Today's Show: Civil Rights, Civil Liberties

I was bad today and didn't get to update the blog, including with today's guests on the show. Nonetheless, I wanted to post here now because often people later want links to the guests' web sites and books.

At 2:30 ET: I spoke with Molly McKay whose group, Marriage Equality USA, is organizing vigils around California and around the country for the night before the California Supreme Court hears oral arguments on why Proposition 8 should be repealed. Go and get get involved.

At 3:30 ET, H. Alexander Robinson, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, came on the program to speak with me about Michael Steele, the new leader of the Republican National Committee, who has been sparring with Rush Limbaugh and flip-flopping on LGBT rights.

At 4:30 ET, Human Right's Watch's Jennifer Daskal joins me to discuss the secret Bush administration memos made public by the Obama Justice Dept. that show the far-reaching authority that Bush attorneys were claiming in fighting terror, threatening American civil liberties on a massive scale.

“A culture of ethical failure”

Yet another example of Bush administration corruption and lies, in the agency that would responsible for all the off-shore drilling they now want to undertake:

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct...

...Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

Based in suburban Denver and modeled to operate like a private sector energy company, the decade-old royalty-in-kind program sells oil and gas on the open market. Its employees are subject to government ethics rules, such as restrictions on taking gifts from people and companies with whom they conduct official business.

One of the reports says that the officials viewed themselves as exempt from those limits, indulging themselves in the expense-account-fueled world of oil and gas executives.

Bush, Cheney Bail on RNC

Bush and Cheney both have canceled their appearances at the Republican National Convention because of Hurricane Gustav -- of course, most Republican organizers are happy about that. They'd scheduled them for Monday, Labor Day, hoping no one would be watching. They couldn't not speak -- unless there was something like a hurricane or natural disaster. And even with that, there's no reason why Cheney can't go -- he's just looking for the excuse. And now McCain will go down to the region for a photo op.

We're headed to St.Paul with the show as scheduled, but we will not be live tomorrow at the RNC. We weren't planning on it for the first day anyway. You will hear a rebroadcast from the DNC, and then on Tuesday we'll be live in St.Paul, no matter what happens, from Radio Row of the RNC.

Wishing well to all those in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and hope Gustav spares the entire region.