President Bush's alleged cocaine use was an issue in the 2000 election. It fizzled. He refused to either admit or deny using the drug. Now, bloggers are writing about it because of Kitty Kelly's new book, The Bush Family. Kelly is a tabloid-type biographer who previously has targeted the Reagans, Princess Diana and others. In her book, Kelly claims Bush used cocaine at Camp David when his father was President and in the mid- 60's. Her source is Bush former sister-in-law Sharon Bush.

Personally, I could care less what drugs Bush did in college. College is a time of experimentation, of youthful indiscretions. I mostly share the views of Drug War Rant on the issue.

There is another issue though, and that is, did Bush use cocaine later in life? What does Kelly say about Bush's 40th birthday party at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs? Was he coke-fueled then, dancing on the bar as rumors at the time suggested? It was after this party that he gave up alcohol for good--even though, he says, he wasn't an alcoholic. Did he also give up cocaine then....at the age of 40?

Why is this an issue?

Hold onto your hats, here it comes: The Kerry Republican attack dogs are about to launch ads reminiscent of their Willie Horton attack on Michael Dukakis. The name of the group responsible for the ads is MoveonforAmerica.org.

MoveOnForAmerica.org was created due to the Bush campaign’s largely timid ads against Mr. Kerry, and will air this first ad starting Tuesday Sept. 7th in the Washington D.C. market and in key swing states beginning Monday September 13th. Since the organization is a “non-connected” committee, the ads will run non-stop until Election Day, and are not subject to the McCain-Feingold ban during the campaign’s final 60 days.

MoveOnForAmerica.Org is a group of citizens created by its president, DC-based GOP political consultant Stephen Marks. Specializing in opposition research and media, Mr. Marks has consulted dozens of candidates at all levels from presidential to congressional, including consulting for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Republican Governors Association. Mr. Marks has also been a press secretary in GOP campaigns [including Jeb Bush’s bid for governor in 1994], as well as an investigative journalist for such publications as Penthouse and New York Newsday. Mr. Marks also currently hosts The Stephen Marks Show heard weekly on KFNX Radio in Phoenix.

Update: The Pentagon's acceptance of Judicial Watch's complaint, as opposed to merely its acknowledgment of receipt of it, has yet to be credited by mainstream media. See the many comments. See also the Sept. 3 Chicago Sun Times article which says no action on the complaint has been taken.

Update: Time Magazine reported on June 22, 1998 that Richard Mellon Scaife, the "premier sugar daddy of the American right" gave Judicial Watch $550,000. in 1997. (available on lexis.com) The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported last week that Scaife continues to give annually to Judicial Watch through his Carthage Foundation, and details another complaint Judicial Watch has filed questioning donations to Kerry's senate campaign.

******************
Your tax dollars at work. The Pentagon is going to investigate John Kerry's receipt of five Vietnam war medals.

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the Inspector-General's Office of the US Navy. Senator Kerry served as a Swift boat captain for four months in 1968, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was wounded in action and awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.

It should come as no surprise who's behind the ridiculous move. Judicial Watch, which is anything but bipartisan, in my constitutionally protected opinion.

...the navy has agreed to a request by Judicial Watch, a bipartisan lobby group, for a full inquiry. Judicial Watch wants the navy to report before the elections, but navy officials are so far refusing to give a timetable for the inquiry.

Response from the Kerry campaign:

In an angry statement from Kerry campaign headquarters, senior Kerry adviser Michael Meehan condemned the navy inquiry as an expensive waste of Pentagon resources. "The facts are clear," Mr Meehan said. "The navy awarded John Kerry the Silver Star, a Bronze Star . . . and three Purple Hearts. This is a waste of taxpayers' dollars and the Pentagon's time, especially during wartime."

Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity has an even better response.

Other examples of Judicial Watch's lawsuits:

From the "pants on fire" department: In his convention speech, Bush touted his Administrations' passage of sweeping Medicare reforms. So why are Medicare prices rising an unprecedented 17%?.

Update: Kerry rips Bush over his false convention promise to make Medicare stronger.

The AP reports that a government response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for Bush's National Guard records show that documents are missing--five types of documents that should have been created are not in the file.

Records of Bush's service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount. The five kinds of missing files are (direct quote from article):

• A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush's local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush's draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.

• Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to ``direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination,'' according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded ``with the command recommendation'' to Air Force officials ``for final determination.''

With the conventions over, Bush and Kerry have crystallized their campaign themes.

Bush will define himself as commander in chief, while Republicans try to mobilize a vast ground campaign to get out their own votes. Kerry will sharpen his defense to blunt GOP attacks on his leadership capacity, coupling this with an assault on what the GOP convention revealed is Bush's soft underbelly: the economy and domestic policy.

The fight will be taken to the wavering states that neither side can afford to lose -- places like Florida, Ohio, Oregon and New Mexico -- and where, despite months of campaigning, tens of millions of dollars of advertising and two conventions, both sides remain statistically neck and neck. Few states are more pivotal than Pennsylvania.

Good move by Kerry in picking former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart as his chief spokesman.

The GOP convention showed, Lockhart said, that Bush has no new ideas on domestic policy and "doesn't seem to get that millions of Americans are struggling out there, or even to be open to changing any of the policies he's pursued over the years." Indeed, any tour of Madison Square Garden frequently revealed that the economy is not the GOP's strong suit. Speakers largely glossed over it, though delegates from Midwestern manufacturing states readily admitted that jobs are a big issue there, and GOP operatives confirmed that their own polling showed as much.

Bush's speech showed his weakness on economic issues:

Painting by numbers. A picture worth 1,000 words. Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair gives us Bush by the Numbers.

Gary Farber of Amygdala has more on words not found in Bush's speech.

Media Matters charges:

Discredited Republican pollster Frank Luntz, CEO and president of Luntz Research Companies, made four appearances during MSNBC's coverage of the Democratic (July 28 and July 29) and Republican (September 1 and September 2) National Conventions, touting flawed focus groups in three of his appearances. Not once during any of these appearances did any MSNBC anchor or commentator mention Luntz's partisan Republican ties or questionable ethical standards.

With the convention over, and the polls focusing on a "Bush Bounce," it's a good time to take stock of the most critical senate races. There are eight critical races, according to the non-partisan Cook Political Report, which we received a complimentary edition of today:

There are 34 senate races this year, 19 of which involve seats currently held by Democrats. Of the 19 seats, 10 are considered safe and another two (Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold) are considered probably safe. That leaves 7 seats, of which that of Zell Miller in Georgia, is considered a goner. That leaves 6.

Of the 6, there are 5 seats considered highly vulnerable, 4 of which are now held by senators not running for re-election, so the races in those 4 will be open and between newbies. The 5th highly vulnerable seat is that of Tom Daschle. The sixth seat is considered merely vulnerable, and is now held by Patty Murray of Washington.

So, here are the six races Democrats need to work hardest to preserve, and the candidates running for them:

1. Florida - Democrat Betty Castor (vs. Mel Martinez)
2. Lousiana - Democrat still unknown (vs. David Vitter)
3. North Carolina - Democrat Erskine Bowles (vs. Richard Burr)
4. South Carolina - Democrat Inez Tenenbaum (vs. Jim deMint
5. South Dakota- Democrat Tom Daschle (vs. John Thune)

On the Republican side, there are three highly vulnerable seats and one likely switch (Illinois will go to Barak Obama.) There are no merely vulnerable seats. Here are the three critical seats:

Received from the John Kerry campaign, excerpts of his Ohio speech tonight. The gloves are off. Finally. Our advice to Kerry: Keep them off.

The election comes down to this. If you believe this country is heading in the right direction, you should support George Bush. But if you believe America needs to move in a new direction, join with us. John and I offer a better plan that will make us stronger at home and more respected in the world. And we need your help to do that.

For three days in New York, instead of talking about jobs and the economy, we heard anger and insults from the Republicans. And I'll tell you why. It's because they can't talk about the real issues facing Americans. They can't talk about their record because it's a record of failure.

We all saw the anger and distortion of the Republican Convention. For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

Look for the new ad by Mothers Opposing Bush:

Far from the convention-centric streets of Midtown, on Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a nascent political action committee launched its very first television ad Wednesday afternoon. Mothers Opposing Bush, a group of women who say they "didn't want to wake up in November 2004 to the same politics and policies we believe are unhealthy for our children and our planet," debuted a 30-second spot starring Edie Falco, aka "Carmela" on HBO's "The Sopranos."

"Mothers always put their children first," Falco says in the ad. "Mr. Bush, can you say the same?" She closes the spot, which begins a three-day run tomorrow on CNN, by urging viewers to "join the MOB. How could you not?"

Go here and join the MOB today.

[hat tip National Journal.]

Don't miss the new article by Mary Jacoby in Salon detailing President Bush's lost year in the National Guard. Here's the intro. Get a free day pass if you're not a subscriber and read the whole thing:

In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush? “The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison’s widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

Linda Allison’s story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign’s assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton “Red” Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.