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Federal officials follow Bush "signing statements" instead of the law| |
Excerpt: Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers.
In a report to Congress, the non partisan Government Accountability Office studied a small sample of the bill provisions that Bush has signed into law but also challenged with signing statements. The GAO found that agencies disobeyed six such laws, while enforcing 10 others as written even though Bush had challenged them. |
Federal Election Commissioner accused of blocking lawsuits over suppressed minority votes| |
Excerpt: A former Justice Department political appointee blocked career lawyers from filing at least three lawsuits charging local and county governments with violating the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, seven former senior department employees charged Monday.
Hans von Spakovsky also derailed at least two investigations into possible voter discrimination, the former employees of the Voting Rights Section said in interviews and in a letter to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. They urged the panel to reject von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission. |
Bush "had to be aware" of Abu Ghraib torture, says General who headed investigation| |
Excerpt: The two-star Army General who led the first military investigation into human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has bluntly questioned the integrity of former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, suggesting he misled the US Congress by downplaying his own prior knowledge of what had happened.
Major General Antonio Taguba also claimed in an interview with The New Yorker magazine published yesterday that President George Bush also "had to be aware" of the atrocities despite saying at the time of the scandal that he had been out of the loop until he saw images in the US media.
Nominee for top CIA lawyer signed off on torture, helped create black-box prisons
Excerpt: John Rizzo has been nominated to become general counsel of the [CIA]. His nearly two-hour session before the Senate Intelligence Committee was a cautious affair. Few inquisitors asked barbed questions, and the man being questioned delivered answers noteworthy for their lack of detail.
The most pointed moments of the hearing occurred when lawmakers asked Rizzo whether he had endorsed a 2002 Justice Department memorandum that gave legal guidance for the detention program.
The memorandum argued that nothing short of the pain associated with organ failure constituted illegal torture. Rizzo said that he raised no objections at the time to the legal reasoning in the memorandum.
Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Rizzo was "up to his eyeballs in developing and implementing the government's detention and torture program" and added that his promotion "should have been a nonstarter."
CIA nominee won't answer questions about torture ... unless it's in secret session
Excerpt: Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) tried a different tack. "Have detainees been rendered by us, including the CIA, to countries that use torture?" Rizzo [who has spent much of the past five years honing the CIA's interrogation policies] said he would have to answer behind closed doors.
"I'm not asking you which countries," said Levin, who is also a lawyer. He repeated the question. "Well, again, if you don't mind, senator ... it's difficult to give a yes or no answer to that in an open session."
Levin later asked for the record to reflect "a statement of the president in December 2005 that we do not render to countries that torture, a statement made in public ... in contrast to Mr. Rizzo's statement that he could not answer that question in public." |
Republicans use Justice Department to subvert justice
Attorney firings expose politicization of justice at Justice| |
Excerpt: The investigations into the Bush administration's decision to fire nine U.S. attorneys have exposed how the administration has eroded the firewall between partisan politics and the Justice Department and compromised the independence of the nation's top law enforcement agency.
As early as 2002, administration policymakers, Republican legislators and GOP party officials began injecting politics into criminal investigations and civil and voting rights enforcement and applying political litmus tests to judges and career lawyers at the Justice Department.
A McClatchy Co. analysis of thousands of Justice Department documents, congressional testimony and interviews with current and former Justice Department officials reveals that the administration:
• Issued a series of directives to dismantle the boundaries between White House political operatives and the Justice Department, permitting a larger circle of aides to discuss pending investigations.
• Ignored the advice of Justice Department lawyers and crafted national security policies that pushed the limits of the law. In one case involving secret spying, at least 10 top department officials -- including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and the head of the FBI -- were prepared to resign in protest.
• Allowed political advisor Karl Rove and the White House Office of Political Affairs to become conduits for complaints about politically sensitive prosecutions or the prosecutors who were pursuing them.
• Fired some independent-minded U.S. attorneys and replaced them and some career Justice Department lawyers with young lawyers who had little trial experience but solid Republican Party credentials.
• Pushed states to purge their rolls of improperly registered voters, a campaign that critics charge hurt Democrats and helped Republicans. ...
[M]any of the nation's legal experts, including Republicans with long government service, see a troubling change in the administration of justice.
"We have a Justice Department that has substantially been turned into a political arm of the White House," said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, who has become a fierce critic of the President. ... |
Two Senators seek info on Republican vote caging| |
Excerpt: Senators Kennedy and Whitehouse have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding a probe by the DoJ's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into "allegations that the Republican National Committee engaged in 'vote caging' during the 2004 elections."
The letter, sent today to Gonzales, also requests an investigation into "whether any Department officials were aware of allegations that Tim Griffin had engaged in caging when he was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and whether appropriate action was taken."
What the heck is vote caging, and why does nobody care?
Excerpt: Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). If [reporter Greg] Palast is right, Griffin and vote caging open the door to explaining the White House involvement in the U.S. attorneys purge. |
Gonzales stonewalled on Cheney refusal to cooperate with oversight| |
Excerpt: The government official responsible for enforcing the order, J. William Leonard, complained about this last January to Attorney General Gonzales, asking for an official ruling, but he never received a response.
[Newsweek] asks, "Why didn't Gonzales act on Leonard's request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard's letter has been 'under review' for the past five months -- by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had 'no documents' on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Newsweek. |
Crook withdraws his nomination as #3 at Justice Dept;
will return to being U.S. Attorney for Montana | |
Excerpt: Bill Mercer sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying it was unlikely that the Senate would confirm him as associate attorney general, a post he has held on an interim basis since September. He plans to leave Washington and turn his full attention to his work as U.S. attorney for Montana. |
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Investigators find 88 officials with secret White House email accounts| |
Excerpt: In March 2007, the White House said only a handful of officials had such accounts. That number has now risen to 88.
Over 140,000 emails from Karl Rove illegally destroyed
Excerpt: House investigators have learned that the Bush administration's use of Republican National Committee email accounts is far greater than previously disclosed -- 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove alone -- and that the RNC has overseen "extensive destruction" of many of the emails, including all email records for 51 White House officials.
White House emails likely violated the Hatch Act
Excerpt: While the American justice system posits innocence until guilt is proven, it stretches credulity to believe that Rove and others have not used their political accounts to avoid the record keeping act, and to mask clandestine activity. While Mr. Rove is undoubtedly an energetic and prodigious man, quick calculations show that he sent an average of 76.7 emails a day, every day for five years, on off-the-record accounts. Perhaps an investigation will show that he was simply incredibly active on his MySpace page in the wee hours of the morning before he went to work, but somehow one doubts it ...
White House response ("Clinton did it too") is a lie
Excerpt: Snow's statement is false. In 1993, President Clinton's then-Assistant to the President John Podesta issued a staff memo clearly stating that all administration e-mails dealing with official business had to be "incorporated into an official record-keeping system," stressing that no "e-mail document that is a Presidential record should be deleted." |
Guantanamo 'trials' are rigged, says Army officer| |
Excerpt: An Army officer who played a key role in the "enemy combatant" hearings at Guantanamo Bay says tribunal members relied on vague and incomplete intelligence while being pressured to rule against detainees, often without any specific evidence.
His affidavit, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held. |
1.8 million U.S. veterans have no health insurance| |
Excerpt: About 1.8 million U.S. veterans under age 65 lack even basic health insurance or access to care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, a new study has found. The ranks of uninsured veterans have increased by 290,000 since 2000, said Stephanie J. Woolhandler, the Harvard Medical School professor who presented her findings yesterday before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.
The focus of the hearing was whether to open VA hospitals' doors to so-called Priority 8 veterans, who have no service-connected disabilities and whose earnings generally are above 80 percent of the median income where they live. Only about half of the 1.8 million uninsured veterans are classified Priority 8, Woolhandler said. The rest may technically be eligible for some VA care but live too far from its facilities for it to be a real option, she said.
Comment: First of all, making 80% of the median income in your area in no way makes you wealthy enough to afford even routine health care, especially at the inflated rates charged to people without insurance. Worse, Republicans' main argument against living up to this nation's obligation to take care of our veterans is that it is the first step on a slippery slope towards (gasp) universal health care. Way to support the troops, Republicans. Madeline Zane PERMANENT LINK |
Cheney tries to shut down information oversight office, says law doesn't apply to him| |
Excerpt: Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.
Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.
The vice president's office is "not subject to such investigation" by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, spokeswoman [Dana Perino] said. But she could not explain why Cheney's office initially complied with reporting requirements, then stopped in 2003.
Perino was hard-pressed to explain the vice president's contention that his office is not strictly part of the executive branch.
Bush says the White House is also exempt from rules
Excerpt: The executive order Bush issued in March 2003 covers all government agencies that are part of the executive branch and, although it doesn't specifically say so, was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said. |
Cheney spies on White House Staffers| |
Excerpt: [White House national security lawyer John] Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.
Comment: The Post's series on Cheney is well worth reading -- it's among that paper's best journalistic work in recent memory. Further highlights? Cheney announced the administration's "detainee" policy, then sent it to Bush to sign ... Cheney ordered Secret Service logs destroyed ... Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Major bloggers seek to match
low ethics of big-time journalists| |
Excerpt: Last June, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, former soldier, one-time Reagan Republican, and proprietor of the wildly successful liberal blog Daily Kos, sent an email to an invitation-only listserv known as Townhouse. Consisting of some 300 liberal bloggers, journalists, activists, and consultants, the list was an outgrowth of weekly strategy sessions held at a D.C. bar -- a forum for brainstorming on issues and tactics, and a means of creating a "unified message," as Moulitsas later put it. Its members were bound by one main rule: Nothing from the list was to be quoted or distributed, which, this being politics, meant that a leak was bound to happen.
Moulitsas asked list members to "ignore" a blog item by the New York Times' Chris Suellentrop that revealed that Jerome Armstrong -- founder of the popular liberal blog MyDD and a close friend and business associate of Moulitsas -- had once been implicated in a stock-touting scheme. Suellentrop noted parallels between stock-hyping and bloggers' touting of candidates such as Howard Dean, who had hired both Armstrong and Moulitsas as consultants during his 2004 presidential campaign.
Moulitsas, who had recently co-authored the book Crashing the Gate with Armstrong, told Townhouse members that these revelations were "a non-story." "So far," he wrote, "this story isn't making the jump to the traditional media, and we shouldn't do anything to help make that happen." He urged participants to "starve it of oxygen."
Comment: Well, that's more than a little scummy. I've always hesitated to say the following 'cuz it'll sound like sour grapes, but today, let's say it:
There certainly are occasional newsworthy nuggets that surface at "big league blogs" like Daily Kos, but just in general, the fame and popularity of some of the giant blogs -- Daily Kos, AmericaBlog, Atrios at Eschaton, MyDD, etc. -- has always seemed exponentially out of proportion to how worthwhile they are. Or how worthwhile they aren't. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Iran -- Run-up to the next war:
US deploys third carrier group
to patrol Persian Gulf| |
Excerpt: My question for all of this is, where on Earth is the Western media? When the U.S. sent in the second carrier [group] a little while back it was all over the news for debate and discussion. Now they're sending a THIRD carrier [group] and it is floating along under the radar. This is just absurd to me. The censorship and secrecy with which this government operates is appalling to the point where it makes me ashamed to be an American. |
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Bush's permanent "surge" could lead to lengthening soldiers' tours of duty again| |
Excerpt: The Army is considering whether it will have to extend the combat tours of troops in Iraq if President Bush opts to maintain the recent buildup of forces through spring 2008. ...
Gen. David Petraeus, Iraq war commander, suggested Sunday that conditions on the ground might not be stable enough by September to justify a drop in force levels, and he predicted that stabilizing Iraq could take a decade. Earlier this year, Bush ordered the deployment of some 30,000 additional troops as part of a massive U.S.-led security push around Baghdad and the western Anbar province.
Comment: In the very first sentence here, note the casual term "if President Bush opts." How about, if the spineless Democrats allow it ...? Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK
Troops' one-month breaks blocked
Excerpt: US commanders in Iraq are rejecting a recommendation by Army mental health experts that troops receive a one-month break for every three months in a combat zone, despite unprecedented levels of continuous fighting and worsening risks of mental stress.
Instead, commanders are trying to give troops two to three days inside heavily fortified bases after about eight days in the field, said Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, chief aide to the ground forces commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno.
"We would never get the job done of securing (of Baghdad) if we went out for three months and came back" for one, Anderson said.
Comment: There's this Republican administration, supporting the troops again, by sending them to die for nothing, making sure they're as un-safe and miserable as possible while dying for nothing, making sure they have no R&R, and of course, denying them medical care if they're lucky enough to live through it all. Have they started charging the families for military funerals and burials yet? If not, count on it. I mean, nobody ever really spit on the troops after Vietnam, that's all myth and lie, but spitting on the troops is, metaphorically, the Republicans' standard policy. I don't think even the enemy, the Vietcong or the Iraqi insurgency, hate American troops as much as Republicans hate American troops. Angry Annie PERMANENT LINK |
Candidate who 'lost' Florida election
on hinky machines is not allowed to see
how (or whether) votes were counted| |
Excerpt: A state appellate court ruled Monday that Christine Jennings has no right to examine the programming source code that runs the electronic voting machines she says malfunctioned in her southwest Florida congressional race.
The three-judge panel said Monday Jennings did not meet the "extraordinary burden" of proving a lower court was wrong to deny her request last December. |
Court: Gov't needs a warrant to read your emails| |
Excerpt: A federal appeals court on Monday issued a landmark decision that holds that e-mail has similar constitutional privacy protections as telephone communications, meaning that federal investigators who search and seize emails without obtaining probable cause warrants will now have to do so.
Under the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government has regularly obtained e-mail from third parties without getting warrants and without letting targets of an investigation know (ergo, no opportunity to contest). But a district court held that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment by allowing the feds to secretly seize e-mail without probable cause warrants. |
Iraqi tribunal charade continues,
and U.S. media plays along| |
Excerpt: As expected the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid alias Chemical Ali to death, along with two other defendants for their role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980's.
All the key players in the media were there to capture the dramatic courtroom scene. What none of the reporters mentioned however was that when Saddam and Chemical Ali and the rest of Saddam killers were doing their worst, the U.S. governments of Ronald Reagan and later George Bush Senior were their de facto allies, providing them with vital satellite intelligence, weapons and financing, while shielding them from U.N. investigations or efforts by the U.S. Congress to impose trade sanctions for their depredations. |
U.S. pays $2500 for killing Iraqi person ...
or for wrecking an Iraqi's car| |
Excerpt: What's an Iraqi life worth? How about |
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Some answers, and some more questions
about Saudi chartered jet on 9/19/01
by Kevin Good, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: In the aftermath of 9/11/2001, there was one charter flight that got special clearance from the White House and the FBI to fly from Los Angeles CA to Orlando FL, on to Washington DC, then to Boston MA, and then leave the country. It was the plane that took members of Osama bin Laden's family out of America, back to their homes in Saudi Arabia. |
I want to let the whole stinking
world know that I HATE BUSH
AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
by Phillipe F., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Do you see Congress doing anything about anything? HELL NO. They are too busy s*cking George Bush's f*cking c*ck and taking turns bending over to take it in the *ss. |
Republican operative is too gay for war
by Richard Blair, All-Spin Zone| |
Excerpt: Tyler Whitney, the webmaster for the right-wing antigay Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo's presidential campaign, has been outed by the Michigan gay paper Between the Lines. [Michelangelo Signorile] had reporter Todd Heywood on the show today. Bay Buchanan, Team Tancredo Senior Advisor and sister of the fire-breathing Pat Buchanan, is defending Whitney, saying, "A person's sexual preference is a personal matter and has nothing to do with the campaign."
In other words, if he wants to work against his own kind -- for a man who's railed against gay rights and has a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign -- we're happy to have him! ...
Last November, Whitney -- whose father was a speech writer for former conservative Michigan Gov. John Engler, who was no friend to gays -- went to a YAF-sponsored protest against a pro-gay, pro-trans human rights ordinance and held a sign that said, "Go back in the closet!" Other signs at the protest included "Straight Power" and "Faggotry." ...
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A democracy on paper only?
Association for Civil Rights in Israel
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Excerpt: Democracy can survive a situation of exercising control over people and denying them their rights only in highly exceptional, temporary situations. Forty years is neither exceptional nor temporary, but a fixed reality. Today, after forty years of domination over Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, we cannot examine the definition of Israel as a democratic state without relating to the situation of all people living under its control. |
Creating anarchy in the Middle East
(in the sense of complete chaos)
by Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz [Jerusalem, Israel]
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Excerpt: President George W. Bush, the one whose semi-hallucinatory dream of democratization has become a genuine reality of anarchy; whose adopted vision of two states -- Israel and Palestine -- has become during his tenure a distant dream. It is difficult to think of an American president who has caused more damage to Israeli interests than the president who is considered one of the friendliest to Israel of all time. No leader has done more than Bush -- by commission as well as omission -- to destroy the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. |
Bashing Barry Bonds:
The campaign against
one of baseball's greats
by Nick Gillespie, Reason
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Excerpt: It's a curious fact that, as Simmons notes, you almost never hear fans dismiss the accomplishments of someone like Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, who openly admitted cheating (by doctoring the ball). But if there's a hint of drug use, there's a big problem.
A curious fact and, when you look at the absolute havoc wrought at all levels by misguided drug policies that warp everything in this country from education to foreign policy to law enforcement, a tragic one. |
Why corporations are not people,
and the unsavory consequences
of pretending that they are
by Mike Hoy, Loompanics Unlimited
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Excerpt: Plainly put, corporations are anti-American. They are anti-individual. The word "corporation" does not appear in our Constitution. Large institutions of all kinds (both government and business) were suspect in colonial and early America. In fact, the Boston Tea Party was not a protest against taxes, but direct action taken against the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite. |
Republicans screw small-time investors
by Ben Stein, New York Times
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Excerpt: Now comes the part that is enough to make you cry if you, like me, had any hope that the law had something to do with justice or the Department of Justice.
Many writers and public figures came forward to ask Christopher Cox, the chairman of the SEC, to file an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to hear the Enron case. Mr. Cox, while a great guy, has not always been the most attuned to shareholder issues. But Mr. Cox and his SEC did the right thing and drew up an amicus brief on behalf of the shareholders asking the highest court to hear the case.
This was Saul on the road to Damascus and a great turning point -- except that's when [Henry M. Paulson Jr., Secretary of the Treasury] weighed in. Mr. Paulson, who before becoming Treasury secretary was head of Goldman Sachs, a huge investment bank (in which I am a paltry stockholder), urged Paul D. Clement, a worthy gent who is the United States solicitor general at the Justice Department, not to file the SEC amicus brief in the Enron case.
Why? Well, certainly not because such a move might result in a change that could cost investment banks a ton of money. ...
I know that Mr. Bush does not read the New York Times. But I know a lot of people at the White House do. Please, some of you, reconsider this embarrassment. There is no justice in this refusal to aid the Enron shareholders. There is no political gain from slapping the little guy in the face. There is no money to be made: Wall Street is giving lavishly to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama already.
The GOP is supposed to be on the side of the small investors, not of those accused of being crooks -- or so I used to think. Was I wrong all along? Is the Bush White House just the handmaiden of Wall Street?
Comment: Mr Stein, you've always seemed to me to be one of the old-fashioned Republicans who had some integrity, and you were excellent in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but I don't know how anyone with a triple-digit IQ could fail to know by now that Wall Street owns George W Bush. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
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| | an Iraqi car? For the U.S. military in Iraq, it may be roughly the same.
A report released late last month by the Government Accountability Office examines the practices and rules guiding condolence payments that the U.S. military can distribute to families of Iraqi civilians killed "as a result of U.S. and coalition forces' actions during combat."
Despite Iraqi civilian deaths reaching tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, throughout the war, we are not talking big condolence pay-outs thus far. In 2005, the sums distributed in Iraq reached $21.5 million and -- with violence on the upswing -- dropped to $7.3 million last year, the GAO reported.
Comment: The Washington Post did original reporting on this issue, veterans without health care, and Dick Cheney trying to shut down an oversight office all in the same week. The person in charge of keeping the newspaper Bush-friendly must have been on vacation. Madeline Zane PERMANENT LINK |
Jay Garner, former U.S. reconstruction chief, says Iraq teeters on the brink of genocidal war| |
Excerpt: The man who led the initial American effort to reconstruct Iraq after the war believes the country is on the brink of a genocidal civil war and its government will fall apart unless the US changes course and allows a three-way federal structure. He has also urged talks with Iran and other regional players.
Jay Garner, the former US general appointed two months before the invasion to head reconstruction in Iraq, admitted that before the 2003 war coordination between the various US departments and military had been disjointed. |
Iraq now ranked second among world's failed states| |
Excerpt: Iraq has emerged as the world's second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.
The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year. |
Iraq becomes prime training ground for export of Jihadists| |
Excerpt: Iraq has overtaken Afghanistan as an ideal training ground for Jihadists to export their battle across and beyond the Middle East, experts say. The new generation of Islamist militants in Iraq are more battle-hardened than their veteran anti-Soviet counterparts from Afghanistan, and the export of their Muslim "holy war" to calmer Arab countries has become a phenomenon. |
U.S.-led air strike on school kills seven Afghan children| |
Excerpt: At least seven children were killed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike on a religious school in Afghanistan, the coalition said on Monday, amid rising anger over civilian deaths from foreign military operations. Up to 60 civilians have been killed in the past three days in the southern Uruzgan province alone, a senior provincial official said. |
Iraq refugees quadruple in '07| |
Excerpt: The plight -- and massive number -- of refugees and displaced citizens in Iraq has been one of the great under-reported aspects of the war. Perhaps that will change in the wake of a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent today.
The leading humanitarian group in Iraq says the number of internally displaced people in Iraq has quadrupled since January and is up eight times from a year ago. It had found in May 2006 that there were 125,169. For May 2007 it counts 1,024,430, with 37% of them children. Health care is limited. |
Trashing (or saving?) the planet
Bush's administration works behind the scenes to deny global warming| |
Excerpt: It is no secret that industry-connected appointees within the White House have worked actively to distort the findings of federal climate scientists, playing down the threat of climate change. But a new investigation by Rolling Stone reveals that those distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, in a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove. An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act -- as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration scientists and climate-policy officials -- confirms that the White House has implemented an industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters. |
Vietnamese suit against American chemical makers over Agent Orange goes to appeal| |
Excerpt: Several major US chemical companies are directly accountable for supplying the US military with agent orange during the Vietnam War and causing widespread dioxin poisoning, a lawyer for Vietnamese plaintiffs told a federal appeals court.
The plaintiffs appealed against a lower court decision that dismissed a civil suit seeking class-action status on behalf of more than three million Vietnamese people against the chemical companies. It could have resulted in billions of dollars in damages and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam.
More than 30 companies, including Dow Chemical Co and Monsanto Co, are named in the lawsuit. |
San Francisco Mayor bans bottled water| |
Excerpt: In a press release announcing the decision, the mayor cited the environmental impact of making, transporting and disposing of the bottles. More than a billion of them end up in the state's landfills each year, the release said.
When the ban goes into effect, city and county offices will dispense municipal tap water from a reservoir. Winnicker said exceptions will be made in cases where potable water is not easily available or poses health concerns. |
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Bush nominates anti-education activist as budget director| |
Excerpt: US President George W. Bush today named Jim Nussle, the man accused of championing federal funding cuts for education while promoting tax cuts for the rich, as his the new Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Nussle, a Representative from Iowa who led the effort to cut $12.7 billion from higher education, including the largest cut to the federal student loan program in its history while supporting f $958 billion in tax cuts for the rich, will have central responsibility for implementing the Bush administration's agenda in such areas as defense programs, energy initiatives and tax policies. |
New Orleans death rate up 50% since Katrina; lack of health care for poor cited| |
Excerpt: Death rates in New Orleans rose nearly 50 percent as the city began its recovery from Hurricane Katrina, in part because of storm-related damage to its public health facilities, researchers said on Thursday.
"The city lost half of its public health workers after Katrina so that compromises your ability to recover. The number of city employees went from 6,000 to 3,000," Dr. Kevin Stephens, New Orleans Health Department director and the lead researcher, said in an interview.
In March, Stephens told the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee that just four of the eight hospitals in the parish which includes the city had reopened and they had all done so at reduced capacity. |
House votes to fund foreign health clinics ... even if they offer abortions| |
Excerpt: The House voted narrowly Thursday to reverse a ban on contraception aid to groups overseas that offer abortions, challenging a pillar of President Bush's foreign aid policy.
If the proposal passes the Senate, Bush is likely to swiftly veto it and be upheld by conservative lawmakers, who say no assistance of any kind should be given to organizations that promote or offer abortions. Democrats say an unintended consequence is an alarming shortage of contraceptives, particularly in poor rural areas. |
News from America's very bestest ally, Israel:
Israel's military intelligence chief warns of war this summer| |
Excerpt: Israel's military intelligence chief warned Sunday that Israel is on the brink of a war that could break out as early as this summer.
Major General Amos Yadlin told the Israeli Cabinet that several factors were moving the nation toward war.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Yadlin cited Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, World Jihad, and Syria who the paper quoted Yadlin as saying "are all actively working against Israel, and may force a conflict as early as this summer." |
Abbas demands final status talks or nothing as he heads to Egypt summit| |
Excerpt: Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, is demanding that next Monday's scheduled summit with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, contains a discussion over "final status" talks on a future Palestinian state, Palestinian officials said yesterday. |
Olmert rejects U.S. proposal for final status 'shelf agreement'| |
Excerpt: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected, during his visit to the United States last week, a proposal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel negotiate a permanent settlement with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ...
The disagreement between Rice and Olmert was evident at the White House lunch meeting given by President George W. Bush for Olmert and senior U.S. and Israeli aides.
Olmert agreed several months ago to launch talks with Abbas over "a political horizon," on condition that these deal not with the three core issues -- Jerusalem, permanent borders and the refugees -- but only with the nature of the future Palestinian state, its systems of government and law and security arrangements for the territories.
Olmert is strongly opposed to the idea. He believes that any settlement reached should be implemented, and fears a situation in which Israel approves the agreement, but Abbas fails to sell it to the Palestinian public. In that event, Israel might be pressured to make further concessions [Further? Than what?] to make Abbas' task easier.
Comment: While the media keeps fueling the bullshit of peace through Fatah and Abbas....and all is well now that Hamas is being isolated.... what a CROCK! E13 PERMANENT LINK |
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Anti-war liberals heckle House Speaker Pelosi| |
Excerpt: There were about 25 members of Code Pink in the audience of several thousand at the conference of liberal activists. The women of all ages waved pink "lead us out of Iraq now" signs and dressed in "Pink Police" costumes.
The group started a watchdog site specifically targeting Pelosi and has camped outside her home in San Francisco to "encourage the speaker to be a leader and stop buying Bush's war." |
Group targets Republican lawmakers to change votes on Iraq| |
Excerpt: A coalition of anti-Iraq war groups is targeting 40 GOP lawmakers around the country in a grassroots effort modeled on the "Freedom Summer" civil rights campaign and the more recent initiative against privatizing Social Security.
Aiming to use political pressure as an agent to separate Republicans from President Bush on the war, the "Iraq Summer" will target nine senators and 31 members of the House in 15 states. |
Nebraska judge bans the word 'rape' from courtroom| |
Excerpt: [The victim] testified for 13 hours at Safi's first trial last October, all without using the words rape or sexual assault. She claims, not unreasonably, that describing what happened to her as sex is almost an assault in itself. "This makes women sick, especially the women who have gone through this," she told the Omaha World-Herald. "They know the difference between sex and rape." |
Abu Ghraib tactics were first used at Guantanamo| |
Excerpt: The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq.
The investigation also supports the idea that soldiers believed that placing hoods on detainees, forcing them to appear nude in front of women and sexually humiliating them were approved interrogation techniques for use on detainees. |
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia praises Jack Bauer, 24, and, apparently, torture| |
Excerpt: The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes." |
Billion-dollar spy satellite shut down ... maybe| |
Excerpt: Spy chief Mike McConnell has junked a multibillion-dollar spy satellite program that engineers hoped would someday pass undetected through the space above other nations. The move from the director of national intelligence comes after several years of congressional efforts to kill the program.
[GOP Rep. Peter] Hoekstra would not identify the program McConnell said was being cut and said he remains doubtful it is truly gone. He said its congressional allies could find a way to bring it back to life through a bill. He also noted that the White House has not sent a revised version of its budget to Congress reflecting McConnell's change. |
Munich District Attorney calls for arrest of CIA agents in El Masri case| |
Rough translation from German: Munich state lawyers have requested the arrest of agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the case of Khaled al-Masri.
Comment: Here's a little background on Masri, from 2006:
In a separate court document filed last night, Khan's attorneys offered declarations from Khaled al-Masri, a released detainee who said he was held with Khan in a dingy CIA prison called "the salt pit" in Afghanistan. There, prisoners slept on the floor, wore diapers and were given tainted water that made them vomit, Masri said. American interrogators treated him roughly, he said, and told him he "was in a land where there were no laws."
Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized in Pakistan.
The family said Khan was staying with a brother in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 when men, who were not in uniform, burst into the apartment late one night and put hoods over the heads of Khan, his brother Mohammad and his brother's wife. The couple's 1-month-old son was also seized.
Comment: Ain't that America, you and me, ain't that America something to see? John Mellencamp PERMANENT LINK |
States face decisions on who is mentally fit to vote| |
Excerpt: Rhode Island is among a growing number of states grappling with the question of who is too mentally impaired to vote. The issue is drawing attention for two major reasons: increasing efforts by the mentally ill and their advocates to secure voting rights, and mounting concern by psychiatrists and others who work with the elderly about the rights and risks of voting by people with conditions like Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
Comment: Talk about ass-backwards...! America considers it a far higher priority to test its voters for decision-making fitness, rather than the politicians running for office!
So those of us who pull a voting lever are considered more potentially dangerous to the world than those with their finger on a nuclear button? I bet if politicians were tested for either lying OR general psychopathic traits, lots of those presently in office would never have made it there.
And just think: if our politicians themselves had to pass a truly independent and expert battery of psychiatric tests before they could qualify as candidates, we'd probably have much better (and safer!) choices in elections -- even if every single one of us citizens (crazies included) voted.
JR Mooneyham PERMANENT LINK |
Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) suggests free
contraceptives for Mexicans, to reduce illegal immigration| |
Excerpt: "A slower rate of growth of Mexico's population would improve the economy of Mexico. It would also reduce the environmental pressure on Mexico's ecosystem. But a slower rate of growth would also reduce the long-term illegal immigration pressure on America's borders," reasoned Rep. Mark Kirk, who also supports stronger border security in the short-term.
In reality, fertility rates have plunged in Mexico since 1980, when an average couple would have five or more children. Now, the country's fertility rate has dropped to 2.5 children, compared to 2.1 for the United States, according to United Nations data. |
Sicko: Health insurance industry, big pharmaceuticals
launch smear campaign against Michael Moore| |
Excerpt: The pharmaceutical industry and think tanks it backs financially are readying a multifaceted counteroffensive against Michael Moore's film about the health care industry. ...
The drug companies and their allies have been on their toes ever since the movie was being filmed, when they warned personnel to watch out for film crews from the Fahrenheit 9/11 director. But in advance of the film's release, they are upping the volume and the tempo of their activities. |
There are more than three stooges (and one of them will be America's next President)
Romney's "security guy" likes to pretend he has police powers| |
Excerpt: State Police are investigating one of Mitt Romney's top campaign aides for allegedly impersonating a trooper by calling a Wilmington company and threatening to cite the driver of a company van for erratic driving, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.
Jay Garrity, who is director of operations on Romney's presidential campaign and a constant presence at his side, became the primary target of the investigation, according to one of the sources, after authorities traced the cellphone used to make the call back to him. The investigation comes three years after Garrity, while working for Romney in the State House, was cited for having flashing lights and other police equipment in his car without proper permits. |
Sen Clinton booed at speech for blaming Iraq| |
Excerpt: Last summer, when she criticized the idea of setting a timetable to withdraw US forces from Iraq, Hillary Clinton was met with a chorus of boos at the annual Take Back America conference.
This year was supposed to be different. Hillary now pledges to end the war on her first day in office. But yet again she experienced boos at Take Back America when she put the blame on the Iraqi government for the mess in Iraq.
"The American military has succeeded," she said midway through her speech. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed." That line has become a standard talking point for politicians of both parties, especially Republicans. |
Giuliani dropped out of Iraq Study Group to take six-figure speaking gigs| |
Excerpt: On April 12, 2006, [Rudolph Giuliani] was giving a keynote address at an economics conference in South Korea for a fee of $200,000. On May 18, he was giving a speech on leadership in Atlanta for $100,000.
At that point, [Iraq Study Group co-chair James] Baker gave Giuliani an ultimatum: Start showing up for sessions, or quit. On May 24, he quit, noting in a letter (provided to Gordon) that prior commitments prevented him from giving the panel his "full and active participation." (He was replaced by former Attorney General Edwin Meese, a puzzling choice for the job; maybe he was the only public figure Baker could find on such short notice. According to someone I know who attended one session, the elderly Meese "was barely conscious.")
Comment: The only thing this self-promoting, corrupt sleazeball has going for him is that he's seen as "Mr. 9-11" ... but only by people who know absolutely nothing about him. Every single fact about his record and his history show him to be a bastard and a crook. Even New York Firefighters have formed a campaign to tell everyone how much they hate his guts. In other words, if he actually manages to get nominated, this election could be really really fun. Madeline Zane PERMANENT LINK
Comment: Ah, the Iraq Study Group -- a wave of nostalgia makes me nauseous. That was the virtually all-Republican war hawk group that, amid much hype a few months ago, offered the Bush administration reams of advice on Iraq, advice that was marginally less insane than Bush policies, and advice that was instantly ignored by Bush. And Giuliani Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK
Giuliani's South Carolina campaign manager indicted on cocaine charges
Excerpt: South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, was indicted Tuesday on federal cocaine charges. Ravenel is also the state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. |
McCain has more lobbyists on staff than any other '08 candidate| |
Excerpt: A Huffington Post examination of the campaigns of the top three presidential candidates in each party shows that lobbyists are playing key roles in both Democratic and Republican bids -- although they are far more prevalent on the GOP side. But, all the campaigns pale in comparison to McCain's, whose rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to his conduct. |
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Judge blocks law that would make immigrants homeless| |
Excerpt: A federal judge here granted a preliminary injunction that forces the city of Farmers Branch to win at trial before it can enforce an ordinance barring apartment rentals to undocumented immigrants. Agreeing with lawyers for residents and apartment owners who sued, U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay wrote that the measure is "based upon a scheme that does not adopt federal immigration standards" and is too vague for landlords to apply. |
Declassified docs reveal quarter-century of CIA lawbreaking| |
Excerpt: The documents, which were published online Thursday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, detail illegal CIA activities from the 1950s through the mid-1970s.
The so-called "family jewels" -- as the 693 pages of documents are referred to -- had been classified, aside from a few dozen pages, since they were first compiled beginning in 1973. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published the first account of the CIA's domestic operations outlined in the document in December 1974. |
Republicans hire Australian immigrant who was jailed for visa violations| |
Excerpt: Michael Kamburowski, the Australian immigrant hired as a top official in the California Republican Party, was ordered deported in 2001, jailed three years later for visa violations -- and has filed a $5 million wrongful arrest lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to U.S. District Court documents.
Kamburowski was named in March to be the chief operating officer of the California GOP. He is responsible for the state party's multimillion-dollar budget and oversees campaign funds and financing for the nation's largest state GOP organization.
Comment: There aren't enough American criminals to satisfy the Republican Party's demand for unethical operatives. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Evan Almighty's appalling effort to pander to religious moviegoers| |
Excerpt: Universal [Studios] has hired a religious marketing firm to sell Evan Almighty to churches and religious leaders, hoping to capture the same hundreds of millions in Christ dollars raked in by The Passion, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Bruce Almighty. If they succeed, it will be tragic, not because Evan Almighty is unfunny (although it certainly is), but because it will validate Hollywood's embarrassingly stupid approach to religion and faith. If I were a believing man, movies like Evan would make me long for the days when Hollywood just ignored God. |
Recording industry teeters on the brink| |
Excerpt: Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far -- and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers' growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline.
The major labels are struggling to reinvent their business models, even as some wonder whether it's too late. "The record business is over," says music attorney Peter Paterno, who represents Metallica and Dr. Dre. "The labels have wonderful assets -- they just can't make any money off them." One senior music-industry source who requested anonymity went further: "Here we have a business that's dying. There won't be any major labels pretty soon."
Comment: The recording industry wants me to be all misty-eyed at its demise, and I'm not a big music buff, certainly not one of the eager downloaders or anything... but my general reaction is, good riddance. I hope the movie industry faces a similar collapse in the near future.
The corporate control of art has led to some nice common cultural heritage, so we can all hum "My Girl" or "Starry Eyed Surprise" together, but it's also led to a blanding-down of everything artistic about the art. Like American Idol -- good lord, that show is a musical abortion. It just makes me cringe. Every wannabe star comes on and just does an impersonation of previous stars. And the judges make sure that anyone who does anything outside of the ordinary is immediately sent home. Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Town that blocked high school Iraq play revealed as inspiration for Stepford Wives| |
Excerpt: After the New York Times published an article on the Wilton High censorship scandal, Ira Levin, the author of The Stepford Wives, wrote the paper a letter: "Wilton, Conn., where I lived in the 1960s, was the inspiration for Stepford, the fictional town I later wrote about in The Stepford Wives. I'm not surprised ... that Wilton High School has a Stepford principal." |
Middle school principal on field trip suddenly becomes terrorist| |
Excerpt: She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.
"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'." |
ABC "reporter" becomes Pentagon spokesman| |
Excerpt: The Pentagon will announce this week that Geoff Morrell, previously a White House correspondent for ABC News, has been hired as the Defense Department's on-camera briefer ... The official said that a working journalist was chosen by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in an effort to improve press relations at a time when the administration is under pressure to show progress in Iraq.
Comment: Of course, if ABC's "working reporter" had been actually doing his job this whole time, the Pentagon would hate his guts too much to ever consider putting him on the payroll. Madeline Zane PERMANENT LINK |
Motion would put Duke prosecutor behind bars| |
Excerpt: The 42-page motion asked the judge to hold Nifong in criminal contempt of court -- particularly in his withholding of pertinent DNA evidence that would have cleared the college students -- and to impose sanctions against him. If granted, the prosecutor could land in prison. |
House votes to end aid for Saudi Arabia| |
Excerpt: The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations. ...
In the past three years, Congress has passed bills to stop the relatively small amount of U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia, only to see the Bush administration circumvent the prohibitions. Now, lawmakers are trying to close loopholes so that no more U.S. aid can be sent to the world's leading petroleum exporter. |
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Lightning round news
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Abortion legalized in Portugal
McAllen, Texas officials want a wall around Washington DC
Cockroach sues Kansas Congressman
400 stuck on jetliner for seven hours
Australia bans alcohol, pornography, but just for Aborigines
Law & Order video game used footage from actual kidnapping that led to murder
Investigation of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens expands
Man sues after plane piloted by FBI hits his Lamborghini
Nearly one-third of Congress has family on payroll
Five biggest pr*cks in Congress
Missing: Large lake in southern Chile
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