Digby: Politics Lost

Feel the magic. Joe Klein has a new book coming out in which he excoriates the rich insider Democratic consultants. Apparently, Klein thinks the Democrats should listen to rich insider Democratic pundits instead.

He writes:

Roger Ailes was right when he predicted at the beginning of the television era that in the future all politicians would have to be performers.

How interesting. What to make of the fact that two paragraphs later he says this:

...let me give 2008 a try. The winner will be the candidate who comes closest to this model: a politician who refuses to be a "performer," at least in the current sense.

Whatever. Klein criticizing the Democratic consultants is like Charlie Manson criticizing Richard Jeffrey Dahmer as far as I'm concerned.

Digby: The Neocon Beast

Thank you Matt Yglesias for reminding everyone that this push for Iran is part and parcel of neocon ideology and not just some reflex of George W. Bush's messianic impulses.

... there's a widespread view on the American right that it's always a mistake to reach diplomatic agreements with "evil" regimes. There's also a widespread view on the American right that, contra the examples of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, nuclear deterrence won't work against "crazy" leaders. At the intersection of those two opinions is the conclusion that we ought to be very, very, very, very willing to use unilateral preventative military force against countries that have nuclear weapons programs or that we merely vaguely suspect of having nuclear weapons programs. Both of those ideas are foolish and dangerously wrong, but they're also widespread -- not private oddball notions of Bush's. If liberals want to push this country's foreign policy in a better direction over the next five-to-ten years, we need to attack the whole network of ideas (including a non-trivial number of ideas whose origins are inside the Democratic coalition) that gave us the Iraq War and that threaten to give us the Iran War.

Digby: Cost Effective Nativism

This is worthy of some serious push back from the blogosphere. For the past couple of days, the GOP has been circulating the fact that the Democrats refused to let the Republicans in the House strip their bill of the parts making illegal immigration a felony. This has been greeted with some "analysis" on the part of the media that the Democrats are just as hypocritical as the Republicans on the issue of immigration. The GOP is reportedly running ads on spanish language media saying Democrats voted for the bill to make illegal immigration a felony.

Digby: Breeding Poverty

Here's an interesting new argument about abortion and immigration from Chuck Colson, via Media Matters:

But what's the root of the problem? Why do we have a shortage of workers? Aha, that's the unspeakable "A" word that the elite dread the most: abortion. The reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment. And Americans are barely maintaining a replacement-level birthrate of 2.1 children per woman.

Digby: Uptight, Crazy and Reactionary

In this post about the developing generation gap between Boomers and Millenials (which is child's play compared to the generation gap between boomers and the greatest generation --- now that was real hell) I read that boomers "express greater concern than any other generational grouping with virtually every specific issue examined in the survey" and "have substantially more negative and pessimistic perceptions of the political process than any other generational grouping." Evidently, boomers are also "uptight, crazy, and reactionary, featuring rightwing views on 'lifestyle issues and crime' and, generally speaking, 'are often characterized by taking strong, relatively extreme positions on issues.'"

Digby: Breeding Republicans

Following up on my post from yesterday about Chuck Colson's lament that about all the aborted babies who could be working in the fields today, the indefatigable Carolyn at MakeThemAccountable reminds me that she wrote about this sometime back --- and this is not just some isolated whim on Colson's part. It seems that there are conservatives who back all kinds of family support like universal health insurance that might place them as close to the progressive camp as the conservatives --- until you see what their motives are:

Does this mean that the progressive fight for economic justice now over? Can we sit back and relax?

Not exactly.

Glenn Greenwald: A Resolute Fantasy World

One virtually never sees any disagreement among Bush supporters with regard to Iraq or terrorism policies, but Powerline has a very brave and surprising post -- to which all three of its luminaries contributed -- which expresses disagreement with yesterday's essay from world-renowned and esteemed military historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, who smeared the motives of the retired American Generals who are criticizing the administration's war effort, by claiming that the Generals are only saying these things to sell books and enrich themselves. Powerline is having none of it.

According to Powerline, Dr. Hanson is wildly off-base. From them we learn that "those griping ex-Generals" are not motivated by a desire to sell books. Rather, they are voicing these criticisms because they are "mostly, in effect, Clinton appointees," because they are simply "'old school' generals who object to Rumsfeld's pet theories" of military transformation, and because these are the rejects who got forced out of their jobs because they "didn't fit with the new program." Hanson was right, of course, that these Generals were operating from base and venal motives; he just got the specific smear wrong.

Digby: Black Reconnaissance

It's obvious to me that this call for Rumsfeld's resignation by six generals is about stopping this operation in Iran first and foremost. It is not a coincidence that the first salvo came from Sy Hersh last Sunday.

The question I had to ask myself was whether it was really about the nuclear thing or something more that had the military up in arms. In reading back over Hersh's articles of the last year or so, it became quite clear to me that this has something to do with the fact that Bush instituted the plan to invade Iran more than a year ago when he believed he had been crowned Emperor in the 2004 elections --- and that the plan has gone forward without any consideration of changing circumstances on the ground in Iraq. Furthermore, the plan itself comes from the same comic book from which Rummy and Newtie cooked up their RMA fantasy about invading Iraq with only 30,000 troops, a cell phone and a toothpick.

Digby: Bush's Secret War

Colonel Sam Gardiner is the retired colonel who taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval Warfare College and who found more than 50 instances of demonstrably false stories planted in the press in the run up to the war, back in 2003. He was just on CNN:

CLANCY: Well, Colonel Gardiner, from what you're saying, it would seem like military men, then, might be cautioning, don't go ahead with this. But what are the signs that are out there right now? Is there any evidence of any movement in that direction?

GARDINER: Sure. Actually, Jim, I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way.

Billmon: Munich

Munich – the name, not the movie – has long been one of the neoconservative movement's most cherished political symbols, a kind of short-hand description of everything the neocons despise about liberals and their approach to foreign policy.

Munich equals appeasement – the worst sin in the neocon theology. It also stands for weakness, cowardness, naivety and an amoral willingness to bargain with the devil, as well as the failure to recognize that the devil never keeps his word.

Michael Kinsley: Where Do We Meddle Next?

A Half-Century of Protecting Our Interests

By Michael Kinsley
Friday, April 14, 2006; A17

So, after more than a half-century of active meddling -- protecting our interests, promoting our values, encouraging democracy, fighting terrorism, seeking stability, defending human rights, pushing peace -- it's come to this. In Iraq we find ourselves unwilling regents of a society splitting into a gangland of warring militias and death squads, with our side (labeled "the government") outperforming the other side (labeled "the terrorists") in both the quantity and gruesome quality of its daily atrocities. In Iran, an irrational government that hates us with special passion is closer to getting the bomb than Iraq -- the country we went to war with to keep from getting the bomb -- ever was.

Seymour Hersh: Bush Administration Planning Possible Major Air Attack on Iran

By Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!

Wednesday 12 April 2006

We speak with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh about his latest article in the New Yorker that the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. [includes rush transcript] We are joined today by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Hersh reports that the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Sources told Hersh that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.

One of the military's initial option plans calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon against suspected underground nuclear sites.

Billmon: Rummy Punch

The campaign to relieve Field Marshal Von Rumsfeld of his baton is picking up steam, with more retired generals and the hawkish Washington Post columnist David Ignatius calling for his resignation.

The catcalls have grown so loud that the White House apparently has decided it can't go on pretending not to hear them. So Scotty "my-ass-is-halfway-out-the-door-already" McClellan used a question at Thusday's press briefing as an opportunity to reaffirm his master's undying support for the embattled defense secretary:

"The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said at a briefing. He went on to read long quotations from the nation's top military officer, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, praising Rumsfeld's dedication and patriotism.

Billmon: New Pravda No More?

It's at least mildly encouraging to see that the New York Times may not be on board for the drive to war this time:

Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.

Billmon: Eye of Newt

It seems just about everybody in Left Blogostan has been taking a swing at Newt Gingrich over his recent remarks suggesting most of the troops should be withdrawn from Iraq forthwith – victory for democracy or no victory for democracy.

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has a fairly typical reaction, to wit: How dare that right-wing blowhard asshole advocate withdrawal after sliming as traitors anyone on the left who suggested the same thing!

Now I always enjoy watching people take potshots at Newt Gingrich (and if Cheney wants to take a real one at him with his Bushmaster I wouldn't mind that either) but in this case the shooters may be missing the real target.

EPA is ordered to release documents on mercury rule

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | April 14, 2006

A federal magistrate in Boston ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency late yesterday to release internal documents to Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly about how the federal agency arrived at a controversial rule to regulate mercury emissions from power plants.

Reilly sued the EPA in March 2005 after the EPA refused to release all the information Reilly requested about alternatives the agency considered before coming up with its mercury emissions trading program. Reilly believes the EPA dismissed more effective alternatives.

Salon: Rumsfeld 'personally involved' in interrogation of Qaeda detainee that turned 'harsh'

RAW STORY
Published: Friday April 14, 2006

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in the interrogation of an al-Qaeda detainee that turned "harsh," according to an explosive report at Salon.com based on an Army inspector general's report released through an FOIA request.

Excerpts from the article, "Rumsfeld knew," by Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin:

#

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

'Where's the outrage?'

Another fracture in the conservative evangelical movement

Ken Connor, the former head of the Family Research Council, is angry about the 'double standard' on ethical issues that may threaten the credibility of Christian conservative leaders.

The tumultuous reception accorded Tom DeLay at the late-March "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006" conference appears to have triggered at least two distinct reactions. For DeLay, the love in the room assured him that there would be life after Congress, so he decided the time was right to announce his resignation from the House. For Ken Connor, the former head of the Family Research Council and the founder and president of the Center for a Just Society, the reaction appeared to be a tipping point; a visible indicator that his Christian evangelical brethren had lost their bearings when it came to identifying and criticizing unethical behavior.

Net Neutrality and the Coming Fight For Internet Freedom

If you think open nondiscriminatory access to the Internet is what makes the Web special, you had better get ready to fight for it, because Congress is toying with a new paradigm that could close the Web down to many of tomorrow's innovators.

Ever since the Internet was first opened to commercial use in the early 1990's, it has been defined by its open exchange of ideas - an exchange that has fostered tremendous innovation and economic growth.

Tens of millions of Internet users in our country - and billions of dollars in economic innovation - like our current system of open networks the way it is. But if the new telecommunications bill [pdf] that is making its way through Congress passes, this innovation-friendly and open network will be replaced with one defined by new tolls and bottlenecks. We cannot let that happen.

'I feel like I did in the Vietnam days - I hate to pay taxes just so they can go and bomb more people'

Reporter whose scoops give the Bush administration sleepless nights

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday April 14, 2006
The Guardian

A generation ago aspiring journalists looked up to the Watergate team of Woodward and Bernstein as their idols. But times have changed. One half of the Washington Post duo, Carl Bernstein, has moved into academia, while Bob Woodward has grown rich and part of the Washington establishment.

His books on the Bush administration have leant heavily on interviews granted by the president and his top aides. Far from shaking the administration, they were advertised as recommended reading by the Bush re-election campaign.

FBI reexamines '46 lynchings by white mob

Rights activists press witnesses to speak up

By Greg Bluestein, Associated Press | April 14, 2006

ATLANTA -- Nearly 60 years after a white mob lynched two black couples on a summer afternoon and got away with it, the FBI is taking another look at the case.

FBI agent Stephen Emmett said the case is being reviewed ''to ensure that any recent technology or techniques could be used to enhance the prior investigation." He would not elaborate and said a decision on whether to actually reopen the investigation has not yet been made.

Bush's Secret Tax Hike

Everyone knows the AMT is incredibly unfair. So why won't the president and Congress fix it?

By Daniel Gross
Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006, at 11:55 AM ET

This tax season is shaping up as a banner one for the federal government. The strong stock markets have produced a gusher of capital gains taxes. Corporations are continuing to reap massive profits, and so they're paying more in corporate income taxes. Lehman Brothers economist Drew Matus told Barron's that he expects "a 17 percent jump in tax receipts this season (not including regular withholding), and just a 5 percent increase in refunds." The upshot: Tax-season payments could be $59 billion higher than last year.

Should these projections materialize, Republicans will trumpet them as a validation of the supply-side tax-cutting mania. Just reduce taxes on capital and high-earning individuals, and tax revenues will magically leaven. But in fact, the rising revenues may prove exactly the opposite, Democratic point: If you raise taxes on people who make a lot of money, you'll end up with more tax revenues. In addition to windfalls from capital gains and corporate taxes, Matus noted that rising receipts attributable to the Alternative Minimum Tax are filling Washington's coffers. "My suspicion is the AMT has captured a large amount of the tax cut for upper-income earners," he told Barron's. In other words, tax receipts are up in part because many of the rich are paying higher taxes.

The Poor Man's Air Force

A History of the Car Bomb (Part 1)
By Mike Davis

Buda's Wagon (1920)

"You have shown no pity to us! We will do likewise. We will dynamite you!
-- Anarchist warning (1919)

On a warm September day in 1920, a few months after the arrest of his comrades Sacco and Vanzetti, a vengeful Italian anarchist named Mario Buda parked his horse-drawn wagon near the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, directly across from J. P. Morgan Company. He nonchalantly climbed down and disappeared, unnoticed, into the lunchtime crowd. A few blocks away, a startled postal worker found strange leaflets warning: "Free the Political Prisoners or it will be Sure Death for All of You!" They were signed: "American Anarchist Fighters." The bells of nearby Trinity Church began to toll at noon. When they stopped, the wagon -- packed with dynamite and iron slugs -- exploded in a fireball of shrapnel.

Molly Ivins: White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic

Posted on Apr. 12, 2006

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—Personally, I think this is a really good time not to keep up. The more you try, the less sense it makes, although getting us used to having it all make no sense at all may be an extremely sneaky Karl Rove ploy to justify the war in Iraq. Hard to say.

The latest development to which the only appropriate response is “Huh” is the news that the “mobile weapons labs” introduced to us by President Bush before the war as conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were not evidence—conclusive or otherwise—of WMD and were not, in fact, mobile weapons labs.

The only thing new here is the news that George W. Bush probably knew a couple of days before he talked about them in public that the Defense Intelligence Agency had found they were not mobile weapons labs.

Natural light to reinvent bulbs

A natural light source that could put the traditional light bulb in the shade has been invented by US scientists.

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.

The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights.

The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.

"We're hoping that this will lead to significantly longer device times lifetimes in addition to higher efficiency," said Professor Mark Thompson of the University of Southern California, one of the authors of the paper.

Documents Show Link Between AT&T and Agency** in Eavesdropping Case

** The 'Agency' is NSA.--Dictynna

By JOHN MARKOFF and SCOTT SHANE

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 — Mark Klein was a veteran AT&T technician in 2002 when he began to see what he thought were suspicious connections between that telecommunications giant and the National Security Agency.

But he kept quiet about it until news broke late last year that President Bush had approved an N.S.A. program to eavesdrop without court warrants on Americans suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

Now Mr. Klein and a few company documents he saved have emerged as key elements in a class-action lawsuit filed against AT&T on Jan. 31 by a civil liberties group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The suit accuses the company of helping the security agency invade its customers' privacy.

Blame NAFTA

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted April 13, 2006.

Thanks to NAFTA's success, the flood of illegal immigration is up and the standard of living of the average Mexican is down.

The debate about illegal immigration rarely mentions NAFTA. That's regrettable, since the flood of undocumented Mexicans in 2006 empirically challenges the economic philosophy that guided NAFTA's design.

The slogan of those who championed a North American Free Trade Agreement was, "Trade, not aid." NAFTA would solve our problems, they insisted, with little or no transfer of funds from richer Canadians and Americans to poorer Mexicans. By raising Mexican living standards and wage levels, Attorney General Janet Reno predicted NAFTA would reduce illegal immigration by up to two-thirds in six years. "NAFTA is our best hope for reducing illegal migration in the long haul," Reno declared in 1994. "If it fails, effective immigration control will become impossible."

Higher carbon dioxide, lack of nitrogen limit plant growth

Stunted plants may not soak up excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

Earth's plant life will not be able to "store" excess carbon from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as well as scientists once thought because plants likely cannot get enough nutrients, such as nitrogen, when there are higher levels of carbon dioxide, according to scientists publishing in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

That, in turn, is likely to dampen the ability of plants to offset increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Outsourcing saves less than claimed

Thu Apr 13, 4:32 AM ET

Outsourcing of information technology and business services delivers average cost savings of 15 percent, a survey found on Thursday, disproving market claims that outsourcing can reduce costs by over 60 percent.

After professional fees, severance pay and governance costs, savings range between 10 percent and 39 percent, with the average level at 15 percent when contracts are first let, according to outsourcing advisory firm TPI.

"This research proves that the promise of massive operational savings is unrealistic when you take into account the costs of procurement and ongoing contract management," Duncan Aitchison, TPI's managing director, said in a statement.

"In our experience, outsourcing arrangements which focus solely on delivering huge savings often fail to meet client expectations," he added.

Barbara Ehrenreich: The Bloated Bush Government

Sometimes it’s hard to tell left from right. As I write this, the Republicans, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Democrats, are scrapping internally over Iraq and immigration. Some Democrats want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; others are willing to “stay the course,” wherever it may lead. Some Republicans want to make illegal immigration a felony – although how we will manage to incarcerate approximately 11 million more people has not been made clear. Others want an unlimited international supply of $6 an hour maids, busboys and leaf-rakers.

But the most confusing blurring of political differences has to do with the size of government. Traditionally, or at least according to time-honored cliché, liberals stood for “big government,” and conservatives stood against it. Reagan’s men wanted to “kill the beast” of government (not noticing how much Carter’s budget cuts had already starved it), and Gingrich’s gang eventually forced Clinton to declare the “era of big government” over. It was Clinton – not Reagan or Bush I—who shrunk welfare into a program of limited wage supplementation for severely underpaid single mothers.

Digby: They'll Have To Throw Their Daughters In Jail

Jumping off the shocking article in last Sunday's NY Times magazine about the criminalized abortion doctrine in El Salvador, Eric Zorn has begun an interesting dialog about why anti-choicers don't logically insist that women be tried for their crime? The usual answer seems to rest on the idea that women are so dumb or brainwashed that they don't know what they are doing so they can't be held liable for their crime.

Digby: Flashback

Saturday, November 5, 2005;

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.

Military Worship & the Republic

By Ivan Eland

April 12, 2006

Editor's Note: During key moments of the Iraq conflict, George W. Bush's supporters have silenced war skeptics by charging that any dissent would hurt the troops. War critics were accused of undermining morale of American soldiers or demeaning their sacrifice.

Satirists have summarized this debate-stopping question as "why do you hate the troops?"

Yet beyond the question of whether you're "supporting the troops" by keeping quiet as they are dispatched to an unwise war, there is the additional question of whether venerating the military is healthy for any democratic Republic. In this guest essay, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland addresses that issue:

Since the Vietnam War, in which returning draftees were shunned by much of American society, critics of U.S. foreign policy, including the Iraq War, have bent over backwards not to criticize U.S. military forces and have praised soldiers’ willingness to fight for their country.

Billmon: Why People Think the Economy Sucks

Many conservatives profess to be puzzled by the fact that many Americans don't appreciate the wonderful economic boom we're enjoying, now that the Cheney administration has led us into the supply side utopia.

And it's true, they don't:

Four in 10 – 40 percent – say Bush is doing a good job with the economy, down eight percentage points in a month.

Restoring wetlands key to curbing bird flu: report

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian
Tue Apr 11, 4:37 PM ET

Restoring wetlands and clearing poultry farms from migratory flyways could help curb the spread of bird flu by stopping wild birds from mixing with domestic fowl, a U.N.-commissioned report said on Tuesday.

The clearance of wetlands due to drainage for agriculture or hydroelectric projects is forcing some wild birds on to alternative sites such as farm ponds and paddy fields, bringing them into direct contact with domestic poultry, the report said.

This increases the spread of the virus, which has jumped from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War

Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

Bush's October surprise - it's coming

By Spengler

One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.

Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.

Again With the 'Jewish Conspiracy'

By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet. Posted April 11, 2006.

A new documentary about the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' attempts to understand the lure of the book's anti-Semitic message.

Editor's Note: This story was originally posted in The Mix.

Sometime in the late-18th century, a cabal of powerful Jewish elders sat around a table and hatched a plot to take over the world. If you get that, you get the gist of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. All the rest, as the rabbis say, is commentary.

Shortly after 9/11, a young Egyptian cabdriver assured filmmaker Marc Levin that no Jews had perished in the World Trade Center because, he explained, all the Jews had been "warned in advance." It's all in that book, the driver told him, written 100 years ago. No matter that "the book" has been debunked a half a dozen times since the Times of London first exposed it as a forgery in 1921.

Billmon: Deja Vu Times Three

Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Bloomberg News
Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days
April 12, 2006

My own highly placed sources in the intelligence community tell me this report is based on the debriefing of an Iranian defector codenamed "Spitball." But that's classified, so don't tell anyone except Judy Miller.

Digby: Basket Case

This is funny.

Good work by the firedoglake brigade and Matt Stoller. There's more to come.

Needling is a tried and true political tactic.

Digby: Neverending Story

This is an interesting attempt by the NY Times to suss out the "narrative" of Fitzgerald's case based upon his recent filing:

Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but also to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Mr. Fitzgerald's account of what was happening in the White House in the summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration's narrative, which suggested that Mr. Wilson was seen as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered by disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Mr. Bush relied.

Digby: Dark Vision

And I thought I was depressed about this Iran gambit. Billmon lays out a very convincing case that the US can probably launch an unprovoked nuclear attack against Iran --- and nobody will really care. Indeed, it might serve everybody's interests quite ably.

Damn if it won't be a heckuva show, the kind we really love with handsome flyboys taking off from aircraft carriers and big beautiful explosions that make us all feel good about how our high tech "surgical" weaponry only kills the bad guys.

Billmon: Mutually Assured Dementia

Maybe it's just me, but I've been at least a little bit surprised by the relatively muted reaction to the news that the Cheney Administration and its Pentagon underlings are racing to put the finishing touches on plans for attacking Iran – plans which may include the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.

I mean, what exactly does it take to get a rise out of the media industrial complex these days? A nuclear first strike against a major Middle Eastern oil producer doesn't ring the bell? Must every story have a missing white woman in it before the cable news guys will start taking it seriously?

Eric Alterman on Joe Klein on Liberals

I went to a breakfast this morning sponsored by HBO and the Council on Foreign Relations where Tina Brown interviewed Julia Sweig, author of Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century, here, before a small gathering of media and foreign policy bigwigs. Sweig, a Latin America specialist, has written a subtle, historically-informed study about the phenomenon in which she sought to distinguish between those aspects that are structural and destined to plague our relations with the rest of the world as long as we are the world’s only superpower—which actually, is not as long as it sounds—and those aspects which are purely the fault of the incompetence, malevolence, dishonesty, etc. of the Bush administration. It was a useful discussion with many useful tributaries and give and take with the audience and we all felt better for it.

That is right up until the very last moment when, after someone brought up the question of the whether the Democrats will be able to present an effective alternative to Bush in the next election, Joe Klein shouted out, “Well they won’t if their message is that they hate America—which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past twenty years.”

Molly Ivins: The Daily Drip of Special Favors for Special Interests

AUSTIN, Texas—We need to keep up with the daily drip, that endless succession of special favors for special interests performed by Congress, or we’ll never figure out how we got so far behind the eight ball. While the top Bushies lunge about test-driving new wars (great idea—the one we’re having is a bummer, so let’s start another!), Congress just keeps right on cranking out those corporate goodies.

Earlier this month, the House effectively repealed more than 200 state food safety and public health protections. Say, when was the last time you enjoyed a little touch of food poisoning? Coming soon to a stomach near you. What was really impressive about HR 4167, the “National Uniformity for Food Act,” is that it was passed without a public hearing.

RU-486 ruled out in one of two recent deaths initially linked to the abortion pill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health officials said Monday they have ruled out the abortion pill RU-486 in one of two deaths in women who had taken the drug. The second remains under investigation.

The one death was unrelated to either abortion or use of the pill, the Food and Drug Administration said. The second woman showed symptoms of infection. Four other women have died of a rare but deadly infection after undergoing pill-triggered abortions.

In those four deaths, all involving Californians, the women tested positive for Clostridium sordellii, a common but rarely fatal bacterium.

Archives OK'd Removing Records, Kept Quiet

Wednesday April 12, 2006 1:31 AM

By FRANK BASS and RANDY HERSCHAFT

Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Archives agreed to seal previously public CIA and Pentagon records and to keep silent about U.S. intelligence's role in the reclassification, according to an agreement released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The 2002 agreement, requested three years ago by The Associated Press and released this week, shows archivists were concerned about reclassifying previously available documents - many of them more than 50 years old - but nonetheless agreed to keep mum.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 04/11/06

'Murray Waas is Our Woodward Now,' declares Jay Rosen, who also gives kudos to the reporters at Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, including Jonathan Landay. Read an interview with Waas, who's mostly ignored by major papers, and see what a difference a day makes at the New York Times.

Arguing that the 'Situation in Iraq could not be worse,' Patrick Cockburn is "becoming convinced that the country will not survive," as an Iraqi general maintains that U.S. forces 'must stay 3-5 more years.' Plus: "Coalition of the willing" to take another hit?

The credibility of ''The Nuclear Power Beside Iraq' is said to have "almost reached the level of unspoken media premise that the 'Iraq has WMD' canard did a few years ago." Plus: Was Seymour Hersh played? He says no in an interview with NPR.

Before branding Hersh's Iran article "bad reporting," Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol "floated a trial balloon," charging that Patrick Fitzgerald "is now out to discredit the Bush administration." More Kristol, and Karen Kwiatkowski, on C-SPAN's "Q&A."

With "Another criminal scandal that reaches the White House," a new poll delivers 'An Election-Year Blow to the GOP,' but Wonkette wonders how "91 percent of voters have managed to divine a difference between Democratic and Republican plans for Iraq." Do the Democrats need a 'Contract'?

"$100 a head" A Phoenix talk show host volunteers on the air to "kill illegal immigrants as they cross the border," as "well over a million" take to the streets, and the editor of the Agribusiness Examiner chronicles "corporate agribusiness's dirty little secret."

A columnist ridicules the Media Research Center for including among the judges of its DisHonor Awards, those who are "primarily propagandists or entertainers who have no real standing as journalists ... Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Ingraham are entertainers and not very good at it either."

Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi

Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; A01

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

Secret Service records raise new questions about discredited conservative reporter

By John Byrne| RAW STORY Editor

Updated: Day discovered with two check-ins but no check outs; Other events found on some days without press briefings

READ THE DOCUMENTS

In what is unlikely to stem the controversy surrounding disgraced White House correspondent James Guckert, the Secret Service has furnished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Democratic congressmembers.

The documents, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House. Though he wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, the records show that he applied with his real name.

Max Blumenthal: An Evening With David Horowitz and Ward Churchill

As poorly as David Horowitz performed in his debate last Thursday at George Washington University against Colorado University's Ward Churchill, he still won. The fact that hundreds of people would gather on the campus of a major university to watch a serious debate on the merits of a bill as insane as Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights," which would allow students to sue their professors and mandate the hiring of one right-wing professor for each professor who assigns supposedly left-wing material, was a victory in itself for the right's favorite red diaper baby.

The debate (audio here) was promoted and staged safely within the right's intellectual hothouse by Young Americans for Freedom, ensuring that at least most of the crowd would give serious consideration to Horowitz's conspiratorial maledictions against academia. "The education schools today teach social justice, which is a code for socialism or communism," Horowitz declared. "The social work department... is about an indictment of free market capitalism."

With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight

By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, April 10 — From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.

The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Paul Krugman: Yes He Would

by Paul Krugman

"But he wouldn't do that." That sentiment is what made it possible for President Bush to stampede America into the Iraq war and to fend off hard questions about the reasons for that war until after the 2004 election. Many people just didn't want to believe that an American president would deliberately mislead the nation on matters of war and peace.

Now people with contacts in the administration and the military warn that Mr. Bush may be planning another war. The most alarming of the warnings come from Seymour Hersh, the veteran investigative journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. Writing in The New Yorker, Mr. Hersh suggests that administration officials believe that a bombing campaign could lead to desirable regime change in Iran - and that they refuse to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 10, 4:55 PM ET

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

Republican Raptures

By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted April 11, 2006.

Author Kevin Phillips discusses the growing power that the Christian Right has over the Republican Party.

Ever since former Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips published the bestselling "The Emerging Republican Majority" in 1969, the announcement that he's written a new book has typically been first met by political observers and the press with a kind of hushed awe, and then a mad rush to read it. Phillips' books tend to give comprehensive overviews of politics at the national level, and macro social phenomena that shape our national interest. His latest book -- his 11th -- is no different.

In "American Theocracy" (Viking), Phillips examines three crises affecting the country: The dangers that growing instability and shortages in global oil markets pose for our petro-dependent society; the threat that our massive debts and deficits may collapse the dollar and the American economy; and the growing power that the Christian Right has over the Republican Party.

The corporate sponsored creation of disease

The corporate sponsored creation of disease--"disease mongering"--turns healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic harm, say the guest editors of a special issue of PLoS Medicine devoted to how drug companies sell sickness.

In the opening essay, the guest editors, Australian journalist Ray Moynihan and clinical pharmacologist David Henry (Newcastle University, Australia), define disease mongering as "the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments."

Nature can help reduce greenhouse gas, but only to a point

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.--Plants apparently do much less than previously thought to counteract global warming, according to a paper to be published in next week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors, including Bruce Hungate of Northern Arizona University and lead author Kees-Jan van Groenigen of UC Davis, discovered that plants are limited in their impact on global warming because of their dependence on nitrogen and other trace elements. These elements are essential to photosynthesis, whereby plants remove carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air and transfer carbon back into the soil.