Bush, Rats & a Sinking Ship

By Robert Parry
February 25, 2006

In just this past week, conservative legend William F. Buckley Jr. and neoconservative icon Francis Fukuyama have joined the swelling ranks of Americans judging George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq a disaster.

“One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” Buckley wrote at National Review Online on Feb. 24, adding that the challenge now facing Bush and his top advisers is how to cope with the reality of that failure.

“Within their own counsels, different plans have to be made,” Buckley wrote after a week of bloody sectarian violence in Iraq. “And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.”

Juan Cole - 02/25/06

Violence in Baghdad, Samarra
Curfew Partially Observed

There was more violence on Friday in Iraq amid calls by clerical leaders for peace. The daytime curfew called for earlier was widely ignored, especially in East Baghdad or Sadr City, where the Mahdi Army militiamen were out in force, driving around in heavy vehicles.

Americablog: Where's the Washington Post article with the charge that Bush's foreign policy is based on "geopolitical fantasy"?

by Joe in DC - 2/24/2006 10:15:00 PM

Earlier tonight, the Washington Post had a pretty blistering article on Bush's foreign policy speech today to the American Legion. There was no question from reading that piece that Bush really thinks things are going well with his foreign policy. And, it left no doubt that Bush's optimism is not widely shared. I started to write a post because I was struck by this passage:

Outlining what he called a "forward strategy for freedom," Bush painted a generally optimistic picture of events overseas that have led critics to charge that his foreign policy is built largely on geopolitical fantasy.(my emphasis, not the Post's)

I cut and pasted the paragraph above and started to write the post. But, when I went back to the Post to get the link, the article was gone. The link is now to another story that incorporates Bush's foreign policy speech today in to the Iraq debacle.

Americablog: AP picks up the story about that dirty little Ricky

by Joe in DC - 2/25/2006 10:42:00 AM

Ricky is getting some national attention. And don't forget that Santorum, who spends a lot of time obsessing about gay sex, is also the GOP's beacon of ethics in the Senate:

Sen. Rick Santorum's charity donated about 40 percent of the $1.25 million it spent during a four-year period, well below Better Business Bureau standards - paying out the rest for overhead, including several hundred thousand dollars to campaign aides on the charity payroll.

The charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is described on its Web site as an organization promoting "compassionate conservatism" by providing grants to small nonprofit groups, many of them religious.

MediaCitizen: Network Neutrality: Dead on Arrival?

Network neutrality, a principle that ensures the free flow of ideas online, appears dead on arrival in Washington as big media once again wield influence over our elected politicians.

The numbers tell the story. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T and other telephone and cable companies are among the top contributors to the re-election campaigns of a number of house Telecommunications Subcommittee members, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who has received more than $12,000 from AT&T executives, employees and their family members. Comcast associates tipped in an additional $10,000 equaling Upton's contribution from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

Cursor's Media Patrol - 02/24/06

As it's reported that "Violence spreads in Iraq as militia groups take to the streets," Juan Cole's read on an Al Hayat article is that "Astonishingly, Sistani seems to be threatening to deploy his own militia ... if the Iraqi government doesn't do a better job of protecting Shiites and their holy sites."

With 'Clerics' authority growing' -- "clerical leaders are notable for their lack of direct contact with Americans" -- Mark Engler asks, 'How Costly Is Too Costly?'

Paul Krugman finds "a kind of rough justice in Mr. Bush's current predicament," over a deal said to include not six but 21 U.S. ports.

FBI agents opposed "aggressive interrogation tactics" by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo, but their protests were overridden by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, according to documents released by the ACLU, one of which refers to DHS interrogators showing detainees homosexual porn movies and wrapping them in the Israeli flag.

"Vigilance is the watch-word now," says blogger and Republican, Gregory Djerejian, "not only re: our many enemies abroad, but also with regard to key administration actors ... Yoo. Addington. Haynes. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Gonzalez. Wrong on the law. Wrong on our values. Wrong for America."

After citing "a number of administration officials" for a story reporting that "Cheney was drunk when he gunned down his friend," Capitol Hill Blue's Doug Thompson maintains that "we don't have to make this stuff up."

All at sea in the Middle East's perfect storm

Simon Tisdall
Friday February 24, 2006
The Guardian

Sectarian revenge attacks and widening divisions in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing have intensified fears of irreversible descent into all-out civil war in Iraq. But it is unclear what the US and Britain, lacking new ideas and facing a perfect storm of troubles across the Middle East, can do to stop it.

Among yesterday's many ominous developments, accusations of deliberate trouble-making levelled at Iraq's Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, stood out. A spokesman for the Muslim Clerics Association, the country's most influential Sunni religious body, said it held "certain Shia religious authorities" responsible for continuing attacks on Sunni civilians, clerics and mosques.

Plame Whistleblowers Targeted by Administration

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report Friday 24 February 2006

Two top Bush administration officials who played an active role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, have been removing from their jobs, career State Deptartment weapons experts who have spoken to investigators during the past two years about the officials role in the leak, according to a half-dozen State Department officials.

The State Department officials requested anonymity for fear of further retribution. They said they believe they are being sidelined because they have been cooperating with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and have disagreed with the Bush administration's intelligence that claimed Iraq sought 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore from Niger - an explosive piece of intelligence that was included in President Bush's January 2003, State of the Union address that was found to be based on crude forgeries, but helped pave the way to war.

The reshuffling, which has been conducted in secret since late last year, has led to a mini-revolt inside the State Department, numerous officials who work there said.

Bill Moyers: Restoring The Public Trust

February 24, 2006

Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This is the prepared text of his remarks on an 8-day speaking trip in California on the issue of money and politics.

I will leave to Jon Stewart the rich threads of humor to pluck from the hunting incident in Texas. All of us are relieved that the Vice President’s friend has survived. I can accept Dick Cheney’s word that the accident was one of the worst moments of his life. What intrigues me as a journalist now is the rare glimpse we have serendipitously been offered into the tightly knit world of the elites who govern today.

The Vice President was hunting on a 50-thousand acre ranch owned by a lobbyist friend who is the heiress to a family fortune of land, cattle, banking and oil (ah, yes, the quickest and surest way to the American dream remains to choose your parents well.)

More documents prove that top defense officials approved of abuse at Guantanamo detention center

The American Civil Liberties Union has released documents that prove that top Department of Defense officials endorsed interrogation methods at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that the FBI described as both abusive and illegal.

“We now possess overwhelming evidence that political and military leaders endorsed interrogation methods that violate both domestic and international law,” said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the ACLU. “It is entirely unacceptable that no senior official has been held accountable.”

Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer
Thu Feb 23, 3:53 PM ET

An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.

Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.

Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida — and its 27 electoral votes — by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.

Secret Again

The absurd scheme to reclassify documents.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006, at 7:00 PM ET

Those who control the past control the future, Orwell famously wrote in 1984. In the realm of national-security policy, the battle for this control is heating up.

The latest skirmish started last December, when an independent scholar named Matthew Aid went to the National Archives to re-examine some declassified documents that he'd copied several months earlier and learned that they'd been removed from the public shelves and reclassified.

Michael Kinsley: Abracadabra Economics

The new magic makes supply-side economics old hat.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 24, 2006, at 6:15 AM ET

The hideous complexity of President Bush's prescription-drug program has reduced elderly Americans—and their children—to tears of bewildered frustration. The multiple options when you sign up, each with its own multiple ceilings and co-payments; the second round of red tape when you actually want to acquire some pills; the ludicrously complex and arbitrary standards of eligibility, which play a cruel and pointless game of hide-and-seek as they lurch up and down the graph paper like drunks: Suddenly a mystery is solved—so, this must be what he means by "compassionate conservatism."

Thus Bush's only major domestic accomplishment in six years as president has not achieved its intended purpose of cementing the affection of senior citizens for the Republican Party. Many Republicans are sobbing with frustration, too. It is one thing to put aside your principles and spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society if it is going to help you to win elections (so you can pursue your dream of smaller government). It is another to sell your soul and not get anything for it. No one looks more foolish than a failed cynic.

TIA Lives On

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

IRS Finds Charities Overstep Into Politics

Friday February 24, 2006 3:46 PM

By MARY DALRYMPLE

AP Tax Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - IRS exams found nearly 3 out of 4 churches, charities and other civic groups suspected of having violated restraints on political activity in the 2004 election actually did so, the agency said Friday.

Most of the examinations that have concluded found only a single, isolated incidence of prohibited campaign activity.

In three cases, however, the IRS uncovered violations egregious enough to recommend revoking the groups' tax-exempt status.

Blogger bares Rumsfeld's post 9/11 orders

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday February 24, 2006

Guardian

Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them.

"Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say. "Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not."

The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were declassified this month in response to a request by a law student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of Information Act. Anderson has posted them on his blog at outragedmoderates.org.

The Pentagon confirmed the notes had been taken by Stephen Cambone, now undersecretary of defence for intelligence and then a senior policy official. "His notes were fulfilling his role as a plans guy," said a spokesman, Greg Hicks.

UAE Gave $100 Million for Katrina Relief

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press WriterFri Feb 24, 5:32 AM ET

The United Arab Emirates gave the Bush administration $100 million to help victims of Hurricane Katrina weeks before a state-owned company there sought U.S. approval for its ports deal.

The White House said Thursday the $100 million for storm victims demonstrates the relationship between the two governments caught in a firestorm over the potential security risks of state-owned Dubai Ports World running significant operations at six major U.S. ports.

The administration said the request for U.S. approval of the $6.8 billion ports deal and the UAE contribution were not related.

"There was no connection between the two events," said Adam Ereli, the deputy State Department spokesman.

Ted Rall: Slander? She Wrote The Book

By Ted Rall
Thu Feb 23, 11:40 AM ET

How Ann Coulter Gets Away With Defaming Liberals

NEW YORK--My utterances occasionally spark controversy but I've got nothing on Ann Coulter. The star Republican pundit, who has spewed more racist, offensive and defamatory slurs in a week than Louis Farrakhan and Pat Robertson have in their whole lives combined, has turned slander and threats of violence into a cottage industry.

Coulter thinks the nation's top journalists deserve to die. "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh," Coulter sneered in reference to the Oklahoma City bomber, "is he did not go to the New York Times building." After 9/11, she validated radical Islamists' fear and hatred: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

America, Narcoleptic Pit Bull

Once the (tarnished) beacon of peace and democracy, now just another global flamethrower
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 24, 2006

I have never been in a grand melee. I have never been in a violent clash or in an angry mob scene or part of an anti-war protest that got completely out of hand and the police had to come in and throw tear gas and swing batons and drag screaming dreadlocked dudes away by their hair.

But I do remember my time on the childhood playground, the fights between boys (and even the scarier girls), where two or more of the single-digiters would, for reasons most likely having to do with the opposite sex or turf or licorice whips, decide to throw down and take to kicking and punching and squealing, and suddenly everyone would rush over and gather round for the mad entertainment, everyone cheering and stomping and some of the bystanders even starting fights themselves, and you could see their blood rise and their demons come out as their own innate sense of violence and rage steamed out their ears like fetid smoke.

Bob Dole says he won't lobby on ports deal

...Dole Uses Carefully Worded Language to Claim He Won't Lobby on the Shifty Dubai Deal, When He Will. Read the Article Closely. He is Just Protecting His Wife Politically and Taking the Terrorist Tainted Money to the Bank. 2/25--BUZZFLASH

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. - Former Sen. Bob Dole says he won't lobby Congress - not even his wife, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C. - to push through a questioned deal that would allow a Middle Eastern company to take control of six U.S. ports.

Bob Dole, a former GOP presidential candidate, is among a team of lawyers at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Alston & Bird hired to represent Dubai Ports World, which is owned by United Arab Emirates. The company volunteered Friday to postpone its takeover to help give the Bush administration time to convince skeptical lawmakers the deal poses no increased risks from terrorism.

Molly Ivins: It's the Corporation, Stupid

AlterNet. Posted February 23, 2006.

The government is willing to outsource American jobs for the holy grail of free trade. Why is it surprising that national security is ditto?

So, aside from the fact that it's politically idiotic and at least theoretically presents a national security risk, just what is wrong with the Dubai Ports deal?

As President George W. Bush actually said, "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, we'll treat you fairly."

So, what's wrong with that? There's our only president standing up against discrimination and against tarring all Arabs with the same brush and all that good stuff. (The fact that it was Mr. Racial Profiling speaking, the man who has single-handedly created more Arab enemies for this country than anyone else ever dreamed of doing is just one of those ironies we regularly get whacked over the head with.)

Digby: Insider Outsiders

When did the mainstream DC press come to believe that they represent outside the beltway thinking?

Today, Josh Marshall notes:

...there's just nothing more precious than seeing the faux-populist poseur Post editorial writers standing tough against an entrenched "establishment" of thirty-something, tenure-desperate semioticians and lit geeks in defense of "mainstream American values", a well of mores and beliefs with which the Post is no doubt deeply in touch. (Peel away the Fred Hiatt mask and underneath it's Bruce Springsteen; cut a little deeper and he's an Iowa farmer.)

Digby: Shipping News

CNN just reported that Condoleeza Rice called for Syria to cooperate in the investigation of the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister. She really ought to keep that issue quiet for the moment.

Check out this report from Robert Parry:

The Bush administration is letting the United Arab Emirates take control of six key U.S. ports despite its own port’s reputation as a smuggling center used by arms traffickers, drug dealers and terrorists, apparently including the assassins of Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Digby: Castrati Chat

Rush has been on a strange tangent the last couple of days. Aside from his strange sensitivity to the feelings of terrorist supporting middle eastern potentates (which actually makes sense when you stop and think about it) he also appears to be somewhat obsessive on other subjects:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm tempted to say that we are on "Summers's eve." We are at Summers's eve. I know Summer's Eve is also -- I think; I used to be an expert in these things -- a feminine deodorant spray, but it's also -- it also designates, ladies and gentlemen, that we are in the last days of the administration of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. And, by the way, this happened -- I think we need to change the name from Harvard to Hervard, because a bunch of angry feminazis took him out simply because he spoke the truth about diversity on campus and the differences in men and women.

Digby: Live By Demagoguery, Die By Demagoguery

William Greider is right on the money.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf:

David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commenting on PBS, and I thought I heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted "the experts," and they assured him there's no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims--actually, by an Arab government--managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.

Avedon Carol: Good stuff

On the way to asking us to vote for him as America's Worst Professor in the FrontPageMag poll, Michael Bérubé reminds us that it's a sign of the raging success of the liberal blogosphere that the Koufax Awards have been overwhelmed by a job that was once a lot easier to do. Back in the days when Dwight Meredith started the awards back at his old blog, any list of the most important blogs was topped mostly by what purported to be libertarians, but look at the BlogStreet Most Important Blogs list now! Instapundit has been kicked down to the number two spot by Eschaton, and there are only three blogs that aren't unabashedly liberal/progressive in the entire top 20. In fact, the top 100 of BlogStreet's most influential blogs are mostly liberal and you wouldn't have to do much editing to get a pretty good left-wing blogroll out of it. I guess there aren't that many people who want to read a lot of far-right Bush-lovin', liberal-bashin' anti-Americanism when offered the choice of something else.

Teen groups push Congress for comprehensive sex ed.

Melissa McEwan

Published: February 23, 2006

As the Bush administration continues to fund only abstinence-only sex education, American youth are taking comprehensive sex education into their own hands, RAW STORY has learned.

Programs favored by the administration often censor information about birth control and abortion completely. A December 2004 report commissioned by Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) found 11 out of 13 abstinence-only curricula examined to contain errors and distortions.

Scientists Promote Benefits of Black Magic Soil

ST LOUIS—Black soil created by humans long ago could brighten the future of modern farming and help curb global warming.

The dark earth, called terra preta, was produced by Amazonian people who slowly burned their waste by smoldering it, thousands of years ago.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 02/23/06

Despite reports of "more than 130 deaths, mostly of Sunnis," in Iraq, 'U.S. Downplays Civil War Threat' -- although one military spokesman admits that "some drive-by shootings against mosques have been reported ..."

A Sunni writer expresses the fear that "This may be the start of when it all goes really wrong," and Baghdad Burning's Riverbend reports that "Things are not good in Baghdad."

Controversy over 'Dubai's Port of No Return' is said to be undermining Bush's "one remaining political asset," and The Nation's John Nichols argues that 'Corporate Control of Ports Is the Problem.'

Sen. Orrin Hatch's claim that "Nobody with brains" denies that Saddam was "supporting" al-Qaeda, leads to an airing of the issue in Utah. GlobalSecurity.org's John Pike is quoted as saying, "I guess I don't have a brain, then," and it's noted that Paul Pillar called it a "manufactured issue." And, there's 'The "memogate" lie that will not die.'

Average American Family Income Declines

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
2 hours, 11 minutes ago

After the booming 1990s when incomes and stock prices were soaring, this decade has been less of a thrill ride for most American families.

Average incomes after adjusting for inflation actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

Many families were struggling in the aftermath of the 2001 recession and the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000, the Fed's latest "Survey of Consumer Finances" showed. The comprehensive look at household balance sheets comes every three years.

Ban on abortions is voted in South Dakota

By Monica Davey The New York Times

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2006

PIERRE, South Dakota South Dakota lawmakers have voted to outlaw nearly all abortions, setting up the first direct legal attack on Roe v. Wade by a state in 14 years.

Abortion rights advocates across the country reacted with outrage and dismay. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which runs the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota, said it was bracing to fight the move in court immediately, if the governor signs it.

It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy

by David Michael Green

This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.

Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?

Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.

Digby: Conduits

Jane is admirably doing battle with the WaPo again. Deborah Howell's column today is the usual bizarre mixture of harsh theatre critic and sycophancy. I don't get it.

I remember fondly the work of Geneva Overholser who actually worked as the readers representative and honestly attempted to analyse and assess the paper's performance.

Digby: Institutional Apostasy

Kevin Drum has written a review of Bruce Bartlett's "Imposter" (the heretical consrevative anti-Bush tract for the Washington Monthly.

Here's an excerpt:

Put in plain terms, Bartlett's charge is simple. George W. Bush, he says on page one, is a “pretend conservative.” Philosophically, Bush actually has more in common with liberals than he does with true conservatives.

Digby: Filling In The Blank Check

Be sure to read Glenn Greenwald's piece today about the undercurrent in DC that suggests that the Republicans aren't so sanguine about the NSA scandal accruing to their benefit after all. This is clearly becauase of the pressure coming from within, but I think that mostly has to do with Bush's unpopularity generally (as I write below.) The bottom line is that the Eunuch Caucus needs some viagra, and

Digby: What You See Is What You Get

I was just watching Bush give a speech and he said "it makes sense for the government to incent people."

I've never really subscribed to the great man theory, but I have to say that in my experience organizations do take their cues from the person at the top. When you have a president who says things this ridiculous every single day, for more than five years, I think it's safe to say that he is a boob.

Digby: Democrat Libre

Matt Stoller has a fiery exchange going with Hotline Blogometer and Washington Examiner opinion writer, William Buetler, about the normally navel gazing subject of the blogosphere's influence on politics. I don't have a lot to add, except to take issue with one little bit that Buetler writes in his piece:

The phrase [Vichy Democrats]was timely, punchy, and summed up the anger I saw directed against moderate and conservative Democrats.

No, no, no and no. The anger was not and is not against moderate and conservative Democrats.

Digby: The Trifecta

If there are three hallmarks of this failed Bush administration, it is hubris, incompetence and cronyism. This port deal features all three.

The hubris is illustrated by the fact that they actually thought after years of fear mongering and beating of Islamic terrorist war drums, they wouldn't be questioned about a United Arab Emirates contract for port security. The king shall not be questioned. The incompetence feature is that they believe it is smart to outsource security, of all things, to another country. If there is one thing all sides can agree upon, it's that the US should control its own borders and ports. It's com

Digby: Mixed Signals

On CNN earlier today:

NGUYEN: Well, it wasn't quite an apology, but it was an admission. Three weeks after his State of the Union address calling for energy independence, President Bush acknowledged today that his administration has been sending some mixed signals.

Mr. Bush visited one of the nation's top renewable energy labs in Colorado. He praised the work that's being done there and acknowledged that just two weeks ago the government laid off 32 workers there. Those jobs have now been restored, just in time for the president's visit.

Digby: Empty Veto

So Bush says he'll veto any legislation to block the port deal. He says that his government knows what it's doing and wouldn't have ok'd the deal if it would harm the nation's security. This is the same government that did such a great job with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

Assuming that we aren't seeing some sort of kabuki here, it appears that the Eunuch Caucus is getting an earful from their constituents and see no margin in working with the lame albatross right now. He's threatened vetoes before and the invertebrate Republicans have always fallen into line. This time appears to be different.

Digby: Cutthroats

Both Kos and Atrios linked to this post about how Rove smeared John Kerry fior allegedly being in cahoots with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. It was bullshit, of course, and now we find out that Rove's buddy Abramoff was selling Bush face time and cut a deal for a meeting with Mahathir for 1.2 mil. (And to think the Republicans had coronaries about those silly "white house coffees.")

This post also notes some other dirty tricks from the last electionthat I was unaware of.

Digby: Blackmail

Every converstation I've had with people about this port deal, on both the right and the left, has been one of complete befuddlement. Why on earth would Bush do something this politically obtuse? After all the fearmongering and the talk about "oceans don't protect us" for the last four years it's just inexplicable that they would go to the wall for a deal that looks so terrible.

Just now I sleepily clicked over to Atrios and read this, which just makes it even more unbelievable:

The Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency's director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States on Thursday.

Digby: You Can Never Be Too Careful

Following up my post below, I'd like to recommend this diary over at Kos by hekebolos. I think this is an excellent insight into why this port issue is having so much resonance:

Time and time again, this president has said that his highest goal, superceding all others, and even superceding any previous precedent of executive authority--is to defend the American people. He has shown time and time again that neither international law, nor federal law, nor the constitution, nor the Legislative or Judicial Branches of the Government of the United States, will prevent him from executing that duty as he and he alone sees fit.

Digby: His Petard

From Dave at Seeing the Forest, here's Rush from yesterday:

This is the first time in four years that I can recall a Democrat seriously being concerned about this group of people, and this is racism. This is racism. We are concluding that all Arabs are terrorists. We are concluding that every damn one of them -- be they a sheik, an emir -- they are all terrorists. They all have ties to terrorists and they all seek our utter, total destruction, and we can't risk an exception to that. They're all that way -- and welcome to racism Democrats, because the Democrats are leading the show on this just as well as a lot of conservatives are. So when Democrats are illustrating their racism, their xenophobia, they're also demonstrating that they fully acknowledge we have an enemy. Well, this is a tenuous position for them to take because their kook base doesn't believe any of this.

Digby: Innocent Life

As the country careens toward a supreme court showdown on Roe vs Wade, I just have to point out that columnists like EJ Dionne are full of shit when they say that most members of the right to life movement care more about a the taking of an innocent life rather than wanting to control a woman’s reproductive systems. They may think that’s what they care about but if that were true 81% of Americans, including many who call themselves "pro-life," wouldn't believe that abortion should be legal in case of rape or incest.

I hate to point out the obvious but children who are conceived in rape or incest are just as innocent as those who are conceived because birth control failed. The difference is not in the relative innocence of the children --- it’s the "innocence" of the woman. Most people believe that she should not be forced to bear the child of her molester, her relative or her rapist. And I think it’s fair to assume that they think this because they believe that the pregnancy wasn’t her “fault."

Digby: Issues And Competence

TAPPED approvingly quotes this from a new Union blog called Laying it On The Line

We keep losing elections because the parties are fighting on two different levels. We talk about competence and issues. They talk about character and values.

We appeal to narrow self-interest and a laundry list of issues. We are down in the weeds. They appeal to a higher plane, as pollster Cornell Belcher puts it, getting a substantial number of low income whites to vote not ‘against their economic interests’ as some would have it, but for what they see as higher interests.

Microbes convert 'Styrofoam™' into biodegradable plastic

Bacteria could help transform a key component of disposable cups, plates and utensils into a useful eco-friendly plastic, significantly reducing the environmental impact of this ubiquitous, but difficult-to-recycle waste stream, according to a study scheduled to appear in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

The microbes, a special strain of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida, converted polystyrene foam — commonly known as Styrofoam™ — into a biodegradable plastic, according to Kevin O’Connor, Ph.D., of University College Dublin, the study’s corresponding author. The study is among the first to investigate the possibility of converting a petroleum-based plastic waste into a reusable biodegradable form.

The Brad Blog: Why do Diebold's Touch-Screen Voting Machines Have Built-In Wireless Infrared Data Transfer Ports?

IrDA Protocol Can 'Totally Compromise System' Without Detection, Warns Federal Voting Standards Website

So far, no state or federal authority -- to our knowledge -- has dealt with this alarming security threat

We hate to pile on... (Or do we?) But, really, with all the recent discussion of California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's mind-blowing about-face re-certification of Diebold -- against state...

We hate to pile on... (Or do we?)

But, really, with all the recent discussion of California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's mind-blowing about-face re-certification of Diebold -- against state law, we hasten to add -- this may be a good time to point out one small item that we've been meaning to mention for a while.

As Jody Holder's recent comment points out, McPherson's silly "conditions" for re-certification of Diebold in California require a few much-less-than-adequate knee-jerk "safe guards" towards protection of the handling of the hackable memory cards in Diebold's voting machines. (Here's McP's full "Certificate of Conditional Certification").

Cursor's Media Patrol - 02/22/06

An Asia Times report says the situation in Pakistan "is fast coming to a head," with President General Pervez 'Musharraf losing his grip.'

With its missile strike on Damadola, the U.S. "handed the Islamists a victory of considerable proportions," which according to Andrew Bacevich arose from the Bush policy of 'Sending a general to do a sheriff's job.'

The Washington Post reports that wildlife biologists at the Bureau of Land Management have been taken out of the field and put to work processing drilling permits, quoting one biologist who recently quit as saying that he "spent less than 1 percent of my time in the field."

Dem report: GOP ties to lobbyists have cost millions of Americans

John Byrne
Published: February 22, 2006

A Democratic report by the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, Louise Slaughter (D-NY), declares that Republican ties to lobbyists have cost millions of Americans access to basic social services, RAW STORY has learned.

Bush nominated executive from Dubai port company eyed for U.S. ports to Maritime post

RAW STORY
Published: February 21, 2006

A senior executive from the company looking to manage several key U.S. ports was appointed by President Bush to a key transportation appointment reporting directly to Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, RAW STORY has found.

The White House announcement of his appointment is available here. More discussion of the appointment can be found at Daily Kos.

Democrat: White House chief of staff nixed NSA wiretap briefing

RAW STORY
Published: February 22, 2006

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, alleged in a statement today that the White House recently cancelled scheduled briefings to the full Intelligence Committee on the details of President Bush's warrantless wiretap program.

Sirotablog: The dirty little secret behind the UAE port security flap

2.21.06

Politicians and the media are loudly decrying the Bush administration's proposal to turn over port security to a firm owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - a country with ties to terrorists. They are talking tough about national security - but almost no one is talking about what may have fueled the administration's decision to push forward with this deal: the desire to move forward Big Money's "free" trade agenda.

How much does "free" trade have to do with this? How about a lot. The Bush administration is in the middle of a two-year push to ink a corporate-backed "free" trade accord with the UAE. At the end of 2004, in fact, it was Bush Trade Representative Robert Zoellick who proudly boasted of his trip to the UAE to begin negotiating the trade accord. Rejecting this port security deal might have set back that trade pact. Accepting the port security deal - regardless of the security consequences - likely greases the wheels for the pact. That's probably why instead of backing off the deal, President Bush - supposedly Mr. Tough on National Secuirty - took the extraordinary step of threatening to use the first veto of his entire presidency to protect the UAE's interests. Because he knows protecting those interetsts - regardless of the security implications for America - is integral to the "free" trade agenda all of his corporate supporters are demanding.

At Spy Agencies, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

by William Fisher

NEW YORK - This was the picture painted to a House of Representatives committee last week, as its members heard from five soldiers and civilians who say their livelihoods and reputations have been destroyed or placed in serious jeopardy by their attempts to expose and correct waste, fraud or abuse in their workplaces.

They are known as "national security whistleblowers". And, unlike whistleblowers in civilian agencies of the U.S. government, they have little legal protection against retaliation.

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy (Hardcover)

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Lewis Lapham has been the Editor of "Harper's" magazine for 30 years (retiring as Editor Emeritus this spring). In the March issue (not available online), Lapham calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush in that venerable publication. Have we got your attention yet?

Lapham concludes his impeachment call with these trenchant words: "It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States--to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity and blood."

Administration Failed To Conduct Legally Required Investigation Before Approving UAE Port Deal

In ordinary cases of foreign direct investment the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) first conducts a 30-day “review” of the transaction. After the review, the committee makes a judgment as to whether a 45-day “investigation” is necessary to address national security concerns.

The law, however, was amended in 1993. That amendment makes the 45-day investigation mandatory in cases like the Dubai World Ports transfer.

Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC LIPTON
Published: February 22, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — President Bush, trying to put down a rapidly escalating rebellion among leaders of his own party, said Tuesday that he would veto any legislation blocking a deal for a state-owned company in Dubai to take over the management of port terminals in New York, Miami, Baltimore and other major American cities.

Mr. Bush issued the threat after the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports. Mr. Bush suggested that the objections to the deal might be based on bias against a company from the Middle East, one he said was an ally in fighting terrorism.

Big Medicine's Malignant Growth

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted February 22, 2006.

Some medical professionals say the only way to rid ourselves of medicine's vast piles of waste is to shrink the health care industry itself. Are they heretics or visionaries?

Andrew Jameton dug through the clutter of his bookshelf and pulled out a flexible plastic ventilator circuit. "This is used by a patient for two days, and we throw it away," he said. "In the past, they were used for just one day, so we're making progress, I guess."

He handed me a thin, colorful cardboard box, about half the size of a sheet of paper. "Pharmaceutical samples came in this. It holds three pills."

Changes in reef latitude

Is pollution causing regional coral extinctions?

Since the 1980s, researchers have hypothesized that nutrient levels rather than temperature are the main factor controlling the latitudinal bounds of coral reefs, but the issue remains controversial. New results from an extensive survey of reefs in South Florida by a Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution research team strongly support this hypothesis. The research suggests that, by supporting blooms of harmful seaweed, increasing nutrient pollution levels are reducing the areas where reef-building coral can survive, a result the team believes it is directly observing in Florida waters.

Bush Didn't Know About Ports Deal

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 2 minutes ago

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

Defending the deal anew, the administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among both Republicans and Democrats.

Bush on Tuesday brushed aside objections by leaders in the Senate and House that the $6.8 billion sale could raise risks of terrorism at American ports. In a forceful defense of his administration's earlier approval of the deal, he pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement.

New Wingnut Meme: Sedition Law Needed

by Steven D
Mon Feb 20th, 2006 at 11:43:20 AM EST

Sedition is a word with a long, and embarrassing, history in the United States, beginning with the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed by our second President, John Adams, and used to arrest a number of newspaper publishers who supported opponents of Adams' Federalist party. Fortunately for the country, the law expired on the last day of Adam's first (and only) term in office.

Sadly, Adams was not the last president to suppress dissent through the use of laws against sedition. Woodrow Wilson, during World War I, enforced two laws, the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, that provided for the arrest of anyone who expressed antiwar or anti-government opinions. Over 2000 people were arrested, the most famous of which was Socialist spokesman Eugene V. Debs, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

W aides' biz ties to Arab firm

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Breaking news update: Top Republican leader against ports deal

WASHINGTON - The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

A new fundamentalism

Mervyn King's call for a reformed International Monetary Fund comes at a time when the world economy may be teetering on the edge, writes William Keegan

Tuesday February 21, 2006

When anti-globalisation protesters say the International Monetary Fund (IMF) needs to be reformed, nobody takes much notice. But when the highly respected governor of the Bank of England speaks out, he makes quite a splash.

Mervyn King has been gearing up for several years for the important speech on the IMF he delivered in India yesterday, and the location he chose to urge fundamental reforms was most appropriate, because one of his criticisms is that the IMF as at present constituted is far too US and Euro-centric.

David Corn: Libby's Graymail

Last week, I suggested that Scooter Libby might be trying to orchestrate a "graymail" defense--which is based on the implied threat of blowing national security secrets. That's being a patriot, right? It seems that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald believes this is what Libby is up to. In a filing Fitzgerald submitted to the court this week (which was released today), Fitzgerald opposed Libby's demand that Fitzgerald somehow force the CIA and White House to release classified information that is tangential to Libby's defense against the charge he lied too FBI agents and Fitzgerald's grand jury.

The Enemy

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 17 February 2006

They called it "Cyber Storm," and it was a war-game exercise run last week by the Department of Homeland Security. The war game had nothing to do with testing the security of our shipping ports, borders, infrastructure or airports. "Cyber Storm" was testing the government's ability to withstand an onslaught of information and protest from bloggers and online activists.

"Participants confirmed," wrote the Associated Press, that "parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."

Say what? Online expressions of political opinion are so dangerous that the Department of Homeland Security must war-game scenarios to deal with them? Bloggers are potential terrorists now? Bloggers are the enemy? Last week, as far as DHS was concerned, they were.

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006

Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

With A Little Help From His Friends

Exclusive: An investigation into the private and public finances of Rick Santorum suggests that the Senate GOP might want to reconsider making him its ethics czar.

By Will Bunch
Issue Date: 03.10.06

“In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to.”

-- U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good

* * *

The estates at Shenstone Farm sprawl over 500 acres of steeply rolling, barren hillside, at the point where northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs finally surrender to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On an unseasonably warm January day, this former horse farm is shrouded in fog so dense that a visitor could imagine a band of gray-clad rebel soldiers emerging from these hilltops in the heart of Civil War country.

Instead, what slowly takes shape from the gloaming are well over 100 McMansions, with more on the way -- massive brick structures jutting out like solitary fortresses, each surrounded by roughly four acres of treeless, lunar-like landscape, with three-car garages and sconce-topped brick monument pillars at the foot of each long driveway. Most sport pricey wood playsets in the backyard.

The White House's Chilling Effect

By Ruth Marcus
Tuesday, February 21, 2006; Page A15

The Bush administration is constantly telling us that it can't tell us too much, for fear of chilling debate among the president and his top advisers. This argument would be a lot more persuasive if -- on the rare occasions the public is permitted a peak behind the White House curtain -- there were more evidence of something to chill.

Five years and counting, the notion that this is an insular White House headed by an incurious president isn't exactly administration-bites-dog news. But recent developments have reinforced and even broadened this image: This White House is not just reluctant to hear anything that conflicts with its pre-set conclusions -- it's also astonishingly ineffective in obtaining and processing information it wants to have.

Annals of the Pentagon: THE MEMO

by JANE MAYER
How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted.
Issue of 2006-02-27
Posted 2006-02-20

Memo Link: http://www.newyorker.com/images/pdfs/moramemo.pdf

One night this January, in a ceremony at the Officers’ Club at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia, which sits on a hill with a commanding view across the Potomac River to the Washington Monument, Alberto J. Mora, the outgoing general counsel of the United States Navy, stood next to a podium in the club’s ballroom. A handsome gray-haired man in his mid-fifties, he listened with a mixture of embarrassment and pride as his colleagues toasted his impending departure. Amid the usual tributes were some more pointed comments.

“Never has there been a counsel with more intellectual courage or personal integrity,” David Brant, the former head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said. Brant added somewhat cryptically, “He surprised us into doing the right thing.” Conspicuous for his silence that night was Mora’s boss, William J. Haynes II, the general counsel of the Department of Defense.

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition

By KENNETH CHANG

In the recent skirmishes over evolution, advocates who have pushed to dilute its teaching have regularly pointed to a petition signed by 514 scientists and engineers.

The petition, they say, is proof that scientific doubt over evolution persists. But random interviews with 20 people who signed the petition and a review of the public statements of more than a dozen others suggest that many are evangelical Christians, whose doubts about evolution grew out of their religious beliefs. And even the petition's sponsor, the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says that only a quarter of the signers are biologists, whose field is most directly concerned with evolution. The other signers include 76 chemists, 75 engineers, 63 physicists and 24 professors of medicine.

Approach to school affects how girls compare with boys in math

More women are pursuing higher education and doctoral degrees than ever before, but women still are rare in the math-oriented professions. Yet, researchers say, girls perform just as well as boys on achievement tests and tend to earn better grades in math than do boys during the earlier school years. A new study in the journal Developmental Psychology indicates that how girls and boys approach their schooling underlies the differences in math grades.

Industries Get Quiet Protection From Lawsuits

Federal agencies are using arcane regulations and legal opinions to shield automakers and others from challenges by consumers and states.

By Myron Levin and Alan C. Miller
Times Staff Writers

February 19, 2006

WASHINGTON — Near sunrise on a summer morning in 2001, Patrick Parker of Childress, Texas, swerved to avoid a deer and rolled his pickup truck.

The roof of the Ford F-250 crumpled, and Parker didn't stand a chance. His neck broke and, at 37, he was paralyzed from the chest down. He sued, and Ford Motor Co. settled for an undisclosed amount.

"You can imagine what happens when you're belted in and the roof comes down even with the door," Parker said. "Your options are death or quadriplegia."

FDA Is Urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 20, 2006; A01

Picture two steaks on a grocer's shelf, each hermetically sealed in clear plastic wrap. One is bright pink, rimmed with a crescent of pearly white fat. The other is brown, its fat the color of a smoker's teeth.

Which do you reach for?

The meat industry knows the answer, which is why it has quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide.

White House Working to Avoid Wiretap Probe

But Some Republicans Say Bush Must Be More Open About Eavesdropping Program

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 20, 2006; A08

At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.

In both cases, the administration was spared the outcome it most feared, and it won praise in some circles for showing more openness to congressional oversight.

But the actions have angered some lawmakers who think the administration's purported concessions mean little. Some Republicans said that the White House came closer to suffering a big setback than is widely known, and that President Bush must be more forthcoming about the eavesdropping program to retain Congress's good will.

NSC, Cheney Aides Conspired to Out CIA Operative

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Monday 20 February 2006

The investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson is heating up. Evidence is mounting that senior officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council conspired to unmask Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence, according to sources close to the two-year-old probe.

In recent weeks, investigators working for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald have narrowed their focus to a specific group of officials who played a direct role in pushing the White House to cite bogus documents claiming that Iraq attempted to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger, which Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had exposed as highly suspect.

Propaganda: America's psychological warriors

By Floyd J. McKay
Special to The Times

Aficionados of the movie "Casablanca" will recall the roguishly corrupt police inspector Louis Renault, played by Claude Rains, who upon "discovering" that gambling was taking place at Rick's club, proclaimed that he was "shocked, shocked."

You had to think of that when the White House announced that it, too, was "shocked" that a Pentagon contractor was bribing Iraqi journalists and posting propaganda in Iraqi newspapers without identifying the source.

The people "shocked, just shocked" were the same people who paid at least two American journalists to write pro-administration columns and produced for compliant local television stations so-called "news reports" that were nothing more than propaganda.

AAAS denounces anti-evolution laws as hundreds of K-12 teachers convene for 'Front Line' event

ST. LOUIS, MO.--The Board of Directors of the world's largest general scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), today strongly denounced legislation and policies that would undermine the teaching of evolution and "deprive students of the education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an increasingly technological, global community."

Across the United States, at least 14 pending laws -- including Missouri HB 1266 -- differ in language and strategy, but "all would weaken science education," said AAAS President Gilbert S. Omenn, professor of medicine, genetics and public health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "The AAAS Board of Directors opposes these attacks on the integrity of science and science education," he added. "They threaten not just the teaching of evolution, but students' understanding of the biological, physical, and geological sciences."

Scientists look to the Bahamas as a model for coral reef conservation

One of the greatest challenges facing marine ecologists today is finding innovative ways to reverse the rapid decline of coral reef ecosystems around the world. Ten percent of the planet's reefs already have been degraded beyond recovery, according to one survey, and another 60 percent could die by 2050, primarily because of human activities, such as pollution, overfishing and climate change.

The situation is particularly acute in the island nations of the Caribbean, which have seen an 80 percent decline in coral cover in recent decades. To address this crisis, an international team of researchers, in consultation with the government of the Bahamas, launched the Bahamas Biocomplexity Project--an interdisciplinary approach to ecosystem management that project leaders say could serve as a model for coral reef conservation worldwide.

Oceanic Acidity

Researcher outlines coral's future in an increasingly acidic ocean

VIRGINIA KEY, FL (February 17, 2006) — The ocean is getting more and more acidic, and that's bad news for coral reefs. That's the word from University of Miami Rosenstiel School's Dr. Christopher Langdon who will speak on “Possible Consequences of Increasing Atmospheric CO2 on Coral Reef Ecosystems,” Monday, Feb. 20 at 3 p.m. HST (8 p.m. EST) in Honolulu at the American Geophysical Union's 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting.

“While we focus a great deal of attention on rising ocean temperatures and the bleaching incidents they cause in corals, we tend to overlook the other consequence of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on our corals: decreases in ocean pH,” Langdon said. “Carbon dioxide in the ocean is creating a growingly acidic environment for corals, and this acidity could ultimately cause our reefs to waste away.”