MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

"If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, we wouldn't have George W. Bush."

Christy Marx

The Mars Society

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother on November 8, 1954

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 30 April 2006

ANTI-CHOICE FAKE CLINICS
The anti-choice movement has a stealth strategy for blocking women's access to abortion care. Known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), many of these anti-choice, fake "clinics" mislead women into believing they offer comprehensive reproductive health care, when they actually intimidate and harass women in the midst of a difficult and deeply personal decision. Making matters worse, in Texas, politicians are spending five million in taxpayer dollars on these fake clinics instead of real health facilities that provide family planning.
Click here to find out more:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/0pA4_y91iRPV/

It's time for Congress to hold these fake "clinics" accountable and stop their false advertising. Click here to take action:
http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/house_cpc_0306/ww67xesr15kwekn?

And the repression just keeps on coming.

Imagine receiving a letter...
by TheBlaz
Fri Apr 28, 2006 at 06:32:08 PM PDT

A letter in a nifty envelope delivered by a stern-looking individual. You're confused as you read the letter. It's from the FBI. They are demanding information from you about someone. Not only this, but you can't ever ever tell ANYONE about it. You can't tell the person that you gave the FBI info about them, can't tell your wife, nobody.

OK, ok. True enough, odds are you'll never receive this letter.

But what if your employer did?

The letter in question(PDF) is known as a National Security Letter, or NSL. An NSL is like a warrant in that the FBI can use it to get information about people, but it is UNLIKE a warrant in that a judge does not issue it.

In fact, a judge doesn't know about it. no one in the judicial branch knows about it. it's a blank check for the executive branch to seek whatever info it wants--and to force subjects of such an investigation into silence forever.

"18 U.S.C. Section 2709(c): Prohibition of certain disclosure.--No wire or electronic communication service provider, or officer, employee, or agent thereof, shall disclose to any person that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained access to information or records under this section."

Go back and read that once again because it sounds vaguely important. In a Friday night news dump, it was revealed that:

The FBI delivered a total of 9,254 NSLs relating to 3,501 people in 2005, according to a report submitted late Friday to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate.

That's a shitload of unconsitutional happenings going on. And according to Doe v. Ashcroft (decided in 2004, PDF here), they are indeed unconstitutional. It's about to get quote-heavy:

"The Court concludes that § 2709 violates the Fourth Amendment because, at least as currently applied, it effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge to the propriety of an NSL request. In the Court's view, ready availability of judicial process to pursue such a challenge is necessary to vindicate important rights guaranteed by the Constitution or by statute. On separate grounds, the Court also concludes that the permanent ban on disclosure contained in § 2709(c), which the Court is unable to sever from the remainder of the statute, operates as an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech in violation of the First Amendment."

Courts have ruled that these NSLs have an "undue coercive effect." I'm sorry, did they say "undue coercive effect"? The FBI comes to your house, tosses a letter in your face and starts demanding information, then tells you you can't ever let anyone know you gave them info, and it's described as "undue coercive effect." I've got a more accurate description, but I'm trying to cut back on 4-lettered words.

READ THE REST.

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Not Amused?
By E&P Staff
Published: April 29, 2006 11:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

..........

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

..........

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail. "

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides—-the president’s side and the vice president’s side."

READ THE REST.

Posted: 29 April 2006

The Worst President in History?
One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq -- an appeal that would have sounded too "sensitive," as Cheney once sneered -- the administration built a "Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking. He did so while proclaiming an expansive Wilsonian rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy -- yet discarding the multilateralism and systems of international law (including the Geneva Conventions) that emanated from Wilson's idealism. He did so while dismissing intelligence that an American invasion could spark a long and bloody civil war among Iraq's fierce religious and ethnic rivals, reports that have since proved true. And he did so after repeated warnings by military officials such as Gen. Eric Shinseki that pacifying postwar Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of American troops -- accurate estimates that Paul Wolfowitz and other Bush policy gurus ridiculed as "wildly off the mark."

..................

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

..................

The monster deficits, caused by increased federal spending combined with the reduction of revenue resulting from the tax cuts, have also placed Bush's administration in a historic class of its own with respect to government borrowing. According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006.

.................

Bush's faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration's pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don't like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

.....................

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

Posted: 28 April 2006

I applaud Rep. Conyers. Our not-duly-elected "President" is out of control.

Taking the President to Court
by Congressman John Conyers
Thu Apr 27, 2006 at 12:46:24 PM PDT

As some of you may be aware, according to the President and Congressional Republicans, a bill does not have to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law. Forget your sixth grade civics lesson, forget the book they give you when you visit Congress - "How Our Laws Are Made," and forget Schoolhouse Rock. These are checks and balances, Republican-style.

As the Washington Post reported last month, as the Republican budget bill struggled to make its way through Congress at the end of last year and beginning of this year (the bill cuts critical programs such as student loans and Medicaid funding), the House and Senate passed different versions of it. House Republicans did not want to make Republicans in marginal districts vote on the bill again, so they simply certified that the Senate bill was the same as the House bill and sent it to the President. The President, despite warnings that the bill did not represent the consensus of the House and Senate, simply shrugged and signed the bill anyway. Now, the Administration is implementing it as though it was the law of the land.

Several public interest groups have sought to stop some parts of the bill from being implemented, under the theory that the bill is unconstitutional. However, getting into the weeds a bit, they have lacked the ability to stop the entire bill. To seek this recourse, the person bringing the suit must have what is called "standing," that is they must show they were injured or deprived of some right. Because the budget bill covers so many areas of the law, it is difficult for one person to show they were harmed by the entire bill. Thus, many of these groups have only sought to stop part of it.

After consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation, I determined that one group of people are injured by the entire bill: Members of the House. We were deprived of our right to vote on a bill that is now being treated as the law of the land.

So, I am going to court. With many of my Democratic Colleagues (list appended at the bottom of this diary), I plan to file suit tomorrow in federal district court in Detroit against the President, members of the Cabinet and other federal officers seeking to have a simple truth confirmed: a bill not passed by the House and Senate is not a law, even if the President signs it. As such, the Budget bill cannot be treated as the law of the land.

As many of you know, I have become increasingly alarmed at the erosion of our constitutional form of government. Whether through the Patriot Act, the President's Secret Domestic Spying program, or election irregularities and disenfranchisement, our fundamental freedoms are being taken away. Nothing to me is more stark than this, however. If a President does not need one House of Congress to pass a law, what's next?

The following is a list of co-plaintiffs on this lawsuit. I would note that I did not invite every Member of the House to join in the suit, and I am certain many, many more Members would have joined if asked. However, this was not possible for various arcane legal reasons.

The other plaintiffs include Rep. John Dingell, Ranking Member on the Energy and Commerce Committee; Rep. Charles B. Rangel, Ranking Member on the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. George Miller, Ranking Member on the Education and Workforce Committee; Rep. James L. Oberstar, Ranking Member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Rep. Barney Frank, Ranking Member on the Financial Services Committee; Rep. Collin C. Peterson, Ranking Member on the Agriculture Committee; Rep. Bennie Thompson, Ranking Member on the Homeland Security Committee; Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, Ranking Member on the Rules Committee; Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, Ranking Member on the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee; Rep. Sherrod Brown, Representing Ohio's 13th District.

From The Center for American Progress.

CIVIL LIBERTIES -- SPECTER EXPRESSES OUTRAGE OVER NSA SPYING PROGRAM AS HOUSE VOTES AGAINST TRANSPARENCY: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) yesterday "complained Thursday that there hasn’t been enough outrage over President Bush’s domestic surveillance program and threatened to push legislation that would kill it." Specter said he wants the White House to stop "walking all over Congress" and asked, "Where's the outrage? There is none, except on a few editorial pages." Yet, Specter made clear that "he will not seek a vote on it at this time." The tough talk without tough action is reminiscent of Specter's failure to swear in Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez before his Judiciary Committee testimony. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives voted down an amendment to require the administration to deliver a "classified report to Congress" detailing the program's activities. Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee voted against an intelligence spending bill for the first time in her career "to send the strong signal" that she opposes the "legal rationale offered by the Bush administration." "I do not support violating the law or the Constitution," she said. "Enhanced security without respect for law gives away the very values we are fighting to defend, and I believe that the program...can and must fully comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and with our Constitution."

From Grist on-line magazine.

House Republicans fight to preserve $5 billion in oil industry tax breaks

In public, prominent Republicans are chastising oil companies over high gas prices, and threatening price-gouging investigations and windfall-profit taxes. Behind closed doors, House Republicans are fighting to protect some $5 billion worth of tax loopholes for those very same oil companies. Luckily for them, the country's Strategic Outrage Reserve has been completely tapped. At issue is a tax bill designed mainly to extend the tax cuts for the rich passed in Bush's first term. The Senate version includes changes in arcane tax accounting rules, among them rules that allow oil companies to grossly underestimate the value of their inventories. House Republicans are furiously fighting the changes, with backing from the White House. In February, Treasury Secretary John Snow sent letters to Congress stating that "the president's senior advisors would recommend that the president veto the legislation if this provision remains." After all, populist-friendly rhetoric is one thing, but we're talking about real money here!


One coral species found able to adapt to warmer waters; others screwed

Last year, unusually warm Caribbean waters killed some 40 percent of the coral around the U.S. Virgin Islands and weakened much of the rest. This year, wouldn't you know it, the waters are warming again. "It's impossible to overstate how important this is," says biologist Caroline Rogers. High water temperatures lead coral to kick off the partner algae that give them color and sustenance, leaving them white and frail -- a problem that's hitting reefs around the globe. But one species of coral found in the waters of Hawaii seems to have gotten Darwin's memo about adapting: when bleached, instead of relying on energy reserves, Montipora capitata extends short stinging tentacles and gobbles tiny marine animals called zooplankton. "This suggests there are some corals out there that can survive," said lead researcher Andréa Grottoli, whose study appears in Nature this week. Those other corals were weenies anyway, right?


Feds won't press charges against scientists who falsified Yucca documents

Scientists accused of falsifying quality-assurance documents for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste site in Nevada will not be charged by federal prosecutors. Emails between U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists from 1998 to 2000 indicate that dates were invented and inconvenient data was deleted as hydrologists conducted a data review before the Energy Department sought a license for the nuke-waste dump. The White House is pushing to speed up construction at Yucca, which is supposed to store 77,000 tons of waste from nuclear power plants. Despite the decision not to file charges, the Energy Department's inspector general admitted that the scientists' lapse has "had the effect of undermining public confidence in the quality of the science associated with the Yucca Mountain Project." Because that confidence was sky-high before, don't you know.

Posted: 23 April 2006

The CIA “Wehrmacht”
Posted on Wednesday, April 19, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

With the war in Iraq an utter debacle and public opinion turned against the White House, anger within the armed forces towards Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Administration is growing, and the Pentagon is fighting back (see “Pentagon Memo Aims to Counter Rumsfeld Critics” in the April 16 New York Times). But what's been little noted thus far is what looks to be a similar revolt brewing at the CIA. An ex-senior agency officer who keeps in contact with his former peers told me that there is a “a big swing” in anti-Bush sentiment at Langley. “I've been stunned by what I'm hearing,” he said. “There are people who fear that indictments and subpoenas could be coming down, and they don't want to get caught up in it.”

This former senior officer said there “seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people” at the agency to avoid involvement in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially “renditions”—the practice whereby the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the CIA: “There's an SS group within the agency that's willing to do anything and there's a Wehrmacht group that is saying, 'I'm not gonna touch this stuff'.”

READ THE REST.

Posted: 22 April 2006

Important information about net neutrality.

Posted: 21 April 2006

I fully expect Bush to stage a terrorist attack come Oct.

If Past Is Prologue, George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President
By JOHN W. DEAN

President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding. In a mid-2004 column, I argued that, at that point, Bush had already demonstrated that he possessed the least attractive and most troubling traits among those that political scientist James Dave Barber has cataloged in his study of Presidents' personality types.

Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the public of confidence in its President, and for which he is directly responsible. This Administration goes through scandals like a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another.

............

Recent events provide an especially good illustration of Bush's fateful - perhaps fatal - approach. Six generals who have served under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have called for his resignation - making a strong substantive case as to why he should resign. And they are not alone: Editorialists have also persuasively attacked Rumsfeld on the merits.

Yet Bush's defense of Rumsfeld was entirely substance-free. Bush simply told reporters in the Rose Garden that Rumsfeld would stay because "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." He sounded much like a parent telling children how things would be: "I'm the Daddy, that's why."

This, indeed, is how Bush sees the presidency, and it is a point of view that will cause him trouble.

...............

George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.

Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.

...............

As the 2006 midterm elections approach, this active/negative president can be expected to take further risks. If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.

What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.

How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

Posted: 20 April 2006

Just when you think the Bush regime couldn't get any more poisonous...

Bush Plan To Hide Data on 1.5M Lbs. of Toxic Chemicals in California
State Legislation Would Protect Californians' Right to Know About Pollution in Their Communities

SACRAMENTO - April 17 - A Bush Administration proposal to roll back Americans' right to know about chemical hazards in their neighborhoods would let California industries handle almost 1.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals a year without telling the public, according to an investigation of federal data by Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Currently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program requires industrial facilities to report annually the release, disposal, incineration, treatment or recycling of 500 pounds or more of 650 chemicals covered by the law. But last fall the EPA proposed sharply raising the reporting threshhold so that only releases of 5,000 pounds or more would be reported, and reports would only be required every other year.

"The right to know what hazardous chemicals are coming out of the smokestack across the street from your child's school is essential," said EWG Vice President Bill Walker. "The Administration's proposal makes it easier for industries to pollute our communities with hazardous chemicals—in secret."

EWG's report, "Stolen Inventory," lists all facilities in California that would be allowed to stop or cut back on reporting chemical releases, broken down by county, city and chemical. It is available at www.ewg.org.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions hit record high

This week, the feds quietly -- as in, tiptoeing in socks, holding breath -- released annual stats on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, as required by the U.N. climate-change convention. The news is roughly as good as you would expect: The U.S., with only 5 percent of the world's population, is its biggest GHG polluter; emissions rose 1.7 percent between 2003 and 2004, the biggest increase since 2000, part of a 15.8 percent rise since 1990; in 2004, the U.S. spewed the equivalent of 6.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, fossil-fuel combustion was responsible for the bulk (94 percent) of the emissions. Demand for electricity in the U.S. keeps on rising, as does the number of cars on the road. Said U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson: "[T]he U.S. is making significant progress toward the president's greenhouse-gas reduction goals." Said us: What the hell are you talking about?

Posted: 19 April 2006

Senate Hearings on Bush, Now
By CARL BERNSTEIN
In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributing editor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?

The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration—and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will cost an estimated $300 billion and that will drive the national debt toward $10 trillion; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.

..............

One of the similarities between Bush and Nixon is their contempt, lip service aside, for the legitimate oversight of Congress. In seeking to cover up his secret, illegal activities, Nixon made broad claims of executive privilege or national security, the most important of which were rejected by the courts.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their colleagues have successfully evaded accountability for the dire consequences of their policies through a tried-and-true strategy that has exploited a situation in which the press (understandably) has no subpoena power and is held in ill repute (understandably) by so many Americans, and the Republican-controlled Congress can be counted on to ignore its responsibility to compel relevant, forthright testimony and evidence—no matter how outrageous (failure to provide sufficient body armor for American soldiers, for example), mendacious, or inimical to the national interest the actions of the president and his principal aides might be.

................

Before the Times story had broken, the president was ardent about his civil-libertarian credentials in such matters: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," Bush said in a speech in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004. Obviously, Bush's statement was demonstrably untrue. Yet instead of correcting himself, Bush attacked the Times for virtual treason, and his aides initiated a full-court press to track down whoever had provided information to the newspaper. "Our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk," he declared, as if America's terrorist enemies hadn't assumed they were subject to all manner of electronic eavesdropping by the world's most technologically sophisticated nation.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 17 April 2006

We should support these efforts by the networks and broadcasters. The FCC has become an out-of-control censorship bulldog. This info is from the Cynopsis e-newsletter.

Two separate court actions filed, both looking for the same outcome in response to the fines against networks and affiliates proposed by the FCC last month. Fox and CBS filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York, and ABC and Hearst-Argyle station group filed with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. NBC filed to participate with the other broadcasters. Both filings, as they relate specifically to language, claim the current FCC decisions of indecency are unconstitutional, allege the FCC overstepped its authority and the decisions are contrary to First Amendment rights. Specific incidents cited include utterances by Nicole Ritchie at the Billboard Awards, Cher on the CBS Early Show and various scripted words on ABC's NYPD Blue. In its filings, CBS also asked for reconsideration on the fines levied from the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, and the 2004 episode of Without a Trace. Aside from the monetary fines proposed by the FCC, at the heart of the matter is this statement made by the networks who are joined by more than 800 affiliated stations: "...The FCC rulings underscore the inherent problem in growing government control over what viewers should and shouldn't see on television. Parents currently have the ability to control and block programming they deem inappropriate for family viewing from entering their home through the use of the V-chip and cable- and satellite-blocking technologies."

From The Center for American Progress.

TAXES -- BUSH USES TAX DAY TO PUSH FOR MORE TAX BREAKS FOR THE WEALTHY: Over the weekend, before tax filings were due, President Bush used his radio address to ask Congress to extend his tax cuts permanently. "Tax relief has done exactly what it was designed to do," Bush said. "It has created jobs and growth for the American people." But the Los Angeles Times found that as the tax code's progressivity decreased under Bush, "tax rates have contributed to huge increases in the wealth of the wealthy, but so far most people haven't seen significant economic improvement." "It's as if Santa Claus dropped bags of money down everybody's chimney," said the Tax Policy Center's Leonard E. Burman. "Only he dropped extra-big bags in rich people's homes, and extra-small ones in smaller homes." One recipient of Santa's largest "bags of money" this year is Vice President Dick Cheney, who reportedly is entitled to a $1.9 million tax refund. The disparity between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has grown. "Last year, for example, a typical corporate chief executive officer made 279 times the average pay of a non-supervisory production worker," according to an American Progress report. Meanwhile, conservative senators are using budget gimmickry to mask the deficits that more tax cuts for the wealthy would create. "That's amazing," the Washington Post's editorial board writes, "even from this Congress."

Research in Pacific shows ocean trouble
Acidity rises, oxygen drops, scientists find


By LISA STIFFLER

Research fresh off a boat that docked Thursday in Alaska reveals some frightening changes taking place in the Pacific Ocean.

As humans are pumping out more carbon dioxide that is helping to warm the planet, the ocean has been doing yeoman's work to lessen the effects -- but it's taking a toll.

Over time, the changes could have an impact that ripples through the food chain, from microscopic plants that can't grow right to salmon and whales unable to find enough to eat.

The Pacific is getting warmer and more acidic, while the amount of oxygen and the building blocks for coral and some kinds of plankton are decreasing, according to initial results from scientists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the University of Washington and elsewhere.

"There are big changes," said Christopher Sabine, chief scientist for one leg of the research trip, which ultimately traveled from Antarctica to Alaska.

Many of the most interesting results are tied to the ocean becoming increasingly acidic because of its absorption of carbon dioxide.

"You don't have to believe in climate change to believe that this is happening," said Joanie Kleypas, an oceanographer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colo. "It's pretty much simple thermodynamics."

And it's alarming.

READ THE REST.

I knew there was a reason I liked Viggo.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I am not anti-Bush, I'm anti-Bush behaviour. In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, hypocrisy, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.
Viggo Mortensen
Lord of the Rings actor
defending his criticism of George W. Bush as a "beast"

Posted: 15 April 2006

Permission to Speak Freely, Sir
By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted April 14, 2006.

Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things they're saying. Tools

I am sorry that high school and college kids no longer have to face a couple of years of mandatory military service. That may be a strange thing to say for a guy who protested the draft back in the '60s. Maybe it's the inevitable aging process. Or maybe it's the perspective you get from the higher altitude of experience.

What got me thinking about this were the extraordinary statements being made by recently retired U.S. generals. Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things these guys are saying about their former civilian superiors.

I hit Marine Corps bootcamp on July 7, 1965, a wimpy kid from suburbia. The first thing we were told was that we were the lowest forms of life on earth -- and that meant lower than civilians. I was to learn as time went on that this was not just drill instructor blather. It was a genuine, deeply ingrained belief that permeated the highest ranks of the military for civilian control. We were repeatedly told that the lowest civilian we met on the street outranked the highest grade military officer. And that was not show. They believed it, not just as a principle, but a sacred trust.

Those who never served will likely see that as corny, empty rhetoric, window dressing, quaint -- at best. But those who did serve know of what I speak. We get it. That's one reason I bemoan that two generations of kids have since been spared a stint in uniform. It changed my life in ways I now understand and appreciate in ways I could not back then.

This is not a column about reinstituting the draft. I just want to make the case that you pay close and respectful attention to the recent statements by retired top Pentagon brass. Because never in my life did I ever expect to hear these kinds of things coming out of the mouths of such men. Never. Here's a sampler:

* "[Donald Rumsfeld] has proved himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."
--General Paul Eaton, who oversaw training of Iraqi army troops, 2003-2004

* "I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him. Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there."
--retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

* "I think we need a fresh start … We need leadership up there (the Pentagon) that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them."
--Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, 2004-2005

* We won't get fooled again … Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach should be replaced."
--Marines Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations of Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2000-2002

* "The problem is that we've wasted three years … absolutely, Rumsfeld should resign."
--Marines Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of U.S. Central Command

* "A lot of them [other generals] are hugely frustrated. Rumsfeld gave the impression that military advice was neither required nor desired" in the planning for the Iraq war.
--Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, former commander of Marines forces in the Pacific Theater

* "Everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out. [Rumsfeld and his advisers have] made fools of themselves, and totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict."
--Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs

The administration is trying to counter these devastating statements by noting that none of the generals voiced such reservations during the lead-up to the war. And, because so many Americans now lack any direct experience with the military, the tactic may just work. After all, it's easy to dismiss these retired generals just that easily. "So, where were your qualms when we really need them, general?"

I know the answer to that question -- and it's not the answer the Bushies want you to get.

When an officer has a particularly sticky problem with the actions or orders of a superior officer, s/he can "request permission to speak freely, sir."

Well, that was tried, by Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was promptly and unceremoniously "shit-canned." (Another term my fellow vets may find familiar.)

READ THE REST.

Y'know, you just can't say this often enough. Bush is a liar.

Title: Divine Right of Bushes [the immaculate declassification]
Source: The New York Times
Author: Maureen Dowd

So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information.

Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence.

"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times.

Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.

When other officials leak top-secret stuff — even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts — they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.

After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."

Really, W. should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody. Since the Bush administration is basically a monarchy, he should pass the crown to Jenna. She couldn't do worse than this bunch of airheads and bullies.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

EPA unveils mixed news on U.S. toxic emissions

The U.S. EPA issued its annual Toxics Release Inventory this week, and it's a pessimist's dream. U.S. waterways absorbed 241 million pounds of chemicals in 2004, up 10 percent from the year before. Dioxin, mercury, and PCB releases were down, but (a fact the press failed to note) the 58 percent dioxin decline in 2004 was relative to a huge spike in 2003; compared to 2002, the decline was desultory. The EPA's talking point: Overall chemical pollution -- mainly from mining, electric, and haz-waste companies -- fell more than 4 percent from 2003 to 2004. So, only 4.2 billion pounds of nasty spewed into the environment in 2004. Praise be. Presumably satisfied with a job well done, the Bush administration is pushing to have the TRI review conducted every other year instead of annually, and is trying to excuse companies from reporting "small" spills and releases of fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical.

From The Center for American Progress.

Another Tax Day, Still No Comprehensive Reform

With tax day three days away, President Bush has stepped up his calls to make permanent his tax cuts and right-wing advocacy groups have aggressively promoted a repeal of the estate tax. But so far, conservatives' efforts have been limited to rhetoric and infighting. In 2005, Bush promised to "to give this nation a tax code that is pro-growth, easy to understand, and fair to all." Yet he has ignored the Sept. 2005 recommendations of his bipartisan task force on tax policy, and last week Congress "abandoned [its] efforts" at tax reform and left for a two-week vacation. Conservative congressional leaders have promised to pick up the issue when they return, but their proposals would largely benefit only the wealthiest Americans.

THE PARIS HILTON TAX CUT: Many conservatives try to portray the estate tax as a "death tax" on small, family-owned businesses. "It's just about penalizing success, and that's why it's unfair and wrong," notes the Free Enterprise Fund (FEF). But in reality, the estate tax is a progressive inheritance tax, affecting only the heirs to the wealthiest Americans. Americans are about four times as likely to be hit by lightning than to have to pay estate taxes on small businesses or farms. As columnist E.J. Dionne notes, "Fewer than 1 percent of the people who died in 2004 paid an estate tax, and half the revenue from the tax came from estates valued at $10 million or more." By 2009, only families worth more than $7 million -- fewer than three in every one thousand estates -- will pay even a penny in estate taxes, and for those who will pay anything, the first $7 million will be tax free. Conservatives in the House and Senate are proposing to permanently repeal the estate tax -- or seek a "compromise" that is nearly as bad -- even though such a move would cost over three quarters of a trillion dollars in the next decade. The right wing is also ignoring the priorities of the American public. A new poll finds that 57 percent favor reforming or leaving alone the estate tax; only 23 percent back repealing it.

THE UNEARNED INCOME TAX CUT: A centerpiece of Bush's tax cuts was a 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends. Those cuts are set to expire in 2008, when capital gains taxes would be taxed 20 percent and dividends would be taxed as regular income. Conservatives in Congress are seeking to extend the 15 percent rate. It would be a costly move that would bestow the vast majority of benefits to the well-off. According to the Tax Policy Center, nearly three quarters of the benefits of these tax cuts will go those earning over $200,000 and nearly half to those earning more than $1 million each year. Despite administration claims to the contrary, Federal Reserve economists have found these investment tax cuts haven't boosted the stock market and the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation has found that any economic benefits of the cuts would "eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits."

THE BALLOONING ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was originally conceived of as "a trap for wealthy tax dodgers." But the rate was never indexed to inflation and is now taxing the middle class. This year at least 19 million taxpayers, making as little as about $30,000, will be hit by the AMT. The AMT currently has few supporters, yet the conservative Congress was unable to put aside its infighting and left for recess without reforming the tax. The Senate's AMT provision would have ensured that taxpayers who did not pay the AMT in 2005 would not to pay it in 2006, increasing exemption amounts to $42,500 for single taxpayers and $62,550 for couples. The House is pushing for the Senate to pass its stand-alone AMT relief bill, but Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) has said the bill will need to have both AMT reform and cuts on capital gains and dividend taxes to win support in the Senate. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) disagrees: "The truth is we cannot have it all. Capital gains can wait. But AMT cannot wait." In the long-run, AMT reform must be coupled with broader tax reform to ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share.

A FAILURE TO DELIVER: Bush's tax cuts have "failed to produce the burst of economic activity the president promised." A report by the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute shows that Gross Domestic Product "grew only 13.5% since the first round of tax cuts were passed in early 2001, averaging 2.7% per year. The average for similar periods in the past was far better -- growing 16.3% or 3.2% per year." In fact, since the 2003 tax cuts, job growth has been weaker than during any comparable period following a recession -- about half the historical average. This year's projected deficit is already enormous -- $423 billion -- but the President's tax cuts are yet to take full effect. When they do, they will add $400 billion a year to the national debt. John Irons, American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy, notes, "The tax code needs to raise more revenue than it does now. ... Not only do we have massive deficits now, but the situation will only get worse as baby boomers retire and as medical costs increase our obligations under Medicare and other programs. A failure to increase revenue means a failure to invest in our nation, our economy, and our kids." American Progress has a plan.

Posted: 13 April 2006

THE BELOVED CYNTHIA McKINNEY
A White Ex Cop Speaks Out About a Georgia Congresswoman
by Michael C. Ruppert

April 11, 2006 1000 PST (FTW) - ASHLAND -Cynthia McKinney is a friend of mine. Until the day I die she will be a friend of mine. More than that, she will be a role model and an inspiration that I don’t ever expect to be equaled, let alone surpassed. Full disclosure.

Out of several dozen Op-Eds, news reports and commentaries on the now-infamous so-called “cop-slapping” event of March 29th, I haven’t seen a single one that, from my perspective, got it right. So right up front, let me say that if I am forced to look at this one snapshot incident, divorced from context and history, then yes, my very good friend messed up. It shouldn’t have become as big a deal as it has and she bears some responsibility for that. But if I look at the event as part of a continuum of the life of congress, or the life of this nation, and (no less importantly) of the life of this woman, things look and feel a whole lot different.

The virulent, spit-dripping, white, racist commentators from Boortz to DeLay and the oh-so-PC and dainty black Democratic pundits, columnists and pols who pick Cynthia McKinney apart—pretending to defend her while putting her black butt on the E-Bay auction block for November—are actually allies. They both want her to go away. They both want the issues that have come too close to public recognition in this case to go away. Leaders from left and right, black or white, cannot bear the thought of actually looking deeper at what happened with Cynthia McKinney and what it means.

Let me give you an historical hint. As a rule, wars are generally started over big events, (e.g. the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, North Korea’s Army Crossing the 38th parallel). Revolutions are generally started over less memorable things (e.g. “Let them eat cake,” a tea tax, some government troops opening fire on unarmed demonstrators). People of all colors and political persuasions understand that underlying both wars and revolutions are monstrous icebergs of unresolved inequity. So it is with Cynthia McKinney. And it is her hairdo (new or old, take your pick) that now sits atop an iceberg that both right-wing whites and bought-off blacks would like to go away.

I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it. Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just about anyone else on the Hill. It’s subtle, but so is the taste of dirt when it’s in your mouth.

READ THE REST

If this doesn't worry you, you're dead.

E-VOTING 2006: The Approaching Train Wreck
Our Elections are Now Officially 'A National Disaster in the Making'
By John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Normally this space is taken with my ideas of what are the "Top 5" voting news stories for the week. Today I am going to use this space to talk about what I see as the beginning of a disaster in the making with our elections. This isn't the election fraud that some point to when they talk about the vendors and some elections officials. It's not about recounts or audits. This is a real, get your hands around it, happening problem that will disrupt our election process if we do not do something about it now. While we have been involved in all of our issues about Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or "touch-screen") voting machines or paper ballots the electronic voting machine vendors have been wreaking complete havoc across the country.

So far this year two states have conducted primary elections. In Texas there is at least one candidate who has stepped forward and has challenged the election because of anomalies in vote counts and known voting machine failures. One county's machines counted some votes up to 6 times which resulted in approximately 100,000 more votes being counted than were cast. Though the vendor, Hart Intercivic, initially blamed the problem on human error, they finally had to admit that it was a programming error and not poll workers or voters who had erred. In Illinois some county officials are threatening to withhold final payment of funds on contracts with Sequoia Voting Systems because of failures with their machines that ended with results in the primary not being known for over a week after the voters went to the polls. In both states the involved vendors were very successful in the media with deflecting the blame from their machines to "human errors" or "glitches". However, when you listen to people who were there and who saw and worked through the problems you get a very different picture...

As these primaries were being conducted Summit County Ohio announced that over 70% of the memory cards for their precinct based optical-scan machines would not work. The vendor, ES&S, announced that their memory card contractor had made mistakes on some cards and they would be replaced. Memory cards for electronic voting machines store vote tabulations amongst other things.

READ THE REST.

Say goodbye to the last shreds of your privacy.

Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
By Ryan Singel

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.

According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.

"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."

Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

READ THE REST.

People who were actually paying attention knew that Iraq was a mistake long before the Bushies started this immoral war.

Why Iraq was a mistake
By LIEUT. GENERAL GREG NEWBOLD (RET.)

Two senior military officers are known to have challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the planning of the Iraq war. Army General Eric Shinseki publicly dissented and found himself marginalized. Marine Lieut. General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's top operations officer, voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war. Here, for the first time, Newbold goes public with a full-throated critique:

In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture -- who became career members of the military during those rough times -- the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.

From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq -- an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat -- al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.

I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

With the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't--or don't have the opportunity to--speak. Enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the Constitution. The distinction is important.

Before the antiwar banners start to unfurl, however, let me make clear--I am not opposed to war. I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And while I don't accept the stated rationale for invading Iraq, my view--at the moment--is that a precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake. It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists' message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.

I will admit my own prejudice: my deep affection and respect are for those who volunteer to serve our nation and therefore shoulder, in those thin ranks, the nation's most sacred obligation of citizenship. To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress.

The End Of The Internet As We Know It?

Telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T want to build high-speed networks to provide video and Internet services in competition with cable companies. Will these networks be broadly available and foster technological innovation? Or will they simply benefit certain moneyed interests? The answer -- and, ultimately, the future of the Internet -- depends on the telecommunications bill currently winding its way through Congress. Consumer advocates and progressives like Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) are pushing for the telecom networks, which will be built using public rights-of-way, to provide universal, non-discriminatory access. The telecommunications companies (along with the cable giants) want to reserve the right to give preferential access to whomever has the most cash. Thus far, unfortunately, the industry is winning.

WHAT IS NET NEUTRALITY?: Markey and others are pushing for the telecommunications bill to require "net neutrality." The telephone network already operates on this principle. Anyone willing to pay a reasonable fee can get his or her own phone line. Once you get a phone line, it works just as well as Paris Hilton's phone line or any other phone line. Also, it doesn't matter whether you're calling Brad Pitt or your grandmother, the connection works the same. (This is the way networks run naturally. Data is data. It doesn't matter who sends it.) Open, non-discriminatory access to the phone networks means businesses compete on the basis of what they do with the telephone network, not whether they can afford preferential access to it. The telecoms want to reserve the right to sell privileged access to their high-speed networks. (Edward Whiteacre, the CEO of SBC Communications put it this way: "Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that.") So, for example, Amazon.com could pay the telecoms a premium and ensure that its site loads much faster than an independent bookstore's site. The end result could be a two-tiered Internet, where your success doesn't depend on innovative ideas but rather the ability to pay, thus stifling small businesses that could become the next Microsoft or Google.

NET NEUTRALITY IN NAME ONLY: Last week, a House subcommittee rejected by a 23-8 vote an amendment by Markey that would have required net neutrality. Instead, the subcommittee vote to "codify the FCC's voluntary principles governing net neutrality." The key word here is "voluntary." The bill would do nothing to stop cable and telecom companies from offering "premium broadband tiers and charge content providers more to use them." There are no provisions "barring anti-competitive conduct," such as favoring content produced by the company that owns the network. Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy lamented, "Members from both sides of the aisle endorsed a plan which will permit cable and phone companies to construct 'pay as you surf, pay as you post' tollbooths for the Internet. Special-interest money contributed to committee members has given the AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others another brand new monopoly to control--our digital communications network known as the Internet. The committee's vote against 'network neutrality' was more about the power of big money to influence their anti-Internet freedom position." (Check out the top contributors for Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who is the sponsor of the current legislation.) Markey says the bill, as it stands now, "imperils the future of electronic commerce and innovation to the ‘world wide whims’ of broadband barons, and ties the hands of the FCC in a way that will legally prevent it from saving something very special."

TECH INNOVATORS SUPPORT STRONG NET NEUTRALITY GUARANTEES: The CEOs of some of the world's most innovative and successful technology companies -- including Google, EBay and Yahoo! -- wrote the House Energy Committee last week to express their concern that "legislation being considered by the Committee fails to preserve the longstanding openness of the Internet." As a result, according to the CEOs, "consumer choice, American innovation and global competitiveness" are put at risk. They urged the committee to adopt net neutrality rules that were "both meaningful and readily enforceable."

THE BUILD OUT PROBLEM: The telecoms want to use public rights-of-way (i.e., the land used to build roads, etc) to build their networks. But they also want the right to provide service only to the most profitable areas within those communities. As of now, the bill lacks a so-called "build out" provision that would require telecom companies competing with a cable franchise to provide service everywhere the cable company does. The result may be that low-income and minority neighborhoods will not see the benefits of improved networks and competition.

BYPASSING COMMUNITIES: Currently, cable companies are required to negotiate franchise agreements with local communities to provide service. The telecoms want to compete with the cable companies but bypass communities. These negotiations are the only opportunity for towns to ensure "cable and Internet providers pay attention to labor issues, provide for technology upgrades and ensure public safety concerns are met."

IRAN -- URANIUM ENRICHMENT ANNOUNCEMENT CALLED 'POLITICAL THEATER': Radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced yesterday that the country had enriched a small amount of uranium, "far below the quantity and purity needed" to produce nuclear weapons but still in violation of a recent U.N. Security Council demand that it halt work on the process. The announcement -- which was made during a festive ceremony featuring music and dancers -- "may have had less to do with an engineering feat than with carefully timed political theater," demonstrating its defiance, according to the New York Times. One U.N. official said the news "should be depicted with caveats. If they've enriched for 5 minutes it's one thing, if you have major enrichment it's another." Indeed, while Iran has now apparently enriched uranium to 3.5 percent purity; "for weapons-grade material they need to kick it up to about 80 percent and do so on an industrial-scale, all of which will likely take years."

NATIONAL SECURITY -- ADMINISTRATION MADE SECRET AGREEMENT TO HIDE RECLASSIFICATION EFFORTS: In February, the New York Times revealed that "thousands of declassified documents had been reclassified by executive branch agencies and removed from public access in questionable circumstances." The Federation of American Scientists declared the reclassification "a threat to the integrity of the entire national security classification and declassification program," and warned that the efforts would reduce the National Archives to a "mere repository of officially-sanctioned history." Most recently, the non-profit National Security Archive, located at George Washington University, exposed how the reclassification scheme came about. According to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) obtained through a Freedom of Information request, "The National Archives and Records Administration secretly agreed to a covert effort, led by the Air Force, the CIA, and other still-hidden intelligence entities, to remove open-shelf archival records and reclassify them while disguising the results so that researchers would not complain." As part of the secret agreement, the National Archives "agreed that the existence of the program was to be kept secret as long as possible" and that "the withdrawal sheets indicating the removal of documents would conceal any reference to the program and 'any reason for the withholding of documents.'"

Posted: 11 April 2006

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else.”
     Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
     26th President of the United States
     As quoted from an editorial by him in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

From The Center for American Progress.

IRAN -- RECENT COVERAGE FAILS TO NOTE ADMINISTRATION'S CREATION OF SECRETIVE IRAN GROUP: Remarking on the recent coverage by the Washington Post and the New Yorker on the Bush administration's preparations for a military strike against Iran, Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor at The New Republic, writes that "absent from either account...is any mention of the State Department's ramped-up campaign for regime change in Iran -- a campaign that intensifies by the day." According to Kaplan, the administration has formed what it calls the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), a body headed by Vice President Cheney's daughter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, and whose purpose is to encourage regime change in Iran. The State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs is disgruntled by the Bush team's efforts to run its own Iran shop and skirt the traditional bureaucracy. The administration's pre-Iraq war creations of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) may suggest one possible answer for why the administration feels the need to set up a secretive Iran operating group. OSP was created to cull intelligence to make the strongest possible case for war with Iraq, while WHIG helped market the war based on the selective intelligence the administration collected. Cheney is operating with more than $75 million at her disposal to ostensibly promote democracy in Iran.

Posted: 9 April 2006

George Bush is a dangerous lunatic with messianic delusions. The single most important thing we must do, as citizens, is prevent this lunatic from driving us into WW3, or into a nuclear holocaust, or into an endless religious war. If we cannot change the make-up of Congress this November, we are in deep shit.

Bush 'is planning nuclear strikes on Iran's secret sites' By Philip Sherwell in Washington

Jack Straw: Iran attack would be 'nuts'

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran's nuclear programme.

............

Despite America's public commitment to diplomacy, there is a growing belief in Washington that the only solution to the crisis is regime change. A senior Pentagon consultant said that Mr Bush believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy".

READ THE REST!

Pssst! Who's behind the decline of politics? (consultants)
by Joe Klein

On the evening of april 4, 1968, about an hour after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy responded with a powerfully simple speech, which he delivered spontaneously in a black neighborhood of Indianapolis. Nearly 40 years later, Kennedy's words stand as an example of the substance and music of politics in its grandest form and highest purpose—to heal, to educate, to lead. Sadly, his speech also marked the end of an era: the last moments before American public life was overwhelmed by marketing professionals, consultants and pollsters who, with the flaccid acquiescence of the politicians, have robbed public life of much of its romance and vigor.

Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a dangerous job that night. His audience was unaware of King's assassination. He had no police or Secret Service protection. His aides were worried that the crowd would explode as soon as it learned the news; there were already reports of riots in other cities. His speechwriters Adam Walinsky and Frank Mankiewicz had drafted remarks for the occasion, but Kennedy rejected them. He had scribbled a few notes of his own. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, rather formally, respectfully. "I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news ..." His voice caught, and he turned it into a slight cough, a throat clearing, "and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee."

There were screams, wailing—just the rawest, most visceral sounds of pain that human voices can summon. As the screams died, Kennedy resumed, slowly, pausing frequently, measuring his words: "Martin Luther King ... dedicated his life ... to love ... and to justice between fellow human beings, and he died in the cause of that effort." There was near total silence now. One senses, listening to the tape years later, the audience's trust in the man on the podium, a man who didn't merely feel the crowd's pain but shared it. And Kennedy reciprocated: he laid himself bare for them, speaking of the death of his brother—something he'd never done publicly and rarely privately—and then he said, "My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,'" he paused, his voice quivering slightly as he caressed every word. The silence had deepened, somehow; the moment was stunning. "'Until ... in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

Listen to Kennedy's Indianapolis speech on Time.com and there is a quality of respect for the audience that simply is not present in modern American politics. It isn't merely that he quotes Aeschylus to the destitute and uneducated, although that is remarkable enough. Kennedy's respect for the crowd is not only innate and scrupulous, it is also structural, born of technological innocence: he doesn't know who they are--not scientifically, the way post-modern politicians do. The audience hasn't been sliced and diced by his pollsters, their prejudices and policy priorities cross-tabbed, their favorite words discovered by carefully targeted focus groups. He hasn't been told what not to say to them: Aeschylus would never survive a focus group. Kennedy knows certain things, to be sure: they are poor, they are black, they are aggrieved and quite possibly furious. But he doesn't know too much. He is therefore less constrained than subsequent generations of politicians, freer to share his extravagant humanity with them.

"Television," Walinsky said many years after his Kennedy apprenticeship, "has ruined every single thing it has touched." There was some puckishness to this—he was talking about professional basketball, if I remember correctly—but Walinsky is a serious man and he wasn't really joking. Yes, television has been a wondrous thing. Vast numbers of people now watch presidential debates, State of the Union messages, prime-time press conferences, not to mention terrorist attacks, hurricanes and wars in real time. But television also set off a chain reaction that transformed the very nature of politics. "This is the beginning of a whole new concept," said a very young Roger Ailes as he stage-managed Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. "This is the way they'll be elected forevermore. The next guys up will have to be performers." Television brought other changes as well. Suddenly, politicians were able to use televised advertising to communicate in a more powerful and intimate (and negative) way than ever before—and suddenly politicians had to raise vast sums of money to pay for those ads. Television demanded transparency, and so the rules of politics had to change as well: no more selection of presidential candidates in smoke-filled rooms.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 5 April 2006

Alcohol cloud is 463 billion kilometres long

PARIS (AFP) - Astronomers say they have spotted a cloud of alcohol in deep space that measures 463 billion kilometres (288 billion miles) across, a finding that could shed light on how giant stars are formed from primordial gas.

The vast bridge-shaped cloud of methyl alcohol has been spotted in a region of our galaxy, the Milky Way, that is called W3(OH), where stars are being formed by the gravitational collapse of concentrations of gas and dust, the discoverers said in a press release.

Methanol, an organic (carbon-based) molecule, is a cousin of ethanol, which is found in alcoholic beverages. Methanol is not suitable for human consumption.

The cloud was spotted by astronomers based at Britain's Jodrell Bank Observatory led by Lisa Harvey-Smith. Their work was to be presented on Tuesday at a meeting in Leicester, central England, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

In 2004, methanol, also called methyl alcohol, was spotted for the first time in one of the disk-like clusters that form around nascent stars.

That discovery opened up a new area of debate in astrophysics, challenging the conventional view that interstellar chemistry could not provide the conditions for creating complex molecules, as they would be ripped apart by ultraviolet radiation from stars and other tough conditions.

Around 130 organic molecules have also been identified so far in outer space, fuelling speculation that these complex molecules may have helped to sow the seeds for life on the fledgling Earth.

This is another of my worries about the Bush regime -- their desire to push their religion down the throats of everyone else on the planet and destroy the vital division between church and state.

How the GOP Became God's Own Party
By Kevin Phillips

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.

The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate.

The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 3 April 2006

This from the bastard that was supposed to be a "fiscal conservative". Yeah, right.

George Bush's Trillion-Dollar War
by BOB HERBERT, The New York Times

Call it the trillion-dollar war.

George W. Bush's war in Iraq was never supposed to be particularly expensive. Administration types tossed out numbers like $50 billion and $60 billion. When Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, said the war was likely to cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was fired.

Some in the White House tried to spread the fantasy that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk, told Congress that Iraq was "a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

The president and his hot-for-war associates were as wrong about the money as they were about the weapons of mass destruction.

Now comes a study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, that estimates the "true costs" of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress.

DAILY GRILL
"There's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad. It's not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress towards rebuilding Iraq."
-- Vice President Dick Cheney, 2/26/06, repeating the talking point that the media doesn't report the good news from Iraq

VERSUS

"I think the American media is being made a scapegoat for what’s going on out there. ... It’s hard to dwell on the good things when the bad things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic."
-- Gen. Anthony Zinni (Ret.), 4/2/06

ETHICS -- 'COINGATE' REACHES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Ohioan Thomas Noe gained notoriety in his home state last year for his role in the "Coingate" scandal, charged on 53 counts, including money laundering, theft, forgery, and tampering with records. Noe oversaw Ohio's $50-million rare coin investment, eventually stealing more than $10 million from the fund. Noe raised more than $100,000 in 2003 for the Bush-Cheney campaign and was indicted separately in late 2005 for allegedly laundering $45,400 to the campaign. The Treasury Department's inspector general has now opened an investigation into Noe's "role as a member and chairman of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the Treasury secretary on themes and designs for coins and congressional gold medals." A Toledo Blade report notes that the White House played a key role in establishing Noe as the chairman of the powerful committee. In 2003, President Bush signed legislation that said the chairman of the new committee would be chosen by the treasury secretary, rather than by members of the committee. "I think it was a very directed way of moving a candidate of the administration's choice into the chairmanship by changing the way in which it had been traditionally done and mandating it legislatively," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). While on the commmittee, Noe also used his "post to influence policy and seek access to inside information that could benefit him as a rare-coin dealer."

POVERTY -- AMERICA SHOULD FOLLOW BRITAIN'S LEAD ON CHILD POVERTY: Since 2000, the number of American children living in poverty has risen 12 percent -- to 13 million. By contrast, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has succeeding in reducing child poverty by 17 percent -- approximately 700,000 kids -- over the past five years. Despite the ongoing U.S. economic expansion, the poverty rate for children keeps rising, largely because the benefits of the recovery have flowed so disproportionately to families at the top of the income scale. "But in the United Kingdom, the policy-driven focus on reducing child poverty has helped to ensure that economic growth is reaching those at the bottom of the income scale." Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and Mark Greenberg, the executive director of the American Progress' Task Force on Poverty, argue that the British formula for success has been to boost the incomes of working parents, mainly through subsidies to low-wage earners. They have raised the minimum wage regularly, instituted programs to develop healthy and school-ready children, and launched a government agency that specifically tackles the conditions afflicting poor families. In calling for the institution of targeted goals here in the U.S. to reduce child poverty, the authors write, "The more you learn about [the British] initiative, the more you realize just how far off track we've gotten."

Posted: 2 April 2006

Some interesting science links below, which I ganked from the Kleiner's Korner e-newsletter.

Mouse testes show promise for stem cells
By Rick Weiss, The Washington Post

Scientists in Germany said Friday they had retrieved easily obtained cells from the testes of male mice and transformed them into what appear to be embryonic stem cells, the versatile and medically promising biological building blocks that can morph into all kinds of living tissues.

If similar starter cells exist in the testes of men, as several scientists said Friday they believe is likely, it may not be difficult for scientists to cultivate them in laboratory dishes, grow them into new tissues and transplant those tissues into the ailing organs of men who donated the cells.

The technique would have vast advantages over the current approach to growing "personalized" replacement parts -- an approach that has stirred intense political controversy because it requires the creation and destruction of cloned human embryos as stem cell sources. The new work suggests that every male may already have everything he needs to regenerate new tissues -- at least with a little help from his local cell biologist.

READ THE REST

Science literacy: The Chinese get it
By Len Peters

A lot has been said lately about the danger of America losing its preeminence in science and technology while nations like China and India threaten to surpass us. You see some pretty alarming statistics: The U.S. now imports more high-tech products than it exports. The number of American 18- to 24-year-olds with science degrees has fallen to 17th in the world, plummeting from third three decades ago. Only three American companies ranked among the top 10 recipients of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2003.

My own experiences in China have convinced me how serious that nation is about staking its future on technological superiority. When I visited China eight years ago, it was a Third World nation. But when I returned late last fall, things had changed dramatically. I saw many new, well-equipped laboratories, often staffed by brilliant Chinese nationals who were trained in the U.S. or Europe and then recruited back to China. One highly touted research park near Beijing boasts 22 colleges and universities next door to Chinese branches of Fortune 500 companies.

China is like a highly motivated startup company. They're building the infrastructure to do it all — research, engineering and product development — and they're doing it fast. It's very exciting to see their entrepreneurial spirit.

We can't lower our wages to compete with those of China and other developing countries. Nor can we, or should we, shut off the worldwide innovation pipeline; we need everyone's brainpower. So how can we compete?

READ THE REST.

When the blues keep you awake
Blue light can reset your biological rhythms
By William J. Cromie, Harvard News Office

Your eyes do more than see.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School demonstrated this by showing that your eyes are part of a light reception system that can keep you alert when sleep starts to fog your brain. When the researchers exposed people to blue light at night, this system immediately increased their alertness and performance on tests.

"These findings add to a growing body of evidence that a novel light reception system exists in the human eye in addition to sight," says Steven Lockley, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Men and women exposed to blue light sustained a high level of alertness during the night when people feel most sleepy. These results suggest that light may be a powerful countermeasure for the negative effects of fatigue for people who work or study at night."

It's well known that white light can do the same. Long-distance travelers and shift workers sit in front of commercial light boxes that shift their natural clocks with glaring white light, hyping their attention to daylight levels. Apparently, blue light can do this more effectively.

READ THE REST.

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