Paul Krugman: Design for Confusion

August 5, 2005

I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.

Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.

Roberts omits stint with cosmetics group

BY TOM BRUNE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

August 3, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts failed to include his lobbying of Bush administration officials on behalf of the cosmetics industry in 2001 in his Senate questionnaire released yesterday.

The omission is notable because the Senate asked for a list of all of his lobbying, and his work for the Cosmetics, Toiletries and Fragrance Association resulted in the controversial suspension of stricter rules for labeling sunscreen products.

James Dobson's Nazi Comparison

A Press Release from Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, co-author of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810) today condems Focus on the Family's James Dobson's likening of stem cell research to Nazi experiments in World War II. (received by e-mail.)

James Dobson's remarks were extremely ignorant and insulting. While it's sad that they warrant a response, his comments diminish the enormity of the Nazis' atrocities and are an appalling distortion of the debate," said Rep. DeGette. "In a perfect world, everyone would ignore such inflammatory rhetoric. Barring that, it must be condemned by all rational people. I hope my Republican colleagues express the same outrage with Dobson that they have expressed for partisan purposes in the past."

Dobson's comments, delivered on the August 3 broadcast of the Focus on the Family radio show, were first reported by Media Matters.

Elusive sniper saps US morale in Baghdad

Commanders weigh their options as 'Juba' notches up more kills

Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Friday August 5, 2005
The Guardian

They have never seen Juba. They hear him, but by then it's too late: a shot rings out and another US soldier slumps dead or wounded.

There is never a follow-up shot, never a chance for US forces to identify the origin, to make the hunter the hunted. He fires once and vanishes.

Juba is the nickname given by American forces to an insurgent sniper operating in southern Baghdad. They do not know his appearance, nationality or real name, but they know and fear his skill.

Daily Howler - 08/05/05

HOW MUSCLE WORKS! Paul Krugman helped us consider the problem with creeping self-freeperization: // link // print // previous // next //

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 2005

DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDY: Someone decided it was time to wax eloquent. So the Times began to ponder the Net. In the process, someone even wrote this:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (8/5/05): It's natural enough to think of the growth of the blogosphere as a merely technical phenomenon. But it's also a profoundly human phenomenon, a way of expanding and, in some sense, reifying the ephemeral daily conversation that humans engage in.

“Hmm,” we quickly found ourselves wondering. Have we been engaged in “a profoundly human phenomenon, a way of expanding and, in some sense, reifying the ephemeral daily conversation that humans engage in?”

Uninsured Kids Likely To Go Without Any Medical Care

August 4, 2005

A study by two research groups finds more than one-fifth of uninsured children in New York went without medical care for an entire year, while in Florida the percentage was even higher – one out of four. Conversely, 92 percent of the insured New York Children, and 88 percent of Florida’s insured children received care during the same period, according to the research.

Uninsured children in New York were 12 times more likely not to receive needed medical care than New York children with insurance, while in Florida, they were 20 time more likely to go without medical care. The research was prepared by analysts at the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, located at the University of Minnesota, and the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.

Big Oil warns of coming energy crunch

Big Oil warns of coming energy crunch
By Carola Hoyos in London
Published: August 4 2005 18:35 | Last updated: August 4 2005 18:35

International oil companies have advertising campaigns warning that the world is running out of oil and calling on the public to help the industry do something about it.

Most of the executives ofThe world's five largest energy groups generally maintain that oil projects are viable with the price at which they test a project’s viability is within the around $20 a barrel. range. But their advertising and some of their companies' own statistics appear to tell a different story.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest energy group, said in a recent advertisement: “The world faces enormous energy challenges. There are no easy answers.” And the companies' statistics back up the sentiment. In The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, the Irving, Texas-based company forecasts that oil production outside the Organisation ofthe Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel that controls three-quarters of the world's oil reserves, will reach its peak in just five years.

Talking Points Memo: 08/05/05 -- 12:02 AM EDT

First two grafs of Sid Blumenthal's new piece in The Guardian ...

Almost every significant aspect of the investigation to bring the London terrorists to justice is the opposite of Bush's "war on terrorism". From the leading role of Scotland Yard to the close cooperation with police, the British effort is at odds with the US operation directed by the Pentagon.

Talking Points Memo: 08/05/05 -- 12:06 AM EDT

Can someone give me some back up or elaboration on what TPM Reader KC just sent in to me ...

I recently read Wilson's entry in Who's Who myself, and I can confirm that indeed "Valerie Elise Plame" is named as Joseph Wilson's wife. However, it's important to note that naming wives by their maiden names seems to be standard practice for the book -- Wilson's previous wife is listed by her maiden name, for just one example. This indicates one of two things is likely true: 1) The book is where Novak got her name, and he committed one of the sloppiest and laziest acts of journalism in recent history by not realizing that the book's standard practice list wives by their maiden names or 2) Novak knew that was the standard practice for Who's Who, so once he realized that his source identified Valerie Wilson by her maiden and cover name, he turned to a publicly available source that would naturally list her by that maiden name as "proof" that her cover name was widely known.

Talking Points Memo: 08/05/05 -- 12:34 AM EDT

This is a big story: Paul Volcker reportedly will accuse Benon V. Sevan of taking kickbacks in the Oil-for-Food program.

Yes, Sevan's name has been tossed around for ages.

Talking Points Memo: 08/05/05 -- 01:03 AM EDT

Early today I set up a thread over at TPMCafe where people could speculate and discuss just what it was that happened today on CNN with Bob Novak. It's actually an amazing mix of speculation and deft insight with, okay, a few wild flights of fancy mixed in.

Talking Points Memo, 08/05/05 01:36 AM EDT

There is an article in the Post tomorrow about our efforts to send most of the detainees at Guantanamo back to their native countries for imprisonment there. Nearly 70%, the article says, will be sent to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The countries have to "commit to taking steps that will prevent enemy combatants from re-engaging in hostile activity, and commit to treating the detainees humanely."

Talking Points Memo, 08/05/05 01:36 AM EDT

There is an article in the Post tomorrow about our efforts to send most of the detainees at Guantanamo back to their native countries for imprisonment there. Nearly 70%, the article says, will be sent to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Advertisement
The countries have to "commit to taking steps that will prevent enemy combatants from re-engaging in hostile activity, and commit to treating the detainees humanely."

Segregation - Era Agency's Files Unsealed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 4, 2005

Filed at 9:56 a.m. ET

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The final documents have been unsealed from a segregation-era state agency that secretly tracked the activities of civil rights workers and suspected subversives, including a white teenager who was dating a black man.

Kept under seal by a federal court order to protect juveniles named in its documents, the last four files of the Alabama Legislative Commission to Preserve the Peace were made public this week by state archivists.

The commission looked into a wide range of events during the civil rights era, ranging from lunchroom brawls between black and white students in city schools to suspected communists making ''frequent trips to the Iron Curtain countries.''

Environmental Damage on Earth Seen From Shuttle

By REUTERS

Filed at 10:12 a.m. ET

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Discovery is linked with the International Space Station and orbiting 220 miles above the Earth.

``Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world,'' Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

``We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used,'' said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.

Did Congress and Bush Fudge Books on Roads Bill?

By CARL HULSE
Published: August 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - President Bush has never exercised his veto power, but he brandished it over major transportation legislation for two years, threatening Congress with the V-word should lawmakers break the bank in pursuit of home-state road and bridge work.

So when Congress delivered transportation legislation with a price tag put at $286.4 billion, the administration claimed victory, noting the final amount was just $2 billion above the White House's limit and far below what senior members of Congress wanted.

The Ghosts of Emmett Till

By RICHARD RUBIN
Published: July 31, 2005

We've known his story forever, it seems. Maybe that's because it's a tale so stark and powerful that it has assumed an air of timelessness, something almost mythical: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black kid born and raised in Chicago, went down in August 1955 to visit some relatives in the hamlet of Money, Miss. One day, he walked into a country store there, Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, and, on a dare, said something fresh to the white woman behind the counter -- 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the owner's wife -- or asked her for a date, or maybe wolf-whistled at her. A few nights later, her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, yanked young Till out of bed and off into the dark Delta, where they beat, tortured and, ultimately, shot him in the head and pushed him into the Tallahatchie River. His body, though tied to a heavy cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, surfaced a few days later, whereupon Bryant and Milam were arrested and charged with murder.

Slain Writer Was Investigating Graft

American freelancer Steven Vincent was focusing on politics in Basra -- the increasing influence of extremists and alleged corruption.
By Ashraf Khalil and Thomas S. Mulligan
Times Staff Writers

August 4, 2005

BAGHDAD — Journalist Steven Vincent collected facts for his stories from the streets of Basra, not from official statements. But he knew that the streets of Iraq's second-largest city were becoming increasingly unsafe for him.

"This is not the easygoing municipality of 1.5 million people I recall," he wrote in a June 9 article for National Review Online. "For one thing, I can no longer wander the streets, take a cab or dine in restaurants for fear of being spotted as a foreigner: Kidnapping, by criminal gangs or terrorists, remains a lucrative business."

Still, Vincent persisted, on a personal mission to uncover the dark political underbelly of Basra. He wrote about it, and some think it may have cost him his life.

The 49-year-old former arts writer was abducted Tuesday night from a downtown Basra street along with Nour al Khal, an Iraqi woman who was his longtime assistant and interpreter. Vincent's body was discovered before dawn, hands bound and shot five times; Khal is being treated for multiple gunshot wounds in a Basra hospital.

Antarctic ice shelf collapse linked to global warming

The collapse of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica in 2002 has no precedent in the past 11,000 years, a study that points the finger at global warming says.

Measuring some 3,250 square kilometres in area and 220 metres thick, the Larsen B iceshelf broke away from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, eventually disintegrating into giant icebergs.

By chance, a US-led team of geologists had gathered a rich harvest of data around the iceshelf just before the spectacular collapse, including six cores that had been drilled into marine sediment.

The cores contain the remains of plankton and algae embedded in layers of minerals, and their radiocarbon and oxygen isotopes provide clues about ice cover and climate change over the millennia.

Disease Traced to Extreme Weather

Study of cholera rates in Bangladesh could link global warming to infectious outbreaks.
By Charles Piller
Times Staff Writer

August 4, 2005

An analysis of four decades of disease records from Bangladesh shows that periods of extreme rainfall, drought or high temperatures can sharply increase cholera rates, a pattern that some researchers believe bolsters claims that global warming will increase disease outbreaks.

The effect of weather on disease can be dramatic. In one period of turbulent weather from 1992 to 1994, the study found a six- to eight-fold increase in the number of cholera cases.

The study, published today in the journal Nature, found lesser increases during other periods of severe weather.

The researchers found that both floods and droughts promote cholera infections.

Hiroshima a pacifist bastion 60 years after A-bomb

By George Nishiyama
Reuters
Thursday, August 4, 2005; 11:24 AM

HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Sixty years after the atomic bombing that killed thousands in the blink of an eye and devastated his home city of Hiroshima, Sunao Tsuboi is worried Japan may again be headed down the path of militarism.

The survivor of the world's first atomic bombing has vowed, like many other Hiroshima residents, to keep the city a bastion of pacifism.

Exemptions From Ethics Rules Allow Lawmakers to Accept Almost Anything

There's Always a Way
Exemptions From Ethics Rules Allow Lawmakers to Accept Almost Anything

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page D01

A lushly produced video on DVD arrived in lobbyists' mailboxes all over Washington this summer. In it, Sen. Michael D. Crapo narrates what amounts to a sales pitch for them to pay $2,500 each to party with him later this month in beautiful Sun Valley, Idaho.

"We shoot all day. We fish all day. We ride horses all day. And then we finish the day with the best barbecue in the West," the Idaho Republican boasts. "Frankly, I think this is the best event in the country."

In Congress, the GOP Embraces Its Spending Side

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page A01

GOP leaders this week sent House Republicans home for the summer with some political tips, helpfully laid out in 12 "Ideas for August Recess Events." Drop by a military reserve center to highlight increased benefits, the talking points suggest. Visit a bridge or highway that will receive additional funding, or talk up the new prescription drug benefit for seniors.

New Documents Show FBI Targeting Peaceful Protesters in Colorado as Potential Terrorists

August 2, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

DENVER -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado today released new documents that it says confirm that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) is inappropriately treating people who engage in peaceful protest as potential terrorists.

The ACLU obtained the documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last December on behalf of 16 organizations and ten individuals. The files released today contain information on the Colorado American Indian Movement and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.

Vanity Fair floats allegations GOP chief Hastert took Turkish bribes

RAW STORY

Vanity Fair’s September edition, now out in New York but yet to hit national newsstands, packs a punch with an article about Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who has been gagged by the Bush Administration from revealing information about conversations she translated surrounding a seemingly major corruption scandal involving Turkish nationals and U.S. lawmakers, RAW STORY can reveal.

Bilmon - August 3, 2005

Bombs Away

When I wrote about last week's Texas-sized barbeque of corruption in Washington, I wasn't aware of the most amazing piece of pork on the menu -- a nuclear knockwurst for one of the world's largest manufacturers of weapons-grade uranium:

A provision tucked into the 1,724-page energy bill that Congress is poised to enact today would ease export restrictions on bomb-grade uranium, a lucrative victory for a Canadian medical manufacturer and its well-wired Washington lobbyists.

The Burr Amendment -- named for its sponsor, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) -- would reverse a 13-year-old U.S. policy banning exports of weapons-grade uranium unless the recipients agree to start converting their reactors to use less-dangerous uranium . . .

Bring 'Em On

Fourteen Marines were killed in a roadside bomb blast in western Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, in one of the single deadliest attacks against U.S. forces since the beginning of the war. It is the second major deadly attack against Marines in the area in the past three days.

Reuters
Bomb kills 14 Marines in western Iraq
August 3, 2005

There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

George W. Bush
Remarks to the Press
July 2, 2003

A friend of mine predicts the day will come when mothers in this country get their children to eat their vegetables (or wash their ears or do their homework or go to bed on time) by warning them that if they don't, the big bad George W. Bush will come and get them. I don't know about that, although I did successfully terrify my kids into submission once by threatening them with the Cheney monster. I'll never make that mistake again: The nightmares kept them up for weeks.

Too Close for Comfort

Late in the afternoon of Election Day, the corrupt South Texas border bosses whose support [LBJ] had purchased asked him when they should report the voting results from their counties, and he violated a fundamental rule of Texas politics: report your key precincts -- the ones in which you control the results -- only at the last minute, so your opponent would not know the total he had to beat. . .

Robert A. Caro
Means of Ascent
1990

Paul Hackett easily beat my expectations, as well as those of the Washington punditburo, in Ohio's special congressional election yesterday. He did not, however, beat his opponent, Jean Schmidt, who will now take her rightful place with the other GOP heel clickers in our Chamber of People's Deputies.

The Daily Howler - August 3, 2005

DIGGING DIGBY! Digby makes the best case against Novak. But here’s why we don’t buy it yet: // link // print // previous // next //

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2005

DESIGNING A BETTER PENGUIN: We believe we have a quick solution to the debate about Intelligent Design. Anyone inclined to believe in ID should be taken to see The March of the Penguins. After all, what “intelligent” designer could have devised the Rube Goldberg-style reproductive system of the hapless emperor penguin? For us, the sheer absurdity of penguin reproduction overpowers the film’s supposed merits. That and the hopeless, anthropomorphic narration written by the film’s French producers —a narration so silly it will make you rethink your decade-long defense of the French.

If any group ever needed a Moses to lead them from the wilderness of their hard wiring, it would have to be the emperor penguin. The emperor penguin—or the world film business, whose wiring has recently led them to ask Morgan Freeman to narrate all films.

Daily Kos - August 3, 2005

Not Torture, Just Murder

by mcjoan

Wed Aug 3rd, 2005 at 17:32:46 PDT

Update [2005-8-3 20:32:46 by Armando]: From the diaries by Armando.

Premeditated murder, in fact. Documents released for the trials of two soldiers charged in the killing of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush paint a nauseating picture of the process by which the brutal dentention and death of prisoners was plotted and carried out by the military and by the CIA.

[T]he Dec. 2, 2003, autopsy, quoted in classified documents and released with redactions, showed that Mowhoush had "contusions and abrasions with pattern impressions" over much of his body, and six fractured ribs. Investigators believed a "long straight-edge instrument" was used on Mowhoush, as well as an "object like the end of an M-16" rifle.

"Although the investigation indicates the death was directly related to the non-standard interrogation methods employed on 26 NOV, the circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier," said a secret Army memo dated May 10, 2004.

More after the fold.

Digby - August 3, 2005

Wedged In

I keep reading in the mainstream press about the terrible rift between the DLC and the left and how Democratic candidates are going to have to thread the needle in 06 and 08 to deal with it. We are all told how desperately the party needs to stop being a collection of issues and come together around some big ideas that we can all endorse and win mainstream support with.

Singing For Jesus

...as long as it doesn't require any travel.

In a telephone interview late Tuesday, Perkins said Frist wasn't invited because he had participated by videotape in the group's previous event. The main reason the event is being held in Nashville, he said, is that it is easier to line up country music stars there to perform.

So I guess country stars, many of whom spend months at a time on the road, are so committed to the cause that they will only perform if the event is held in their home town. That's very inspirational.

Effective Interrogation

A week into Mowhoush's detainment, according to classified investigative documents, interrogators were getting fed up with the prisoner. In a "current situation summary" PowerPoint presentation dated Nov. 18, Army officials wrote about his intransigence, using his first name (spelled "Abid" in Army documents):

Juan Cole - August 2 & 3, 2005

Straw Admits Coalition Troops a Problem
Seven Marines Killed in Western Iraq
At Least 41 Others Killed Tuesday

First the Polish Prime Minister didn't have the talking points from Karl Rove. Now the UK Foreign Minister, Jack Straw, has had an attack of frankness:

' First there is Iraq. “Things are not good there at the moment,” he says, acknowledging the strength of the terrorist insurgency. But he believes a new Iraqi constitution can be agreed by the deadline of the middle of next month. “The more certainty you have on that, the more you can have a programme for the draw-down of troops which is important for the Iraqis,” he says. “Because – unlike in Afghanistan – although we are part of the security solution there, we are also part of the problem.” '

He said what? It looks to me as though Blair really is determined to get most British troops out of Iraq during the coming year, if his defense minister is making such a huge admission.

Fisking the "War on Terror"

Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of the US Republican Party.



Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.



One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.

The Mahablog: Rove Roundup

Richard Schmitt of the Los Angeles Times reports that Karl Rove's executive assistant testified last week to Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury.

The interest in Susan Ralston, Rove's longtime executive assistant, was unclear. But it comes as special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has been focusing on differences in witness statements made to federal agents and the grand jury investigating who revealed the identity of Valerie Plame.

Ralston's appearance Friday followed grand jury testimony last month by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who recounted a conversation he had had with Rove in July 2003 in which Rove alluded to Plame without mentioning her by name. Cooper and columnist Robert Novak subsequently wrote stories identifying Plame after talking with administration officials. ...

The Mahablog: O-hi-o

Matt Taibbi writes in the New York Press (via Smirking Chimp) about a recent epiphany regarding the elections, Ohio 2004.

I was inclined to dismiss as a waste of time any discussion of what happened in Ohio. The story wasn't going anywhere. Even if there was evidence of wrongdoing, how could it possibly be more incontrovertible than the evidence in Florida? And given that nothing happened when Bush stole the election in front of the entire world in Florida, why bother making a fuss now in Ohio--especially since John Kerry was clearly many millions of votes less of a victim than Al Gore?

Well, I don't think that way anymore. After attending this panel, and speaking to the congressmen involved in the preparation of the Conyers report (in particular Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a former Ohio secretary of state) I'm convinced that Ohio was a far more brazen and frightening subversion of democracy than Florida.

The panel was a Harper's Magazine Forum on Voting Irregularities in the 2004 Election. I didn't attend the panel, but I did read an article by Mark Crispin Miller on the Ohio 2004 vote in the August 2005 issue of Harper's (three monkeys on the cover). The article is titled "None Dare Call It Stolen," and it's the most thorough exposé I've seen yet on how GOP operatives stole the state for Bush.

Arthur Silber - August 2, 2005

A REMARKABLY STUPID FAT CLEMENZA IS YOUR PRESIDENT

We know that Bush has announced that he has rejected the founding principle of the United States that all persons are created equal, and that they are endowed with equal rights that the law is properly bound to recognize and protect.

We know that Bush has made clear that loyalty to his fellow gangmembers is more important than the protection and defense of the nation that he has sworn to protect.

SCARCITY IN THE MIDST OF OVERWHELMING ABUNDANCE

In considering this story, it should be remembered that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is now in its third year.

And no matter how you examine it, this cannot reasonably be interpreted as anything other than a sign of a disastrously misconceived and mismanaged post-invasion plan—if, indeed, such a plan ever existed at all:

Insurers Want Their Say in Social Security Debate

By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
Published: August 2, 2005

Congress is not expected to adopt deep changes to Social Security this year. But regardless of the outcome of Republican proposals to add private accounts to the system, the nation's huge life insurance industry stands to benefit from the debate over Social Security's future.

Neurology Study Uncovers a Tendency to Learn Racial Bias

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 2, 2005

Whatever their attitudes toward race, people notice and respond to racial differences almost instantaneously, often in subtle ways that psychologists have yet to fully understand.

In a study reported last week, researchers at New York University and Harvard found in a laboratory experiment that the sight of a stranger of another race can prompt a measurable nervous system reaction that probably reflects unconscious biases, as well as a natural caution around members of unfamiliar groups. The effect was equally strong in both white and black Americans, and all but absent in people of either race who had a history of interracial dating.

Wealth Is Likely to Mean Less Pain at Life's End

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: August 2, 2005

People whose net worth is over $70,000, the median in the United States, are 30 percent less likely than poorer people to feel pain at the end of their lives, a difference that persists even when controlling for age and severity of illness, a new study shows.

'Dark Genius of Wall Street'

By JOSEPH NOCERA
Published: July 31, 2005

AND here we've thought, all these many years, that Jay Gould, the fabled robber baron of the mid- to late-1800's, was, well, a robber baron. A stock manipulator. A briber of judges and politicians. A man who would short the stocks of his own railroads -- and then run them back up again once he'd inflicted enough pain on his rivals. A magician at turning bonds into stock, and stock into cash for himself. A Wall Street sharpie the likes of whom have probably never been seen, certainly not in this less flamboyant time -- ''an incarnate fiend of a Machiavelli in his calculations, his schemes and ambushes, his plots and counterplots,'' to quote a 1909 history.

Group estimates Iraq dead since war's start at 25,000

Reuters

WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005

BAGHDAD Nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians, police officers, and army recruits have been killed since the war began in March 2003, according to a survey by Iraq Body Count, an American-British nongovernmental group.

Nearly half the deaths in the two years surveyed to March 2005 were in Baghdad, where a fifth of Iraq's 25 million people live, according to media reports monitored by the group. Of the total, nearly 37 percent were killed by U.S.-led forces, the group said.

Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb

U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration Statements

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A01

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

From Belfast to Beirut

Rami G. Khouri
August 02, 2005

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced July 28, that it had ordered its forces to stop their violent resistance against Britain. This could have important implications for the quest for peace and stability throughout the Middle East, which in turn would help reduce the global terror problem.

I've spent my whole life hearing "Belfast to Beirut" used as a synonym for the senseless, destructive political violence that plagued both regions, and a symbol of our common inhumanity. So it's nice, for a change, to sit in Beirut and hear good news again from Belfast.

The Man Who Made Kathie Lee Cry

Labor Gadfly Charles Kernaghan Buzzes In

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page D01

Really, it's inappropriate to be here, at a tony Capitol Hill restaurant for lunch. The guest, you see, doesn't eat lunch. Charles Kernaghan usually is too driven, too obsessed with his crusades to get bogged down with food (except a late-night dinner, his main meal of the day.) And this power-lunching thing has got him on the wrong side of the fence. Usually he's shouting at the powerful, not dining among them; usually he's shaming them, even secretly videotaping their factories for his various exposés.

Iraqis Commit To Deadline for Drafting Charter

Bodies of 19 Shiites Found in Capital

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A08

BAGHDAD, Aug. 1 -- The writers of Iraq's new constitution committed themselves Monday to completion of a draft charter by Aug. 15, sticking to a tight timeline that sets new elections in December and could allow significant U.S. troop withdrawals as soon as early spring.

Iraqi and U.S. forces already are preparing for some of the first concrete moves toward an American drawdown. A top-level U.S.-Iraqi task force is due to meet this month to start defining the conditions that must be met for the United States to begin bringing home its 138,000 troops stationed here, U.S. military spokesmen said. And Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, separately identified cities in the more stable south and north where he said withdrawal of foreign forces could likely start now.

Bush: Intelligent Design Should Be Taught

The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; 7:05 AM

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Military Denies Rigging Guantanamo Tribunals

Associated Press
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A04

The Pentagon acknowledged yesterday that two former members of the military team handling prosecutions of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had alleged last year that the trial system was rigged in favor of the government.

A Pentagon spokesman said, however, that the prosecutors' charges had been "thoroughly investigated" and dismissed as unfounded. While declining to reveal specifics of the allegations, Lawrence T. Di Rita said an investigation determined they were "much ado about nothing."

(China) Cnooc Withdraws $18.5B Bid for Unocal

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; 10:18 AM

Chinese oil company Cnooc Ltd. today abandoned its rival bid for California-based oil and natural gas provider Unocal Corp., the largest attempted takeover by a Chinese company, citing the "political environment in the U.S."

The move unblocked the way for Chevron Corp.'s $17.4 billion bid for the El Segundo-based Unocal. Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, is now the sole bidder for Unocal.

Sudan's Fledgling Peace Now in Peril

Calm Urged As Riots Follow Official's Death

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A01

KIGALI, Rwanda, Aug. 1 -- Rioters rampaged through the capital of Sudan on Monday, smashing cars and shops in violence that officials said left at least 20 people dead, as news spread that John Garang, a prominent rebel leader and the newly installed first vice president of Sudan, had been killed in a helicopter crash Sunday.

Privilege at Stake With Nominees

Bush Aims to Reassert Presidential Power in Debate Over Roberts, Bolton

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Page A06

At the heart of battles over President Bush's nominations to the Supreme Court and United Nations is a broader -- and largely successful -- campaign to reassert executive prerogatives lost under his predecessor and limit public access to the internal workings of government.

Paul Krugman: Triumph of the Machine

The campaign for Social Security privatization has degenerated into farce. The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).

On the other hand, the administration is crowing about its success in passing the long-stalled energy bill, the highway bill and Cafta, the free-trade agreement with Central America. So is the Bush agenda stalled, or is it progressing?

The answer is that the administration is getting nowhere on its grand policy agenda. But it never took policy, as opposed to politics, very seriously anyway. The agenda it has always taken with utmost seriousness - consolidating one-party rule, and rewarding its friends - is moving forward quite nicely.

'Thomas Paine and the Promise of America': Founding Father of the American Left

By JOSEPH J. ELLIS

WHAT we might call the Founders' Surge keeps rolling along. Harvey J. Kaye's ''Thomas Paine and the Promise of America'' is the newest entry in the founders' sweepstakes, making a spirited argument that Paine merits a place on the Mall or Tidal Basin as the only authentically radical voice, the only unblinkered democrat, the only patriotic prophet whose vision remains relevant and resonant for our time.

If the criteria were exclusively journalistic, Paine's status would be assured. In 1774 this working-class unknown from London, uneducated and a former corset maker, arrived in Philadelphia. Less than two years later he did what every American journalist since then has dreamed of doing: changing the course of history with a piece of writing. His ''Common Sense'' (1776) galvanized popular opinion around the idea that American independence was not impossible, but indeed inevitable.

Several months later he became America's first embedded journalist, accompanying the tattered remnants of the Continental Army as it fled across New Jersey after a devastating defeat in New York. In retrospect, this was the most vulnerable moment the American republic ever faced, the greatest threat to what we now call national security. In this all-consuming context, Paine wrote the defiantly reassuring words that would echo through the ages: ''These are the times that try men's souls.'' Long before Edward R. Murrow could tingle spines during World War II with ''This is London,'' Paine had already set the standard against which all subsequent American journalists would be measured.

Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged

By North America correspondent Leigh Sales

Leaked emails from two former prosecutors claim the military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent, and thin on evidence against the accused.

Two emails, which have been obtained by the ABC, were sent to supervisors in the Office of Military Commissions in March of last year - three months before Australian detainee David Hicks was charged and five months before his trial began.

The first email is from prosecutor Major Robert Preston to his supervisor.

Maj Preston writes that the process is perpetrating a fraud on the American people, and that the cases being pursued are marginal.

(Rupert) Murdoch dynasty 'will end'

Empire likely to be broken up after founder's death, says former lieutenant

Richard Wray
Monday August 1, 2005
The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire is unlikely to survive intact beyond its founder's lifetime and will be broken up, according to a former Murdoch lieutenant.

The prediction by Andrew Neil, the ex-Sunday Times editor, follows the decision by Rupert Murdoch's eldest son, Lachlan, to leave his job as News Corp's deputy chief operating officer to return to Australia. This has prompted speculation that his younger brother, James, BSkyB's chief executive, will now inherit the business when his father dies.

Robert Novak: Ex-CIA official's remark is wrong

August 1, 2005

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

A statement attributed to the former CIA spokesman indicating that I deliberately disregarded what he told me in writing my 2003 column about Joseph Wilson's wife is just plain wrong.

Though frustrated, I have followed the advice of my attorneys and written almost nothing about the CIA leak over two years because of a criminal investigation by a federal special prosecutor. The lawyers also urged me not to write this. But the allegation against me is so patently incorrect and so abuses my integrity as a journalist that I feel constrained to reply.

Wife of Ohio GOP fundraiser does some election reform of her own

Larisa Alexandrovna

In yet another surreal twist in Ohio’s “coin-gate” scandal, the wife of Bush’s chief Ohio fundraiser, Tom Noe—who is currently embroiled in campaign finance and money laundering probes—surprised poll workers and observers alike by disrupting the ballot count during the 2004 general election, RAW STORY has discovered.

But Why Can't Hillary Win?

Sen. Clinton's electability problem.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, July 29, 2005, at 1:39 PM PT


Political insiders mostly agree: Despite being an early front-runner for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton faces long odds of ever being elected president. But if she can't win, why can't she?

One facile argument, often voiced by Hillary-loathers on the right, is that she's too far to the left. The "real" Hillary is closer to Howard Dean than Bill Clinton, a recent piece in the National Review asserted. Wrong! An unhedged supporter of the war in Iraq, Sen. Clinton stands at the hawkish, interventionist extreme of her party on foreign policy. Despite her pandering vote against CAFTA, she's a confirmed free-trader and deficit hawk. On the cultural issues that often undermine Democrats, she seeks common ground, sometimes with flat-earth conservatives like Rick Santorum, and has been nattering about the "tragedy" of abortion. Even Hillary's notorious government takeover of health care was misconstrued as an ultra-lib stance. In opting for a mixed, private-public managed-competition plan, the then-first lady was repudiating the single-payer model long favored by paleo-liberals. Her plan was flawed in many ways, but it wasn't what Ted Kennedy wanted.

Uzbekistan kicks US out of military base

Pentagon given six months to quit as Washington's relations with hardline dictator sour in wake of civilian massacre

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Monday August 1, 2005
The Guardian

Uzbekistan has given the US six months to close its military base there, in its first move to sever relations with its former sponsor.

The air base near the southern town of Khanabad, known as K2, was opened weeks after the September 11 attacks to provide vital logistical support for Operation Enduring Freedom in neighbouring Afghanistan.

On a Big Issue, Little Is Known

By Charles Lane

Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A15

Activists on both the left and right have focused intently on every shred of possible evidence that Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. would vote to overrule the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

But there has been far less attention to an equally contentious issue that takes up far more of the justices' time each term than abortion: capital punishment. Every death sentence in the country comes before the court not once but twice or more: first on direct appeals, the vast majority of which are brushed aside, and then on habeas corpus challenges claiming constitutional violations at trial or sentencing.

DNA Test Frees Man After Nearly 18 Years

The Associated Press
Monday, August 1, 2005; 11:29 AM

PITTSBURGH -- Prosecutors joined defense attorneys Monday in seeking freedom for a man who has spent nearly 18 years behind bars for a rape that DNA evidence now shows he didn't commit.

A hearing was set on a motion filed by Allegheny County prosecutors asking Judge John Zottola to free Thomas Doswell, 44.

DNA evidence in the case was retested by the nonprofit Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law in New York.

Roberts Backed Limits on Bias

A Charter Member of Reagan Vanguard
Court Nominee Was Part of Legal Team Seeking to Shift Course on Civil Rights Laws

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Amy Goldstein and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A01

In the early 1980s, a young intellectual lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. was part of the vanguard of a conservative political revolution in civil rights, advocating new legal theories and helping enforce the Reagan administration's effort to curtail the use of courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination.

Just 26 when he joined the Justice Department as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, Roberts was almost immediately entrusted to counsel senior department officials on such incendiary matters of the day as school desegregation, voting rules and government antidotes to bias in housing and hiring.

King Fahd, Man of Maddening Contradictions

By Thomas W. Lippman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, August 1, 2005; 6:36 AM

King Fahd ibn Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who died Monday, was a man of maddening contradictions who ruled a country of maddening contradictions.

By turns profligate and abstemious, corrupt and correct, energetic and lazy, dedicated and indifferent, he demonstrated both voracious appetites and undoubted abilities. Fahd, believed to be 83, was admired as a forward-looking modernizer and loathed as a corrupt autocrat, sometimes by the same analysts.

His greatest accomplishment was to hold his country together and preserve his family's rule in an era of immense pressures both domestic and external.

Bush Sidesteps Senate, Installs Bolton as U.N. Envoy

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 1, 2005; 10:27 AM

President Bush sidestepped the U.S. Senate on Monday and installed controversial nominee John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, saying the post was "too important to leave vacant any longer."

Speaking at the White House, Bush said he was sending Bolton to the United Nations with his "complete confidence."