Backlash over new pensions legislation

By Norma Cohen in London
Published: March 23 2006 22:11 | Last updated: March 23 2006 23:19

Employers will be able to slash their contributions to underfunded pension schemes by tens of billions of dollars over the next five years under proposed legislation before Congress that was expected to have the opposite effect.

The legislation was proposed by the White House last year to lessen the risk of a taxpayer bailout of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal safety net for pension schemes.

Why Be a Billionaire?

Deconstructing Forbes' annual list.
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, March 24, 2006, at 6:08 AM ET

Forbes magazine has published its annual list of the world's billionaires. On the Web site, there are convenient links to sermonettes in Forbes over the years about how the population explosion at the tippy-top of the wealth scale demonstrates the power of human gumption and the glory of the capitalist system. Twenty years ago, according to Forbes' lists, there were 140 billionaires. Three years ago there were 476. This year there are 793; each has an average net worth of $3.3 billion.

Nevertheless, billionaires remain a mystery. And it's a mystery at the heart of our economic system. There isn't six times as much gumption in the world as there was two decades ago. Free enterprise, or something like it, has spread to Third World and former Communist countries, and this is reflected in the appearance of Russians, Chinese, and Indians on the Forbes list. But that cannot explain the large increase in American billionaires.

Tennessee to Require DNA From Abortions

By ERIK SCHELZIG, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 24, 12:38 AM ET

Doctors performing abortions on girls younger than 13 years old would be required to preserve a sample of the fetal tissue for law enforcement under a bill passed by the Senate on Thursday.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation could use those samples for DNA tests to help prosecute rapists, said Sen. Roy Herron, the bill's sponsor.

"Whoever has sex with a child 12 years of age or younger is committing rape, whether force is involved or not, and they ought to be prosecuted," he said.

State Bans Abstinence Program

By The Associated Press

PROVIDENCE - Rhode Island education officials have banned from public schools a federally funded abstinence program that civil rights advocates said embraced sexist stereotypes and included a voluntary student health survey that violated privacy laws.

Lawyers at the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union first complained last year that a now-abandoned textbook used by Heritage of Rhode Island taught students that girls should wear clothing that doesn't invite "lustful thoughts" from boys. The book described men as "strong" and "courageous" while women were called "caring."

New home sales plunge 10.5 percent, sharpest drop in nearly nine years

RAW STORY
Published: Friday March 24, 2006

New-home sales recorded the steepest drop in nearly nine years during February, marking the fourth decline in six months and providing more evidence of a continuing slowdown in the housing market, the WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTS -- excerpts:

#

The Commerce Department said Friday that sales of single-family homes decreased 10.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.080 million. The decrease was the biggest since an identical slide in April 1997. The level of demand was the lowest since May 2003's 1.078 million annual rate.

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement

In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

FBI Action Perceived As Intimidation

Statement by Kay J. Maxwell, President of the League of Women Voters of the United States and Chellie Pingree, President of Common Cause

Washington, D.C. – The League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS) and Common Cause expressed concern today over a recent incident involving the League of Women Voters of Berrien and Cass Counties (LWVBCC) in Michigan, Common Cause and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“At a time when Americans are relying on the FBI to protect against terrorism, it seems strange that precious resources would be spent contacting citizen advocacy groups to question their work educating the public about open government. Such behavior smacks of intimidation,” said Kay J. Maxwell, LWVUS President.

“The FBI’s actions in this instance seemed intended to have a chilling effect on the right of Americans to freely express themselves,” said Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause.

U.S. to Contract Foreign Co. to Scan Cargo

Bush Admin. Hiring Chinese/Hong Kong Firm to Scan Cargo, a No-Bid Contract. Why is Bush Outsourcing Our National Security?--BUZZFLASH

By TED BRIDIS and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers2 hours, 1 minute ago

One of Americans' favorite beach destinations, the Bahamas, is getting a new U.S. arrival — sophisticated equipment to detect radioactive materials in shipping cargo. But U.S. customs agents won't be on site to supervise the machine's use as a nuclear safeguard for the American shoreline that is just 65 miles away from Freeport. Under an unusual arrangement, a Hong Kong company will help operate the detector.

The Bush administration says it is finalizing a no-bid contract with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. It acknowledged the deal is the first time a foreign company will be involved in running a radiation detector at an overseas port without American customs agents present.

The administration is negotiating a second no-bid contract for a Philippine company to install radiation detectors in its home country, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. At dozens of other overseas ports, foreign governments are primarily responsible for scanning cargo.

Earth's warming likely irreversible, scientists say

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Within the next 100 years, the growing human influence on Earth's climate could lead to a long and irreversible rise in sea levels by eroding Earth's vast polar ice sheets, according to new observations and analysis by several teams of scientists.

One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be 4 degrees warmer than today and that over the coming centuries, the world's oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet -- conditions last seen 130,000 years ago, between the last two ice ages.

Three Years Of Happyfun War!

1,100 days of brutal violence and death, grinding you down to a numb little nub. Thanks, Dubya!

- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 24, 2006

You've endured three more birthdays. There have been three Academy Awards ceremonies, three new Super Bowl champions, three full winters and three summers, three complete cycles of jean styles and hemlines and pleat cuts in the fashion world and there has been the rise and very quick fall of roughly 146 horrible TV shows you never even saw.

Your skin has changed. Your teeth have worn down. Your bones have shifted in their sockets. Your fingernails grew another 4 inches and you consumed roughly 5,850 pounds of food and 600 pounds of meat and your hair grew about a foot and a half.

Digby: The Worm Turns

Greg Sargent at TAPPED sees what's important about the emerging new and improved conventional wisdom about the Feingold resolution:

Lockhart speaks out in an interview with Chris Lehmann in his entertaining piece on Feingold in this week's New York Observer. Lehmann writes:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold's proposal - and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, "is complete nonsense."

Digby: Religious Discrimination

American's increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn't extend to those who don't believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota's department of sociology.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Getting It Straight with the Wrong-Headed Right

by SusanG
Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 01:43:15 PM PDT

What I need from the conservatives who were wrong is this:

A statement, a simple statement, that they were wrong and we were right. Period. Not that Bush incompetently executed a terrific idea, but that the idea itself was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. As wrong as you can get. You simply cannot force democracy on another nation at gunpoint. Period.

It doesn't matter that you don't like the messenger, that you wish he or she were less shrill or not fat or not given to making documentaries or standing in ditches or previously criticizing Bush on other issues from the pages of the New York Times. None of that matters. Those messengers were right. You were wrong. Period. Have the decency to say it, once and for all, and we can move on.

Panic in the Newspaper Biz

Posted on Mar. 23, 2006

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying—it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

Let’s use this as a handy exercise in journalism. What is the unexamined assumption here? That the newspaper business is dying. Is it? In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2%, down from 21% in 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal. That ain’t chopped liver—it’s more than double the average operating profit margin of the Fortune 500.

Bush Bombs in Cleveland

Posted on Mar. 21, 2006

By Robert Scheer

On the third anniversary of the beginning of his Iraq catastrophe, President Bush yet again dealt in denial, but this time the carefully screened audience at the Cleveland City Club wasn’t buying it.

Perhaps most on target was an elderly gentleman who cited what he said were the three main reasons for going to war in Iraq — WMD, Iraq’s ties to the Sept. 11 terrorists and the alleged purchase of nuclear material from Niger — and then noted dryly that all three of these rationales turned out to be false.

Digby: Born Again Nihilist

In an interesting exchange on the Lehrer News Hour Wednesday night (in which David Frum proved again that he is an inveterate GOP shill who cares more for the party than the country) David Gergen mentioned several times that thre Bush administration saw Bush as Truman, in the sense that he would be vindicated by history. He said:

The surprise to me has been that, when you talk to people around the president, the model they cite is often that of Harry Truman. Truman was someone whose polls fell down into the 20s in the final year in office. And, indeed, he could not run in 1952 because he was so low because of the Korean War.

Soros, Big Democratic Donors Targeted by Republican Measure

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. House Democrats may have to pay a steep price to enact legislation overhauling lobbying rules: agreeing to restrict donations by some of their biggest backers.

Republicans have proposed a $5,000 cap on federal campaign donations to independent groups known as ``527 committees,'' as part of lobbying legislation soon to be taken up by Congress. The provision could curtail a source of funding from donors such as billionaire investor George Soros that provided tens of millions of dollars to Democratic-leaning groups in the 2004 elections.

Democrats have made allegations of Republican wrongdoing a central theme of this year's campaigns; opposing the ethics legislation because of the 527 provision may leave them open to charges they're not serious about the issue, even after scandals involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Representative Randy Cunningham, a California Republican imprisoned for taking bribes.

Bush's Media Blame Game

Norman Solomon
March 23, 2006

Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

Top officials in the Bush administration have often complained that news coverage of Iraq focuses on negative events too much and fails to devote enough attention to positive developments. Yet the White House has rarely picked direct fights with U.S. media outlets during this war. For the most part, President Bush leaves it to others to scapegoat the media.

Karl Rove’s spin strategy is heavily reliant on surrogates. They’re likely to escalate blame-the-media efforts as this year goes on.

Supreme Court imposes new limits on police searches

Rules residents have equal right to deny entry

By Charles Lane, Washington Post | March 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court narrowed police search powers yesterday, ruling that officers must have a warrant to look for evidence in a couple's home unless both of the partners present agree to let them in.

The 5-to-3 decision sparked a sharp exchange among the justices. The majority portrayed the decision as striking a blow for privacy rights and gender equality; dissenters said it could undermine police efforts against domestic violence, the victims of which are often women.

The ruling upholds a 2004 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court, but still makes a significant change in the law nationwide, because most other lower federal and state courts had said police could search with the consent of one of two adults living together.

Poll: Opposition to Gay Marriage Declining

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 23, 6:51 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The public backlash over gay marriage has receded since a controversial decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2003 to legalize those marriages stirred strong opposition, says a poll released Wednesday.

Gay marriage remains a divisive issue, with 51 percent opposing it, the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found. But almost two-thirds, 63 percent, opposed gay marriage in February 2004.

Apocalyptic president

Even some Republicans are now horrified by the influence Bush has given to the evangelical right

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 23, 2006
The Guardian

In his latest PR offensive President Bush came to Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday to answer the paramount question on Iraq that he said was on people's minds: "They wonder what I see that they don't." After mentioning "terror" 54 times and "victory" five, dismissing "civil war" twice and asserting that he is "optimistic", he called on a citizen in the audience, who homed in on the invisible meaning of recent events in the light of two books, American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips, and the book of Revelation. Phillips, the questioner explained, "makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this? And if not, why not?"

Bush's immediate response, as transcribed by CNN, was: "Hmmm." Then he said: "The answer is I haven't really thought of it that way. Here's how I think of it. First, I've heard of that, by the way." The official White House website transcript drops the strategic comma, and so changes the meaning to: "First I've heard of that, by the way."

"War on Christians"?

Later this month, Rich Scarborough's Vision America will host 'The War Against Christians and the Values Voter 2006' Conference in Washington D.C.

"The left will continue to accuse us of trying to 'Christianize America.' Because it can't debate us on the issues, it seeks to demonize us. But we are the inheritors of the faith tradition that is part of the fabric of America. We seek to return America to the Godly values espoused by leaders like Washington, Adams, Lincoln and Reagan. And we have just as much right to be actively involved in the political process as other citizens."
-- Pastor Rick Scarborough

"A specter is haunting America, and it is not socialism and certainly not communism. It is the specter of Americans kneeling in submission to a particular interpretation of a religion that has become an ideology, an all-encompassing way of life. It is the specter of our nation ruled by the extreme Christian right, who would make the United States a 'Christian nation' where their version of God's law supersedes all human law -- including the Constitution."
-- Rabbi James Rudin, "The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us" (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006).

Digby: Lil Benji, Day 3

I think it's awfully of interesting that the Washington Post hired a 24 year old ex-Bush staffer, whose daddy (also a Bush staffer) was in charge of the making sure Abramoff got what he wanted. (Wasn't the entire Deborah Howell flap about the shoddy Abramoff coverage in the first place?)

Josh Marshall has the scoop:

You see, it turns out the Domenech family came in for a number of Bush administration appointments. Not only Ben, but Ben's dad, Doug, who was White House liaison to the Department of Interior.

Grants Flow To Bush Allies On Social Issues

Federal Programs Direct At Least $157 Million

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Page A01

For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs.

In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush's agenda on abortion and other social issues.

Prosecutors Want DeLay Charges Reinstated

By APRIL CASTRO
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; 6:56 AM

AUSTIN, Texas -- Prosecutors will try to persuade a Texas appeals court Wednesday to reinstate some of the criminal charges against Rep. Tom DeLay, who is trying to win re-election to Congress while under indictment.

In December, a judge threw out some of the conspiracy and money laundering charges against the former House majority leader, saying the conspiracy law DeLay allegedly violated did not exist at the time.

A Time for Heresy

Bill Moyers
March 22, 2006

Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This is the prepared text of his remarks delivered on March 14 upon the establishment by Marilyn and James Dunn, of the Wake Forest Divinity School, of a scholarship in religious freedom in the name of Judith and Bill Moyers.

When Dean Bill Leonard asked James Dunn to join him here at Wake Forest’s new Divinity School, my soul shouted “Yes!” These two men personify the honesty and courage we need to meet the challenge of faith in the fundamentalist dispensation of the 21st century as radical interpretations of both Islam and Christianity seek, in the words of C.Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, “to take over the government and use cause structures to advance the ideology, hierarchy, and laws” of their movement.

James Dunn and Bill Leonard are Baptists. What kind of Baptist matters. At last count there were more than two dozen varieties of Baptists in America. Bill Clinton is a Baptist. So is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. Al Gore is a Baptist. So is Jerry Falwell. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes.

Material witness detention under scrutiny

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday March 21, 2006

Detention of material witnesses has become a hotly debated tactic in the wake of reports of government prosecutorial abuses, according to a story set for Wednesday's New York Times, RAW STORY has learned.

Abu Ghraib Dog Handler Is Unrepentant

By DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press WriterWed Mar 22, 8:34 AM ET

An Army dog handler convicted of tormenting Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison with his snarling animal was unrepentant about the abuse charges at his sentencing hearing, telling a court-martial jury that soldiers aren't supposed to be "soft and cuddly."

Sgt. Michael J. Smith, 24, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was found guilty Tuesday of six of 13 counts. A judge later dismissed one count, saying it duplicated another, leaving Smith facing a possible penalty of up to 8 1/2 years in prison.

His sentencing hearing resumed Wednesday with discussion among the lawyers and judge about jury instructions.

Smith told the court-martial jury that he wished he had learned in basic training how to better avoid getting into trouble with superiors. Soldiers who do not "end up in a heap of trouble," he said.

Gunned down: the teenager who dared to walk across his neighbour's prized lawn

Some interesting statistics on guns--Dictynna

· 66-year-old blasted boy twice with shotgun
· Killing highlights dilemma over firearms death toll

Julian Borger Washington
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian

"I just killed a kid," Charles Martin told the emergency services operator. "I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice."

He had gunned down Larry Mugrage, his neighbours' 15-year-old son. The teenager's crime: walking across Mr Martin's lawn on his way home. Mr Martin opened fire from his house and then, according to the police, walked up to the wounded boy and pulled the trigger again at close range, killing him.

Daily Kos: Shame (a rant)

by georgia10
Tue Mar 21, 2006 at 03:51:32 PM PDT

I am ashamed. I am ashamed of this President. Aren't you? After watching his press conference today, a sense of shame overtook me. I'm ashamed that he took to the podium today as if he emptied out a container of laughing gas. I'm ashamed of a President who has the temerity to laugh when asked a question about war. I'm ashamed of the whores of the fourth estate who care more about having the honor of being the butt of one of the President's jokes than about exposing the truth to the American people. I'm ashamed that millions of my fellow Americans are so scared and so desperate for leadership that they believe the President's bullshit.

I am ashamed. I'm ashamed of this President, this megalomaniac hellbent on leaving his assprint on the map of the Middle East, no matter how much destruction is wrought and no matter how much blood flows in the streets of lands that never threatened us. I'm ashamed that when I see the American flag waiving, images of flag-draped coffins flash in my mind. I'm ashamed of Freedom's MarchTM. Ashamed when I see villages reduced to rubble. Ashamed when I see the tiny little corpses. God, they're so painfully tiny--lined up in a row, little angels wrapped in colorful blankets that starkly contrast against their gray-tinged faces. Ashamed when I see wailing Iraqis slam their hands against plain, unvarnished coffins, over and over, asking "Why? Is this democracy? Why?" When I see those image of funerals, of broken families, I want to crawl into my TV, I want to go to them and grab their slumped shoulders and scream "I'm sorry, good god, I'm so sorry. I want to leave, I want us to leave, believe me. But they won't listen...No one listens anymore."

Time to Exit Iraq, A Leading Paper Declares

Editorials criticizing our adventure in Iraq are a dime a dozen, but very few have called for a U.S. pullout. But on Sunday, one of the most respected papers, The Des Moines Register, called on the president to set a timetable for a phased American withdrawal.

By Greg Mitchell

(March 21, 2006) -- For about as long as I can remember (which these days is about two years), I have been agitating in this space for major daily newspapers to call for a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq, or at least the setting of a timetable for same. Once these editorials got the ball rolling, many others would follow, I presumed, and policy might actually change.

Alas, not many have answered the call, as I observed once again two days ago in reviewing some of the third anniversary editorials. Like the vast majority of Americans, editorialists have turned against the war but are hesitant, or just plain afraid, to suggest that the U.S. reverse course. Maybe President Bush admitting on Tuesday that he planned to keep U.S. troops in Iraq at least until he leaves office will force some to confront this prospect.

Bush says Iraq pullout up to 'future presidents'

Warns leaving too soon would boost Al Qaeda

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | March 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush suggested yesterday that US troops might stay in Iraq beyond his presidency, which ends in 2009, saying at a press conference that the issue of removing troops from the country ''will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

The president, responding to aggressive questioning at the hastily arranged morning session, declined to give a timetable for pulling US soldiers out of the increasingly unpopular war. But he warned several times about the danger of a ''premature" withdrawal.

''There's no question that if we were to prematurely withdraw and the march to democracy were to fail, then Al Qaeda would be emboldened," Bush said. ''Terrorist groups would be emboldened. The Islamo-fascists would be emboldened."

Reigniting the Arms Race

By Michael Klare, The Nation. Posted March 22, 2006.

President Bush's dangerous deal to deliver nuclear technology to India makes nuclear war all the more likely.

During the early cold war era, both superpowers provided nuclear technology to selected Third World countries -- the United States to South Korea and Iran (under the Shah), the Soviet Union to China and North Korea -- as a way of cementing ties with favored allies and shifting the global balance of power in their favor. Later, as concern over the spread of nuclear weapons intensified, the superpowers agreed to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and to cease transferring weapons-related nuclear technology to nonweapons states.

For thirty-five years nuclear nonproliferation was a major priority of U.S. foreign policy. But now, in a throwback to early cold war power politics, President Bush has agreed to supply nuclear technology to India in blatant violation of the NPT.

Digby: Al's Vision

I will always have a great fondness for Al Gore. In 2000 I watched him get trashed by a ruthless Right Wing Noise Machine and a sophomoric press corps who were determined to punish him for Clinton's sins (which only they and the very right wing of the Republican party felt required punishment in the first place.) It was one of the most god-awful displays of character assassination we've ever seen --- and the way it ended, with the Republicans pulling every lever of brute institutional power they had to seize the office, had to have been a terrible, dispiriting event. I know how bad I felt. I can only imagine the searing disappointment he must have endured.

IRS plan would allow sale of tax data to marketers

lBY JEFF GELLES
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

March 21, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- The Internal Revenue Service is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns.

If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers for the first time would be able to sell information from individual returns -- or even entire returns -- to marketers and data brokers.

The change is in a set of proposed rules the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them "not a significant regulatory action."

'The Secret Way to War'

By Frank Rich

It's hard not to think of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day when reading Mark Danner on what will forever be known as the Downing Street memo. Ishiguro told the story of a butler, just beyond the periphery of tawdry events in high places in World War II England, who pieces together fragment by fragment the story of his lord's collaboration with the Germans. So Danner, standing at a remove from momentous sotto voce conversations among the British ruling class on the eve of another war, teases out the meaning of similar evidence at his disposal until finally we get a clear and damning larger picture of a plot to take both England and the United States into a war of choice in Iraq on false premises. But you can only take this analogy so far. Unlike Ishiguro's tragically limited narrator, Danner understands the implications of every piece of the story, and, in these pages,^[*] lays out the history of "the secret way to war" with devastating acuity.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 03/21/06

With 'Regional vultures circling Iraq' amid a reported casualty shift, 'Iraqis sound angry on invasion anniversary,' with one quoted as saying: "I got nothing from this so-called liberation, just this cell phone and my satellite receiver. But I lost my three daughters."

Quoting an Iraq scholar who says that "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so. I would expect to hear 'No bases,'" the AP reports that "Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete."

As a second poll finds more than 40 percent support for censuring President Bush, Sen. Russ Feingold described the reluctance of fellow Democrats to back his resolution as "Shades of October 2002," during an interview with Charlie Rose. Plus: 'How Would a Patriot Act?'

Kevin Phillips writes about writing his book "American Theocracy," which, according a New York Times review, "may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years ... and for the most part frighteningly persuasive."

Referring to Phillips' book, a questioner asked President Bush on Monday, "Do you believe .... That the war in Iraq and the rise in terrorism are signs of the apocalypse. And, if not, why not?" And Bush himself had a question for Cleveland.

Digby: Hoisting The Sail

There is no more reliable arbiter of beltway conventional wisdom than Cokie Roberts. Her entire career has been built on the idea that she knows what the establishment is thinking (which the establishment then inexplicably twists into what "the people" are thinking.) She has spent her life in Washington DC and is as much a part of the firmament as the Arlington cemetary. When she speaks, the poobahs have issued an verdict.

Digby: Why We've Got His Back

Russ Feingold appeared on Charlie Rose and I suspect it may be what forced Bill Kristol to admit that he was "an impressive politician" who made the case very effectively.

Crooks and Liars has the video and I urge you to watch it all. He has his finger on the pulse of the Democratic base --- which, by the way, represents the new majority.

Billmon: Trusting the Marketplace

Confronting critics of the Bush administration's economic record, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the widening gap between high-paid and low-paid Americans reflects a labor market efficiently rewarding more productive people . . . Mr. Snow said the same phenominon explains why compensation for corporate chief executives has climbed so sharply.

"In an aggregate sense, it reflects the marginal productivity of CEOs. Do I trust the market for CEOs to work efficiently? Yes. Until we can find a better way to compensate CEOs, I'm going to trust the marketplace."

Wall Street Journal
Snow Defends President's Handling of Economy
March 20, 2006

If Only …

The lessons of our Iraqi bungles.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006, at 6:23 PM ET

A question worth mulling, on this third anniversary of the war that President Bush told us was over and won two years and 10 months ago, is this: Were the fiascos inevitable—built-in products of the nature of the war itself—or could they have been avoided, or at least might their impact have been minimized, if President Bush and his top advisers had made smarter decisions?

This isn't the stuff of parlor games; it's a vital question. If the disasters were inescapable, then we shouldn't get involved ever again in this sort of war. If they were preventable, then maybe these broader issues of war and peace can't be settled by this particular conflict, but we can draw the lesson that we should elect less dogmatic leaders; and the officers and advisers who counseled against those decisions, who turned out to be right all along, can draw the lesson that they should speak out more boldly, perhaps even resign in protest, if they find themselves mired in such catastrophes again.

Rewriting The Science

(CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools--The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished

The Guardian
Monday, March 20, 2006
by Greg Palast

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

'Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills'

At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time

Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil
Monday March 20, 2006

Guardian
In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, US, two men - one a former CIA agent and Republican candidate for Congress, the other a former army ranger - are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining $3m (£1.7m) intended for the reconstruction of Iraq. These two events have no direct link, but they are none the less products of the same thing: a financial scandal that in terms of sheer scale must rank as one of the greatest in history.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq".

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

Death squads on the prowl in a nation paralysed by fear

Patrick Cockburn in Arbril
Published: 20 March 2006

Iraq is a country paralysed by fear. It is at its worst in Baghdad. Sectarian killings are commonplace. In the three days after the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February, some 1,300 people, mostly Sunni, were picked up on the street or dragged from their cars and murdered. The dead bodies of four suspected suicide bombers were left dangling from a pylon in the Sadr City slum.

The scale of the violence is such that most of it is unreported. Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, said yesterday that scores were dying every day. "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

Digby: The Boundries Of Our Power

I'm glad to see Steve Clemons being quoted saying this in today's harsh Philadelphia Inquirer editorial:

Before Iraq, said Steven C. Clemons, a useful mystique surrounded the strength of the United States. Clemons heads foreign policy studies at the New America Foundation.

Rogue nations such as Iran didn't know the boundaries of our power. This blundering war of choice in Iraq has revealed them.

Digby: Changing Public Opinion

John Amato has the video up of Brit Hume having a hyperventilating hissy fit this morning on Fox news at Bill Kristol's assertion that Feingold's motion is good for Democrats. Wow.

Brit seemed unusually concerned that Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams all indicated that Feingold's move was either principled or good politics (or both) didn't he? And then he went completely ballistic when Juan Williams challenged his misleading assertion that the public is "surprisingly" "astonishingly" "overwhelmingly" in favor when asked "should we listen in on al Qaeda communications in the U.S." --- by pointing out that it's the illegality of the program that concerns people.

Billmon: Groundhog Day

As it happens, I've been spending the third anniversary of the launch of Operation Clusterfuck reading The Assassin's Gate, George Packer's historical apologia for being part of (his words) a "tiny, insignificant camp of ambivalently pro-war liberals."

I could think of a few other choice -- and more accurate -- descriptions, but that's beside the point.

The point is that while I haven't even gotten to the actual invasion yet, Packer's book already has provided a quasi-hallucinatory reminder of what the past three years have been like -- i.e. a seemingly endless spin on the Karmic wheel reserved for those who don't -- or can't -- learn from the past.

How to spot a baby conservative

KID POLITICS | Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...
Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM
KURT KLEINER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

THE IRAQ WAR: Three years

White House no longer sees quick end to difficult war

James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 19, 2006

When the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq three years ago, the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean.

Six weeks later, President Bush spoke in the past tense about Operation Iraqi Freedom, thanking the Iraqis who welcomed the U.S. troops and promising that democratic change would sweep the region.

Now, with sectarian violence roaring and casualties rising, the White House increasingly is talking, in the present tense, about a long war, meaning the old-fashioned kind -- "the crucible with the blood and the dust and the gore," as Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last fall.

Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press WriterSat Mar 18, 12:52 PM ET

"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.

Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free."

"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."

Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

Murtha On Meet The Press

Murtha appeared on MTP today and got the full body treatment from Timmy. Russert wailed away at John (who wouldn't like to see that same treatment with Condi or Cheney?) and threw everything and the kitchen sink at him, but Murtha was relentless in his feelings about the Iraq war. He admitted that he made a mistake with his vote and then slapped down Ken Melman. He also addressed the criticisms from the wingnuts about the media and their coverage of the war.

The Letter of the Law

The White House says spying on terror suspects without court approval is ok. What about physical searches?

By Chitra Ragavan

3/27/06

In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases."

Environmental chemicals implicated in cancer, say experts

New research at the University of Liverpool suggests that environmental contaminants, such as pesticides, are more influential in causing cancer than previously thought.
New research at the University of Liverpool suggests that environmental contaminants, such as pesticides, are more influential in causing cancer than previously thought.

Previous studies in cancer causation have often concluded that exposure to carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, for example, organochlorines (OC) - found in pesticides and plastics - occurs at concentrations that are too low to be considered a major factor in cancerous disease. Now new research at the University of Liverpool, published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, has found that exposure even to small amounts of these chemicals may result in an increased risk of developing cancer - particularly for infants and young adults.

Kevin Drum: More Social Security Doom-Mongering....

Over at Slate, Will Saletan has yet another entry in one of journalism's favorite genres: the Social Security doomsday story. It's chock full of the usual grim statistics: we're living longer, we're retiring earlier, there are fewer workers to support each retiree, and the taxes to keep up with all this are going to bankrupt us before long. In short, we're completely screwed.

Please. Can we just stop with this stuff? The financial projections for Social Security really aren't that complicated, and the Social Security trustees take into account all the stuff that Saletan mentions. They know perfectly well that lifespans are increasing and they include that in their models — along with a dozen other trends that Saletan doesn't mention. And it turns out that the results aren't really very scary at all.

Digby: X-treme Politics

I'm not trying to get back into the religion debate tonight, but I do think that while we are talking about the Democratic wackos who the pundits believe are wildly out of the mainstream with their calls for censure, we shouldtake a little peek at some of the things that are happening on the other side. Right there in Washington.

How about this group, called the Justice House of Prayer in Washington SC:

The Justice House of Prayer (JHOP) exists to raise up a house of prayer to contend with every other house that challenges the Lordship and supremacy of Christ over all affairs.

Task Force 6-26: Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees

By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL

Published: March 19, 2006

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.