Cursor's Media Patrol - May 3, 2006

The latest in a series of "largely ignored" articles by the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage, detailing President Bush's use of "signing statements" to declare himself unbound by "more than 750 laws enacted since he took office," quotes Sen. Arlen Specter as saying, "There may as well soon not be a Congress."

Bush's claims have "gone well beyond anything to do with national security," Savage said in an appearance on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." Plus: "Has George W. Bush come to believe he's king?"

The New York Times reports that the Taliban are "moving their insurgency into a new phase, flooding ... southern Afghanistan with weapons and men," but evidently, the people who are ridding it of vehicles are not terrorists.

Iraq's entire oil industry is described as 'On the Verge of Collapse,' with the commander of the fleet guarding what "looks like a scene ... from 'Waterworld'" quoted as saying that a successful USS Cole-type attack "would raise the world market price by several dollars within hours."

"The first in a series of 21" government studies reportedly "eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously."

Mike Davis explores the devastating impact of international economic policies on 'Slum Ecology,' in an essay adapted from his book, "Planet of Slums," in which he sees the "war on terrorism" as "an incipient world war between the American empire and the slum poor." Plus: 'The Lodi Front.'