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 etermine 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: 28 March 2007

From The Center for American Progress. Let's see, who should we believe? The same old people that have been lying to us all along, or....

IRAQ -- RETIRED GENERAL CONCLUDES IRAQ IS 'IN DESPAIR': Late yesterday, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey released a report based on a recent trip to Iraq that included meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. McCaffrey -- who previously served in Vietnam and commanded a division in the first Iraq war -- described the situation in Iraq as a "low grade civil war" that has "worsened to catastrophic levels." Contradicting statements made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) yesterday, McCaffrey found that "no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, report, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection." The report, which was presented to White House officials late yesterday, stands in "sharp contrast" to his previous assessments which include a statement after a trip just last year calling the "progress" in Iraq "very encouraging." As the Washington Post reports, McCaffrey found his "bottom line" in this most recent report to be that "the U.S. military is in 'strategic peril.'" The retired general, who is opposed the President's continuing escalation plan, called the insurgent militias "'in some ways more capable of independent operations' than the Iraqi army." In concluding the report, he said the "vocal opposition" of Congress could "actually provide a helpful framework" for the U.S. government to help the Maliki administration "understand their diminishing options." But he added that "we have very little time left."

From Grist, "a beacon in the smog".

U.S. Interior considering revamp of Endangered Species Act, draft shows

Last week, a U.S. Interior Department memo quietly changed where endangered species are protected. Now it seems the feds have been giving the Endangered Species Act an even broader rethink. A leaked draft shows that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has toyed with shifting significant ESA powers to states and allowing activities that imperil species if they don't "hasten the rate of extinction." It may also change the ESA timeframe -- species are now eligible if they face extinction in "the foreseeable future," but that could be cut to 20 years or 10 generations. "It's a radical weakening of the Endangered Species Act," says Daniel Patterson of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity calls it "a rewrite from top to bottom" that "makes recovery of species impossible." While Fish and Wildlife spokesfolks insist plans are still evolving, an anonymous federal employee told Salon that many staffers think the draft is daft.

Posted: 20 March 2007

Neocons in Cheney's Office Fund al Qaeda-Tied Groups ... and No One Cares?
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted March 17, 2007.

Seymour Hersh's recent report that Iran-Contra veterans working out of Dick Cheney's office are using stolen funds from Iraq to arm al Qaeda-tied groups and foment a larger Sunni-Shia war is a very big deal.

Let me see if I've got this straight.

Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras.

In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began.

Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.

READ THE REST.

From Grist, "a beacon in the smog".

Siberian mine disaster kills more than 100, rescuers search for survivors

The world may be addicted to oil, but it's coal that's doing us in. An explosion at a Siberian coal mine on Monday killed 106 workers, and rescuers were still searching for a handful of missing people today. While 93 lucky bastards escaped with their lives, the accident -- caused by a build-up of methane at a depth of nearly 890 feet -- is said to be Russia's worst mining disaster in a decade. So, must have been a creaky, outdated, unsafe facility, right? Nyet. The mine, about 2,000 miles east of Moscow, opened in 2002 and was equipped with state-of-the-art technology. In fact, the victims of the explosion included a British engineer, his interpreter, and 20 members of the mine's senior management team, who were apparently there to inspect or install an English-made hazard monitoring system. Alexander Sergeyev, chair of the Independent Coal Miners' Union, called for new methane-ventilation laws and criticized quota systems that pressure miners to work too quickly. But: coal mining? Still crazy.


What You Herd Is Not What I Meant Bush administration reinterprets Endangered Species Act

The Bush administration has quietly issued a new spin on the Endangered Species Act that would have the feds protect imperiled animals and plants only in places where they're in trouble -- not where they're thriving or have already disappeared. A memo announcing the change was posted on the Interior Department website on Friday. The Center for Biological Diversity threatened to pursue the issue in court, saying the new policy could mean 80 percent of some 1,300 species now listed under the act would lose protection. "Say I'm an irrigator," said CBD's Kieran Suckling. "Say there are 10 fish in a stream. ... I'm going to go kill those 10 fish. Now they are part of the historical range, not the current range. It doesn't count." In more uplifting news, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said on Friday that the feds will look into whether some species should be listed as threatened or endangered because of climate change. Oddly enough, he failed to mention the ESA memo. So forgetful, that one.

From The Center for American Progress. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"There will be good days, and there will be bad days ahead."
-- President Bush, 3/19/07

VERSUS

"There will be good days and there will be bad days."
-- President Bush, 3/19/06

VERSUS

"There will be good days and there will be difficult days."
-- President Bush, 3/19/04

Yeah, let's just do away with that pesky paper trail....

NATIONAL SECURITY -- FBI REWRITES RULES ON PHONE RECORDS: Earlier this month, the Justice Department Inspector General (IG) issued a report detailing the FBI's repeated improper use of so-called "national security letters." The IG found that the FBI "had ignored its own rules when demanding telephone and financial records about private citizens." FBI investigators issued these "secret requests" to several large telecom companies including AT&T and Verizon beginning in 2001. The letters often referenced "exigent circumstances" and promised that subpoenas for the requested information had been submitted to the U.S. Attorney's office and would be served promptly. The IG found that such statements were often false and that "there sometimes were no open or pending national security investigations tied to the request." Further, it was found that in many cases "no subpoenas had actually been requested before the letters were sent." It was later revealed that the FBI had been aware of such "legal lapses" as early as 2005 and, according to one FBI official, had taken steps to "clean up" the problems in 2006 by submitting seven more national security letters to "provide legal backing for all the telephone record requests that still needed it." Today the Washington Post is reporting that the FBI has issued a new set of rules governing requests for phone company records in which the use of national security letters or subpeaons is no longer required. While the rules require that requests be limited to "dire emergencies," such requests can now be made "verbally," relieving agents of "a paperwork burden that was the heart of past problems." FBI Assistant Director John Miller assured the Post that the new rules include "an audit trail to ensure we are doing it the right way." Congress has promised a full inquiry and IG Glenn Fine and FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will appear before House Judiciary Committee today.

Posted: 19 March 2007

From The Center for American Progress.

MILITARY -- ARMY RESERVE OFFICERS DECLINE DEPLOYMENT TO MIDDLE EAST: "Only about one-fifth of 10,000 veteran officers in the Army's Individual Ready Reserve say they're willing to be deployed overseas, an Army survey shows." In a military with combat resources already pressed thin, the "Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) is one of the last resources the Army taps for manpower. It consists of former active-duty, National Guard and reserve soldiers who have moved into the Ready Reserve and lead virtually civilian lives." Before 9/11, the Army rarely tapped into the Ready Reserve, but since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 11,000 have been called for duty, with 6,000 being deployed to the Middle East. However, "more than 200 enlisted soldiers in the Ready Reserve have defied orders to serve and are being discharged." Retired Army colonel Jim Martin believes negative feelings about the Iraq war and the Bush administration within the Ready Reserve are likely contributors to this low morale. These sentiments are reflected in public opinion of the war, currently at an all-time low. A report by American Progress fellow Ruy Teixeira shows that public approval of the Iraq war has quickly decreased since 2003. Only 34 percent of Americans now believe the Iraq war has been worth fighting, and 59 percent believe it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place. Currently, President Bush's approval rating sits at 30 percent.

ETHICS -- HUME FALSELY SMEARS PLAME AS HAVING LIED UNDER OATH: Earlier this month, several prominent conservatives, including columnist Robert Novak, Fox News's Brit Hume, and National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg, engaged in an unhalting campaign to discredit former CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson, claiming that there was "no evidence" to suggest she was in fact a covert agent and falsely asserting that her profession was widely known on the "Washington cocktail circuit." While these claims were discredited by CIA Director Michael Hayden -- who told Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) quite emphatically, "Ms. Wilson was covert" -- Hume renewed his attempts to smear Plame yesterday by suggesting that she lied under oath when she testified that she had not recommended her husband be sent to Niger to investigate Iraq's supposed nuclear ambitions. Hume said Plame's testimony "flies in the face of the evidence" adduced by the "bipartisan" Senate Intelligence Committee, which said that "she very much did have something to do with it, that she recommended him and that she put it in a memo." Hume's false claim originated from a statement attached to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq by Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Christopher Bond (R-MO), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT). The three conservative senators wrote definitively, "The plan to send the former ambassador [Wilson] to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee." They based their claim on testimony by a CIA employee who appeared before the Senate Intel Committee. In fact, as Plame revealed on Friday, the CIA employee later apologized to her "with tears in his eyes" because he said "his words had been twisted and distorted" by the senators. The unnamed employee consequently drafted a memo, asking that he be re-interviewed by the Senate to correct the record. His attempts to set the record straight were previously denied, but Waxman said Friday that the House Oversight Committee would "insist on getting that memo."

Posted: 14 March 2007

Bigotry is bigotry, no matter how he tries to hide it. From The Center for American Progress.

MILITARY -- JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN FACES BACKLASH AFTER HOMOSEXUALITY REMARK: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace faced a backlash yesterday after saying on Monday that homosexuality is "immoral" and comparable to adultery. In a "rare rebuke of the nation's top military officer," Sen. John Warner (R-VA) said he "strongly disagrees" with Pace's views, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded during a press conference, "We need the most talented people, we need the language skills, we need patriotic Americans who exist across the board in our population. We don't need moral judgment from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs." Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man and the first American soldier to be seriously wounded in Iraq, expanded on their comments. "Judging gay men and women in the military for factors unrelated to their fitness to serve undermines our military's effectiveness," Alva said. "Certain leaders' bigotry should not be a rational basis for discrimination. This kind of prejudice is going to continue to have a direct impact on our national security as we allow qualified gay men and women to lose their jobs for no good reason. This policy -- and General Pace's bigotry -- is outdated, unnecessary and counter to the same American values our soldiers are giving their lives for each and every day." Pace issued a "clarifying" statement yesterday, saying, "I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views." But he refused to apologize.

From Grist, "a beacon in the smog".

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decisions continue to befuddle

Let it not be said that Hurricane Katrina's lessons didn't sink in. For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers learned that it's good to look prepared, even if you aren't -- so it (apparently knowingly) installed 34 defective pumps in New Orleans before the 2006 hurricane season. The season was mild, so the Corps now has time to fix the gadgets' overheating engines, broken hoses, and blown gaskets for the 2007 season. (The pumps were made by a company run by a former business partner of Jeb Bush. We're just saying.) The Corps also learned that developing wetlands is bad, bad, bad. That's why it just issued controversial regulations allowing development on some flood plains to proceed without environmental reviews. Curiously, Corps officials say the rule -- which guides projects that fill less than half an acre of wetlands or less than 300 feet of a stream -- will deter building on bigger wetlands parcels by allowing it on small ones. It's a wonder their brains don't burst from all that logic.

Posted: 13 March 2007

This is grim, truly grim. Bush is the worst disaster this planet has ever seen.

Beyond Quagmire A panel of experts convened by Rolling Stone agree that the war in Iraq is lost. The only question now is: How bad will the coming explosion be?
TIM DICKINSON

Posted: 12 March 2007

From The Center for American Progress.

"As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, GA, is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records."
--Salon, 3/11/07

GOVERNMENT - SUNSHINE WEEK SPOTLIGHTS PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW: In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a landmark law that opened the government's records to public scrutiny. Because of FOIA, Vietnam War veterans learned about their exposure to Agent Orange, reporters learned that the military had given U.S. troops in Iraq body armor that failed ballistics tests, and the public learned how many times Jack Abramoff had visited the White House. Unfortunately, under the Bush administration, federal agencies have stalled or ignored an increased number of FOIA requests, classified a record number of documents, stepped up punishment for whistleblowers, and tightened secrecy in the name of national security. A new study by the National Security Archive finds that just one in five federal agencies posts on its website all the records to file FOIA requests and just 6 percent "tell people how to request what does not appear there." Another study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government "found that 26 federal agencies were processing fewer FOIA requests, making petitioners wait much longer for responses and releasing less information than they were nine years ago." This week marks Sunshine Week, highlighting the public's right to know what the government is doing. Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) plan to reintroduce legislation that will strengthen FOIA by giving agencies "strong incentives to act on FOIA requests in a timely fashion." It will also "ensure that Internet-based journalists and people who write Web logs are given the same reduced FOIA fees as other members of the press" and will establish a FOIA hotline to track requests.

CORRUPTION -- HALLIBURTON LEAVING HOUSTON TO FOR 'LAISSER FAIR ATTITUDE' OF DUBAI: Halliburton, the oil services giant once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, "will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai." Time Magazine's Karen Tumulty wondered if their were reasons for the move beyond being closer to Mideast oil reserves: "Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts." "Dubai," the Financial Times reports, "has long positioned itself as a regional business hub, with a laisser faire attitude to business regulations." House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chair Henry Waxman is "already planning to hold a hearing" on the move, Tumutly reported. Halliburton has brought the added scrutiny upon itself. In February, Waxman's committee found the U.S. government has wasted $10 billion in Iraq on "overpriced contracts or undocumented costs," and of that amount, more than $2.7 billion were charged by Halliburton. In one especially egregious case, the company "failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused 'mass sickness or death,'" according to an internal company report.

Posted: 6 March 2007

From Grist, "a beacon in the smog".

The Knights Who Say NIH
Health agency reviews bisphenol A safety as controversy swirls

Ignoring the news about bisphenol A? Time to pay attention, cuz the plastic resin is used in everyday products from baby bottles to canned goods and linked to a host of health problems. And with the National Institutes of Health reviewing the safety of BPA this week, a maelstrom is brewing: a major player in the NIH study, Sciences International, is a consultant that has counted BPA makers including Dow Chemical among its clients. The firm issued a report for NIH that some scientists say embraces the industry view that low doses of BPA have no health effects. Of course, that whole "low-dose" thing may be moot: a new study from the Environmental Working Group found levels of BPA in some canned foods as high as 200 times the acceptable level. "This is one of the highest-volume produced chemicals in the world," says Fredrick vom Saal, a Missouri biology professor and BPA researcher. "It's in everybody's bodies, and it's a very potent sex hormone. It's just nuts that it's being used the way it is."

From The Center for American Progress.

CIVIL LIBERTIES -- WHITE HOUSE PRIVACY PANEL RUBBERSTAMPS BUSH SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM: "A White House privacy board has determined that two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs -- electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking -- do not violate citizen's liberties." The five-member panel, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, is preparing to issue a report to Congress next week defending the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program and the Treasury department's monitoring of international banking transactions, calling the programs "properly protective and attentive to civil liberties." The independence of the panel, which is directly tied to the White House and has operated in secret for almost a year, is under question by civil liberties advocates, who assert that the organization is merely a rubberstamp for the Bush administration's domestic agenda. Privacy Board members "serve at the pleasure of Bush, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has final say over whether officials must comply with the board's recommendations." Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) "called it absurd that the board effectively gave the eavesdropping program its stamp of approval even before the administration was forced to backtrack and submit it to court oversight." Rotenberg added that most of the Privacy Board members are not subject to Senate approval, a provision that both the House and Senate are trying to change by subjecting the board to increased Congressional oversight.

Posted: 1 March 2007

From Grist, "a beacon in the smog".

U.S. Department of Energy to grant up to $385 million for cellulosic ethanol

The U.S. plans to sink up to $385 million into cellulosic ethanol, doling out grants for six bio-refineries across the nation. The funds, spread over four years, will cover up to 40 percent of a $1.2 billion push expected to result in annual production of more than 120 million gallons. "Ultimately, success in producing inexpensive cellulosic ethanol could be the key to eliminating our nation's addiction to oil," said Energy Secretary Sam Bodman. The plants, in Iowa, Kansas, Florida, California, Idaho, and Georgia, will use sources ranging from switchgrass and cornstalks to landfill waste and timber scraps. "Cellulosic ethanol is not five or six years away," says the CEO of grantee Alico. "It is almost today." And as the U.S. gropes for the energy-independence grail, says energy consultant Lawrence J. Goldstein, leaders "are throwing money where they ought to be throwing it, because they know they can't get within shouting distance of their goal without a major, quick breakthrough in cellulosic."

Let's see, if women = farm animals.... From The Center for American Progress.

HEALTH CARE -- LAWMAKERS VOW TO BLOCK WHITE HOUSE EFFORT TO DEFUND OFFICE OF WOMEN'S HEALTH: The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Women's Health (OWH) "just had more than one-quarter of this year's $4 million operating budget quietly removed." The office had stood up for scientific research that ultimately led to the approval of the emergency contraceptive Plan B. Because the remaining $2.8 million has already been spent or allocated, the funding cut will "effectively halt further operations for the rest of the year." Yesterday, a group of senators -- Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) -- wrote a letter to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach demanding a halt to the agency's efforts to de-fund the office. The letter stated: "As Congress moves forward with the budget and appropriations process, we will pursue every course to make certain that this funding is restored. We intend to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that the OWH has the resources it needs to safeguard women's health." The Bush administration has done little to promote -- and a great deal to impede -- the functions of the OWH. Susan Wood, the office's former director, resigned in 2005 over the politically-motivated delay surrounding the approval of Plan B. The administration then moved to appoint an "FDA veteran trained in animal husbandry who spent much of his career in the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine" to oversee the office. Fierce opposition caused the administration to reconsider that appointment. Women's health advocates believe the reported funding cuts are "payback" for OWH's stance on Plan B and is the beginning of an effort to shut the office down completely. "We must work together in Congress to sustain funding for the Office of Women's Health so that vital women's health research is not halted for political retribution," Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) said.

But wait, there's more! From The Center for American Progress.

Pushing Out Justice

One of the most "important tenets" of a U.S. attorney's office is to never "mix politics with prosecutions." But it appears that the Justice Department has done just that, recently firing eight well-respected U.S. attorneys and replacing them with partisan Bush administration loyalists. Many of these ousted prosecutors were working on high-profile corruption cases and received high marks on their job evaluations by the Justice Department. All appear to be "victim[s] of strong-arm political pressure from Washington," pushed out to make room for political cronies. At each turn, Justice Department officials have made up different excuses for the firings, from insisting that the prosecutors stepped down on their own to claiming that they were fired for "performance-related" reasons. None of these charges have stood up. A little-noticed provision in the Patriot Act allows these "interim" Bush appointees to serve indefinitely, without Senate approval. Conservative senators are now blocking a repeal of this measure. "I think Americans need to have full confidence that their federal prosecutors are above politics," said one of the ousted prosecutors, David Iglesias, highlighting why it is necessary for all of these Bush appointees to be held up to public scrutiny.

CLAIM #1 -- THEY WERE BAD AT THEIR JOBS: On Feb. 6, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that six U.S. attorneys were fired in Dec. 2006 for "performance-related" reasons. But in reality, these prosecutors were highly respected in their fields and received praise in job evaluations from the Justice Department shortly before they were told to resign. Similarly, at least four of the fired prosecutors said that Michael Battle, head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, never cited performance issues -- or gave any reason at all -- as the reason for their forced resignations. John McKay, the former U.S. attorney in Washington, recounted his conversation with Battle: "When I was composed enough to ask him why [I was being fired], he told me he couldn't answer any of my questions. ... He said nothing about performance issues or management or anything else." In fact, five of these prosecutors had positive job reviews. Just months before firing him, Battle sent McKay a "congratulatory letter for the laudatory report issued by the Justice Department audit team." Daniel Bogden, the former U.S. attorney in Nevada, "was described in his last job performance evaluation in 2003 as being a 'capable' leader who was highly regarded by the federal judiciary and investigators." Former U.S. attorney in California Carol Lam was "'well respected' by law enforcement officials, judges and her staff" in her 2005 evaluation. Paul Charlton, former U.S. attorney in Arizona, was "described as being respected by his staff, federal investigators, judges and Native American leaders for 'his integrity, professionalism and competence.'" A Justice Department official also confirmed that Iglesias "received a positive evaluation last year."

CLAIM #2 -- THEY WEREN'T TEAM PLAYERS: After media reports began revealing that the U.S. attorneys were all given positive job evaluations, the Justice Department changed its excuse for the forced resignations, claiming that the attorneys were rogue prosecutors. "The reviews don't take into account whether the U.S. attorneys carried out departmental priorities," said one official. But as the New York Times noted, "each case report included a statement that each of the ousted prosecutors had established strategic goals set by the Justice Department in high priority areas like counterterrorism, narcotics and gun violence." Bogden said that his office had "done more gun cases, drug cases, gang cases, child exploitation cases, identity theft cases than any office has done in any five year period of time." A Justice Department review of Iglesias's job performance, dated Nov. 2005, concluded that he had a strategic plan that "complied with the department's priorities."

CLAIM #3 -- THERE'S NO COVER-UP: What the ousted prosecutors all have in common -- in addition to strong job evaluations -- is that they were "overseeing significant public-corruption investigations at the time they were asked to leave. Four of the probes target Republican politicians or their supporters." In the case that has received the most attention, Lam oversaw the public corruption case of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, which resulted in his guilty plea and the indictments of a defense contractor and a former CIA official. With Lam's departure, it is unclear whether her successor will continue to pursue the corruption investigation. Similarly, Charlton's office was "investigating charges involving land deals and influence peddling against Republican Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ)," Bogden was "looking into campaign law violations by at least one member of the state's Congressional delegation," and Cummins was investigating Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt (R). Kevin Ryan, the former U.S. attorney in California, wasn't pursuing public corruption, but as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly notes, he likely "stepped on the toes of a number of their [the Bush administration's] most generous contributors with his high profile investigations of back-dated stock options given to numerous executives in major corporations." Iglesias, who was pursuing a federal probe of a kickback scheme, believes he was fired because he "refused to speed up an indictment of local Democrats a month before November's congressional elections." Iglesias "said that two members of Congress called separately in mid-October" and "appeared eager...for an indictment to be issued before the elections in order to benefit the Republicans." "I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," Iglesias noted.

CLAIM #4 -- IT'S NOT POLITICAL: The Justice Department continues to insist that the firings weren't political. "I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons," said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "When I hear you talk about the politicizing of the Department of Justice, it's like a knife in my heart," said McNulty. But the Justice Department itself has admitted that at least one of the U.S. attorneys -- H.E. "Bud" Cummings in Arkansas -- was pushed out to make way for Bush loyalist Timothy Griffin, the former research director at the Republican National Committee and a "37-year-old protege" of Karl Rove. According to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK), the Justice Department originally tried to claim that Cummins resigned on his own, which McNulty later admitted was untrue. Salon notes, "Some former Justice Department officials say they believe the administration's moves are a politically driven power grab -- aimed not only at a tighter grip on policy from Washington, but also at creating openings with which to reward their friends and build up a bench of conservative loyalists positioned to serve in powerful posts in future administrations." Similarly, Sen. John Ensign (R-AZ) was reportedly "told that the decision to remove U.S. attorneys, primarily in the West, was part of a plan to 'give somebody else that experience' to build up the back bench of Republicans by giving them high-profile jobs." Since last March, the administration has named nine U.S. attorneys -- including Griffin -- with Bush administration ties. These appointees include a former counselor to Gonzales and a protege of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

CLAIM #5 -- IT WASN'T DONE TO AVOID CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT: In 2005, a member of Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) staff slipped into the Patriot Act a little-noticed provision that allows the attorney general to appoint replacement U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period of time. Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a measure "that would take away the executive branch's unchecked power on U.S. attorney appointments" and restore the system to the pre-2005 rules. It would allow the attorney general "to appoint a replacement for 120 days, with the district court then stepping in and appointing a new interim U.S. attorney if the Senate has not approved a permanent one." Conservatives are now blocking the full Senate bill, sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Mark Pryor (D-AR). Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) requested an analysis from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) into whether previous administrations have also fired prosecutors without justification, but the Justice Department has refused to cooperate with the investigation, according to the CRS analyst. Today, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on issuing subpoenas to four of the eight dismissed prosecutors and the Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, "will send letters to those fired before voting next week on compelling their testimony." "In order to get the full picture of why these U.S. attorneys were fired, we need to hear from the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys themselves," said Conyers.

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