During tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Florida, both former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tried to run away from their past more liberal positions. In fact, Fox News moderators Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, and Carl Cameron repeatedly asked Giuliani and Romney to prove their conservative credentials. And while the mainstream media allows the GOP to cater to its conservative base and ideology, political pundits don’t extend the same privilege to Democrats.

As the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has pointed out, the mainstream media often pulls Democratic candidates to the right and suggests that representing liberal causes or “catering” to progressive organizations like MoveOn.org will lose them the election.

Media advocates of centrism typically call on Democrats to reject their natural supporters, often denigrated as “special interests”: liberals, unions, civil rights and feminist groups, and environmental and consumer rights organizations. Meanwhile, corporate-friendly policies and conservative-leaning “moral values” are presented as the road to electoral success. Many political pundits say going centrist is not only the right thing—it’s the only way Democrats can win.

During his speech at the Values Voters Summit, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney suggested that the biggest problem facing African American communities is “out-of-wedlock childbirth.”

Ann and I will use the bully pulpit to teach America’s children that before they have babies, they should get married. It’s time to make out-of-wedlock births out-of-fashion again!

Bill Cosby related that in some inner cities: ‘There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible males to watch out for wayward boys, whole neighborhoods in which little boys and girls come of age without seeing up close a committed relationship and perhaps never having attended a wedding.’ This simply breaks my heart. And then there are the broad national implications of this tragedy. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot thrive when so many children are being raised without fathers in the home.

While “close to 70% of all new [African American] babies are born to unwed mothers–about three times the rate of illegitimate birth that prevails among whites and Asians” — preaching about family values does not address the structural racial inequalities that are undermining African American families. As author and social critic Paul Street points out:

The phenomena that are hopelessly muddled include an inequitably funded educational system that apparently just happens to provide poorer instruction for blacks than whites; an electoral system whose voting irregularities and domination by big money happens to disproportionately disenfranchise blacks; a criminal justice system that happens to especially stop, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate African-Americans; a political economy whose tendency toward sharp inequality happens to especially impoverish and divide black communities; and residential markets and housing practices that happen to disproportionately restrict African-American children to the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods and communities, where kids’ chances of learning are significantly diminished by the threats of injury and violence. The list goes on.

Rev. Jesse Jackson made a similar argument in a rare appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor. Jackson argued that in African American communities “jobs out, investment out, guns and drugs in. We do not grow drugs, nor manufacture them. To unleash semiautomatic weapons as legal again to enforce the drug trade. Taxes up, service down. First-class — second-class schools.”

There’s a phenomenon here that lends itself to marginalizing a whole body of American people. We must take that on seriously, because in some sense, it costs more to lock up than to lift up.

While conservatives, and some liberals, are generally reluctant to discuss or address America’s deep racial inequalities, Mitt Romney’s misunderstanding of the problems plaguing African American communities may rest in his sheer reluctance to learn. Back in September, Mitt Romney was one of four top-tier GOP candidates who skipped a minority issues debate, citing a “scheduling conflict.” Unfortunately, rather than address what he calls one of the “biggest threats to the fabric of our society” with tailored solutions, Romney prefers to apply misguided ‘family values’ templates and leave the real problem unresolved.

The former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay has alleged that “politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections…adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.” Air Force Col. Morris Davis felt “pressure to pursue cases that were deemed “sexy” over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.”

Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel’s command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest.

“There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up,” Davis said. “People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness.”

Unfortunately this isn’t the first time the Bush administration has manipulated terrorism prosecutions to score political points. In September 2002, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that the prosecution of ‘the twentieth hijacker’ Zacarias Moussaoui, “has also contributed to discontent within the F.B.I. over what some see as a politicized Justice Department more eager to have splashy court victories than to protect intelligence resources.”

One senior F.B.I. official noted, with obvious disdain, that the Justice Department attorneys wanted to use raw intelligence from sensitive, ongoing investigations to bolster otherwise flagging counterintelligence or counterterrorism criminal cases. “You’d make one case but lose thirty others,” the official said.

The prosecution of Jose Padilla suffered a similar fate. According to Harpers Magazine’s Scott Horton, the administration orchestrated a show trial.

The Attorney General had gone way out on a limb in the accusations he made. In fact, Ashcroft had done this. It had happened while he was in Moscow—and I was there at the same time, working on a deal, and remembering my amazement over the spectacle of a U.S. Attorney General making these sorts of accusations at a hastily convened Moscow press conference. It was simply bizarre. […]

From the outset it was handled in a way that undermines the public’s confidence in the integrity and fairness of our law enforcement system, and was, in important ways, simply stupid.

The attorney general’s dramatic press conference in Moscow, for instance, is now regularly acknowledged by Justice Department officials (off-the-record) as a colossal mistake. They justify it by saying that it provided proof of the Department’s zealous work to protect the country from terrorism. That is a suspiciously political calculus. An attorney general should not be concerned about the monthly fluctuation of public opinion polls. He should be focused on justice. And that press conference and the relentless hype that followed it obstructed the pursuit of justice in the Padilla case. It showed a failure to adhere to basic rules of prosecutorial ethics. And beyond that, it was simply unwise.

Point well taken. Rather than using terrorist prosecutions to boost sagging poll numbers, the administration should, as Davis has asked, “leave prosecuting cases to prosecutors.”

When President Bush announced the surge strategy in January 2007, he argued that his plan would reduce violence and give the Iraqi government “the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.” As former Press Secretary Tony Snow later explained

But the point is you’re trying to add strength to the forces in Iraq so that they’re going to be successful in taking out sectarian violence and also al Qaeda violence, so that you have the conditions under which people can pursue the important business of political reconciliation and economic development.

But the surge has failed to meet these objectives. According to a new report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, U.S. attempts at political reconciliation, economic growth, and building an effective police force in Iraq “have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and the capital.”

In fact, the New York Times notes that “the picture that emerges is far from confidence-inspiring, and raises the question of whether any Western program, no matter how well founded, can overcome the challenges of putting Iraq back together again.”

The answer seems to be that it can’t. As Gen. David Petraeus noted in March of 2007, without political reconciliation, there is no military solution to Iraq. Thus, by Bush’s own standard, the surge has failed. The troops must come home.

UPDATE: A few weeks ago, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told the Washington Post, “I don’t think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such.”

USA Today is reporting that “the Army, Navy and Air Force unwittingly advertised for recruits on a website for gays, who are barred from military service if they are open about their sexual orientation.”

Most of the military jobs posted were hard-to-fill positions requiring advanced training, although some ads sought to fill core combat slots at a time when the Iraq war has challenged recruiters to meet goals.

Barring gays from the military has undermined national security. “Since the policy was instituted, at least 11,000 servicemembers, hundreds of whom had with key speciality skills such as training in Arabic, have left the military. Currently in the midst of a readiness crisis, the military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays could serve openly. “

Rather than recruit gays, the military has lowered its recruiting standards. Last year, the US military “enlisted thousands of new soldiers with criminal records and fewer who have earned high school diplomas.”

The spike of new enlistees given “character” waivers for fiscal 2007 continues a steady upward trend in the number of recruits with past arrests and convictions allowed into the Army since the start of the war in Iraq. More than 11 percent of the Army recruits needed waivers for problems with the law – up from 7.9 percent the previous year and more than double the percentage in 2003, the year the U.S. invaded Iraq.

In today’s Washington Post, twelve former Army Captains write that the U.S. military is overstretched and loosing ground to insurgents in Iraq.

Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles… There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition. America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

The captains’ argument has been echoed by retired and active duty military officials. Just days ago, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, called the war “a nightmare with no end in sight.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Undersecretary for Intelligence Gen. James Clapper and other top officials have also argued that the war may be crippling the military’s ability to respond to other crises. ThinkProgress has the full run down here.

The Bush administration has consistently claimed that the decision to draw down troops from Iraq “will be made on a calm assessment by our military commanders based on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians or poll results in the media.” In reality, the President only listens to those who wear his brand of rose-colored glasses.

For instance, during today’s White House press conference, Press Secretary Dana Perino dismissed Sanchez’s criticism and responded like a “nervous…Washington politician.”

General Sanchez had a good career with the military and the President appreciates his service. I think that, by any measure, if you look at Iraq today, where we’ve been because of the surge — where we’ve come because of the surge, we’re in a much better place today because of what General Petraeus has been able to do in providing the additional troops and getting the Anbar — Anbari sheikhs to turn against al Qaeda, reducing civilian death, electricity is up around the country.

Similarly, fearing that a military drafty would rally the American people against the Iraq war, President Bush rejects the idea and its proponents. Rather than end the Iraq war and preserve the American military, Bush choses to fight the war on the cheap. Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, put it best:

I say to those people who want to keep up this surge indefinitely, if you have the courage of your convictions, then call for reinstatement of the draft. Because our volunteer Army was not designed, as Gen. Abizaid said, for the long war.

But Bush ignores all this. Rather than strategically deploying the American military to defend the homeland, Bush has hijacked America’s volunteer forces to propel a failed ideological agenda. Fortunately, members of the military are increasingly calling Bush on his bluff. For the second time in three months, American foot soldiers have provided the President and the American people with “calm assessments … based on the conditions on the ground in Iraq.” Today’s pleas, like those that came before, have fallen on deaf ears.

The ACLU is reporting that the Department of Defense improperly collaborated with the FBI and issued “hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval.” According to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero

The Department of Defense may have secretly and illegally conducted surveillance beyond the powers it was granted by Congress. It also appears as if the FBI is serving as a lackey for the DoD in misusing the Patriot Act powers. At the very least, it certainly looks like the FBI and DoD are conspiring to evade limits placed on the Department of Defense’s surveillance powers.

But in a January 2007 interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Vice President Dick Cheney described the practice of issuing national security letters as a “perfectly legitimate activity.”

There’s nothing wrong with it or illegal. It doesn’t violate people’s civil rights. And if an institution that receives one of these national security letters disagrees with it, they’re free to go to court to try to stop its execution.”

The ACLU documents seem to contradict Cheney’s assertions. “Although compliance with Defense Department-issued NSLs is voluntary, the coercive language found in these letters would lead a reader to believe compliance was mandatory.” Moreover, while “the Defense Department told Congress that it seeks NSL assistance from the FBI only in joint investigations… an internal program review shows that the military asks the FBI to issue NSLs in strictly Defense Department investigations.”

UPDATE: The Washington Post reminds us that “earlier this year, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI may have improperly obtained phone, bank and other records of thousands of people inside the United States since 2003 by using national security letters and exigent letters, or emergency demands for records. “

The Washington Post is reporting that “the U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.”

But the military has long overestimated the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to “working-level analysts and troops on the ground,” in the first half of 2007, Al Qaeda accounted for just 8 percent to 15 percent of attacks in Iraq and the group is believed to comprise just 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. A recent Congressional Research Service report noted that attacks from al Qaeda are only a small percentage of the violence in Iraq.

In fact, even the President’s own Benchmark Assessment Report, released on September 14th, concedes that the “main elements” of Iraqi violence “include a communal struggle for power and resources between the Shi’a majority and Sunni, Kurd, and other minorities.”

The Post article also points out that “views of the extent to which AQI has been vanquished also reflect differences over the extent to which it operates independently from Osama bin Laden’s central al-Qaeda organization, based in Pakistan.”

“Everyone has an opinion about how franchisement of al-Qaeda works,” a senior White House official said. “Is it through central control, or is it decentralized?” The answer to that question, the official said, affects “your ability to determine how successfully [AQI] has been defeated or neutralized. Is it ‘game over’?”

But since the administration maintains that the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq is connected to the greater struggle against Al Qaeda Central in the “war on terror,” then judging by the administration’s own standards, the Iraq war has been unsuccessful in reducing the overall Al Qaeda threat. Military officials have consistently underestimated Al Qaeda’s resiliency. As ThinkProgress notes, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the leading advocate of a “declaration of victory” over Al Qaeda, “also fiercely advocated the declaration of Mission Accomplished” in 2003. President Bush has made similar missteps. Here is a sampling:

- Thanks to President Musharraf’s leadership, on the al Qaeda front we’ve dismantled the chief operators of al Qaeda…over 500 al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are detained, they’re no longer a problem. So slowly but surely, we’re dismantling the networks. [White House, 6/24/04]

- We have gone after al Qaeda and other terrorists with relentless determination, disrupting their communications, planning, training, and financing. We have put the enemy on the run, and now they spend their days avoiding capture, because they know America’s Armed Services are on their trail. [White House, 5/27/05]

- Absolutely, we’re winning. Al Qaeda is on the run…We’re winning, and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle right now is Iraq. [White House, 6/25/06]

But according to the National Intelligence Estimate, “Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure along the Pakistani border and may now be a stronger and more resilient organization today than it appeared a year ago.” Similarly, in early September, the Washington Post reported that “by drawing on lessons learned during 15 years of failed campaigns to destroy it,” Al Qaeda “has grown stronger, rebuilding the organizational framework that was badly damaged after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.”

While the extent of the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda Central may not be known, one thing is certain: Bush’s ill planned “war on terror” and America’s continued presence in Iraq only fuels Al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts and endangers American lives.

The Republicans of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce issued a satirical press release grossly misrepresenting the vetoed legislation that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Based in the fictional Springfield from The Simpsons, the release featured the rich Montgomery Burns and Mayor Quimby jockeying for government funded health care.

The release quoted Burns saying, “The little darlings are needy? Me, too. I need somebody to pay ,” suggesting that well-off parents would be allowed access to free health care should SCHIP be expanded.

Such scenarios, however, have absolutely no basis in reality. Under the vetoed plan, parents would only be eligible for coverage if they work low-income, uninsured jobs and the poorest children be “first in line” for coverage. The release comes just a day after the Republican Leadership in the Senate was found by ThinkProgress to be propagating known fictions about 12-year-old SCHIP beneficiary Graeme Frost. As Paul Krugman recapped in the New York Times:

Right-wingers began “insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).”

Indeed, the “press release” and their previous smear campaign betrays the callous zeal with which House Republicans and some Senate Republicans have sought to prevent the needed expansion of SCHIP. While an astounding 91% of Americans want “Congress to help states cover more uninsured children”, a “vast majority [of Americans] also supported covering uninsured parents in low-income working families,” and “more than 600,000 children joined the ranks of the uninsured last year,” House Republicans are more concerned with scoring cheap brownie points with an out-of-touch Bush administration. (via Atrios, Wonkette)

*Seriously Joe, stop.

Yesterday, The Body Politik noted that while former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani portrays himself as an expert on terrorism, his actual statements and policy judgments usually reveal his ignorance. Today, Josh Marshall notes that Rudy Giuliani has hired “Michael Rubin as Senior Iran and Turkey Advisor and Middle East Advisory Board Member.”

Rubin worked at “Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans” and “like the most interesting and frightening neos, Michael is that perfect mix of extreme factual knowledge and extreme lack of judgment, prone to wild-eyed theories and fantasies of various sorts but all in the end leading inexorably toward catastrophic policy moves for the United States.” Below is a sampling of Rubin’s greatest hits:

- IRAQ: “The question with Iraq is not whether they were involved on Sept. 11. The question with Iraq is, do we think they have the capacity, the will and the means to create mass casualties in the United States. I think they do. The evidence shows they do. And then the issue is, why should we wait and sacrifice another 5,000 innocent lives?” [10/24/01 Yale Daily News]

- “September 11 has helped to persuade the region that the United States isn’t going to take it anymore. Even onerous regimes are eager or willing to be part of the U.S. coalition against Usama bin Ladin’s terrorism. Under resolute U.S. leadership, some of this spirit could be mobilized against Iraq.… [Ankara, Amman, Kuwait City, and Riyadh] want to see a plan that is focused, determined, and close-ended. If the United States can produce one, its regional allies will fall into line.”[Winter/02, Middle East Quarterly]

- “The Kurds themselves, many of them patriotic veterans of the Iraqi Army do not wish to split from Iraq; they do want a federal, unified and democratic Iraq. Their only problem is with Saddam Husayn himself. Until he is removed, nothing can proceed.” [ 7/10/01, Middle East Forum]

- The New York Times reports that Rubin advised The Lincoln Group, a Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print American propaganda, on the content of the propaganda campaign in Iraq. [1/2/06, NYT]

- IRAN: “U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses.” Diplomacy with Iran is “a mirage, a tactical tool to divert U.S. policy attention away from the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officials charged with implementing the Iranian leadership’s objectives…For the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq, it must engage not with the illusion of Iranian policy, but refine its strategies to neutralize and counter the Iranian strategies.” [8/09/07, Washington Post]

- “In the wake of Sadr’s uprising, Washington is faced with the same choice: End Iran’s infiltration through forceful action, or wish it away. How long can we afford to keep choosing the latter?“ [4/26/04, New Republic]

- ISLAMIC WORLD: “In the Islamic world, confrontation may work better than dialogue. As the Taliban were driven from Kabul, Afghans spontaneously celebrated, cheering America in the streets…Washington should not negotiate with rogue regimes, at least not until they move beyond mere rhetoric and unilaterally cease all weapons proliferation and terror sponsorship without precondition.” [12/12/01, Opinion Journal]

- REGIME CHANGE IN SYRIA: The Asia Times reported that Michael Rubin and the usual neo-con suspects “signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon.” [4/17/03, Asia Times]

By recruiting hard line neo-conservatives, Giuliani is tacitly endorsing the failed foreign policy of the Bush administration. If the war on terror and the war in Iraq have radicalized jihadists and increased the terror threat, Giuliani’s willingness to pursue a confrontational and militant foreign policy– possibly extending the war to Iran– would jeopardize American safety and security.