352 QuickLinks

Saturday, February 25, 2006
Blogs are vital alternative media sources, by Carolyn Kay
(3 comments) There is a huge advantage in having many eyeballs patrolling the sources of information, many minds with many varieties of experience free to express their thoughts in an open forum - discussion that is not chosen and/or edited by people whose living may depend on not offending the powerful ... (Published in the Financial Times, of London)

Sunday, February 19, 2006
Barbara Boxer, Mark Crispin Miller, and others on Barry Gordon From Left Field!
(3 comments) Sen. Barbara Boxer, Mark Crispin Miller, and other great guests will be interviewed on Barry Gordon From Left Field, Sunday, Feb. 19, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time on www.kcaaradio.com on the World Wide Web, and on KCAA 1050 AM in the Inland Empire of California. Listen in and phone in, and tell your family and friends to do likewise. Knowledge is power!

Saturday, February 11, 2006
Jason Leopold & Others Webcast on "Barry Gordon From Left Field"!
(3 comments) Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. Pacific Time, guests on "Barry Gordon From Left Field" will include Jason Leopold, one of the top investigative reporters today, who will discuss his news-breaking article just published by Truthout.org, with hard-hitting revelations from Leopold's sources inside the CIA, NSC, and State Department on Cheney, Libby, and others in the CIA leak investigation; The Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr, minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Texas, and author of "America, Fascism, and God," who will provide refreshingly liberal views from a "heretical" religious perspective; and two couples who met through the Internet and who for Valentine's Day will discuss the risks and rewards of the hot cultural phenomenon of online dating. So catch the webcast, on www.kcaaradio.com, and call in, to 1-800-809-0802. Don't let the Right monopolize the airways!

Sunday, February 5, 2006
Today on "Barry Gordon From Left Field" Progressive Talk Radio
(3 comments) Update! Barry's guests today include Bob Barr, conservative activist and former Republican congressman from Georgia, who will discuss being "political bedfellows" with former Vice President Al Gore, in speaking out against the NSA wiretapping and other abuses of civil liberties by this administration; Corey Robin, author of "Fear: History of a Political Idea," who will talk about the use of fear to manipulate public opinion; and Demtric Collins, music producer, who will talk about his company's new hit CD "Doggie Dog World & Kitty Cat Kingdom," which teaches children to appreciate animal life. So catch the webcast, on www.kcaaradio.com, or the broadcast, in the Inland Empire of California, and call in, to 1-800-809-0802, each Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. PST to let the world know the Left is right!

Saturday, February 4, 2006
(Scathing, Vital) Lessons Learned from the Alito Fight
(3 comments) Final result is that the Democrats have been sorely outplayed. They have switched positions in the middle and criticized their own stance and their own voters. So, when the elections roll around, the Republicans say the Democrats are "flip-floppers" and "wafflers" and "weak." They convince the electorate to vote for them instead because they are strong and mean what they say.

Thursday, February 2, 2006
Bush SOTU Brings to Mind Recent Re-Issue of Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," About Rise of Folksy Fascist
(3 comments) Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here" envisioned an America in thrall to a homespun facist dictator. Newly reissued, it's as unsettling a read as ever. Read the excellent, chilling review in The Boston Globe by Joe Keohane, the editor of Boston's Weekly Dig.

Sunday, January 29, 2006
Waxman et al. Today on "Barry Gordon From Left Field": Progressive Talk Radio
Former president of SAG and candidate for Congress Barry Gordon hosts "Barry Gordon From Left Field" on progressive radio station KCAA 1050 AM, broadcast from the Inland Empire (the fast-growing area east of L.A.) and webcast on http://www.kcaaradio.com/, every Sunday from 2 to 5 pm PST. Today's noted guests are: Rep. Henry Waxman, leading congressional Democrat, who will discuss healthcare and other issues; Quentin D. Young, MD, former physician to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson, Past President of the American Public Health Association, and Chairman of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, who will also discuss healthcare issues; and Terrence Blanchard, jazz trumpeter, film composer, and current Grammy nominee, who will discuss the upcoming awards from The Recording Academy. Listeners are encouraged to phone in. "It's a whole new ballgame!"

Sunday, January 22, 2006
Today on "Barry Gordon From Left Field": Progressive Talk Radio / Webcast
Former president of SAG and candidate for Congress Barry Gordon hosts "Barry Gordon From Left Field" on progressive radio station KCAA 1050 AM, broadcast from the Inland Empire (east of L.A.) and webcast on http://www.kcaaradio.com, every Sunday from 2 to 5 pm PST. Today's noted guests are Author David Heenan, who will discuss his newest book, "Flight Capital," about the "reverse brain drain" that is sending U.S.-educated foreigners and even U.S. citizens back to their ancestral homelands to build up their economies at the expense of our own economic well-being; Steven Gardner, lawyer for the Center for Science and the Public Interest, who will talk about their lawsuit against Viacom, owner of Nickelodeon, and Kellogg Corp., to stop the marketing of junk food to children; and Dianne Bates, entertainment journalist, who will report on the Sundance Film Festival and especially on the new political documentaries that have surfaced there. Listeners are encouraged to phone in ... and let the public know the Left is right!

Sunday, January 15, 2006
Today on "Barry Gordon From Left Field": Progressive Radio Talk Show
Former president of SAG and candidate for Congress Barry Gordon hosts "Barry Gordon From Left Field" on progressive radio station KCAA 1050 AM, broadcast from the Inland Empire (east of L.A.) and webcast on http://www.kcaaradio.com/, every Sunday from 2 to 5 pm PST. Today's noted guests are Douglas Massey, professor from Princeton and author of what Barry believes is one of the most interesting and important books of 2005 -- "Return of the 'L' Word" (as in Liberal) -- and Stephen Farber, online critic for Movieline.com, who will talk about the awards shows and the films in contention for 2005. Listeners are encouraged to phone in ... and let the public know the Left is right!

Sunday, January 8, 2006
New Progressive Radio Talk Show / Webcast: "Barry Gordon From Left Field"
Former president of SAG and candidate for Congress Barry Gordon brings his talk radio show "Barry Gordon From Left Field" to progressive radio station KCAA 1050 AM, broadcast from the Inland Empire (east of L.A.) and webcast on www.kcaaradio.com, every Sunday from 2 to 5 pm PST. Today's noted guests will discuss Ariel Sharon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bush's overreaching and constitutional history, and commitments vs. resolutions for the new year and the rest of your life. Listeners are encouraged to phone in ... and let the public know the Left is right!

Friday, December 30, 2005
"Is Wal-Mart Good For America": "Frontline" Documentary Rebroadcast
Low wages, poor benefits, and worker abuse are the hallmarks of Wal-Mart's business practices, and the retail giant is setting the example for companies all across America. You can learn more about how Wal-Mart's policies send American jobs overseas by watching the rebroadcast of PBS's "Frontline" documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" on Tuesday, January 3. Click here to check local listings to see when the one-hour special -- one of the highest-rated programs in "Frontline" history -- will air in your community. In "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?", correspondent Hedrick Smith examines Wal-Mart as a global force changing the balance of power in the business world and leaving workers behind. You'll hear from an IBEW member who worked at television manufacturer Thomson Industries and see Rubbermaid's equipment auctioned off to Chinese buyers, illustrating how Wal-Mart's strong-arm tactics on suppliers to lower prices have driven jobs from once-solid American companies to low-wage operations overseas. You can learn more about the program on Frontline's website. Don't miss it! -- From UnionVoice.org

Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Fascism then. Fascism now?
(3 comments) When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

Monday, November 28, 2005
"War Based on a Lie": A Letter to the Editor in "Stars & Stripes"
(3 comments) Weapons of mass destruction? I’m still looking for them, and if you find any give me a call so we can justify our presence in Iraq. We started the war based on a lie, and we’ll finish it based on a lie. I say this because I am currently serving with a logistics headquarters in the Anbar province, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. I am not fooled by the constant fabrication of “democracy” and “freedom” touted by our leadership at home and overseas.

Saturday, November 26, 2005
Europe in Uproar Over CIA Operations
(3 comments) From Scandinavia to the tropical Canary Islands, the CIA's clandestine use of European soil and airspace for counter-terrorism missions is triggering outrage, parliamentary inquiries and a handful of criminal prosecutions.

Friday, November 25, 2005
Brownie, You're Doin' a Heck of a Job ... At Cashing In
(3 comments) Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job. [WHO WANTS HIS ADVICE? WHO WOULD INVEST IN THIS COMPANY? WHO DOES HE STILL HAVE INSIDE ACCESS TO? WILL KATRINA SURVIVORS SHARE IN HIS PROFITS? THIS IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHAT IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY]

Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Thanksgiving, from the ground up
(3 comments) Every morsel on the table is a reminder of the value of the land and those who work it.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
GM Closures to Hit 12 Plants, 30,000 Jobs
(3 comments) UAW leaders blasted the latest cutbacks as "disappointing, unfair and unfortunate" and said the company's "continuing decline in market share is not the fault of workers or our communities." "We have said consistently that General Motors cannot shrink itself to prosperity," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Richard Shoemaker said in a statement. The automaker needs to offer vehicles "that consumers find attractive, exciting and want to buy."

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Silver spoons and rusted wrenches
(3 comments) THE AMERICAN auto industry is dead. With General Motors announcing, days before Thanksgiving, 30,000 more layoffs and nine plant closings, the Rust Belt just got the final strike of the sledgehammer. When GM finally goes down for good, all the rusted remains of that region will crumble. ... Those born with silver spoons rarely come to the aid of those born with rusted wrenches. We're either going to continue the ridiculous trend of tax cuts that essentially pad the trust funds of the wealthy or we're going to reinvest in the region that helped the United States win its many wars and made us the world's sole economic superpower. Otherwise, this region will soon rust to dust and ash.

Thursday, November 17, 2005
Hawkish Dem Rep. John Murtha (PA) Calls for Immediate Pullout from Iraq, Blasts Cheney & Bush
(3 comments) "It is time for a change in direction," said Rep. John Murtha ... one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats. "Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region." ... Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." Referring to Bush, Murtha added: "I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he criticized Democrats for criticizing them."

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Class Matters
(3 comments) Two months ago, in his prime-time address from New Orleans, President Bush called upon the nation to "rise above the legacy of inequality." He was joking, obviously. The president's congressional allies now propose to cut Medicaid, food stamps, free school lunches and child-care subsides. They do not propose to save money by undoing the tax cuts that have handed an average of $103,000 a year to people making over $1 million.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Faith and Conscience
(3 comments) President Bush's promises to double foreign aid to Africa and send more money to poor countries with effective governments aren't on track. Let's hope the president hasn't forgotten he made them.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Spoils Go to Party Most Apt to Adapt
(3 comments) Bush's top political goal has always been to mobilize a massive turnout of Republicans by pursuing an unapologetically polarizing agenda, even at the price of straining his relations with moderate voters. ... Bush has seen his approval rating among independent voters fall to an almost unimaginable 29%. ... One fissure [in the Democratic Party] is between those who want to aim at swing voters and those who want to emulate Bush with an agenda intended to excite their base. The more important disagreement is between those who want the party to promote its own ideas and those who want to stay low while Bush is struggling.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Venture of Warner Bros., AOL to Provide Old Television Shows a New Life Online
(3 comments) Time Warner Inc. plans to announce today that it will make more than 100 old television series — including "Falcon Crest," "Kung Fu" and the '70s sitcom that made John Travolta a star, "Welcome Back, Kotter" — available for free in the first major archive of TV shows on the Web.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
This isn't the real America, by Jimmy Carter
(3 comments) IN RECENT YEARS, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican. These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights. Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Bush, The Albatross Around GOP Candidates' Necks; i.e., GOP Rats Desert the Sinking Bush Ship of State
(3 comments) Douglas R. Forrester now says the chief reason for his loss by a wide margin in the race for New Jersey governor is President Bush's unpopularity.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Doing Unto Others as They Did Unto Us
(3 comments) How did American interrogation tactics after 9/11 come to include abuse rising to the level of torture? Much has been said about the illegality of these tactics, but the strategic error that led to their adoption has been overlooked. The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Burn in hell, Mr. President
(3 comments) Polls show most Americans share my distrust of Bush. We all see him for what he is – a dishonest, opportunistic political beast who lets nothing stand in the way of his unbridled lust for power. He speaks of God at one moment and calls those who dare disagree with him “motherfuckers” the next. He has, without blinking an eye, sent more than 2,000 American military men and women, along with countless thousands of Iraqi civilians, to their deaths in a senseless invasion based on manufactured “evidence” and outright lies. Then he has the gall to stand up on the day we set aside to honor those who served and continue to promote his lies and call those who see the truth traitors who aid the enemy.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Playing With Fire
(3 comments) Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation. Do they really have anything left to say?

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Bush Tries to Gag Critics in Veterans Day Speech
(3 comments) In his Veterans Day speech, Bush took the low road. Responding to critics who charge him with manipulating intelligence and hoodwinking the American people into war, Bush said: “It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began.” And then he set about rewriting it.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Right on the run
(3 comments) Unethical – in the polite, understated sense that Carlo Gambino was “unethical” – and incompetent. Those glaring Bush-administration qualities pretty much explain why Democrats walked away with all the goodies in Tuesday’s elections. Those are the qualities against which the electorate protested at the ballot box.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Frist Sells Soul To The Devil
(3 comments) On the way to work at his job on Capitol Hill, Sen. Bill FristÂ’s limo stopped at a traffic light, and the Devil opened the door and joined him on the back seat. ... Without batting an eyelid, Frist got into the Senate chamber and announced that the leaking to the Washington Post of the fact that the CIA had set up secret world-wide torture camps was a far more serious "crime" than the establishment of those very same camps. "There you go, Devil. You owe me ten grand."

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Democrats and the War
(3 comments) Everything that needs to be known is now known: The reasons the Bush Administration gave for the American war in Iraq were all falsehoods or deceptions, and every day the US occupation continues deepens the very problems it was supposed to solve. Therefore there can no longer be any doubt: The war--an unprovoked, unnecessary and unlawful invasion that has turned into a colonial-style occupation--is a moral and political catastrophe. As such it is a growing stain on the honor of every American who acquiesces, actively or passively, in its conduct and continuation.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Radioactive Bush
(3 comments) BushÂ’s unparalleled unpopularity gives ... [Democrats] the opportunity to really stand for something, like getting the troops out of Iraq, like boosting the minimum wage to a livable level, like providing universal health care and free college education, like alleviating poverty. NowÂ’s the time for boldness.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Bush's Conservative Judge Harbors Libertarian Streak
(3 comments) Judge Alito's broad reading of the freedom of speech and press clauses of the First Amendment stands in contrast with his narrower interpretation of other constitutional rights, including the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and the Sixth Amendment's guarantees of fair trial rights for criminal defendants.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Democrats Losing Race For Funds
(3 comments) The Democratic National Committee under Howard Dean is losing the fundraising race against Republicans by nearly 2 to 1, a slow start that is stirring concern among strategists who worry that a cash shortage could hinder the party's competitiveness in next year's midterm elections. ... The explanation most offered by Dean allies for the sluggish start is that donors are tired of giving after watching Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) fail to deliver the White House.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument
(3 comments) President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Woes of Auto Parts Maker Threaten Wages
(3 comments) To the 3,800 plant workers of Lockport, a class war is underway in the auto industry. Many of them believe Delphi's bankruptcy was orchestrated by auto executives to permanently smash the pay scale of working people. There is a sense here that nobody is holding the people in top management accountable. ... if Delphi and its workers don't craft a deal on pay, pensions and benefits, a costly strike looms over the auto industry.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Group Trains Air Force Cadets to Proselytize
(3 comments) A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers. ... The organized evangelization effort has continued this year despite an outcry over alleged proselytizing at the academy that has prompted a Pentagon investigation, congressional hearings, a civil lawsuit and new Air Force guidelines on religion.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
U.S. Orders College to Drop Fellowships For Minorities
(3 comments) Federal prosecutors are threatening to sue Southern Illinois University over three scholarship programs aimed at women and minorities, calling them discriminatory. ... University spokeswoman Sue Davis said Friday that the programs have helped improve the school's diversity and are similar to those at other schools nationwide.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Strategists: Bush Comeback Will Be Tough
(3 comments) "Unless Bush and his advisers do something dramatic to reposition the administration and stop the slide in public approval, they're going to find they have very few friends who want to come to the White House, let alone friends who want them to come to their districts," Light said. "And that's about the worst possible position for a president to be in."

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Keep the Internet Free
(3 comments) Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS's existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
In First for Africa, Woman Wins Election as President of Liberia
(3 comments) Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist and former World Bank official who waged a fierce presidential campaign against the soccer star George Weah, emerged victorious on Friday in her quest to lead war-torn Liberia and become the first woman elected head of state in modern African history. [WHY ARE NO WOMEN PROMINENTLY MENTIONED AS SERIOUS CONTENDERS FOR PRESIDENT IN THE U.S.? SHAME ON US!]

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Centrist Democrats Provided Edge on Detainee Vote
(3 comments) "A foreign national who is captured and determined to be an enemy combatant in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured soldier of the Axis powers during World War II," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Conservative Episcopalians Warn Church That It Must Change Course or Face Split
(3 comments) Conservative leaders of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and their Anglican counterparts from overseas intensified their warnings Friday about the possibility of a schism in the Anglican Communion if the Episcopal Church did not renounce the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Democrats Seek Documents on Abramoff and Bush Meeting
(3 comments) House Democratic leaders called on the White House on Friday to release documents showing whether a powerful Republican lobbyist [Jack Abramoff] had a role in arranging an Oval Office meeting last year between President Bush and the president of the West African nation of Gabon, whose government had been asked by the lobbyist to pay $9 million to help arrange such a meeting.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
'Faith talk' and Tammany Hall [Talk Values but Deliver the Goods]
(3 comments) People are inclined to trust the political judgments made by those who help them in times of need, and in this era of slashed government social programs — replaced in part by grants to "faith-based" providers — it's conservative evangelical ["mega"] churches that now play that role for many struggling Americans.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
Wal-Mart & Its Foes Turn to Religion
(3 comments) Wal-Mart has quietly reached out to church officials with invitations to visit its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to serve on leadership committees and to open a dialogue with the company. Across the aisle, one of the company's chief foes, Wal-Mart Watch, this weekend is launching seven days of anti-Wal-Mart consciousness-raising at more than 200 churches, synagogues and mosques in 100 cities, where leaders have agreed to sermonize about what they see as moral problems with the company.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
U.S., N. Korea Stick to Their Positions in Nuclear Talks
(3 comments) Negotiators didn't expect to resolve the complex issues involved in only three days. Pyongyang and Washington remained far apart on major issues involving North Korea's nuclear weapons program following three days of six-party talks that concluded here Friday. North Korea continued to insist that progress be made by the parties agreeing on "step-by-step measures" in which Pyongyang would be compensated at each juncture. ... The United States, on the other hand, has argued that the focus should be on a complete, verifiable dismantling of North Korea's weapons program.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
On Bush, the Dems, Jon Stewart, Hunter Thompson, Bill Moyers, and King (not Don); by John Cusack
(3 comments) Bush 2. How depressing, corrupt, unlawful and tragically absurd the administration's world view actually is...how low the moral bar has been lowered...and (though I know I'm capable of intellectually lazy notions of collective guilt) how complicit our silence as citizens is...Nixon, a true fiend, looks like a paragon of virtue next to the criminally incompetent robber barons now raiding the present and future. ... This is indeed a league of bastards -- these men are human scum.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Legacy of 42nd President Framed With Barbs at 43rd
(3 comments) Clinton talked at length about his legacy, making the case for his policies on balanced budgets, global peacemaking and even health care -- saying recent history has shown he was right to push for reform even if he made mistakes in the effort.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Oil's Bigwigs Enjoy a Rigged Market
(3 comments) Fundamentally, the energy market isn't really a market -- it is rigged by nationally run oil monopolies that dictate the supply and prices of crude oil, individually within their own borders and globally through the OPEC cartel. In that system, private firms such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron are mere price-takers. But they are also willing free-riders who benefit handsomely from the price-fixing of others.

Friday, November 11, 2005
His Image Tarnished, Bush Seeks to Restore Credibility
(3 comments) Faced with a bleak public mood about Iraq and stung by Democratic accusations that he led the nation into war on false pretenses, President Bush is beginning a new effort to shore up his credibility and cast his critics as hypocrites.

Friday, November 11, 2005
'Wake up, Democrats — it's a new day'
(3 comments) All across the nation, on a host of local issues, Americans demonstrated the polls are true: the Right is wrong for them. This is wonderful news for progressives of all stripes, but there is danger, too, and it's the same danger that has sunk the Left for the last decade: voters didn't vote for Democrats, they voted against Republicans. If the Left wants to duplicate these results in 2006 and take back the Hill, it must respond to this victory not with conciliatory gee-whiz shuffling of feet, but with a full-out charge against the neoconservative agenda.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Is This the End of Bushism?
(3 comments) If we define Bushism as the political project of building a majority coalition, despite a commitment to unpopular policies, based on a superior cultural, national security, and leadership image among voters, that project is now failing.

Friday, November 11, 2005
The President Should Be Held Accountable, by Sen. Ted Kennedy
(3 comments) Earlier this week, several of our Republican colleagues came to the Senate floor and attempted to blame individual Democratic Senators for their errors in judgment about the war in Iraq. It was little more than a devious attempt to obscure the facts and take the focus off the real reason we went to war in Iraq. 150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because ... in his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to al Qaeda justified immediate war.

Friday, November 11, 2005
For book, Carter takes off gloves
(3 comments) Outlining what he called a "profound and unprecedented change in basic American policies" under the Bush administration, Carter said the invasion of Iraq was a moral and political disaster, and has left the United States in more danger from terrorists than before. Tax cuts for the wealthy and proposed spending cuts to social programs have demonstrated an "open and overt commitment to the rich at the expense of the poor," while the Bush administration has sacrificed the environment for business.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Lest We Forget on Veterans Day: The Cuts Proposed for Vets by George "AWOL" Bush
(3 comments) The Bush budget plan slashes benefits for veterans by eliminating funding for state programs that provide veterans with long-term care, more than doubling prescription drug co-payments for some veterans, and requiring them to pay an annual enrollment fee of $250. The Bush plan would also trim nursing home care by $351 million, which would eliminate approximately 5,000 beds in nursing homes run by the Veterans Administration.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Cost of Bush War of Lies: 15,477 Wounded Vets; 2060 Who Will Never Live to be Vets
(3 comments) 10-Nov: Two more U-S soldiers and a Marine have been killed in Iraq. The soldiers died Thursday after being hit by small arms fire about 75 miles west of Baghdad. They were members of a U-S army unit detailed to the Second Marine Division in western Iraq. The Marine was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb. He was taking part in the latest U-S-led push in western Iraq known as Operation Steel Curtain. The goal is to wipe out insurgent strongholds and infiltration routes along the border with Syria.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Administration Uses Lax Dirty Bomb Clean-Up Standards to Justify Lax EPA Standards
(3 comments) "It's outrageous," said Daniel Hirsch, head of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a group that studies nuclear risk. "They are permitting much higher doses than are protective of the public, and appear to be doing so as part of an overall effort to relax public radiation protections." Hirsch referred to a companion proposal, also controversial, that would relax or eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines on allowable radiation exposure from a wide variety of other sources, including nuclear power plants, dumpsites and even airport security devices.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Senate Approves Plan to Limit Detainee Access to Courts
(3 comments) The Senate endorsed a plan yesterday that would sharply limit suspected foreign terrorists' access to U.S. courts, an effort to overturn a landmark 2004 Supreme Court ruling that has allowed hundreds of detainees held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Bush Aide Fires Back at Critics On Justification for War in Iraq
(3 comments) The White House went on the offensive in the debate over the Iraq war yesterday, insisting that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein harbored banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Who Loves Freedom More? by Michael Kinsley
(3 comments) The Constitution is not supposed to be just an obstacle course for officials who are trying to get around it. It ought to inspire policy even when it doesn't impose policy. Ditto the Geneva Conventions. Why would you even want to be clever about reasons it might not apply here or there?

Friday, November 11, 2005
Bush Vigorously Attacks Iraq War Critics
(3 comments) President Bush forcefully attacked critics of the war in Iraq today, accusing them of trying to rewrite history and saying they are undercutting American forces on the front lines.

Friday, November 11, 2005
80% of Seniors Doubt Medicare Drug Benefit
(3 comments) Open enrollment starts in days, but only two in 10 plan to sign up, a survey says. Many appear confused about all the options. ... If doubts harden into disdain, that could force major changes to one of President Bush's most promoted domestic-policy accomplishments.

Friday, November 11, 2005
AP-Ipsos Poll: Most Americans Doubt Bush's Honesty
(3 comments) Almost six in 10 -- 57 percent -- said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest. ... More than eight in 10, 82 percent, described Bush as "stubborn," with almost that many Republicans agreeing to that description.

Friday, November 11, 2005
FDA Issues Warning for Contraceptive Patch
(3 comments) Users of the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch are exposed to more estrogen than from birth control pills so are at higher risk of blood clots and other side effects, the Food and Drug Administration has warned.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Under Pressure from Right, FDA Suggests Warnings for Condoms
(3 comments) Against a background of pressure from social conservatives, the Food and Drug Administration is recommending a new series of labels for condoms, warning that they "greatly reduce, but do not eliminate" the risk of some sexually transmitted diseases. Though little noticed by the general public, the issue of condom labeling has become another battleground in the nation's culture wars.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Some Abortion Foes Unsure About Alito
(3 comments) Some antiabortion groups are starting to wonder whether Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. is as strong an ally of their cause as opponents have depicted him. Although he has been wholeheartedly embraced by most major conservative groups, those whose sole mission is to restrict and prohibit abortion have reservations about the latest Supreme Court nominee as they learn more about his record on the divisive issue.

Friday, November 11, 2005
Rove Says the Tide Is Running in Conservatives' Favor
(3 comments) Karl Rove ... denounced liberal judges Thursday for engaging in "judicial imperialism" and told conservative activists that reform of the federal judiciary was on the way, led by the Supreme Court's new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr. "The wind and tide are running in our favor," Rove said in a speech ... that also predicted Senate confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Friday, November 11, 2005
U.S. Trade Deficit Soars to Record Levels in September
(3 comments) The U.S. trade deficit ballooned to record high levels in September after exports — notably of aircraft — fell and imports surged, the Commerce Department reported today. In other economic news, a widely watched gauge of consumer confidence strengthened this month and the government reported a slightly larger than expected rise in new unemployment claims.

Friday, November 11, 2005
House GOP leaders scuttle budget-cut vote
(3 comments) House Republican leaders scuttled a vote Thursday on a $51 billion budget-cut package in the face of a revolt by moderate lawmakers over cuts to Medicaid, food stamp and student loan programs.

Friday, November 11, 2005
ACLU, NAACP ask Congress to redo voter law
(3 comments) Civil rights activists argued Wednesday that a 2-year-old Supreme Court decision largely wiped out 40 years of progress minorities have made under the Voting Rights Act.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Oil and Grilling Don't Mix
(3 comments) Senators struck a note of populist outrage when they ordered oil executives to appear before the Energy and Commerce committees to explain high fuel prices and record company profits. ... But instead of calling oil executives on the carpet yesterday, senators gave them the red-carpet treatment. ... From the start, the ferocity of the questioning seemed to come in inverse proportion to the amount of industry funds a questioner had received.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Anti-Terror Measure Rejected in Britain
(3 comments) The House of Commons on Wednesday soundly defeated an anti-terrorism measure championed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, dealing him one of the most significant political setbacks of his eight years in office. The lower house of Parliament voted 322 to 291 against a proposal to allow suspects in terrorism cases to be held for as many as 90 days without charge, up from the current 14. It was Blair's first loss in a major vote in that house since he took office in 1997.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
For GOP, 2006 Now Looms Much Larger
(3 comments) In a season of discontent for the White House, Tuesday's election results intensified Republican anxiety that next year's midterm contests could bring serious losses unless George W. Bush finds a way to turn around his presidency and shore up support among disaffected, moderate swing voters.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Congress May Limit Bush's Powers with Patriot Act
(3 comments) Congress edged closer yesterday to limiting some of the sweeping surveillance and search powers it granted to the federal government under the USA Patriot Act in 2001, including a provision that would allow judicial oversight of a central tool of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. ... it would mark another significant setback for the weakened Bush administration as it battles the GOP-controlled Congress over the limits of its powers related to terrorism and the Iraq war.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Democrats Query Nominee On Ethics
(3 comments) Senate Democrats are pressing Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. about his rulings on cases that involved financial companies in which he had investments, a sign that ethics questions may play a role in his confirmation hearing.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
A Party Finds the Right Words
(3 comments) Tuesday's elections will be seen as a rebuke to Bush. But they may be more important as the moment Democrats finally figured out how to talk without embarrassment about God and the practical uses of government.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Kaine Puts Roads at Top of Agenda, Says Virginia GOP's Ads 'Backfired'
(3 comments) Gov.-elect Timothy M. Kaine (D) said yesterday that he will immediately begin a series of town hall meetings across Virginia to rally public support for a legislative battle next year over fixing the state's transportation problems. A day after his victory over Republican Jerry W. Kilgore, Kaine savored the latest Democratic win in a state known for its fidelity to the GOP in recent years. At a morning news conference in Richmond, he declared that voters had rejected the Kilgore campaign's attacks on his record.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
An Important Indictment
(3 comments) The flailing Bush presidency continues to spin off new compelling story lines almost daily; yesterday it was torture, today it's Bush as electoral albatross. It's almost inevitable that the media will let some fall by the wayside. But according to a new Pew Research Center poll, the recent indictment of senior White House aide Scooter Libby is a really big deal: Even more important to the country, for instance, than the 1998 charges that President Bill Clinton lied under oath about Monica Lewinsky. Those, of course, led to Clinton's impeachment.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
War, Spin, & A Little Bit of Everything
(3 comments) The spinmeisters, meanwhile, put out their predictable talking points after Tuesday's elections: Democrats saying their day is coming, Republicans saying the local races meant nothing. Had the outcome been reversed, the party messages would have flipped as well.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Ballot Measures Mostly Draw Scowls From Voters
(3 comments) In this off-year election, voters across the country defeated a range of ballot initiatives — lashing out at ideologically driven arguments and rejecting tax cuts in favor of putting money into infrastructure and education. ... "The issue agenda has shifted from the '90s and early 2000s, when the focus was on lower taxes and limiting government," he said. "Now we are spending most of our time figuring out how to meet essential services." Because of this, "voters are being less ideologically driven —there is less real hostility to government," he said. "At the moment, I think voters are in a pragmatic middle ground."

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Abramoff Allegedly Scammed African President for Meeting with Bush
(3 comments) Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny, according to newly disclosed documents. The African leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, met with President Bush in the Oval Office on May 26, 2004, 10 months after Mr. Abramoff made the offer. There has been no evidence in the public record that Mr. Abramoff had any role in organizing the meeting or that he received any money or had a signed contract with Gabon [notorious for human rights abuses].

Thursday, November 10, 2005
House Shelves Alaska Drilling in Budget Fight
(3 comments) House Republican leaders were forced to jettison a plan for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska on Wednesday night to save a sweeping spending bill, a concession that came one day after the party suffered significant election loses.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Amtrak Fires Its President in Dispute Over Future
(3 comments) Amtrak's board fired the company's president on Wednesday morning, widening a divide between the Bush administration and Congress over the future of the railroad.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Blaming the Messenger
(3 comments) The truth is that the damage is caused by the administration's underlying acts and policies, not by the news media's disclosures, which serve only to hold officials accountable for their actions. It is the secret camps themselves and the abuse and torture of prisoners that smear America's image and jeopardize Americans serving their country, not newspaper articles.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
The Return of Ahmad Chalabi
(3 comments) Mr. Chalabi's record as a double-dealer and unreliable source stretches back for decades. He has long been distrusted by those in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency who know Iraq best. But during the crucial months that the Bush administration was planning the invasion and occupation, Mr. Chalabi became a favorite of pro-war Pentagon and White House officials, largely by telling them what they wanted to hear. It is alarming that the administration is still willing to reward him with such a high-ranking official audience.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Feel the Burn, Girlyman
(3 comments) In the aftermath of the California special election the headlines read, “SCHWARZENEGGER ROUTED”, a most welcome bulletin that for inspirational value ranks a close second to “COULTER DROWNS IN SEWAGE TREATMENT MISHAP”. Yet the most relevant factor is not that He Who Gropes has just been groped. It is the way in which he has been groped that serves as a template for liberal success.

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Pat Robertson: Intelligent design rejection was a vote against God
(3 comments) On today's broadcast of "The 700 Club," Robertson told Dover [PA] residents, "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God." The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network explained, "You just voted God out of your city."

Thursday, November 10, 2005
Oil Company Execs Defend Profits to Senate, With an Assist by the Bush FTC
(3 comments) The head of the Federal Trade Commission said a federal price-gouging law "likely will do more harm than good." "While no consumers like price increases, in fact, price increases lower demand and help make the shortage shorter-lived than it otherwise would have been," FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras told the hearing. "That's an astounding theory of consumer protection," replied Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Deadly Explosions Rock Jordan Hotels
(3 comments) Explosions hit three hotels in the Jordanian capital Wednesday night, and at least 18 people were killed and 120 wounded. A police official said the explosions indicated the involvement of al-Qaida, which has launched coordinated attacks on high-profile, Western targets in the past.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
CIA v. Cheney
(3 comments) Cheney's current situation has the makings of a Greek tragedy in the way he is about to self-destruct. The tragic flaw of overweening arrogance - the Greeks called it hubris - did not begin with Euripides. Nor will it end with the inexorably approaching demise of the vice president and other leaders of the current US administration.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
What America Exports: Paper, Waste and Jobs
(3 comments) In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to generate net new jobs in middle and upper middle class professions. This is a serious economic, social and political problem that receives no attention.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Willie Horton's Swift Boat Crashes In Virginia
(3 comments) Republican Jerry Kilgore's defeat in Virginia is not only a reflection of voter disillusionment with George W. Bush, who swooped in at the eleventh hour for a rally with the gubernatorial hopeful, it marks a stunning repudiation of the GOP's vaunted attack machine. Throughout the campaign, Kilgore avoided the issues Virginians cared about most -- transportation and education -- homing in instead on the character of his opponent, Tim Kaine. This time-tested Republican strategy proved to be a grave miscalculation.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
A Culture Of Lies
(3 comments) If the public had known what White House was planning: handing over public assets to its private benefactors, concentrating wealth and power to secure long-term partisan advantage, and mortgaging the country’s fiscal future and civil liberties to pull it off—we would have long ago seen angry torch-wielding mobs storming the castle.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Bush Suffers a Trifecta of Defeat in Off-Year Election
(3 comments) You can bet the already nervous Republicans who are Busheviks out of fear that Tom DeLay or Karl Rove will blow their knee caps off if they stray from the Politburo (White House) party line are now going to start breaking away out of fear that they will lose their 2006 elections.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Democratic Turncoat Turned Out
(3 comments) St. Paul [MN] A year after Mayor Randy Kelly publicly backed President Bush for re-election, voters here showed they hadn't forgotten -- and weren't in a forgiving mood. Residents of this heavily Democratic city ousted Kelly, electing fellow Democrat and former Council member Chris Coleman by a 70 percent to 30 percent margin.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
PA Evolved, But the World is Still Flat in Kansas
(3 comments) TOPEKA, Kan. — The state Board of Education approved curriculum standards Tuesday that question evolution and redefine science to include concepts other than natural explanations. The board, in a 6-4 vote, recommended that schools teach the "considerable scientific and public controversy" surrounding the origin of life — a dispute most scientists contend exists only among creationists.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Centrist Senators Feel Assured on Abortion After Alito Visit
(3 comments) Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Alito told her he would respect precedent even if he disagreed with the original ruling ... Alito also met privately with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), who emerged from their discussion saying the veteran federal appeals judge had assured him that he considered Roe a precedent that "deserved great respect."

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
The Roots of the Riots in France
(3 comments) The young Muslims living ... outside Paris, Lyon and Marseilles are no less alienated than those living near Amsterdam, Barcelona and London. ... It is ... discrimination, not Islamic fervor, that is seen as sparking the riots. But will some of the fury be focused into jihad? ... these radicalized young people, like any European citizen, would be eligible for visa-free travel to the U.S.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
The Won't-Be-Bullied Pulpit
(3 comments) The rightful role of communities of faith is not to speak and act as though God is in the pocket of the Democratic or Republican parties. Our role is to boldly proclaim the biblical themes of justice for all, peace on Earth, the sacredness of all life and the preciousness and fragility of the environment.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Bush Gambles, Loses Campaigning
(3 comments) Iraq, Katrina, CIA leak, Harriet Miers. Things couldn't possibly get any worse for President Bush. Wait, they just did. Bush put his wispy political prestige on the line in the Virginia governor's race and lost Tuesday when the candidate he embraced in a last-minute campaign stop was soundly defeated ... "Republicans are not so angry at the president that they want to vote for the other guy. They just stayed home," said GOP consultant Rich Galen.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Wag the Damascus?
(3 comments) Military planning for Syria was thus initiated long before the United Nations report implicating the Syrian regime in the February assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a vocal critic of Damascus. And it should be pointed out that much of the new military planning is also related to Syria's overt and clandestine support for the Iraqi insurgency, as well as its continued harboring of former Iraqi Ba'athists and their families.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Central Torture Agency?
(3 comments) Why should we adhere to the Geneva Conventions when our terrorist enemies do not? The answers are simple. First, we have long championed the Geneva Conventions because we want our citizens treated humanely when they are captured. Second, morally it is the right thing to do. If this amendment passes, what weight will our complaints have when other governments use their intelligence services to torture Americans?

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Mr. Kaine's Victory
(3 comments) Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's triumph in Virginia's gubernatorial race is a watershed -- the victory of a Southern Democrat who prevailed despite his principled opposition to the death penalty and his refusal to rule out new taxes.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Report Warned C.I.A. on Tactics In Interrogation
(3 comments) A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Big Builder Sees Slower Home Sales
(3 comments) The nation's largest maker of luxury homes ... said yesterday that soaring home prices appeared to have ended. It was the latest sign that many real estate markets are slowing.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Forget "President Schwarzenegger": Voters Terminate Arnold's Pet Initiatives
(3 comments) There was talk of amending the U.S. Constitution so that a foreign-born citizen could run for president. ... some around the governor ... counseled a rightward shift to put the governor more in the mainstream of the national GOP. ... Polls showed the governor's once-solid bipartisan support steadily eroding throughout the year as his opponents spent tens of millions of dollars in TV ads to tarnish his image ... If Tuesday's early results hold [and they did], it would suggest that Schwarzenegger's celebrity appeal has faded.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Gubernatorial Wins in NJ & VA Show How Dems Can Beat GOP (Stuck with Bush)
(3 comments) Democrats swept gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday, sending new tremors through Republicans worried that President Bush's sagging popularity may drag down the party in next year's midterm elections. ... Especially ominous for Republicans were the results among swing voters in suburban and exurban communities across northern Virginia ... in affluent but socially moderate suburbs ... a backlash against the conservative positions ... on such social issues as gun control, the death penalty and gay adoption ... in the fast-growing exurban communities that have become an increasingly important stronghold for the GOP ... Democrats ... overcome Republican cultural appeals ... with more focused attention to bread-and-butter concerns [such as overdevelopment].

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
More Concerned About the Leak than the Torture, GOP Wants to Investigate CIA Prison Story
(3 comments) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert called Tuesday for a congressional investigation into the disclosure of alleged secret U.S. interrogation centers abroad. The Washington Post reported Nov. 2 on the existence of secret U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe for terror suspects.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Poll: Libby Indictment Hits Major Nerve
(3 comments) Four in five, 79 percent, said the indictment of former Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on perjury and other charges is important to the nation ... [and] 43 percent, now say U.S. and British leaders were mostly lying when they claimed before the Iraq war that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ... That's up from 31 percent who felt in February 2004 that the leaders were lying.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
While Paris Burns
(3 comments) President Jacques Chirac and his ministers ... appear to have no idea what to do and to whom to talk. Their floundering illustrates the deeper problems that underlie the current unrest: a failed approach to absorbing immigrants into society, an out-of-touch political elite and ministers more interested in a presidential election that's still nearly two years away than in coming up with answers for today's literally burning problems.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Bush’s Approval Ratings Will Not Recover – There Will Be No Comeback
(3 comments) Bush isn’t going to make a comeback. He’s fallen and he can’t get up. A comeback presupposes substance and ability. A worthy character who has suffered some setbacks, bad luck or simple human mistakes can make a comeback because he has it in him ... George Bush ... doesn’t have the personality suited for making necessary changes ... Even if he had the inclination to make a change, he doesn’t have the ability. He simply doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. ... there is no polite way to put this – the man is an imbecile.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
So Iraq Was About the Oil
(3 comments) When Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly decried the Bush administrationÂ’s bungling of U.S. foreign policy, the focus of the press coverage was on WilkersonÂ’s depiction of a "cabal" headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that had hijacked the decision-making process. Largely overlooked were Wilkerson's frank admissions about the importance of oil in justifying a long-term U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Syllabus: The Bush-Cheney Ethics Refresher Course
(3 comments) Apparently the new "ethics refresher course" at the White House is going to focus on reminding White House staff that classified information is not supposed to be told to reporters ... Seriously, who in the hell are they kidding? Themselves?

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Compassion's Toll on Society of "Owners" Too Poor to be Sick
(3 comments) That crapshoot called health should never be the dividing line between comfort and poverty. In the United States, a health-industrial complex designed to punish the sick as it cures them is poverty's cruelest recruiter, and the middle class' gathering economic threat.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Wal-Mart's Tax on Us
(3 comments) Wal-Mart, the Alpha Dog of discount stores, has also become the Alpha Hog at the public trough. The phenomenal growth of the world's largest corporation has been supported by taxpayers in many states through economic development subsidies ... The economic impact of these subsidies on small businesses is given a human face in one powerful segment of Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price."

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Yes, They Lied, by William Rivers Pitt
(3 comments) "The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." -- Ari Fleischer, 12/4/2002

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Grokster Calls It Quits on Sharing Music Files
(3 comments) Grokster, a developer of file-swapping software used to trade copyrighted music and movie files, said Monday that it would halt distribution of the software and cut off support for its associated network as part of a landmark settlement with the recording industry and Hollywood studios.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
France Beefs Up Response to Riots
(3 comments) Confronted by the most dramatic social uprising since 1968, the government of France remains largely helpless against gangs of angry youths. The response is being crafted by a lame-duck president and an interior minister and a prime minister who are slugging it out to replace him. While many French leaders depict the rioters as simple criminals, political and social analysts and many French citizens see the fires that are burning across the country as reflecting a growing identity crisis in a nation where social policies have not kept up with rapidly changing profiles in religion, race and ethnicity.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Wider Scope in Prewar Probe Sought
(3 comments) "Comparing public statements with what the intelligence community published does not alone tell the story," [Sen. John D.] Rockefeller [IV (D-W.Va.), the panel's vice chairman,] said in a statement yesterday. "If necessary, we may need to conduct interviews and request supporting documents." Rockefeller warned that "if the committee is denied testimony or documentation, we must be prepared to issue subpoenas."

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
GOP Budget Cuts Face Varied Opposition
(3 comments) House Democrats have compiled lists of committee votes for cuts to agriculture, student aid, child support and health care programs, as well as for oil drilling in the Alaska refuge, that Democratic leaders vow to use in next year's midterm congressional elections. "This is going to test whether moderate Republicans are really moderate," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "There are a ton of people who will have a day of reckoning coming."

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Blair Failed In Dealing With Bush, Book Says
(3 comments) Prime Minister Tony Blair was so "seduced" by the "proximity and glamour of American power" that he failed to use his leverage with President Bush to slow the rush to war with Iraq, Britain's former ambassador to the United States has written in a new book ... "DC Confidential."

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
No More Blank-Check Wars
(3 comments) Requiring Congress to declare war, rather than just approve or authorize the president's decision to take troops into combat, would make it much harder for Congress to duck its responsibilities. The president would be required to give Congress an analysis of the threat, specific war aims with their rationale and feasibility, general strategy and potential costs. Congress would hold hearings, examine the information and conclude with a full floor debate and solemn vote.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Conservatives Also Irked by IRS Probe of Churches
(3 comments) The IRS threat to revoke the tax-exempt status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena because of an antiwar sermon there during the 2004 presidential election is part of a larger, controversial federal investigation of political activity at churches and nonprofit groups.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Lying with Intelligence
(3 comments) Bush exploited the worldwide horror felt over the 9/11 attacks to justify the Iraq invasion. His outrageous claim, repeated over and over before and after he dragged the nation into an unnecessary war, was never supported by a single piece of credible evidence. The Bush defense of what is arguably the biggest lie ever put over on the American people is that everyone had gotten the intelligence wrong. Not so at the highest level of U.S. intelligence, as DITSUM No. 044-02 so clearly shows. How could the president not have known?

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Deadliest Suicide Bombing Against G.I.'s in Months Kills 4 in Iraq
(3 comments) In Washington, the Pentagon announced planned troop rotations that would leave a force of at least 92,000 in Iraq through 2008, though officials emphasized that the numbers could change ... Suicide car bombings against American soldiers are rare, and the attack underscored the increasing skills of insurgents here.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
Energy Companies Feel the Heat on the Hill
(3 comments) With voters fuming about high fuel prices, two Senate committees want answers from oil company executives about why they are ringing up record profits. Senior officials from ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, BP America and Shell Oil Co. are to appear tomorrow before a joint hearing of the Energy and Commerce committees, to try to deflect a push by Republicans as well as Democrats for anti-price-gouging legislation, including a windfall profits tax.

Monday, November 7, 2005
'Bush doing corporate bidding while on the clock
(3 comments) Among Latin Americans, polls show George W Bush to be the most unpopular American president in history. On November 3, 2005, the Argentine daily reported the results of a poll that showed 6 out of ten Argentines opposed Bush's presence in their country.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Bush's Wall of Shame
(3 comments) Somewhere in this world of ours there should be at least one Wall of Shame (and perhaps an adjoining Wall of Cronyism) for an administration which has heaped favor, position, and honors on those who have blundered, lied, manipulated, and broken the law (not to say, cracked open the Constitution and the republic). Here is just a sampling of the band of culprits who might appear on such a wall and but a few of the things for which they might be held accountable:

Monday, November 7, 2005
10 Officers Shot as Riots Worsen in French Cities
(3 comments) Rioters fired shotguns at the police in a working-class suburb of Paris on Sunday, wounding 10 officers as the country's fast-spreading urban unrest escalated dangerously. Just hours earlier, President Jacques Chirac called an emergency meeting of top security officials and promised increased police pressure to confront the violence.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Delays Hurting U.S. Rebuilding in Afghanistan
(3 comments) ...the United States hopes to withdraw 4,000 soldiers from the country's south next spring; a drop in overall foreign aid is expected; and Taliban attacks are rising ... Government ministers here say that the foreign consultants and contractors the Americans pay for are producing shoddy work and achieving little - though charging dearly.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Bush declares: 'We do not torture'
(3 comments) Bush supported an effort spearheaded by Vice President Dick Cheney to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed ban on torture ... "We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding ... Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture," Bush said. [So why oppose a law vs. torture?]

Monday, November 7, 2005
Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Military Tribunals
(3 comments) The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a challenge to the Bush administration's military tribunals for foreign terror suspects, a major test of the government's wartime powers.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Military backs down, will carry Ed Schultz Show overseas
(3 comments) Armed Forces Radio has decided to include the Ed Schultz Show in overseas programming ... The Department had intended to begin carrying Schultz's show earlier, but that deal was put on hold after Schultz's remarks. Several Democratic senators [encouraged by public email campaigns] then wrote to officials in the Defense Department ... Schultz will share the airwaves with conservative radio maven Rush Limbaugh.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Antiwar Sermon Brings IRS Warning
(3 comments) The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election.

Monday, November 7, 2005
We Americans are like recovering addicts after a four-year bender
(3 comments) Bush made his white constituency feel good about themselves, but no longer. Citizens are rediscovering democracy

Monday, November 7, 2005
Evaluations, Cronyism and Pay
(3 comments) [A discussion of] the Bush administration's goal of replacing the General Schedule pay system with one that more strongly links pay raises to annual performance evaluations at all federal agencies ... a common employee fear about the proposed system ... [is] that managers will slant annual evaluations to reward favored workers ...

Monday, November 7, 2005
Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy ... And Becomes Isolated
(3 comments) Increasingly, however, Cheney's positions are being opposed by other administration officials, including Cabinet members, political appointees and Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the administration on all matters concerning terrorism.

Monday, November 7, 2005
What Are We Holding Together?
(3 comments) As Yugoslavia broke up in 1991, the first Bush administration put all its diplomatic muscle into a doomed effort to hold the country together, and it did nothing to stop the coming war. We should not repeat that mistake in Iraq.

Monday, November 7, 2005
Don't Count on a Filibuster: Alito Charms Senate Dem's, "Defies" Labels
(3 comments) Although liberal activists are portraying Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as a right-wing extremist, his 15 years' worth of legal opinions do not promise fealty to any ideology. Though many of his rulings favor business or prosecutors, they are often narrow — and a sizable number cut the other way. Accordingly, Democrats in the Senate are cautious, and there is little or no talk of a filibuster. "My instinct is that we should commit" to an up-or-down vote, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Sunday ... "He isn't Robert Bork," said a top aide to a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee ...

Monday, November 7, 2005
Bust Strategy to Get Out of Hole: Historical Precedents etc.
(3 comments) Calling for more cuts "was the biggest political adjustment he's made in months and will pay the biggest dividends if he follows through," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Ousted from PBS, Rove Crony Investigated for Corruption at Voice of America
(3 comments) Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees ...

Saturday, November 5, 2005
High Prices for Energy Hold Down Job Growth
(3 comments) Job growth was surprisingly meager last month, the Labor Department reported yesterday, in a sign that business executives have become worried that the economic damage from high energy prices might be growing.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Alito: Permissive on Copyright & Wiretaps
(3 comments) "... he takes a limited view of copyright, which could bode well for tech companies, as well as a permissive approach toward electronic surveillance by police."

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Some in GOP Regretting Pork-Stuffed Highway Bill
(3 comments) ... with spiraling war and hurricane recovery costs, the pork-laden bill has become a political albatross for Republicans, who have been promising since President Bush took office to get rid of wasteful spending.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Evidence Mounts, Tying Top GOP Lobbyist to Interior Dept. Official
(3 comments) The Justice Department is investigating [Jack] Abramoff's practices, focusing on tribal clients that paid him and a public relations associate $82 million between 2001 and 2003. Investigators are examining whether executive branch officials or members of Congress and their staffs did favors for the lobbyist for campaign contributions, jobs or trips.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Credentials Are Fine, but Values Matter, Too
(3 comments) Lawyers and jurists such as ... John Davis and Robert Bork (and possibly Chief Justice John Roberts and Judge Samuel Alito?) ... are brilliant and have a feeling for the law. But what about a feeling for justice? Do they even see injustice? And if so, do they believe that the power of the Supreme Court should be used to remedy injustice? Do they read the Constitution generously?

Saturday, November 5, 2005
The Republicans' Gathering Storm
(3 comments) In 1994, Democrats were hit with the political equivalent of "the perfect storm" which enabled Republicans to pick up 62 House and Senate seats and seize control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 42 years. For today's beleaguered Republicans watching the gathering clouds anxiously, the good news is that the forecast does not call for another perfect storm in 2006. The bad news is that, instead, they face something much worse.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Torture: It's the new American way
(3 comments) During the Cold War, we thought we knew what distinguished us from our Soviet bloc enemies. We did not have a gulag; we did not imprison and torture our enemies. But the war on terror has distorted our national values. We have used some of the same tactics we once decried. The Soviet Union's legacy of terror lives on, its tactics embraced by some of our leaders. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to insist that the McCain amendment, which prohibits U.S. personnel from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, should not be applicable to the CIA. Somewhere in Moscow's Novodevichyi cemetery, Khrushchev is probably laughing inside his grave.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Democrats Move to Exploit Iraq Missteps
(3 comments) Outnumbered on Capitol Hill, Democrats are embracing the little power they have in the GOP-controlled House and Senate by using procedural techniques to highlight Iraq troubles and issue blistering critiques of Bush's war policies.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
U.N. Audit: Halliburton Owes Iraq a Refund for Poor Work, Price Gouging
(3 comments) "The Bush administration repeatedly gave Halliburton special treatment and allowed the company to gouge both U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people," Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, said in a statement on the new audits. "The international auditors have every right to expect a full refund of Halliburton's egregious overcharges."

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Alito: Favoring Big Business at Expense of Workers & Investors
(3 comments) His extensive paper trail of 15 years of opinions reveals a jurist deeply skeptical of claims against large corporations ... with few exceptions, he has sided with employers over employees in discrimination lawsuits and in favor of corporations over investors in securities fraud cases.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Bush administration's moral compass is lost
(3 comments) Mired in political corruption of one variety or another, hamstrung (economically and spiritually) by an unjust war, and publicly shamed by the most despicable display of institutionalized racism since the slave era, as demonstrated in the unforgivably inept early response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has lost whatever moral voice it might have had ... The immorality (by any religious tradition's measure) of the proposed $50 billion budget reconciliation package is brazen. If enacted, it would prove only to increase the suffering of the already-struggling poor, including tens of thousands who lost everything along the Gulf Coast. Maybe immoral isn't the appropriate word. Downright evil is a better description.

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Alito: An Overall Record in Support of Discrimination
(3 comments) "Alito has been a judge a long time, and it would be incorrect to say that he always rules against victims of discrimination," Chemerinsky said. But he added: "Overall, his rulings are far more for defendants than for plaintiffs in discrimination cases. There are many more troubling decisions than encouraging ones in trying to predict where Alito would be as a Supreme Court justice in discrimination cases."

Saturday, November 5, 2005
Senators Take On Bush With Torture Ban Proposal
(3 comments) "If necessary — and I sincerely hope it is not — I and the cosponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails," McCain said on the Senate floor. "Let no one doubt our determination."

Friday, November 4, 2005
A Cheney-Libby Conspiracy, Or Worse? Reading Between the Lines of the Libby Indictment, by John Dean
(3 comments) Indeed, when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Faith and Fraud, by Jonathan Schell
(3 comments) A factitious picture of the world built up by the Bush Administration over its five years in power is now going to pieces before our eyes. Great jagged spikes of reality, like the crags of the iceberg that ripped open the staterooms of the Titanic, are tearing into it on all sides. The disrespected world of facts, an exacting master, is putting down this governmental insurrection against its ineluctable laws.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Governors chafe at greater military role
(3 comments) Several governors are fuming over a Bush administration suggestion that the active military take a greater role in disaster response, calling it an attempt to usurp state authority over National Guard units ... "I'm going to stand up among a bunch of elected governors and say, 'Are we going to allow the military without a shot being fired to effectively do an end-run coup on civilian government? Are we going to allow that?'" [Montana Gov. Brian] Schweitzer said. "We're going to have a little civics lesson for some leaders who are apparently out of touch in the military."

Friday, November 4, 2005
As Thousands Protest in Streets, Bush Makes Deals in Argentina
(3 comments) MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina -- A crowd of 10,000 protesters chanting "Get out Bush!" swarmed the streets of this Argentine resort today, hours before the hemisphere's leaders sat down to debate free trade, immigration and job creation ... Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ... [said] he was "inspired" by the protesters, who ... oppose the U.S.-led negotiations to form a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to Argentina ... But Bush seemed to be winning over supporters ... 28 of the 34 countries participating in the summit had [reportedly] agreed [behind closed doors] to relaunch trade talks as early as April.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Congress & Administration Eliminate Crucial Habitat Protections
(3 comments) The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would eliminate federally protected critical habitat on 150 million acres of largely undeveloped public and private land. The Senate could act on the legislation by year's end. But even without legislative action, the Bush administration is eliminating critical-habitat designations around the country.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Do More Work, Earn Less Pay: "Productivity Up, Labor Costs Drop"
(3 comments) U.S. workers in recent years have been pressed to produce more, although often for modest wage increases that have helped keep their employers' costs down ... U.S. business productivity — measuring worker output per hour — surged at an annual rate of 4.1% in the July-to-September period, the Labor Department reported. It was the strongest increase in more than a year and far surpassed expectations. Meanwhile, unit labor costs — what it costs businesses to produce a given output for a set amount of labor — declined at an annual rate of 0.5% in the quarter, the department said. It was the first drop in this key indicator of corporate profitability since the second quarter of 2004.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents Identified
(3 comments) [According to Gen. Nicolo Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, which has been accused of having been the source of the forged documents] ... an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino ... [was] the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program ... Mr. Martino ... [was reportedly] a former intelligence informer who had been "kicked out of the agency" ... News reports have quoted him as saying he obtained them through a contact at the Niger Embassy here [Italy] ... the false documents were [reportedly] produced and disseminated by one or more people for personal profit ...

Friday, November 4, 2005
Former Head & GOP "Monitor" of PBS Removed from Its Board
(3 comments) Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the former head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was forced to step down as a member of its board on Thursday evening. The move came after the board began reviewing a confidential report by the inspector general of the corporation into accusations about Mr. Tomlinson's use of corporation money to promote more conservative programming.

Friday, November 4, 2005
DeLay Asked Lobbyist Abramoff to Raise Money Through Charity
(3 comments) Representative Tom DeLay asked the lobbyist Jack Abramoff to raise money for him through a private charity controlled by Mr. Abramoff, an unusual request that led the lobbyist to try to gather at least $150,000 from his Indian tribe clients and their gambling operations, according to newly disclosed e-mail from the lobbyist's files.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Senate Passes Budget With Benefit Cuts and Oil Drilling
(3 comments) Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said, "This bill is a reflection of the Republican Congress's commitment to pursue a path of fiscal responsibility." It will, Mr. Gregg said, reduce the deficit and save roughly $35 billion over the next five years. Democrats said the savings would disappear and the deficit would increase if Republicans carried out their plan to cut taxes by $70 billion later this year.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Dressed for Success, Primed for Failure
(3 comments) Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Brownie fretted about his attire while New Orleans drowned. This would make a great sitcom if the results weren't so tragic.

Friday, November 4, 2005
Bush Arrives for Hemispheric Summit, Planning to Pitch Free Trade
(3 comments) MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina ... The Bush administration had hoped the meeting would help revive stalled plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, a zone that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina ... Across the region, half a dozen populist leaders have been elected in recent years, often supported by constituencies that blame U.S.-backed economic policies, private investment and international trade as sources of continued poverty and widening income disparities.

Friday, November 4, 2005
First the CBS News Poll, Now the WP-ABC News Poll: Most Don't Trust Bush
(3 comments) For the first time in his presidency a majority of Americans question the integrity of President Bush, and growing doubts about his leadership have left him with record negative ratings on the economy, Iraq and even the war on terrorism, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows. On almost every key measure of presidential character and performance, the survey found that Bush has never been less popular with the American people. Currently 39 percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 60 percent disapprove of his performance in office -- the highest level of disapproval ever recorded for Bush in Post-ABC polls.

Friday, November 4, 2005
In Louisiana, Worker Influx Causes Ill Will
(3 comments) "People from other states, we appreciate their help," said Aubrey D. Cheatham, a union electrician from New Orleans who believes he lost a job to lower-paid workers from outside Louisiana. "But everybody else is getting work, not us."

Friday, November 4, 2005
StopTheNRA E-Mail Campaign vs. "Machine Gun Sammy" Alito
(3 comments) The same White House that just last week gave special legal protection to the gun industry, that refuses to bar terrorists from buying guns, and that broke a campaign promise and put Uzis and AK-47s back on America's city streets ... [now] nominate[s] "Machine Gun Sammy" to the highest bench in the land! In 1996, when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the authority of Congress to ban fully automatic machine guns, Judge Samuel Alito dissented. Yes, he voted to loosen the restrictions on machine guns. Click the Headline Link (above) & E-Mail your senators vs. Alito!

Friday, November 4, 2005
More People Now Believe in Aliens on Earth Than Approve of Bush in White House
(3 comments) Dick Cheney ... has a 19 percent approval rating. How low is 19 percent? ... [he] is now 18 points behind the number of people who believe alien beings have secretly contacted the U.S. government ... Scottie McClellan, however, can still spin things: Bush only trails the aliens by two points.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Senate backs drilling in Alaska refuge
(3 comments) Senate opponents to drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge failed Thursday to strip the measure from a massive budget package as supporters of exploration argued that the oil is needed to help break America of its import habit. Environmentalists, who believe strongly the refuge should continue to be off limits to oil companies to protect the area's wildlife, had acknowledged that it was a long shot to get the provision killed and now are concentrating on defeating the overall budget bill.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Behind the Scenes for the Alito Hearings: Gang of 14 Sticks Together
(3 comments) A bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers met privately to discuss the appointment. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., told reporters there was a "sense that we're still together and keeping this a civil and orderly process at this point."

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Alito could shift Court on major issues
(3 comments) ... Alito ... is expected to bring a more reliably conservative approach to areas that O'Connor has influenced: abortion restrictions, the death penalty, campaign finance, affirmative action and states' rights. The shift could be abrupt.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Inside the bunker
(3 comments) Hostage to his failed fortune, Bush is a prisoner of the right. His administration has become its own republic of fear.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Administration's Flu Plan Gets Mixed Reception in Congress
(3 comments) The Bush administration's long-awaited plan to deal with the threat of pandemic flu received a mixed reception on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as senators chided top health officials as taking too long and questioned their spending priorities.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Goodbye, My Sweet Deduction
(3 comments) many economists say the real estate subsidy is one of the tax code's most unfair features, overwhelmingly benefiting the affluent and pulling investment from the rest of the economy into the housing sector. But for millions of homeowners, what no doubt matters most about the plan is how it affects their bottom line. And for many of them, especially those living in houses in expensive markets in California and the Northeast, the answer is clear: If it becomes law, the value of their homes will almost certainly fall.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
The Prison Puzzle
(3 comments) The rigid ideologues blocking ... reform say the Geneva Conventions banning inhumane treatment are too vague. Which part of no murder, torture, mutilation, cruelty or humiliation do they not understand?

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Rove's Future Role Is Debated
(3 comments) If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame ... Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe ...

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Senate's Closed-Session Move Borne Out of Daschle's Strategy
(3 comments) It took Democrats about five seconds to trigger the parliamentary move that forced the Senate into a rare closed session this week, but it was more than a year in the planning ... Reid's aides said yesterday that their boss decided on the dramatic, attention-grabbing ploy because he was weary of GOP foot-dragging on a promised inquiry by the Senate intelligence committee into the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq. "We'd had enough press conferences and requests, public and private," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "Now it was time to act."

Thursday, November 3, 2005
"Compassionate Conservatism" at Work: Food Stamp Cuts Are On Table
(3 comments) House Republicans are pushing to cut tens of thousands of legal immigrants off food stamps, partially reversing President Bush's efforts to win Latino votes by restoring similar cuts made in the 1990s. The food stamp measure is just one of several provisions in an expansive congressional budget-cutting package that critics say unfairly targets the poor and disadvantaged, especially poor children.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Libby Pleads Not Guilty to Charges in Leak Case
(3 comments)

Thursday, November 3, 2005
A War Without Winners
(3 comments) One could almost forgive President Bush for waging war under false or mistaken pretenses had a better, more democratic Middle East come out of it ... From here, it looks like a war that is already going badly for America could go even worse for much of the Middle East. Mission accomplished?

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Open Up, Mr. President
(3 comments) You have let official secrecy become an end in itself, a positive value rather than a necessary evil to be used sparingly in an open society. It is not surprising that your White House distrusts and/or despises the media, the CIA, the State Department's career officers, the United Nations and a host of other institutions that you could not control, but that you could not accept that you could not control. Like most paranoia, yours is not totally unfounded: People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
President Pushover
(3 comments) Certainly there can be no greater sin in a sizable bloc of sitting senators using long-standing Senate rules [the filibuster] to stymie a nomination than a cabal of outsiders -- a lynching squad of right-wing journalists, self-sanctified religious and moral organizations, and other frustrated power-brokers -- rolling over the president they all ostensibly support. But the message that has been sent is that this president is surprisingly easy to roll.

Thursday, November 3, 2005
Democrats Seek a Shift to Issues That Will Favor Them
(3 comments) "We are going to assert ourselves," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Senate Democratic campaign effort and one of those involved in mapping out the surprise floor attack on Republicans. "What has given us new vigor in this is we think the American people are on our side."

Thursday, November 3, 2005
CBS News Poll: How Low Can Bush Go?
(3 comments) President Bush's job approval has reached the lowest level yet. Only 35 percent approve of the job he's doing [57% disapprove] ... [As for] Vice President Cheney ... his favorable rating is down ... to just 19 percent ... 51 percent say the CIA leak is of great importance to the nation ... 64 percent say the result of the war with Iraq wasn't worth the loss of American life and the war's other costs ... 68 percent say things in the U.S. are pretty seriously off on the wrong track ...

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Clinton Joins Thousands to Honor Parks
(3 comments) A soaring rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" moved thousands of mourners at the funeral of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks on Wednesday, with a preacher bidding: "Mother Parks, take your rest" ... The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry," said Clinton [who] ... once presented Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom ... The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has called Parks "the mother of a new America," was also to speak. Aretha Franklin was preparing to sing ... "There will never be another Rosa Parks," said Moses Fisher, a Detroit native ...

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
(3 comments) The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba ... It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Remember That Mushroom Cloud?
(3 comments) ... there is a much larger issue than the question of what administration officials said about Iraq after the invasion - it's what they said about Iraq before the invasion. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, may have been grandstanding yesterday when he forced the Senate to hold a closed session on the Iraqi intelligence, but at least he gave the issue a much-needed push.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Jobs and Joblessness on the Gulf Coast
(3 comments) In the months since Katrina, plans to increase unemployment aid have flitted across Congress's legislative radar screen, only to vanish as Republican lawmakers prepare to push a $70 billion tax cut package, much of it to benefit millionaire investors.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Microsoft Introduces Web Services, Competing With Google and Yahoo
(3 comments) Microsoft introduced on Tuesday two new advertising-supported Web services, Windows Live and Office Live, as a direct response to the formidable challenges posed by its major competitors, Google and Yahoo. The new online initiatives will deliver services to businesses and consumers directly via the Web, in many cases, without the need to download the applications to a computer. As such, they are an important step in extending Microsoft's reach beyond the desktop PC to smart phones and other Internet-connected devices.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
The Fed Lifts Rates Again, Despite Rise in Fuel Price
(3 comments) Undaunted by back-to-back hurricanes and higher oil prices, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates on Tuesday for the 12th time in a row and made it clear that more increases were on the way.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
F.D.I.C. Chairman Picked to Oversee Gulf Recovery
(3 comments) This appointment is business as usual and shows that the gulf recovery is not a top priority for the president," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "Mr. [Donald E.] Powell may be an accomplished banker and political fund-raiser, but according to the administration, he has no disaster recovery experience. I find this terribly troubling, especially given the tragic missteps of Michael Brown."

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Big Drop in October for Detroit
(3 comments) October, which is the start of the new model year, used to be a month for the auto industry to celebrate. This year, it was a month for Detroit to forget. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler held their lowest shares of the American market ever last month. Sales fell in the wake of high gasoline prices, fears about the economy and consumer resistance to buying cars without the big discounts the companies offered this summer.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
G.O.P. Reaches to Other Party on Supreme Court Pick
(3 comments) Facing deep Democratic skepticism over the choice of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, the Bush administration turned quickly to moderate Democrats who could be crucial to the confirmation as the two sides braced for a polarizing fight over Judge Alito's legal views.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
BIGGER THAN WATERGATE: Bush-Cheney Traitors Deserve Prison, Impeachment
(3 comments) To weigh the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame against historical standards, consider that no leader of the Soviet Union--including that master of ruthlessness, Josef Stalin--ever arranged for the name of a KGB operative to appear in a newspaper.

Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Congress must investigate lies, leaks
(3 comments) Did the Bush White House, in a deliberate and organized manner, misrepresent the truth to Congress, the American people and the world in making its case for the military invasion of Iraq? This is a critical question that demands a clear answer. To this point, Congress has abdicated its responsibility to investigate all the facts. That must change.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room
(3 comments) Wal-Mart is taking a page from the modern political playbook. Under fire from well-organized opponents who have hammered the retailer with criticisms of its wages, health insurance and treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has quietly recruited former presidential advisers, including Michael K. Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan's image-meister, and Leslie Dach, one of Bill Clinton's media consultants, to set up a rapid-response public relations team in Arkansas.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Labor Dept. Is Rebuked Over Pact With Wal-Mart
(3 comments) The Labor Department's inspector general strongly criticized department officials yesterday for "serious breakdowns" in procedures involving an agreement promising Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before labor investigators would inspect its stores for child labor violations.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Bush Calls for $7.1 Billion to Prepare for Bird Flu Threat
(3 comments) [Relenza and Tamiflu, to relieve flu symptoms, will be stockpiled along with vaccine, to prevent bird flu. Although those moves are generally applauded, it is worth noting that Tamiflu is made by the company for which Donald Rumsfeld worked and in which he reportedly still owns stock.]

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Dems Should Target GOP, Not "Bush" -- Starting with Alito's Nomination
(3 comments) GOP to Moderate America: Drop Dead. If Democrats are going to build a winning strategy from recent events they need to starting thinking strategically rather than tactically. That means getting away from personalities and targeting the Republican Party as an institution and an ideology ... The Democratic message on Alito now needs to be clear, consistent, and unanimous: He's an extremist nominee from a Party that's been turned over to extremists.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Democrats Force Senate Into Closed Session Over Iraq Data
(3 comments) Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue. "They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Democratic leader Harry Reid said ... "The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," said Majority Leader Bill Frist. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas," the Republican leader said.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
October 2005: One of the Bloodiest Months of the War
(3 comments) The military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers and marines near Baghdad on Monday, making October the fourth deadliest month for troops here since the war began ... The attacks brought the number of Americans killed in October to 92, the highest monthly toll since January ... Iraqi casualties have also risen ...

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Panel Recommends Major Tax Law Changes
(3 comments) President Bush's advisory commission on taxes unanimously recommended a vastly simplified tax system today that would limit the deduction of interest payments on large mortgages and erase other tax breaks that many Americans enjoy. The general outline of the recommendations has been public for two weeks, and the response throughout the government to the panel's final report today was less than enthusiastic.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Cable news coverage of Alito nomination skewed right
(3 comments) CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News provided imbalanced coverage of the October 31 nomination of federal appeals court judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court -- Republicans, conservatives, and pro-Alito guests dominated the networks' coverage; far outnumbering Democrats, progressives, and Alito critics. Media Matters for America analyzed the cable news networks' October 31 coverage of the nomination from 7 a.m. to noon ET.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
The Supreme Court Battle Shapes Up
(3 comments) "This appointment clearly moves the debate out of the gray and into the black and white," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a leading social conservative group. "This is an important moment in American history that has been decades in the making" ... "If confirmed," [Ralph] Neas [president of People for the American Way] said, "Samuel Alito could literally be a walking constitutional amendment undoing precedents that go back to the 1930s" ... But one Republican strategist [said,] "Democrats won't light a firestorm in the country, and they won't light a firestorm in the Senate." [DON'T COUNT ON IT]

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Alito Befriends Big Business at Expense of Workers & Consumers
(3 comments) ... the sole dissenter in a 1996 case involving a female hotel employee who had complained of sexual harassment ... [and] Alito opposed federal rules against anti-competitive practices ... [and] Alito said Congress went too far in passing the Family and Medical Leave Act ... [and] "Alito gives every indication that he will be a strong ally for business interests on the court ... He will be swimming in the deep right of the court's pool on business questions."

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Supreme Court Showdown: Democratic "Moderates" Capitulate?
(3 comments) Democrats and Republicans predicted that Alito's fate would probably be decided by the so-called Gang of 14 — senators from both parties who cobbled together a compromise in May that averted a showdown over judicial nominees ... Privately, senior Democratic staff members doubted that the seven moderate Democrats in the Gang of 14 would consider Alito's strongly conservative record — or the fact that his ascension to the court could tip its balance — as the sort of extraordinary circumstances that would allow them to support a filibuster. "I don't think Democrats are going to say filibuster unless they are sure they want to filibuster and they have the votes."

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
How This Supreme Court Battle Might Be Won
(3 comments) 1) Mobilize for a fillibuster ... 2) Prepare for the Nuclear Option ... 3) Publicize your own shortlist ... 4) Expose this gambit for exactly what this is ... 5) Expose the nomination for what it is ... 6) Keep this fight as short as humanly possible.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005
SaveTheCourt.org -- Petition vs. Alito from People for The American Way
(3 comments) * Read our release on Judge Alito's nomination * Read a brief overview of Judge Alito * Read our 24-page preliminary report on Judge Alito * Read about the Radical Right's reaction to the nomination. * Read what others are saying about Judge Alito. * SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP ALITO

Monday, October 31, 2005
Detailed Preliminary Report on Alito, from Alliance for Justice
(3 comments) Judge Alito is the leading conservative voice on the Third Circuit. His ideological similarity to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has earned him the nickname "Scalito." According to the National Law Journal, Judge Alito "is described by lawyers as exceptionally bright, but much more of an ideologue than most of his colleagues." Despite President Bush's suggestion that he values judges who are "restrained" and understand the limited role of the courts, Judge Alito has aggressively sought to curb Congress' legislative authority to tackle issues of national importance ... Nominated to be Justice Sandra Day OÂ’ConnorÂ’s replacement, Judge Alito would almost certainly shift the balance of the Supreme Court hard to the right ... "There will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court."

Monday, October 31, 2005
Stop Alito: MoveOn.org 48-Hour Petition
(3 comments) This morning, with his administration growing weaker by the day, President Bush caved to pressure from the radical fringe of the Republican Party and nominated Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Alito is a notoriously right-wing judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He has consistently ruled to strip basic protections from workers, women, minorities and the disabled in favor of unchecked power for corporations and special interests. Bush's ploy to woo the far-right could reshape the High Court for decades to come—but we don't have to let that happen. Today we're joining the campaign to stop him by aiming to collect 250,000 signatures in 48 hours. Can you help us get there? (Click the title-link of this summary to go to the petition)

Monday, October 31, 2005
The Record of Samuel Alito: A Review, by People for the American Way
(3 comments) ... the judicial philosophy of Samuel Alito is far to the right. In fact, he has been given the nickname “Scalito” by some who practice before him and liken him to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He has demonstrated hostility toward the principles undergirding a woman’s constitutionally protected right to govern her own reproductive choices – most notably in the Third Circuit’s attempt to limit or overturn Roe v. Wade in the context of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. In addition, he has issued a number of troubling opinions that seek to undermine established civil rights law, especially in the areas of gender and race, and that seek to severely limit the federal government’s ability to protect its citizens. Alito claimed that the federal government could not apply the Family and Medical Leave Act to state employees, a decision effectively reversed by the Supreme Court, and even argued that Congress could not enact a ban on the possession of machine guns. It is clear that Alito’s confirmation would seriously jeopardize Americans’ rights.

Monday, October 31, 2005
Bush Nominates "Scalito": The Nuclear Nominee?
(3 comments) Over the weekend, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, warned President Bush in remarks on CNN's "Late Edition" not to pick Judge [Samuel] Alito, saying it would create a lot of problems ... But an early signal of conservative approval came from Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative, who called the choice of Judge Alito a "grand slam home run" ... On Sunday, Mr. Reid did not rule out the possibility that Democrats would try to block a nominee by a filibuster or refusing to close debate and vote. But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina [and one of the Gang of 14], fired back Sunday, saying that any filibuster would not stand ...

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Our 27 months of hell, by Joseph Wilson
(3 comments) We anticipate no mea culpa from the president for what his senior aides have done to us. But he owes the nation both an explanation and an apology.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Smoking Guns and Red Herrings
(3 comments) ...this indictment does not end the story; rather, a close reading suggests that these charges are most likely merely a chapter in a long and tragic story. Here, from a former federal prosecutor, are thoughts about four things we should expect, four things we shouldn't, and one question we should all be asking.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
The White House Criminal Conspiracy
(3 comments) Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
None dare call it Treason
(3 comments) And although, as I write, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had not handed up an indictment for Dick Cheney, I have no doubt that one is in the offing ... His secret task force on energy was, I postulate, the blueprint for the Iraq war.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Being Conservative Just Criminal
(3 comments) The poor babies ... Never mind that the cons and neocons are in control of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of your federal government. It doesnÂ’t matter, because they are still persecuted for their beliefs, like witches in Salem or Sunnis in Iraq. If they need a pacifier, they can always go to war and commit perjury later.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Indicting America , by Scott Ritter
(3 comments) The crime that was committed goes far beyond the outing of a rogue diplomat's CIA-affiliated spouse, as serious as that charge may be. The deliberate and systematic manner in which the Bush administration, from the president on down, peddled misleading, distorted and fabricated information to Congress and the American people represents a frontal assault on the very system of government the United States of America proclaims to champion.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Bush's Imploding Presidency, by Robert Kuttner
(3 comments) WITH THE indictment of Lewis Libby and possible indictment of Karl Rove, President Bush faces a fateful choice. Bush can adopt a bunker mentality and try to appease his base of social ultra-conservatives and military hawks who have brought him such grief. Or he can reach out to the broad mainstream, as he pretended to do when he ran as a "uniter, not a divider" in 2000. Who would have predicted that the Bush machine would implode so spectacularly, on so many fronts simultaneously? It is worth pausing a moment to take stock of it all ...

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Bush Strategy for BIGTIME Damage Control
(3 comments) President Bush will try to give his second term a fresh start by naming a new conservative nominee to the Supreme Court and intensifying his drive to cut government spending ... But some insiders say they are not sure if Mr. Bush fully grasps the degree of the political danger he faces and the strength of the forces arrayed against him ... a move to the right by the White House could cause problems for Republican lawmakers from moderate states, including some facing tough re-election campaigns next year ... "It is the thinking of most people at the White House, including the lawyers, that this [the Plame investigation] is done." [DON'T COUNT ON IT, "OFFICIAL A" ET AL.]

Sunday, October 30, 2005
New Risks for Cheney
(3 comments) Vice President Dick Cheney makes only three brief appearances in the 22-page federal indictment that charges his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., with lying to investigators and misleading a grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case. But in its clear, cold language, it lifts a veil on how aggressively Mr. Cheney's office drove the rationale against Saddam Hussein and then fought to discredit the Iraq war's critics. The document now raises a central question: how much collateral damage has Mr. Cheney sustained?

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Failing to Equip the Iraqi Army to Take Our Place
(3 comments) Even as American forces are relying more on Iraqis to fight the insurgency, the Iraqi Army is facing some of the same procurement problems that American troops have experienced in getting adequate armor and other equipment, according to interviews in Iraq with American and Iraqi military officials. But if the Americans have faced an uphill battle in getting vital gear - their shortfalls continue to this day - then their Iraqi counterparts are confronting a herculean task.

Sunday, October 30, 2005
"Compassionate Conservatism" at Work: Congress to Cut Medicare & Medicaid
(3 comments) Congressional committees have proposed substantial cutbacks in Medicaid and Medicare, the nation's largest health insurance programs, which together cover more than one-fourth of all Americans. [GOD FORBID THEY SHOULD RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH TO PAY FOR IRAQ, KATRINA, ETC.]

Sunday, October 30, 2005
Rabid Right Demands No More "Stealth" Nominees: Looming Supreme Court Battle Royale?
(3 comments) "I am hopeful that the one thing that they may have learned from all this is that if you are going to be in a fight in Washington, it is best to fight with your political opponents and not your friends," said Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative who ran for the Republican presidential nomination and was an early opponent of the Miers nomination.

Friday, October 28, 2005
Bushzilla vs. Reality (again)
(3 comments) Surrounded by scandal, Plamegate, Katrina, the Miers flame-out, an ideological war that has cost 2005 (as of this moment) American lives and has destroyed Iraq, a floundering economy, “greencake/Niger” forgery investigations on the other side of the Atlantic, investigations about DeLay, Frist and voter fraud in Ohio, he’s been jumping like a cricket on a skillet telling us to “stay the course” and, even nuttier, that “everything is fine.” He repeats the lines over and over again, hoping to lull us into sleep, sleep, sleep. Dubya? We’re awake. Ain’t gonna happen.

Friday, October 28, 2005
Arianna -- Bush: Of Mojo and Macbeth
(3 comments) George Bush has clearly lost his mojo. The swaggering victor who just nine months ago was ready to spin his three-percent win into a mandate now can't even get his pal Harriet's nomination out of the starting gate. ... There will be no legacy of endless Republican power. No grand remaking of the Middle East. No privatization of, well, everything. No shrinking the government. No superseding his father. Instead, he's staggering toward his dusty political death ...

Friday, October 28, 2005
FITZGERALD NEWS CONFERENCE AT 2 PM ET: Libby to be indicted; Rove still investigated
(3 comments) Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe, plans to ask a grand jury to indict Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, a lawyer involved in the case told CNN today. President Bush's top political strategist Karl Rove will not be indicted today, but is not out of legal jeopardy, according to sources. Fitzgerald is expected to hold a news conference at 2 p.m.

Friday, October 28, 2005
DOJ Website: News Straight from Fitzgerald
(3 comments) Contrary to earlier, confused reports, only details of 2 PM news conference were released by 12 Noon ET; info about actual investigation should be forthcoming.

Friday, October 28, 2005
LIBBY INDICTED ON FIVE COUNTS: TREASON AT VICE PRESIDENT'S DOORSTEP
(3 comments) Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted Friday on five charges that include obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury in the investigation into the leak of a covert CIA agent’s name.

Friday, October 28, 2005
LIBBY RESIGNS
(3 comments) First Sitting White House Official in 135 Years to be Indicted. Is this restoring "honor and integrity" to the White House?

Friday, October 28, 2005
OFFICIAL TEXT OF FIVE COUNTS OF INDICTMENT
(3 comments) From DOJ Website: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. I. LEWIS LIBBY, also known as "SCOOTER" LIBBY

Friday, October 28, 2005
Dissecting the Indictment: When Libby First Blew Plame's Cover
(3 comments) (From Page 6 of the Indictment) "On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and disparaged what he termed 'selective leaking' by the CIA concerning intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA's handling of Wilson's trip to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson's wife might work at a bureau of the CIA."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Dissecting the Indictment: Plame's CIA Identity Was NOT General Knowledge
(3 comments) Despite the baldfaced lies being spread far and wide by the Right, the Indictment states clearly (Page 3): "Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie WilsonÂ’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Dissecting the Indictment: The Second Time Libby Blew Plame's Cover
(3 comments) (From Page 7 of the Indictment): "On or about the morning of July 8, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. ... During this discussion, LIBBY advised Miller of his belief that WilsonÂ’s wife worked for the CIA." (See also First Time, below)

Friday, October 28, 2005
Dissecting the Indictment: Who is the Mysterious, Treasonous "Official A"?
(3 comments) (From Page 8): "On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House ('Official A') who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about WilsonÂ’s wife."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Dissecting the Indictment: The Third & Fourth Times Libby Blew Plame's Cover
(3 comments) (Page 8): "On or about July 12, 2003, in the afternoon, LIBBY spoke by telephone to Cooper, who asked whether LIBBY had heard that Wilson's wife was involved in sending Wilson on the trip to Niger. LIBBY confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information too. ... On or about July 12, 2003, in the late afternoon, LIBBY spoke by telephone with Judith Miller of the New York Times and discussed Wilson's wife, and that she worked at the CIA." (See also Second and First times, below)

Friday, October 28, 2005
Summary of the Five Counts of the Indictment
(3 comments) Count One: Obstruction of Justice ("misleading and deceiving the grand jury"). Count Two: False Statement (to FBI agents). Count Three: False Statement (again to FBI agents). Count Four: Perjury (under oath before grand jury). Count Five: Perjury (again under oath before grand jury).

Friday, October 28, 2005
Summary of the Indictment from Official DOJ Website ... And the BIG Question...
(3 comments) See the link for Fitzgerald's Press Release, summarizing the circumstances of the five counts: "the maximum penalty for conviction on all counts 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine." BUT THE BIG QUESTION IS WHY DID LIBBY BLOW PLAME'S COVER AND THEN LIE ABOUT IT? Fitzgerald in his news conferences says he doesn't know why: he was like an umpire with "sand thrown in his eyes." We need congressional investigations!

Friday, October 28, 2005
Will the Bush Administration Implode?
(3 comments) ... once upon a time not so very long ago, this administration had a fair amount of room for error. Now, it's no longer in control of its own script and has next to no space for anything to go wrong in a world where "going wrong" is likely to be the operative phrase for quite a while. The Fitzgerald indictments, in other words, are probably just the end of the beginning. Whether they are also the beginning of the end is another question entirely.

Friday, October 28, 2005
15,220 live with the wounds of war
(3 comments) "Personally, I think there's a difference between living and being alive," Howard said. "A lot of us fear losing an arm or a leg; a lot of guys worry they'll get hurt and lose their genitals. It's the head injuries that are the worst, in my opinion. I fear getting a head wound -- having brain damage and still being alive, but not being able to care for my wife or kids."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Anger simmers in New Orleans' dead Ninth Ward
(3 comments) "Lower Nine is not a priority," said Greta Gladney, a fourth-generation resident whose mother was whisked by boat from the rooftop of a neighbor's home in the area still off-limits to residents. "There's almost a concerted effort to keep African Americans from returning to the city."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Cindy Sheehan: If You Believe in What You Are Doing, Give Me Your Stiffest Sentence...
(3 comments) If you don't, then resign.

Friday, October 28, 2005
Impeachable offense: Why must justice for a monumental crime grasp at straws?
(3 comments) Beyond special prosecutor Patrick FitzgeraldÂ’s possible perjury indictments of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove lie 100,000 or so deaths, a ruined country, worldwide enmity and a bill to U.S. taxpayers of $200 billion and counting. Admittedly, this is no semen-stained dress, but itÂ’s a colossal screw-up nonetheless.

Friday, October 28, 2005
The Rabid Right Revels in New-Found Clout
(3 comments) By taking a lead role in sinking the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, the conservative wing of the Republican Party declared its independence from the White House and asserted its claim to steer the party rightward even after the George W. Bush era ... The criticism over Miers opened the biggest chasm between the president and his political base, and it threatened to become as politically toxic as the conservative rebellion against his father's presidency in 1990 after George H.W. Bush broke his "no-new-taxes" pledge. ... Terry Holt, a GOP strategist who was a spokesman for Bush's 2004 campaign ... [said,] "And now the president has a terrific opportunity to pick the right fight and force the liberals into the corner they belong."

Friday, October 28, 2005
Bush Administration Resurrects "Clear Skies" Plan
(3 comments) Critics of the administration plan found at least one encouraging sign in the analysis. It showed that controls for carbon dioxide in the Carper bill would cost only $1 per ton, undermining a common argument that reducing carbon dioxide emissions would drive up electricity prices. "The administration can no longer hide behind the boogeyman of high electricity prices to justify its do-nothing policy on global warming," said John Stanton of the National Environmental Trust. "With that admission, the administration crossed a line that can't be uncrossed."

Friday, October 28, 2005
The Worst Week in the Political Life of Geo. W. Bush
(3 comments) "They're not reaching out; they're in a bunker mentality."

Thursday, October 27, 2005
Bush Caves to Rabid Right: Miers Withdraws Her Nomination
(3 comments) Concern among conservatives over her views on abortion and judicial philosophy heightened on Wednesday when The Washington Post reported that Ms. Miers, in a 1993 speech in Dallas, spoke approvingly about a trend toward "self-determination" in resolving debates about law and religion, including those involving abortion rights and religion in public schools and public places.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Two thousand dead - and for what?
(3 comments) Her son, she said, shares her skepticism about the war in Iraq. Lots of his fellow Marines do. Support for some broader policy is not what motivates them. "Really, they don't train these guys to protect their country," Elaine Brower said. "They train them to protect each other. I asked James, 'Why are you going back?' He said, 'My buddies are over there, and I need to protect them.'"

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Plamegate may seem arcane, but we all have a stake in the outcome
(3 comments) This scandal offers an opportunity not only to discredit Bush, but the entire ideology used to justify the war in Iraq

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
DeLay acknowledges failure to report money
(3 comments) Rep. Tom DeLay failed to comply with House requirements that he disclose all contributions to a defense fund that pays his legal bills, the Texas Republican acknowledged to House officials.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Senate may probe Miers' lottery days
(3 comments) A Senate panel may seek testimony from a former Texas lottery official who claimed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers let a company keep its contract because one of its lobbyists helped President Bush get into the National Guard in the 1960s.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
FEMA extends Brown's contract by 30 days
(3 comments) Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose coastal district was among the hardest hit by Katrina, said the contract extension is an insult to taxpayers, particularly those Gulf Coast residents "whose lives were in danger in the aftermath of that storm because of Mike Brown's incompetence." "I've got tens of thousands of people living in two-man igloo tents tonight, and less than a quarter of the people who have asked for FEMA travel trailers have gotten them," Taylor said. "And at the same time they can find $140,000 a year to pay this incompetent son of a gun; that's ridiculous."

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Senators in G.O.P. Voice New Doubt on Court Choice
(3 comments) Emerging from a weekly luncheon of Republican senators in which they discussed the nomination, several lawmakers suggested that as Ms. Miers continued her visits on Capitol Hill, she was not winning over Republican lawmakers. "I am uneasy about where we are," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican on the Judiciary Committee who had so far expressed only support for the president's choice. "Some conservative people are concerned. That is pretty obvious."

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
(3 comments) An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Rising Toll Bleeds Support for War
(3 comments) A year and a half ago, at the first anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the death rate for American troops accelerated. Since then, none of the political milestones or military strategies proclaimed by U.S. officials have succeeded in slowing the toll...The number of deaths attributed to roadside bombs has sharply increased...The war has taken a growing toll on National Guard and reserve units...When he notified the family of Wallace's death, a military bereavement officer told them that all that remained of Jeffrey was "body parts that had to be scraped out of that Humvee," according to Sarah's mother, Karen Gossett, 51. His remains fit into a small box.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Even for Big Oil, the numbers have never been as big as this
(3 comments) When major U.S. energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. announce their third-quarter earnings in the next few days, the results are certain to be staggering. Pumped up by soaring prices of oil, natural gas and gasoline in August and September, Exxon Mobil alone is expected to report quarterly profit of about $8.7 billion. That would be more than what such titans as Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp. and Time Warner Inc. earn in an entire year...On Tuesday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called on the companies to spend more to build refineries and boost production to help "ease the pain" of high energy prices...some Democrats in Congress have another idea: Slap the industry with a windfall-profit tax like the one imposed in 1980. Some consumer advocates, meanwhile, want Congress to mandate that a share of oil and gas earnings be plowed into alternative-energy research...Meanwhile, energy companies' owners — their investors — have their own idea of what to do with the avalanche of cash: They'd like much of it paid to them in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Iraqi Charter Vote: Prelude to Civil War?
(3 comments) Returns made public Tuesday by the Independent Electoral Commission underscored the country's sharp division along ethnic and sectarian lines. Voters in each of the three northern provinces dominated by Kurds favored the constitution by margins of 99 to 1. In each of the nine predominantly Shiite provinces in the south, the yes votes accounted for more than 94% of the total...Foes of the draft mustered a 97% no vote in Al Anbar province, the heartland of the insurgency, and 82% rejected the charter in Salahuddin, Hussein's home province. But they fell short of the two-thirds benchmark in Nineveh province, which has a large Sunni Arab population and provides strong support for the insurgency but also has a sizable Kurdish minority. The official count in Nineveh was 45% yes and 55% no.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The limits of Bush's mind
(3 comments) President Bush persists in his defense of the policies that have resulted in the decline of his fortunes...What's happening? Is the man so insulated from the reality of events that he has come to believe his administration's propaganda? Or is there a more ominous and pervasive problem that calls into question something other than political ideology, that is influenced by a world view marked by an inability to reason logically and learn from experience?

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bush's pick for State post criticized
(3 comments) Ellen Sauerbrey, a Republican loyalist chosen by President Bush to head the State Department's refugee program, is the latest nominee to face tough questions from senators about her qualifications. The State Department's refugee and migration program needs a chief with experience handling crises of displaced people, Democrats said Tuesday. "It doesn't appear that you have very specific experience," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., during Sauerbrey's confirmation hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee. "I don't think we see the requisite experience that we've seen in other nominees" for the job, added Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bush: U.S. must brace for more casualties
(3 comments) Outside the White House, meanwhile, peace activist Cindy Sheehan - whose 24-year old son, Casey, died in Iraq last year - said she and others plan to "die symbolically" each night over the next four days to protest U.S. involvement in Iraq. "I'll be laying down and not getting up," said Sheehan, who planned the protests this week expecting that the U.S. military death toll would hit 2,000. "When they let me out I'll do the same thing if I get arrested."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
White House sidesteps Cheney questions
(3 comments) The White House on Tuesday sidestepped questions about whether Vice President Dick Cheney passed on to his top aide the identity of a CIA officer central to a federal grand jury probe...Cheney has said little in public about what he knew. In September 2003, he told NBC he did not know Wilson or who sent him on a trip to Niger in 2002 to check into intelligence - some of it later deemed unreliable - that Iraq may have been seeking to buy uranium there..."I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back," Cheney said at the time. "... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him." Asked Tuesday whether Cheney always tells the truth to the public, McClellan said, "Yes." "Frankly I think it's a ridiculous question," he said.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The 2000th American to Die in the Bush War of Lies
(3 comments)

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Media Matters: Top CIA leak investigation falsehoods
(3 comments) ...those defending the officials at the center of Fitzgerald's probe have advanced numerous falsehoods and distortions. As Media Matters for America documents below, the media have not only failed to challenge many of these claims, but also repeated them...Falsehood: It is legally significant whether the leakers disclosed Plame's name in their conversations with reporters...Falsehood: Wilson said that Cheney sent him to Niger...Falsehood: Plame suggested Wilson for the trip to Niger...Falsehood: Wilson was not qualified to investigate the Niger claims...Falsehood: Plame's CIA employment was widely known...Falsehood: Fitzgerald must prove that Plame's covert status was leaked...Falsehood: Fitzgerald's investigation was originally limited to possible violation of 1982 law...Falsehood: Leak investigation is the result of partisan motivations...

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bush Picks Successor to Fed Chief Greenspan
(3 comments) Ben S. Bernanke, a former Ivy League economist, vows to 'maintain continuity' with the central bank's current policies...The choice of Bernanke was warmly received both on Wall Street and in academia...[The nominee wrote this year that] "the U.S. economy is fundamentally strong. What's important is whether we continue to pursue good economic policies — taking the actions necessary to increase the skills of the workforce, keep our economy open to the world, increase our energy security, reduce the government deficit, keep taxes low, curb frivolous lawsuits, ease unduly burdensome regulations and ensure that Social Security and other entitlement programs are placed on solid long-term footing."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Wal-Mart Tries to Improve Working Conditions & Image
(3 comments) Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Monday pledged to more closely monitor suppliers' factories for labor abuses, improve health benefits for employees and support an increase in the federal minimum wage — taking on critics of its treatment of employees while acknowledging the needs of working-class customers. In addition, Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. said the retail giant would improve the efficiency of its massive truck fleet and reduce solid waste at its stores to help the environment..."From their point of view, the problem is how to get into the other half of America, basically coastal America, and to do that they adopted a number of strategies: attack their opponents and also, maybe on some issues, accommodate their opponents...Part of it is smoke and mirrors, and part of it will be real accommodations."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
On message, under fire
(3 comments) THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has been both admired and mocked for its "message discipline" — the almost unprecedented ability of its top officials to speak in unison in public...But as President Bush's woes mount, so do the ranks of defectors from his administration. With the passion of the formerly censored, these dissenters are belatedly spewing forth their stories...In such a Soviet-style atmosphere of political correctness, is it any wonder that the bureaucracies under Bush began to tailor their reports to what they knew their masters wanted to hear?

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bulletproof protection for the gun industry
(3 comments) Congress has decided to grant the gun lobby its most fervent and irresponsible wish: blanket immunity from civil lawsuits...If gun makers receive special status under the law, why couldn't chemical manufacturers, automakers, drug makers or even the tobacco industry all claim to be victims of what President Bush so wrongly crusades against as "frivolous lawsuits"?

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bush Refuses to Release Miers' Files
(3 comments) Senators of both parties say that Miers — who has held three White House jobs in the last five years, including counsel to the president — is largely unknown outside the Bush administration. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have said they may not vote for her unless the White House provides at least some materials that demonstrate her qualifications to sit on the nation's highest court..."It's a red line I'm not willing to cross," the president said...

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Warm Oceans Threaten Caribbean Coral Reefs
(3 comments) 'Bleaching' may kill up to 90% of the colorful undersea polyp colonies in some areas...The extremely warm ocean waters fueling this season's record hurricane season are stressing coral reefs throughout the Caribbean and may kill 80% to 90% of the structures in some areas...The current warming in the Caribbean may be partly because of global warming, but scientists attribute most of it to a natural cycle of alternating warmer and cooler water that changes every few decades...Yet corals...face the multitude of human-induced problems such as dynamiting reefs as a fishing technique, coastal development and increased use of fertilizers that run off from farms. Now...corals also face global warming that will amplify problems brought on by natural warming cycles in the ocean..."And corals are experiencing stresses that are probably unprecedented in recent millennia."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Little Data to Support Gulf Enterprise Zone's Promise
(3 comments) Despite the creation of hundreds of local, state and federal enterprise zones that have bestowed billions of dollars in tax benefits on thousands of qualifying businesses over the last two decades, nobody has been able to demonstrate conclusively that the incentives actually work. Evidence that the federal programs have spurred business development "is virtually nonexistent," the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said..."It's a form of corporate welfare," said Robert B. Reich, who was Labor secretary when the Clinton administration launched federal empowerment zones a decade ago. "In most of these circumstances, the businesses would have gone in anyway for other economic reasons. It just gives taxpayers' money away to businesses that don't need it."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Tighter Oversight of F.B.I. Is Urged After Investigation Lapses
(3 comments) Civil rights advocates called on Monday for Congress to increase its oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's surveillance of suspects in intelligence investigations, in light of newly disclosed records indicating that the F.B.I. had violated the law.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
3 Bombers Strike at Baghdad Hotels
(3 comments) Though the death toll was far lower than in many recent suicide attacks, the significance of the assault went beyond casualty statistics. The two high-rise hotels, the Palestine and the Sheraton, have been symbols of the foreign presence in Iraq and have been the bases for Western news organizations and foreign security contractors since the American-led invasion 30 months ago.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
White House Wants CIA to be Free to Torture Suspects
(3 comments) Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists..."They are explicitly saying, for the first time, that the intelligence community should have the ability to treat prisoners inhumanely," Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said. "You can't tell soldiers that inhumane treatment is always morally wrong if they see with their own eyes that C.I.A. personnel are allowed to engage in it."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
CHENEY TOLD LIBBY PLAME WORKED FOR CIA!
(3 comments) I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday...Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson...Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year.

Monday, October 24, 2005
Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges
(3 comments) With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor...The negative effects on Mr. Bush's presidency if his senior aides were indicted, said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington, would be as great as the positive effects of Mr. Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "This is the most important turning point for his administration in terms of turning down and losing support..."

Monday, October 24, 2005
Wag the Dog? U.S. Widens Campaign on North Korea
(3 comments) The Bush administration is expanding what it calls "defensive measures" against North Korea, urging nations from China to the former Soviet states to deny overflight rights to aircraft that the United States says are carrying weapons technology...

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Libby: In the Spotlight And on the Spot
(3 comments) "Cheney and Scooter play chess on several different levels," Matalin says. "That's how their minds work. It's not about what's right in front of him. They look at things in the sweep of history. "The Wilson thing was almost mosquitoesque."

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Letter Shows Authority to Expand CIA Leak Probe Was Given in '04
(3 comments) Weeks after he took over the investigation 22 months ago into the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's identity, special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald got authority from the Justice Department to expand his inquiry to include any criminal attempts to interfere with his probe, according to a letter posted Friday on Fitzgerald's new Web site. Fitzgerald is nearing a decision on whether he will prosecute anyone when the federal grand jury term ends Friday. The letter specified that he could investigate and prosecute "perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence and intimidation of witnesses" ... "The fact that he [Fitzgerald] asked for authority that he probably already had, but wanted spelled out, makes it arguable that he had run into something rather quickly..."

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Battle of the Titans: Microsoft vs. Google over AOL
(3 comments) The most ferocious battle on the Internet these days is between Microsoft Corp., the incumbent software giant, and Google Inc., the extraordinarily profitable Internet search firm. It's both an epic clash over this era's new mass medium and a cool development for people who use computers, because the companies constantly try to top each other with new products...

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Islamists and Mujahedeen Secure Victory in Afghan Vote
(3 comments) At least half of the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of Parliament, will be made up of religious figures or former fighters, including four former Taliban commanders...Even with such a Parliament, President Hamid Karzai is likely to be able to push through most bills and appointments. He can rely to some degree on support from his fellow Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country...

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale
(3 comments) The intensity could be further inflamed by comments from Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser during the administration of Mr. Bush's father, in the coming edition of The New Yorker..."The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney," Mr. Scowcroft told Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker. "I consider Cheney a good friend - I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Court Nominee Supported Minority Program for State Bar
(3 comments) When Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, was moving toward the presidency of the State Bar of Texas in 1992, she enthusiastically supported an effort by the group to guarantee positions on its board of directors to female and minority lawyers...Ms. Miers's position at the time, which was reported in The Washington Post on Saturday, concerns some conservative groups, who fear that her support for diversity may veil sympathies for affirmative action and quota systems and indicate how she may vote on the Supreme Court.

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Democrats Keep Mum on Miers Nomination
(3 comments) So far, Democrats aren't playing a major role in the criticism of Miers because of a simple political calculation: If your opponents are shooting themselves, don't stand in the way of the bullets.

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Official Says U.S. Rushed to War in Iraq
(3 comments) A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush's approaching reelection campaign. Robin Raphel, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq assistance, said that the invasion's timing was driven by "clear political pressure," as well as by the need to quickly deploy the U.S. troops that had been amassed by the Iraq border. Soon after the invasion, Raphel said, it became clear that U.S. officials "could not run a country we did not understandÂ…. It was very much amateur hour."

Saturday, October 22, 2005
GOP Infighting: Cornryn vs. Specter over Miers
(3 comments) Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee and a former judge, took exception on Friday to comments by Senator Arlen Specter, the committee chairman, that Harriet E. Miers, the Supreme Court nominee, needed a "crash course on constitutional law." Mr. Cornyn...said, "I personally find that not only false but condescending and really inappropriate."

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Flop Sweat
(3 comments) ...it is heartening to see the fever-sweat of fear popping out on the brows of these swaggering world-shakers, these third-rate goons and half-wit cranks posing as great statesmen, if only for a little while. Fear has always been their weapon of choice: They've used it to foment aggressive war, to crush political opposition, to manipulate the electorate and to mask their own incompetence, corruption and greed. Now they're getting a taste of it themselves -- and they can't take it.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Who Is Scooter Libby?
(3 comments) "Everything you know about Cheney you know about Scooter..."

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Inside Walter Reed Army Hospital is the horrible reality of the Iraq War, a reality that few Americans see, and fewer wa
(3 comments) At the Army’s flagship medical facility, where thousands of wounded soldiers pass through, there is no political spin, no media filter, no presidential lies, and no patriotism without cost as there is in America. There are only the wounded and mangled from Iraq. There is the ground zero for ugly war reality. For these men and women there was no safe “Champagne Unit,” no other options, no Ivy League hiding, no just talking while others did the fighting. At Walter Reed there are not Chickenhawks.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
(3 comments) ...Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors...Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement...Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy...

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Bush calls for U.N. action against Syria
(3 comments) President Bush on Friday said the U.N. should deal quickly and seriously with a report implicating Syria in the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, a killing that led to protests and withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after nearly 30 years as overlord.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
White House targets N. Korean companies
(3 comments) The Bush administration, intensifying pressure on North Korea, targeted eight companies in that country suspected of helping to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The action taken by the Treasury Department on Friday means that any bank accounts or financial assets belonging to the eight companies found in the United States would be frozen. Americans also are forbidden from doing business with them.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
U.S. general: Iraqi army needs more time
(3 comments) It will take up to two years for the Iraqi army to have the military leadership and supplies it needs to operate on its own, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Friday...Earlier this year, U.S. military officials said they thought they could begin fairly substantial troop withdrawals next spring. But amid ongoing questions about the Iraqi army's training, they have since scaled back that prediction, saying some troop reductions are possible in 2006 but that any withdrawal will be based on conditions in Iraq.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
American Fatalities in Iraq Near 2000
(3 comments) Three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), were killed in action while conducting combat operations against the enemy when their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device in the vicinity of Nasser Wa Salaam on Oct. 20. A Soldier assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), died of wounds sustained from an indirect fire attack in Hit, Oct. 20.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Bush Visits California - Governator Girly Man Throws Hissy Fit
(3 comments) President Bush flew here Thursday for a Republican National Committee fundraiser, stirring up a hornet's nest of criticism within his own party and among Democrats who assailed the governor for what they called a "snub" of the nation's leader. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his aides have made no secret of the fact they would have preferred the president visit another time - after the Nov. 8 special election that is already placing demands on the state's Republican donors.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
How Miller was used by source
(3 comments) Miller, the reporter, represents something far more persistent and pernicious in American journalism. She's virtually an exemplar of an all-too-common variety of Washington reporter: ambitious, self-interested, unscrupulous and intoxicated by proximity to power...The breathtaking ease with which Miller acceded to a demand from one of the executive branch's highest ranking officials that she mislead her readers about what really was occurring on an issue of literally life-and-death importance should be just that — breathtaking. Unfortunately, it's just another shabby example of dirty work as usual among a certain time-serving segment of the Washington press corps.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Posting of CIA Leak Probe Documents May Signal Indictments Ahead
(3 comments) Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor rumored to be wrapping up the long-running investigation of the leak of a CIA agent's identity, set up a website this week posting previously filed documents in the case. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he "strongly cautions against reading anything into the timing" of the website launch. However, others familiar with the case said it was unlikely that the prosecutor would set up an Internet page if his investigation was going to close without indictments.

Saturday, October 22, 2005
DeLay's Lawyer Presses Judge to Step Aside
(3 comments) Rep. Tom DeLay appeared in court as a criminal defendant for the first time Friday, listening while his lawyer pointedly asked the presiding judge to step aside for making campaign donations to Democrats and their liberal allies...The former Republican leader, charged with conspiracy and money laundering in a campaign finance case, smiled occasionally as he sat alongside his wife Christine in the courtroom...DeLay's favorable rating plummeted to 18 percent in the latest CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll...

Friday, October 21, 2005
The President's Picks Reveal Hostility Towards Supreme Court
(3 comments) [President Bush] has had two openings to render the court toothless. He has filled those vacancies with a brilliant jurist who apparently believes the court should sit on its hands in perpetuity, and a place-filler - his new judicial ideal.

Friday, October 21, 2005
Profit Rises Sevenfold at Google
(3 comments) ...one driver of the strong results was that Google had been able to convince major marketers that search engine advertisements - which are mostly short snippets of text - are good ways to promote brands rather than simply to consummate immediate sales.

Friday, October 21, 2005
Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run by 'Cabal
(3 comments) Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal," and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.

Friday, October 21, 2005
Congress Passes New Legal Shield for Gun Industry
(3 comments) The gun liability bill has for years been the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association, which has lobbied lawmakers intensely for it. Its final passage, by a vote of 283 to 144, with considerable Democratic support, reflected the changing politics of gun control, an issue many Democrats began shying away from after Al Gore, who promoted it, was defeated in the 2000 presidential race.

Friday, October 21, 2005
FEMA's lone representative in New Orleans as Katrina hit tells senators of maddening neglect
(3 comments) Marty Bahamonde had just learned, as he huddled in New Orleans' Superdome with evacuees, that Michael Brown's press secretary was fretting about blocking out time for the director to eat dinner at one of Baton Rouge's busy restaurants that night. "OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" Bahamonde messaged the co-worker. "I just ate an MRE" — military rations — "and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants."

Thursday, October 20, 2005
"Compassionate Conservatism" at Work: U.S. Gives Florida a Sweeping Right to Curb Medicaid
(3 comments) The Bush administration approved a sweeping Medicaid plan for Florida on Wednesday that limits spending for many of the 2.2 million beneficiaries there and gives private health plans new freedom to limit benefits. The Florida program, likely to be a model for many other states, shifts from the traditional Medicaid "defined benefit" plan to a "defined contribution" plan, under which the state sets a ceiling on spending for each recipient.

Thursday, October 20, 2005
Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info
(3 comments) Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation. Rove told grand jurors it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA from Libby's recounting of a conversation with a journalist, according to people familiar with his testimony. They said Rove testified that his discussions with Libby before Plame's CIA cover was blown were limited to information reporters had passed to them. Some evidence prosecutors have gathered conflicts with Libby's account.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Rice: U.S. may still be in Iraq in 10 years and may use force vs. Syria and Iran
(3 comments) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined on Wednesday to rule out American forces still being needed in Iraq a decade from now. Senators warned that the Bush administration must play it straight with the public or risk losing public support for the war. Pushed by senators from both parties to define the limits of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East, Rice also declined to rule out the use of military force in Iran or Syria, although she said the administration prefers diplomacy.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Financial Aid Can't Keep Up With College Tuition
(3 comments) As tuition across the nation continues to outpace gains in financial aid, students' chances of attending college and finishing with a degree increasingly are linked to their families' income...[there are] big gaps in graduation rates even among students who had high test scores...college completion increasingly was "not about academic preparation; it's about money."

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
New Parks Plan Omits Some Terms That Sparked Furor
(3 comments) The Bush administration has backed away from the most controversial parts of a proposed revision of National Park Service policy that critics said would have opened the park system to more commercial activity and off-road vehicle use.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Tax Panel to Offer Bush Two Overhaul Plans
(3 comments) President Bush's tax restructuring panel settled Tuesday on two approaches to simplifying the federal tax code, one that would preserve the income tax but scale back its tax breaks and one that would exclude investment income from taxation...Both would also limit the mortgage interest deduction and eliminate the deduction for payments of state and local income and property taxes. Some panel members expressed concern that either plan would make the system less progressive by shifting more of the tax burden from the wealthy to the less well-heeled.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
GOP Is Caught Between Alliances: Conservative Base vs. Moderate Independents
(3 comments) Amid public discontent over the war in Iraq, high gas prices, the response to Hurricane Katrina and ethical controversies in Washington, approval ratings for Bush and the GOP-led Congress have tumbled to ominously low levels among independent and moderate voters. But the White House and congressional leaders also are facing widespread dissatisfaction among conservative leaders antagonized by Bush's spending policies and his nomination of White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. This two-front war complicates the challenge for the GOP as Bush tries to regain the initiative in Washington and the party prepares for the 2006 midterm elections.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Indictments More Likely: No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak
(3 comments) A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report. By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury's findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Miers Pledged Support to Ban on Abortion
(3 comments) Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate today. As a candidate for the Dallas city council, Miers also signaled support for the overall agenda of Texans United for Life -- agreeing she would support legislation restricting abortions if the Supreme Court ruled that states could ban abortions and would participate in "pro-life rallies and special events."

Monday, October 17, 2005
Time to Bring Down the Gavel on Lifetime Tenure for Justices?
(3 comments) Justices today, on average, remain on the high court longer and retire at a more advanced age than ever before. Supreme Court justices now routinely serve a quarter-century or more...The Soviet Politburo probably turned over faster. Which is why an informal band of prominent legal thinkers from left and right is challenging the Constitution's grant of lifetime tenure to Supreme Court justices.

Monday, October 17, 2005
Why Conservatives Are Divided
(3 comments) [Miers'] defenders say that we should...trust Mr. Bush's judgment. At the very moment that conservatives have begun to conclude that their bets on Mr. Bush are no longer paying off, Mr. Bush has asked them to double down. That request has even pro-Miers conservatives feeling disillusioned, and other conservatives feeling betrayed. That's what's dividing conservatives - and it's why they're thinking more and more about life after President Bush.

Monday, October 17, 2005
Administration's Tone Signals a Longer, Broader Iraq Conflict
(3 comments) Senior officials say the intelligence reports flowing over their desks in recent months argue that even if democratic institutions take hold, the insurgency may strengthen. And that possibility has created a quandary for an administration that desperately wants to equate democracy-building with winning the war, but so far has not been able to match the two...he has begun warning that the insurgency is already metastasizing into a far broader struggle to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." While he still predicts victory, he appears to be preparing the country for a struggle of cold war proportions.

Monday, October 17, 2005
Dutch court won't extradite terror suspect to U.S.
(3 comments) A Dutch court...blocked the extradition of a Dutch terror suspect to the United States, saying his legal rights in U.S. custody could not be guaranteed...The ruling by the Hague District Court said the suspect's "fundamental right" of unlimited access to a defense lawyer and immediate access to a judge may be compromised in the United States..."This ruling is unique in Dutch legal history. Never before has a judge ruled that an extradition to the United States could not take place because the rights of a defendant could not be guaranteed..."

Monday, October 17, 2005
Bush Is in No Hurry on Katrina Recovery:
(3 comments) Bush has made highly publicized trips to Louisiana and Mississippi on average of once a week since the storm, but the administration has yet to introduce legislation for two of the three proposals the president highlighted during his September speech from New Orleans. In the case of the third proposal, $5,000 accounts to help workers left unemployed by the hurricane, an administration-drafted House bill would provide aid for fewer than a quarter of the jobless. Despite mounting evidence that Washington is having trouble putting to use most of the $62 billion in emergency funds approved by Congress so far, the president has resisted appointing a recovery coordinator or further detailing his vision of how to tackle rebuilding. In interviews last week, he explained that he wanted state and local officials to act first. [DID THEY LEARN NOTHING?]

Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Our own Contract with America (by Kos)
(3 comments) Seeing an opening to reach voters while Republicans are beset by turmoil, House Democrats are privately planning to accelerate the timing of the release of their platform and the major policies they will promote on the campaign trail next year...Iraq benchmarks, energy independence, universal college, affordable health care, minimum wage, fiscal sanity -- we're starting to get somewhere. And these are ideas that apply equally well with the party's left as with its right. And none of that agenda offends the American people...Those ideas will still need to be framed properly to build the party's broader narrative, but we don't have to use smoke and mirrors to sell our agenda to the American people.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Airmen Fill the Gaps in "The Long War"
(3 comments) Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks...the reassignments come as another sign that the Pentagon is struggling to meet the demands of what military officials have begun calling "the long war."

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Critics attack EPA's Yucca Mountain rules
(3 comments) "This rule is a transparent attempt to accommodate the industry," Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist who has been critical of the Yucca project, told reporters on a conference call a day ahead of an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on draft regulations. "In the proposed EPA rule, every norm of radiation protection that has been established for the general public since the late 1950s ... is to be thrown overboard."

Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate
(3 comments) Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable..."We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs."

Monday, October 10, 2005
Bush, Miers, the Guard, and the Texas Lottery
(3 comments)

Monday, October 10, 2005
What Roy Blunt Did for Tom DeLay (And Vice Versa).
(3 comments) Missouri Representative Roy Blunt, who is filling in for Tom DeLay as majority leader while DeLay is under indictment, owes his rise in the House to the Texas congressman. But he may also one day blame DeLay for his fall, because DeLay appears to have taught him not only how to count votes and woo lobbyists, but arguably how to play fast and loose with campaign finance ethics.

Monday, October 10, 2005
America's war criminals pass the buck to underlings (from The Japan Times)
(3 comments) The reason for this lies in the culture of irresponsibility created and nurtured by the Bush administration. According to this, the buck does not stop on the president's desk, where it should, but is rather passed on down and dropped in the lap of the weak, the vulnerable and the unwitting. Never has the U.S. ever experienced, in such a comprehensive manner, a ruling clique whose measure of governing is "the rulers can do no wrong" and whose password is "shirk and destroy."

Monday, October 10, 2005
Be It Confidence or Hubris, Bush Nominates Boldly
(3 comments) The backlash against Miers last week makes clear that not all conservatives agree; Bush simply overestimated their willingness to defer to him. History says Miers is still a favorite for confirmation. But she faces the genuine threat of an informal left-right alliance that argues she isn't the best person for the job. Too much confidence, not too little, probably explains why Bush now faces an unpredictable fight likely to weaken him whether the Senate confirms Miers or not.

Monday, October 10, 2005
Potential Candidates Shun GOP Calls to Run
(3 comments) A confluence of problems that are driving down Bush's public approval ratings — high gas prices, ongoing violence in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the ethics problems hounding Rove and GOP congressional leaders — is also making it harder to persuade Republicans to seek Senate seats in 2006...

Monday, October 10, 2005
Lobbyists Dominate Katrina Relief Efforts
(3 comments) The Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act — introduced last month by Louisiana Sens. Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican — included billions of dollars' worth of business for clients of those lobbyists and a total price tag estimated as high as $250 billion. One advisory panel member who discovered that most of his fellow panelists were lobbyists called the resulting legislation "a huge injustice" to the state. "I was basically shocked," said Ivor van Heerden, director of a hurricane public health research center at Louisiana State University. "What do lobbyists know about a plan for the reconstruction and restoration of Louisiana?"

Sunday, October 9, 2005
In a Grueling Desert Race, a Winner, but Not a Driver
(3 comments) Stanley, a robotic vehicle designed by a Stanford University team, appeared to earn its creators a $2 million prize on Saturday by being the fastest finisher on a 132-mile course through the Nevada desert. The race, called the Grand Challenge, was a Pentagon project meant to promote the development of technologies for 21st-century automated warfare.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Battle blogging for profit
(3 comments) AS BLOGS become big business, Internet giants have begun trying to profit from new forms of journalism, including war coverage. The results are not encouraging. Yahoo's latest experiment reveals that it considers war news just another form of entertainment. This from an online giant that has already shown it is cavalier about press freedom and a friend of oppression.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
My brother, the warrior, died for ... ?
(3 comments) MY BROTHER died to buy a bit of time...Amped, no doubt, on adrenaline, he must have struggled to recall his basic training. M-16 on automatic, he descended into the crossfire of two rattling machine guns. Bullets shredded his body, no part spared...The price of that night in Vietnam? Nine dead Marines, one of them my brother. The war in Iraq, with its horrifying body counts and obituaries, has set me to contemplating the bizarre calculus of military life and death.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
American Debacle, by Zbigniew Brzezinski
(3 comments) Some 60 years ago Arnold Toynbee concluded, in his monumental "Study of History," that the ultimate cause of imperial collapse was "suicidal statecraft." Sadly for George W. Bush's place in history and — much more important — ominously for America's future, that adroit phrase increasingly seems applicable to the policies pursued by the United States since the cataclysm of 9/11.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
In Basra, Militia Controls by Fear
(3 comments) The most feared institution in Iraq's third-largest city is a shadowy force of 200 to 300 police officers known collectively as the Jameat, who dominate the local police, who are said to murder and torture at will and who answer to the leaders of Basra's sectarian militias.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
The Crisis of the Bush Code
(3 comments) WHEN Gov. George W. Bush of Texas hit the presidential campaign trail, he seldom brought up his view of abortion. But with conservative Christian crowds, he never missed an opportunity to praise "pregnancy crisis centers"...a delicate balancing act that, until President Bush picked Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court last week, had enabled him to forge an unprecedented bond with social conservatives without unnerving more moderate voters...the coalition that Mr. Bush and his adviser Karl Rove hoped would be the foundation of a durable Republican majority.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
The 'Real' Cindy Sheehan: Character Assassination by Email
(3 comments) A FALSE email flier making the rounds claims that Cindy Sheehan never really cared about her son while he was growing up and abandoned him to be raised by her 'ex-husband' so she could pursue her 'liberal, feminist agenda'.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Welcome to the Hackocracy
(3 comments) The hackocracy, of course, reflects the virtues of its architect, George W. Bush. Like Michael Brown and lesser known hacks, the president hasn't allowed personal setbacks to stymie him. The old-fashioned values of fortitude and family have given him the strength to rebound from a doomed oil company called Arbusto, a doomed congressional candidacy, and catastrophic failures at Harken Energy. That may be why, while cronies populate every presidency, no administration has etched the principles of hackocracy into its governing philosophy as deeply as this one.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Poor Migrants Work in Iraqi Netherworld
(3 comments) U.S.-hired contractors rely on laborers from impoverished countries, but no one looks out for the rights -- or lives -- of the foreigners.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
Shut Out on Healthcare After Storm
(3 comments) Under the present rules for Katrina victims, if you are destitute, the government will pay your medical bills. Ditto if you are severely disabled or have children. But if you're an adult who had a job that included health benefits and you lost that job because of the storm, the government can't seem to help...Of 6,322 displaced households that had applied for Medicaid through Sept. 23 in Louisiana, more than half, 3,456, were not eligible under current rules, according to the state.

Sunday, October 9, 2005
A Central Pillar of Iraq Policy Crumbling
(3 comments) Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country. The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course. But...with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Who Will Lead the Democrats Out of the Wilderness
(3 comments) With the once seemingly invincible Republican machine sputtering under the weight of incompetence and scandal, now is the time for Democrats to leap out from our caves and finish them off.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
'The Right Result' Was Key to Miers: In Dallas, She Made A Name for Candor
(3 comments) She would meet with abortion rights advocates and gay rights activists but tell them firmly she did not agree with them. She backed a redistricting plan aimed at electing more minorities even though conservatives called it a quota system. She voted to raise taxes two years in a row, disagreeing with some colleagues who favored deeper budget cuts...In another instance, candidate Miers agreed to sit down with a group of abortion rights activists..."She said, well, I'm sorry, it's murder, and that's that."

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Iraq Imposes Stiff Security
(3 comments) "The situation is so tense there is a threat looming in the air about civil war that could erupt at any moment, although some people would say that it is already there," Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told British Broadcasting Corp. radio in an interview Saturday.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Outside Inquiry Sought on Prosecutor's Demotion
(3 comments) The ranking Democrats on three House committees called Thursday for an outside investigator to determine why a prosecutor in Guam was demoted in 2002 after opening a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
A Case Of Treason
(3 comments) The investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the fact that Valerie Plame, wife of former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA undercover operative, is nearing completion. Virtually lost in the recent spurt of press reporting is the fact that the compromise of Ms. Plame (and, as night follows the day her carefully cultivated network of spies) was unconscionable. Ms. Plame, a very gifted case officer, was a close colleague of mine at CIA...It is important that a fuller story be available to citizens of this country, to enable us all to judge the enormity and significance of what happened. Accordingly, my Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues and I thought it would be useful to boil down some key facts in digestible form...

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Bush's Approval Rating Remains at All-Time Low: Optimism about country's future fading
(3 comments) Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in President BushÂ’s political coalition are increasingly worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Martial Law: The One Answer to Every Question
(3 comments) President Bush warned the nation that outbreaks of Bird Flu may require massive quarantines enforced by the US Military...Bush's comments echoed the same themes we've heard repeatedly since Hurricane Katrina, that the president needs the power to deploy troops within the country at his own discretion and without any legal restrictions. It is a conspicuous attempt to militarize the country and declare martial law, although the media has scrupulously avoided the obvious conclusions.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Fall of the Rovean Empire?
(3 comments) Drunk on power, the Republican oligarchs overreached. Now their entire project could be doomed.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Bush Addresses G.O.P. Unease Over Nominee
(3 comments) After Mr. Bush campaigned on a promise that he would choose justices in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, two of the court's most reliable conservatives, the selection of Ms. Miers, the White House counsel, has infuriated conservatives, who have assailed her as a crony who lacks the proper credentials, as well as a clear record on some of the most important social issues of the day, including abortion, gay marriage and religion in public life.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
Has George W. Bush killed America?
(3 comments) With TV providing a ceaseless backdrop of the country's failings - a crippled and tone-deaf president, a negligent government, corruption, military atrocities, soaring debt, racial conflict, poverty, bloated bodies in floodwater, people dying on camera for want of food, water and medicine - it seemed things were falling apart in the land where happiness is promoted in the constitution.

Friday, October 7, 2005
Melting, melting
(3 comments) An ice-free Arctic Ocean hasn't existed in a million years, but some scientists fear that we may be headed there -- and beyond.