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The very first words of the very first item in the Bill of Rights are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”.  Ashcroft is enthusiastically and fervently in support of the last portion of the phrase, but conveniently forgets (more accurately, it seems, tramples upon) the start of it.  Of course, he’s well practiced at that, blissfully ignoring the phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” whenever he invokes the Second Amendment.

Considering the source, I don’t suppose I’m surprised by this.  Ashcroft has constructed his entire political career on selecting his few favorite pieces of the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution while blithely ignoring and/or violating the rest of it.  In his shorthand, there’s really only one Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and even that one is pared down to his unswerving support of guns in all forms, in all places, in anyone’s hands, without “interference” by anyone. 

What’s troubling is that, by and large, We the People put up with Ashcroft’s bludgeoning of our American rights.  He and Dubya and the rest of the cabal have wrapped it all in 9/11, and will continue to ride that excuse as long and as far as they can.  Their public relations approach has been impeccable—truly a marvel to behold, if it wasn’t so damn frightening.

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George W. Bush probably would have been a pretty good Commissioner.  He opposed (and may even have voted against) the wildcard, doesn’t particularly like the designated hitter, and was in general a savvy baseball owner.  Had he been made Commissioner, it’s highly unlikely that he and his minions would be occupying the White House today.  Even better, it would have kept the horrid Bud Selig out of the Commissioner’s office, which would have been a tremendous boon for baseball.

Bush’s baseball ownership history is instructive.  After Poppy was elected President, Dubya used his and his father’s Yale connections to put together a syndicate (mainly from Cincinnati and New York) that bought the Rangers from family friend and fellow Texas oilman Eddie Chiles for $89 million in 1989.  At that time, the Commissioner was Peter Ueberroth, architect of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, mastermind of the late-1980s baseball owner collusion scheme, and a fellow Yalie.  Bush only put up $500,000 himself, and even that relatively small stake was borrowed from a Texas bank, perhaps using as collateral his proceeds from ditching his shares of Harken Energy a bit earlier.  Bush became the club’s managing general partner, which meant that he was the public face of the Rangers, the one who attended baseball meetings and cast votes in the decisions of Major League Baseball.  For that, he paid himself a nice little $200,000 annual salary.  Dubya put in another $100,000 the next year, and added $6302 to his investment in 1992.  He was instrumental in pressing for a new publicly-financed stadium for the team; The Ballpark in Arlington was built in time for Opening Day in 1994.

After he upset Richards to take the governorship in 1994, Bush resigned his post as the managing general partner of the Rangers, but retained control of his equity stake in the team.  His $606,302 investment had gotten him 1.8% of the club’s stock, but Bush also had a side deal in which he would gain an additional 10% of the stock (plus accumulated interest) if the Rangers were sold.  Which is what happened in 1998, while Dubya was preparing for his gubernatorial reelection.  The buyer was Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks, head of media oligarch Clear Channel Communications and heavy contributor to Bush-related PACs.  The price paid by Hicks was $250 million, and the net profit to George W. Bush (enhanced by a subsidy enacted by the Texas legislature at the urging of the Governor) was a tidy $14.9 million.  Just another example of how bidness happens in the world of Texas oil, I guess.

Sadly, we’ll never know how different things might have been under Commissioner Bush ... would that the baseball owners had cottoned to him back in 1993.

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For instance, we learned today that the F-16 pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan last April, killing four and wounding eight, were flying on Dexedrine, an amphetamine.  And where had these guys scored their hits of “speed”?  From the dispensary at their airbase, that’s where.  It seems that the USAF not only permits its pilots to use this drug, they issue the pills to their pilots. 

Apparently, it’s a longstanding practice in the US military.  Their use was especially high during the Gulf War, when most USAF missions were carried out at night.  At that time, pilots would be issued “Go pills” for their nocturnal missions, then get “No-Go pills” (i.e., sedatives) afterwards.  Not surprisingly, this practice led to a not-insignificant number of addicted pilots.  Alarmed by what was happening, the Air Force banned the pills after the Gulf War, as did the Navy.  But the Air Force reversed its ban during the Bosnia/Kosovo campaign in 1996, and the Navy lifted their ban in 1999.

According to a Pentagon report, Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, the pilots who bombed the Canadian contingent, “had been prescribed Go and No-Go pills for use in combatting fatigue and in adjusting to the new times zones in the deployed region.” At the time of the strike, the two had been in Afghanistan for more than a month.

The physiologic status of the pilots probably had far less to do with this tragic error than a failed command-and-control structure and poor communications among the allied forces.  Still, this report does give a whole new meaning to the term “War on Drugs”.

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