Discrimination Against the Female Brain

By Caryl Rivers, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2006.

It's not biology, child-rearing demands, or differences in ability that explain slower female advancement in scientific and technical fields. It is discrimination, pure and simple.

Recently, a committee of specialists at the University of Miami found that it was not biology, hormones, child-rearing demands, or differences in ability that explained why women were not advancing as fast as they should in scientific and technical fields. It was discrimination, pure and simple. "It is not a lack of talent, but unintended bias that is locking women out," said Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and head of the committee that wrote the report. It was sponsored by the prestigious U.S. National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

This is not a new story. People familiar with the research know that for many years, studies have shown few gender differences that would account for women's lack of progress. They also know that the notion that “girls can't do math” starts as early as third grade and gets progressively worse. Harvard's Larry Summers got into trouble because -- as he candidly admitted -- he had gotten the science wrong. A quick check with some of his own faculty members could have saved him a lot of grief.

The Religious Right Goes to Washington

By Sarah Posner, AlterNet. Posted September 30, 2006.

Republican presidential candidates fell all over themselve to pander to religious conservatives at last weekend's "Values Voter Summit" -- billed as the most important political event in the Christian Right's history. An AlterNet reporter covered the scene.

Republicans are staking their hopes of holding on to power in the November elections on looking tough on terror. But at the Family Research Council's first "Values Voters Summit" in Washington last week, billed as the most important political event in the Christian Right's history, a showcase of 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls, and, tellingly, the president's own spokesman, all focused not on terrorists or war or global jihad, but on the threat posed to America by two men getting married. Under the stress of possibly losing its grip (on power), the party of the so-called "values voter" has collapsed under the weight of its own moral dishonesty.

Speakers at the conference fired up the audience, but there was virtually no mention of the occupation of Iraq, spiraling health care costs, a huge housing bubble, or the daily economic struggles many Americans face. Those things pale in comparison to the real threats: a declining culture, and the shadowy network of feminists and Hollywood executives that are responsible for its fall.

Test on Terrorism

Peter Kornbluh

On September 11 a midlevel magistrate named Norbert Garney filed legal papers in an El Paso, Texas, court recommending that notorious Cuban-exile terrorist Luis Posada Carriles be set free. In response to a petition of habeas corpus filed by Posada's lawyers, Garney's twenty-three-page "Report and Recommendation" (R&R) concluded that the Bush Administration had failed to avail itself of basic legal procedures to keep Posada in jail. Posada "was never certified by the Attorney General as a terrorist or danger to the community" under the Patriot Act, according to the R&R, nor had the Justice Department presented evidence of "special circumstances" that would allow it to hold Posada for security or terrorism concerns. In light of those findings, the magistrate wrote, "the Court recommends that Petitioner's request for habeas relief be granted, and that [Posada] be released."

Big $$ for Progressive Politics

Ari Berman

On December 13, 2004, a month after the re-election of George W. Bush, twenty-five of the wealthiest donors in the progressive community gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington for an important strategy session. The group had collectively poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the effort to defeat Bush--and had nothing to show for it. Yet the despair of John Kerry's defeat provided an urgent call to arms. "The US didn't enter World War II until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor," Erica Payne, a New York political consultant who helped organize the gathering, told the donors. "We just had our Pearl Harbor."

The time had come for the donors to think differently about how to spend their money, just as conservatives had done forty years earlier when they launched a counteroffensive against liberalism and pushed the Republican Party far to the right. The meeting was led by Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton Administration, who'd spent the last year and a half developing a PowerPoint presentation vividly mapping the rise of the conservative movement. He'd convened the meeting to encourage progressives to emulate the conservative funders by investing in the "guts" of politics--leaders and ideas and institutions that would last beyond one election. A month later the Democracy Alliance officially came into existence, as an exclusive collective of donors and one of the progressive community's most ambitious undertakings yet.tkqiwnie

Justice for A Genocide, in Book Form

By John Dolan, The eXile. Posted September 30, 2006.

A decade after the 'lessons learned' of World War II, British colonizers slaughtered at least 300,000 in Kenya. Only now has the first serious history been published detailing the crimes.

Reviewed: Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkin, (Henry Holt and Co, 2006)

One of the great mysteries of the 20th century was the way Britain got away with pillaging nearly every country on the planet without suffering any retribution. I've spent a long, bitter time brooding over this experimental proof that there's no such thing as karma. Among the reasons I've found for this failure to prosecute are the reluctance of the raped to report their sufferings, the stupidity and credulity of American scholars vis-a-vis their Oxbridge colleagues, and the charmed life that seems to reward those individuals and nations lucky enough to lack any vestige of conscience.

But there are simpler reasons, bravely revealed in Caroline Elkins's account of the slaughter of some 300,000 ethnic Kikuyu of Kenya, the torture of hundreds of thousands more, and the internment of the entire Kikuyu population, in mid-20th-century Kenya. As Elkins reveals, the Brits simply destroyed every record of the massacres they could find, and -- unlike the French, Germans or other conscience-harried colonials -- kept the settlers' oath of Omerta, never revealing what they did to the "Kukes" to anyone except other vets whose anecdotes were as bloody and full of blame as theirs. The difference between the British Empire and other fascist empires is not that these guys were nicer. Nobody who reads this book could continue to believe that, if they were fool enough to believe it beforehand. The difference is that the Brits were good at it, and had no conscience to trouble them. Thanks to that careful incineration of records and highly adaptive national sociopathic disorder, "...there would be no soul-searching or public accounting [in Britain] for the crimes perpetrated against the hundreds of thousands of men and women in Kenya."

Revolt of the Generals

Richard J. Whalen

A revolt is brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals. This rebellion--quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless--comes not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The dissenters include two generals who led combat troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division (the "Big Red One"). These men recently sacrificed their careers by retiring and joining the public protest.

Sara Robinson for David Neiwert: Bring On The Angry Liberals

by Sara Robinson

(If you think you've seen this before, you have: I had this up briefly as a comment, but decided to expand on it, and move it to the main page.)

Two days after the Big Dog bit, the MSM is in full spin about how out-of-control and crazy he was. And Democrats everywhere are flinching and cowering under the onslaught of disapproval. "Yes, yes -- perhaps he did go a bit far. We're sooo sorry. It was wrong, and we won't even THINK of doing it again. Please, Mr. MSM, don't hurt us. We'll be good, we promise."

Pitiful.

David Neiwert: Michael Shea and RED STATE

Friday, September 29, 2006

[Michael Shea with interview subjects in Arkansas.]

I had lunch the other day with Michael Shea, the independent filmmaker whose first solo work, Red State, deserves a national audience. I describe it here. We got on nicely, since it seemed we both were operating from a similar wavelength.

Michael agreed to do a regular interview with me, so the next day, we talked by phone. Here's the result.

Glenn Greenwald: Judge Taylor defies the Leader again

(updated below)

As Congress prepares to enact one of the most tyrannical and un-American laws in our nation's history, at least there is a Federal Judge who recognizes that we are not supposed to live under executive tyranny and that the obsequious submission to the President which characterizes Congressional Republicans is a destructive and repugnant trait.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor today refused the Bush administration's request to issue a "stay" of her Order in the ACLU v. NSA case. When Judge Taylor ruled previously that the President's warrantless eavesdropping violated both the criminal law and the U.S. Constitution, she issued an Order enjoining the Bush administration from continuing its warrantless eavesdropping program.

Glenn Greenwald: George Bush's vast new powers of detention and interrogation

Final passage of the torture/detention bill was 65-34. Without necessarily planning in advance to do so, I live-blogged the Senate proceedings here (if you're going to subject yourself to something as unpleasant as watching U.S. Senators "debate" a bill to give the U.S. President the powers of torture and indefinite detention, it's much healthier to have an outlet when doing so).

Glenn Greenwald: Beltway Democrats are seriously flawed, but the election is still critically important

(updated below)

Now that the torture and detention bill will become law, it is necessary to focus on the political implications of what happened yesterday and, more broadly, what has been done to our country by the Bush administration and the blindly loyal Congress for the last five years. It goes without saying that the conduct of Democrats generally (meaning their collective behavior) was far, far short of anything noble, courageous or principled. And one could, if one were so inclined, spend every day from now until November 7 criticizing the strategic mistakes and lack of principle of Beltway Democrats and still not exhaust the list.

Glenn Greenwald: A pathological need to break the law

When the Bush administration accused The New York Times of gravely damaging national security by revealing the administration's surveillance of SWIFT banking transactions, that accusation made less sense than even most of the administration's other claims of that sort. After all, it has long been known and publicly discussed that the administration was specifically monitoring SWIFT transactions in order to find the terrorists' money trails (what was not known, and what the NYT significantly revealed, is that the surveillance was being undertaken without any judicial or Congressional oversight).

As today's Washington Post reminds us: "When newspapers first reported the program's existence in June, President Bush called the disclosure 'disgraceful.'" But today, the real reason for the Bush administration's desire to conceal these activities was revealed -- it's because American access to these records is illegal under European law.

Glenn Greenwald: Mark Steyn and Hugh Hewitt reveal the true impulses underlying yesterday's vote

(updated below)

At this point, the true depravity of Bush followers should surprise nobody. But still, there is something peculiarly revealing and revolting about this disgusting, giggly little chat between Mark Steyn and Hugh Hewitt yesterday. Their topic? The "very enjoyable day trip to Gitmo" which Steyn took, courtesy of the U.S. military. What is there to say about things like this:

HH: Well, the alleged enemy combatants lost their habeus [sic] corpus rights today, thanks to the steely indifference to liberty, as the Democrats would put it, of the Republican majority in the Senate. Do they appear put upon to you, Mark Steyn?

MS: No, they don't. It's interesting to me. They were being treated very lavishly . . .

And this:

HH: Mark Steyn, did you get a chance to talk to any of the interrogators at Gitmo?

MS: Yes, I did, actually. (laughing) I spoke briefly to a rather lovely female interrogator. As you know, Muslim young men often have complicated attitudes to women. And they...and she, in fact, found that although Saudi males were incredibly hostile to her the first couple of times she interrogates them, that they've been deprived of female company for so long, that actually, they warm up to her by about the third or fourth meeting.

Digby: It's Getting Hot In Here

Many thanks to tristero for voicing the frustration and outrage so many of us are feeling about events of this week. I remember writing a piece sometime back about the danger presented by the constant drumbeat of cruel and violent rhetoric that bubbles up from the right wing into the national conversation and becomes more and more acceptable. (David Neiwert, as you know, has written about this extensively.) Civilized taboos are being broken everywhere, especially the most important taboos, the big ones, the ones that put untrammelled power in the hands of unaccountable authority.

Digby: Mad Hatter

I wrote a post a couple of days ago quoting Admiral Henry Harris, the commander of Guantanamo asying there are no innocent men imprisoned there and that those who committed suicide were committing an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us." It struck me as absurd that hanging yourself in your cage could be considered an act of war and I thought this guy was likely taking the notion of "suiciders" to some ridiculous conclusion.

But I came upon another quote from him saying something even more absurd:

Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.

Digby: Trusting Huck

I was just listening to old Huckleberry go on about turth and justice and the American way of torture. He says that all the analysts who say this bill is an abomination and an affront to everything we stand for are just wrong. We should believe him because he is a military lawyer and an expert on these issues. If you listen to the beltway wags you also know that he is a man of honor who courageously went against his president and insisted that we needed to ensure this legislation lived up to our ideals.

Digby: It Could Happen To You

As we ponder how this torture legislation might develop in the future, it's probably a good idea to check out how the intelligence community of the United States sees the threat of terrorism developing in the future. From the NIE:

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age.

Let's hope that our leaders in Washington don't decide that the war on terror has expanded to such groups any time soon. (Although all the hoopla about Hugo Chavez's remarks may just be a precursor to such designations.) But keep in mind, that the generic term "terrorism" is the word used in the new bill that:

blesses detainee abuse and looks the other way on forms of detainee torture; it immunizes terrible acts; it abridges the writ of habeas corpus-- in the last, most egregious draft, it strips the writ for alleged enemy combatants whether proved to be so or not, whether citizens or not, and whether found in the U.S. or overseas.

Digby: Faithbased Torture

By now probably everyone knows that the torture bill that's working its way through the Senate is even worse than the one they crafted last Friday. It's so bad that they are now saying it has "drafting errors" when something particularly egregious is pointed out. One wonders how many other "drafting errors" will wind up in this sloppy, hurried mess. They are rushing it through without anybody knowing what they hell it really says:

Democrats, while being careful to say that they had made no decision to block the detainee bill, expressed rising concerns about changes to the proposal that they said went beyond what Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, had described Monday as merely “technical changes.”

Digby: Moving On

I keep hearing from the right wing talking heads today that it's time to put all the arguments about how we got into Iraq behind us, that even though it's now official that it created more terrorists and made the nation less safe, we need to look to future and figure out where to go from here, not live in the past.

That's very compelling. But there's just one little thing we need to do before we move on. We need to figure out which people we should trust to lead us as we move forward to fix the mistakes of the past.

Digby: Mou oshimai da

Republican leaders said Monday that they had reached a tentative agreement to garner political support for legislation on domestic surveillance, in part by sidestepping the question of whether the president has the constitutional authority to order wiretapping without a court order.

There was wide disagreement about the plan’s impact. Supporters billed the most recent version as a way of requiring a court order for most domestic wiretaps. But civil rights advocates and even some administration officials suggested that it would maintain the status quo in allowing the continuation of wiretapping without warrants under a program approved by President Bush.

Bush’s Useful Idiots: Tony Judt on the Strange Death of Liberal America

Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?

It wasn’t always so. On 26 October 1988, the New York Times carried a full-page advertisement for liberalism. Headed ‘A Reaffirmation of Principle’, it openly rebuked Ronald Reagan for deriding ‘the dreaded L-word’ and treating ‘liberals’ and ‘liberalism’ as terms of opprobrium. Liberal principles, the text affirmed, are ‘timeless. Extremists of the right and of the left have long attacked liberalism as their greatest enemy. In our own time liberal democracies have been crushed by such extremists. Against any encouragement of this tendency in our own country, intentional or not, we feel obliged to speak out.’

Elite Bipartisan Group Pushes for Foreign Policy Overhaul

Posted on Sep 28, 2006

Nearly 400 of the world’s leading foreign policy intellectuals contributed to a Princeton University-organized initiative...to address America’s national security concerns.

Visit the initiative’s Princeton University website

Read the actual report (.pdf file)

Deficit comes in below projections, thanks to `off-budget' borrowing

By Kevin G. Hall

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government closes the books on fiscal 2006 Saturday, and politicians are likely to trumpet that the federal deficit came in almost $60 billion below projections. Problem is, they won't be using the same math you use.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the federal deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 will total around $260 billion, aided by a surge in revenues. That's $58 billion lower than last year's deficit and about $77 billion lower than projections at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Lessons Of The Gas Pump

Michael Klare

September 29, 2006

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum . This piece originally appeared in TomDispatch.

What the hell is going on here? Just six weeks ago, gasoline prices at the pump were hovering at the $3 per gallon mark; today, they're inching down toward $2—and some analysts predict even lower numbers before the November elections. The sharp drop in gas prices has been good news for consumers, who now have more money in their pockets to spend on food and other necessities—and for President Bush, who has witnessed a sudden lift in his approval ratings.

Terror 2016

Aziz Huq

September 29, 2006

Aziz Huq directs the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice . He is co-author of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in Times of Terror (New Press, 2007), and recipient of a 2006 Carnegie Scholars Fellowship. This article, originally posted here Thursday, is updated to reflect Thursday's Senate vote on the Military Commissions Act.

This week, Republicans —aided by Democratic fecklessness—bargained away both liberty and decency in the name of partisan security

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives enacted the Military Commissions Act , a law that strikes harder at American liberties and at the fundamentals of American government than any since the authorization of the Japanese internment. Thursday, the Senate passed the same bill , and President Bush is expected to waste no time and sign it today.

Judge May Have Stymied Abramoff Probe

Saturday September 30, 2006 1:16 AM

AP Photo NY136

By MATT APUZZO

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The bribery investigation involving influence-peddler Jack Abramoff may have been stymied by a federal judge in Florida just as prosecutors began asking questions about the lobbyist's ties to the White House.

U.S. District Judge Paul Huck refused to delay Abramoff's prison sentence for fraud charges Thursday, rejecting a plea by the Justice Department's top corruption prosecutor, who said Abramoff was providing information about officials whose names hadn't yet surfaced in the case.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 09/29/06

"Nothing could be less American," says the ACLU of the Military Commissions Act passed by the Senate, while one observer remarks that "it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done," and the Los Angeles Times looks ahead to court challenges over the suspension of habeas corpus.

The Wall Street Journal celebrates 'An Antiterror Victory,' that would allow "benign" methods of interrogation to continue, that are not "torture" or even "abuse" but simply about "being able to make life uncomfortable."

David Corn shows pictures from a museum of Khymer Rouge atrocities of 'what waterboarding looks like', an experimenter tests how "rough" life might get in a "20 inch wide cell," and Chris Floyd calls out 'the murderers of democracy.'

As Richard Whalen observes that "dissenting retired generals are bent on making Iraq this nation's last strategically failed war," Joe Conason explains how a VoteVets ad campaign targeting Republican senators for failing to provide soldiers with adequate body armor is provoking fear in the GOP.

CNN highlights Sen. Inhofe's ties to the oil and gas industry as it fact checks his 'diatribe against global warming science,' but CJR Daily balances Inhofe's views with those of a more moderate global warming skeptic. Plus: 'Scientists of America, Unite!'

Although most observers think John Bolton is finished as U.N. Ambassador, and the postmortem examinations have already begun, 'the bully might still get your lunch money' thanks to a presidential signing statement.

Roll Call reports on the release of a House report documenting "hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff," and it appears to point to Ken Mehlman as "Abramoff's prime favor man in the White House."

Legal residents' rights curbed in detainee bill

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | September 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A last-minute change to a bill currently before Congress on the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay could have sweeping implications inside the United States: It would strip green-card holders and other legal residents of the right to challenge their detention in court if they are accused of being ``enemy combatants."

An earlier draft of the bill sparked criticism because it removed the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their detentions in federal court. But changes made over the weekend during negotiations between the White House and key Republicans in Congress go even further, making it legal for noncitizens inside the United States to be detained indefinitely, without access to the court system, until the ``war on terror" is over.

Diebold Added Secret Patch to Georgia E-Voting Systems in 2002, Whistleblowers Say

By Matthew Cardinale, News Editor, Atlanta Progressive News (September 28, 2006)

(APN) ATLANTA – Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files to Georgia’s electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 Elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Former Diebold official Chris Hood told his story concerning the secret “patch” to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Kennedy’s second article on electronic voting in this week’s Rolling Stone Magazine.

Bush Throws Down the Gauntlet

George W. Bush – breaking with an earlier Republican campaign strategy for localizing congressional races – is nationalizing Election 2006 around his vision of fighting “World War III” against Islamic militants and in defense of his claim to broad presidential powers, such as the right to lock up people he deems “enemy combatants.”

In effect, Bush is gambling that the Right’s powerful media apparatus, Republican organizational advantages and the residual fear from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks will trump the Democrats’ abilities to convince the American people that Bush’s vision represents a dire threat to the future of their democratic Republic.

Study: U.S. middle class in worse shape than ever

By Joanne Morrison | September 28, 2006

WASHINGTON --The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released on Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks.

Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.

Molly Ivins: Why the Torture Bill Matters

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2006.

The detainee bill now in the Senate throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary; basic principles of decency and law.

Oh dear. I'm sure he didn't mean it. In Illinois' 6th Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth of planning to "cut and run" on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot, who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

Montessori education provides better outcomes than traditional methods, study indicates

A study comparing outcomes of children at a public inner-city Montessori school with children who attended traditional schools indicates that Montessori education leads to children with better social and academic skills. The study appears in the Sept. 29, 2006, issue of the journal Science.

New study reports on attacks against U.S. abortion clinics

Crime and violence against abortion clinics are no longer in the headlines, but that doesn't mean they no longer happen. A new study reports on the ongoing vandalism and harassment that are part of the job for those who work in many abortion clinics across the United States. Surprisingly, the researchers found that state legislation designed to protect abortion clinics has had no effect on anti-abortion violence.

Researchers show maps can be powerful tools in fighting poverty

To increase awareness and promote usage of geographic information system applications in development strategies, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network and the World Bank have produced "Where the Poor Are: An Atlas of Poverty," a series of maps detailing spatially referenced data on hunger, child mortality, income poverty and other related indicators at the global, regional, national and local scales.

Army Corps Faked Budget Entries

By T. Christian Miller
The Los Angeles Times

Saturday 23 September 2006

Funds for Iraq work, set to expire, were stashed. It's called improper, but not criminal.

Washington - The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday.

Corps officials listed $362 million in potential contracts for a nonexistent contractor labeled "Dummy Vendor" in a government database, an accounting trick to preserve funds due to expire at the end of this fiscal year, the audit said.

"They took this money and parked it to use later," said one senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to elaborate on the audit.

Panel Urges Basic Coverage on Health Care

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: September 26, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — A federal advisory panel said Monday that Congress should take immediate steps to guarantee that all Americans have access to affordable health care by 2012.

As a first step, the 14-member panel, appointed by the comptroller general of the United States, said, “A national public or private program must be established to ensure protection against very high out-of-pocket medical costs for everyone.”

How Bush Wrecked the Army

Another general revolts.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, at 5:51 PM ET

The generals' revolt has spread inside the Pentagon, and the point of the spear is one of Donald Rumsfeld's most favored officers, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff.

This new phase of rebellion isn't aimed at the war in Iraq directly, as was the protest by six retired generals that made headlines last spring. But in some ways, it's more potent, and not just because Schoomaker is very much on active duty. His challenge is dramatic because he's questioning one of the war's consequences—its threat to the Army's ability to keep functioning.

U.S. drops to 6th in world competitiveness ranking

Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:10 AM ET

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States fell to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's 2006 global competitiveness rankings, ceding the top place to Switzerland, as macroeconomic concerns eroded prospects for the world's largest economy.

In a report released on Tuesday, the World Economic Forum said Washington's huge defense and homeland security spending commitments, plans to lower taxes further, and long-term potential costs from health care and pensions were creating worrisome fiscal strains.

"With a low savings rate, record-high current account deficits and a worsening of the U.S. net debtor position, there is a non-negligible risk to both the country's overall competitiveness and, given the relative size of the U.S. economy, the future of the global economy," it said.

Tomlinson's troubles

Kenneth Tomlinson: Ethically challenged maven of sleaze

The inspector general at the Department of State finds the ethically challenged Kenneth Tomlinson, the reappointed chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, has been improperly using his office to promote his own business interests and to dole out a large consulting contract to a friend.

Consider if you will, Kenneth L. Tomlinson, the Bush appointee to chair the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who was forced to resign after trying to politicize and Republicanize that agency. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Tomlinson, who has most recently been serving as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) -- "the federal board that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries" including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, the Arab-language Alhurra, and Radio Martí -- barely survived an effort by fellow board members to remove him from that post. (BBG broadcasts are listened to by an estimated 100 million people worldwide.)

Crooks & Liars: Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?

By: Nicole Belle on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 6:30 PM - PDT

Keith pulled no punches and launched another smack down on Bush and FOX News…

Video - WMV Video - QT

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Who's Co-Opting Feminism?

By Christy Burbridge, Feminista. Posted September 20, 2006.

'Ifeminists' have no problem with sexual harassment, oppose affirmative action, and think there's nothing sexist about porn. Meet a new women's group that seeks to prop up male power.

"Are you an ifeminist? Take this quiz to find out."

I click on the link. 'Interesting,' I think to myself. 'This will be an entertaining yet informative way to kill an idle ten minutes before my class.'

But what is "ifeminism," anyway? More than likely, we are all at least somewhat familiar with liberal feminism, radial feminism, ecofeminism, and a whole host of others. But I for one had never even heard of ifeminism. Curious to learn about it, I happened upon a website called ifeminists and read the introduction.

Recycled paper and compost could both be key tools to control plant disease

New research by the University of Warwick should have gardeners and commercial growers competing for both recycled paper and organic waste composts. The University's plant research department, Warwick HRI, is finding that recycled paper based composts are proving to be a major weapon in the fight against a range of plant diseases.

New study: Why CEO pay matters

Breakthrough Research Examines Perceptions of Fairness; How Over- or Underpayment Cascades to Lower Organizational Levels

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Barry List INFORMS (443) 757-3560 Barry.list@informs.org

Doug Russell or Chuck Tanowitz Schwartz Communications (781) 684-0770 informs@schwartz-pr.com

HANOVER, MD, September 25, 2006—Executive compensation scholars have released new, breakthrough research analyzing perceptions of fairness in executive pay and how CEO over- or underpayment cascades down to lower organizational levels.

The paper, “Overpaid CEOs and Underpaid Managers: Fairness and Executive Compensation,” looked at data from over 120 firms over a five-year period and is the most comprehensive study of its kind to be conducted. Authored by James B. Wade at Rutgers University, Charles A. O’Reilly, III at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Timothy G. Pollock at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business, it will be published in the September/October 2006 issue of Organization Science.

Digby: Hicks Fer Jesus

I just watched "Red State" yesterday. It's very well done. The narrative seems slow moving and kind of meandering at first and then everything just sneaks up on you until by the end you are truly creeped out.

At first I thought it was a slightly unfair portrayal because he was only showing a very particular kind of red state person. By the end I knew why --- he had a point to make and it's scary as hell. He let these people make it for him. There are way too many Americans who truly believe that the government of the United States should be a theocracy. And throughout this film you see how that idea has so permeated a certain constituency that there's almost no way to get through to them. (The film works well as a companion to Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy" and Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.")

Cursor's Media Patrol - 09/25/06

A "stark" National Intelligence Estimate contradicting repeated claims "that Americans are safer as a result of the administration's policies," may be "stating the obvious," but nonetheless manages to spark a "pitched battle" in the media.

Some American soldiers in Baghdad complain that "the Iraqi troops serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen," while Needlenose raises questions about the relatively small percentage of Iraqi troops in Baghdad.

A New York Times analysis of the "compromise" detainee deal finds "a series of interlocking paradoxes," with little agreement about what it means, the Washington Post notes that its language is intentionally "opaque," and Sen. McCain's attempt to explain how the bill will be interpreted leaves unanswered questions.

Elizabeth Holtzman argues that President Bush "is quietly trying to pardon himself" in a move that has "Dirty War precedents," as "rights groups, military lawyers and legal scholars" denounce the Republican compromise on detainees, but there is still no word from the other party.

The Army's top officer stages an "unprecedented" protest to send the message that it's billions short of what it needs for its current mission, the Army's 3rd Division 'makes do' with inadequate equipment, and the National Guard may be facing a November surprise.

Think Progress catches Chris Wallace telling two lies during his interview with Bill Clinton, and Juan Cole puts the interview in context, comparing the tough questions Wallace asked Clinton to the softballs he threw to Bush administration figures.

"A growing number of state and local officials are getting cold feet about electronic voting technology," according to the New York Times, but Diebold defends the refusal to allow testing of the machines, comparing granting "access to the buttons" to "launching a nuclear missile."

Are We Really So Fearful?

By Ariel Dorfman

Sunday, September 24, 2006; Page B01

DURHAM, N.C.

It still haunts me, the first time -- it was in Chile, in October of 1973 -- that I met someone who had been tortured. To save my life, I had sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy some weeks after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a government for which I had worked. And then, suddenly, one afternoon, there he was. A large-boned man, gaunt and yet strangely flabby, with eyes like a child, eyes that could not stop blinking and a body that could not stop shivering.

Glenn Greenwald: Osama bin Laden died again - Vote Republican

The Terrorism Outrage of the Day for Bush followers, led by Matt Drudge, is that a 9/11 memorial in Arizona contains sentiments they consider "political" -- such as "Feeling of invincibility lost" and "You don’t win battles of terrorism with more battles.” Apparently, this is absolutely intolerable because nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is more immoral or outrageous than "politicizing" the 9/11 attacks.

Those, of course, are the same attacks which have so usefully served as the central prop for three consecutive Republican campaigns, as well as for most of the President's most controversial policies, such as his recent announcement that he would transfer certain terrorist suspects from our secret Eastern European gulags to Guantanamo, after which he demanded that Congress enact legislation authorizing him to use torture and creating the military commissions he wanted. That speech took place, as the President eagerly pointed out in the very first sentence out of his mouth, in the presence of "families who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks on our nation."

Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines

By IAN URBINA

Published: September 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A growing number of state and local officials are getting cold feet about electronic voting technology, and many are making last-minute efforts to limit or reverse the rollout of new machines in the November elections.

Less than two months before voters head to the polls, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland this week became the most recent official to raise concerns publicly. Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said he lacked confidence in the state’s new $106 million electronic voting system and suggested a return to paper ballots.

"Nice Little Conservative Hit Job": And Also, Nice Little Conservative Clip Job

FishbowlDC | ThinkProgress | Posted Monday September 25, 2006 at 08:37 AM

As ETP and TVNewser mentioned yesterday, Fox milked its Bill Clinton interview all day yesterday, including showing several clips including this one, which was also the top video on the Fox site (and about which ETP also wrote specifically yesterday). This clip has since had more than a million views (1,001,556 as of this morning, to be precise) and I think it's worth noting what was included in it — and what was left out:

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed.