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	GOOD NEWS Today, the Senate will vote on legislation to keep critical AIDS, TB and malaria programs running around the world. Call your Senators and ask them to support the Santorum-Durbin amendment. DON'T MISS HUMAN RIGHTS: "Gulf region's newest pipeline: human trafficking." EDUCATION: Budget looks to ax program for bright children from low-income families. IRAQ: The "unnamed and unnoticed" civilian casualties. DAILY GRILL "We must remember the high standards that come with high office. This begins careful adherence with the rules. I expect every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries (that) define legal and ethical conduct. No one in the White House should be afraid to confront the people they work for over ethical concerns, and no one should hesitate to confront me as well." -- President Bush, 7/22/01 VERSUS Q: Two years, and [President Bush] can't call Rove in and find out what the hell is going on? I mean, why is it so difficult to find out the facts? It costs thousands, millions of dollars, two years, it tied up how many lawyers? All he's got to do is call him in. MR. McCLELLAN: You just heard from the President. He said he doesn't know all the facts. I don't know all the facts. Q : Why? MR. McCLELLAN: We want to know what the facts are. Because -- Q Why doesn't he ask him? -- White House Press Briefing, 7/18/05 DAILY OUTRAGE Founder of the Christian Coalition of America Pat Robertson recently declared, "Islam, at least at its core, teaches violence. It's there in the Quran in clear, bold statements...and those who believe it sincerely in their hearts are those that think Osama bin Laden is their great hero." He continued, "Political correctness says that you're not supposed to recognize this, but it just happents to be the truth." ARCHIVES Progress Report

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney,
Mipe Okunseinde and Christy Harvey

JUDICIARY	The Supreme Choice
ETHICS	The Truth Will Set You Free (Of Your Job)
UNDER THE RADAR	Go Beyond The Headlines
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JUDICIARY
The Supreme Choice

The Supreme Court nomination process is moving quickly. President Bush may announce his nominee "in the next few days," and says he would like the confirmation process to be completed by October. Polls show the majority of Americans want Bush to nominate a woman who supports Roe v. Wade and is aligned philosophically with Justice O'Connor (whom only 17 percent describe as "conservative"); tellingly, most Americans are also "uneasy," not "confident," about Bush's choice. That said, these polls should be good news for President Bush, since they reveal that the bar for success is extremely low: Do not select a radical. Do select a moderate, fair-minded judge in the mold of O'Connor, who represents the views of the majority of Americans. This is the message from progressives, independents, and mainstream conservatives alike, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA), who says he wants the nominee to be a "swing voter."

To provide you with the most comprehensive coverage of this important process, American Progress is launching Clerks, a partner blog of ThinkProgress, dedicated entirely to Supreme Count coverage. Writing for Clerks is an esteemed group of legal thinkers, professors, litigators, and advocates, virtually all of whom clerked for Supreme Court justices in recent years. Although each blogger brings a different perspective, all write from a deep awareness of the Court's importance and a deep concern about how a new justice could change our country. Check out Clerks now.

IDEOLOGY MATTERS: The Washington Post recently reported that top adviser Karl Rove has "called for limiting the scope of confirmation hearings, saying ideology should not be a subject of senators' questions as it was 18 years ago." But this approach, thankfully, has been rejected by principal figures from across the political spectrum. Indeed, Sen. Specter said recently that nominees with an "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution (some of whom are apparently on the president's short list) would be well outside the mainstream: "[I]deology could come into play if it is very, very, very extreme, and we had the situation with Judge Bork. And when he was for original intent, it seemed to me that that was the most extraordinary view of constitutional interpretation of anybody who had ever been nominated." Likewise, both Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist believe it is perfectly reasonable for nominees to publicly assert their views on legal issues. In a 1972 opinion (which was quoted later in an opinion by Scalia), Rehnquist wrote, "Proof that a Justice's mind at the time he joined the Court was a complete tabula rasa in the area of constitutional adjudication would be evidence of lack of qualification, not lack of bias." (See more notable quotes from that opinion here.) Last week, American Progress released a letter signed by 101 legal scholars which offers 10 critical questions the nominee should be asked to gauge their judicial philosophy.

IF YOU CHOOSE A MODERATE, THEY WILL COME: Beyond the politics and posturing, the truth is that there are numerous potential candidates for the Court that would receive overwhelming, if not unanimous, bipartisan support in the Senate if nominated. Most notably, there is Edward Charles Prado of the 5th Circuit, nominated to be a district judge by President Reagan, and named to the appeals court by President George W. Bush. Prado has been the focus of a draft campaign, DraftPrado.org, organized by citizens calling on the Senate and President Bush to confirm a justice with a "moderate, balanced approach to the law." Another candidate is Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, "who was named a district judge by President George H.W. Bush and elevated to the appeals court by [President] Clinton."

TO SUCCEED, PRESIDENT BUSH MUST RESIST THE RIGHT WING: The Supreme Court nomination process, like the struggle over the "nuclear option" and the tragic Terri Schiavo saga, is showing the very worst side of far-right conservatives. Christian conservatives led by the Family Research Council have again organized a divisive telecast dubbed "Justice Sunday" to focus on the Court's supposed "hostility toward religion and Christianity in particular." Figures behind the telecast plan to argue that questions regarding a nominee's personal beliefs on issues like abortion would amount to an unconstitutional "religious test." The flier says event speakers will describe "[h]ow activist judges subvert the family, undermine religious freedom and threaten our nation's future." Another conservative advocacy group, the American Center for Law and Justice, is circulating an Internet petition saying the president needs to "stand strong against the liberal onslaught. He must not give in to the call for a consensus candidate." Even some in Congress are belittling the need for consultation. Asked recently about President Bush's outreach efforts, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) "put his arm on the shoulder of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in one of the Senate's elevators and sang, 'Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya.'"

READING THE TEA LEAVES: There are some hopeful signs that President Bush is taking seriously his obligation to consult meaningfuly with the Senate before selecting his nominee. Roll Call reports that the White House has "engaged in unprecedented efforts to solicit the views of Republican and Democratic senators" on potential nominees. Moreover, the president is taking his time. If he does not choose a candidate by Thursday, his selection period "will go down as the longest a Republican president has taken to announce a high court nomination since 1971." But there is also reason for concern. For example, the New York Times reported last week that White House officials reached out to Rev. Jerry Falwell for his advice on the nomination; Falwell heartily backed Bush's most extreme nominee to the federal courts, Janice Rogers Brown. Of course, the true indicator of the president's desire to avoid a partisan fight will be found not in how long or with whom he consults, but the individual he chooses to nominate.

ETHICS
The Truth Will Set You Free (Of Your Job)

As the leak investigation into who revealed Valerie Plame's identity to the press continues on its course, it's important to remember the origins of this debacle. Plame was outed for one reason: she was the wife of someone who undermined the rationale for attacking Iraq. The Bush administration has, in general, been very unsympathetic to internal whistleblowers (see Clarke Kent Irvin and Mike Parker), but they have reserved particularly harsh judgment for those who disagree with the administration's approach to the Iraq war. What is even more disturbing than the treatment of those who criticize the Bush administration is the fact that those who have been criticized most harshly have in fact been proven to be more right than wrong. As Margaret Carlson noted, "In the Bush administration, you lose your job not for lying but for telling the truth." But even those without current jobs in the administration, like former Bush counterterrorism director Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, have not been spared the White House's wrath simply because they had already left the administration. The criteria is simple: if you speak a divergent truth from President Bush, you will face the fury of the White House Smear Machine.

SHINSEKI SMEARED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH: In February 2003, the Army's top general and chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, testified before Congress that it would take "several hundred thousand troops" to occupy post-war Iraq in order to maintain safety "over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems." The Bush administration waged an all-out assault on Shinseki's view, with Paul Wolfowitz calling it "wildly off the mark." According to the USA Today (3/14/03), Donald Rumsfeld even threatened to fire the Army Secretary Tom White after White "failed to rebuke" Shinseki. Rumsfeld did later fire White; Shinseki was not asked to stay on. The NY Daily News reported that none of Rumsfeld's top aides attended Shinseki's retiring ceremony. History has proven Shinseki was right; Bush was wrong.

LINDSEY SMEARED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH: In September 2002, former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey annoyed the White House by suggesting the Iraq war could cost between $100 and $200 billion, an estimate Bush officials insisted was too high. As Tim Russert recently noted, Lindsey "was fired because he said the war in Iraq would cost $100 billion. We're way past that." The cost of the Iraq war to date, according to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) is "$230 billion and rising." History has proven Lindsey was right; Bush was wrong.

O'NEILL SMEARED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH: After being fired along with Lindsey in December 2002, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote a book that discussed Bush's march to war in Iraq. He told Time magazine in Jan. 2004: "In the 23 months I was [in the administration], I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction... To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence." Despite having been given clearance by the Bush administration to use and access documents that pertained to his tenure as Treasury Secretary, the White House immediately called for an investigation into how O'Neill received access to documents they gave him. Numerous intelligence reports, including the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, have proven O'Neill right and Bush wrong.

CLARKE SMEARED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH: Former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke came out in 2004 to say that Bush had planned to invade Iraq before 9/11. He also said that by invading Iraq, the U.S. had "greatly undermined the war on terrorism" and "delivered to al Qaeda the greatest recruitment propaganda possible." The White House assailed his charges as "politically motivated," "reckless," and "baseless" -- notably omitting the most applicable term -- truthful. Clarke predicted the White House would "launch their dogs" on him, and they did. In an attempt to attack his character, the White House declassified a background anonymous briefing on behalf of the President that Clarke had given while he was working at the White House. Like Shinseki, Lindsey, and O'Neill before him, Clark has proven Bush to be on the wrong side of history.

PROMOTIONS FOR TOEING THE COMPANY LINE: While the Bush administration's pattern of firing truth-tellers has been very disturbing, it has been equally distressing to watch Bush officials who have made major miscalculations being promoted or rewarded. Former CIA Director George Tenet said it was a "slam-dunk case" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and he was subsequently rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Similarly, former head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, admitted he "never had enough troops" to maintain security in Iraq, but he received the medal as well. Condoleezza Rice, who allowed inaccurate and deceptive statements about the Iraqi threat to be inserted into Bush's speeches time and again, was rewarded with a promotion. Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton have similarly received the hearty congratulations from President Bush for a job...done.