.... "Hubble bites the dust in NASA budget plan"

Guantanamo ... Social Security ... "Sistani tsunami" ... The Wilson/Plame affair

2.27.05 "Federal Judge Orders 'Enemy Combatant' Jose Padilla Charged Or Released" Yahoo!

Pursuant to its interpretation, the court finds that the President has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold [Padilla] as an enemy combatant," Floyd wrote.

Mr. Bush told Russian president Vladimir Putin "democracies have certain things in common; they have a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press, and a viable political opposition."

2.27.05 "Promoting a ''do as I say, not as I do'' view of democracy" The Arizona Republic

2.28.05 "It's Called Torture" By BOB HERBERT, The New York Times

"Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft's Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture." ...
Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.
A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."
...
Unfortunately, the outlook for this legislation is not good. I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey's bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."

Back-to-back briefings last week put a harsh spotlight on the deep hole left by the budget policies of George Bush's first term. Millions of Americans will be paying the price for the fiscal profligacy of this misnamed conservative government.

2.27.05"Deadly Ignorance" The Washington Post

A study of 81 cities published in 1997 in the Lancet, a medical journal, found that in cities without needle-exchange programs, HIV infection rates among injection drug users rose by nearly 6 percent per year; by contrast, cities that had introduced free-needle programs witnessed a decrease in infection rates of about the same magnitude.
...
Respecting science does not appear to be the administration's priority, however. Not only is it refusing to spend federal dollars on needle exchange, but the administration also is waging a campaign to persuade the United Nations to toe its misguided line. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which is heavily reliant on U.S. funding, has been made to expunge references to needle exchange from its literature, and the administration is expected to continue its pressure on the United Nations at a meeting that starts March 7. The State Department's new leadership needs to end this bullying flat-earthism. It won't help President Bush's current effort to relaunch his image among allies. And it's almost certain to kill people.

For Iraq to be tipped in the right direction, it was necessary to have the election we did, but that was not sufficient. The sufficient thing is that a stable, decent Iraqi government emerge that can also quell the Sunni insurgency.
...
For Lebanon to liberate itself from Syria, the Lebanese opposition groups will have to find a way to translate their aspirations into a withdrawal deal with Damascus. The Syrians will not be pushed out. And for Israelis and Palestinians to really tip toward peace, the moderates on both sides are really going to have to help each other succeed.
Indeed, in the Middle East playground - as Friday's suicide bomb in Israel reminds us - tipping points are sometimes more like teeter-totters: one moment you're riding high and the next minute you're slammed to the ground.

2.27.05 "Private Health Care in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence By PAUL von ZIELBAUER, The New York Times

2.27.05 "ABC EXECS FORCE ROBIN WILLAMS TO CUT OSCAR SKIT" Drudge
"Now 'Jerry Springer - The Opera' is forced to stay off Broadway", The Independent via Drudge

2.27.05 "Promoting a ''do as I say, not as I do'' view of democracy" The Arizona Republic

2.26.05 "George Bush's Stepford Critics -- You're likely to recant, zombie- like, if you betray the president." JONATHAN CHAIT, LA Times

But then, last spring, Bush and the popular McCain began barnstorming the country together. It came out that their rapprochement had followed a meeting between Weaver and his arch-nemesis, Rove, whom he called "gracious" - perhaps the first time anyone had ever called Rove this. Weaver declared that the pair had "a very honest and very frank discussion, and let's just leave it at that."
... as Galileo said of his declaration that the Earth revolves around the sun: "With sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me."
If I recall, this statement was preceded by an honest and frank discussion.

2.25.05 "A New Cyber-Security Breach -- Bank of America says at least 1.2 million federal employee credit card accounts may be exposed to theft or hacking" By TIMOTHY J. BURGER, Time

The U.S. official said a large percentage of the accounts are for the Pentagon but that some 40 federal agencies and other entities are affected.
...
A GSA spokesperson had no immediate response to an inquiry about the matter, including whether any of the Pentagon's billions of dollars in secret "black" programs could be affected.

In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.
Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured. A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."
This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.

Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases.
...
Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, called the subpoenas wildly intrusive and wrote in an e-mail message, "The vast majority of Americans will rightly be appalled at the notion of a state official issuing a mass subpoena about the most private, personal information there is."

Ordinarily, revelations that a former male prostitute, using an alias (Jeff Gannon) and working for a phony news organization, was ushered into the White House -- without undergoing a full-blown security background check -- in order to pose softball questions to administration officials would qualify as news by any recent Beltway standard. Yet as of Thursday, ABC News, which produces "Good Morning America," "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings," "Nightline," "This Week," "20/20" and "Primetime Live," has not reported one word about the three-week-running scandal. Neither has CBS News ("The Early Show," "The CBS Evening News," "60 Minutes," "60 Minutes Wednesday" and "Face the Nation"). NBC and its entire family of morning, evening and weekend news programs have addressed the story only three times. Asked about the lack of coverage, a spokesperson for ABC did not return calls seeking comment, while a CBS spokeswoman said executives were unavailable to discuss the network's coverage.
...
What's also curious is that last December another media controversy erupted over the role a journalist played in posing a controversial question to top White House officials. It involved a reporter for the Chattanooga Free Times Press, Edward Lee Pitts, who helped a National Guardsman craft a tough question posed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding the lack of body armor for U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq. Rumsfeld's at-times-cavalier response created a small firestorm. ("You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.") The revelation that Pitts was involved in formulating the question, and the debate over whether he overstepped a journalistic boundary, soon became a story onto itself in the mainstream press. Unlike Guckert, who was criticized for bending the rules to toss softball questions to administration officials, Pitts was accused of bending the rules to ask a question that was too hard.
Although the Pitts story lasted for only one 24-hour news cycle, it was covered by virtually every major news outlet, including ABC, CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Chronicle -- the very same news organizations that, three weeks into the Guckert saga, have failed to acknowledge the story even exists.

The (Gannon) issue "makes a case that the FBI is completely impotent,'' he said. Biden said the White House security vetting has additionally been called into question by Wall Street Journal reports that California resident Frederick Burk -- a State Department interpreter who has accompanied President Bush on official travel -- has recently surfaced in Jakarta, Indonesia, as a star witness for the defense in the terrorism trial of fundamentalist Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

"The free press has long performed an essential role in ensuring against abuses of governmental power," said Sweet in his lengthy ruling.

2.24.05 "Homegrown senator talks politics with kids -- Allard pays visit to high school alma mater" By COURTNEY LINGLE, The Coloradoan

While many of the students were pleased to hear Allard address the issues important to them, others said they were unhappy with the questioning format.
"I was very disappointed that they screened the questions," senior Chris Linas said, noting he was frustrated that the Young Republicans chose to select specific questions rather than allowing an open discussion. Linas said several students had submitted questions relating to the slaughter in the Sudan that did not get asked.
The Young Republicans defended their method, saying it was necessary to screen the questions in the interest of time and keeping order.

2.24.05 "Journalistic Malpractice" By Robert J. Samuelson, The Washington Post

The disagreeable reality is that the baby boom's sheer weight will sooner or later force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. We ought to be debating them now and giving people warning. But almost everyone has a stake in denial, and the media are complicit. Personal accounts -- like them or not -- don't solve the real problem. If journalists were doing their jobs, everyone would know that.

Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform initiative that had usurped state and local control of public schools.
...
Nine state legislatures are considering various challenges to the law, and the Utah Senate is about to vote on a bill, already approved by the House, that would require state education officials to give priority to Utah's education laws rather than to the federal law. An Illinois school district filed a lawsuit against the Education Department this month in federal court, arguing that No Child Left Behind contradicted provisions of the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA.

The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said.

His mistake was stepping on the real third rail in American cultural politics. It's not Social Security. It is attempting to reconcile the indisputable equality of all people with their differentness. The left thinks if we're all equal we're all alike. Others say we're all equal but God made us different, too, and maybe he did that to keep things interesting, and maybe he did it because each human group is meant to reflect an aspect of his nature. Our differentness is meant to teach us his infinite variety and complexity. It's all about God.
... And:
Why is St. Joseph Cupertino the obvious patron saint of the Internet? Because he flew through the air, lifted by truth. Because no establishment could keep him down. Because he empowered common people. Because they in fact saw his power before the elites of the time did. And because it could not be an accident that the center of the invention of the Internet, ground zero of Silicon Valley, is Cupertino, Calif., named for the saint centuries ago.

2.23.05 "A D.C. official takes a renegade approach to get lower-priced drugs for residents." By Barbara T. Dreyfuss, American Prospect

Unless the drug industry starts to negotiate significantly lower prices, it may find itself battling debt-strapped states for control over the manufacture of drugs. States already take land and other property in order to benefit the public by building things such as roads and schools. Now some legislators and officials are saying they should be able to take away a drug company's intellectual property, its patent. They want to give these patents, which allow a company to manufacture a product, to competitors that agree to sell the drugs to the states at much lower prices.

2.23.05 "Condemn-Nation -- This land was your land, but now it's my land." By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

"Scott G. Bullock represents the homeowners, and his first words to the court strike terror in the heart of anyone who looks into their backyard and sees the ghostly outline of the Target housewares section looming over the trees: "Every home, church, and corner store would produce more tax revenue if it was turned into a shopping mall," he says. There can be no limit to what the state can condemn if the only requirement is that the proposed project improve the tax base."

2.2.05 An article from the Washington Monthly from last year, found today on Memeorandum

"The Democratic 527s admit up front that electioneering is their primary purpose; indeed, that fact is built into the legal definition of a 527. But to merit 501(c) status, the GOP groups must--and do--insist that electioneering is not their primary purpose. Indeed, like most of the GOP shadow groups, AJS reports on its 2000 returns spending zero dollars on political activity." ... "When the IRS does try to step up to the plate, the agency usually gets smacked down. During the late-1990s, the IRS decided to revoke the tax exemption of a charity run by former Republican congressman Newt Gingrich, after finding that Gingrich had used it as a slush fund for his political action committee. But later, under pressure from a GOP member of Congress, the IRS reopened the case and restored the group's tax exemption."

2.21.05 "Amber Alert: Laura's AARP speech missing from White House website!" ...

"During that speech, Mrs. Bush called Social Security a central part of the administration's "compassionate society" and said that the president was firmly committed not to raise taxes or cut benefits." DC's Inside Scoop

ATTORNEYS FOR the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another's arguments.
...In this case, the liberty of a U.S. citizen is at stake. It is not clear what role the U.S. government played in his arrest, nor that he is innocent. What is clear is that Mr. Abu Ali has been held for 20 months without being charged and that, as Judge Bates wrote in December, his lawyers "have presented some unrebutted evidence that [his] detention is at the behest and ongoing direction of United States officials." It should be unthinkable that the courts would resolve this matter without hearing from both sides on key legal questions. It should have been unthinkable for the government to propose such a step. (emphasis added)

See December 2004 Memorandum Opinion Here

2.23.05 "American (Abu Ali) Accused in a Plot to Assassinate Bush" By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times
"He now stands charged with some of the most serious offenses our nation can bring against supporters of terrorism," Mr. McNulty said.
The charges, if borne out in court, would represent one of the more notable terrorism prosecutions in many months brought by the Justice Department on the domestic front. Several of the government's major terror prosecutions, including cases in Detroit, Brooklyn and Albany, have suffered significant setbacks in the courtroom or collapsed altogether amid questions about prosecutors' tactics.p

For some of us of a certain age, Hunter S. Thompson was our muse, our godfather, our Shakespeare.

2.20.05 Riverbend writes from Bagdad about the current situation for women: " Groceries and Election Results.."

2.20.05 "Flaws in drug agency put consumer at risk -- Critics of FDA cite conflicts of interest, lack of enforcement authority" By Judith Graham and Frank James, Chicago Tribune staff reporters.

FDA regulators rush to review applications for new medicines but are slow to address serious problems that surface with the drugs once they come on the market, interviews with physicians, scientists, government officials and medical school researchers suggest.
... Kessler was in charge at the FDA in 1992 when the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, was enacted. The goal was to expand the agency's drug review staff, making it possible for the agency to process new drug applications faster.
That process took 33 months, on average, in 1992. Today, drug company user fees total more than $200 million a year, review times have dropped to an average of about 13 to 14 months and the pharmaceutical industry professes to be very satisfied with the results.
... But critics contend the drug user fee act also transformed the relationship between the FDA and industry, making regulators financially dependent on egulated industry
... None of the recommendations of the drug safety office are binding. If staff members identify a potential problem with a drug, at best they can raise an alert and serve as consultants to other agency officials who make decisions.
Furthermore, all negotiations over regulatory actions have to go through the FDA's Office of New Drugs. That raises a significant potential for conflict of interest because the staff in the office that reviews and approves drugs and is unlikely to want to admit mistakes.
Much More

"These are weapons of mass destruction," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of consumer watchdog Public Citizen's Health Research Group, referring to the drugs. Wolfe, one of the most vocal critics of the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA, said the decision to leave COX-2 inhibitors on the market "defies common sense."
... "These drugs were fast-tracked based on a promise that turned out to be false," Wolfe added. "They were on a fast track because it was believed they protected the gastrointestinal tract, but of course we know that so-called benefit was completely swamped by the massive risk for heart attacks."

Oscar Reyes, whom the Honduran military seized in 1982 and tortured along with his wife, Gloria, said he was dismayed to learn of Mr. Negroponte's nomination.
"He'll say, 'I didn't know,' " said Mr. Reyes, 69, who now publishes a Spanish-language newspaper in Washington. "But the U.S. embassy knew everything that was going on."

2.18.05 "More Gannon/Guckert Revelations" JuliusBlog

2.19.05 "Ex-Boeing Exec Gets 4 Months in Prison" AP

(Prosecutor) Wiechering said a jail sentence was necessary to deter others and because alternatives, like home detention, would not be a sufficient punishment for Sears, given that his home is worth about $5 million.

2.19.05 "Papers reveal Bagram abuse" Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and James Meek, The Guardian

2.18.05 1995 expose of torture in Honduras in the 1980's; Negroponte and the "desaparecidos": Baltimore Sun via pnionline.com

See Also Billmon

2.18.05 "Fresh documents from U.S. Army acquired by ACLU paint devastating picture of continued abuse by U.S. forces" The Raw Story

2.18.05 "U.S. army documents show that photos of American soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound prisoners were destroyed after the Iraqi prison scandal." CBC

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero says it has become "increasingly clear" the military was aware of the allegations of torture.
He says "efforts were taken to erase evidence, to shut down investigations and to humiliate the detainees in an effort to silence them."
The army has not commented.

2.17.05" The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'" Frank Rich, The New York Times

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

2.17.05 "War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told -- Intelligence Officials Talk Of Growing Insurgency" By Dana Priest and Josh White, Washington Post Staff Writers 2.17.05 "Secretary On the Offensive" By Dana Milbank" Washington Post Staff Writer

Rumsfeld's blunt manner was seen as refreshing four years ago, but these are different times. A few prominent Republican legislators have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, over his resistance to increased troop strength in Iraq, his perceived disparagement of the armed forces in December and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Yesterday, GOP lawmakers greeted him with doubts on a variety of matters including war spending, death payments and veterans' benefits.

2.16.05 "U.S. contractors in Iraq allege abuses - Four men say they witnessed shooting of unarmed civilians" Custer Battles

"These aren't insurgents that we're brutalizing," says Craun. "It was local civilians on their way to work. It's wrong."

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.
Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

2.16.05 "Treasury experts split on Social Security plan" By Jonathan Kaplan, The Hill.com The Bush administration’s political appointees and career economists are divided over whether to transform Social Security into a system of private retirement accounts."

Carpetbagger says: "At least until Karl Rove figures out a way to change the civil-service system at the federal level, the Bush gang has to come to grips with the fact that there are career employees throughout the executive branch, many of whom do not consider “loyalty to Bush” their top priority."

2.15.05 "Reform? Not this time" SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

President Bush's nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration has a track record as interim head of the agency. Acting Commissioner Lester Crawford has overseen the FDA while it sits on the approval of over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception, fails to spot serious problems with drugs and neglects strong steps against mad cow disease.For the Bush administration, Crawford's nomination as permanent commissioner on Monday was business as usual.
The administration chose someone whose leadership will pose no threat to industry interests or the comfort of the president's political base.

A government contractor defrauded the Coalition Provisional Authority of tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction funds and the Bush administration has done little to try to recover the money, an attorney for two whistle-blowers told Democratic lawmakers yesterday. ...
The Pentagon has suspended Custer Battles from receiving new contracts, but Grayson said the Justice Department declined last fall to help pursue the case, now pending in federal court in Alexandria. ...
After an interview with Custer in January 2004, agents from the Pentagon inspector general's office wrote, "Battles is very active in the Republican Party and speaks to individuals he knows at the White House almost daily, according to Custer." A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

"Capitol Hill gridlock could have been smashed by minimal West Wing effort," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet.com, a Web site on religion. "No administration since [Lyndon B. Johnson's] has had a more successful legislative record than this one. From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' " ...
"Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced 'new' programs aren't what they appear," Kuo wrote, citing as an example the three-year $150 million "gang prevention" effort Bush announced in this year's State of the Union address. In reality, Kuo said, that money is being taken out of the "already meager" $100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund.

The government "painted this wonderful picture of private accounts," Pardo said. "They fooled me. They fooled us all." ...
But high management fees have trimmed retirees' payouts substantially, while big holes remain in Chile's safety net. An estimated half of the nation's workers aren't saving enough to qualify for even a minimum government pension of about $134 a month. The transition has been brutal for the first wave of retirees such as Pardo, many of whom made the change too late in their careers to reap the full benefits of compound interest. ...
While privatization may have been good for Chile's economy, workers like Quintanilla say it hasn't done much for them. "I'll probably have to work the rest of my life now," she said. "I'm angry."

In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of terror. It is not a cure for terror. The idea that the president of the United States, as he said in his inaugural, is going to help democratic institutions in every region in every nation on earth is a formula for permanent war, Tim. And look, the president of the United States has no constitutional authority to do this. Where in the Constitution do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that do not threaten us and do not attack us? If they don't, their internal politics are their own business. As Quincy Adams says, "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion of freedom everywhere, but the vindicator only of her own."

2.11.05 "The Torture Debate -- Primary Sources" The New Yorker

This week in the magazine, and here online Jane Mayer writes about the use by the United States of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of sending terrorism suspects to other countries, where they may be interrogated and tortured on America's behalf. Mayer obtained a previously unreleased memo that was sent by William Taft IV, the State Department legal adviser, in which Taft dissents from other Administration legal analyses on the applicability—or the inapplicability—of the Geneva Convention for prisoners in the war on terror. The memo is reproduced here, along with correspondence between Taft and John C. Yoo, the deputy assistant attorney general at the time, who strongly defended the Department of Justice’s position, and Alberto Gonzales, then the Counsel to the President.

The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday. ...
The previously secret documents were at the heart of a fiercely partisan debate over Mr. Clarke's contention, in a book and in public statements, that the Bush administration had ignored his warnings of the imminent danger posed by Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

Testimony and Documents Here

The January 25, 2001, memo, recently released to the National Security Archive by the National Security Council, bears a declassification stamp of April 7, 2004, one day prior to Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004. Responding to claims that she ignored the al-Qaeda threat before September 11, Rice stated in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." (emphasis added)

"A large Midwest brokerage abruptly withdrew from a business coalition that backs President Bush's Social Security proposals after the AFL-CIO staged protests at two of the firm's offices and attacked it on the Internet."

"What are we doing giving drugs that cause hallucinations, confusion, psychotic behavior to people that carry weapons and hold secret clearances?" asked Pogany, 33, who is now seeking a medical discharge. "It doesn't pass the common-sense test." ... Dr. G. Richard Olds, professor and chairman of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is among Lariam's critics.
"There's a strong recommendation not to use Lariam for those who depend on fine motor skills," he said. "Do you call firing an M-16 a fine motor skill? I do."
... Military officials now concede Lariam wasn't needed in Iraq and not just because, according to the Pentagon, no malaria infections have been reported among U.S. forces there.

Literally a day after getting sworn in, Spellings' first step as the nation's top educator was to warn PBS about "Postcards from Buster," which had filmed an episode that took place in Vermont, where an 11-year-old girl had two mommies. ... This does not bode well for the future of this department. Spellings takes over a cabinet agency that has overseen an unsuccessful NCLB policy, has paid a third-rate pundit with our money, and is about to receive major budget cuts from her boss, who'd rather invest in tax cuts for millionaires than public schools.
So our new Education Secretary's top new priority is ... censoring a children's program that happened to feature a lesbian couple? Ms. Spellings, if you're reading, it's time to get your priorities in check.

2.11.05 "Getting the Purple Finger" by Naomi Klein, The Nation, via Roe

2.11.05 "Beyond 'Fair and Balanced' -- Sinclair, the pro-Bush broadcaster, is waging war on the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" By ERIC KLINENBERG, Rolling Stone via Memeorandum

2.11.05 "Senate Approves Measure to Curb Big Class Actions" By STEPHEN LABATON, The New York Times via Memeorandum

"This bill is one of the most unfair, anticonsumer proposals to come before the Senate in years," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader. "It slams the courthouse doors on a wide range of injured plaintiffs. It turns federalism upside down by preventing state courts from hearing state law claims. And it limits corporate accountability at a time of rampant corporate scandals." ...
Republicans say they hope the vote will provide momentum for two other major bills overhauling the tort law system, one on asbestos litigation, the other on curbs on medical malpractice lawsuits.

The amount of computing power you can buy for £1,000 doubles every 18 months. It's hardly speculative to declare that by 2020, your desktop will have more operational horsepower than a human brain. ... We could well be the last generation of humans to dominate Earth. ... Once we can affect our genetic makeup we'll become more similar to one another because everybody will want the same thing. ... We as a species have entered a new phase of evolution with the appearance of the world wide web. We share information collectively. You can find out almost anything you want to know at the click of a button, and this happened suddenly, nobody predicted it. This is a collectivisation of human information. ... For scientists, it means the world is now one giant research group. ... Could it be that we just become nodes on a much larger collective thought machine?

2.11.05 " COLUMBIA PROFS FOR TRUTH" By RYAN SAGER, The New York Post via Memeorandum

A group of professors on campus is releasing a report today that is highly critical of the university's handling of charges of anti-Semitism and classroom intimidation — and especially of the committee that Bollinger set up to investigate.

``Information conveyed to my staff suggests that during a recent Adderall meeting, one or more FDA employees requested that the Canadian government refrain from suspending the use of Adderall XR because there was concern that FDA could not handle another `drug safety crisis,''' Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said today in a letter to acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford.

2.10.05 "9/11 Report Cites Many Warnings About Hijackings" By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.
Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

But critics of the bill have said it may effectively create an impossible situation for many plaintiffs, since federal courts are barred under a 1985 Supreme Court ruling from considering class actions in which there are "material" differences in the laws among the affected states.
Thus, the critics say, the law may create a "Catch-22" in which class-action plaintiffs find both federal and state courthouse doors locked.
... This bill is one of the most unfair, anticonsumer proposals to come before the Senate in years," Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the minority leader, said just before the vote. "It slams the courthouse doors on a wide range of injured plaintiffs." Many deserving cases will be dismissed, he predicted, and those that are not may have to go "to the back of a very long line in the overburdened federal court system.

2.10.05 "Wildlife scientists feeling heat -- Species-protection data suppressed, many report" SFGate.com

Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau 2.10.05 "Earth Gets a Warm Feeling All Over" NASA

2.10.05 "RNC challenges ads criticizing Bush's Social Security plan" Yahoo!

2.7.05 "OUTSOURCING TORTURE -- The secret history of America's "extraordinary rendition" program." by JANE MAYER, New Yorker Magazine

2.7.05 "Update 5: W.R. Grace Accused of Hiding Cancer Risk" AP

2.7.05

"This Republican Party is much less fiscally conservative than the one that took Congress 10 years ago," said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "That Congress believed in eliminating entire departments that weren't justified. You don't hear that these days. I wish we did." ... "This is a promise in which his position so far is not credible," said William A. Niskanen, a former economic advisor to President Reagan and chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "President Bush also promised to reduce the deficit in half last year, but it went up $15 billion." ... "However, Bush's budget projections surely understate future deficits because they do not include the cost of three priorities that are at the core of his bid for a second term legacy: ongoing military operations in Iraq; making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent; and overhauling Social Security." By Janet Hook, LA Times

2.7.05 "The president's tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive." Josh Bolton via Drudge.

2.7.05 The Cato Institute 1983 plan to erase social security: "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy", by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, Via Thereisnocrisis.com

2.7.05 "Bush Budget Raises Prescription Prices for Many Veterans" By ROBERT PEAR and CARL HULSE, The New York Times

2.7.05 "President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing. ... And the budget would expand Pell grants, which help the lowest-income students attend college, at the expense of the Perkins loan program for low- and middle-income college students. The $6-billion loan program would be eliminated." By Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius, LA Times Staff Writers

2.6.05 "Although we should not obsess over the deficit per se, we should read it for what it is: a glaring sign that this administration is doing a very poor job with our money." Veronique de Rugy is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

2.6.05 "At home, we need the administration to level with us about the challenges in Iraq, including the time it will take to develop security forces that can operate independently. Overselling the size or capability of those forces -- and leaving a false impression with the American people -- is guaranteed to produce a failed policy." Sen. Joe Biden

2.6.05 " Senate Threatening to Demolish Consumers' Right to Recover for Injuries" Kos

2.6.05 "Cheney Says U.S. Can Afford Extra Borrowing for Social Security" (Bloomberg)

Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. government can borrow $754 billion in the next decade to help finance private accounts for Social Security without hurting the U.S. economy with higher budget deficits."

To finance the change, Mr. Cheney said, the federal government would need to borrow $750 billion in the next 10 years and "trillions more after that." But, he said, "the personal accounts will themselves provide a significant return for those who hold them, so that they'll get a better deal."

2.6.05 "Leading Shiite Clerics Pushing Islamic Constitution in Iraq" By EDWARD WONG, The New Yok Times

The clerics generally agree that the constitution must ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a basic understanding of Shariah as laid out in the Koran. Women should not be treated as the equals of men in matters of marriage, divorce and family inheritance, they say. Nor should men be prevented from having multiple wives, they add.
One tenet of Shariah mandates that in dividing family property, male children get twice as much as female children.

2.6.05 "Bush Budget Would Cut Law Enforcement Aid", etc, etc, AP - Yahoo

2.6.05 "Honesty needed on Social Security" By U.S. Rep. Diana DeGett

2.6.05 "Now it turns out that Pfizer had done a study five years ago that also showed a link between Celebrex and heart problems, but did not follow up on it." Boston Globe

Taken together, the regulatory failures surrounding both Vioxx and Celebrex make a strong argument for changes in the approval process. Drugs like these that are not lifesaving and will be taken for chronic conditions should be subjected to longer preapproval testing to show they are safe over the long term. Drug makers should be required to reveal publicly all studies on new drugs as soon as they are done, and the FDA should police drug ads more aggressively. Finally, the office that monitors drug safety on the market should be better-funded. The office should have enough autonomy that its staff is not influenced by FDA decision-makers who give the initial green light to new drugs. Without changes of this kind, more drugs with harmful side effects will find their way into Americans' medicine cabinets.

2.5.05 Associate Justice Janice Rogers Brown

2.4.05 "Another 'lucky' break for Halliburton" Carpetbagger

2.5.05 "NIH workers angered by new ethics rules -- Restrictions on outside income meet with derision at meeting" By Rick Weiss, Washington Post

2.5.05 "Memo Gives New Details on Workings of Bush's Social Security Plan" By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, The New York Times

Mr. Goss said a "shadow account" would be calculated based on how much the retiree's investment account would have been worth if it had all been invested in bonds with an average yield of three percentage points above inflation.
...
Those who had low wages in their working years would be required to put at least part of the money in their accounts into lifetime annuities, instruments that make a guaranteed monthly payment for life but then expire and cannot be left to heirs.
(See more here)
Retirees who were more affluent could invest or spend their accounts as they wished.
But the guaranteed monthly payments from the government would be determined as if the tax money they had paid to the government were reduced by the amount in the hypothetical shadow account.

Translation: If you put part of your payroll taxes into a personal account, your future benefits will be reduced by an amount equivalent to the amount you would have had to repay if you had borrowed the money at a real interest rate of 3 percent.
...
The only way to get ahead would be to invest in risky assets like stocks, and hope for higher yields. But if the investment went wrong and you earned less than 3 percent after inflation, your benefit cuts would leave you poorer than if you had never opened that private account.
...
The answer, presumably, is that his plan will also involve major benefit cuts over and above those associated with private accounts. And it's true that you can improve Social Security's finances with privatization, as long as you also slash benefits - just as you can kill a flock of sheep with witchcraft, provided you also feed them arsenic. (Thanks, M. Voltaire.)

2.4.05 "E.P.A. Accused of a Predetermined Finding on Mercury" By FELICITY BARRINGER, The New York Times

The inspector general's report, citing anonymous agency staff members and internal e-mail messages, said the technological and scientific analysis by the agency was "compromised" to keep cleanup costs down for the utility industry.
...
Clear Skies is intended to achieve a 70 percent cut in mercury and two other major pollutants, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, but extends to 2018 the amount of time that previous legislation would have given the industry to comply.
...
Even if the legislation fails, the environmental agency has prepared a regulation that mirrors it.

2.3.05 "In his State of the Union address, the president says the federal program must be fixed 'once and for all.' A top Democrat calls his plan 'roulette.'"By Doyle McManus and Edwin Chen, LA Times Staff Writers

In a significant shift in his rationale for the accounts, Bush dropped his claim that they would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems — a link he sometimes made during last year's presidential campaign. Instead, he said the individual accounts were desirable because they would be "a better deal," providing workers what he said would be a higher rate of return and "greater security in retirement."
A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, was more explicit, saying that the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems.
That candid analysis, although widely shared by economists, distressed some Republicans.
"Oh, my God," one GOP political strategist said when he learned of the shift in rhetoric. "The White House has made a lot of Republicans walk the plank on this. Now it sounds as if they are sawing off the board."

2.3.05 "New non-lethal weapon lets troops microwave hostile crowds" via Drudge

2.3.05 "S.S. S.O.S. B.S.", By Eric Umansky, Slate

2.3.05 DAVID E. ROSENBAUM and ROBIN TONER, The New York Times

No withdrawals would be permitted before retirement.
...
When workers retired, most would be required to use at least part of their accounts to buy from the government lifetime annuities, financial instruments that provide a guaranteed monthly payment for life but that expire at death. Despite Mr. Bush's declaration that money in the accounts could be passed on to children and grandchildren, the principal of an annuity cannot be inherited.

Facts:
A lot or even most of the money in your private account is just going to deducted from your benefits. Zero sum game.
A lot or even most of the money in your private account is not going to be able to be left as an inheritance -- you'll be required to buy an annuity upon retirement, and if you die one day later the money will be all gone.

Under the White House Social Security plan, workers who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into individual accounts would ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system
...
If a worker sets aside $1,000 a year for 40 years, and earns 4 percent annually on investments, the account would grow to $99,800 in today's dollars, but the government would keep $78,700 -- or about 80 percent of the account. The remainder, $21,100, would be the worker's.
...
But critics of the Bush plan said the proposed "claw back" renders the whole idea of "personal retirement accounts" virtually meaningless.

"The kind of plan the president seems to be suggesting would mean deep benefit cuts for retirees," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "And it would also mean massive increases in debt for the federal government. That is a bad combination."

The House ethics committee chairman who presided over three rebukes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was bounced from the job Wednesday and replaced by a Republican congressman from Washington state.
...
In addition, Hastert appointed two new members to the panel, Reps. Lamar S. Smith, R-Texas, and Tom Cole, R-Okla., whose political action committees have contributed to DeLay's legal defense fund.

Everyone is delighted that so many Iraqis went to the polls on Sunday, but do the two turnout numbers routinely cited by the press -- 8 million and 60% -- have any basis in reality? And was the outpouring of voters in Sunni areas really "surprisingly strong"?

2.2.05 "Post-Election Buzzkill: Why Iraq Is Still A Debacle" Arianna Online

Forgor trotting out Santayana's shopworn dictum that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it but, for god's sake people, can't we even remember last week?

But the Geneva Convention makes little sense when applied to a terrorist group or a pseudo-state. If we must fight these kinds of enemies, we must create a new set of rules.

2.1.05 Steve Clemons regarding the Project for the New American Century:

However, PNAC's position as chief ideological organ of the Bush administration's neoconservative team has changed the significance of its signature-building ritual. PNAC has become an indefatigable powerhouse advocating a long list of de-thugging operations around the world (here is the roster just after 9/11) and a significant advocate of an ever larger military force to service America's global democratization crusade.
...
We need to review what contingencies of the future we should be preparing for -- and ask ourselves to what degree the Pentagon can deliver on these. My sense is that we have no clue -- and we tend to throw more money and missions at a military that is good at attacking things, but not really good at building nations or establishing civil society abroad.

Is installing Chalabi the true purpose of this war? Wouldn't that be like appointing Ken Lay as president of the United States? That may not go over too well with the Iraqi people, or with Americans who believe we are sacrificing our young people to bring democracy to Iraq.

Health savings accounts, known as HSAs, have already been approved. They were created as a little-noticed appendage to the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill.
...
"Healthcare isn't like buying a Chevrolet," Stark added, disputing Bush's assertion that individual patients can be empowered to control costs. "You can go to Consumer Reports and read about the new Malibu, but if I asked you to describe a regimen of chemotherapy for someone who has colon cancer, you'd be out of gas.
"We are talking about highly technical services that 99% of the public doesn't even know how to spell the names of," he said. "Secondly, there is no uniformity within the medical community as to what services ought to be used. It's a 'by guess and by gosh' sort of practice."
...
Gingrich acknowledged: "You can't have an informed marketplace in a setting where you don't have any information."

The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up.
...
It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.
And I suspect that at least some privatizers know that. Mr. Baker has devised a test he calls "no economist left behind": he challenges economists to make a projection of economic growth, dividends and capital gains that will yield a 6.5 percent rate of return over 75 years. Not one economist who supports privatization has been willing to take the test.

The NBC Universal Television Network, owned by General Electric, told the group, "We are sorry that we cannot accept your ad based on our network policy regarding controversial issue advertising."

"The new law authorizes the secretary of defense to spend as much as $25 million a year through 2007 "to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals" who help Special Operations missions to combat terrorism.
...
The authority is spelled out in the public version of the bill, but it has not previously been described in detail. It provides one example of what intelligence officials have described as a determined effort by the Pentagon to expand its role in intelligence-gathering and other areas that have customarily been the domain of the CIA.

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