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 Dec. 2006

A prime example of massive stupidity.

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

READ THE REST.

Posted: 26 Dec. 2006

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas.
Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

READ THE REST

Posted: 23 Dec. 2006

Hillary's New Strategy: The Mom President

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

December 21, 2006 -- "We’ve never had a mother who ever ran or was elected president…"

That was Hillary Clinton speaking earlier this week, when she appeared on the television show The View. Don’t think for a minute that she was just making an interesting historical observation. No, Hillary doesn’t work that way. She never says or does anything that hasn’t been perfectly scripted and endlessly polled beforehand. She had a message, a new strategy to try out. So look for the new "Mom Strategy" to be the anchor of her presidential run.

Forget Soccer Moms and Security Moms; now it’s going to be all Moms all the time — with Hillary as the biggest Mom of all.

The "Mom Strategy" is key to presenting the latest iteration of Hillary. She needs to move out of the center space that she populated in her last reincarnation as a moderate. That’s over. Because democratic primary voters are squarely at odds with her positions on the war in Iraq, she needs to move on. The "Mom Strategy" gives her a credible way to tack to the left on the war. She’s already begun. Last week, she told an NPR audience that she would have voted against the war if only she had known then what she knows now. Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

In furtherance of the new Mom strategy, she has re-released her best-selling book It Takes A Village. This time, she is pictured surrounded by adoring, well-groomed and respectful children on the cover. Just like Mom. This is no coincidence; it’s an element of the strategy. The subliminal message: I’m a Mom and I’m running for president. Moms take care of people, they’re compassionate and don’t want wars. The fact that the book isn’t selling well in its re-release — Amazon ranks it at 5,000 — doesn’t matter. It’s the cover photo that resonates.

Hillary the Hawk may ultimately be the way to win the centrists who dominate the general electorate. But Hillary, the Mom, another Mother for Peace, is the way to capture the left that runs the Democratic primaries. And that’s exactly what she’s doing.

Gender stereotypes are still alive and well in America and cut across men and women in all ideologies. Survey research shows that all voters believe that women are more compassionate, more focused on children and education, and more pro-peace than men. By tapping into this helpful stereotype, Hillary can flank her rivals on the left, even though her record of support for the war and collusion with the right wing on flag burning speaks loudly to the contrary.

Mom as a metaphor carries all the right messages: empathy with other mothers (particularly the heavily Democratic single moms), a commitment to education, and family values.

Now that Illinois Senator Barak Obama has threatened to bring a newer "first" to presidential politics — the first black may trump the first woman — Hillary answers by labeling herself as the first mother to seek the presidency.

(Actually, she’s not. While Elizabeth Dole — who ran in 2000 — has no children, another woman, who had two children, ran for president in 1872. Victoria Woodhull, an early suffragette — and mistress of Cornelius Vanderbilt — ran as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party).

Hillary’s new strategy echoes the 1996 Bill Clinton strategy in pushing a "fatherhood" agenda. Embracing the idea of taking responsibility, enforcing child support, promoting school uniforms and curfews, and fighting against teen smoking and sex and violence on TV, President Clinton promoted the idea of his fatherhood in his bid for re-election. He began his political career as Arkansas’ boy Governor. When he ran for president, he was everyone’s buddy — eating at McDonalds and jogging in baggy shorts — but as president he needed to grow up and project the subtle image of America’s father. In carefully choreographed photos, he was deliberately surrounded by adoring children looking up at him as he pushed his new message.

Now Hillary is seeking to run for president as America’s Mom — pro-peace, pro-family, pro-children. And it started last week on The View. Stay tuned.

Let's get down to the root of the problem: Freedom of Access to Elections Information
Permission to excerpt or reprint granted with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

MUCH OF WHAT WE WANT IN ELECTION REFORM can be achieved once we have agreement on the civil rights issues. Yes, we need paper ballots, but that does no good unless we also have a right to information.

ELECTION REFORM LEGISLATION MUST DEAL WITH THE PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW

The American constitutional form of representative government is based upon the principle that government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.

Elections are the mechanism through which the citizenry conveys its instructions to the government, and therefore, elections must provide full freedom of access to information to all citizens, which includes access to the information needed to validate and audit the election.

Without this, it is only a matter of time before our system of government crumbles.

THE GOOD NEWS

We can base real electoral reform on a body of law that's already in place: Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA). Elections are a special circumstance, and current FOIA laws don't quite work the way they are currently structured, but with tweaks specifying the kinds of Freedom of Information rights we need for elections, WE might just work wonders to make everybody happy.

FIVE PROBLEMS WITH FREEDOM TO ELECTIONS INFORMATION

FOIA has enormous potential for correcting many of the problems we're seeing, but not until it's adapted for elections. For any election system to work properly:

1) The information to enable citizens to oversee all aspects of the election must actually be produced. With the move to computerized voting, some aspects of the right to observe and the right to examine information have been removed from public access. We need to get those back.

Currently, even when elections information is produced it may be deleted or kept out of print. For example, according to responses to Black Box Voting public records requests issued in New England, elections contractor LHS Associates tends to do business verbally. According to elections officials in Vermont, even purchase orders are often not put in print! In addition, we are finding evidence that elections vendors don't always itemize their invoices.

What we get is that "something" was done to or for the computerized voting system, but there is no document the public can examine to learn exactly what's going on, or even what their tax dollars are paying for.

SOLUTION: One of the things we need to get to work on is identifying what information MUST be produced (in written form) by whatever voting system is used. We're also going to have to mandate sensible retention policies for election-related e-mails and correspondence, because some public officials are telling us they throw away their e-mail correspondence immediately, including communications records with vendors and directives from the state.

2) Information is not provided to citizens timely. Freedom of Information laws are not designed with elections in mind. Almost always, you can't get the records until weeks after the election is certified. By then, it's too late.

And this is getting worse. When Black Box Voting obtained some early precinct results from Georgia counties, we were astonished to find that candidates had been unable to get hold of their own results! While they could get their totals, the precinct detail results were simply not available. Candidates were contacting Black Box Voting just to get their own elections results, because precinct results were not released until certification of the election was imminent.

3) The costs for elections-related records are prohibitive in many states. We love Ohio and North Carolina for their willingness to part with public records at a reasonable price, but in Texas it can cost you $500 just to get a precinct-level report of the results for a single county, and Michigan once tried to charge us $1,600 just to look for a single letter, with no guarantee of finding it, and a requirement for a non-refundable prepayment. South Dakota doesn't really have to give you any records; one South Carolina county insists that you have to travel there if you want to see elections records. And San Diego, Calif. wants to charge over half a million dollars for citizens to audit the paper ballots.

Assuming the right of Freedom of Access to Elections information can be established more uniformly, many of the cost issues can be remedied by requiring elections information formats with fast turnaround time, cost effectiveness and usability in mind.

4) The claim of proprietary trade secrets gets in the way of access to critical information. Some of this is solvable with open source, but not all. Black Box Voting has obtained a letter from the lawyer for Election Systems & Software claiming trade secrets on its customer list -- mind you, their customers are the PUBLIC counties and municipalities that use their voting system. ES&S also claims trade secrets on costs and contracts, for equipment and services purchased with taxpayer money!

READ THE REST at http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Posted: 22 Dec. 2006

Automated Targeting System

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/automated_targe.html

If you've traveled abroad recently, you've been investigated. You've been assigned a score indicating what kind of terrorist threat you pose. That score is used by the government to determine the treatment you receive when you return to the U.S. and for other purposes as well.

Curious about your score? You can't see it. Interested in what information was used? You can't know that. Want to clear your name if you've been wrongly categorized? You can't challenge it. Want to know what kind of rules the computer is using to judge you? That's secret, too. So is when and how the score will be used.

U.S. customs agencies have been quietly operating this system for several years. Called Automated Targeting System, it assigns a "risk assessment" score to people entering or leaving the country, or engaging in import or export activity. This score, and the information used to derive it, can be shared with federal, state, local and even foreign governments. It can be used if you apply for a government job, grant, license, contract or other benefit. It can be shared with nongovernmental organizations and individuals in the course of an investigation. In some circumstances private contractors can get it, even those outside the country. And it will be saved for 40 years.

Little is known about this program. Its bare outlines were disclosed in the Federal Register in October. We do know that the score is partially based on details of your flight record--where you're from, how you bought your ticket, where you're sitting, any special meal requests--or on motor vehicle records, as well as on information from crime, watch-list and other databases.

Civil liberties groups have called the program Kafkaesque. But I have an even bigger problem with it. It's a waste of money.

The idea of feeding a limited set of characteristics into a computer, which then somehow divines a person's terrorist leanings, is farcical. Uncovering terrorist plots requires intelligence and investigation, not large-scale processing of everyone.

Additionally, any system like this will generate so many false alarms as to be completely unusable. In 2005 Customs & Border Protection processed 431 million people. Assuming an unrealistic model that identifies terrorists (and innocents) with 99.9% accuracy, that's still 431,000 false alarms annually.

The number of false alarms will be much higher than that. The no-fly list is filled with inaccuracies; we've all read about innocent people named David Nelson who can't fly without hours-long harassment. Airline data, too, are riddled with errors.

The odds of this program's being implemented securely, with adequate privacy protections, are not good. Last year I participated in a government working group to assess the security and privacy of a similar program developed by the Transportation Security Administration, called Secure Flight. After five years and $100 million spent, the program still can't achieve the simple task of matching airline passengers against terrorist watch lists.

In 2002 we learned about yet another program, called Total Information Awareness, for which the government would collect information on every American and assign him or her a terrorist risk score. Congress found the idea so abhorrent that it halted funding for the program. Two years ago, and again this year, Secure Flight was also banned by Congress until it could pass a series of tests for accuracy and privacy protection.

In fact, the Automated Targeting System is arguably illegal, as well (a point several congressmen made recently); all recent Department of Homeland Security appropriations bills specifically prohibit the department from using profiling systems against persons not on a watch list.

There is something un-American about a government program that uses secret criteria to collect dossiers on innocent people and shares that information with various agencies, all without any oversight. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from the former Soviet Union or East Germany or China. And it doesn't make us any safer from terrorism.

Posted: 21 Dec. 2006

How do you spell hypocrisy? B-U-S-H.
From The Center for American Progress.

FLASHBACK: Bush Said Kerry Proposal to Increase Size of Military Would Make The Country ‘Less Safe’

Yesterday, President Bush announced his intention to increase the "overall size" of the Army, acknowledging that the current forces were "stressed." The Washington Post reports he’s considering an increase of 50,000-70,000 troops.

On June 3, 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) — campaigning for the presidency — proposed expanding the Army by 40,000 troops. Bush quickly slammed the proposal as unnecessary and counter-productive:

Bush’s campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld already has authorized 30,000 more troops through extended tours and new recruitment. He said the country would be "less safe" under Kerry’s approach.


ADMINISTRATION -- BUSH SIGNING STATEMENT RESERVES RIGHT TO IGNORE CONGRESS ON INDIA NUCLEAR DEAL: Last week, President Bush issued a signing statement in connection with legislation "permitting U.S. sales of nuclear fuel and reactors to India for the first time in 30 years." In the statement, Bush says his signature "does not constitute my adoption of the statements of policy (in the law) as U.S. foreign policy." He also says he will "consider how releasing data requested by lawmakers might 'impair foreign relations.'" Congress stipulated in the law that presidents "should report annually on India's cooperation in restraining Iran's nuclear program, which Bush has condemned as a major international threat." Bush also says in the statement that he considered as advisory the "congressional directive prohibiting nuclear transfers to India that conflict with guidelines of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group." (The United States helped establish the NSG "years ago to restrain nuclear trade.") Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), co-chair of the House task force on non-proliferation, said Bush is "reserving the right to ignore the Nuclear Suppliers Group," "turning decades of U.S. international policy on its head," and "thumbing his nose at Congress at the same time." Bush's move is a continuation of what the Congressional Research Service called the administration's use of signing statements "as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House's broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws." The American Bar Association has condemned the practice, calling it "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." Since taking office, Bush has issued more than 750 signing statements, a record for any administration.

It makes me sick to think of all the good we could be doing with this money.

"The Pentagon wants the White House to seek an additional $99.7 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," the Associated Press reports. "The military's request, if embraced by President Bush and approved by Congress, would boost this year's budget for those wars to about $170 billion." "Overall, the war in Iraq has cost about $350 billion."

Posted: 20 Dec. 2006

From The Center for American Progress.

RELIGION -- CONGRESSMAN SENDS VIRULENT ANTI-MUSLIM LETTER TO CONSTITUENTS: Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) issued a letter to constituents earlier this month in which he declares, "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States" if we do not adopt "strict immigration policies." The letter was inadvertently sent to a local progressive activist, who shared it with the C-Ville Weekly newspaper. In the letter, Goode references the election of Muslim Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), and warns "American citizens" to "wake up" or "there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office": "I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran." At another point in the letter, Goode describes telling a "Muslim student" who "came by my office" that the Koran will never be hung on his office wall. "The Ten Commandments and 'In God We Trust' are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, 'As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office.'" Goode's bigoted views are no secret, and he uses them to justify more than his hardline immigration policy. Earlier this year, he announced that he opposed increasing the minimum wage because it would "be a magnet for illegal aliens to come to this country. We do not need a strong magnet to lure illegals here."

CIVIL RIGHTS -- POLL OF SOLDIERS SHOWS 'DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL' NOT WORKING: A new poll of U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan shows that "nearly one in four U.S. troops (23 percent) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59 percent said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual." Under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban, service members are not allowed to publicly acknowledge that they are gay, but more than half (55 percent) of the troops who know a gay peer "said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others." The data also indicate that military attitudes about homosexuality have shifted. Nearly three in four troops surveyed (73 percent) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians, while 15 percent say they are "somewhat" uncomfortable and 5 percent are "very" uncomfortable. More than 11,000 U.S. military personnel have been discharged since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" became law in 1993, including 742 personnel discharged last year, roughly two per day. A study released this year by the Michael D. Palm Center determined the cost to taxpayers from implementing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was at least $364 million. "The real issue here is that you have a policy that is costing us money, hurting readiness and is really not fulfilling any national security objective," American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, an honorary board member of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "It just doesn't make sense now, particularly when you're having such a hard time getting people to join the military and retaining them in the right skills."

Posted: 19 Dec. 2006

From Grist on-line.

Chinese white dolphin is likely extinct

The baiji, a white dolphin found only in China's Yangtze River, appears to have gone extinct. Lipotes vexillifer has been swimming China's longest river for some 20 million years, but in the end it was no match for China's surging economy. In the last few decades, the Yangtze's shallows have been dredged for shipping, many of its fish have been caught or driven away, and noise pollution has increased, perhaps disrupting the sonar of the nearly blind cetacean. In 1986, 400 baiji still swam the river; in 1997, a survey found 13; a 38-day search concluding last week came up empty-handed. An animal must go unseen for 50 years to be formally declared extinct by international scientific bodies, and Chinese scientists will continue searching, but most foreign experts agree with expedition co-leader August Pfluger that the dolphin is "functionally extinct." The baiji thus receives the dubious posthumous award for being the first large aquatic mammal to be killed off by human activity.


Scientists discover 52 new species on the island of Borneo

Over the last 17 months, scientists have identified 52 new plant and animal species in the rainforests of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island, the World Wildlife Fund announced yesterday. The finds include 30 unique species of fish, two tree-frog species, three new trees, a plant that grows only a single large leaf, 16 types of ginger, and a partridge in a pear tree. The world's second-smallest vertebrate -- a fish 0.35 inches long -- was discovered, as well as a catfish with an adhesive belly and protruding teeth. (Alas, the legendary Wild Man remains elusive.) No wonder Charles Dickens described Borneo as a "great wild untidy luxuriant hothouse made by Nature for herself." As always, the diverse habitat is threatened by human activity; only half of Borneo's original forest cover remains, thanks to deforestation for rubber, palm oil, and paper pulp production. And we had been so optimistic there for a moment.


EPA relaxes industry pollution-reporting rules

In a holiday gift to industry, the U.S. EPA has relaxed rules on reporting toxic pollution. Under rule amendments approved yesterday, industrial plants will not have to file detailed public Toxic Release Inventory reports unless they spew 2,000 pounds of pollution or more, four times the previous limit, and they'll face looser requirements for reporting on their most toxic emissions, including lead, mercury, and dioxin. "[This] rule makes a good program better," said EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock, with a straight face. EPA officials had considered upping the baseline to 5,000 pounds, and were originally going to let companies report every two years instead of annually, but backed off those changes after intense criticism. A mere 0.03 percent of 122,420 comments submitted to the EPA about the rule changes were in favor of them, according to advocacy group OMB Watch. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who plans to introduce legislation to disallow the rule changes, said, "The administration's proposed changes are nothing more than a giveaway to corporate polluters at the cost of everyday Americans' health." But what's new?

Posted: 17 Dec. 2006

BUSH'S REIGN 'GRAVE, DETERIORATING'
By Bill Gallagher

"Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes." -- Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev.

DETROIT -- Good Luck. Even his daddy's buddies and a bipartisan panel can't get him to listen. It's not the message; it's his closed ears. President George W. Bush will never admit Iraq is disintegrating and his policies were doomed from the outset.

The body language screamed out as the Baker-Hamilton group leaders made their formal presentation to Bush. He gave his cavalier assurance that he deemed the report "interesting" and "worthy of study." So much so that he claims he actually read it. Methinks he's fibbing. I'm reading it now.

If the White House reporting wimps have any nerve they'll quiz him at his next availability about recommendation 72, starting on Page 91, that states, "Costs of the war should be included in the President's annual budget request, starting with FY 2008: the war is in its fourth year, and the normal budget process should not be circumvented. Funding requests for the war in Iraq should be presented clearly to Congress and the American people. Congress must carry out its constitutional responsibility to review budget for the war in Iraq carefully and to conduct oversight."

Bush will never come clean with the costs of his war, and the idea that he would bring Congress in to discuss his unbridled spending and welcome a review of the Pentagon's no-bid contracts with Halliburton is unthinkable. War, in the Bush-Cheney perverted view, is the exclusive domain of the unitary executive. They consider congressional oversight a quaint concept best left in civics textbooks.

Bush will take the Iraq Study Group Report, grab a couple of insignificant shards from it, feature his "military assessments" (read: what he wants to hear and what Gen. Peter Pace, the sycophant chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will dutifully provide), toss in a bunch of bromides, and then have a prime-time pre-Christmas address to the nation where he'll sell his massaged policy as the path for "victory" in Iraq.

READ THE REST.

Gee, why am I not surprised? From The Center for American Progress.

INTELLIGENCE -- WHITE HOUSE CENSORS OP-ED CRITICAL OF ADMINISTRATION'S IRAN POLICY: Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed last week that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration's refusal to engage Iran. (For more, see Leverett's new policy brief, "Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran.") The CIA had confirmed that the op-ed contained no classified information, but the White House intervened. Leverett explained, "I've been doing this for three and a half years since leaving government, and I've never had to go to the White House to get clearance for something that I was publishing as long as the CIA said, 'Yeah, you're not putting classified information.'" According to Leverett, the op-ed was "all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It's been extensively reported in the media." Leverett believes the White House is trying to "silence an established critic of the administration's foreign policy incompetence," and says the incident shows "just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration's policy." "Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term," Leverett said in a statement.

Posted: 13 Dec. 2006

From The Center for American Progress.

TECHNOLOGY -- McCAIN PROPOSES CRACKING DOWN ON BLOGS: New legislation by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would require commercial websites and personal blogs to "report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000." While Internet service providers already have to follow these requirements, McCain's proposal would impose the "same regulatory scheme -- and even stiffer penalties -- on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites." Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation is "concerned that there is a slippery slope here," noting, "Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?" Additionally, social networking sites will be forced to take "effective measures" to remove any website that is "associated" with a sex offender. Such sites will include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries. "This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts," said Bankston. "Studies by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children show the online sexual solicitation of minors has dropped in the past five years, despite the growth of social-networking services, he said."

Posted: 12 Dec. 2006

This is good news.

Huge Victory for Real People as Telco Bill Dies

The gavel has fallen on the 109th Congress marking the demise of entrenched corporate efforts to legislate away our Internet freedoms — and a stunning victory for real people who want to retain control of the Internet.

The fate of Net Neutrality has now been passed to what appears to be a more Web-friendly Congress.

Our Coalition pledges to work with new Members to craft policies that ensure all Americans can access the Internet and enjoy the unlimited choices it has to offer.

The end of this Congress — and death of Sen. Ted Stevens’ bad bill — gives us the chance to have a long overdue public conversation about what the future of the Internet should look like. This will not only include ensuring Net Neutrality, but making the Internet faster, more affordable and accessible.

‘Huge Victory for Real People’

As the 109th comes to a close, Coalition members today praised our efforts in 2006 and discussed ways we can work towards a better Internet:

"This is a huge victory for real people and a clear signal to the next Congress that standing up for big bold ideas is a winning political proposition," said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action.

Companies like AT"T, Verizon, BellSouth and Comcast spent more than $150 million to push Congress to gut Net Neutrality. But in the end, they couldn’t overcome widespread public opposition.

"The people’s attention to the issue of Net Neutrality is more powerful than any legislation — and this year proves that," said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School and author of Who Controls the Internet.

‘It’s About Fairness’

Network Neutrality has been part of the Internet since its inception, ensuring that the service providers who control the "pipes" don’t interfere with content based on its ownership or source. "Net neutrality is just about fairness and a level playing field," said Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist. "It’s that simple."

"Industry will be back with their money and phony grassroots groups," said Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst at Consumers Union. "But next time around, with a public now well-informed of what’s at stake, we hope Congress will take up broadband policy that advances consumer — not just industry — needs."

The more than 850 groups in the SavetheInternet.com Coalition also include the National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, Educause, Gun Owners of America, Future of Music Coalition, Parents Television Council, the ACLU, and every major consumer group in the country. These are supported by a community of more than a million small businesspeople, bloggers, MySpacers, YouTubers, activists and citizens who signed petitions, called Congress and pounded on their senators’ doors.

"As an activist and new media advocate, I am encouraged by our prospects in Congress for protecting the egalitarian spirit of the Internet and all people’s unfettered access to it," said Christopher Rabb, founder of Afro-Netizen. "This fight has even greater impact on underserved communities, particularly among African-Americans, who rarely own or control the content we consume in mainstream media."

‘The Fight for Net Neutrality Has Only Begun’

While the defeat of HR 5252 is a major step forward, the future of the Internet remains in jeopardy until Congress passes meaningful, enforceable protections for Net Neutrality. Such legislation will be a top priority for members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition when the legislators return in January.

"Despite a Congress deeply in the pocket of telecom lobbyists, the public banded together to stop attacks on our free and open Internet," declared Michael Kieschnick, president of the Working Assets. "In 2007, we will continue the fight to preserve this precious public good by making Network Neutrality the law of the land."

"The potent combination of grassroots support and the facts stopped a bad bill," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "But the fight for Net Neutrality has only begun."

savetheinternet.com

From The Center for American Progress.

Counting Every Vote

More than 18,000 people in Sarasota, FL (District 13), lost their votes in the recent midterm elections. Congressional candidate Vern Buchanan, whom the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission (FECC) declared the winner by just 369 votes, has dismissed the missing ballots, arguing that we should emphasize "the 238,000 people that did vote in this race." But thousands of disenfranchised Americans, whose votes were likely lost due to malfunctioning electronic voting machines, should not be brushed aside. "Sarasota voters have been victimized by not having their vote count," said Democrat Christine Jennings, who lost to Buchanan. Fox News host Sean Hannity accused Jennings and the watchdog groups that have challenged the results of wanting "the court to declare that the Democrat won." Buchanan said Jennings is "destroying democracy." But this case is not a partisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans lost their votes in the midterm elections. Jennings is calling for a new election, to ensure that all Sarasota votes are counted. The Florida election was, unfortunately, just one example of problems nationwide with electronic voting machines that have no verifiable paper trail. Ask Congress to call for a re-vote in Florida and support the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which would "require electronic voting machines to produce a paper record, and compel election officials to conduct periodic audits of the machines."

VANISHING VOTES: The electronic voting machines in Sarasota did not register a vote in the Jennings-Buchanan race for 13 percent of the voters. Since the machines were not required to provide a paper trail, there is no way to recover the vanished votes. Nevertheless, the FECC, made up of Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and two other elected officials, declared Buchanan the winner. While several reports have pointed to poor ballot design as a possible reason for the missing votes, there is little doubt that malfunctioning electronic voting machines with no verifiable paper trails were also responsible. According to a Herald-Tribune survey of voters who had trouble casting ballots on the ES&S iVotronic machines, 36 percent were unable to find the congressional race on their screens and 62 percent said "their votes for either candidate did not initially register on the ballot summary page." (See voter testimonials compiled by People for the American Way [PFAW] here.)

'THIS ISN'T PEPSI-COLA': There is no way to reliably reconstruct what happened in the midterm elections without examining the iVotronic equipment. A circuit judge will hold a hearing Dec. 19 to determine whether ES"S "will have to let others examine the 'source code' computer software for possible glitches." But ES"S is selfishly guarding its equipment, arguing that the source codes "contain trade secrets." But as Kendall Coffey, an attorney for Jennings, notes, "This isn't Pepsi-Cola trying to get ahold of Coca Cola's trade secrets. This is a candidate and a public and a nation that wants to know what went wrong. ... The right to vote is as precious as any trade secret." Jennings, in addition to watchdog groups PFAW, Voter Action, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have filed suits challenging the election results. Jennings also has until Dec. 20 to file a request with the House Administration Committee to investigate the race.

GLITCHES NATIONWIDE: FL-13 wasn't the only district with voting problems in this year's midterm elections. The non-profit watchdog organization Common Cause received "five times as many complaints about mechanical problems with voting machines to their voter hot-line number in this election as in 2004." Programming errors and inexperience with electronic voting machines delayed voters in Indiana and Ohio, "leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead." Almost 40 percent of U.S. voters now cast ballots on electronic voting machines. Use of these voting machines is on the rise, thanks in large part "to $3.8 billion in federal subsidies from the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was supposed to help ensure the integrity of elections by upgrading voting technology." But as John Bonifaz of the National Voting Rights Institute notes, "Now, we're faced with this predicament: Millions of federal dollars have been spent on a product that appears to be seriously flawed."

REFORM PROMISED BY INCOMING CONGRESS: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), one of the "government's premier research centers," recently issued a report concluding that paperless electronic voting machines "cannot be made secure." The Election Assistance Commission, set up to improve elections after 2000 presidential controversy, reviewed NIST's report and "affirmed the need for paper trails or other independent verification going forward," but unfortunately "recommended giving a pass to localities already using flawed machines." Twenty-eight states currently "have laws that require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail, or voters to cast ballots on paper ballots, which are typically counted by optical scanning machines. And 13 states mandate periodic audits of the machines." Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), has promised to revive his legislation -- which has stalled for two years -- to require paper trails, periodic audits, and public source codes for all electronic voting machines. In 2003, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT), along with a large group of Republicans and Democrats, agreed to cosponsor Holt's bill. According to the New York Times, the Holt bill already has bipartisan support of a majority in the new Congress, and incoming chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has said she plans to introduce a similar bill in January.


CIVIL LIBERTIES -- RELIGIOUS FREEDOM GROUP ASKS PENTAGON TO INVESTIGATE PROSELYTIZATION IN PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that supports religious freedom in the military, asked the Pentagon to investigate a promotional video featuring active-duty military officers praising an evangelical Christian group. The 10-minute video produced by the Christian Embassy features military officers speaking on the group's behalf while in uniform. Much of it was recorded inside the Pentagon. "I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate," Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. "And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I'm an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am." Service regulations, in general, prohibit active-duty officers from lobbying for political causes while on duty or wearing uniforms. The Freedom Foundation says a core of evangelicals are gaining influence at the Pentagon, and violating military policies. In addition to the video, it cites Wednesday-morning prayer sessions in the Pentagon's executive dining room, which features speakers from the Christian Embassy. The Pentagon said it needs more time to determine whether the latest incident warrants an investigation. "The Department of Defense does not endorse any particular religious faith, but we do provide servicemembers with the ability to practice their religion," said Pentagon spokesman Maj. Stewart Upton.


IRAQ -- FORMER BUSH OFFICIAL SAYS ADMINISTRATION IS REFUSING IRAQI REFUGEES TO AVOID ACKNOWLEDGING FAILURE: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled their homeland "are likely to seek refugee status in the United States," humanitarian groups say, "putting intense pressure on the Bush administration to reexamine a policy that authorizes only 500 Iraqis to be resettled here next year." Iraq is "quickly becoming the largest" refugee crisis in the world and could "soon overtake the refugee crisis in Darfur," according to a report released last week by Refugees International. "Last month, the UN estimated that 100,000 people were fleeing the country each month, with the number of Iraqis now living in other Arab countries standing at 1.8 million." Official U.S. policy has been that "the refugee situation is temporary and that most of the estimated 1.5 million who have fled to Jordan, Syria, and elsewhere will eventually return to Iraq," the Boston Globe reports. "But US and international officials now acknowledge that the instability in Iraq has made it too dangerous for many refugees, especially Iraqi Christians, to return any time soon." Arthur Dewey, who was President Bush's assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs until last year, said that "for political reasons the administration will discourage" the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States "because of the psychological message it would send, that it is a losing cause." But he says, "I think there will increasingly be a moral obligation on the part of the United States" to allow resettlement by Iraqis here. "That is the price for intervention. Similar to Vietnam, that obligation is just going to have to be fulfilled."

Posted: 11 Dec. 2006

From Grist on-line.

As climate report downplays human impact, scientists struggle to speak freely

The U.N.'s new climate report will apparently lower the estimate of human impact on global warming by 25 percent. Skeptics may salivate, but as a top U.K. scientist says, "The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse-gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future." Hate it when scientists say stuff like that? Try muzzling! U.S. investigators continue to unearth claims of Bush administration censorship of climate researchers. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior scientist Pieter Tans says his supervisor told him not to utter the word "Kyoto" and barred him from using the phrase "climate change" in lecture titles at a carbon dioxide conference. While the boss equivocates, Tans remains unmoved by the fear of being demoted to chief swab licker. "Whatever the consequences are, I will tell [investigators] what my experiences have been," he says. "Whether anyone likes it or not, I don't care."


Utah basketball arena renamed for nuclear-waste corporation

Here in Seattle, home of Qwest and Safeco fields, we know well how corporations have rushed the pro-sports playing field. But our McMonikers are nothing next to Utah's latest rechristening: The Salt Lake City stadium that's home to the Utah Jazz, formerly the Delta Center, is now known as EnergySolutions Arena. Sounds all green and forward-looking, doesn't it? But locals aren't stoked about the company's best-known business operation, a nuclear-waste facility in the Utah desert. Indignant fans are hollering nicknames like HazzMat Center, Half-Life Arena, Radium Stadium, and the Tox Box (there go all our headlines) and asking for a do-over. "Utah's always been the 'stick-it' state: whatever you don't want in your state, stick it here," said Jazz fan Tom Kessler. "We're not tree-huggers, but these guys lend credence to bringing all this stuff to Utah. It's bogus." The company and its supporters counter that, far from bogus, nuclear reprocessing is the future. Refs are reviewing the play.

From The Center for American Progress.

CIVIL RIGHTS - ROMNEY SHIFTS STANCE ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE TO PANDER TO ANTI-GAY RIGHT: Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has fashioned himself into a pro-traditional marriage conservative, fighting for a same-sex marriage ban in his state. On Aug. 26, 2005, Romney told MSNBC host Chris Matthews, "I don't want civil unions or gay marriage." But in a 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, Romney promised to be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), stating, "We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern." Additionally, in a 1994 Bay Windows interview, Romney said, "I think the gay community needs more support from the Republican party and I would be a voice in the Republican party to foster anti-discrimination efforts." "This is quite disturbing," said Tony Perkins, president of the right-wing Family Research Council. "He is going to have a hard time overcoming this." As the New York Times notes, in the past few years, Romney has rarely spoken "about the need to protect gay men and lesbians from bias, instead presenting himself as a conservative stalwart in the fight against same-sex marriage, arguing that legally recognizing same-sex unions endangers the cultural support for heterosexual families."

christymarx.com | site map | Christy Marx: Writing Credits