One Nation Under Investigation One Nation Under Investigation . . . .

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"people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble
-- that means not tell the truth."

Jon Stewart: "Dissemble" means not to tell the truth. "Disassemble" is what you did to Iraq.
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6.29.05 "Duke's Real Estate and Neighborhood -- We've collected here a few snapshots of Randy "Duke" Cunningham's Rancho Santa Fe home and some others in his neighborhood."

See also: "FBI looking at sale of Cunningham home" This article shows a picture of the 42 foot yacht which the Duke calls home the "Duke Stir".

And also: "Rats Abandon Sinking Duke Stir-What do They Know" for further details.

See also: "MZM's Virginia connections extensive"

6.29.05 William Safire: "Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources - who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators - managed to get the prosecutor off his back."

6.29.05 Kevin Drum: "SHORTCHANGING THE VA....Incompetence, self-delusion, or political cowardice? You be the judge:"

6.28.05 "Whistleblowers Describe Halliburton's "Free Fraud Zone"

6.25.05 "Negotiating With Terrorists" via Billmon

"No nation can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death."

George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
April 4, 2002
Rumsfeld: U.S. Met With Iraq Insurgents By THOMAS WAGNER, AP
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged Sunday that U.S. officials met with insurgents in Iraq, after a British newspaper reported two such meetings took place recently at a villa north of Baghdad.
6.26.05 "Rumsfeld Rejects Outside Panel on Gitmo" The Associated Press
"A new independent investigation of abuse allegations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "doesn't make sense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday."
6.26.05 "Safer Vehicles for Soldiers: A Tale of Delays and Glitches" By MICHAEL MOSS via Arianna
When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.
6.26.05 Tom Tomorrow
The history of Western intervention in the Middle East is the history of unintended consequences, and it should have been clear from the start to anyone with basic cognitive functions that the Iraq war was going to come back and bite us in the ass. And make no mistake--it will.
6.26.05 Privacy Groups Protest Pentagon Database
Privacy advocates are objecting to the Pentagon's use of a database with files on millions of young people that the military says it needs for recruiting to help fill its ranks.

The data could be abused by the government or the private company that keeps it, the advocates contend. They also say there is no need for the information to include Social Security numbers, which could be used to steal someone's identity.

6.26.05 "Obama's Stand Against Patriot Act Cheered"

"I hope we can pass a provision, just like the one that the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly, that would require federal agents to get search warrants from a real judge in a real court, just like everyone else does," Obama said.
6.25.05 "The Armstrong Williams NewsHour" By FRANK RICH
The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense.
...
"It's pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by whether it's pro or anti the president," Senator Dorgan said. "It's unbelievable."
Not from this gang. Mr. Mann was hardly chosen by chance to assemble what smells like the rough draft of a blacklist. He long worked for a right-wing outfit called the National Journalism Center, whose director, M. Stanton Evans, is writing his own Ann Coulteresque book to ameliorate the reputation of Joe McCarthy. What we don't know is whether the 50 pages handed over to Senator Dorgan is all there is to it, or how many other "monitors" may be out there compiling potential blacklists or Nixonian enemies lists on the taxpayers' dime.
...
Forget the pledge drive. What's most likely to save the independent voice of public broadcasting from these thugs is a rising chorus of Deep Throats.
6.25.05 "U.S. Court Backs Bush's Changes on Clean Air Act" By MICHAEL JANOFSKY, The New York Times.

6.24.05 "Funds for Health Care of Veterans $1 Billion Short -- 2005 Deficit Angers Senate Republicans, Advocacy Groups" By Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post Staff Writer

The administration and Congress, Robertson said, are promoting policies that "subdivide veterans into little groups, the ones that 'deserve' and the ones who 'don't deserve.' "
Buyer recently sparked new controversy in an interview published by the American Legion Magazine in which he said the department should concentrate on serving a "core constituency," and he disputed assertions that "all veterans are veterans and all veterans should be treated the same."
6.24.05 " US 'stalling UN Guantanamo visit'"

6.24.05 "Public Broadcasting Names New President"

In a letter to Tomlinson, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and others expressed dismay at the expected appointment of Harrison.

"We find it astonishing that Ms. Harrison, given her former prominence as a partisan political figure, would even be considered as a candidate for a job that demands that the occupant be non-political," the senators said in their letter.

6.24.05 "Italy Judge Orders Arrest of 13 CIA Agents"

Prosecutors believe the agents seized Omar as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, according to reports Friday in newspapers Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno.
6.22.05 Kevin Drum
Here's the timeline: in March 2002 no one had thought about the aftermath. Four months later, in July, postwar planning was still nonexistent. In August, General Tommy Franks "essentially shrugged his shoulders at what to do once Baghdad fell" - and Donald Rumsfeld shrugged along with him.

Six months later, on February 28, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz gave his infamous testimony to Congress in which he suggested that postwar Iraq would be relatively peaceful and wouldn't need very many troops for very long. On March 16, just before the war started, Tim Russert asked Dick Cheney, "Do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?" Cheney said no: "I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." Four days later the war began.

On May 2, one day after George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech, senior military planners in Baghdad said cheerily that they figured they could draw down American troop levels to 30,000 by fall. That same month, 400,000 Iraqi troops were disbanded with no thought given to what should be done with them. By summer the insurgency was in full swing and the administration had nothing but a wildly shifting set of ad hoc plans to deal with it.

The Bush administration never seriously considered what to do with Iraq after the war, and never had a clue that they would be facing a long, difficult insurgency. All along, they just figured they'd install some kind of friendly government and then get out.

This was criminal neglect. The Downing Street Memos are just one more piece of primary evidence that this neglect started at the very beginning.

6.22.05 Carpetbagger:
The ACLU report, which is excellent, documents a disconcerting pattern, in which scientific information is suppressed when it conflicts with the Bush agenda and, what's worse, outright censorship and prescreening of scientific articles before publication.
But my very favorite part of this story was the administration response.
Robert Hopkins of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy criticized the ACLU for seeking to politicize the issue.
You read that right. A Bush administration official was criticizing someone else for "politicizing" science. There was no indication that he was kidding.

6.22.05 Andrew Sullivan:

THE BUSH SPENDING SPREE: That's not hyperbole. It's reality. Veronique de Rugy, that flaming leftist from AEI, spells out the appalling Bush record here. Money quote:
Today, we know that compassionate conservatism is really just big government and changing the tone means his veto pen is buried under the ground. The last four years, total spending has risen 33 percent - a figure larger than Clinton's two terms combined. Adjusted for inflation, one would have to go back to Lyndon Johnson to find a larger increase. Moreover, real discretionary spending increases in FY2002, FY2003, FY2004 and FY2005 are 4 of the 10 biggest annual increases in the last 40 years.
But, as the president constantly tells us, he believes in "spending restraint." And he doesn't condone torture. And the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes."
6.22.05 Baghdad Burning ... "I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend..."
The price of building materials has gone up unbelievably, in spite of the fact that major reconstruction has not yet begun. I assumed it was because so much of the concrete and other building materials was going to reinforce the restricted areas. A friend who recently got involved working with an Iraqi subcontractor who takes projects inside of the Green Zone explained that it was more than that. The Green Zone, he told us, is a city in itself. He came back awed, and more than a little bit upset. He talked of designs and plans being made for everything from the future US Embassy and the housing complex that will surround it, to restaurants, shops, fitness centers, gasoline stations, constant electricity and water- a virtual country inside of a country with its own rules, regulations and government. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Republic of the Green Zone, also known as the Green Republic.

"The Americans won't be out in less than ten years." Is how the argument often begins with the friend who has entered the Green Republic. "How can you say that?" Is usually my answer- and I begin to throw around numbers- 2007, 2008 maximum… Could they possibly want to be here longer? Can they afford to be here longer? At this, T. shakes his head- if you could see the bases they are planning to build- if you could see what already has been built- you'd know that they are going to be here for quite a while.

6.22.05 Arianna Huffington: "Bush Spin Doesn't Translate Too Well"
If you could distill all the many massive mistakes Bush has made and continues -- 28 months later -- to make in Iraq into one overarching problem, it would be this: that facts and rhetoric aren't the same thing. That the White House continues to be blind to this distinction is what's dragging down Bush's second term -- and, more to the point, dragging down the country.
6.22.05 Jefferson Morley, washingtonpost.com
In the U.S. media, the debate about Guantanamo often focuses on the propriety of the language used to describe the treatment of prisoners. The White House, conservative columnists and his Senate colleagues criticized Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for saying U.S. interrogation techniques were reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The Post's Anne Applebaum, a Guantanamo critic, rebuked Amnesty International for likening the prison camp to the Soviet gulag.

In the foreign media, the debate is more likely to focus on the propriety of the treatment itself.

6.22.05 "Social Security Opened Its Files for 9/11 Inquiry" By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The Social Security Administration has relaxed its privacy restrictions and searched thousands of its files at the request of the F.B.I. as part of terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, newly disclosed records and interviews show.
6.21.05 Nathan Newman:
We live in a pluralistic culture that often lacks strong shared metaphors of evil. The Nazis are one of those few touchstones of shared understanding of evil and it would deny our language a strong metaphor to label actions so evil to deny its use. Which is really the point of the attack on Durbin: to normalize abuse and torture by US forces as a morally agnostic tool.
To say such abuse is evil -- ie. like what the Nazis did -- is not to say that it's extent or numbers were the same as the Nazis, but to say that it crossed a line beyond pragmatic means-ends violence with some basis of justication to a point of cruel and vindictive violence that shares with the Nazis that essence of evil. Not everything is on a continuum-- at some point you cross the line into the realm of evil, the same realm as the Nazis if in a smaller doses.
A danger of treating the Nazis as uniquely evil in a way that nothing else can compare is to give evil greater license. The very enormity of the Nazi crimes -- if that is to be the measure of true evil -- then grants lesser cruel violence a claim on morality in comparison. That is the claim of the Bush Administration defenders, using the deaths of Jews as a way to vindicate and justify violence against others.
If that is the legacy of "never again," to make all lesser murder and violence pale into a moral puddle of debateable pragmatism, then the Nazis were more successful in spreading evil in our world than they ever could have hoped for.
6.20.05 "US Military Report: The High Death Rates exposed by Brian Harring
The purpose of publishing this alphabetical name list (which I will update monthly) is to encourage the families and friends of survivors to contact us with the names of these unreported casualties.
See Also "Sen. Biden: 'I'm Not Allowed To Be There When The Flag-Draped Casket Comes In' ..." The Huffington Post
On CBS News's "Face the Nation" yesterday, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) told Bob Schieffer that the Defense Department policy forbids him from paying his respects to fallen soldiers as their coffins return to the US through the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Though no cameras and no press would accompany him, Biden said he had to receive express permission from the Pentagon to join a grieving family that had requested his presence as they met their deceased son who died in a car bomb in Iraq.
"I'm allowed in the military base. I'm not allowed to go to the mortuary," he said.
6.21.05 "Living Wage Debate" By Geoff Aung, Campus Progress via Alternet
You've probably heard some of the Right's classic arguments against paying American workers a fair wage before - job loss this or free market that. Campus Progress is cutting through the Right's reductionist sound bites and rebutting their arguments, punch for punch, by dissecting some of the most common living wage criticisms.
...
In the immortal words of comedian Chris Rock: "There are people who would like to get rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn't some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam."
6.20.05 "Expert Says He Was Told to Soften Tobacco Testimony" By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer
Bazerman said the lawyer told him that McCallum had threatened removing Bazerman from the government's witness list and prohibiting him from testifying if Bazerman did not change his testimony. In the proposed change, Bazerman said he was expected to say that appointing a monitor to consider removing senior management would likely be legally inappropriate under certain circumstances. Bazerman said he refused to make the change and was ultimately allowed to testify May 4.
...
"I want the government to behave appropriately. I can't think of an honest, plausible reason other than political interference for what they're doing," he said of political appointees at Justice.
...
Today, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who is set to decide whether the industry engaged in a conspiracy and whether to impose penalties upon the companies, is to meet in a closed-door session with government and tobacco lawyers.
Sources close to the case say that they expect Kessler will question lawyers about the government's last-minute reversal of its recommended penalties. Numerous members of Congress have called for an investigation of political interference into the case, and on Friday, four senators demanded that McCallum be removed from the case or future settlement talks. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has begun investigating the allegations.
6.20.05 "Gov't. Collected Airline Passenger Data" By LESLIE MILLER, The Associated Press
The federal agency in charge of aviation security collected extensive personal information about airline passengers even though Congress forbade it and officials said they wouldn't do it, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
6.20.05 "Watergate and the Two Lives of Mark Felt -- Roles as FBI Official, 'Deep Throat' Clashed" By Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post
One reason that the White House had confidence in Felt, according to Dean, was his sensitive handling of a potentially embarrassing case early in the Nixon presidency. As reported by Curt Gentry in a 1992 biography of Hoover, the FBI chief had heard of "a ring of homosexualists at the highest levels of the White House." Hoover told Nixon he was sending over Felt, one of his "most discreet executives," to investigate.
6.20.05 "Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users" By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times
Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers.
...
The Bush administration says that while it is important for law enforcement officials to get information from libraries if needed in terrorism investigations, officials have yet to actually use their power under the Patriot Act to demand records from libraries or bookstores.
...
"What this says to us," said Emily Sheketoff, the executive director of the library association's Washington office, "is that agents are coming to libraries and they are asking for information at a level that is significant, and the findings are completely contrary to what the Justice Department has been trying to convince the public."
6.20.05 Marty Kaplan
A few days ago the Supreme Court told the FCC that when it comes to deciding what constitutes media diversity, it had its head up its butt.
Two Junes ago, Michael Powell's FCC said there's no problem with two or three television stations in a market having the same owner, because there's such fabulous abundance and diversity these days. To arrive at that conclusion, the FCC came up with a formula -- a "diversity index" -- that paid no attention to the content actually aired by stations, and no attention to how many people actually watched them.
Public interest groups mobilized to undo that in the courts, and finally, last June, the Philadelphia Appeals Court called the FCC diversity index "arbitrary and capricious." Big Media spent tons of dough appealing the Philadelphia decision to the Supreme Court. And now the Supremes have said they won't intervene. The burden is back on the FCC to come up with a diversity index that's not simply a cover for no-holds-barred media consolidation.
...
In our mediated world, nothing's more important than an abundance of diverse voices doing the storytelling about who we are. In the case of broadcast television and radio, those storytellers get their soapbox licenses from the public, for free, in exchange for promising a diversity of voices. It's now up to the FCC to measure diversity in a way that passes the smell test. Before our tribe reduces the number of storytellers we have, and before we give some of them even louder voices, we'd better know how many different voices there really are out there, and who's able to hear them.
6.20.05 "Quick action may head off global epidemic" By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
After poring over old medical records, studying census data and cranking out mathematical models, scientists and health officials are beginning to believe they have a chance to stop a bird flu pandemic before it kills millions of people worldwide
6.20.05 Laurie David "Apparently we're in the midst of a trend: faceless bureaucrats whitewashing science. Moles tinkering in the engine room. Termites in the attic. Deployed by Very Big Business to rewrite regulations to their financial benefit -- natural resources be damned."

6.20.05 Kevin Mattson "teaches American history at Ohio University and is author most recently of "When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism."

In all of these ways, conservatives are now the party of relativism and political opportunism. When winning is all that matters, spinning becomes the only mode of operation. In light of this, it's time for liberals to reassert what they've always stood for: if not absolute truth, at least principled and enlightened debate. We need discussion more than "political warfare" and, as a result, liberals must renew the ideal of rational discussion while conservatives should remind themselves of their better traditions.
6.19.05 "Conyers vs. The Post" John Nichols, The Nation, via Leonard

6.19.05 "Coming soon: Googling the truth -- Web giant pours cash into race for discerning search technology" Owen Gibson, media correspondent, The Guardian, via Arianna

Google News, an offshoot that emerged directly from the company's policy of allowing its 2,700 staff to spend a fifth of their time on their own projects, links to 4,500 sources from around the world and has become a key source of traffic for the internet arms of traditional media giants. But it makes no claim for the sources' veracity or accuracy.
Now Google is looking to develop technologies that factor in the amount of important coverage produced by a source, the amount of traffic it attracts, circulation statistics, staff size, breadth of coverage and number of global operations.
...
Mr Sullivan said another dimension would be added to the debate once search technology started second guessing users' preferences by analysing their online activity and even their hard drives. Microsoft is planning to put tools based around a concept known as "implicit query" in its next version of Windows, due to be launched next year.
...
As religious leaders will attest, belief in your version of the truth largely depends on faith. Google's company motto remains "don't be evil". How long before that becomes "the way, the truth and the life"?
6.19.05 "Congress Assaults the Courts, Again" New York Times Editorial, via Aaron
The House of Representatives took a little- noticed but dangerous swipe at the power of the courts this week. It passed an amendment to a budget bill that would bar money from being spent to enforce a federal court ruling regarding the Ten Commandments. The vote threatens the judiciary's long-acknowledged position as the final arbiter of the Constitution. It is important that this amendment be removed before the bill becomes law.
6.19.05 "Excerpts from Downing Street memos" The Boston Globe

6.18.05 "The Age of Autism: Mercury and the Amish" By Dan Olmsted, The Washington Times

6.18.05 "The Age of Autism: Heavy metal" By DAN OLMSTED, Science Daily

WASHINGTON, May 24 (UPI) -- Parents of autistic children Tuesday launched an organization called Generation Rescue based on their conviction that flushing mercury out of children's bodies improves and in some instances reverses autism.
6.18.05 "Land Study on Grazing Denounced -- Two retired specialists say Interior excised their warnings on the effects on wildlife and water." By Julie Cart, LA Times Staff Writer
The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.
6.17.05 "US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war" By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor, The Independent.

6.17.05 "Halliburton to build new $30 mln Guantanamo jail" Memeorandum

6.17.05 "USDA plants its own news -- Critics liken radio, TV spots to propaganda; agency defends use" By Andrew Martin and Jeff Zeleny, The Chicago Tribune

6.17.05 "Just hearsay, or the new Watergate tapes? --David Paul Kuhn explains how the Democratic representative John Conyers defied Republicans to call for an inquiry into the 'Downing Street memo'

6.16.05 Tom Tomorrow: "First, do no harm" quoting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.
...
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
The whole article can be found Here

See also: 6.13.05 "Playing Politics at Kids' Expense -- Bill would insulate pharmaceutical firms from liability" by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Via Arianna

6.16.05 Lawyers Fought U.S. Move to Curb Tobacco Penalty By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Senior Justice Department officials overrode the objections of career lawyers running the government's tobacco racketeering trial and ordered them to reduce the penalties sought at the close of the nine-month trial by $120 billion, internal documents and interviews show.
...
The newly disclosed documents make clear that the decision was made after weeks of tumult in the department and accusations from lawyers on the tobacco team that Mr. McCallum and other political appointees had effectively undermined their case. Mr. McCallum, No. 3 at the department, is a close friend of President Bush from their days as Skull & Bones members at Yale, and he was also a partner at an Atlanta law firm, Alston & Bird, that has done legal work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, part of Reynolds American, a defendant in the case.
...
"Everyone is asking, 'Why now?' " said a Justice Department employee involved in the case who insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation. "Why would you throw the case down the toilet at the very last hour, after five years?"
Billmon says:
Smoke Gets In Our Eyes
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Big Tobacco:
Tobacco industry lobbying budget, 1999 to June 2004: $113 million
Tobacco contributions to the Republican Party candidates 1990 to 2004: $41 million (75% of total)
Tobacco PAC contributions to Republican candidates 1997 to April 2005: $7 million (75% of total)
Tobacco soft dollars for the RNC 1997-2002: $6.3 million
Tobacco donations to GOP conventions and Bush-Cheney inauguration celebrations 2000 - 2005: $1.5 million
Having the President on your side in a major litigation battle with the Justice Department: Priceless.

6.15.05 "Ex-Bush Aide Who Edited Climate Reports to Join ExxonMobil" By ANDREW C. REVKIN New York Times

See also: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Philip Cooney's matriculation to Exxon Mobil is just a promotion from a company he has been working for all along.
6.15.05 Thomas Friedman:
We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld Doctrine - "Just enough troops to lose." Calling for more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure environment, where you can feel safe only with your own tribe
6.14.05 "Raped, Kidnapped and Silenced" By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times
No wonder the Pakistan government can't catch Osama bin Laden. It is too busy harassing, detaining - and now kidnapping - a gang-rape victim for daring to protest and for planning a visit to the United States.
6.14.05 "GTMO: Where Was the Law? Whither the UCMJ?" Marty Lederman

6.14.05 "U.S. Campaign Produces Few Convictions on Terrorism Charges -- Statistics Often Count Lesser Crimes" By Dan Eggen and Julie Tate. Washington Post Staff Writers

6.14.05 "Army, Insurer in Iraq at Odds -- The Pentagon suspects vast overcharging for workers' compensation in war zones. A financial giant has fought a proposal to cut rates." By T. Christian Miller, LA Times Staff Writer

The Pentagon decided to have the Army Corps hold a competitive bidding process in which one insurance company would win the right to cover all Army Corps contractors around the world, a system in place at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. In those two agencies, insurance experts and U.S. officials said, a blanket policy resulted in cheaper rates by spreading the risk across more workers.
AIG and industry officials, however, said that they opposed the Army Corps effort because the government was unnecessarily injecting itself into the marketplace. Rates have come down over time - evidence, they said, that the market worked.
6.13.05 Billmon: A must read article.
One of the more outrageous things -- among many -- about the war in Iraq is the way it has become deeply entwined with the Republican Party's war for political hegemony at home, thanks to the Bush administration's unabashed belief in the slogan of every successful political machine: "To the victors go the spoils."
6.13.05 "CAFTA Hinders Developing Nations' Access to Needed Medicines" Rep. Henry Waxman Via Arianna

6.12.05 "Bush and Blair Committed to War in April, 2002 -- Leaked Cabinet Briefing Shows British Knew War was Illegal" Prof. Juan Cole

6.12.05 "Ministers were told of need for Gulf war 'excuse'" Michael Smith, Times On Line

6.12.05 "Advisers to Blair Predicted Instability" By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer

6.12.05 "Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action" transcript "The paper, produced by the Cabinet Office on July 21, 2002, is incomplete because the last page is missing. The following is a transcript rather than the original document in order to protect the source"

19. Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks. In particular, we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective as set out in paragraph 5 above. A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired endstate would be created, in particular what form of Government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the timescale within which it would be possible to identify a successor.
6.12.05 "Former Lobbyist Leaves White House Post"
Philip Cooney, who was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, left Friday, two days after it was revealed that he had edited administration reports on climate change in 2002 and 2003.
His departure was "completely unrelated" to the disclosure, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said
See also: 6.8.05 "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming" By ANDREW C. REVKIN, The New York Times
"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

6.11.05 "Don't Follow the Money" By FRANK RICH

Watergate has gone back to being the "third-rate burglary" of Nixon administration spin. It is once again being covered up.
Not without reason. Had the scandal been vividly resuscitated as the long national nightmare it actually was, it would dampen all the Felt fun by casting harsh light on our own present nightmare. "The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before" was how the former Nixon speech writer William Safire put it on this page almost nine months ago. The current administration, a second-term imperial presidency that outstrips Nixon's in hubris by the day, leads the attack, trying to intimidate and snuff out any Woodwards or Bernsteins that might challenge it, any media proprietor like Katharine Graham or editor like Ben Bradlee who might support them and any anonymous source like Deep Throat who might enable them to find what Carl Bernstein calls "the best obtainable version of the truth."
6.11.05 " Dean Speaks Truth But Cowardly Dems Side with Their Elite Corporate Cash Brethren" Olaf Rotkohl
Gee, I guess Howard Dean speaks the truth that the Republican Party is a party of white Christian men. Eighty-seven percent of them are white and Christian. Ninety-nine percent of ALL Republican legislators across the entire nation are white, and the vast majority male, even in Texas with a 47 percent minority population. Americablog's John Aravosis has more from the book The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America by Dr. John Sperling.
6.11.05 "GOP going after municipal wifi" bobriven

6.11.05 Prof. Juan Cole, "Sometimes You are Just Screwed"

6.11.05 "Envy Them? No. Tax Them? Oh Yeah." Jonathan Chait, The LA Times.

A slightly less inflammatory response than Kudlow's came from Harvard economist and former Bush economic advisor Greg Mankiw. "The data show that the rich take a rising share of income when the economy is booming, such as during the 1920s and 1990s," Mankiw wrote in a letter to the New York Times, concluding that if policymakers "want economic prosperity for all, they should avoid focusing on the politics of envy."
Mankiw's choice of decades to focus on is a bit strange. Although I'm not an economist, I understand that the 1920s did not end well.
...
Moreover, there are ways of accomplishing this short of shooting the rich or imposing socialism, say raising the top tax rate to where it stood during the Clinton years. That, by the way, was the other decade of prosperity invoked by Mankiw.
6.11.05 "Kaptur alerts colleagues of unfolding scandal -- Brown says illegalities put presidential election in question" By STEVE EDER, TOLEDO BLADE STAFF WRITER
As the word spread Tuesday night that the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation had lost $215 million in a high-risk investment, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur alerted her colleagues to the mounting concerns in her home state.
...
Democrats such as Miss Kaptur and U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown of Lorain say the latest scandals mirror problems in Washington and even call into question the results of the 2004 presidential election.
...
Mr. Noe, whose attorneys told authorities two weeks ago that $10 million to $12 million of the state's assets were missing from the coin fund, is facing multiple investigations, including a federal probe into whether he laundered money into President Bush's re-election campaign. The Republican contributor was considered a Bush "pioneer" because he raised at least $100,000 for Mr. Bush's campaign.
"I think the George Bush campaign raised a lot of illegal money in Ohio," Mr. Brown said. "That puts the election in some question. I know these people stop at nothing and I know their incompetence kept a significant number of people from getting to vote."
President Bush has returned $4,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Noe, joining Mr. Taft and a host of Ohio Republicans who have returned Noe campaign cash.
6.11.05 "The Dutch-Muslim Culture War" By Deborah Scroggins, The Nation

6.11.05 "Boston Globe staff writer twice repeated Dean fund-raising canard", Media Matters

Boston Globe staff writer Rick Klein twice reported that Democratic National Committee (DNC) fund-raising was "lagging" or "falling behind" under new chairman Howard Dean. In fact, Dean's fund-raising to date has surpassed his predecessor's, both in raw dollars and relative to Republican fund-raising.
6.10.05 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:
In the past four years the White House has altered, suppressed, or attempted to discredit close to a dozen major reports on global warming. These include a 10-year peer-reviewed study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, commissioned by George Bush Sr. in 1993 in his own effort to dodge what was already a virtual scientific consensus blaming industrial emissions for global warming. The list also includes major long-term studies by the federal government's National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as a 2002 collaborative report by scientists at all three of those agencies.
6.10.05 David Corn:
At a recent press conference, Bush was asked what he should be done with leftover blastocysts. He said, "The stem cell issue is really one of federal funding."
6.8.05 "The Conservative Circuit-Court Conspiracy" By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
Last week, a federal court ruled Virginia's ban on late-term abortion unconstitutional -- a decision that is sure to outrage and energize abortion opponents. Is that what these laws are intended to do?

6.8.05 "Tobacco Escapes Huge Penalty -- U.S. Seeks $10 Billion Instead of $130 Billion" By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer

6.7.05 "What Were Those Justices Smoking? -- The medical marijuana ruling is legally and morally flawed." By Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason magazine.

In a concurring dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argues flatly that "if Congress can regulate [medical marijuana] under the commerce clause, then it can regulate virtually anything - and the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers
See also "Federalism, Up in Smoke? -- The Supreme Court upholds a sweeping justification of federal power." Jonathan H. Adler, National Review Online

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