Bush taps the man who wrote the torture memos, the legal mind behind justifying the rapid consolidation of power behind the executive branch over the past four years, to replace John Ashcroft:

President Bush named White House counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general on Wednesday, picking the administration’s most prominent Hispanic for a highly visible post in the war on terror. “His sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies in the war on terror,” Bush said of the man who has served as the White House’s top lawyer over the past four years.

The Times reports on the no-longer repressed battle for the soul of the AFL-CIO:

In a sign of the jockeying and soul-searching, Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s largest union, called yesterday in a letter for far-reaching changes in labor designed to increase its membership, proposing a $25-million-a-year campaign to unionize Wal-Mart and a near doubling in the amount spent annually on organizing…Mr. Stern said in his letter to the 54 members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s Executive Council that President Bush’s victory had intensified the need for change..And he said he wanted a vote on proposals for change before the president’s inauguration in January, instead of at the labor convention in July. Mr. Stern’s call for broad restructuring has fueled fierce divisions, even causing one union, the International Association of Machinists, to warn that it might quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O. if Mr. Stern prevails in his push to remake the federation. Adding to the tensions, some labor leaders say that a close ally of Mr. Stern, John W. Wilhelm, the longtime president of the hotel workers’ union, might challenge Mr. Sweeney, who is up for re-election next year…Mr. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, called today’s meeting to discuss proposals to reshape the union movement and to assess labor’s political efforts this fall. He, too, sent a letter to labor leaders yesterday, saying that unions needed to reshape their movement “to better take on corporate America and win power for working families in today’s economy.” He added, “We should be big enough to discuss our different positions with respect for each other and without restoring to an ‘us against them’ stance.”

Mr. Stern’s proposals would amount to a thoroughgoing restructuring of labor. In his letter he called for consolidating the federation’s 60 unions, perhaps to less than 20, saying that many unions are too small to grapple with giant corporations. “Since the founding of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. nearly 50 years ago, our employers have changed, our industries have changed, technology has changed, and the global economy has changed,” Mr. Stern said. “The labor movement has not kept pace with these changes. Today, workers and their families are paying the price,” he said. Complaining that workers are often hurt when 10 or more unions represent workers in a single industry, Mr. Stern called for giving the A.F.L.-C.I.O. power to bar a union from negotiating a contract that undercuts the wages and benefits that unions in the same industry have already negotiated.

No election in 2006 will be more crucial to the future of the progressive left and the prospects for dignity and justice for working families than this one.

Yani Freemark sets forth the agenda for financial aid reform which today we delivered to Yale’s leadership:

…several universities have stepped in the right direction in efforts to increase the number of enrolled students from less prosperous backgrounds. Harvard, for instance, has pledged to increase recruitment in rural and low-income areas that currently are the hometowns of few Ivy League graduates. Our rival to the north has also made it clear that it will expect no family contributions from students whose families have annual incomes of $40,000 or less. We ask Yale to make similar pledges. By increasing recruitment and eliminating family contributions for the poorest applicants, Yale can maintain its high standards while boosting its number of low-income students. Second, we seek to decrease the financial burdens on Yale students. Currently, students on financial aid are expected to contribute $4,200 of self-help (outside of the family contribution) each year. Because students cannot meet this through work, some are forced to take out loans. This “student contribution” portion is too high, and should be halved so that it can be met by a student working for 10 hours a week at Yale without loans.

Similarly, we ask Yale to reform the summer contribution requirement system (currently $1,650 for freshmen and $2,150 for upperclassmen) in order to make it simpler for students to intern at non-profit agencies or to work at summer jobs that pay less than is needed to fulfill the requirement. Those on financial aid should not be forced to compromise any of the options offered to them as Yale students. Our University should make all possible efforts to level the playing field between those on aid and those fortunate enough not to need it. For international students, we propose an increase in the number of paid trips home from once in four years to one trip home each year. It is unreasonable to expect foreign students to see their families only once in their four-year career at Yale. Finally, we encourage the financial aid office here to increase its transparency and accountability. Students both on and off financial aid know little about the system, and so we propose a mandatory information session on aid and employment issues for freshmen. We also ask the office to publish more data on the economic make-up of the Yale student body. If our University is, in fact, a model for other universities on aid issues, Yale should be willing to disclose the positive outcomes of its efforts.

One of my former PoliSci professors, Jacob Hacker, shreds the spin about a Bush mandate:

If one can bear to recall events of only a week ago, the Republican campaign was based on two main pillars: fear and mud. Overwhelmingly, the “positive” case for Bush’s reelection rested on the relentless drumbeat of the war on terror. Cheney’s remarks typically focused not on domestic issues but on veiled or explicit references to the lurking threat of nuclear incineration. Meanwhile the second pillar of the Bush campaign was to destroy Kerry’s image as a credible alternative through any means necessary…Karl Rove would not have needed to campaign that way if he believed he had a popular domestic agenda. He knew that he did not. Indeed, in the one setting–the three presidential debates–where popular attention was focused on the major issues of the day and the differences between the candidates, the popular verdict was clear: Kerry defeated Bush decisively. In fact, everything we know about American opinion suggests that Bush is out of step with the public on all the issues he is now putting at the top of his “to do” list. During the election campaign, polls found that most Americans continue to be highly skeptical of the Republican tax-cut agenda and convinced that they have not benefited from it…

On Social Security, administration officials have had four years to develop specific proposals. They have held back precisely because once an actual proposal is outlined it becomes clear what a dreadful deal it will be for most Americans. Indeed, when surveys mention the potential downsides of private individual accounts, public opinion has remained rock solid against privatization–and there is no evidence of a strong shift in favor of Bush’s stance. A year ago, for example, the Los Angeles Times found that only a quarter of Americans supported private investment accounts in Social Security if it meant a reduction in guaranteed benefits–a feature of all leading privatization plans. The same basic story holds for other domestic policy issues. The point isn’t that the majority of Americans aren’t conservative on some topics–they are. The point is that their views have not changed fundamentally, and they remain overwhelmingly hostile to the top domestic priorities on which the administration is now claiming a mandate.

Bloodshed in Fallujah:

Thousands of American troops fought their way into the most dangerous parts of Falluja last night at the start of an all-out assault to win back control of the Iraqi insurgent stronghold. The much-heralded attack began shortly after dusk in a two-pronged push by marines into suburbs in the north, while US army soldiers fired volleys of mortars into the southern parts of the city…US commanders and Iraqi officials hope the Falluja assault, which is deeply unpopular with some Iraqis, will subdue the ever-more violent Islamist insurgency and prepare the way for elections due in January. The top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said last night that “a major confrontation” was expected. “We expect that we will have a fight in there over the next few days. As I said, I do believe some [insurgents] have relocated already to other places, but others have come in.” He said there were between 10,000 and 15,000 US troops and more than five battalions of Iraqis involved in the operation. A force of 4,000 marines and soldiers from the marine regimental combat unit took the railway and pushed into the Jolan district in the city’s north-west, a known base for foreign Arab fighters, while another force of 4,000 fought their way into the Askari neighbourhood in the north-east.

All day the city had come under a barrage of aircraft bombing raids, which grew more intense as night approached. From one mosque a cleric exhorted the insurgents to fight: “God is greatest, God is greatest, God is greatest, oh martyrs,” he said. “Rise up mujahideen.” There were frequent heavy exchanges of fire. Video footage from inside the city showed people burying seven bodies, some insurgents, in a makeshift cemetery established in a football ground during the last assault in April. In preparation for the attack, codenamed Phantom Fury, Ayad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, had announced a security crackdown under the 60-day state of emergency. He put Falluja under indefinite curfew from dusk last night. Highways were closed, weapons in the city were banned, the borders with Syria and Jordan were closed and the international airport in Baghdad was shut. “We have started to take necessary measures to provide security and peace in Iraq,” Mr Allawi told a televised news conference.

FAIR on what the specter of the “liberal media” has wrought:

“The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised questions about the president’s integrity,” said Lindorff. “But it was killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of taking this on before the election.” Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist’s analysis of pictures of the president’s back from the first debate. The Times’ bulge story is the latest example of possible self-censorship by major news media during the election campaign. In September, CBS’s 60 Minutes decided to delay until after the election an investigative segment that questioned the Bush administration’s use of forged Niger uranium documents in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that “it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election” (New York Times, 9/25/04; FAIR Action Alert, 9/28/04). And on September 10, CNN reporter Nic Robertson said of a CNN documentary on Saudi Arabia, “I don’t want to prejudge our executives here at CNN… but I think we can be looking forward to [it] shortly after the U.S. elections.” The segment is now scheduled to air this Sunday, five days after the election.

The YDN reports on our hundreds-stong “Don’t Mourn – Organize” gathering on Friday:

Informally known as the “Anti-Bush Bazaar,” the gathering featured ideas to channel post-election depression and a “Don’t Mourn, Organize” board that, by the hour-long event’s end, was covered with meeting dates, emotional notes and calls to action. About 15 conservative counter-protestors carrying Bush-Cheney signs joined them to “show that it was by the will of the people that Bush was elected president,” said Robert Chung ’06, leader of the now-disbanded Students For Bush. Julia Gonzales ’05, one of the organizers, said the event’s coordinators were stunned by the turnout, since the rally was the product of 10 activists informally meeting and deciding to bombard progressive e-mail lists for the 36 hours before the rally. The emotional current of the event ranged from exhausted — Helena Herring ’07, the event’s unofficial master of ceremonies, and many of the other students had spent their summers and spare time campaigning for Kerry — to angry to apprehensive. “It was great to see everyone coming together even though they supported different causes,” Nick Seaver ’07, chairman of the Yale college chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “This was a great outlet for all the negative energy we had.”

The energy and the urgency there were tremendous. The challenge now is chanelling it all into concerted action.

Some bad news for those out there who voted for Bush this time expecting him to change – and for the rest of us:

White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and the director of presidential personnel, Dina Powell, held a conference call on Thursday with agency heads and their White House liaisons and assured them that although all appointees serve at the pleasure of the president, there will be no universal request for resignations. The decision reflects both Bush’s view that his government is working well, and his determination to move aggressively to pass ambitious legislation before he starts being viewed as a lame duck, officials said. A White House official said the reprieve also reflects the premium Bush puts on consistency as part of his management style.

Sam compiles a few of the reasons the Bush agenda has no popular mandate. They also happen to be some reasons Kerry should have won the election:

A majority of voters said that the country is on the wrong track by a margin of 51 to 41 percent. Voters said that the war in Iraq has made us less secure, not more secure by 49 to 45 percent. Voters favored preserving the Social Security system and guaranteeing current benefit levels over allowing individuals to invest in private retirement accounts by 57 to 40 percent. Voters favor fundamental reform of the health care system by a margin of 72 to 24 percent.

Casino workers settle flagship contracts:

In an agreement that could have significant implications for locked- out San Francisco hotel workers, striking casino workers in Atlantic City today are expected to ratify a deal that offers lucrative benefits but abandons the union’s strategy to synchronize the expiration of labor contracts across the nation. Most notably, the proposed contract for 10,000 housekeepers, cooks, food and beverage servers, bartenders, porters and others offers employer-paid health insurance for five years, the polar opposite of the trend for cost- sharing in the American workplace. In tentatively accepting the five-year proposal late Monday, the union abandoned its campaign for a three-year contract that, with an expiration date in 2007, would have put those workers in the same negotiating cycle with union casino workers in Las Vegas. That kind of labor symmetry would have greatly strengthened the union’s bargaining position. “This is a blockbuster contract and the rank and file made the decision, with a contract of that magnitude, with economics and job security, to accept the employer’s five-year proposal,” said John Wilhelm, president of the union’s hospitality division.