Digby: The Sodomized Virgin Exception

South Dakota:

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

Digby: Don't F***

Language warning. Be sure to check the comments on this post...some of them are very interesting.--Dictynna

I got a track-back from the blog "Responding To the Left" to the post below, specifically the story of the woman who had an abortion because she already had two small children and couldn't afford another. I think it is an eloquent and honest representation of the way that many in the pro-life movement feel and it's great to see it out in the open so we can begin to debate this thing honestly:

I don't really get it. I am supposed to feel sorry for this woman? Does Digby expect me to sympathize with her? I hope not, because she's a selfish woman who was thinking only of herself.

Digby: Tears of A Klein Redux

As most of you undoubtedly already know, Jane has been holding a "Joe Klein, in his own words" contest these last few nights and they've ome up with some doozies. It's down to the final round and I'm sorry to see that my favorite didn't make the cut:

The Great Society was an utter failure because it helped to contribute to social irresponsibility at the very bottom.

Paul Krugman: George the Unready

March 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Iraqi insurgents, hurricanes and low-income Medicare recipients have three things in common. Each has been at the center of a policy disaster. In each case experts warned about the impending disaster. And in each case — well, let's look at what happened.

Knight Ridder's Washington bureau reports that from 2003 on, intelligence agencies "repeatedly warned the White House" that "the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war." But senior administration officials insisted that the insurgents were a mix of dead-enders and foreign terrorists.

NYT Editorial: Discovering What Happens Next

The White House has a sorry history of withholding information that the public and Congress need to make informed policy judgments. A proposal in President Bush's new budget would take that damaging tendency one step further by eliminating a government survey that captures the real-world impact of welfare reform, Medicaid, child-support enforcement and many other policies and programs.

Army to Launch Probe Into Tillman Death

By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA BALDOR, Associated Press Writers
44 minutes ago

The Army said Saturday it will launch a criminal investigation into the April 2004 death of Pat Tillman, the former professional football player who was shot to death by fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in what previous Army reviews had concluded was an accidental shooting.

Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, said the Defense Department office of inspector general had reviewed the matter at the Army's request and concluded that a criminal probe was warranted.

Members of the Tillman family were notified on Friday, Curtin said. In the past, Tillman's father, Patrick Tillman, and other family members have criticized the Army and its investigations.

Ex - Congressman Cunningham Sentenced to 8 Years

By REUTERS

Published: March 3, 2006

Filed at 8:26 p.m. ET

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Former U.S. Congressman Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham, who pleaded guilty last year to taking $2.4 million in bribes, was sentenced by a federal judge on Friday to eight years and four months in prison.

It was the longest prison sentence ever given a U.S. congressman, prosecutors said, topping the eight-year sentence given in 2002 to Ohio Democrat James Traficant for bribery, tax evasion and racketeering.

Bill May Undo States' Rules on Safe Food

By MARIAN BURROS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bill that would pre-empt all state food safety regulations that are more stringent than federal standards.

The measure would require uniformity on warning labels and set standards that would affect a wide variety of state regulations.

According to the National Uniformity for Food Coalition, whose members include trade associations, supermarket chains and food manufacturers, different laws in different states confuse consumers. "The citizens of all states deserve the same level of food safety," the coalition's Web site says. "Food cannot be safe in one state and unsafe in another."

Michael Joyce (1942-2006)

Former Bradley Foundation czar's investments in privatization and faith-based initiatives helped build the modern conservative movement

If there was a Hall of Fame for right wing philanthropists and their facilitators -- and who knows, the Heritage Foundation just might establish such an institution some day -- one of its first inductees would undoubtedly be Michael Joyce.

In 1986, Joyce was named in an Atlantic Monthly article as "one of the three people most responsible for the triumph of the conservative political movement." Waldemar Nielson, in his book on the foundation movement, Golden Donors, said Joyce was "pretty close to being the central figure [in conservative philanthropy]." He was once called "the godfather of modern philanthropy" by noted neo-conservative Irving Kristol.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 03/03/06

As U.S. officials leak intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda in Iraq is plotting a spectacular 'Big Bang,' Dahr Jamail notes the "widespread belief ... that U.S. covert operations were behind the bombing" of the Golden Mosque, and cites an Arab News editorial suggesting that civil war "could be the Bush ticket out of the Iraq debacle."

A firedoglake take on Murray Waas's 'What Bush was told about Iraq,' concludes that either the president "knew and lied" or "he doesn't bother doing his job," and an NBC report on a court filing raises the question: 'Did Bob Woodward record key Plame case conversation?'

As "Bush fatigue" sets in, and even staged military events are said to "look more like Saddam firing his rifle off the balcony of his palace," another conservative bails on Iraq.

Michael Kinsley: The Pursuit of Democracy

What Bush gets wrong about nation-building.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, March 3, 2006, at 6:21 AM ET

The case for democracy is "self-evident," as someone once put it. The case for the world's most powerful democracy to take as its mission the spreading of democracy around the world is pretty self-evident, too: What's good for us is good for others. Those others will be grateful. A world full of democracies created or protected with our help ought to be more peaceful and prosperous and favorably disposed toward us. That world will be a better neighborhood for us than a world of snarling dictatorships.

There is no valid case against democracy. You used to hear a lot that democracy is not suitable for some classes of foreigners: simply incompatible with the cultures of East Asia (because deference to authority is too ingrained there), or the Arab Middle East (because everybody is a religious fanatic), or Africa (because they're too "tribal," or too predisposed to rule by a "big daddy,"… or something). But this line of argument has gone out of fashion, pushed offstage by free and fair elections in some surprising places. Even those who still harbor doubts about whether democracy is possible in this place or that—and even those who think that any democracy achieved in such places is likely to be a real mess—don't generally oppose the attempt. As someone else once said, "Good government is no substitute for self-government."

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm

By BOB KERR
The Providence Journal
28-FEB-06

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was "madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail."

Bush Brokers Landmark Nuclear Deal With India

By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
11:16 AM PST, March 2, 2006

NEW DELHI -- President Bush today said his landmark nuclear cooperation agreement with India marked a crucial advancement in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons — ensuring for the first time the presence of international inspectors at civilian nuclear reactors.

But administration officials conceded that the agreement was not everything the U.S. had hoped for — permitting India to keep eight of its 22 reactors under wraps as secret military sites.

Ted Rall: The Other Bad War

Wed Mar 1, 6:42 PM ET

More Torture in Occupied Afghanistan

NEW YORK--"In one of the great deceptive maneuvers in U.S. history," Bob Herbert wrote recently, "the military-industrial complex (with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as chairman and C.E.O., respectively) took its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan and launched the pointless but far more remunerative war in Iraq." Herbert, one of the New York Times' better pundits, ought to know better than to point to Afghanistan as the right fight at the right time. But he's not the only Pollyanna of America's other dirty war.

During his 2004 presidential primary campaign Howard Dean said: "Our military has done an absolutely terrific job in Afghanistan, which is a war I supported...I believe that, had Saddam been captured earlier, we might have been able to spend more time looking for Osama bin Laden, which is the real problem." John Kerry took the same position--Afghanistan war good/part of war on terror, Iraq war bad/distraction--in his run against Bush.

Senator ties Guard to spy plan

MEMOS SUGGEST NATIONWIDE EFFORT

By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - A special California National Guard unit that was disbanded last year amid suspicion it was engaged in domestic spying may have been part of a nationwide effort to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens, a state senator charged Tuesday.

Internal National Guard documents seem to suggest, according to Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, that Guard units in nine other states may have had similar spying initiatives when California's unit became public last summer.

``Because they were all created at about the same time and, to the best of our knowledge thus far seemingly engaged in similar activity, including domestic surveillance activities,'' Dunn said, ``we could only conclude that it had been part of a concentrated or coordinated effort to create such units around the country.''

A Guard official denied the allegations, and said three independent investigations cleared the California National Guard's Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion unit. Spokesman Jon Siepmann also denied the program ever conducted surveillance on U.S. citizens.

Former Enron Exec's Testimony Rocks Court

Former Enron Executive Rocks Court in His Description of the Inside Workings of Enron

By MICHAEL GRACZYK and KRISTEN HAYS

HOUSTON Mar 3, 2006 (AP)— Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling told other top executives "they're on to us," when a small analyst firm produced a research note critical of the company's sales to partnerships run by then-Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, a former top executive testified in a bombshell revelation Thursday.

Minutes before that, Skilling said at the May 2001 meeting attended by company founder Kenneth Lay that he had "brought Andy here" to talk about those partnerships, called LJM1 and LJM2.

What Bush Was Told About Iraq

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 2, 2006

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that discussed whether Saddam's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon.

Wonkette: We’re Bringing the War Back Home

Folks, our fighting boys need your help. Here's the email we received today from one of them:

Just to let you know, the US Marines have blocked access to “Wonkette” along with numerous other sites such as personal email (i.e. Yahoo, AT&T, Hotmail, etc), blogs that don't agree with the government point of view, personal websites, and some news organizatons. This has taken effect as of the beginning of February. I have no problem with them blocking porn sites (after all it is a government network), but cutting off access to our email and possibly-not-toeing-the-government-line websites is a bit much.

Antarctic ice sheet in 'significant decline': study

Thu Mar 2, 2:10 PM ET

Antarctica's mammoth ice sheet, which holds 90 percent of the Earth's ice, is showing "significant decline" as world temperatures heat up, according to a new study released.

As Earth's fifth largest continent, Antarctica is twice the size of Australia and contains 70 percent of Earth's fresh water resources. British research suggests the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet alone would raise global sea levels by over 20 feet (six meters).

And now a team of US researchers at the University of Boulder in Colorado say they have discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is losing up to 36 cubic miles (152 cubic kilometers) of ice annually.

Details Emerge in Latest Plame Emails

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

Wednesday 01 March 2006

The White House confirmed Tuesday that it recently turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney related to covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. The emails were not submitted three years ago when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House staffers to turn over all documents that contained any reference to Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Gonzales's directive in October 2003 came 12 hours after he was told by the Justice Department that it was launching an investigation to find out who leaked Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to reporters in what appeared to be an attempt to discredit and silence her husband from speaking out against the administration's rationale for war. Gonzales spent two weeks with other White House attorneys screening emails and other documents his office received before turning them over to Justice Department investigators.

U.S. Is Reducing Safety Penalties for Mine Flaws

By IAN URBINA and ANDREW W. LEHREN
Published: March 2, 2006

CRAIGSVILLE, W.Va. — In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.

Federal records also show that in the last two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days.

U.S. signs $38 million deal for depleted uranium tank shells

John Byrne
Published: March 2, 2006

The U.S. Army quietly placed an order for $38 million in depleted uranium rounds last week, bringing the total order from a West-Virginia based company to $77 million for fiscal year 2006, RAW STORY has learned.

The munition is highly controversial. While the Pentagon has been ambiguous about its health toll, leftover rounds from the first Gulf War are believed to have caused a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in Iraq. According to a detailed article by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2002, "Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans."

Gene Lyons: Bush’s fabled intuition may be just that

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Tell me again about President Bush’s fabled intuition, his born leader’s gift for choosing the right course of action by natural instinct. Oh, and, yes, the peerless political genius of Karl Rove. Because if you didn’t know any better, it would appear that the administration’s grandest schemes have gone badly awry, confronting the White House with a political crisis seemingly beyond its control. For the longest time, Bush was the GOP and the GOP was Bush. Although I’ve always seen the cult of personality surrounding Bush as a rationalization of his manifest shortcomings of character and intellect, there was no denying its power. Now that illusion appears to be fading. Both the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq and the incomprehensible political blunder of trying to hand over management of U. S. ports to a company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates have brought about the unthinkable: open dissent from prominent Republicans and discontent among the Republican base. The scary part is that Bush’s second term has an almost unimaginable three years to runlonger than the entire presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Thnk Progress: Al-Qaeda Infiltrated UAE Government, According To 2002 Letter

New evidence has emerged that key agencies of the United Arab Emirates may have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda. In May or June of 2002, al Qaeda officials wrote a letter to the UAE government claiming the emirates were “well aware” of the infiltration.

The letter, translated by the United States Government, is publicly available on the website of the West Point Combating Terrorism Center.

Meet the Nativists

By Susy Buchanan and Tom Kim, Intelligence Report. Posted March 2, 2006.

Introducing Rep. Tommy Tancredo, Glenn Spencer and Jim Gilchrist -- the political leaders of a growing xenophobic movement in the United States.

The Intelligence Report is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

One of them says he'd like to bring nuclear weapons to the border. Another vows to stop the alleged Mexican invasion of Idaho. Several have links to white supremacist hate groups; others are given to dire warnings of horrible diseases, "barbaric" practices, and secret Latino conspiracies to "reconquer" the American Southwest. These are the nativists -- the new crop of activists who are driving the movement that exploded last spring with the Minuteman Project in Arizona, a monthlong effort by armed civilians to seal the border with Mexico.

Medicare must change the way it values physician services to avert primary care collapse

Medicare must change the way that it values and reimburses physician services to prevent a collapse of primary care medicine in the U.S., the president of the American College of Physicians (ACP) told the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health today. ACP President C. Anderson Hedberg, MD, FACP, made his comments while sharing ACP's views on the 2006 report of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission

"The collapse will occur at a time when we need more primary care physicians to care for an aging population," noted Dr. Hedberg. "By 2030, one fifth of Americans will be over 65, with an increasing proportion over 85. In fact, the 85 and over population – which is most likely to require chronic care services for multiple conditions – will increase by 50 percent from 2000 to 2010."

US involvement in the Middle East began with Eisenhower

An article published in the latest issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly studies the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 to find that it first accepted the responsibilities in the Middle East that the U.S. would retain for decades. The doctrine also increased the likelihood that the United States would fight in the region. It declared that the U.S. would use economic and military aid and armed forces to stop the spread of communism in the region; Congress gave Eisenhower the authority to dispense 200 million dollars to any country seeking assistance against communism. Although never formally invoked during his presidency, the doctrine guided his policy in three controversies: preserving the reign of Jordan's King Hussein, organizing military maneuvers against Syria, and performing a military intervention in Lebanon.

Echidne: The Gini Coefficient and the Lorenz Curve

These are measures that economists use for income inequality in a society, but I'm not going to talk about them at. Just put them in the headline to scare you. Instead, I'm going to talk about the income inequality itself which really should scare you. Krugman gives us some worrisome data in his latest column where he first debunks the myth that it's education which makes some Americans earn so much than others:

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying

Extent of Eavesdropping May Go Beyond NSA Work

By Charles Babington and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 1, 2006; Page A08

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

Unintended Pregnancy Linked to State Funding Cuts

First-of-Its-Kind Study Cites Impact On Teenage Girls and Poor Women

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 1, 2006; Page A06

At a time when policymakers have made reducing unintended pregnancies a national priority, 33 states have made it more difficult or more expensive for poor women and teenagers to obtain contraceptives and related medical services, according to an analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute.

From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute, a privately funded research group that focuses on sexual health and family issues.

GOP Senators Move to Advance Patriot Act

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 3 minutes ago

Senate Republicans moved Wednesday to prevent Democrats from trying to add more civil liberties safeguards to a renewal of the 2001 Patriot Act due to expire next week.

In a pair of votes orchestrated by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., the Senate effectively shut off amendments to a compromise between the White House and libertarian-leaning Republicans allowing some court challenges to government demands for people's records in terrorism investigations.

Democrats complained that the negotiated limits would be virtually meaningless in practice.

The U.S. Disconnect on Bush Abuses

By Robert Parry
February 28, 2006

The U.S. news media is experiencing a cognitive meltdown as it tries to hold onto the traditional view of the United States as a beacon for human rights while facing the new reality in which George W. Bush has plunged the nation into the dark arts of torture, assassination and “disappearances” more common in “death-squad” states.

Rarely has that disconnect been more clearly on display than on the Feb. 28 editorial page of the Washington Post.

The lead editorial, entitled “Homicide Unpunished,” criticizes the Bush administration for letting off U.S. interrogators implicated in murder and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the page’s final editorial hails the Bush administration for demanding that the United Nations purge its human rights organization of human rights violators.

Goodbye, New Orleans

It's Time We Stopped Pretending

by Mike Tidwell

AS WE REACH THE 90-DAY mark since Katrina hit, it's time we ended our national state of denial. Turns out House Speaker Dennis Hastert had it right all along, though his reasons were flawed. We should call it quits in New Orleans not because the city can't be made relatively safe from hurricanes. It can be. And not because to do so is more trouble than it's worth. It's not. But because the Bush Administration has already given New Orleans a quiet kiss of death now that the story has run its news cycle.

As someone who dearly loves New Orleans and has experienced many of her charms, it pains me immeasurably to call for this retreat. This is not a rhetorical stunt or a shock argument meant to invite compromise talks. I mean what I say: Shut the city down and board it up before thousands more lives are lost.

Congress Poised to Pass Bill Taking Away Your Right to Know What's in Your Food

Tell your Congressman or Congresswoman to vote "No" on House of Representatives Bill H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," coming to a vote in Washington, D.C this Thursday, March 2

The House of Representatives will vote this week on a controversial "national food uniformity" labeling law that will take away local government and states' power to require food safety food labels such as those required in California and other states on foods or beverages that are likely to cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, or mercury poisoning. This bill would also prevent citizens in local municipalities and states from passing laws requiring that genetically engineered foods and ingredients such as Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) be labeled.

The House will vote March 2, 2006 on a bill that would gut state food safety and labeling laws. H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," lowers the bar on food safety by overturning state food safety laws that are not "identical" to federal law. Hundreds of state laws and regulations are at risk, including those governing the safety of milk, fish, and shellfish. The bill is being pushed by large supermarket chains and food manufacturers, spearheaded by the powerful Grocery Manufacturers of America.

Intelligence agencies warned about growing local insurgency in late 2003

By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.

Ill-health legacy of atomic bomb

People who survived the atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 are still suffering health problems, a study reports.

The younger they were at the time, and the more radiation they were exposed to, the higher their risk of illness.

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation looked at thyroid conditions, known to be linked to radiation exposure.

Flying is Dying

By George Monbiot, AlterNet. Posted March 1, 2006.

There is no way to halt global warming and continue traveling long distances at high speeds. The only solution is to stop flying in airplanes.

At last the battlelines have been drawn, and the first major fight over climate change is about to begin. All over Britain, a coalition of homeowners and anarchists, NIMBYs and internationalists is mustering to fight the greatest future cause of global warming: the growth of aviation.

Not all these people care about the biosphere. Some are concerned merely that their homes are due to be bulldozed, or that, living under the new flight paths, they will never get a good night's sleep again. But anyone who has joined a broad-based coalition understands the power of this compound of idealism and dogged self-interest.

Prudent investments in education and training needed for nation's Hispanic population

Education and training are the linchpins that will give the nation's Hispanic workers and their children important tools to contribute to and share in U.S. prosperity, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council that examines the Hispanic experience in the United States. Targeted investments in these areas would benefit not only Hispanics, but also the country as a whole by enhancing U.S. productivity as baby boomers shift into retirement.

The children of Spanish-speaking immigrants are a critical part of America's future success. By 2030, they will number about 26 million and most will be in the labor force, the report notes. Underinvesting in their education would compromise the quality of their lives and, in all likelihood, U.S. competitiveness.

New Anti-Drug Program Shows “Phenomenal” Success by Focusing on Positives

COLUMBUS , Ohio – A newly-released study suggests that a well-designed in-school and community communication campaign really can dramatically cut marijuana and alcohol use among young teens.

In a study of 32 schools in 16 communities around the country, researchers found that the campaign cut in half the number of students who began using marijuana and alcohol during the two years of the project, compared to students in communities without the program.

Primary biliary cirrhosis more prevalent around toxic waste sites in NYC

Significant cluster found on Staten Island

According to a new study, exposure to toxins from hazardous waste sites may be a significant risk factor for developing primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). Published in the March 2006 issue of Hepatology, researchers found significant clusters of the disease near Superfund toxic waste sites (SFS) and that the majority of patients in New York City who need liver transplants because of PBC, reside near SFS. Hepatology is published on behalf of the society by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/hepatology.

PBC is an uncommon liver disease of unknown cause, though it reportedly appears in geographic clusters. Researchers, led by Aftab Ala, M.D. of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, examined the prevalence and potential clustering of PBC near New York City's most toxic waste sites, which are state-designated SFS.

An Unlikely Criminal Crossroads

From Egypt to Afghanistan, when terrorists and gangsters need a place to meet, to relax, maybe to invest, they head to Dubai, a bustling city-state on the Persian Gulf. The Middle East's unquestioned financial capital, Dubai is the showcase of the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich federation of sheikdoms. Forty years ago, Dubai was a backwater; today, it hosts dozens of banks and one of the world's busiest ports; its free-trade zones are crammed with thousands of companies. Construction is everywhere--skyscrapers, malls, hotels, and, soon, the world's tallest building.

But Dubai also serves as the region's criminal crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for the 9/11 hijackers and African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard. Dhows--rickety wooden boats that have plowed the Arabian Sea for centuries--move along the city center, uninspected, down the aptly named Smuggler's Creek.

Digby: Creating A Better Circumstance

This William Kristol quote from this morning is another step in the eventual disavowal of Bushism. You see, just as it was in Vietnam, the know-nothings in Washington won't let the military leaders take the gloves off which is why we are having so many problems.

This will, of course, be folded into the standard one size fits all conservative whine that alleges conservatism cannot fail on its own terms. Not even neo-conservatism, which isn't conservatism at all except to the extent it prefers war over other means of change.

Digby: Extremes

Kos highlights an interesting story today about the fears among the political establishment of the of grassroots extremists:

While some view the evangelical church as above all a force for promoting conservative values, others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and values voters but not the broader electorate.

Digby: Follies

Arthur Silber has written a very compelling series of posts featuring Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly" in several different contexts and it led me to go back and read it. It's an amazing analysis of a certain kind of willful governmental stupidity borne of hubris, mental laziness and bad judgment, and it's quite clear that we are seeing it being carried out right before our eyes. She defined "folly" this way:

To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. This is important, because all policy is determined by the mores of its age. "Nothing is more unfair," as an English historian has well said, "than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory." To avoid judging by present-day values, we must take the opinion of the time and investigate only those episodes whose injury to self-interest was recognized even by contemporaries.

Digby: Programmed Cynicism

I had noticed the propensity of the gasbags to characterize Democratic criticism of the Dubai ports deal as a craven political move to Bush's right. Media Matters has gathered together quite a comepndium of quotes, many of them not coming from the openly right wing media. My favorite is this one, from Evan Thomas of Newsweak:

THOMAS: One thing that strikes me is -- it is hilarious to watch the Democrats, who are all against racial profiling except in this case, where they're racially profiling an entire country, and the Hillary Clintons -- there's a lot about Hillary Clinton in the other subtext here. Hillary and the Democrats need to get somehow to the right of President Reagan on something.

Digby: Limited Nativism

Tristero has already linked to this great interview with Mark Danner and I too recommend that you read it if you haven't already. It's interesting in dozens of different ways, but I wanted to highlight something specific:

TD: They're really extreme American nationalists, though you can't use that word in this country.

Danner: That's true, and they combine with this belief in great-power America an almost nativist distrust of international institutions. That's the difference between Truman America and this regime in its approach to foreign policy. They put international institutions in a similar class with terrorism –- that is, weapons of the weak.

Ah. Yes, they have very skillfully stoked this nativism with distrust of international institutions. This has long been an effective tool on the right from the Panama Canal to the UN black helicopter crowd. Recently, they have stoked this nativism with distrust of our allies too. I have been quite amused to see all of the rightwingers clutching their pearls about "alienating our friends" after their performance in 2003 in which some of them were actually agitating to attack France and Germany. Watching them stutter and dissemble about our great and valued ally the United Arab Emirates is just funny. Freedom falafels anyone?

Think Progress: The Minnesota GOP’s Stealth Attack On Privacy

A story by Minnesota Public Radio reveals a disturbing new way that a political party is secretly grabbing sensitive personal information about voters.

This week the Minnesota Republican Party is distributing a new CD about a proposed state marriage amendment. Along with flashy graphics, the CD asks people their views on controversial issues such as abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, and so on.

The problem – the CD sends your answers back to headquarters, filed by name, address, and political views. No mention of that in the terms of use. No privacy policy at all. The story concludes: “So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are.”

These practices fall way below the standard for today’s polling firms and web sites. The norm for polling firms is to anonymize the data and report only statistical totals. The norm for commercial web sites is to have a privacy policy, with Federal Trade Commission enforcement if the web site breaks its privacy promise.

Paul Krugman: Osama, Saddam and the Ports

The New York Times

Friday 24 February 2006

The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new - the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.

So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.

Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Paul Krugman: Graduates versus Oligarchs

The New York Times

Monday 27 February 2006

Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.

But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."

That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

The President's Indian Fantasy

The rash nukes pledge is typical of Bush's strategic shortsightedness.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2006, at 6:20 PM ET

It takes a great strategic mind, something like a chess master's, to think three or four moves ahead in plotting international diplomacy. It would be nice if the Bush administration, now and then, could think one move ahead.

The pattern is hair-raising. In Iraq, Bush & Co. crashed the gates with no plan for what to do after the country crumbled. In North Korea, they called off nuclear talks and waited for the tyrant's regime to collapse with no plan for how to stop his weapons program if he managed to stay at the helm. In the Palestinian territories, they pushed for elections with no plan for how to react if the wrong side won.

Climate scientists issue dire warning

David Adam, environment correspondent
Tuesday February 28, 2006
The Guardian

The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

A draft of the next influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will tell politicians that scientists are now unable to place a reliable upper limit on how quickly the atmosphere will warm as carbon dioxide levels increase. The report draws together research over the past five years and will be presented to national governments in April and made public next year. It raises the possibility of the Earth's temperature rising well above the ceiling quoted in earlier accounts.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 02/28/06

"U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq -- and soon," writes Nicholas Kristof, citing numbers from a Zogby poll, which also found that 85 percent of U.S. troops serving in Iraq believe that their mission is mainly "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks."

Commenting on the 'Death of a professor,' Iraqi-born novelist and former political prisoner Haifa Zangana describes "a systematic campaign to assassinate Iraqis who speak out against the occupation."

Robert Parry finds "the U.S. news media ... experiencing a cognitive meltdown as it tries to hold onto the traditional view of the United States as a beacon for human rights while facing the new reality in which George W. Bush has plunged the nation."

A Washington Post article is said to offer "more or less conclusive evidence" that an IRS audit of Texans for Public Justice was "a political hit," and a Washingtonian editor contends that the "level of villainy" ascribed to Jack Abramoff "is a little excessive."

As jurors learn about "different ways money was found at Enron" -- but not about the 'Real Rip-Off' -- defendant Ken Lay is found to be down to his last $650,000.

EPA Shutting Off Access to Info

Tucked away in the Bush administration’s recent budget is a proposal that has alarmed scientists and environmentalists. Under the plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will shut down its network of libraries serving the public and its own staff scientists.

In addition, the agency will discontinue its electronic catalog, “which tracks tens of thousands of unique documents and research studies that are available nowhere else,” reports Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Poll: 72 percent of troops want out of Iraq in a year

RAW STORY
Published: February 28, 2006

Seventy two percent of U.S. troops in Iraq believe the United States should pull out within one year, a column by Nicholas Kristof in Tuesday's New York Times reveals. The poll was conducted by Zogby International and is the first poll to examine the attitudes of those currently serving in the wartorn nation.

America's younger workers losing ground on income

From 2001 to 2004, median income fell 8 percent for householders under 35, a survey shows.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

In the race to get ahead economically, America's young workers are falling behind.

A new survey shows that median incomes fell for householders under 45, even as they rose for older ones, between 2001 and 2004.

Income fell 8 percent, adjusted for inflation, for those under 35 and 9 percent for those aged 35 to 44. The numbers add new weight to longstanding concerns about whether younger generations of Americans will achieve living standards that are better - or at least equal to - those of their parents.

Lies, Damn Lies and Poverty Statistics

How an archaic measurement keeps millions of poor Americans from being counted

By Christopher Moraff

Standing before the House rostrum on the night of January 31, President George W. Bush beamed as he recounted the state of the country’s economic health.

“Our economy is healthy,” the president declared during his State of the Union address. “Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.”

Bush Renews Support for Ports Deal

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 20 minutes ago

President Bush said Tuesday he remains supportive of a United Arab Emirates-based company's takeover of some U.S. port operations, even though a new, more intensive investigation of the deal's potential security risks has yet to begin.

Bush is the final arbiter of that second review. Yet, he said after an Oval Office meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that "my position hasn't changed" on support for transferring control of management of some major U.S. port facilities from a British company to Dubai-based DP World.

The administration's approval of the deal has caused an uproar from Republicans and Democrats in Congress that it could open the country to terrorist dangers. Lawmakers criticized the deal anew Tuesday, despite Republican leaders' hopes that the furor had diminished.

Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.

Georgia congressman failed to declare Abramoff client trip, then supported client's efforts

John Byrne and Ron Brynaert
Published: February 27, 2006

A Georgia congressman omitted a trip paid for by a client of fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff from travel disclosure forms, even though he declared it on his personal income filings, RAW STORY has found.

The congressman -- Rep. John Linder (R-GA) -- took a five-day trip to Puerto Rico with his wife in August 1998. The trip was paid for by Future of Puerto Rico, Inc., a nebulous lobbying group that sought to advance Puerto Rican statehood and other island causes. The group was a client of Jack Abramoff, the former conservative superlobbyist who pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in January.

A chilling threat in freedom's land

By LEONARD PITTS

"The enemies of freedom will be defeated." - President George W. Bush, 2005"

"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo, 1971"

The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this year.

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library in Bethesda, Md. Business is going on as usual when two men in uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to view Internet pornography.

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point, a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A police officer is summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of the county's department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their authority.

Frist says he's OK with ports deal

Senate chief backs additional briefings

By Elisabeth J. Beardsley
ebeardsley@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday he's gained a "pretty good" comfort level with the deal under which a United Arab Emirates company would take over operations at six U.S. ports.

However, Frist said he wants to "take a pause" for 30 to 45 days so other members of Congress can be briefed.

Firedoglake: Scrubbing

Back in the days when newspapers and magazines were printed on paper once something was committed to ink that was pretty much it, you had to live with it. And while I do look quite fetching in my tin foil hat I generally like to save it for special occasions, but there's something unexplained and a little disturbing going on with internet news scrubbing.

We've seen quite a few instances of it recently and it usually has to do with explosive comments that are unfavorable to the narrative being disseminated by the administration (and quite often the Vice President):

. Josh Marshall noticed that it happened in a Washington Post article referring to a conversation on Air Force II:
On July 12, the day Cheney and Libby flew together from Norfolk, the vice president instructed his aide to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on Wilson's credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source. (WaPo, October 30 2005)

Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war

Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. And the Interior Ministry is being blamed.

By Andrew Buncombe and Patrick Cockburn
Published: 26 February 2006

Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.

John Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told The Independent on Sunday that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, was carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.

From psychopaths to behaving responsibly: Waking up the inner sleeping beauty of companies

Research news from Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
Studies in corporate responsibility (CR) have found that many large companies seem to fulfil the psychiatric criteria for psychopaths1. New research suggests companies displaying psychopathic behaviour would benefit from a 'Prince of Virtues' approach to wake them from their '100-year sleep'. The research was conducted at the Turku School of Economics in Finland and will be published in the next edition of Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.

Research author Dr. Tarja Ketola argues that working in large companies which employ psychopathic practices which breach people's basic values quickly becomes a huge mental burden for managers and employees. But she sees a solution in the form of using ethical principles employed by individuals in their personal lives.