Cursor - 06/12/06

The Los Angeles Times reports that U.S. troops are massed around the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, home to "a desperate population of 400,000 people trapped in the crossfire between insurgents and U.S. forces," but military officials deny that a "Falluja-style offensive" is underway.

A U.N. official tells the New York Times that the situation in Afghanistan is "the most unstable and insecure I have seen," and the Toledo Blade questions the provenance of American goods for sale in Pakistani markets.

A former managing editor of the Washington Post contends that "intimidation by classification" is the hallmark of the Bush administration, and challenges the constitutionality of the Attorney General's threats to use the Espionage Act against the press.

The Guardian takes the list of "power players" who came to the convention, which as Markos Moulitsas emphasized in his keynote speech, was entirely organized by volunteers, as a sign of the increased clout of political bloggers.

PZ Myers shares his notes for the YearlyKos science panel, and Chris Mooney recounts that Wesley Clark, "riffed for at least twenty minutes, with impressive eloquence, about the importance of science to the American future."

As George Will casts doubt on the human origin of global warming, and federal funding for climate science is 'on the cutting board,' "inconsistent information policies" are blamed for "the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of research findings" in science.