The Poor Man: Now the Law Hates America!

It’s really amazing how much energy conservatives expend trying to subvert and weaken the rule of law. Latest, and most shameless, case in point:

The Southern California-based sponsors of the Judicial Accountability Initiative Law (JAIL) have taken aim at what they call “black-collar crime” across the country. They already have their sights set on the 2006 ballot in Nevada, and they report related efforts in Idaho and New Mexico.

They hope to start the ball rolling on a path that will lead to California.

The South Dakota initiative would create a special grand jury to hear complaints against judges based on an open-ended list of possible grievances. The list specifically includes not only crimes such as graft but certain flaws in reasoning, such as ignoring evidence and “sophistry.”

King of Zembla: The Lessons of Teapot Domegate

Courtesy of Zemblan patriot J.D.: John Dean, White House counsel under Nixon, has written an open letter to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, asking why he hasn't made better use of his plenary powers:

As I am sure you are aware, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Owen J. Roberts, a Philadelphia attorney at the time, and former U.S. Senator Atlee Pomerene, then practicing law in Ohio, as special counsels to investigate and prosecute on behalf of the government any wrongdoing related to the so-called Teapot Dome inquiry. That investigation related to the improper dissipation of government assets -- dubious oil leases to Edward L. Doheny and Harry F. Sinclair . . . .

Tristero for Digby: Report From Afghanistan

RAWA - the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan - was one of the most vocal groups speaking out against the Taliban when no one was listening. Now, one of their members responds to the bromides being wholesaled by a Republican observer to the recent elections. Since those of us in the US have been fed news about Afghanistan that is entirely propaganda, these words probably will read as shrill, hysterical, and suspiciously "radical." I wish they were, but they are not. I followed international news reports pretty closely of the first Loya Jirga after the Taliban fell, the one which first "elected" Karzai. It was a total sham. The US did everything possible to undermine the proceedings, not that they would have been much less corrupt if the US had stayed away. And RAWA's description of the Northern Alliance, the drug farmers,the warlords, and the abuse of women's rights also jibes with numerous reports that fly under the radar of mainstream American news. And for all the suffering the Afghans have endured since what even The Nation described as the "just war" of invasion, the US failed to achieve its prime objective: Bring Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar to justice.

Digby: All In The Family

Bruce Reed writes:

Back in August, when George W. Bush crossed the Mendoza Line with a disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll of 56 percent, he still had four men left to pass for the title of most unpopular president in modern history: Jimmy Carter (59 percent), George H. W. Bush (60 percent) Richard Nixon (66 percent), and Harry Truman (67 percent). I predicted that the way things were going, he could speed past Carter and Bush 41 "within the next month."

Daily Kos: Today's Republican Party

by Armando

Sat Nov 19, 2005 at 05:40:08 PM PDT

An interesting exchange at Josh Marshall's place:

I was exchanging emails with a longtime Republican reader. And in the course of that exchange I mentioned that while I understood the pushback against John Murtha and the announcement he made last week I didn't understand quite the ferocity of it.

Here's how this reader responded ...:

. . . Instant response is what you do in a modern election campaign . . . Discrediting a critic's argument isn't enough, because it takes too much time in an environment when time is everything. Campaign politics are the primary frame of reference for politicians in Washington today. Republicans of late have practiced this trade more aggressively . . . Karl Rove's influence on GOP political operatives may be even more profound, and GOP political operatives have vast influence in Republican politics.

Juan Cole - 11/19/05

Straw Man Resolution in Congress:
Joking around with the Lives of the Troops

Brad Blog gives the text of Democratic congressman and retired Marine Colonel John Murtha's resolution on Iraq:

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of American in Congress assembled, That:

Section 1. The deployment of United States Forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date.

Section 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines shall be deployed in the region.

Section 3. The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

By the way, Murtha's plan resembles in some ways the one I myself had put forward last last August. I am pleased to see that someone with substantial military experience is thinking along similar lines. Murtha called for an end to US military "action" in Iraq, as in, presumably, the counter-productive destruction of cities such as Fallujah, Tal Afar and Husaybah.

Dozens Dead in another Black Friday
Shiite Worshippers Massacred

Suicide bombers went into two Shiite religious centers [Husayniyyahs] in Khaniqin northeast of Baghdad on Friday at the time of noon Friday prayers in congregation, and detonated their bombs. The death toll as of late Friday was being reported as 82 in the Western wire services. Al-Zaman says 100 were killed and 85 wounded. Relatives were combing through the rubble looking for loved ones. The religious centers belonged to Faili Kurds, a Shiite minority among the Kurds. Many Failis had fled from Diyala province to Iran during the time of Saddam, but tens of thousands are said to have returned since 2003. (The AP story giving the name of one of the wounded as "Omar" is a mistake; perhaps it was `Amr. Omar is a Sunni name and not one that typically would be carried by a Shiite).

Bottle of Blog: Preznit Sobers Up, Makes Judgment

Sober Judgment: "That last pretzel was a mistake."

SAN AIR BASE, South Korea - His war policies under siege at home, President Bush said Saturday there would be no early troop withdrawal because “sober judgment” must prevail over emotional calls to end the military mission before Iraq is stabilized.

"Sober judgment"? What is this? A codeword to his base that he's back on the wagon? Yeah, that's what I look for--sober judgment from a guy who can't remember his forties.

What does he know about "sober judgment"? This is a guy who disappears for weeks at a time. This is a guy who can't be seen by the public after ten o'clock at night. This is a guy, in the mid 90's, who woke up naked and bruised and confused in the Governor's Mansion in Austin. He was surrounded by total strangers, had a couple of bloody knuckles, and the last thing he could remember was walking into a bar in Alabama sometime around 1972.

Billmon: The Salvadoran Option II

They really ought to send John Negroponte back to Iraq. It would be like old home week:

Baghdad's Medical Forensic Institute - the mortuary - is a low, modern building reached via a narrow street. Most days it is filled with families of the dead. They come here for two reasons. One group, animated and noisy in grief, comes to collect its dead. The other, however, returns day after day to poke through the new cargoes of corpses ferried in by ambulance, looking for a face or clothes they might recognise. They are the relatives and friends of the 'disappeared', searching for their men. And when the disappeared are finally found, on the streets or in the city's massive rubbish dumps, or in the river, their bodies bear the all-too-telling signs of a savage beating, often with electrical cables, followed by the inevitable bullet to the head.

It's apparent -- both from this story and from reports by human rights groups (note the date on that one) -- that the U.S. and U.K. embassies have been aware for some time that Iraq's Ministry of the Interior has been turned into what the old National Guard used to be in El Salvador, or the Presidential Intelligence Unit in Guatemala, or the National Directorate of Investigation in Honduras, which is to say: death squad central.

Wrestling With History

Sometimes you have to fight the war you have, not the war you wish you had

By David Von Drehle

Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page W12

If only he could show us the memo.

"It's still classified, I suppose?" says Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, looking toward his assistant.

"It's still classified," Lawrence DiRita replies, "along with a lot of the underlying planning."

Rumsfeld nods, apparently disappointed. He is interested in sharing the memo because the memo, as he outlines it, demonstrates that his critics are utterly mistaken. He did not dash heedless and underprepared into Iraq. Rumsfeld foresaw the things that could go wrong -- and not just foresaw them, but wrote them up in a classically Rumsfeldian list, one brisk bullet point after another, 29 potential pitfalls in all. Then he distributed the memo at the highest levels, fed it into the super-secret planning process and personally walked the president through the warnings.

Need To Know

Gerald Lechliter, the retired officer who traced Bush’s military record, has assigned himself a new task -- deciphering the Plame investigation.

By Greg Sargent
Web Exclusive: 11.16.05

Does anybody remember Gerald Lechliter?

In the home stretch of the 2004 presidential campaign, Lechliter, a retired army colonel from Delaware with a bit of spare time on his hands, wrote a 32-page analysis of George W. Bush’s military records that showed that Bush had shirked his duty. Lechliter sent it to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a column, “Missing in Action,” that called Lechliter’s missive “the most meticulous examination I’ve seen of Mr. Bush’s records.” Lechliter helped revive the story, and his analysis was subsequently cited in publications all over the country.

Thomas Paine and Intelligent Design

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted November 17, 2005.

In Paine's version of 'intelligent design,' science and religion are inextricably linked; in the Kansas school board's definition, they are adversaries.

The Kansas school board might find it instructive to read Thomas Paine's 210-year-old argument in support of intelligent design. They may be interested to learn how his belief in intelligent design led him to reject organized religions.

Why read Thomas Paine? Because, it is widely agreed, without him there would have been no United States. Indeed, it was Paine who first used the phrase, "the United States of America."

For those unfamiliar with American history, a brief review may be in order.

The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

By JAMES BAMFORD

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

GOP attacks on U.S. military actions during Clinton Presidency (Updated)

by GlennGreenwald

Sat Nov 19, 2005 at 10:56:45 AM PDT

The odious, patriotism-impugning Michelle Malkin is today stridently hyping a post at Mudville Gazette entitled "History of a Long War (Iraq 1990-2003)," the purpose of which is ostensibly to demonstrate that the U.S. war with Iraq did not begin with Bush's false WMD claims, but instead has been raging continuously since 1990. These most slavish of Bush defenders apparently think that this revisionism will get Bush off the hook for starting a war on false pretenses (since, according to this view, Bush did not start a war with Iraq, but merely inherited an ongoing one).

'Houston Chronicle' Suggests Innocent Man was Executed

By E&P Staff

Published: November 19, 2005 5:00 PM ET
NEW YORK It is often said that while many innocent men and women have been released from death row in recent years, there might not yet be one fully documented case of an innocent person actually put to death by the state. But an article in the Houston Chronicle for its Sunday edition strongly suggests that an innocent man--or rather, a teenager--was executed, 12 years ago.

Ruben Cantu, 17, was executed in Texas in 1993, convicted of murder. He'd had no previous convictions and claimed he was framed in this one.

Iraq Cannot Be Won

By Rep. John Murtha, AlterNet. Posted November 19, 2005.

A conservative senior House Democrat and Purple Heart-decorated Vietnam veteran describes the U.S. presence in Iraq as an 'occupation,' and calls for immediate troop withdrawal.

Following is the transcript of a speech by conservative Democratic Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania on October 17. Murtha is the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriation Committee's defense panel.

I just spoke to the Democratic Caucus and told them my feelings about the war. And I started out by saying the war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.

The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

Digby: The Greatest Doughy Pantload

It's a sad day when Jonah Goldberg's shallow little musings are in Robert Sheer's space on the LA Times op-ed page. His first column features the word "moonbats" and compares FDR to Bush explaining that great presidents lie to us for our own good. He even tells us that we didn't know WWII was a "good war" until the Holocaust and Hollywood showed us this was true. History, you see, will show that George W. Bush, like FDR, will be remembered as a great president even though he lied because of his bold action in the middle east.

Digby: What DOES One Wear To Armageddon?

It appears that Sally Quinn is more than just a society martinet. She's DC's Doyenne of Doom:

On the evening of Nov. 14, Quinn took her message to the grass roots, addressing approximately 70 folks at a meeting of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. Speaking from the pulpit of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Quinn said that she had gathered enough information to “scare you a lot.”

[...]

Your N95 Mask: The Building Block of Emergency Prep. At her talk, Quinn held this particle-filtering device to her mouth and said that she’s “never without it.” She also stuffs one into the briefcase of her husband, former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, who she says “grouses” about the precaution.

Digby: Hardballer

I urge everyone who can to tune into Hardball today. John Murtha is one of Tweety's favorite manly pin-ups. He'll be slavering all over the fact that Murtha has called for immediate withdrawal. (Count how many times he says "stand-up guy.")

In all seriousness, this may be a turning point. Murtha has said the unthinkable: "It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region." Yep. We've made a mess alright. But our continued presence is making things worse --- for everybody.

Digby: Fool You, Shame On You

Garance Franke-Ruta over at TAPPED says:

Did fear of being sent to jail keep Woodward from coming forward? If so, this may be an instance of Patrick Fitzgerald's aggressive approach to journalists backfiring on him in the worst possible way. If subpoenaed, Woodward, given his historic commitment to protecting sources, would almost certainly have refused to testify before the grand jury without a waiver of confidentiality from his source, whom he reports repeatedly refused to give him one. (The source continues to deny Woodward permission to name him publicly.) Which means that Woodward, had he come forward, may well have found himself imprisoned like Judith Miller.

Digby: Testy Woody

Here's an interesting account of a close encounter with Bob Woodward on November 6th (after Libby was indicted and before the Woodster testified) by a reporter with the Toronto Star:

Interestingly, on Sunday, Nov. 6, Woodward was in Toronto, giving a speech to major donors to the UJA. Before the gala dinner at the Royal York Hotel, he spoke to half a dozen reporters, including myself. Here's my treeware column about it.

But I left stuff out.

Digby: Missing The Story

This little chat with Len Downie from the Post this morning is far less revealing than the "water-cooler" message board of yesterday, but it's interesting in one respect. (Check out this excellent analysis of that embarrassing inside look at the WaPo social and professional hierarchy from Glen Greenwald.)

Downie does a great Scott McLellan impression by being robotically unresponsive, but nobody really asks the right question either. Woodward's public statements were egregious but not because he was stating his personal opinion and breaking the Washington Post's rules --- they were egregious because of the opinions themselves.

Digby: Chicken Or The Egg

From FAIR:

During an interview with conservative MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, Wright responded to Carlson's question about offering a left-leaning channel by saying that progressives "don't listen to a lot of radio and they don't watch a lot of television" (Broadcasting & Cable, 11/13/05).

I don't know where he gets his information, but I suspect he's relying on some absurd stereotype. It's also likely that his impression that "the left" isn't relevant comes from the statistics that only 20% of the country identifies as liberal while everyone else is a moderate or a conservative. This is not true. That is branding, something a Network TV guy should know all about.

Digby: Churl Girl

I just had a very unpleasant experience. I watched Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd have the most fatuous discussion of gender and politics I've ever had the misfortune to witness. Don't cry for poor Maureen being taken to task for her shallow interpretation of modern sex roles. She deserves every bit of disapprobation she gets.

I knew that Matthews was a masculine virtues obsessed sexist, what with his endless carping about how Hillary comes off as cold and humorless and how real men will lie to their wives and say they support her but won't have the stomach to do the dirty deed when they get in the voting booth. I did not know that Maureen agreed with him.

Digby: Just Trying To Help

So it was Woodward who picked up the phone after Fitzgerald's press conference and reminded his White House insider source that, contrary to Fitzgeralds apparent belief that Libby was the first to spill the beans to a reporter, the source had told Woodward about Plame sometime earlier.

In his press conference announcing Libby’s indictment, Fitzgerald noted that, "Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." Woodward realized, given that the indictment stated Libby disclosed the information to New York Times reporter Miller on June 23, that Libby was not the first official to talk about Wilson's wife to a reporter. Woodward himself had received the information earlier.

Digby: Hawks Fly Away

"...[Murtha] symbolizes a particular constituent --- the war hawk who recognizes that we aren't winning and that the "war" is, in fact, unwinnable. They are suddenly sweating and agitated because they know that if they are losing guys like him, they are losing the whole enchilada."--Digby

Kevin at Catch reads Little Green Footballs so I don't have to poke my eyes out with an ice pick:

Has anyone here tried to phone, e-mail, fax, or otherwise contact the political slut, John "the coward" Murtha? You, know, the maggot who is being quoted by Al-Jazeera (see nationalreview.com)? I have attempted to call this creature since last night (phone still busy), fax him (busy yesterday and today), and he does not accept e-mails from people outside of his district. This man is a tumor, a slime, a piece of shit and I don't give a DAMN that he served in Vietnam!

Woodward & Washington's 'Tipping Point'

By Robert Parry

November 19, 2005

In my book, Secrecy & Privilege, I track how the Washington press corps changed from the Watergate/Vietnam era of the 1970s, when journalists took some pride in challenging the powerful, to the Iraq War, when many national news outlets cowered and fawned before a White House that equated skepticism with disloyalty.

This gradual but unmistakable shift in the ethos of Washington journalism marked a hard-fought victory for conservatives who invested billions of dollars over the past three decades in building a media/political machine for gaining as much control as possible of the information flowing through the nation’s capital to the American people.

Housing Bubble Insurance

Can you protect the value of your home when the housing market drops?
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Nov. 18, 2005, at 6:08 AM ET

Thanks to rising prices, homeowners increasingly view their houses as investments. At the end of 2004, U.S. residential real estate was worth $18.6 trillion—more than the entire stock market. The National Association of Realtors reported that 23 percent of homes bought in 2004 were investment properties. It's no surprise that there's now a company, Condoflip.com, which aims to let people trade homes the way they trade stocks.

More people have more riding on their homes—and second homes—as investments than ever before. And yet there's no good way to insure those investments. Homeowners policies only cover the infrastructure from physical damage. But if your home falls in value from $1 million to $750,000 thanks to market dynamics, you can't call Allstate. So far, the only methods of hedging against the value of your home are crude and inefficient. You can short the stocks of publicly held home-building companies, like Toll Brothers or Pulte, or buy and sell options on them. But when you do so, you're betting on management and all sorts of other factors. There's no guarantee Toll will fall when the value of your house drops.

The Brad Blog: Democracy Breakin': Ohio's Electric Boogaloo

Blogged by Brad on 11/17/2005 @ 12:16pm PT...

Democracy Breakin': Ohio's Electric Boogaloo

More on Ohio's Staggeringly Impossible '05 Results

The Corporate Media Continues to Not Care, But a Rightwing Blogger Finally Does...

The Corporate Mainstream Media may not give a damn about our democracy. Neither might the bulk of our politicians on both the Left and Right side of the aisle. But...

The Corporate Mainstream Media may not give a damn about our democracy. Neither might the bulk of our politicians on both the Left and Right side of the aisle. But clearly the citizens do, and even one rightwing blogger who has recently seen at least some of the light...

The response to our article on the "staggeringly impossible" results of last week's election in Ohio on several Election Reform initiatives which would have struck deep into the heart of far-right Republican Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has been notable to say the least.

We felt the report was notable enough that we decided to cross-post it both at BRAD BLOG and at HuffPo, where -- though it was never added to the front page as a "featured blog" -- it has already received an extraordinary 93 comments as of this posting.

House Votes for Public Land Mining Sales

Saturday November 19, 2005 12:01 am

By JOHN HEILPRIN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House agreed to reinstate sales of mining lands at cheap prices as part of its budget cut plan approved Friday, a move that could transfer into private hands up to 20 million acres of public lands on Western ranges, national forests and even national parks.

The measure would end a congressional ban that since 1994 has prevented mineral companies and individuals from submitting new applications for ``patenting,'' or buying, public land, including some in national forests and parks.

No such provision is contained in the Senate version of

GOP calls for ethics investigation into Iraq war critic

RAW STORY

Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee, ROLL CALL reports Friday. Excerpts.

#

The calls come as Murtha, a former Marine and pro-military Democrat, has made headlines this week by coming out in support of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Fitzgerald sees new grand jury proceedings

By Adam EntousFri Nov 18, 6:29 PM ET

In a sign he may seek new or revised charges in the CIA leak case, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said on Friday his investigation would be going back before a grand jury.

It was the first time Fitzgerald said he would be presenting information to another grand jury since the indictment and resignation three weeks ago of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Lawyers in the case said the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, which has reached into the highest levels of the White House, could be moving into a new phase that could result in charges against other top administration officials.

Federal Jury Finds Salvadoran Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in 80's

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: November 19, 2005

In a verdict that brought back a dark time in the United States' forgotten wars in Central America, a federal jury in Memphis yesterday found a former military colonel from El Salvador responsible for crimes against humanity during that country's civil war in the 1980's and ordered him to pay $6 million in damages.

The nine-member jury found that the colonel, Nicolás Carranza, had "command responsibility" for the torture of a Salvadoran who was forced to confess falsely to the 1983 killing of an American military adviser, Lt. Cmdr. Albert Schaufelberger.

Made in U.S., Shunned in China

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: November 18, 2005

GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 17 - Abby Chan, a 23-year-old advertising copywriter, took a break from shopping for Levi's jeans at a mall here on Wednesday evening and relaxed at a table in a Starbucks restaurant.

Aside from coffee and denim, there were not many American brand products that interested her. She covets Chanel clothing and Louis Vuitton bags, dreams of owning a BMW or Mercedes-Benz someday, and struggles to think of an American brand that appeals to her.

G.O.P. Tries to Split Democrats With Vote on Iraq War

By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: November 18, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - House Republicans are attempting to split the ranks of the Democrats tonight by offering a resolution to withdraw American troops from Iraq immediately. The Republican-controlled House is expected to defeat the measure in a vote that the Republicans hope will leave the Democrats in disarray.

Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine colonel and one the House Democrats' most influential members on military matters, called on Thursday for pulling out the 153,000 American troops in Iraq "at the earliest practicable date," which could be six months, saying the United States forces had become a catalyst for the continuing violence in Iraq. Mr. Murtha did propose keeping some forces in the region.

Return of the Patriot Act

With key parts of the Patriot Act due to expire shortly, Congress has an opportunity to improve the law. Instead, it seems poised to renew many of the provisions that infringe most directly on civil liberties - and to add some new ones. There is nothing "patriotic" about letting the F.B.I. seize the records of ordinary Americans without a judge's approval, or taking away the federal judiciary's historical role in ensuring that the death penalty is imposed fairly. Some senators are threatening a filibuster as they negotiate to block some of the act's more egregious provisions. We hope a filibuster isn't necessary.

Congress passed the Patriot Act hurriedly after the Sept. 11 attacks, with little time for reasoned discussion. Many of the most aggressive provisions were written to be phased out after a few years, to ensure that a future Congress would be able to reconsider them in calmer circumstances. If that were really happening, Congress would not be preparing to authorize the continued use of "national security letters," an investigative tool that gives the F.B.I. sweeping power to riffle through ordinary Americans' private records.

IRD/Good News: How the right wing targets United Methodist women

Church & Scaife, Part II

by Andrew J. Weaver, JoAnn Yoon Fukumoto, Mary A. Weathers and Fred W. Kandeler

For the past two years, Media Transparency and the Boston Wesleyan Association have published research on a steady stream of attacks against the United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline American denominations carried out by conservative philanthropy sponsored institutions and people.

The primary actor in this unethical and mendacious attack is the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a political "think tank" that operates more like a shark in a fish tank as it attempts to undermine mainline Protestant ministries to form an unholy alliance with far-right politics.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/18/05

As 'Iraq Critics Meet Familiar Reply,' the White House issued a six-page rebuttal to a 900 word editorial it described as coming "from the newspaper that gave us Jayson Blair."

"The American people don't believe this president," said Rep. John Murtha in a "NewsHour" interview, after the White House took the "unusual step" of invoking the name of Michael Moore to dismiss Murtha's criticisms. Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell invoked another name.

The 'Unlikely Lonesome Dove' also said, "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments ... and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." Plus: what a difference a day makes.

Our Man In Iraq The list of charges against a comptroller and financial officer hired by the CPA despite having served time for felony fraud in the 90's, "does little justice to the astonishing brazenness of the accusations described in the complaint," reports the New York Times, one day after introducing the other main character.

Quoted in a Washington Post article on the pair, Rep. Henry Waxman "said that while the Republican-controlled Congress has held 13 hearings on the U.N. oil-for-food scandal... it has held only one hearing on the spending of reconstruction funds."

Calling the new Medicare drug benefit "an example of gratuitous privatization on a grand scale," Paul Krugman compares it to a GOP senator's effort to protect private companies from competition with "the government’s free weather service.

George W. Bush Gives Me Hope

The astonishing collapse of the Bumbling One surely means healthy change is imminent, right?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 18, 2005

Here's the good news: It really can't get much worse.

We cannot afford any more wars. The environment has been sold to the bone. The national spirit has been beaten like an Alaskan baby seal and the GOP has worked our last nerve, passed through the karmic blood-brain barrier, reached saturation to the point where even moderate Repubs and gobs of intelligent Christians are finally saying, Oh my God, what have we done, and how did it all go so wrong, and how much Prozac and wine and praying to a very disappointed Jesus will it take to fix it?

Report: Many jobs pay below living wage

By JENNIFER McKEE
Gazette State Bureau

HELENA - About 40 percent of all the jobs offered in Montana pay less than the $9.07 an hour needed for a worker to enjoy a living wage here, a study shows.

The report, called "Searching for Work that Pays: 2005 Job Gap Study," was released Thursday by the nonprofit Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, a Seattle-based group associated with Montana People's Action.

Pentagon agrees to probe Feith's role in Iraq intel

Thu Nov 17, 2005 8:42 PM ET

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's inspector general has agreed to review the prewar intelligence activities of former U.S. defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, a main architect of the Iraq war, congressional officials said on Thursday.

News of the Defense Department probe comes at a time of bitter political debate over whether President George W. Bush misled the American people with prewar intelligence. The increasingly biter dispute has pitted the president and his top advisers against lawmakers including some from Bush's own Republican Party.

Army to Halt Call-Ups of Inactive Soldiers

Feeling a draft?--Dictynna

Thousands on Reserve List Seek Delay or Exemption on Return to Active Duty

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A11

The Army has suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty, after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up.

Despite intense pressure to fill manpower gaps, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the Army has no plans for any further call-up of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) beyond the current level of about 6,500 soldiers. The IRR is a pool of about 115,000 trained soldiers who have left active-duty or reserve units for civilian life, but remain subject to call-up for a set period.

Cheney Unleashed

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, November 17, 2005; 2:00 PM

Beset by charges that President Bush misled the nation in the run-up to war in Iraq, the White House recently started lashing back at its critics. And last night, everything got kicked up a notch: Bush sent his biggest attack dog into the fight and let him loose.

Headlining a black tie dinner for a conservative research group, Vice President Cheney wasted no time making it clear he was out for blood.

Editorial: Don't Bet on Coincidence

Friday, November 18, 2005; A22

WASHINGTON, it seems, is a city of coincidences.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert

(R-Ill.) held a fundraiser at lobbyist Jack Abramoff's restaurant on June 3, 2003. His political action committee, Keep Our Majority, took in at least $21,500 from Mr. Abramoff's law firm and Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribal clients.

One week later the speaker and his three top deputies wrote Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, urging her to reject a request for a new casino from the Jena tribe of Choctaw Indians. As it happened, the Louisiana Coushatta and Mississippi Choctaw, two of Mr. Abramoff's biggest tribal clients, were furiously working to block the casino.

What Abortion Debate?

Talking About Alito's Respect for Precedent Avoids the Real Questions

By Michael Kinsley
Friday, November 18, 2005; A23

In a 1986 case called Bowers v. Hardwick , the Supreme Court ruled that state laws against homosexual sodomy do not violate the Constitution. In a 2003 case called Lawrence v. Texas , the court ruled that, on second thought, anti-sodomy laws do violate the Constitution. Liberal politicians cheered this rare and unexpected admission of error by the court. They did not express any alarm about the danger of overturning precedents. Plessy v. Ferguson , upholding racial segregation, was a major precedent when the court overturned it and ended formal racial segregation with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Liberals did not complain.

An Iraq Deadline for Bush

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23

This will be remembered as the week when President Bush lost control over the Iraq war debate. His administration has perhaps six months to get things right. If the situation in Iraq fails to improve significantly, public pressure for withdrawal will become irresistible.

There was a political thunderclap across the capital yesterday when Rep. John Murtha -- Marine veteran, defense specialist, longtime hawk and traditional supporter of presidential prerogatives in foreign policy -- called for pulling American troops out of Iraq. American soldiers, he said, "have done all they can in Iraq." Continued engagement by American troops was "not in the best interest of the United States."

Hawkish Democrat Joins Call For Pullout

GOP Assails Murtha's Demand to Leave Iraq

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A01

The top House Democrat on military spending matters stunned colleagues yesterday by calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, while many congressional Democrats reacted defiantly to President Bush's latest attack on his critics.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said many of those troops are demoralized and poorly equipped and, after more than two years of war, are impeding Iraq's progress toward stability and self-governance.

Documents Show Nixon Deception on Cambodia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 17, 2005

Filed at 3:21 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Determined to win re-election, the Nixon administration sought ways to use former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa for its campaign in 1972, the year after President Nixon pardoned the union leader, newly released documents show.

The material released Wednesday by the National Archives shows the Justice Department reviewed how far the administration could go in promoting Hoffa at campaign appearances in an effort to cut into traditionally strong union support for Democrats.

Survey Shows a Revival of Isolationism Among Americans

By MEG BORTIN,
International Herald Tribune
Published: November 17, 2005

Shaken by the Iraq war and the rise of anti-American sentiment around the world, Americans are turning inward, a new Pew survey of United States opinion leaders and the general public has found.

The survey, conducted this autumn and released today, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970's and the end of the Cold War in the 1990's.

Now, High-Tech Work Is Going Abroad

By JAMES FLANIGAN
Published: November 17, 2005

Millions of low-technology jobs, from textile production to corporate call centers, have migrated to Asian countries like India and China in recent years. Now, though, high technology is increasingly coming up for grabs, and no company illustrates the speed at which corporate America can replace high-priced American talent with cheaper foreign brainpower than Conexant Systems.

Conexant, a Newport Beach, Calif., maker of the intricate microchip brains behind Internet access for home computers and satellite-connecting set-top boxes for televisions, has gone on a hiring binge for research engineers in India, a move that it says will eventually cut its overall costs by 50 percent.

I Vant to Drink Your Vatts

By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Households across the land are infested with vampires. That's what energy experts call those gizmos with two sharp teeth that dig into a wall socket and suck juice all night long. All day long, too, and all year long.

Most people assume that when they turn off the television set it stops drawing power.

But that's not how most TV's (and VCR's and other electronic devices) work. They remain ever in standby mode, silently sipping energy to the tune of 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, awaiting the signal to roar into action.

A Timetable for Mr. Bush

Published: November 17, 2005

No matter how the White House chooses to spin it, the United States Senate cast a vote of no confidence this week on the war in Iraq. And about time.

The actual content of the resolution, passed on a vote of 79 to 19, was meaningless. The Senate asked the administration to provide regular reports on progress in Iraq, and took the position that next year should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." It was a desperate - but toothless - cry of election-bound lawmakers to be let off the hook for a disastrous military quagmire.

Republican leaders, who supported the proposal, argued that the vote was a repudiation of a Democratic motion to set possible withdrawal deadlines for American troops. But the proposal would never have gone to the floor if members of President Bush's party had not felt the need to go on the record, somehow, as expressing their own impatience with the situation.

Robert Scheer: The Big Lie Technique

At a time when approximately 57 percent of Americans polled believe that President Bush deceived them on the reasons for the war in Iraq, it does seem a bit redundant to deconstruct the president's recent speeches on that subject. Yet, to fail to do so would be to passively accept the Big Lie technique -- which is how we as a nation got into this horrible mess in the first place.

The basic claim of the president's desperate and strident attack on the war's critics this past week is that he was acting as a consensus president when intelligence information left him no choice but to invade Iraq as a preventive action to deter a terrorist attack on America. This is flatly wrong.

New Revelations Undermine Credibility of Alito's Efforts to Discount His Own Words and Record

Alito played key role in Reagan effort to overturn Roe, said he was ‘particularly proud’ of that work

Efforts by Judge Samuel Alito to explain away clear written statements about his legal philosophy are crumbling under the weight of ongoing revelations about his record.

A Boston Globe report today confirms that in the months before he applied for promotion to deputy assistant attorney general, Alito was actively involved in devising legal strategy in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a case in which the Reagan administration’s brief urged that “this Court should overrule” Roe v. Wade. A colleague from the solicitor general’s office told the Globe that Alito made a “major contribution” to the case.

It's time Americans take back their country

by Gerald Plessner

America is in a very dangerous time. Because of the weakness of our president we are more vulnerable --- truly vulnerable --- than we were even in the days after September 11, 2001.

When an American president is seen in the world as weakened, then other countries both friend and foe, naturally react to that weakness. They do so either by moving in their own best interest without regard to our leadership or by increasing their hostile acts towards us and our friends.

George W. Bush is that weakened president and we have only to thank those who bought his election, those who have hijacked America's foreign and domestic policy and those who have lied to us and taken us into this predicament.

Criticism of Voting Law Was Overruled

Justice Dept. Backed Georgia Measure Despite Fears of Discrimination

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005; Page A01

A team of Justice Department lawyers and analysts who reviewed a Georgia voter-identification law recommended rejecting it because it was likely to discriminate against black voters, but they were overruled the next day by higher-ranking officials at Justice, according to department documents.

The Justice Department has characterized the "pre-clearance" of the controversial Georgia voter-identification program as a joint decision by career and political appointees in the Civil Rights Division. Republican proponents in Georgia have cited federal approval of the program as evidence that it would not discriminate against African Americans and other minorities.

Digby: All The Presidents Stooges

I can't tell you how impressed I continue to be with the elite journalists in this country. After finding out that top reporters from The NY Times, The Washington Post and NBC all withheld information from the public about their leaders, I can only wonder what else they may be keeping back because of their cozy relationships, book deals, or political sympathies. This is a crisis in journalism.

Matt Cooper was leaked to by Karl Rove in the summer of 2003 and he fought to keep from revealing his source. But he fulfilled his responsibility as a journalist by writing a story and it was the real story about what was going on.

Digby: Hard Target

Woodward, who has had lengthy interviews with President Bush for his last two books, dismissed criticism that he has grown too close to White House officials. He said he prods them into providing a fuller picture of the administration's workings because of the time he devotes to the books.

"The net to readers," Woodward said, "is a voluminous amount of quality, balanced information that explains the hardest target in Washington," the Bush administration.

Digby: Waiver-ing

Dick Stauber, Matt Coopers lawyer, just made a very good point on Hardball.

Woodward's souce apparently came forward and told the prosecutor about their conversation. Yet Woodward still says that he is under a confidentiality agreement and needs special permission to reveal what he knows. Stauber asks, "if coming forward and admitting something to a US Attorney isn't waiving confidentiality, then what is?"

Digby: Too Many Marts

I think it's really great that Bob Woodward is such a stand up guy who refuses to divulge his sources no matter what the consequences. He has always shown excellent journalistic judgement in these things so we can trust him to know what is important and what isn't.

For instance, in his examination of the presidency "Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate" he discusses how dumb it was for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton not to just tell what they knew right away and get it all over with:

After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon's succesesors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.

Juan Cole - 11/16/05

Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
Preparations for Cairo Conference

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari revealed Tuesday that nearly 200 prisoners detained by the Ministry of the Interior had been discovered to have been tortured and half-starved.

The State Department spokesman alleged that the US does not practice torture! And said it did not expect others to do so. But surely Abu Ghraib was a signal to the Iraqi secret police as to what was permissible.

Woman Bomber Unrepentant

Al-Hayat: Sajidah Mubarak Atrus al-Rishawi, who attempted to detonate a belt bomb at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman last Wednesday night is still unrepentant. She insists that she is fighting "the infidels and apostates from among the Muslims."

Muslims and the 5 Questions

Somebody named Dennis Prager wrote a frankly bigotted op-ed for the LA Times asking "Muslims" 5 questions. The questions are fairly easy to answer in themselves, but the stupidity of the whole framework is what is objectionable. Why is it that our media personalities cannot think their way out of a paper bag? Why don't high school civics courses alert them that there might be a problem with stereotyping everyone that you categorize as belonging to a particular group?

Billmon: Judy Woodward

Scroll down at the link to see the picture. Billmon has a cruel streak...--Dictynna

Or should I call him Little Mister Run Amok?

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed . . .

GOP Lt. Gov of Maryland changes his story on supposed racist criticism he received

by John in DC - 11/16/2005 09:18:00 PM

My oh my. It seems the African-American Republican Lt. Governor of Maryland, Michael Steele, is now backing off of reports by himself, the GOP governor of Maryland, and their press secretary that he was greeted by a veritable shower of Oreo cookies, thick as locusts the press secretary said, during one of the debates during the last election.

Now that the Baltimore Sun has basically proven the story to be an outright lie, the Lt Gov is - surprise! - changing his story.

Carbon Dioxide Storage a Success

I hope this pans out--Dictynna

By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer

November 15, 2005, 7:43 PM EST

WASHINGTON -- An experimental project in Canada to inject carbon dioxide into oil fields has proven successful, removing 5 million tons of the heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas, while enhancing oil recovery, the Energy Department said Tuesday.

If the methodology could be applied worldwide, from one-third to one-half of the carbon dioxide emissions that go into the atmosphere could be eliminated over the next century and billions of barrels of additional oil could be recovered, the department said.

National Security Adviser was Woodward's source, attorneys say

Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was the senior administration official who told Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA officer, attorneys close to the investigation and intelligence officials tell RAW STORY.

Testifying under oath Monday to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Woodward recounted a casual conversation he had with Hadley, these sources say. Hadley did not return a call seeking comment.

We Still Don't Have a Plan

What has everybody been doing for three years?
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005, at 4:51 PM ET

It is becoming increasingly clear that President George W. Bush and his top advisers lack not only a strategy for fighting the war in Iraq but—more disturbing—any idea of how to devise one.

The latest, most jaw-dropping evidence comes from a front-page article by Greg Jaffe in the Nov. 15 Wall Street Journal. Jaffe tells the story of David (last name withheld for obvious reasons), a 37-year-old U.S. Army foreign-affairs officer stationed undercover in northwestern Iraq. David wears civilian clothes, packs only a pistol, and is so fluent in Arabic that the locals think he's one of them. As a result, he's been able to trace how jihadist fighters have moved into Iraq across the Syrian border—what routes they use, what markings they follow—and he's passed on the information to American military commanders. He's also advised these commanders and other officials on how to deal with their Iraqi counterparts, he's fired incompetent interpreters who'd been hired by officials who didn't know the language, and he's staved off at least one big conflict with Turkey.

More Suspect Yucca Mtn. E - Mails Said Found

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 16, 2005

Filed at 5:48 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There is more evidence of questionable work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada, an Energy Department inspector general's report said Wednesday.

Criminal investigations already were under way into a batch of e-mails the Energy Department disclosed in March that suggest government scientists falsified data on the project.

Risks of Teflon Relative Raised by Insider

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 16, 2005

Filed at 9:02 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- DuPont Co. hid studies showing the risks of a Teflon-related chemical used to line candy wrappers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hundreds of other food containers, according to internal company documents and a former employee.

The chemical Zonyl can rub off the liner and get into food. Once in a person's body, it can break down into perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts, known as PFOA, a related chemical used in the making of Teflon-coated cookware.

Vietnam Archive Offers Parallel to War in Iraq

By THOM SHANKER, DAVID STOUT
and JOHN FILES

Published: November 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - White House advisers convene secret sessions on the political dangers of revelations that American troops committed atrocities in the war zone, and whether the president can delicately intervene in the investigation. In the face of an increasingly unpopular war, they wonder at the impact on support at home. The best way out of the war, they agree, is propping up a new government that can attract feuding elements across a fractured foreign land.

Ignore the Man Behind That Memo

Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s insistence that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights is not the only alarming aspect of a newly released memo he wrote in 1985. That statement strongly suggests that Judge Alito is far outside the legal mainstream and that senators should question him closely about it. They should be prepared to reject his nomination to the Supreme Court if he cannot put to rest the serious concerns that the memo, part of a job application, raises about his worthiness to join the court.

When Judge Alito applied for a job with the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, he submitted a Personal Qualifications Statement that outlined his approach to the law.

DeLay Prosecutors Deny Misconduct Charges

Thursday November 17, 2005 1:46 AM

By APRIL CASTRO

Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Prosecutors in Rep. Tom DeLay's conspiracy and money laundering case on Wednesday denied allegations that they coerced a grand jury to indict the former House majority leader.

DeLay's attorneys have asked that charges against the Republican be dropped because Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, ``browbeat and coerced'' grand jurors into filing criminal charges.

Tentative Deal on Patriot Act Teeters

Thursday November 17, 2005 1:31 AM

By LAURIE KELLMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A tentative agreement to renew the Patriot Act this week teetered late Wednesday without explicit support of the lead Senate negotiator, as Democrats complained that the draft wouldn't sufficiently curb the FBI's power to probe the most private aspects of people's lives.

Hours after House and Senate negotiators said they had reached a tentative pre-dawn agreement, Democrats and civil libertarians complained that it didn't address their chief concern: the curbing of FBI power to gather certain information by requiring the investigators to prove the subject's records are connected to a foreign agent or government.

AMERICABLOG: Growing signs of a criminal conspiracy over PlameGate at the White House

by John in DC - 11/16/2005 03:41:00 PM

New from AP:

1. We find out that a senior White House official leaked to Bob Woodward the name and CIA status of Valerie Plame.

The newspaper reported that Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leak of Plame's identity, that the official talked to him about Plame in mid-June 2003.

2. That official is not Libby.

Woodward and editors at the Post refused to identify the official to reporters other than to say it was not Libby.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/16/05

One day after the Village Voice's Sydney Schanberg wrote that he wondered "what Woodward's newsroom colleagues at the Washington Post think of his put-down of this investigation," two of those colleagues report that 'Woodward was told of Plame more than two years ago.'

Former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson repeatedly broke federal law, according to what the New York Times describes as "a scathing report" by the CPB's Inspector General that "described a dysfunctional organization." More from NPR and PBS, the latter at "kenny_11-15.html."

Media Citizen finds something missing from the report: "e-mail traffic between Tomlinson and White House political advisor Karl Rove... This evidence, which may reveal the White House's hand in manipulations of PBS and NPR programming, is still under lock and key at the heavily partisan CPB."

"No wonder Senator Stevens was so adamant about not placing the oil executives under oath," says one observer in response to a White House document obtained by the Washington Post that says 'Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force' on energy policy.

A Wall Street Journal columnist argues that "Republicans would benefit if Tom DeLay stepped aside" and accepted "what no one is willing to tell him, that he has been neutered." (A low blow for a low man--Dictynna)

Alito's Smoking Gun

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A19

Samuel Alito could not have put it more plainly. "The Constitution," he wrote in a 1985 job application he posted to the Reagan administration's attorney general, Ed Meese, "does not protect a right to an abortion."

The folks charged with getting Alito confirmed as Sandra Day O'Connor's successor are insisting that the judge's declaration is not a smoking gun. Alito's subsequent record on the federal appellate bench, said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, "shows he has indeed put his personal views on abortion aside." And in the Washington Times story that revealed the existence of the application, an unnamed Republican official insisted, "the issue is not Judge Alito's political views during the Reagan administration." The issue was the hundreds of opinions Alito had authored in the years since, in "none of which is it evident what his political philosophy is."

A War For Karl

Michael T. Klare
November 16, 2005

Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict. This article first appeared on TomDispatch and is reprinted with permission.

In the 1998 movie Wag The Dog, White House spinmeister Conrad Brean seeks to deflect public attention from a brewing scandal over an alleged sexual encounter in the White House between the president and an all-too-young Girl Scout-type by concocting an international crisis. Advised by a Hollywood producer (played with delicious perversity by Dustin Hoffman), Brean "leaks" a fraudulent report that Albania has acquired a suitcase-sized nuclear device and is seeking to smuggle it into the United States. This obviously justifies an attention-diverting military reprisal. The press falls for the false report (sound familiar?) and all discussion of the president's sex scandal disappears from view—or, as Brean would have it, the "tail" of manufactured crisis wags the "dog" of national politics.

The strange case of supernatural water

Florida tested ‘Celestial Drops’ to see if they warded off citrus canker
By David Park Musella
Skeptical Inquirer
LiveScience
Updated: 3:08 p.m. ET Nov. 15, 2005

Florida's citrus crop contributes billions of dollars to the state's economy, so when that industry is threatened, anything that might help is considered. Back in 2001, when citrus canker was blighting the crop and threatening to reduce that vital source of revenue, an interesting — if not quite scientific — alternative was considered.

Katherine Harris, then Florida's secretary of state — and now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives — ordered a study in which, according to an article by Jim Stratton in the Orlando Sentinel, "researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test ‘Celestial Drops,' promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its ‘improved fractal design,' ‘infinite levels of order,' and ‘high energy and low entropy.'"

UPDATE 1-U.S. Senate panel votes to end Big Oil tax break

Tue Nov 15, 2005 6:36 PM ET

(Adds comments from Sen. Wyden, oil companies that testified at Senate hearing, oil company profits, edits)

By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - With the oil industry enjoying record profits from high prices for gasoline and other petroleum products, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday voted to repeal a $1 billion tax break for big oil companies.

Congress had included the tax break, which related to certain expenses for oil and natural gas exploration, in a broader bill to update U.S. energy policy that President George W. Bush signed into law this summer.

Investigators allege Kerik took money from mob-linked contractors

BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO
STAFF WRITER

November 16, 2005

New Jersey officials Tuesday alleged that Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, took money or "things of value" from two reputedly mob-linked contractors attempting to influence his actions as a public official.

The claims were made in a complaint filed by New Jersey law enforcement officials with the Casino Control Commission in an effort to revoke casino industry licenses granted to the contractors and their companies.

Kerik is not doing any business in the New Jersey casino industry and is not charged with wrongdoing in the complaint, but officials said that the contractors in question, brothers Frank and Peter DiTommaso, had a long-standing relationship with him.

Exclusive: More than 13,000 being held by coalition in Iraqi prisons; Less than 2% have been convicted

Larisa Alexandrovna

As more and more Iraqis have been detained and released, the insurgency has intensified. The number detained has more than doubled in the last year and a half; the number of attacks has also more than doubled over the same period.

Recent documents leaked to RAW STORY reveal that as of Nov. 8, coalition forces in Iraq held 13,514 in Iraqi prisons. The documents also reveal the grim landscape of Iraq’s internment system, in which just two percent of those detained been convicted. A UN report has confirmed the basic figures.

N.Y. to Lose $125 Million in 9/11 Aid

New Orleans should stash any cash they get in an offshore account.--Dictynna

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press WriterWed Nov 16, 7:08 AM ET

Congressional budget negotiators have decided to take back $125 million in Sept. 11 aid from New York, which had fought to keep the money to treat sick and injured ground zero workers, lawmakers said Tuesday.

New York officials had sought for months to hold onto the funding, originally meant to cover increased worker compensation costs stemming from the 2001 terror attacks.

But a massive labor and health spending bill moving fitfully through House-Senate negotiations would take back that funding, lawmakers said.

"It seems that despite our efforts the rescission will stand, very sadly, and that is something of a promise broken," said Rep. Vito Fossella (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y. "We will try hard in the coming weeks, but ultimately Congress will have something of a black eye over this."

A spokeswoman for Rep. John Sweeney (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., said the congressman also had been told New York would lose the funding in whatever compromise version of the spending bill finally reaches the floor.

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force

By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A01

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; A01

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- one week after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Sidney Schanberg on the utter uselessness of Bob Woodward, here talking about Traitorgate with Larry King:

"Technically they might be able to be charged with perjury. But I don't see an underlying crime here, and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know maybe this is not one to go to the court with."

Is this the same Bob Woodward whose Watergate scoops were dismissed by Richard Nixon's press secretary, the late Ron Ziegler, as piddling stories about a "third-rate burglary"? Doesn't Woodward remember the reaction by many in the White House press corps, who initially sneered at the story and brushed it off as the fevered product of two lowly cityside reporters covering crime and the courts—which is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the time?

Digby: Fighting The Last War

While agreeing with E.J. Dionne's basic premise in his op-ed this morning --- that the Cheney administration acted like a bunch of rabid dogs back in 2002, making it extremely difficult to even debate, much less vote against the decisions to go to war --- Michael Crowley makes the point that I mentioned earlier, which is that the Democratic leadership, particularly the Presidential Hopeful Club, were fighting the last war:

The 2002 debate was filled with discussions about who got the Gulf War "right" and who was "wrong," and how the anti-war folks--who predicted all sorts of disasters that never came to pass--could have miscalculated so badly. Back in '91, anti-war votes killed the near-term presidential aspirations of some key Democratic senators, which may help to explain why ambitious people like John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and even Hillary Clinton all voted the way they did (pro-war) in 2002. Scare tactics or not, they may have felt they couldn't afford, politically, to risk the sort of damage incurred by people like Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, who wound up on the "wrong" side of the 1991 vote and retired soon after instead of running for president as once expected.

Digby: Call Anyway

From what I gather, the two new proposed compromises to the Lindsey Graham Cojones Project are recondite and vague.

I agree with Marty Lederman at SCOTUS blog that this is surely a case for testimony from experts and a thorough discussion. Pushing through changes to the most fundamental underpinnings of our system of government in order to meet arbitrary deadlines is a very bad idea.

Strange Behavior at the F.D.A.

Published: November 15, 2005

Congressional investigators have documented some highly suspect maneuvering behind the Food and Drug Administration's decision last year to reject over-the-counter sales of the controversial morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B. The investigation, by the Government Accountability Office, stopped short of asserting that political considerations had led agency officials to overrule their own experts and outside advisers. But the most plausible inference one can draw is that politics or ideology was allowed to trump science as higher-ups at the agency searched for rationales to keep access to the contraceptive restricted.

Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials

Published: November 15, 2005

To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.

Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.

ACLU Sues to Expand Bible Tax Break

Tuesday November 15, 2005 9:01 PM

By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO

Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA (AP) - Acting on behalf of a seller of spiritual books, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit arguing that a Georgia law exempting the Bible from sale taxes is discriminatory and should be extended to all publications dealing with the meaning of life.

``If they're not taxing someone's holy scriptures, they shouldn't be taxing anyone's,'' said Candace Apple, who owns the Phoenix and Dragon Bookstore in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. ``I'm not willing to stand at the counter and tell someone, `Oh, sorry, your religion is wrong.'''

Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/15/05

'Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials,' the New York Times editorializes that "It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why."

In 'rediscovered testimony,' George Tenet "told Congress in February 2001 that Iraq was 'probably' pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs but that the CIA had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons," reports Raw Story. Earlier: "This odd story begs for analysis."

A report on the motivation of a failed suicide bomber, who lost three brothers in Iraq, mentions that the CIA "recently warned that a new generation of jihadists was being trained in the Iraq war, and that these fighters could soon take their cause to other countries."

Roberto Lovato describes how Halliburton and its subcontractors turned hundreds of undocumented Latino workers into 'Gulf Coast Slaves' after Katrina. Lovato earlier covered 'The Latinization of the New New Orleans.'

Very disturbing story about Bush's state of mind in the Wash Times magazine

by John in DC - 11/15/2005 05:26:00 PM

The Washington Times, you may know, is an "independent" newspaper that is basically the mouthpiece of the Republican party. For that reason, it sometimes gets inside scoops as to what the GOP is thinking, and even what's going on inside the White House. For that reason, their latest story on Bush is extremely disturbing:

President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration sources say. The president's reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity.

Motive Glimpsed in Jordan Attack

Relatives Say U.S. Offensive in Fallujah Radicalized Woman

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Page A18

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 14 -- Relatives of the woman who failed in a bid to bomb a hotel in Jordan said she was radicalized by the U.S. attack on Fallujah in November 2004 to retake the Iraqi city from insurgents. They said Sajida Rishawi, 35, had watched her husband dragging bloodied insurgent fighters through their gate, burying the dead in their back yard.

Rishawi's friends and family members in Fallujah sought to explain what drove her, after seeing footage broadcast by Jordanian state-run television that showed the captured woman modeling a suicide vest that she allegedly wore as part of coordinated bombing attacks on three hotels here that killed 57 people.

Bernanke Wants "Continuity" in Succeeding Greenspan

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:06 PM

White House economic adviser Ben S. Bernanke, President Bush's choice to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve, pledged today to steer clear of "all political influences" at the helm of America's central bank and said he would continue to focus on controlling inflation.

In prepared testimony at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke, 51, also stressed that "continuity" with Greenspan's policies was a top priority. But he expressed support for one key departure from those policies, saying he wants to set long-term targets for inflation, provided his colleagues on the Federal Reserve Board agree.

Senate Republicans Block Iraq Timetable

By LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:47 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday easily defeated a Democratic effort to pressure President Bush to outline a timetable for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It then overwhelmingly endorsed a weaker statement calling on the administration to explain its Iraq policy.

By 58-40, senators rejected the non-binding Democratic timetable proposal that the minority party's leadership advanced in the wake of declining public support for a conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 U.S. lives and cost more than $200 billion.

Pension Agency Reports $22.8B Shortfall

Tuesday November 15, 2005 5:46 PM

By MARCY GORDON

AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal agency that insures the private pensions of 44 million workers said Tuesday that its deficit was $22.8 billion in 2005, as big airlines in bankruptcy dumped their pension liabilities.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. disclosed in its annual financial report that as of Sept. 30, it had $56.5 billion in assets to cover $79.2 billion in pension liabilities.

Juan Cole - 11/15/05

The Strange Death of Moustapha Akkad;
Zarqawi and "Halloween"

The ironies and dangers of globalization are tragically epitomized in the death last week of Hollywood director Moustapha Akkad at the Radisson SAS in Amman at the hands of an Iraqi suicide bomber. Akkad was there with his daughter to attend a wedding.

Bombing at Green Zone;
Exodus of Physicians from Capital

Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb outside an entrance to the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, striking at a convoy of 3 vehicles and killing 2 South African security guards. Three other persons were wounded. In Ramadi, a bomb aimed at a US convoy instead killed 5 civilians and wounded 2 others. The US conducted a sweep of Dur, looking for Ibrahim Izzat al-Duri, a top Baathist official who has been among the masterminds of the Iraqi guerrilla war against the Americans and their Iraqi allies. Duri was reported dead by one Baathist internet site recently, but another, based in Jordan, denied the report. If al-Duri were really dead, it would have big implications for the guerrilla movement, but there is no good evidence of it (that is what the US is looking for).

Senate Republicans Pushing for a Plan on Ending the War in Iraq

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war.

The Senate is also scheduled to vote Tuesday on a compromise, announced Monday night, that would allow terror detainees some access to federal courts. The Senate had voted last week to prohibit those being held from challenging their detentions in federal court, despite a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.

The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it

Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 15, 2005

Guardian

Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.

The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on Falluja in November last year: "White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

MyDD: A Conversation with George McGovern

by Jonathan Singer

I'd like to introduce everyone to Jonathan Singer. He will be filling in on the weekends. You can see his blog Basie! here. I've been a fan of his for a while--Chris

On Saturday morning, I had the real honor of speaking with the 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee, Sen. George McGovern (D-SD). McGovern, who is now putting the finishing touches on his new library at Dakota Wesleyan University, was a hero during World War II before becoming a professor at the University in 1950. McGovern was elected to the House in 1956, serving two terms before narrowly losing a Senate race in 1960. After serving as President Kennedy's director of the Food for Peace Program, McGovern was subsequently elected to the United States Senate in 1962, where he served three terms.