John Nichols | The Nation

John Nichols

John Nichols

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Countering Doublespeak

The House of Representatives is moving toward a vote on the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the spin machines of the White House and the corporate special interests - along with their amen corner in the media - are working overtime.

These are the days when the big lies get told - as we learned more than a decade ago when the Clinton White House was busy working with congressional Republicans to win support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and more recently when Congress debated establishing permanent normal trade relations with China.

To counter the Orwellian twists of facts and figures that are sure to come from the White House and its political allies, fair trade campaigners (www.citizenstrade.org and www.wiscotrader.org) have come up with a top 10 list of trade doublespeak - and the facts to counter it:

No. 10: Our trade deficit actually shows how strong the economy is.That's a lot like arguing that the more you go into debt, the richer you really are. Here's what happened with NAFTA: Our trade deficit with those countries is 12 times bigger than before the pact - it shot up from $9 billion in 1993 to $111 billion last year. A high trade deficit weakens our economy.

No. 9: CAFTA slows immigration.This same false promise was made under NAFTA, and we all witnessed the opposite result of increased immigration from Mexico. CAFTA has back-door provisions that may make U.S. immigration laws and visa requirements in violation of the agreement, and unenforceable.

No. 8: CAFTA opens a substantial market for U.S.goods.Central America has some of the poorest countries in the world, and the aggregate economy of the six CAFTA nations is minuscule. "Add up the six CAFTA economies and you get a market the size of New Haven, Conn.," points out trade analyst Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Tonelson concludes that CAFTA is a "classic outsourcing agreement" - an arrangement in which the only significant U.S. export would be manufacturing jobs to poor, low-wage nations.

No. 7: CAFTA helps the working poor of Central America.Since NAFTA, real wages for Mexican workers have fallen. Over 1.5 million displaced Mexican subsistence farmers were turned into unemployed masses. Mexico is becoming poorer. Today, 40 percent of Central America's workers earn less than $2 a day. Their employment rights are routinely abused, and CAFTA will require these countries to merely enforce their own weak and unfair labor laws. CAFTA is about making corporations, not Central American workers, richer.

No. 6: CAFTA helps farmers.The poor of Central America will not be buying cheese from Wisconsin or corn from Iowa. Under CAFTA, barriers to agricultural imports from these countries would be removed immediately, while barriers to U.S. exports wouldn't be lifted for anywhere from 10 to 20 years - thereby crippling U.S. agricultural producers. Many state-level farm organizations publicly oppose CAFTA. The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture passed a resolution against CAFTA because farm products aren't adequately protected by the agreement. CAFTA will hurt the American farmer, but funnel money to large agribusiness corporations who do business overseas.

No. 5: CAFTA is essential for national security.This desperate plea by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a last-ditch effort by a failing administration to resuscitate CAFTA using fear and divisiveness. Short of votes in Congress, with a flawed strategy, they are attempting to scare the American people into support. Nobody really thinks al-Qaida has splinter cells in Costa Rica. We won't be fooled into believing Osama bin Laden is hiding out in the Dominican Republic.

No. 4: CAFTA is a relatively small trade agreement.CAFTA is the largest trade agreement before our country since NAFTA, and a critical steppingstone toward creation of a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas. It has become a national referendum on failed trade policies of the past, and the outcome will set a course for our future dealings with China. For local and state government, CAFTA would become the highest law of the land, determining rules on procurement, health care, zoning and immigration.

No. 3: CAFTA helps the American worker.Just the opposite. When companies in other countries are allowed to race to the basement, employment conditions for our American workers deteriorate. We get less pay, fewer benefits and reduced health care coverage. CAFTA is the Wal-Mart of trade deals. CEOs justify actions by the need to stay competitive and keep prices low. Big corporations then get all the breaks, and the profits, while workers' rights and wages are forsaken.

No. 2: Trade deals always pass in Congress; so will CAFTA.Right now, a majority of House members, including a significant number of Republicans, oppose CAFTA. Another sizable bloc of GOP House members is uncommitted. For CAFTA to pass, over two dozen House members will have to breakcommitments to vote against it, and every single uncommitted member will need to vote for it. That's not likely to happen, as polling shows opposition to outsourcing and CAFTA is growing. The more Americans find out about it, the less they like it.

No. 1 doublespeak: CAFTA trade policies create jobs and stimulate economic growth.It's the Big Lie. When we import more, and our trade deficit grows, we lose jobs, and export our wealth to other countries. We lost an estimated 900,000 net jobs to NAFTA. Outsourcing the American economy to other countries is a failing strategy for our future.

Rove Defense Team

It appears that no one in Washington has bothered to ask why it is that the Republican National Committee is leading the defense of Karl Rove. But it's a good question.

If Rove is really the president's deputy chief of staff in charge of policy, as opposed to a political hack operating within the White House and using taxpayer money to do the work of the Republican Party, wouldn't it make sense that his defenders would be current and retired policy specialists? And since the controversy in which he is embroiled has something to do with national security, wouldn't it be at least a little more assuring if a former Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser or chief of the Central Intelligence Agency were to speak up on his behalf?

But, no, as the controversy about his leaking of classified information heats up, Rove is being defended, for the most part, by RNC chair Ken Mehlman, a political operative who has never been seriously involved in policy matters – let alone national security issues.

Mehlman is a second-string hack, a veteran of the losing presidential campaigns of George Bush I in 1992 and Mr. Elizabeth Dole in 1996.

To the extent that Mehlman has a reputation is it as a professional "spin doctor" – a party operative who is paid to warp the truth.

That's precisely what Mehlman is doing in his defense of Rove. Instead of trying to muster a defense of Rove's leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to reporters -- apparently in an effort to punish Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, for exposing the administration's lies regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction – Mehlman and his team have been busy spreading lies about Wilson.Attacking Wilson is currently mission critical for the RNC. The latest display items on the committee's website are headlined "Joe Wilson's Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies And Misstatements" and "In Case You Missed It: Excerpts From RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman on FOX News' ‘Fox And Friends,' – a Friday morning appearance in which the RNC chair essentially repeated the list of supposed inaccuracies and misstatements.

Here's the problem: It is the RNC, not Wilson, which is guilty of spreading inaccuracies and misstatements. The RNC claims that Rove told Time magazine writer Matthew Cooper that "Wilson's wife" had OK'ed the former ambassador's 2002 mission to Niger in Africa to check out claims that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis had been attempting to buy materials that might be used to develop WMDs. In fact, it was not Plame but the CIA's Directorate of Operations for the Counterproliferation Division, which sent Wilson to Niger.

The folks at the watchdog group MediaMatters, who are working hard to set the record straight, state that, "The Los Angeles Times reported on July 15, 2004, that an unnamed CIA official confirmed that Plame was not responsible for the CIA's decision to send Wilson to Niger, saying: ‘Her bosses say she did not initiate the idea of her husband going. ... They asked her if he'd be willing to go, and she said yes.'"

The second big lie that the RNC is spreading suggests that Rove was leaking information to Time's Cooper in order to prevent the reporter from repeating a supposed false claim by Wilson – that he was sent on the Niger mission by Vice President Dick Cheney.

This is just pure fantasy. Wilson has always been exceptionally precise about how he ended up in Niger. He laid things out in the original op-ed piece for The New York Times in July, 2003, where he explained,

"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."

How to Oppose a War

Contemporary politicians who are struggling to determine when the time will be right to start talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq would do well to borrow a page from former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, D-Wisconsin.

In the spring of 1964, when only about 16,500 U.S. troops were present in the country as "advisers," and when no one had heard of the Gulf of Tonkin, Nelson was asked by a television reporter to discuss the U.S. presence in southeast Asia. Nelson responded by suggesting that President Lyndon Johnson should reconsider the decision to commit troops to the region, arguing that the time had come to "set some timetable for withdrawal from the situation."

The Wisconsin senator completely rejected the notion that any good would result from an escalation in the U.S. role in the troubled country.

"I don't think that additional men and materials and economic aid ... is going to solve the problem in South Vietnam," asserted Nelson, who repeated his counsel that the time was coming for "an orderly withdrawal."

As the senator's biographer, Bill Christofferson, noted, "Nelson knew almost from the start that the Vietnam War was a mistake."

Even more significantly, Nelson had the courage to express that opinion when few others were willing to do so.

To be sure, Nelson, who died last week at age 89, will be most remembered as the originator of Earth Day. And his role in launching the contemporary environmental movement certainly merits recognition and praise. But it is important to recall that Nelson's green activism was only a part of his broader progressive vision and commitment.

Raised in the Wisconsin progressive tradition of former U.S. Sen. Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette, who courageously and correctly opposed Woodrow Wilson's decision to march U.S. troops into World War I, Nelson emerged in the mid-1960s as an equally courageous and correct critic of Johnson's misadventure in Vietnam.

After being assured by Sen. J. William Fulbright, the respected chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the Johnson administration would not use the Gulf of Tonkin resolution as an excuse to expand the U.S. mission in southeast Asia, Nelson grudgingly voted for that August1964 measure. Only a pair of maverick senior senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, opposed it. But, as Nelson came to realize that Fulbright had been bamboozled by the president, the Wisconsin senator joined Morse and Gruening in working to end the war.

In May 1965, when Johnson sought a $700 million supplemental appropriation "to meet the mounting military costs of Vietnam," the Wisconsin Democrat broke ranks with the Democratic administration to join Morse and Gruening in opposing the spending measure. Speaking to the Senate, Nelson declared, "Members of the Senate, known as the world's greatest deliberative body, are stumbling over each other to see who can say 'yea' the quickest and the loudest. I regret it, and I think that someday we shall all regret it."

Noting that the administration had failed to make a compelling case that the war was necessary, let alone wise, the senator concluded, "Thus, reluctantly, I express my opposition to our procedure here by voting 'nay.' The support of the Congress for this measure is clearly overwhelming. Obviously, you need my vote less than I need my conscience."

Nelson would continue for the better part a decade to be one of the Senate's most passionate foes of the war. When the fighting was finished in 1973, he said, "Let us hope that our political leaders in both political parties have learned a lesson from this mistaken enterprise and will not involve the country again in a civil war where the vital interests of this country are not at stake."

With U.S. troops stuck in the quagmire that is Iraq, it is obvious that the lesson was not learned. And the only way they will get out alive is if more senators learn the lesson that Nelson taught: Start talking about withdrawal early and don't be afraid to vote your conscience.

Bugged by the Brits

Conservative radio and television personalities in the United States were unsettled after last week's bombings in London -- not because of the terrorist attack on a major western city, but because too few Londoners were willing to serve as props to support the right-wing ranting of the Americans. After one stoic Brit, who had blood on the side of his face, calmly described climbing out of a smoke-filled subway station, a Fox anchor exclaimed, "That man's obviously in shock."

Actually, the man appeared to be completely in control of his faculties, as did the British journalists who appeared that evening on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor." Host Bill O'Reilly, the king of the hysterics, had a hard time with the Brits, who simply were not as feverish as he had hoped -- and who were genuinely bemused when he started ranting about how much he hated Britain's highly regarded Guardian newspaper.

O'Reilly, like too many other American radio and television commentators, expected the British attacks to provide a new opportunity to hype support for the war in Iraq, gripe about "open borders" and generally spin sorrow and fear into political gold for the conservative cause.

It didn't happen, though not for lack of trying by the folks at Fox.

The Fox commentary following the London bombings was surreal. Brit Hume babbled about how the dip in stock values after the attacks meant it was "time to buy," Brian Kilmeade suggested that a deadly terrorist attack on a country where the G8 leaders were meeting "works to our advantage," and John Gibson bemoaned the fact that the bombs hit London and not Paris. "They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?" chuckled Gibson, the host of one of the network's "news" shows.

But the Fox personalities and their allies in right-wing talk radio found few takers among the British for their efforts to politicize the gruesome developments in the British capital.

Try as American conservative commentators did to get Londoners to echo their pro-Bush, pro-war line, the British generally refused to play along.

This does not mean that most Brits who were interviewed embraced calls for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq or other alternatives to the Bush administration's misguided approach to the so-called "war on terror." But it does mean that, instead of parroting propaganda, the Brits preferred to engage in thoughtful discussions about what had happened, why the terrorists targeted London and what ought to be done to prevent future attacks. Few topics were off limits.

Veteran journalist Gary Younge suggested that the attacks were "Blair's blowback" -- the bloody wages of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to back President Bush's disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Some members of parliament called for Britain to quickly withdraw its troops from the quagmire. Others suggested that Britain needs to get more engaged in promoting the Middle East peace process. There was no single response, no lockstep approach, because the Brits were angry enough -- and determined enough -- to put everything on the table.

Unfortunately, a thoughtful, nuanced discussion that was focused on finding solutions -- rather than merely venting or promoting a particular political agenda -- didn't fit into the Fox format.

The inability of American right-wing media to recognize honest discourse prevented most U.S. media outlets from recognizing that which was genuinely meaningful and moving about the British reaction.

For instance, U.S. media pretty much missed the one truly Churchillian response to the attacks -- that of London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a committed socialist and anti-war activist, who issued the following statement on the day of the attacks:









How to Fight Terrorism

President Bush unwittingly provided an appropriate response to the gruesome terrorist attacks on London.

Highlighting the "vivid" contrast between the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, Scotland -- where the world's most powerful leaders have been forced by grassroots pressure to address issues of global poverty and climate change -- and the carnage in London after coordinated bomb blasts killed dozens of commuters Thursday morning, Bush said, "On the one hand, we got people here who are working to alleviate poverty and to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and that are working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who've got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks."

Bush went on to promise that, "we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate."

Imagine the cries of outrage and incomprehension that would have arisen from right-wing talk radio and television pundits if a President Al Gore or a President John Kerry had called, in the immediate aftermath of an attack linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, for spreading an "ideology of hope and compassion" as part of the response to terrorism.

Imagine if a President Gore or a Kerry had spoken, as Bush did, of bringing those responsible for the attacks "to justice" rather than pledging to "hunt them down and kill them."

Imagine if a President Gore or Kerry had failed to make any mention of the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- supposedly a critical front in the "war on terror" -- at such a moment.

Bush's amen corner in the media is, of course, packed with hypocrites who hear echoes of Churchill in the president's every utterance, just as they detect the language of treason in the mere mention of alternative approaches to fighting terrorism.

But the failings of his followers ought not obscure the fact that the president's response -- intentionally or otherwise --went to the issues that should be addressed.

Bush expressed his "heartfelt condolences," he called for bringing the killers to justice. And then he spoke -- in the context of a broader discussion about alleviating poverty, disease and environmental decay -- about combating terrorism with "hope and compassion." In the end, it will only be when hope and compassion are delivered to the world's most dispossessed peoples -- through debt reduction, aid and measures that combat the spread of easily treated diseases -- that those who preach violence as a response to inequity and injustice will be sufficiently marginalized to make it possible to talk of "winning" a war on terrorism.

Is it possible that the president is beginning to accept this reality? Could he be coming to realize that the challenges posed by international terrorism cannot be met merely with cowboy rhetoric and bombs?

Surely, the painful recognition that, almost four years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, al-Qaeda is apparently still capable of pulling off coordinated, and extremely deadly, attacks in one of the most security-savvy cities on the planet ought to cause Bush to rethink his misguided response to what he describes as the great challenge of his presidency.

Unfortunately, Bush has shown little capacity for growth in his knowledge or understanding of world affairs. So it is wise to remain skeptical about how far he plans to take his "hope and compassion" response.

That said, we ought to hold the man to his words -- and to remind the president's amen corner that it was not Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi who responded to the news of a terrorist attack with a discussion about alleviating poverty and ridding the world of disease. It was George W. Bush. And, at least in that moment, he was right.

Democrats for CAFTA

Organized labor is opposed to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Progressive farm groups are opposed to CAFTA.

Environmental groups are opposed to CAFTA.

Civil rights groups are opposed to CAFTA.

Human rights groups are opposed to CAFTA.

Virtually all of the organizations that are associated with what is loosely defined as the Democratic coalition are opposed to the trade deal that Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin says "will hurt American workers, hurt the workers of Central America and create instability in Central America that will force more immigration into the United States."

So, of course, Senate Democrats must have been united in opposition to the Bush administration's proposal to expand on the failed model of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which has wrecked havoc with the economies of the U.S., Mexico and Canada -- to create a free trade zone that extends from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Circle. Right?


Just before the July 4 Congressional break, when the Senate voted on CAFTA, a dozen Republicans abandoned the administration to vote "no." That meant that, if Democrats had been united in their opposition, the trade deal would have been easily defeated and the president's plan to make it easier for multinational corporations to exploit workers, communities and the environment throughout the hemisphere would have been dealt a fatal blow.

Instead, ten Democrats -- New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman, Washington's Maria Cantwell, Delaware's Tom Carper, California's Dianne Feinstein, Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, Washington's Patty Murray, Florida's Bill Nelson, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Arkansas's Mark Pryor and, Oregon's Ron Wyden, as well as Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords, who caucuses with the Democrats, voted for the president's proposal.

As a result, CAFTA won by a 55-45 margin.

Make no mistake, it was a failure of focus on the part of Democrats that gave Bush's trade policies Senate approval.

Fortunately, the fight is not done. Opposition to CAFTA is more widespread in the House of Representatives, which still must vote on the measure. More House Republicans have broken with the president on the issue and House Democrats appear to be more united in their opposition than ever before.

As U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, a steadfast foe of corporate-sponsored free trade deals notes, opposition to CAFTA has grown as members of both chambers "who (once) blindly accepted these agreements are now beginning to read the fine print."

Feingold's right. The trend is against CAFTA.

The sad thing is that, because 10 Democrats and Jeffords are still blindly accepting the flawed arguments of the Bush administration -- just as they did the flawed arguments of the Clinton administration before it – a trade pact that could do severe harm to workers, farmers and the environment in the U.S. and abroad cleared the Senate. Had those Bush Democrats bothered to read the fine print -- and to make a break with the corporate funders of so many of their campaigns -- the CAFTA fight would already be done.

Not Dominion, But Liberty

As the 229th anniversary of the founding of the American experiment approached, President Bush provided a painful reminder of how far the United States has drifted from the ideals of her youth.

Speaking to soldiers who would soon be dispatched to occupy Iraq, Bush sounded an awfully lot like the King George against whom George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other revolutionaries of 1776 led their revolt.

America was founded in opposition to empire. The Declaration of Independence was a manifesto against colonialism. And the wisest of the founding generations abhorred imperialism.

Their opposition to empire was not merely rooted in their own bitter experience. It was, as well, rooted in a faith that American freedoms and democracy would suffer if the nation embarked upon a career of empire.

So, while Bush suggests that other lands must be occupied to preserve liberty at home, the patriots of our time recall will do well to recall words spoken on another July 4.

When America was younger and truer to her ideals, on Independence Day, 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams appeared before the US House of Representatives and declared:










She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.








Court Fight: It's More Than Left vs. Right

"A nation's success or failure in achieving democracy is judged in part by how well it responds to those at the bottom and the margins of the social order.... The very problems that democratic change brings--social tension, heightened expectations, political unrest--are also strengths. Discord is a sign of progress afoot; unease is an indication that a society has let go of what it knows and is working out something better and new."

Those are not the thoughts of a great civil rights leader, nor of a prominent progressive reformer.

They are the words of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" vote on the US Supreme Court, who on Friday announced that she is stepping down.

O'Connor joined the Court as an ideological conservative and, for the most part, served as such. But, as the above quote from her 2003 memoir, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice, suggests, the first woman to serve on the nation's highest court was a conservative of the modern age.

Her nuanced stances on issues such as abortion rights--she defended the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion as "a rule of law and a component of liberty we cannot renounce"--distinguished her from the Court's conservative judicial activists, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. (To get a full sense of what is at stake, see the list of 5-to-4 decisions where O'Connor cast the deciding vote, which follows this piece.)

With O'Connor's exit, the Court will move in one of two directions. No, not right or left. With O'Connor out, the Court will either go backward or forward.

If President Bush nominates and the Senate confirms an activist soul mate for Scalia and Thomas, the Court will not simply become more conservative.

It will move back toward the days before Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower used their nominations in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s to wrench the judicial branch out of a dark and undistinguished past. Those selections made the Supreme Court a functional branch of government, rather than an obstructionist defender of an often corrupt old order.

People for the American Way President Ralph Neas put it best when he said Friday, "A Scalia-Thomas majority would not only reverse more than seven decades of Supreme Court legal precedents but could also return us to a situation America faced in the first third of the twentieth century, when progressive legislation, like child labor laws, was adopted by Congress and signed by the President but repeatedly rejected on constitutional grounds by the Supreme Court."

Neas understands his history well. The contemporary image of the Supreme Court as a defender of civil liberties and civil rights, and an ally of progress, is one that developed over the course of the twentieth century. It was not always so. And there are no guarantees that it will remain so.

As such, this is not merely a battle over a Court vacancy, nor even over the balance on the bench.

If the Court moves backward to the bad old days, so too will the nation.

With a Court guided by a majority determined to reverse the progress made on issues ranging from reproductive freedom to privacy rights, affirmative action, church-state separation, environmental protection, consumer safeguards and worker rights, Neas warns, America would return to a time when the judicial branch took as its mandate the preservation of the status quo against the march of social progress.

"A Supreme Court with additional justices who do not meet consensus standards could radically rewrite our nation's fundamental definitions of justice," says Neas.

In so doing, it could also rewrite our sense of time. Instead of living in 2005, Americans could find themselves dragged backward to those nineteenth-century days when the Supreme Court was the nation's primary barrier to social and economic justice.****************************************************************

People for the American Way has compiled a list of 5-to-4 rulings in which Sandra Day O'Connor was the decisive Justice. Here are some of the decisions that the group says are in danger of being overturned:

1. Grutter v. Bollinger (2003): Affirmed the right of state colleges and universities to use affirmative action in their admissions policies to increase educational opportunities for minorities and promote racial diversity on campus.

2. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004): Said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.

3. Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002): Upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor's opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.

4. Hunt v. Cromartie (2001): Affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.

5. Tennessee v. Lane (2004): Upheld the constitutionality of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act and required that courtrooms be physically accessible to the disabled.

6. Hibbs v. Winn (2004): Subjected discriminatory and unconstitutional state tax laws to review by the federal judiciary.

7. Zadvydas v. Davis (2001): Told the government it could not indefinitely detain an immigrant who was under final order of removal even if no other country would accept that person.

8. Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001): Affirmed that civil rights laws apply to associations regulating interscholastic sports.

9. Lee v. Weisman (1992): Continued the tradition of government neutrality toward religion, finding that government-sponsored prayer is unacceptable at graduations and other public school events.

10. Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington (2003): Maintained a key source of funding for legal assistance for the poor.

11. Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia (1996): Said key antidiscrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act apply to political conventions that choose party candidates.

12. Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001): Upheld laws that limit political party expenditures that are coordinated with a candidate and seek to evade campaign contribution limits.

13. McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003): Upheld most of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, including its ban on political parties' use of unlimited soft-money contributions.

14. Stenberg v. Carhart (2000): Overturned a state ban on so-called partial birth abortion.

15. McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky (2005): Upheld the principle of government neutrality toward religion and ruled unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays in several courthouses.

The Big Lie


George W. Bush -- September 17, 2003





Until now.











Reinforcing the Wall


















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