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 June 2006

I keep reading about the growing inequality of income and the decline of the middle class, yet no one in government shows concern about dealing with it. Could it be that the Bushies prefer a poor and disadvantaged populace? That makes it easier for the rich to stay in control.

U.S. Losing Its Middle-Class Neighborhoods

Widening income inequality in the United States has been well documented in recent years, but the Brookings analysis of census data uncovered a much more accelerated decline in communities that house the middle class. It far outpaced the decline of seven percentage points between 1970 and 2000 in the proportion of middle-income families living in and around cities.

Middle-income neighborhoods -- where families earn 80 to 120 percent of the local median income -- have plunged by more than 20 percent as a share of all neighborhoods in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. They are down 10 percent in the Washington area.

It's happening, too, in this prosperous, mostly white middle-income Midwestern city where unemployment is low and a vibrant downtown has been preserved. As poor and rich neighborhoods proliferate, the share of middle-income neighborhoods in greater Indianapolis has dropped by 21 percent since 1970.

"No city in America has gotten more integrated by income in the last 30 years," said Alan Berube, an urban demographer at Brookings who worked on the report.

"It means that if you are not living in one of the well-off areas, you are not going to have access to the same amenities -- good schools and safe environment -- that you could find 30 years ago," he said.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

From The Center for American Progress.

HEALTH CARE -- NEW MEDICAID RULES A 'THREAT TO MILLIONS': Starting tomorrow, 50 million low-income Americans will need to prove their citizenship or "lose their medical benefits or long-term care." The new Medicaid rules will require recipients to provide a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship. But several million Americans -- including Katrina evacuees, "mentally ill, mentally retarded and homeless people, as well as elderly men and women, especially African Americans" -- may be unable to provide the necessary documents. Many African-Americans did not receive birth certificates because they were denied access to maternity wards during segregation days. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, nine percent of African-American adults lack a passport or birth certificate, compared with just 5.7 percent of adults nationwide. Another study estimates that "one-fifth of African-Americans born in the 1939-40 period [lack] a birth certificate" and "[o]btaining required documents may be difficult and costly for low-income citizens," notes the Kaiser Family Foundation. Low-income citizens, backed by antipoverty groups, have filed a class-action suit challenging the new rules.


The Constitution Still Reigns

In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the special military tribunals created by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists are illegal. Specifically, the court found that the tribunals "were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949." The immediate impact of the decision will be to end the "jury-rigged" "ad hoc" trials of Salim Ahmed Hamdan and the nine other Guantanamo detainees who have been charged, and preclude such trials for other detainees. Yet the ruling -- "a definitional moment in the ever-shifting balance of power among the branches of government" -- will have other complex and far-reaching implications. Broadly viewed, Hamdan was a "democracy-forcing" decision, reining in the Bush administration's expansive and unconstitutional interpretation of executive power and reasserting the role of Congress in fashioning national security policy. "The Founders have not been disproved," one commentator observed. "This constitutional system works, even in wartime, and even under an administration with demonstrable contempt for the rule of law."

HOW WE GOT HERE: After Sept. 11, the Bush administration declared its intent to try suspected terrorists by reviving "a form of military trial not used since the World War II era." Rather than structuring the military tribunals on the general court-martial -- a "proven method" by which the military "conducts trials every day" -- the administration "sought to design a new system from scratch." The result was a disaster. Defendants could "be excluded from the proceedings and convicted based on evidence kept secret from them and their lawyers," while prosecutors were able to "rely on hearsay, coerced testimony and unsworn statements." The tribunal system's rules "shifted constantly," a "legal cloud...hung over its entire process," and "ironically, it...moved at a glacier's pace, having successfully tried not a single person to date -- thereby defeating its entire purpose." Hamdan was the first legal challenge to this system.

EXPANSIVE INTERPRETATION OF 9/11 FORCE AUTHORIZATION REBUKED: The Supreme Court ruling in Rumsfeld v. Hamdi, issued two years ago Wednesday, declared that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President." The Bush administration nevertheless continued to argue that by passing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the days after Sept. 11, Congress had given expansive approval to any number of controversial policies, implied as part of a broad authorization to "use all necessary and appropriate force." In Hamdan, the Bush administration argued that Congress had implicitly authorized the special Guantanamo tribunals when it approved the AUMF. The Court disagreed. Even if one assumes that "the AUMF activated the President's war powers," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "there is nothing in the text or legislative history of the AUMF even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter" the laws already governing the treatment of military detainees. This limited reading of the AUMF is a serious blow to the administration's legal rationale for other post-9/11 initiatives, including the NSA's warrantless surveillance of Americans.

REJECTION OF GENEVA CONVENTIONS REBUKED: After Sept. 11, the Bush administration unilaterally declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda. In a Jan. 25, 2002 memo to the President, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales infamously argued that the "new paradigm" post-9/11 rendered parts of the Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete." The Court also rejected this position yesterday, ruling that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees captured in military conflicts, including members of al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, and not merely soldiers fighting for states which are signatories to the Conventions, as the administration argued. Article 3 requires that detainees be tried by a "regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." The Court ruled that the Guantanamo tribunals "violate that requirement because they are not regularly constituted tribunals but instead are specially constituted courts in the absence of any emergency."

ADMINISTRATION RATIONALE FOR DETAINEE TREATMENT IN DOUBT: By setting aside the Geneva Conventions for "enemy combatants," the Bush administration also threw out the Conventions' prohibitions on abusive interrogation techniques. Senior military officials used this reasoning to argue to Congress that admittedly "abusive" and "degrading" treatment of Guantanamo prisoners "did not result in any violation of a U.S. law or policy." In ruling that Common Article 3 applies to the detention of Hamdan, the Supreme Court has rejected the administration's fundamental shift away from more than a century of U.S. military practice of applying international humanitarian law to armed conflict. In addition to guidelines on fair trials, Common Article 3 prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." (This is "far more protection" than given by the McCain anti-torture amendment.)

UNCHECKED EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY REBUKED: President Bush and Vice President Cheney have aggressively pursued the expansion of executive authority since taking office. (The decision to create special military commissions for terror suspects actually "represented one of the first steps" by Cheney to increase executive authority after 9/11.) The legal rationale for this forceful drive was undercut yesterday. Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion in Hamdan contains multiple sharply-worded warnings about the importance of constitutional checks and balances on the executive. "Trial by military commission raises separation-of-powers concerns of the highest order," Kennedy writes, arguing that it is "imperative...that when military tribunals are established, full and proper authority exists for the Presidential directive." Judicial insistence upon consultation between Congress and the Executive "does not weaken our Nation's ability to deal with danger," he states. "To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation's ability to determine -- through democratic means -- how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means. Our Court today simply does the same."

A GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY REBUKED: Yesterday's ruling "echoed not simply as matter of law but as a rebuke of a governing philosophy." It was "such a sweeping and categorical defeat for the Bush administration," the New York Times notes, that human rights lawyers were "almost speechless with surprise and delight." One administration lawyer found words to describe the ruling: "It's very broad, it's very significant, and it's a slam." The administration's arguments were called "erroneous," "unpersuasive," "inapposite," "unsound," as the Court "struck at the core of [Bush's] presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country." The Court's principle message to Bush, according to the Los Angeles Times: "Step back, imperial president."

A STRIKING BLOW AGAINST TERRORISTS: Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) said the decision was "ridiculous and outrageous" and likely had our enemies "laughing at us." (He then admitted he hadn't actually read the decision.) Rush Limbaugh's website ran the headline, "Liberals Celebrate Supreme Court Victory for Terrorists." These attacks are false: yesterday's ruling is a striking blow against terrorists. From the black hole of Guantanamo to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody has been an affront to American values, served as a rallying cry for our enemies, and hindered our ability to lead a truly united alliance against terrorist networks. Moreover, some five years after 9/11, the Bush administration still has "no viable mechanism for trying al-Qaeda operatives," meaning that "if American troops catch Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri tomorrow, the government has no means of bringing them to justice." Yesterday, the Supreme Court "presented Bush with an opportunity to restore the United States to its traditional position as the foremost champion of the rule of law," American Progress's Ken Gude argues. "The road back to a sound detainee policy is now obvious: return to the proven, effective, legitimate, and fair procedures established by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions."

Posted: 29 June 2006

These are the kinds of tactics one usually expects in a third world country where corruption is a part of life. Has it become a part of American life?

The Coming Ballot Meltdown
Andrew Gumbel

Anyone wondering where America's next electoral meltdown will take place--and it can only be a matter of time--might do well to turn back to the scene of the last one. Ohio was, of course, ground zero of the 2004 presidential election, and now it's the battleground of one of the most hotly contested governor's races in the country. The Republican candidate this November is none other than Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, a man vilified by voting rights activists for a string of baffling and, to all appearances, nakedly partisan rulings in the 2004 presidential race, when he also doubled as co-chair of George Bush's state re-election campaign. Now he's at it again--issuing draconian guidelines on voter registration that carry the threat of felony prosecutions against grassroots get-out-the-vote groups, especially in Democratic-leaning urban areas, for even the slightest procedural irregularity. Despite denials from Blackwell's office of any malicious political intent, the guidelines have had an immediate chilling effect on groups like the activist community organization ACORN, which has suspended registration efforts pending urgent consultations with its lawyers. Several leading Democrats have urged Blackwell to step aside from all election-supervising responsibilities, a proposal his staff has greeted with near-derision.

It would be bad enough if Blackwell were acting merely to benefit his party, as he did in 2004. But in this case he's taking advantage of his office to act on behalf of his own ambitions. Unless something changes between now and November, he will remain in charge of counting the votes--his own and everyone else's. In a pivotal election in a pivotal state, this is far from reassuring. As Peg Rosenfield, an elections specialist with the League of Women Voters of Ohio who spent twelve years working in the secretary of state's office in the pre-Blackwell era, put it, "If you think '04 was a mess, just wait. I anticipate a debacle."

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

What the Republicans have created is, in effect, a system where they have multiple tools to deter their opponents from casting ballots in the first place--through the voter-ID requirement, the strict rules on provisional balloting and so on--and then making the vote count itself so opaque as to be beyond redress.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

Sierra Club sues Pentagon for holding up new wind farms

The Sierra Club is suing the Defense Department for effectively halting new development of wind farms in the name of homeland security. The suit charges that the department failed to complete a congressionally mandated study on how wind turbines affect military radar by a May 8 deadline; at least 15 new wind projects await completion of the study. "If the military can have windmills and effective radar at Guantanamo, why can't we have both in the Midwest?" asked Sierra Club attorney Kristin Henry, who noted that delayed construction could make wind developers ineligible for federal tax credits that expire after 2007. Meanwhile, the administration pursues security-risky nuclear power like there's no tomorrow -- which, in their defense, there might not be. The feds were breezily unconcerned about the potential impacts of terrorist attacks when conducting environmental reviews of nuke plants until ordered to consider those impacts by a recent court decision.


U.S. cars are tops in CO2 emissions

The U.S. boasts 30 percent of the world's cars and is responsible for almost half of global car-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a new report by Environmental Defense. American-driven cars emit 15 percent more carbon dioxide per mile than the global average (meaning, in essence, they get worse gas mileage). Plus, Americans just drive more: 29 percent above the global average. In 2004, U.S. cars and light trucks drove the equivalent of the distance to and from Pluto ... more than 470 times. Small cars in toto emit more CO2 than SUVs because there are more of them, but lead author John DeCicco predicts SUVs will become a larger percentage of the U.S. car fleet over the next few years, as older cars are scrapped while relatively recent SUVs stay on the road. Environmental Defense hopes the report will encourage the feds to consider higher fuel-economy standards and emissions caps. We're not holding our breath. Or rather, we're just holding it to avoid inhaling the fumes.


GAO says EPA is sloppy and plagued with management problems

Well, here's a shocker: the U.S. EPA is inconsistent in its environmental enforcement and keeps sloppy records. That's what the Government Accountability Office told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works yesterday. Upon reviewing reports and studies from the past six years, the GAO discovered that the EPA's 10 regional offices disagree on which regulations to enforce and how to penalize polluters. In 2001, the GAO recommended that the agency create a management plan to better organize employees and develop an accurate budget detailing where money was needed. Looks like that didn't happen: In the past five years, the small changes the agency has made have had "minor impact," said the GAO. We expect the administration will be outraged by the discovery that a major federal agency is falling short and step right up with reforms. After all, look what's happening at FEMA. Or ... don't.

And one from the humorous sides of things, though it's the type of humor that's so close to the truth it hurts.

Template for News Stories on Government Data Gathering
posted by Daniel J. Solove

NSA warrantless wiretaps. NSA collection of phone records. CIA gathering of financial records.

The stories are endless. To help out reporters, I thought I'd just write a quick and easy template to make reporting a little bit easier. So here it is:

Under a top secret program initiated by the Bush Administration after the Sept. 11 attacks, the [name of agency (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.)] have been gathering a vast database of [type of records] involving United States citizens.

"This program is a vital tool in the fight against terrorism," [Bush Administration official] said. "Without it, we would be dangerously unsafe, and the terrorists would have probably killed you and every other American citizen." The Bush Administration stated that the revelation of this program has severely compromised national security.

"This program is a threat to privacy and civil liberties," [name of privacy advocate] said. But [name of spokesperson for Bush Administration] said: "This is a very limited program. It only contains detailed records about every American citizen. That's all. It does not compromise civil liberties. We have a series of procedures in place to protect liberty."

"We're not trolling through the personal data of Americans," Bush said, "we're just looking at all of their records."

The [name of statute] regulates [type of record] and typically requires a [type of court order]. Although the [name of agency] did not obtain a [type of court order], the Bush Administration contends that the progam is "totally legal." According to the Attorney General, "we can [do whatever we did or want to do]. The program is part of the President's emergency war powers."

Posted: 27 June 2006

Reed's hypocrisy is staggering. He dares to call himself a christian?

Congressional Report on Abramoff Exposes Ney and Reed
By Mark Sherman
The Associated Press

Washington - Rep. Bob Ney told Senate investigators he made no effort to help a client of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, a congressional report said Thursday.

Ney said he was not even familiar with the Tigua tribe of El Paso, Texas, which was seeking legislation that would allow it to reopen its shuttered casino, according to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee report on the massive lobbying fraud perpetrated on Indian tribes by Abramoff and others.

Yet the report says Ney assured tribal leaders of his support for the legislation on two occasions in 2002, once in person and once via telephone.

The section of the 373-page report that focuses on Ney is a fresh sign of potential legal trouble for the Ohio Republican who has become ensnared in a wide-ranging criminal probe of influence peddling in Washington.

The report also highlighted the work of former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed on behalf of Indian gambling interests. Reed, seeking the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in Georgia, was paid more than $4 million by two tribes between March 2001 and February 2002, the report said. The money was sent through intermediaries to satisfy Reed's concern that he not be linked to Indian casinos, the report said.

Reed, a longtime friend of Abramoff, received the bulk of the credit for shutting down the Tigua's casino, a campaign carried out to benefit another Abramoff client's gambling operations.

In a statement, Reed said, "The report confirms that I have not been accused of any wrongdoing."

Reed said he was assured he would not be paid with money derived from gambling. "While I believed at the time that those assurances were sufficient, it is now clear with the benefit of hindsight that this is a piece of business I should have declined," Reed said.

The committee said the Tigua's plight showcased the aggressive efforts of Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a former aide to then-Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Abramoff and Scanlon helped close the Tigua casino "only to pitch their services for millions of dollars to help that same, now desperate tribe reopen its casino," the committee reported. The lobbyists' scheme sucked tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes. "Without doubt, the depth and breadth of their misconduct was astonishing," the report said.

READ THE REST.

Iraq's Pentagon Papers
This unjustified war is waiting for its whistle-blower, says the leaker of Vietnam's secret history.
by Daniel Ellsberg

A joint resolution referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calls for the withdrawal of all American military forces from Iraq by Dec. 31. Boxer's "redeployment" bill cites in its preamble a January poll finding that 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease if the U.S. leaves Iraq within six months, 67% believe that their day-to-day security will increase if the U.S. withdraws and 73% believe that factions in parliament will cooperate more if the U.S. withdraws.

If that's true, then what are we doing there? If Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer, what does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq (foreseen by 80% of Iraqis polled)? What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

It was questions very much like these that were nagging at my conscience many years ago at the height of the Vietnam War, and that led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, 35 years ago this week. That process had begun nearly two years earlier, in the fall of 1969, when my friend and former colleague at the Rand Corp., Tony Russo, and I first started copying the 7,000 pages of top-secret documents from my office safe at Rand to give to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That period had several similarities to this one. For one thing, Republican Sen. Charles Goodell of New York had just introduced a resolution calling for the unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Indochina by the end of 1970. Unlike the current Boxer resolution, his had budgetary "teeth," calling for all congressional funding of U.S. combat operations to cease by his deadline.

Two other similarities between then and now: First, though it was known to only a handful of Americans, President Nixon was making secret plans that September to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia — including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with officials reiterating regularly that the nuclear "option" is "on the table."

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

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates — so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public — about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth — earlier than I did — before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

It is past time for Americans to summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. We must force Congress and this president, or their successors if necessary, to act upon the moral proposition that the U.S. must stop killing men, women and children in Iraq, and must not begin to do so in Iran.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

From The Center for American Progress.

IRAQ -- FORMER ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS TESTIFY ON MISUSE OF INTELLIGENCE: Four former Bush administration officials involved in the run-up to the Iraq war testified before the Democratic Policy Committee yesterday to explain how and why the intelligence was manipulated. Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, said he needed just three words to explain why a small number of individuals in the administration “had more influence…than the professionals.” "The Vice President," he said. Wilkerson stated that Powell's Feb. 2002 presentation of the Iraqi threat at the United Nations was "the lowest point in my professional life." Former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Carl Ford said lawmakers share some responsibility for intelligence failures, telling them “not to accept the crap we give you.” Paul Pillar, a former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on Iraq, said he believes that that decision to invade Iraq was made by summer 2002, "and instead of intelligence informing a policy decision, it was used to justify a decision already made." The fourth official, Wayne White, the former deputy director in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said he warned senior U.S. officials days into the war that Iraqi Sunnis would strongly resist the occupation. "I quickly warned, around the first week or 10 days of the war...that this spelled danger as we moved farther north, especially into Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland," White said. In his review of the hearing, The Nation's David Corn wrote, "[A]ccountability still awaits those who called it wrong--and those who misused the intelligence."

TAXES -- WARREN BUFFETT DECLARES OPPOSITION TO ESTATE TAX REPEAL: The right-wing effort to repeal the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax), which fell three votes short of passage in the Senate earlier this month, is expected to be brought up for another vote before the July 4 recess. (Conservatives "are crossing their fingers that this version, which includes tax breaks for the timber industry as a sweetener, will pick up support from Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.") One individual who opposes repealing the inheritance tax on the ultra-rich: billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest man, who announced this week he plans to give away the vast bulk of his $44 billion fortune to charity. Buffett has argued that repealing the estate tax “would be a terrible mistake,” the equivalent of “choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.” He reiterated this position yesterday during a press conference with Bill and Melinda Gates: "It's a very equitable tax," Buffett said. "It's in keeping with the idea of equality of opportunity in this country, not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged."

CIVIL RIGHTS -- VOTER DISCRIMINATION STILL A PROBLEM IN MANY STATES: The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, landmark civil rights legislation that continues to protect voters from discrimination, is set to have several provisions expire at the end of 2007. While a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers support renewing the VRA, a few right-wing legislators have stalled the process. Among the provisions that need renewal is one requiring localities with "heavy populations of non-English speakers to provide ballots and instructions in other languages." "There are only two scenarios where one might not have language skills enough to understand the ballot: either they are naturalized citizens who did not meet the required language proficiency or they grew up in an ethnic enclave without benefit of learning English. If that's the case, it's high time they learned it," said Rep. Steven King (R-IA), one of the VRA's staunchest opponents. Rep. John Carter (R-TX), objecting to the Section 5 provision requiring certain states to get the Department of Justice's (DOJ) approval to changes in voting, told the Houston Chronicle, "I don't think we have racial bias in Texas anymore." But new reports by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights show just how necessary the VRA remains, despite Carter's rhetoric. According to DOJ statistics, since 1982, "Texas has had the second highest number of Section 5 objections interposed by the DOJ -- including at least 107 objections, 10 of which were for statewide voting changes. Only Mississippi, with 120 objections, has had more." "This carefully crafted legislation should remain clean and unamended," said Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who worked on the original bill, which he called "the keystone of our national civil rights statutes." Help renew the VRA today.

Posted: 26 June 2006

The right-wingers are at it again, trying to stir up the public over a meaningless hot-button issue -- this time flag-burning. Obviously, we are threatened by an overwhelming rash of people burning flags. My god, they're on every street corner! They're using them to burn down the national forests! Since there's nothing esle we need to worry about in this country, besides Iraq and the economy and the environment and the inability of ordinary Americans to survive on a minimum wage, we must of course go through the massive effort of a Constitutional amendment.

What else can I say except GMAFB. The flag is a piece of cloth. What counts, what is vital, is what the flag represents. It represents our democracy, our Bill of Rights which includes freedom of speech and freedom from undue government oppression over our lives. The minute our government seeks to limit any of our rights or infringe our rights -- such as with warrantless spying and uncontrolled presidential "executive orders" -- then the flag has lost its meaning.

Contact your senate congresscritters today and let them know you don't buy into this political posturing. Tell them to focus on the issues that truly concern our nation today.

What these criminals are willing to do defies belief.

African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List
By: Greg Palast
As reported for Democracy Now!

Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK) and Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.

The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

[More:]

A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts. Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.

***

For Greg Palast's discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black soldier purge of 2004, go to http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastDN6-14-06.mp3

***

Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."

The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.

One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.

Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.

A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by "provisional" ballot.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican's national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, "Caging.xls." Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

READ THE REST.

Global warming? What global warming?

Glaciers' melt rate surprises scientists
WATER SEEPS TO BASE OF ICECAP IN GREENLAND
By Robert Lee Hotz
LOS ANGELES TIMES

JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland - The Greenland ice sheet -- two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico -- shapes the world's weather, matched in influence only by Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere. In its heart, snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is preserved.

Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.

Climate experts have started to worry that the icecap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.

By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress.

MEDIA -- REP. KING CALLS FOR NEW YORK TIMES REPORTERS TO BE CHARGED UNDER ESPIONAGE ACT: The New York Times reported on Friday that the Bush administration has “examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States” allegedly linked to terrorist networks. Yesterday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) argued that the Times reporters, editors, and publishers responsible for that story should be charged under the Espionage Act, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. "The New York Times is putting its own arrogant elitist left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people," King said on Fox News Sunday, "and I’m calling on the Attorney General to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times -- its reporters, the editors who worked on this, and the publisher. We’re in a time of war...and what they’ve done has violated the Espionage Act, the COMINT act." (Watch the video.) King later told the Associated Press that the New York Times' actions were "treasonous." Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) responded to King’s claims yesterday, calling them "premature," and paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

POLITICS -- FLAG-BURNING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT MAY COME UP FOR SENATE VOTE THIS WEEK: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) plans a vote this week on a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would give Congress the right to outlaw flag desecration. "The House routinely has approved the flag amendment by broad majorities, but the Senate twice has fallen short of the necessary two-thirds vote needed to send the question to the states for ratification." This year, the proposal might actually pass, having already obtained 66 of the 67 required Senate votes. Debate over the amendment "ignores more serious problems facing the nation" and is part of the right's "strategy this year to bring up 'values' issues -- such as the gay-marriage constitutional amendment that failed in the Senate this month -- to galvanize conservative voters for midterm elections." There are at least three good reasons why a flag-burning amendment should not pass: 1) flag-burning is a non-problem because it occurs very infrequently; 2) flag burning has been declared by the Supreme Court to be protected speech; and, 3) the amendment's language is vaguely-worded, defining desecration in ways that might result in the censorship of works of act. A number of prominent veterans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have spoken out against the amendment.

TERRORISM -- WITH ALL EYES ON IRAQ, AL QAEDA-LINKED LEADER RISES IN SOMALIA: Over the weekend, a "prominent Somali cleric who is on the United States list of terror suspects" was "elected as head of an Islamist militia that controls the Somali capital and most of the southern regions." Today, the Washington Post reports that militias are "still willing to negotiate with the weak interim government that has been operating out of Baidoa, in the unstable country's west," but the new leader, Hassan Dahir Aweys - "a suspected al-Qaeda collaborator" -- "has condemned the interim government in the past and said he opposed Western-style democracy for Somalia." The administration had been lending secular warlords clandestine support to fight the Islamic militias, but the support "thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize." Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Africa Subcommittee, criticized the administration's lack of focus on Somalia. "While we were asleep at the switch," Feingold said on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, "while we were bogged down in Iraq, all focused on Iraq as the be all and end all of our American foreign policy, we are losing the battle to al Qaeda." He added: "We’ve spent $2 million in Somalia in the last year while we’re spending $2 billion a week in Iraq. This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us and those who are likely to attack us in the future."

UNITED NATIONS -- BOLTON ATTACKS U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICIAL FOR CRITICIZING FLAWED ADMINISTRATION POLICIES: Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour sharply criticized some of the tactics being employed in the war on terror, reminding all nations -- including the United States -- that they are constrained by an "absolute ban on torture and the right to a fair trial." She also said, "It is vital that at all times Governments anchor in law their response to terrorism." U.S. Ambassador John Bolton immediately slammed Arbour's "misplaced priorities": "For all the human rights problems in the world in places like North Korea and Iran and so on, to go after the United States and Israel -- it is business as usual from the U.N. human rights machinery." But just one month earlier, Bolton's own deputy stated that the "U.N. human rights machinery" exists to inform all member states -- including the U.S. -- of their international duties and obligations and added, "The United States holds the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in high regard." Bolton has once again shown he is willing to throw international cooperation by the wayside and employ double standards in order to defend flawed Bush administration policies.

Posted: 25 June 2006

This type of fraud isn't new. What's pathetic is that nothing ever gets done about it.

GOP Kills Bill to Police Halliburton
By Bob Geiger, AlterNet. Posted June 20, 2006.

Republicans in Congress have made it clear they're willing to fight for military contractors' right to lie, cheat and defraud taxpayers.

I suppose it's old news at this point that the Bush administration lied us into the Iraq war, and that the cost of this mess will be fully realized by the next generation when Bush leaves office with the biggest budget deficit in U.S. history.

And, while Democrats have been complaining for years about the GOP-led Congress abandoning its oversight of the executive branch's wrongdoing, a vote that took place in the Senate last week shows how the Republican desire to ignore fraud and abuse extends right into killing legislation that would help stop defense contractors from ripping off the American people.

In an effort to stop companies like Halliburton and its subsidiaries from cheating our troops and stealing from Americans, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., introduced S.AMDT.4230 and attached it to the Defense Authorization bill currently being debated in the Senate. The bill was intended to improve contracting "by eliminating fraud and abuse and improving competition in contracting and procurement."

"I think when you are at war, when a massive quantity of money is being pushed out the door, that we ought to decide to get tough on those who would be engaged in war profiteering," said Dorgan in fighting for his amendment last week. "I dare say that never in the history of this country has so much money been wasted so quickly. And, yes, there is fraud involved, there is abuse involved, and it is the case that there is a dramatic amount of taxpayers' money that is now being wasted."

Dorgan's bill -- cosponsored by 17 Democrats and called the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006 -- was tabled by a roll call vote of 55-43, effectively rejecting the amendment. Every single Senate Republican voted against the measure to make the contracting process honest and impose penalties on those who break the law.

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

I'll leave you with one other Dorgan horror story in which he describes a massive amount of money paid to four contractors to install air-conditioning in a Baghdad building.

"The contract goes to a subcontractor, which goes to another subcontractor, and a fourth-level subcontractor," said Dorgan "And the payment for air-conditioning turns out to be payments to four contractors, the fourth of which puts a fan in a room. Yes, the American taxpayer paid for an air-conditioner and, after the money goes through four hands, there is a fan put in a room in Iraq."

I guess that's fiscal conservatism Republicans can truly embrace.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

The Piggery Award from Barbara Ehrenreich's blog

While pondering Congress’s rejection of a minimum wage increase this week, it’s helpful to recall the basic taxonomic distinction between Predators and Pigs. Predators – in this case, those who employ people at unlivable wages – suck the marrow out of their employees, transform eager young women into stress-injured cripples, and virtually orphan the children whose parents are forced to work two or more jobs to support them.

Pigs, on the other hand, sit by wriggling with delight at these cannibalistic proceedings. It’s their job to oink out choruses of praise for the Predators. “Predation is Prosperity!” they proclaim, all the while hoping that some little scraps of flesh will fall their way.

So the Piggery of the Month award goes to those members of the US Congress who voted themselves a “cost of living adjustment” raise of $3300 while refusing to raise the minimum wage from a pathetic $5.15 an hour. As economic commentator Holly Sklar notes, Congressional pay will have increased by $34,900 between 1997 and 2007—an amount that it would take three minimum wage workers one year to earn (or one minimum wage worker three years) – to $171,800 a year, plus luxurious benefits.

From a Congress that has consistently cut taxes for the wealthy, themselves included, while cutting programs that serve the poor and the middle class, the minimum wage vote is not entirely surprising. What merits special notice in this instance is the unctuous rhetoric that arose from the sties as Republicans rushed to explain that by holding down the minimum wage they were actually helping the poor. If we don’t keep wages down, they said, grease dripping from the corners of their mouths, the Predators might find their prey less tasty, and unemployment will rise!

Never mind that there is no empirical evidence for this prediction. Employment didn’t plunge the last time the minimum wage was increased, in 1997, nor has this happened in any of the states – Massachusetts for example – that have raised their own minimum wages in the last few years. I grant you that there might be trouble if the minimum wage were to rise at the same rate as CEO pay. As the Institute for Policy Studies reported in 2005, “If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour.”

READ THE REST.

When CEO pay skyrockets while the middle-class is squeezed into low-paid no-benefit desperation, one can only say that America is screwed...and screwed over. The following info comes from the website for Barbara Ehreneich's books, Bait and Switch and Nickle and Dimed.

Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 18, 2005

The facts on the U.S. economy and the jobs it generates:

* Over 500,000 Americans have dropped out of the labor market because they have given up on job searches
* 20% of currently unemployed people have been out of a job for over 6 months. This is double the historical average in periods with similar unemployment rates.
* Percentage of eligible workers participating in the labor force is at 66%. This is a fifteen year low.
* Median family income has declined since 2000. Median hourly wages are the same as they were in November 2001 when the recovery began.
* 60% of small businesses are forced to attempt to constrain health-care costs, most by raising co-payments. 14% offer incentives for employees to decline health care.
* 1.33 jobs are posted on-line for every 100 job seekers posting resumes on-line.
* In 2004, 3.6 million workers ran through all their unemployment benefits without finding a new job.
* Between 2001 and 2004, 44% of the unemployed were white collar workers.

The Corporate Welfare State

After lobbying by the pharmaceutical and high tech industries and with bipartisan support, Congress passed a corporate “tax holiday” under the heading of the American Jobs Creation Act that allows corporations to repatriate overseas profits kept in tax havens at a greatly reduced – up to 85% lower – tax rate.

* Hewlett Packard will save $4.2 billion in taxes under this holiday, well over the $1 billion in charges it is accruing to cover the cost of laying off 14,500 of its employees.
* Pfizer will repatriate $36.9 billion from overseas affiliates. Instead of investing in job creation, it will lay off up to 10,000 workers and buy back billions of dollars in its stock to increase the wealth of shareholders.
* PepsiCo is repatriating $7.5 billion in income and will also use a large chunk for stock buybacks.
* Eli Lilly announced it would repatriate $8 billion to boost R&D spending. Year to date, it has increased R&D spending by 10% - only $134 million.
* Ford Motor Company has announced that it will cut 8% of its white collar workforce in 2005

Through July of 2005, U.S. companies have announced 641,245 job cuts, nearly 100,000 more than the equivalent period in 2004. If the present trend continues, 2005 will be the fifth consecutive year that U.S. companies have trimmed more than a million jobs.

Posted: 24 June 2006

This sounds like what you'd expect from these bastards. Force them to put the unPatriot Act to one of these commissions and then listen to them squeal.

White House, GOP Leaders Plan All-Out Assault on Federal Protections

Apparently rushing to lock in a long-sought goal before the fall elections, GOP congressional leaders may bring to a vote within weeks a proposal that could literally wipe out any federal program that protects public health or the environment--or for that matter civil rights, poverty programs, auto safety, education, affordable housing, Head Start, workplace safety or any other activity targeted by anti-regulatory forces.

With strong support from the Bush White House and the Republican Study Committee, the proposal would create a "sunset commission"--an unelected body with the power to recommend whether a program lives or dies, and then move its recommendations through Congress on a fast-track basis with limited debate and no amendments.

Three leading proposals have been introduced and are being winnowed into a final version. They would give the White House some--or total--authority to nominate members to the commission. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has confirmed that his office is coordinating development of a final version for prompt floor action.

Sunset commissions have been proposed, and defeated, before. But public interest veterans say the current situation is unlike any in the past, because the House Republican Study Committee, which includes some of the most anti-regulatory members of Congress, has secured guaranteed floor consideration of a sunset bill.

If such a bill should become law, the sunset commission could be packed with industry lobbyists and representatives from industry-funded think tanks, and could conduct its business in secrecy. Two of the sunset proposals under consideration would mandate that programs die after they are reviewed, unless Congress takes action to save them.

Several environmental programs have been targeted during past sunset attempts. Experts predict those would be among the first a sunset commission would review. Among them: the Energy Star Program; federal support for mass transit; the State Energy Program, which supports numerous state and local energy renewable efficiency programs; the Clean School Bus Program; the Land and Water Conservation Fund; federal grants for Wastewater infrastructure; a national children's health study that examines factors leading to such problems as premature birth, autism, obesity, asthma, and exposures to pesticides, mercury and other toxic chemicals.

A coalition of public interest groups is fighting to block enactment of a sunset commission. Information is available through the Sunset Commission Action Center at OMB Watch.

Posted: 21 June 2006

Bushenomics 102: Reality
by Larry Beinhart

There were two stories in Saturday’s New York Times that reveal the reality of Bushenomics.

One said that Delta Airlines was going to eliminate its pilot pensions. It was in the business section, page C3.

“Where Did the Good Investments Go,” was the headline on the other one. It was an editorial. It said, “By and large, American companies are flush with cash,” and have been for some time, but they can’t find productive places to put the money.

Those of you who are reading this have been living through Bushenomics 101.

The theory is that if you cut taxes for the wealthy they will go out and invest it. That will grow the economy and create jobs.

In the past it’s been called trickle down theory and voodoo economics.

The first thing that happened utilizing this theory was a recession. Bushenomicers blamed it on Clinton.

We have had a slow recovery. Bushenomicists blame it on Clinton, on 9/11, and the subsequent wars. What George Bush fondly calls the ‘trifecta.’

The first of these is odd because under Clinton the economy grew like gangbusters. It produced jobs, the Dow Jones grew over 350%, the deficit left by Bush the Elder turned into a surplus. So Clinton policies should have been a perfect ‘how to.” The second was reasonable, but only for a brief period. A month, two months, perhaps a quarter. That’s all. The third is absurd. War normally produces growth. All around growth. Including jobs.

The so-called recovery has been treated as very mysterious. First, because it did not produce jobs. Now, because it is not producing business either. Yet it has produced an increase in corporate profits and a great rise in real estate.

If you just take the facts and forget about the fantasy, there’s nothing mysterious about any of it.

The great bulk of the tax cuts went to rich people. If someone making a million a year gets to keep an extra hundred thousand, what do they do with it? Go out and start a company? No. They put it in the stock market or real estate. In this case, business has not really been growing. The Dow is still only a few points over where it was when Bush took office. Other factors, like low interest rates, favored real estate. So the money flowed there.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 20 June 2006

NARAL Pro-Choice America
ELECTIONS 2006: PRO-CHOICE! ACT IT. VOTE IT.
Stop the radical right or....
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/
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What exactly would happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned?

Many of us take for granted that bans would then be passed in so-called "red states"... But what about historically pro-choice states like California? Or New York? What about your state?

The answers might surprise you. Click here to learn more:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/

For the 33 years since the historic decision of Roe v. Wade, anti-choice extremists have steadily chipped away at a woman's right to choose. But now, two anti-choice Justices have been appointed to the Supreme Court. South Dakota has banned abortion. Louisiana has passed a ban on abortion to go into effect if Roe is overturned. And 12 other states including Ohio, Georgia, and Missouri are considering or have considered similar abortion bans.

Roe v. Wade is threatened. You know it and I know it. But the facts all point to one opportunity to defend a woman's right to choose: Elections 2006.

Right now we need to make sure that every pro-choice American knows the facts, and seizes this critical opportunity. How can you help? Download our educational "If Roe v. Wade Fell" card to get the facts:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/

Then pass it on to your friends to let them know how electing pro-choice congressional candidates in 2006 can protect Roe v. Wade for generations to come.

Some post-Roe possibilities from our "If Roe v. Wade Fell" card that might surprise you:

:: The fight goes to Congress - and it passes a nationwide ban on abortion. Anti-choice lobbyists could simply take the matter to members of Congress and call for a nationwide ban of abortion rather than enact a patchwork of state bans. Download the card to see how they could do it:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/

:: The fight stays with the Supreme Court - and it bans all abortion: The Supreme Court doesn't have to stop at overturning Roe, it could take the next step and outlaw abortion nationwide without even involving Congress or state legislatures. Find out how it could happen:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/

:: The fight goes to the states - and even "blue states" might ban abortion: 16 states already have pre-Roe abortion bans on the books, some that could become immediately enforceable if Roe is overturned. But what about the rest of the states? Find out why even solidly pro-choice states are at risk, too:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/opA4_y91SRYx/

As we face a critical election year, I look to you and your pro-choice network of friends and colleagues to help us elect pro-choice candidates who can help us fight against the current and potential attacks on a woman's right to choose. Click here to get your friends to pledge to vote pro-choice in November:
http://prochoiceaction.org/campaign/pledge_2006/forward/ww67xesrv5kdxd8?

Thank you for all that you do to protect a woman's right to choose.

Sincerely,
Kristin Koch
Assistant Director of Communications - Online Advocacy

P.S. Just yesterday, June 19, the Supreme Court signaled that it may be willing to reverse decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to choose when it agreed to hear a case that could eliminate vital protections for women's health as guaranteed under Roe v. Wade. The decision is the latest example of how President Bush has politicized the country's courts. To learn more about the cases and what's at stake, click here:
http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/l1A4_y91SRY3/

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If you would like to unsubscribe from NARAL Pro-Choice America's Choice Action Network, you can visit your subscription management page at:
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As a friend of mine said, damn right.

Bush Leagues

Like us, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is pretty damn pissed off at White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's callous disregard for the American military men and women killed in Iraq. Said Reid fro the floor of the Senate Friday:

In the Senate yesterday, we had a moment of silence because we lost our 2,500th troop in Iraq.

It was a solemn milestone which we observed in this Chamber. Over at the White House, I guess they have a different feeling. In all the news around the country today, there's a quote from Tony Snow, the President's Press Secretary, who said in response to the news, "it's a number."

"It's a number."

I say to the White House, it's more than a number. It's somebody's son or daughter, someone's father or mother, a neighbor, an uncle, or an aunt.

In Nevada, we've lost 39 soldiers in Iraq. Every one of them is more than a number.

I wonder how my friends - the Lukacs and the Salazars - feel about that statement?

These are two Nevada families I met around Memorial Day in my office, and then again at Memorial Day Ceremonies in Boulder City. Both of them had lost sons in Iraq.

I wonder how they feel about their sons being just numbers?

They're not just numbers. They're no more numbers than the people who have been wounded. They're not numbers either.

All of them--they're people--people who in many instances who have lost eyes and legs and arms and are paralyzed.

They're not just numbers.

Mr. President, I think maybe we should discuss briefly what a Republican Congressman said yesterday. I know this man, know him well. I've been going to the House gym for a lot of years, and a man who also goes there--by the name of Wayne Gilchrest--is my friend. He is a Republican Congressman from Maryland.

One day, we were standing in the House gym--I've known him for many, many years--and because of our knowing one another, he was - he was shaving, actually, with his shirt off and on his back - I noticed he had a real scar. I said, Wayne, what is that scar?

He said, I was shot in Vietnam.

He was a sergeant. Raised his arm to fire and as he did that, somebody shot him through the chest. The bullet came out of his back and left a big scar.

The words he remembers is "Sarg has been shot. Hope he's not dead."

He survived after many months in hospitals. He was a school teacher when he came back from Vietnam, taught kids. Now he is a member of Congress and has been for some time. Here's what he said in the Washington Post Yesterday.

"I can't help but feel through eyes of a combat-wounded Marine in Vietnam, if someone was shot, you tried to save his life. . . . While you were in combat, you had a sense of urgency to end the slaughter, and around here we don't have that sense of urgency."

"To me, the administration does not act like there's a war going on. The Congress certainly doesn't act like there's a war going on. If you're raising money to keep the majority, if you're thinking about gay marriage, if you're doing all this other peripheral stuff, what does that say to the guy who's about ready to drive over a land mine?"

Mr. President, our troops are more than just numbers, and they deserve a better debate.

Our troops also deserve a better Commander-in Chief.

From The Center for American Progress.

Hastert's Corruption Junction

Your hard-earned tax dollars may be funding pork-barrel projects that personally enrich House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). In August 2002, Hastert and his wife purchased 195 acres of isolated farmland -- much of it with no access to roads -- located in his home district (IL-14). A year and a half later, with the help of two partners, he purchased another 70 adjacent acres. At the same time, Hastert aggressively pushed for federal funding to build the " Prairie Parkway " through the district. (The Chicago Sun-Times described it as Hastert's "pet project.") In August 2005, Hastert succeeded. President Bush signed a transportation bill that included $207 million for the " Prairie Parkway ." Thanks to the parkway, Hastert's isolated parcels would soon have access to major cities. Just four months later, Hastert sold a portion of the land to a real-estate developer, earning a profit of at least $1.5 million.

HASTERT CLAIMS PARKWAY DID NOT IMPACT PROPERTY VALUE: Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, claimed, "None of the properties purchased by the speaker are near enough to the Prairie Parkway to be affected by the proposed highway." (This explanation was later echoed by Hastert himself.) There are a couple of major holes in this defense. First, the parkway is only about three miles from Hastert's property, an ideal distance to benefit land value. If land is too close to the parkway, noise pollution will depress property values. Second, Hastert has "talked about the expressway's economic development potential since he took federal office in the 1980s."

HASTERT IN A BOX: Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, who first uncovered Hastert's questionable real estate transactions, asks an essential question: If being three miles away "means a prospective homeowner and commuter will reap no benefit whatsoever from the parkway, why are taxpayers spending $207 million to build it?" In other words, either Hastert personally profited from the $207 million in federal funds or he pushed an costly pork-barrel project with negligible economic benefits.

HASTERT HID THE SALE : Hastert's financial disclosure forms made it very difficult for the public to learn about his questionable real estate transactions. His 2004 financial disclosure form, for example, said he purchased "1/4 share of land ( Plano , Ill. )." But if one went to search the land transactions in Illinois , that purchase wasn't listed under Hastert's name. Rather, the purchase was made by Little Rock Trust #225. Hastert's financial disclosure form "makes no mention of the trust." As a result, it was very difficult for anyone to figure out what land Hastert purchased and where it was located. This appears to violate financial disclosure rules in the House ethics manual, which require "disclosure of real property should include a description sufficient to permit its identification (e.g., street address or plat and map location)." It took some incredible sleuthing by the Sunlight Foundation to uncover the truth.

HASTERT DOUBLES DOWN: $1.5 million in profit is just the beginning. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Speaker is "in prime position to reap further benefits as the exurban region west of Chicago continues its prairie-fire growth boosted by a Hastert-backed federally funded proposed highway." Instead of cash, Hastert accepted more land, including "a one-third interest in a 126-acre property on Miller Road , just south of the...planned development," in exchange for the property he sold to a developer. Hastert also still owns 125 acres from his initial purchase.


Under the Radar

CONTRACT CORRUPTION -- WAXMAN STUDY FINDS LARGE SPIKE IN SPENDING FOR FEDERAL CONTRACTS UNDER BUSH: A study conducted by the House Government Reform Committee for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) claims that a "shadow government" of federal contractors has exploded in size over the past five years. Between 2000 and 2005, federal procurement spending increased 86 percent. The total spending increase has amounted to over $175 billion over that period of time, and the total spent annually on federal procurement projects now rests at $377.5 billion. The largest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin, received contracts worth more than the total combined budgets of the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the Small Business Administration, and the U.S. Congress. The fastest growing contractor under the Bush Administration has been Halliburton. Federal spending on Halliburton contracts shot up an astonishing 600 percent between 2000 and 2005. The report identifies 118 federal contracts worth $745.5 billion that have been found by government officials to include significant waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement. Each of the Bush Administration’s three signature initiatives — homeland security, the war and reconstruction in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina recovery — has been characterized by wasteful contract spending.

IMMIGRATION -- HERITAGE REPORT UNDER FIRE FOR INFLATING IMMIGRATION FIGURES: As the Senate debated the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, the Heritage Foundation released a report on the bill that "landed like a perfectly timed statistical bomb." The report predicted that, if enacted, the change in law would allow "an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years - fully one-third of the current population of the United States." "[The bill] would transform the United States socially, economically, and politically," Heritage's Robert Rector wrote. "Within two decades, the character of the nation would differ dramatically from what exists today." "Within 24 hours of the report's publication, the Senate passed an amendment sharply limiting the new guest worker program, a key provision of the bill." But top demographers now say Rector's figures "sound too high and lie well outside historical ranges, even those during the late 19th century when U.S. borders were open." Critics have "accused [Rector] of double counting, ignoring emigration, using unreasonably high assumptions of legalization and naturalization and other errors that compounded over time to produce eye-popping numbers." "That just can't be," Carl Haub, a senior demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, said about the estimate. According to Haub, calculations like Rector's "rarely take into account that people leave as well ... Immigration is a net event. People come, and then they go."

STATE WATCH -- TABOR BACKERS RESORT TO UNDERHANDED TACTICS: Across the country, right-wing activists are launching campaigns to impose a so-called "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights" (TABOR) on the states. TABOR arbitrarily caps "increases in state spending based on only two factors -- population growth and the consumer price index." Last November, Colorado residents voted to suspend TABOR, recognizing the disastrous economic and social impacts it had wrought on the state. Now, in order to pass TABOR in other states, the right wing is trying to dupe voters into signing petitions. Montanans are reporting "being tricked or coerced into signing ballot initiative petitions they didn't intend to sign," including for the TABOR initiative. The Oklahoma petition may have more than 120,000 invalid signatures on it. A group of petition challengers, including "several bankers, businessmen and a former Republican attorney general," allege that "thousands of people who signed the petition were not registered to vote in Oklahoma and therefore ineligible to sign the document," and the petitions were circulated "by people who were ineligible because they were from out of state and not Oklahoma residents or voters." The TABOR campaign in Oregon refuses to disclose its donors, 90 percent of whom have donated through the intermediary groups Americans for Limited Government, based in Chicago, and Americans for Tax Reform, run by Grover Norquist, in Washington, D.C.

Posted: 17 June 2006

Regardless of my political leanings or Progressive views, I have to agree with the side that says setting a specific timetable to leave Iraq would be a mistake. We shouldn't be there and should never have invaded in the first place, but now, like it or not, we're stuck. As the saying goes, "You break it, you pay for it." Which I believe is the warning Powell gave to the administration. But of course, they didn't listen. They were too arrogant and full of their sense of power.

I agree with the concept of establishing specific targets of achievement and using those to guide when troops can be withdrawn. That way we are working toward established goals, without a predicatable timetable that could be used against us by enemies. We shouldn't have our troops there a minute longer than is absolutely necessary, but we cannot afford to leave too soon and allow the country to disintegrate into a condition that is far worse than the Iraq that existed under Hussein. Our standing as a nation in the view of the world has already been severely damaged. If we were to withdraw and Iraq fell apart, that standing would be irreparably damaged. So we're stuck. The best thing we can do now is to forge ahead with getting Iraq back on its feet and get Bush and his cronies out of the Congress and the White House before they can do even more hideous damage to this country.

Posted: 13 June 2006

From Grist on-line magazine.

Bush admin weakens water-pollution rules after oil exec intervenes

When Clinton administration regulators announced they were working on a rule that would require special EPA permits for oil and gas drilling sites, to prevent water pollution, the oil and gas industry lumbered into action, lobbying furiously to thwart the rule. Then the Bush administration came into office, and their job got easier. In 2002, Ernest Angelo -- Texas oilman and longtime hunting buddy of Karl Rove -- sent a letter to Rove. He complained about the rule and said many oil types "openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity." Rove forwarded the letter to Bush environmental advisers, asking to "get a response ASAP." Mere weeks later, a top EPA official wrote Angelo and assured him that the rule was being delayed. Now, as of yesterday, the rule has been implemented in dramatically weakened form. And that, friends, is a parable for our times.


EPA will phase out highly toxic pesticide

If you've been avoiding Brussels sprouts because of pesticide contamination -- as opposed to the grossness -- you're in luck: by next year, the U.S. EPA plans to phase out organophosphate azinphos-methyl (AZM) on the odiferous buds, as well as on nuts and nursery stocks. By 2010, AZM would be banned completely, affecting growers of apples, blueberries, cherries, pears, and parsley. AZM, known by the trade name Guthion and used to kill codling moths, has been applied widely to crops since the late 1950s. In 2001, EPA research determined that apple pickers could not safely re-enter AZM-sprayed fields for 102 days; the agency then set the worker re-entry standard at 14 days. Farmworkers and enviros sued the EPA in 2004, saying the agency shouldn't permit use of a chemical that could cause dizziness, vomiting, seizures, paralysis, loss of mental function, and death. AZM alternatives are "all more expensive on a per-acre basis," says the director of a tree-fruit research center. "But they are all less toxic to humans." Hmm, tough call.

Posted: 10 June 2006

Go on, you know you want to.

Do-It-Yourself Impeachment...Impeach bush

Impeach for Peace, a Minnesota-based impeachment group, has researched a method for impeaching the president using a little known and rarely used part of the Rules of the House of Representatives ("Jefferson’s Manual"). This document actually empowers individual citizens to initiate the impeachment process themselves.

"Jefferson's Manual" is an interpretive guide to parliamentary procedure, and is included (along with the Constitution) in the bound volumes of the Rules of the House of Representatives. The section covering impeachment lists the acceptable vehicles for bringing impeachment motions to the floor of the House.

Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.

After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.

Feel free to download it, print out TWO copies, fill in your relevant information in the blanks (name, State, etc.), and send in two letters today (One to the Speaker of the House, and the other to John Conyers of the House Judiciary).

Hold on to the other copy of the two letters until October 12th when we're having everyone send them in.

That's right — to make a big impact, we're having everyone send it in on the same date. We hope to flood the Judiciary Committee and John Conyers office with sacks of mail and cause a newsworthy event to further pressure the Congress to act on the memorials. Although, it's important to keep in mind that in the 1826 precedent, impeachment resulted as a result of a single memorial. Yours might be the one.

GET THE REST OF THE INFO.

Posted: 9 June 2006

From the Organic Consumers Association.

EPA ADMINISTRATORS PRESSURE STAFF TO OVERLOOK TOXIC PESTICIDES
Government scientists are blowing the whistle on the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to allow the continued use of 20 hazardous organophosphate pesticides. Nine thousand EPA scientists have submitted a strongly worded letter to the EPA's Administrator, Stephen Johnson, protesting that "industry pressure" is compromising the "integrity of the science upon which agency decisions are based." Research indicates that these specific organophosphate pesticides, similar in composition to bio-warfare nerve gases, pose serious health threats, especially to babies in the womb, infants, and children, yet most of them are contained in common products used by the average consumer. EPA scientists complain that they are being forced to skip key risk assessment tests on these dangerous toxins due to pressure from the chemical industry. This rebellion inside the EPA comes on the heels of the agency's new controversial regulations that would allow the intentional dosing of pregnant women and children with pesticides.

TAKE ACTION! http://organicconsumers.org/epa7.htm


GERMAN COMPANY TAKING OVER U.S. DRINKING WATER SUPPLY
As municipal water supplies across the U.S. are taken over by corporations, citizens who were once proponents of water privatization are stepping up to the tap to figure out if there's any way to take back control of their water. Freshwater, a resource that has been considered publicly owned for thousands of years, is now considered "blue gold," and as such, is quickly becoming a privately owned commodity. Some quick facts: -A German company, RWE, now owns the water in over 1,100 U.S. cities. -In Illinois alone, more than one million people now have their local water supply owned by that same German company. -15% of the U.S. business water supply is now privately owned... a figure that has more than tripled in the last decade.

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_658.cfm

DRIVING AWAY FROM CORN-BASED ETHANOL
President Bush has made a surprising call to eliminate a two decade long tariff on ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil. Sugarcane produces eight times more energy per pound than corn, making U.S. corn-based ethanol appear to be irrational and inefficient. But according to Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, a biofuel trade organization, competition in the global marketplace will only create demands for U.S. farmers to generate biofuels more efficiently. A potential competitor to sugarcane ethanol is cellulosic ethanol, derived from switch grass and farm waste. "No threat. It's an opportunity," Shaw said. "We are in Iowa. All you see is cellulose." Meanwhile, Archer Daniels Midland, one of the most powerful corporate agribusiness lobbyists in Washington, continues to successfully push Congress to approve subsidizing the less efficient corn-based ethanol with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Some studies have estimated that in order to replace all U.S. oil imports with domestically produced corn ethanol, as much as five times the entire area currently farmed for all crops in the U.S. would be needed.

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_661.cfm

QUICK RELATED TIDBITS

Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, designed it to run on vegetable and seed oils like hemp. In fact, when the diesel engine was first introduced at the World's Fair in 1900, it ran on peanut oil.

Two decades later, Henry Ford was designing his Model Ts to run on ethanol made from hemp. He envisioned the entire mass-produced Model T automobile line would run on ethanol derived from crops grown in the U.S.

Even in the 1920s, the oil industry had massive lobbying power in Washington. Lobbyists convinced policymakers to create laws favoring petroleum based fuels while disgarding the ethanol option.

Nearly a century later, amidst oil wars in the Middle East, Global Warming, and a nearly depleted oil supply, the U.S. government is finally shifting attention to fuels that are more along the lines of Diesel and Ford's original ideas.

In an interview with the New York Times in 1925, Henry Ford said: "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_666.cfm

Posted: 8 June 2006

Note that this is Sandra Day O'Connor saying this!

Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship
Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks

Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.

Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary."

She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

READ THE REST.

Posted: 5 June 2006

I put nothing past the lunatics in the Bush regime.

Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Set For June Or July
McGovern: Staged terror attacks across Europe, US "probable" in order to justify invasion

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 1 2006

Former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor Ray McGovern, fresh from his heated public confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld, fears that staged terror attacks across Europe and the US are probable in order to justify the Bush administration's plan to launch a military strike against Iran, which he thinks will take place in June or July.

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, McGovern was asked about the timetable for war in Iran and said that behind the diplomatic smokescreen, the final chess pieces were being moved into position.

"There is already one carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the last report I have at least - they will all be there in another week or so."

"The propaganda has been laid, the aircraft carriers are in place, it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases - cruse missiles are at the ready, Israel is egging us on," said McGovern.

McGovern said Iran's likely response to a US air strike would be threefold - mobilizing worldwide terrorist cells that would make Al-Qaeda look like a girls netball team - utilizing its cruise missile arsenal to attack US ships and sending fighters into Iraq to attack US forces.

"The Iranians can easily send three divisions of revolutionary guard troops right over....the long border with Iraq," said McGovern, stating that the local Sunni population of Iraq would welcome such an invasion.

The turmoil caused by such an action would lead the US to tap its so-called 'mini-nuke' arsenal said McGovern, opening a new Pandora's box of chaos.

McGovern highlighted President Bush's all time record low approval ratings as a reason for launching an attack on Iran to again whip up false patriotic fervour.

"I can see Karl Rove saying, 'look what you need to do is become a war president again, get us involved with something pretty big here and then strut around and say you can't vote for a bunch of Democrats to pull the rug out from under me while there's a war going on'."

READ THE REST.

I found this rather...interesting.

How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents

Did you know that it is a crime to tell a lie to the federal government? Even if your lie is oral and not under oath? Even if you have received no warnings of any kind? Even if you are not trying to cheat the government out of money? Even if the government is not actually misled by your falsehood? Well it is.

Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 makes it a crime to: 1) knowingly and willfully; 2) make any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation; 3) in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the United States. Your lie does not even have to be made directly to an employee of the national government as long as it is "within the jurisdiction" of the ever expanding federal bureaucracy. Though the falsehood must be "material" this requirement is met if the statement has the "natural tendency to influence or [is] capable of influencing, the decision of the decisionmaking body to which it is addressed." United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510 (1995). (In other words, it is not necessary to show that your particular lie ever really influenced anyone.) Although you must know that your statement is false at the time you make it in order to be guilty of this crime, you do not have to know that lying to the government is a crime or even that the matter you are lying about is "within the jurisdiction" of a government agency. United States v. Yermian, 468 U.S. 63, 69 (1984). For example, if you lie to your employer on your time and attendance records and, unbeknownst to you, he submits your records, along with those of other employees, to the federal government pursuant to some regulatory duty, you could be criminally liable.

Even in our age of ever expanding federal power, the breadth of this statute (and the discretion it lodges in prosecutors) is awesome. Congress has regulated so many areas of our lives and federalized so many functions that the reach of Section 1001 is virtually boundless. This is what caused many federal courts to create an "exculpatory no" doctrine, holding that falsely answering "no" to an inquiry from a federal agent was, standing alone, not a crime under Section 1001. In 1998, however, the United States Supreme Court rejected this doctrine (as being inconsistent with legislative intent) in Brogan v. United States, 522 U.S. 398, 805 (1998). Thus, the only avenue for reform with respect to Section 1001 is in Congress, where politicians seldom get brownie points for narrowing the reach of federal criminal statutes.

But why, you may ask, should law-abiding citizens be alarmed about this statute? Don't the feds only pick on big-league liars? Don't we trust the federal government and its law enforcement officers and assume that they are responsibly trying to ferret out crime? Besides, if we meet an FBI agent that we do not trust, can't we always decline to speak to him?

It may be true that most federal agents and prosecutors are decent people who would not intentionally abuse Section 1001. Moreover, it is very important from a law enforcement perspective for federal agents to be able to informally question witnesses during the initial stages of an investigation. And certainly citizens are under no obligation to speak to a law enforcement agent in the first place, although, as shown below, it is essential to learn how to decline to speak to government officers. But power corrupts, and the potential for abuse of this statute is great, especially during periods of public outcry over corporate and other white-collar crimes. When we reflect upon how many petty rules and regulations get broken and how many white lies are told during the course of an average American business day, it is apparent that Section 1001 can easily be applied and misapplied to normally upstanding folk.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine.

World's deserts will become more desert-y, says U.N.

Happy World Environment Day -- we got you some bad news! As climate change progresses, desert temperatures will rise up to 12.6 degrees F by the end of the century; rainfall in most deserts will decline by up to 20 percent; water will become scant, or too salty to drink or use for crops. So warns a chipper new United Nations report, anyway. These changes could endanger the globe's 500 million desert-dwellers and a variety of rare animals, including our new favorite, the Asian houbara bustard. Desert regions account for nearly a quarter of the globe's total land surface and house cities like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Phoenix, Ariz. The U.N. warns of conflict over increasingly scarce resources in desert areas. One bright side (ha ha): deserts could boom in solar power. With today's technology, a 310-square-mile area of the Sahara could generate enough solar energy to power the entire world.

Posted: 4 June 2006

Yet another good reason why I detest the Bush regime.

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?
By Dana L.

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

READ THE REST.

A long read, but worth it.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in "tinfoil hats," while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as "conspiracy theories,"(1) and The New York Times declared that "there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale."(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. "We didn't have one election for president in 2004," says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. "We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities."

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

"It was terrible," says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. "People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened."

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. "Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen," Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. "You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb."

READ THE REST.

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