WP Op Ed: He's The Worst Ever

By Eric Foner

Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page B01

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

Changes in presidential rankings reflect shifts in how we view history. When the first poll was taken, the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote. As a result, President Andrew Johnson, a fervent white supremacist who opposed efforts to extend basic rights to former slaves, was rated "near great." Today, by contrast, scholars consider Reconstruction a flawed but noble attempt to build an interracial democracy from the ashes of slavery -- and Johnson a flat failure.

US teen pregnancy rates decline as result of improved contraceptive use

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to a report by John Santelli, MD, MPH, department chair and professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The scientific findings indicate that abstinence promotion, in itself, is insufficient to help adolescents prevent unintended pregnancies.

Data from the report, "Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use" suggest that the United States is following patterns seen in other developed countries where increased availability and increased use of modern contraceptives have been primarily responsible for declines in teenage pregnancy rates. The study by Dr. Santelli of the Mailman School in conjunction with researchers at the Guttmacher Institute examines information from the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative household survey that provides comprehensive coverage of female adolescents.

Faith groups urge cuts to AIDS fund

Allege opposition to Christian efforts

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- Some leading Christian conservatives, angry over the Global Fund to Fight AIDS's promotion of condoms and its perceived lack of support for faith-based programs, are pushing Congress to cut US support for the AIDS initiative, which was initiated by President Bush in a Rose Garden ceremony five years ago with a $200 million commitment.

The fund -- whose full name is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria -- has become one of the pillars of the international effort to fight infectious diseases, growing into a $6.6 billion organization that supports programs in 136 countries.

Paul Krugman: Economic Storm Signals

--The New York Times, December 1, 2006

“It’s tough to make predictions,” Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “especially about the future.” Actually, his remark makes perfect sense to economists, who sometimes have trouble making predictions about the present. And this is one of those times.

We’re now two-thirds of the way through the fourth quarter of 2006, so you might think we’d already know how the quarter is going. Yet, economists’ assessments of the current state of the U.S. economy, never mind the future, are all over the place.

Exxon Mobil CEO warns against congressional Democrats' plan to end industry tax breaks

Exxon Mobil CEO warns against congressional Democrats' plan to end industry tax breaks. Exxon Mobil CEO is obviously greedy to the point of stupidity.--Buzzflash

By Mark Jewell

ASSOCIATED PRESS

2:05 p.m. November 30, 2006

BOSTON – Proposals by congressional Democrats to eliminate oil industry tax breaks and subsidies would set a bad example overseas and discourage new industry investments, Exxon Mobil's top executive said Thursday.

Rex W. Tillerson said moves suggested by leaders of the incoming Democratic congressional majority would encourage similar steps by governments abroad, where Exxon Mobil Corp. generates the bulk of its profit.

U.S. rethinking Iraqi unification goal

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
Sat Dec 2, 3:32 AM ET

President Bush is becoming more personally involved in Iraq's fragmented politics as his administration reevaluates efforts to unite different Iraqi groups in an attempt to preserve U.S. options.

The administration is looking at ways to unite Iraq's fractious sectarian and political factions, officials familiar with an internal administration review of Iraq policy said Friday.

At the same time, the president is stepping up his personal diplomacy — meeting with a top Shiite power broker at the White House next week and with the nation's Sunni vice president in January.

The president is under pressure to find a new blueprint for U.S. involvement in Iraq, where sectarian violence has been growing worse. The meetings suggest that Bush wants to become more personally involved in trying to bring warring factions together.

GSA Chief Seeks to Cut Budget For Audits

Contract Oversight Would Be Reduced

By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 2, 2006; Page A01

The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews.

GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.

In West, Conservatives Emphasize the 'Conserve'

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 2, 2006; A01

SEATTLE -- Nearly a decade ago, historian Patricia Nelson Limerick set the modern American West to verse:

The West has been lucky, it's true.

It did not grow old -- it grew new.

As it grew older, it got fresher and bolder.

Don't you wish it could happen to you?

Limerick and others said in the 1990s that the New West was shedding its slavish reliance on mining, logging, ranching and dams. They prophesied that it would become a region where the economy, politics and popular culture were dominated by urban people who went outdoors not to chop down trees, punch cows or pour concrete but to recreate, appreciate and preserve.

That prophecy proved premature. Working-class indignation exploded in the Interior West against environmentalists, Democrats and outside agitators, stalling efforts by the Clinton administration to rewrite grazing, mining and forestry laws. Republicans shrewdly harnessed the populist anger and consolidated political control, and in 2000 they began an aggressive push for oil, gas and mineral extraction on public land.

Keith Olbermann Proves That Dissent Has An Audience

By Daphne Evitar, The Nation. Posted December 2, 2006.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has become the first cable news host in years to tell it like it is, and his soaring ratings prove the American public does have a taste for real news and honest dissent.

If you picked up the New York Times on October 18, you'd have had little reason to think it was a particularly significant day in American history. While the front page featured a photo of George W. Bush signing a new law at the White House the previous day, the story about the Military Commissions Act -- which the Times never named -- was buried in a 750-word piece on page A20. "It is a rare occasion when a President can sign a bill he knows will save American lives" was the first of several quotes of praise from the President that were high up in the article. Further down, a few Democrats objected to the bill, but from the article's limited explanation of the law it was hard to understand why.

But if you happened to catch MSNBC the evening before, you'd have heard a different story. It, too, began with a laudatory statement from the President: "These military commissions are lawful. They are fair. And they are necessary." Cut to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann: "And they also permit the detention of any American in jail without trial if the president does not like him."

Huffington Post: Disgraced CEO Behind Report Calling For Weakening Post-Enron Corporate Governance Reforms

Corporate titans are salivating over the propect of weaking the post-Enron corporate governance reforms known as the Sarbanes-Oxley law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told the media she is open to some changes and a new report out today is supposed to provide the substantive reasons for softening the rules.

It turns out, though, that former AIG insurance executive Maurice Greenberg, who was ousted because of accounting manipulations and misrepresentations, runs the foundation that funded the report calling for weakening the corporate governance and accounting standards that helped uncover AIG's misconduct.

Pelosi Taps Reyes for Intelligence Post

Friday December 1, 2006 4:46 PM

AP Photo WX103

By KATHERINE SHRADER

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has chosen a Border Patrol agent-turned-congressman to lead the House Intelligence Committee, ending weeks of Democratic debate about who will oversee the nation's spy agencies.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, takes over the key post next year, as his party tries to intensify oversight of the intelligence community. Critics say Republicans failed to do that, leading to faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq and other stumbles.

Abramoff accomplice right wing Rabbi Daniel Lapin is still in business

Ethically-challenged head of Toward Tradition, one of the Christian Right's most reliable Jewish allies, decides to keep the doors of his organization open

A funny thing happened to Rabbi Daniel Lapin on his journey to constantly claiming the moral high ground: Toward Tradition, his conservative Jewish organization, got so deeply involved with the shenanigans of the now-jailed Republican Party mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- Lapin's longtime friend and business associate -- that rumors of the organization's demise began to percolate in the media. But despite the rumor that Toward Tradition would shut its doors -- a rumor generated largely by the Rabbi's testimony before a congressional committee -- Lapin has now pledged to keep the organization's doors open.

Bob Cesca: Step Away From The Constitution, Mr. Gingrich, And Put Your Hands Where We Can See Them

Bob Cesca
Tue Nov 28, 9:11 PM ET

I don't think it can be said more clearly: we should be willing to die at the hands of a thousand terrorist attacks before giving up our liberties. Actually, it can be said more clearly -- by Patrick Henry.

But at no time in present memory has that declaration been more applicable. You, me and every human being who calls him- or herself an American ought to be willing to sacrifice ourselves before acquiescing to the tyranny of those who advocate such unconstitutional laws as the USA Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and other yet-to-be-proposed ideas put forth by reactionary Republican cowards.

The surprising rebound of unions

Courts, elections help unions parry administration’s assault

By STEPHEN LOSEY

November 27, 2006

In the early days of President Bush’s administration, it appeared federal unions were in for hard times.

The administration — abetted by a supportive Congress — took steps that seemed squarely aimed at marginalizing the unions. It disbanded the labor-union partnerships that existed across the government. It announced an aggressive campaign to open tens of thousands of federal jobs to contractor competition. It replaced all the members of the federal panel that resolves labor impasses with people whom unions viewed as hostile. It barred unions from the new Transportation Security Administration. And in 2003, it began efforts to dismantle the government’s 45-year-old collective bargaining rules at two of the biggest departments: Homeland Security and Defense.

But the unions fought back — in the federal courts, in Congress and, most recently, at the ballot boxes. And instead of finding themselves on the ropes, federal unions have scored an impressive string of successes that have convinced many they still have an important say over federal workplace matters.

Bob Gates & Locking You Up Forever

By Robert Parry
December 1, 2006

As the next Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates will be in charge of a new star-chamber legal system that can lock up indefinitely “unlawful enemy combatants” and “any person” accused of aiding them. Yet, despite these extraordinary new powers, his confirmation is being treated more like a coronation than a time for tough questions.

Not since 2003 when Secretary of State Colin Powell wowed Official Washington with his United Nations speech on Iraq’s WMD has there been such an awed consensus about any public figure as there has been for former CIA Director Gates, who is almost universally praised for his intelligence, experience and down-to-earth style.

U.S. rates travelers for terror risk

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer
26 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls

By Kim Sengupta in Ghazni, Afghanistan
Published: 29 November 2006

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.

The day we arrived, an Afghan policemen and eight insurgents died during an ambush in an outlying village. Rockets were found, primed to be fired into Ghazni City during a visit by the American ambassador a few days previously.

But, as in the rest of Afghanistan, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of this conflict. At the village of Qara Bagh, the family of Mr Halim are distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head: "They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that, it would be haram. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us."

Fatima Mushtaq, the director of education at Ghazni, has had repeated death threats, the notorious "night letters". Her gender, as well as her refusal to send girls home from school, has made her a particular source of hatred for Islamist zealots.

"I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much? Mohammed Halim and his family were good friends of ours and we are very, very upset by what has happened. He came to me when the threats first began and asked what he should do. I told him to move somewhere safe. I think he was trying to arrange that when they came and took him," she said.

The threats against Ms Mushtaq also extend to her husband, Sayyid Abdul, and their eight children. "When the first letters arrived, I tried to hide them from my husband," she said. "But then he found the next few. He said we must stand together. We talked, and we decided that we must tell the children. So that they can be prepared, but it is not a good way for them to grow up."

Ms Mushtaq is familiar with the ways of the Taliban. During their rule she and her sister ran secret schools for girls at their home. The Taliban beat them for teaching the girls algebra.

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

New Report Paints Bleak Picture of War in Iraq

By Voice of America News

URL of this article:
http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/index.php
Dec 1, 2006 - 6:20:25 AM

WASHINGTON: A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research and analysis organization, paints a bleak picture of the war in Iraq, and says Americans will have to accept what it calls a high-risk, high-cost strategy in order to reverse the country's slide into civil war. VOA correspondent Meredith Buel reports from Washington.

The report's author, Anthony Cordesman, a senior military and national security analyst with the center, is a former director of intelligence assessment for the secretary of defense.

Cordesman, who has made numerous trips to Iraq, says there is no doubt the conflict there has become a civil war, and there is a critical risk the violence will get much worse in the coming months.

Learning to Live with the Ayatollahs

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted November 30, 2006.

If Bush dares to move militarily against Iran, we will become mired in a bloody conflict that knows no borders.

How in the world did George W. Bush manage to turn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader" of "Axis of Evil" Iran, into a prophet of peace in the Middle East?

That is the disturbing question that must be asked after Iraq's president journeyed this week to plead for support from what was previously described by the White House as one of the world's most menacing rogue regimes.

Seagrass ecosystems at a 'global crisis'

Bioscience article calls for 'global conservation effort' to preserve critical coastal habitat

Washington, DC (December 1, 2006) -- An international team of scientists is calling for a targeted global conservation effort to preserve seagrasses and their ecological services for the world’s coastal ecosystems, according to an article published in the December issue of Bioscience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS).

The article "A Global Crisis for Seagrass Ecosystems" cites the critical role seagrasses play in coastal systems and how costal development, population growth and the resulting increase of nutrient and sediment pollution have contributed to large-scale losses worldwide.

Genetically engineered blood protein can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen

Scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, says research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

This molecular complex can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis, the method typically used to split water into its constituent parts. The breakthrough may pave the way for the development of novel ways of creating hydrogen gas for use as fuel in the future.

Digby: Talking To The Hand

NEWSWEEK: Your grandfather was Muslim, but you are a Christian. What did you think of the pope’s original comments about Islam and how the reaction played out?

Barack Obama: Well, I think that we live in a time where there are enormous religious sensitivities, and I have no doubt that the pope did not intend to offend the Muslim faith any more than many of us sometimes say things in a different context that aren’t intended to cause offense. But I think all of us, particularly religious leaders, have to be mindful that there are a lot of sensitivities out there. Now, the flip side is that there are those in the Muslim community who are looking to take offense and are constantly on the lookout for anything that would indicate that the West is somehow antagonistic toward Islam.

White House memo doubts Iraqi leader's abilities

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq's prime minister saw his support eroding in two fronts Wednesday as a White House memo questioned his leadership and key backers within Iraq's government suspended support of his administration.

The classified memo by President Bush's national security adviser questions whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki can end sectarian violence in Iraq.

The details of the memo became known as Bush was to hold talks Wednesday and Thursday with al-Maliki in Jordan. The leaders are expected to discuss political and security strategies for Iraq.

Bill Moyers: Message To West Point

November 29, 2006

This is an excerpt from the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom delivered by Bill Moyers at the United States Military Academy on November 15, 2006.

Many of you will be heading for Iraq. I have never been a soldier myself, never been tested under fire, never faced hard choices between duty and feeling, or duty and conscience, under deadly circumstances. I will never know if I have the courage to be shot at, or to shoot back, or the discipline to do my duty knowing the people who dispatched me to kill—or be killed—had no idea of the moral abyss into which they were plunging me.

I have tried to learn about war from those who know it best: veterans, the real experts. But they have been such reluctant reporters of the experience. My father-in-law, Joe Davidson, was 37 years old with two young daughters when war came in 1941; he enlisted and served in the Pacific but I never succeeded in getting him to describe what it was like to be in harm’s way. My uncle came home from the Pacific after his ship had been sunk, taking many friends down with it, and he would look away and change the subject when I asked him about it. One of my dearest friends, who died this year at 90, returned from combat in Europe as if he had taken a vow of silence about the dark and terrifying things that came home with him, uninvited.

The N-Word

Unmentionable lessons of the midterm aftermath.

By Diane McWhorter
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006, at 6:29 PM ET

Warning: This article contains the word Nazi.

There's been something weird about the denouement of the midterm elections, starting with the pronounced absence of Democratic triumphalism. The prevailing mood has been stunned relief rather than glee, and nobody seems eager to delve too deeply into what exactly it was about George W. Bush that the voters so roundly rejected. Put another way, what were the sins included under the shorthand summary for the president's failures, "Iraq"?

For some reason, I keep thinking about an observation Eleanor Roosevelt made in an unpublished interview conducted in May of 1940, as the German Wehrmacht swept across France. She expressed dismay that a "great many Americans" would look with favor on a Hitler victory in Europe and be greatly attracted to fascism. Why? "Simply because we are a people who tend to admire things that work," she said. So, were the voters last month protesting Bush's policies—or were they complaining that he had not made those policies work? If Operation Iraqi Freedom had not been such an unqualified catastrophe, how long would the public have assented to the programs that accompanied the "war on terror": the legalization of torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, the unauthorized surveillance of law-abiding Americans, the unilateral exercise of executive power, and the Bush team's avowed prerogative to "create our own reality"?

Court may force Bush's hand on environment

· States challenge policy on global warming
· Victory would pave way for CO2 emission controls

Ed Pilkington in New York
Wednesday November 29, 2006
The Guardian

The supreme court in Washington will bring its ultimate authority to bear for the first time today on the issue of global warming - hearing legal arguments in a case that environmentalists believe could have far-reaching consequences.

Twelve US states, led by California and Massachusetts and backed by several cities and environmental groups, have brought the case to try to force the Bush administration to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories.

Harold Meyerson: Plumb Out of Mission

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, November 29, 2006; Page A23

The meaning of the election was clear for all to see: The people plainly believed that the unified, pluralistic Iraq that the Bush administration insisted was growing stronger with each passing day actually had no future at all.

There's no other way to interpret the vote for the first Iraqi National Assembly, held one year ago, in December 2005. Overwhelmingly, Iraqis voted their sect rather than their nation. The Shiites, who constitute roughly 60 percent of Iraq's population, voted for Shiite parties, which now control roughly 60 percent of the National Assembly. The Sunnis and the Kurds voted for their own parties, too.

David Corn: Iran/contra: 20 Years Later and What It Means

It's the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra scandal. Two decades ago, the public learned about the bizarre, Byzantine and (arguably) unconstitutional actions of high officials in the post-Watergate years. But many Americans did not absorb the key lesson: the Iran/contra vets were not to be trusted. Consequently, most of those officials went on to prosperous careers, with some even becoming part of the squad that has landed the United States in the current hellish mess in Iraq.

Before tying the then to the now, let's revisit the basic narrative. When Congress, by fair vote, decided in the 1980s that the United States should not assist the contras fighting the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua, the Reagan White House concocted several imaginative ways to pull an end-run around democracy. This mainly entailed outsourcing the job to a small band of private sector covert operators and to foreign governments, which were privately requested or pressured by the Reaganites to support the secret contra support operation. The "Iran" side of the scandal came from President Ronald Reagan's covert efforts to sell weapons to Iran to obtain the release of American hostages held by terrorist groups supposedly under the control of Tehran--at a time when the White House was publicly declaring it would not negotiate with terrorists. The two clandestine projects merged when cash generated from the weapons transactions with Iran was diverted to the contra operation.

Judge strikes down Bush on terror groups

By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent
Wed Nov 29, 6:46 AM ET

A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague.

Some parts of the Sept. 24, 2001 order tagging 27 groups and individuals as "specially designated global terrorists" were too vague and could impinge on First Amendment rights of free association, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said.

The order gave the president "unfettered discretion" to label groups without giving them a way to challenge the designations, she said in a Nov. 21 ruling that was made public Tuesday.

Stop the Press Spree Against Working Moms

By Sheila Gibbons, Women's eNews. Posted November 29, 2006.

Not all working women fare as well as high-profile mother-of-five Pelosi: How employer bias is going underreported and squeezing women out of the workplace.

Elizabeth Vargas, banished from ABC's World News Tonight co-anchor seat last May after announcing she was expecting a second child, returned to TV broadcasting last week.

While Vargas may no longer be "with child" in the biological sense, her first 20/20 story on Nov. 10 -- a report on working mothers, featuring herself as one -- is pregnant with the growing sense of working mothers' indignation.

Earthshakers: the top 100 green campaigners of all time

The Environment Agency has invited experts to name the people who have done most to save the planet

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

From the woman who raised the alarm over the profligate use of pesticides to the doctor who discovered that chimney sweeps in 18th century London were dying because of their exposure to soot, the government's Environment Agency has named the scientists, campaigners, writers, economists and naturalists who, in its view, have done the most to save the planet.

To help celebrate its tenth anniversary, a panel of experts listed its 100 greatest eco-heroes of all time. And it does mean all time: St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) is there, as is Siddartha Gautama Buddha, who died in 483BC.

Democrats Could End Discriminatory Prison Sentencing Rules

By Jackie Jones, Black America Web. Posted November 28, 2006.

Prison reform advocates say that the new Democratic majority in Congress may end America's sentencing policy which has black defendants receiving substantially more prison time for drug possession.

A new Democratic majority in Congress may finally be able to push through a recommendation from the U.S. Sentencing Commission to end the disparities in crack versus powdered cocaine sentencing, reform advocates say.

Critics of the current sentencing policy say it discriminates against black defendants who get substantially more prison time for possession of much smaller amounts of crack than those convicted of possession of powdered cocaine.

A Question for Neoconservatives of the Catholic Right

Talk to Action
November 26, 2006
Frank Cocozzelli

...But for all the neoconservatives' bluster about the need for a religious orthodoxy to hold society together, [Leo] Strauss was an atheist and taught that "philosopher-kings" had to maintain their special standing by keeping silent about their personal atheism, playing along with the illusion of there being a God and an afterlife. Believing that reason and revelation cannot be reconciled. Strauss believed that religion can only have currency if it stifles dissent, imposes clannishness and gives citizens a reason to die for one's homeland.

Christian evangelicals: Enablers of the wayward Republicans

Out of step with the American people, right wing religionists looked past GOP corruption. Next they'll probably be going local.

Top shelf conservative Christian evangelicals, GOP political leaders, and a host of right wing pundits, columnists, and radio and television talk show hosts have just about finished hashing out the whys and wherefores of Election 2006's "thumpin." Much post-election talk has centered on both the actions of the so-called "values voters," and what the election results might means for the future of the Christian right.

Some conservatives have moon-walked away from their defeated GOP brethren faster than Michael Jackson in his prime. Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson has argued -- in a post-election statement and on a Thanksgiving Eve appearance with CNN's Larry King -- that it wasn't that conservative social issues were rejected by the voters, it was that the GOP didn't push the conservative social agenda hard enough.

Hail to the chief

Dick Cheney's mission to expand -- or 'restore' --the powers of the presidency

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | November 26, 2006

ANN ARBOR, MICH. -- In July 1987, then-Representative Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned US assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

US dollar 'will keep falling'

Heather Stewart
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer

The US dollar has reached a 'tipping point' as foreign exchange markets wake up to the threat that the Federal Reserve will have to slash interest rates in the new year to stave off recession, analysts say. After a sharp sell-off on Friday took the greenback to 18-month lows against the euro, and pushed the pound to $1.93, economists warned that there was worse to come for the US currency.

'We are just at the start of what we think will be a downtrend for the dollar - a tipping-point has probably been reached,' said Tim Fox, currency strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, who expects sterling to hit $2 within the next three months.

Jonathan Chait: Bring back Saddam Hussein

I wish I didn't think he was right.--Dictynna

Restoring the dictator to power may give Iraqis the jolt of authority they need. Have a better solution?

Jonathan Chait

November 26, 2006

THE DEBATE about Iraq has moved past the question of whether it was a mistake (everybody knows it was) to the more depressing question of whether it is possible to avert total disaster. Every self-respecting foreign policy analyst has his own plan for Iraq. The trouble is that these tracts are inevitably unconvincing, except when they argue why all the other plans would fail. It's all terribly grim.

So allow me to propose the unthinkable: Maybe, just maybe, our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power.

Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale.

America the charitable: a few surprises

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Everybody knows Americans are big givers. But their charitable impulses keep generating surprises.

Consider just a few conclusions from recent research:

• Charitable giving plays an even larger role in the economy than is suggested by some $260 billion in annual contributions. Each dollar of giving appears to create $19 of extra national income, according to a book released this past weekend.

• Demand for nonprofit services gets proportionately bigger, not smaller, as a locality's income rises, a Federal Reserve economist finds.

• The philanthropy of the wealthy may not hinge on tax incentives to the degree many believe. In one new survey, a majority of wealthy givers say they would contribute the same amount if the estate tax were abolished. Ditto, they said, if they could no longer deduct the value of gifts from their taxable income.

Ted Rall: The Long Slog of Rebuilding American Democracy

NEW YORK--The military tribunal lasted a week. At the end the 17 defendants were permitted to make a closing statement. Alexei Shestov, 41 years of age, stood up and admitted being a terrorist and traitor. "In that struggle," he confessed, "I employed every loathsome, every filthy and every destructive method." Coercive interrogation techniques--what effete and weak-stomached liberals would call torture--loosened the terrorist's tongue. "For five weeks I denied everything," he said, "for five weeks they kept confronting me with one fact after another, with the photographs of my dastardly work and when I looked back, I myself was appalled by what I had done."

Mahablog: Rightier Than Thou

For a great many years, most Americans have found presidential elections to be a choice between someone they don’t like and someone they can’t stand. That’s largely because the early nomination process is less about capturing the public’s imagination than about running a gauntlet of activists and interest groups. The candidates are already bruised and bleeding, sometimes fatally, before active campaigning for primaries even begins.

Thus, the nomination process is less about vision and leadership than about picking the least objectionable positions on hot-button issues. Or, like George W. Bush in 2000, carefully maintaining blank-slate status so that voters saw in him what they wanted to see. Being the fair-haired child of party insiders didn’t hurt, either.

Daily Kos: The Free Trade Myth

by gjohnsit
Sat Nov 25, 2006 at 01:32:12 PM PST

NAFTA and GATT have about as much to do with free trade as the Patriot Act has to do with liberty. - Michael Badnarik

The Washington Post had an article the other day that touched upon a very interesting result of the recent election.

Looking at the Democrats who picked up formerly Republican House seats, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch tallies 27 who defeated (or replaced resigning) free-trade Republicans and who campaigned against the kind of trade deals that Congress has ratified.

That's 27 out of the 29 Democratic pickups just a year after the GOP Congress passed CAFTA in a midnight vote.

Glenn Greenwald: The "centrist" position on the war in Iraq

This Washington Post article on the inner workings of the bizarrely revered Baker-Hamilton Commission is notable for several reasons, the first of which is that neoconservatives are stomping their feet and whining loudly because they feel that their Great Wisdom and Expertise are being unfairly ignored:

Neoconservatives, who supported and crafted much of the original Iraq strategy, say the panel was stacked against them. Michael Rubin, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, resigned because he said he was a token.

Daily Kos: "Tort reform" - a/k/a another attack on democracy

by Wandering mind
Sat Nov 25, 2006 at 07:42:44 AM PST

I have been bothered for some time over the entire discussion of "tort reform." Republicans have been able to frame this issue strictly in terms of the behavior of the lawyers who represent plaintiffs. They are easy targets, so I can understand why Republicans focus on them.

What I don't understand is why Democrats and the Trial Lawyers themselves have failed so miserably in responding.

To me, the issue is simple - it is another example of how Republicans do not trust the ordinary person to be fair. In other words, it is an example of how Republicans do not really believe in democracy.

Daily Kos: This Could be the Beginning of the End of Iraq

by DHinMI
Sat Nov 25, 2006 at 09:07:13 PM PST

As Ben P has just pointed out, the McClatchy wire service is reporting that followers of Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr have taken over a radio station in Baghdad and are urging attacks on named Sunni leaders and neighborhoods:

Followers of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took over state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis "terrorists" and issue what appeared to many viewers as a call to arms.

The two-hour broadcast from a community gathering in the heart of the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City included three members of al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc, who took questions from outraged residents demanding revenge for a series of car bombings that killed some 200 people Thursday.

Despite Election Results, Edsall Still Sees 'Red'

Thomas B. Edsall, replacing John Tierney this month on The New York Times' op-ed page, follows up his ill-timed book, which had predicted hard times for Democrats on the campaign trial, by forecasting more trouble ahead for the party. With his track record, the 2008 elections may be in the bag for the Democrats.

By Greg Mitchell

(November 25, 2006) -- When John Tierney was finally ceremoniously booted off The New York Times’ op-ed page, there was some hope that his guest replacement this month, Thomas B. Edsall, after a distinguished career at The Washington Post, would provide thoughtful commentary in that unliberal column slot.

So what does he do on Saturday? He offers advice to the Democrats on how they can avoid certain disaster for the party and stop trudging along as “No.2.” He also states that liberalism is “dead” and “rigor mortis” will soon set in, and the party as a whole must undergo a “painful transformation.” This comes on the heels of the Democrats’ electoral triumph, and it comes from a man who in his recent book was prescient enough to write, "The Republican Party holds a set of advantages, some substantial and some marginal,” meaning that "the odds are that the Republican Party will continue to maintain, over the long run, a thin but durable margin of victory."

AP Analysis: Firms Crimping Oil Supplies

Sunday November 26, 12:13 AM EST

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) — You'd think it was Texas. Dusty roads course the scrubland toward oil tanks and warehouses. Beefy men talk oil over burritos at lunch. Like grazing herds, oil wells dip nonstop amid the tumbleweed — or even into the asphalt of a parking lot.

That's why the rumor sounded so wrong here in California's lower San Joaquin Valley, where petroleum has gushed up more riches than the whole gold rush. Why would Shell Oil Co. simply close its Bakersfield refinery? Why scrap a profit maker?

Talking Points Memo (November 25, 2006 -- 05:10 PM EDT

A hard-to-understand story in tomorrow's New York Times on a secret U.S. report that finds Iraqi insurgent groups are self-financing.

What makes the piece murky is no distinction is made between "insurgents," "terrorists," and other militant groups in Iraq. Maybe that's the approach of the secret report that the NYT piece is based on. But it would seem to me that lumping all of the various armed factions in Iraq into one category called "the insurgency" would be to miss many important differences in the goals and strategies--and the means of funding--of the many disparate groups currently operating in Iraq.

I remember the quiet day we lost the war in Iraq

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 02/11/2006

It was the moment I should have twigged. It was the moment I should have realised that I had voted for the biggest British military fiasco since the Second World War. I was wandering around Baghdad, about 10 days after Iraq had been "liberated", and it seemed to me that the place was not entirely without hope.

OK, so the gunfire popped round every corner like popcorn on a stove, and civil society had broken down so badly that the looters were taking the very copper from the electricity cables in the streets. But I was able to stroll without a flak jacket and eat shoarma and chips in the restaurants.

Cheney returning to U.S. after talks with Saudis

Sat Nov 25, 2006 10:44 PM ET

By Patricia Zengerle

SHANNON (Reuters)- Vice President Dick Cheney met on Saturday with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who expressed concern about the security situation in the Middle East, but neither side gave specifics about their discussions.

The two men were together for about three hours during Cheney's brief visit to the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Cheney made no comment after the meeting before boarding his plane and flying back to the United States, stopping over briefly in Ireland.

Science Teachers’ Organization Refuses To Accept Copies of Inconvenient Truth

In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of An Inconvenient Truth (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs:

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs. …

[T]here was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.”