Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 15, 2007

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

Did White House staffers violate Presidential Records Act by using outside e-mail addresses to conduct business?

Submitted by CREW on 15 March 2007 - 2:06pm.

Did they? That's what CREW wants to know.

White House staffers who dealt with with Jack Abramoff and the U.S. Attorney firings sent e-mails from outside addresses linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to circumvent the mandatory record-keeping system. Today, CREW sent a letter to Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), asking for an investigation into whether the White House has violated its mandatory record-keeping obligation under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

Global temperature -- politics or science?

Don't know about this one...--Dictynna

The entire debate about global warming is a mirage. The concept of "global temperature" is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Bjarne Andresen who has analyzed this hot topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, both Ontario, Canada.

Patrick Fitzgerald Chosen As U.S. Attorney Over Rove Pressure

Former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) revealed yesterday that Karl Rove pressured him in 2001 to choose a U.S. Attorney who he believed would be lenient in probing state corruption, the Chicago Tribune reports. Fitzgerald ended up choosing Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), who was later named Special Prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

A desperate Army is scraping the bottom

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

McClatchy Newspapers

An Army already stretched painfully thin is now being asked to find the additional 25,000-plus troops to man President Bush's escalation in Iraq and, it's now obvious, prepare for additional combat rotations next year.

All the easy sweeping up of manpower already has been done. All the obvious moves to rob Peter to pay Paul have been carried out just to keep this unending war going.

Now comes the hardest part: Units that are completing their second or third yearlong combat tours are being extended for another four or six months. Other units, now home for their promised 12 months with their families, are being told they will go back to combat sooner than that.

Bush Admin Emails Contradict Sworn Testimony

Statements On Firings of Prosecutors Are Key Issue

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007; A01

In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

Digby: Loving Rudy Out Of The Race

Atrios says:

Rudy's going to try to make this an issue of family privacy, but to the extent his ex-wife and estranged son want to talk about the issue it's unclear what the hell that actually has to do with anything.

True, but we already know how this will be handled by Rudy and the right wing. They will follow the Cheneys gay daughter formula. If anyone brings it up, Rudy and his followers will immediately growl in the impudent reporter's face about the invasion of privacy, even if the kids and the ex are out there stumping for Hillary. They will further go out and condemn any Democrat who brings it up saying "this is not a gooood man." The press will be flummoxed and drop it. So will the Democrats. The wingnuts and the Christian Right will ignore it just as they self-servingly ignored Cheney's glaring hypocrisy about his daughter.

Digby: Stop The Presses!!!

The Boston Globe has a blockbuster story on its hands:

Obama paid late parking tickets
Racked up penalties while at Harvard

By David Abel, Globe Staff | March 8, 2007

Barack Obama is no longer a scofflaw, at least in Cambridge and Somerville.

Two weeks before the US senator from Illinois launched his presidential campaign, he paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, officials said yesterday.

Digby: The Empty Conscience

I've written a lot about how the Democrats need to hold Republicans accountable for what they do or they will rise from their electoral graves and return to do it again --- just as they have been doing since the dawn of the dirty tricks, modern conservative movement. Character assassins are not impressed by Christian forgiveness and the American people are too busy working two jobs to pay off their sub-prime mortgages and their 28% interest credit cards to notice the details. It's up to the Democrats to do this.

So when George W. Bush has the utter chutzpah to nominate the biggest contributor to the Swift Boat Liars as an ambassador, it is imperative that the Democratic senate reject him. Otherwise Republicans will once again be assured that there is no price to pay, even when they lose elections.

Political Animal: Pay No Attention To The Man Behind the Curtain...

What an infuriating article on the No Child Left Behind Act in the Washington Post tonight. The question is whether NCLB's requirement of 100% proficiency by 2014 is achievable, and the answer, as almost everyone in the article acknowledges, is no. 100% isn't achievable for anything. Everyone knows that. Nonetheless, here's a sampling of Republican bloviating on the subject:

"We need to stay the course," U.S. Deputy Education Secretary Raymond Simon said. "The mission is doable, and we don't need to back off that right now."

....Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. education secretary and supporter of the law, said Americans don't want politicians to lower standards.

"Are we going to rewrite the Declaration of Independence and say only 85 percent of men are created equal?" Alexander asked. "Most of our politics in America is about the disappointment of not meeting the high goals we set for ourselves."

Current situation is distinct from Clinton firings of U.S. attorneys

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration and its defenders like to point out that President Bush isn't the first president to fire U.S. attorneys and replace them with loyalists.

While that's true, the current case is different. Mass firings of U.S. attorneys are fairly common when a new president takes office, but not in a second-term administration. Prosecutors are usually appointed for four-year terms, but they are usually allowed to stay on the job if the president who appointed them is re-elected.

Damn Right, We're Angry

Paul Waldman
March 14, 2007

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success. The views expressed here are his own.

We can’t deny it any longer. There’s no point in hiding it, no point in trying to explain it away. Yes, it’s true: We progressives are angry. And we no longer care if the centrist, moderate guardians of the establishment scold us for it.

Our anger is not just some vague feeling whose source we can’t put our finger on. It isn’t based on absurd conspiracy theories and it isn’t illogical.

Phthalates now linked to fat, related health risks

Rochester study connects common chemicals to rising obesity rates

Exposure to phthalates, a common chemical found in everything from plastics to soaps, already has been connected to reproductive problems and now, for the first time, is linked to abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in adult males, according to a study by the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The research adds to the growing suspicion that low-dose exposures to phthalates and other common chemicals may be reducing testosterone levels or function in men, and thereby contributing to rising obesity rates and an epidemic of related disorders, such as Type 2 diabetes, said lead author Richard Stahlhut, M.D., M.P.H., a Preventive Medicine resident at the University of Rochester. The study was published today in the online edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Debunking the NYT's Sloppy Hit Piece on Gore

Yesterday, Drudge breathlessly reported a coming "hit on Gore" from The New York Times. Today that hit has come, in the form of a state-of-the-art piece of slime from Bill Broad.

This may be the worst, sloppiest, most dishonest piece of reporting I've ever seen in the NYT. It's got all the hallmarks of a vintage Gore hit piece: half-truths, outright falsehoods, unsubstantiated quotes, and a heaping dose of innuendo. As usual with these things, unless you've been following the debate carefully, you'll be left with a false impression -- in this case, that scientists are divided over the accuracy of Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth.

The Seymour Hersh Mystery

A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…And No One Notices
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Why the U.S. Is So Far Behind the Brits on Climate Change

By Sarah Stillman, Truthdig. Posted March 14, 2007.

While America is still begrudgingly coming to terms with the climate crisis, British politicians, scientists and newspapers have been shouting from the rooftops for years. So why is the U.S. so far behind its closest ally?

Nothing screams "I (heart) global warming" quite like a romp around Capitol Hill in your bikini top at Christmastime. I speak from experience; this past holiday season, high on Coppertone and early-blooming cherry trees, I found myself all too eager to tryst with the infamous 21st-century menace--never mind that he'd recently melted the heart of the Ayles Ice Shelf, screwed 2,000 polar bears in the Beaufort Sea and sweet-talked the pasty male congressional interns into prematurely bearing their chests on the National Mall in January. Do I regret my indulgence? No. Have I repented? Yes. My cure? A blustery island called Great Britain.

Truthdigger of the Week: Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Posted on Mar 10, 2007

Truthdig tips its hat this week to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, whose talent for tackling high-stakes court cases without flinching or yielding to partisan pressures made him the ideal prosecutor for the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial. Fitzgerald’s work in clinching Tuesday’s guilty verdict boosted his already stellar reputation, well established in his current hometown of Chicago as well as in international legal circles, into the realm of the legendary. More important, though, the Libby verdict sent a strong message to the media about the catastrophic costs of getting too cozy with the government they are supposed to scrutinize and may have marked the end of an era of media manipulation at the hands of a secretive and self-serving administration.

Paul Krugman: Overblown Personnel Matters

The New York Times
Monday 12 March 2007

Nobody is surprised to learn that the Justice Department was lying when it claimed that recently fired federal prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. Nor is anyone surprised to learn that White House political operatives were pulling the strings.

What is surprising is how fast the truth is emerging about what Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, dismissed just five days ago as an "overblown personnel matter."

Sources told Newsweek that the list of prosecutors to be fired was drawn up by Mr. Gonzales's chief of staff, "with input from the White House." And Allen Weh, the chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, told McClatchy News that he twice sought Karl Rove's help - the first time via a liaison, the second time in person - in getting David Iglesias, the state's U.S. attorney, fired for failing to indict Democrats. "He's gone," he claims Mr. Rove said.

There's Always Money For War

Jared Bernstein

March 12, 2007

Jared Bernstein is senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute and author of All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy.

Okay, this is going to sound really naïve. It’s the kind of question you’d expect from an earnest, if not slightly annoying, 12-year-old, not from a hard-boiled wonk like yours truly. But why is it that our representatives can easily raise endless amounts of money for war, but can’t adequately fund human needs?

Treasury casts a wide net under Patriot Act

By Kevin G. Hall

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Under a little-noticed provision in the USA Patriot Act, the Treasury Department has ordered severe restrictions against foreign banks or countries for reasons beyond the stated purpose of the law and without producing evidence.

Section 311 of the 2001 Patriot Act was drafted to halt terrorist financing and money laundering, but the Bush administration has used it against an alleged source of terrorist financing - a bank in Syria - only once. The Treasury has invoked it more often to punish alleged human-rights abuses or offshore banking havens.

Congressman says he doesn't believe in God

He is either very brave or is about to retire.--Dictynna

Democrat Pete Stark of California is the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. to make such a public acknowledgement.

By Adam Schreck
Times Staff Writer

March 13, 2007

WASHINGTON — Cue the jokes about godless politicians and Bay Area liberals.

Secular groups Monday applauded a public acknowledgment by Rep. Pete Stark that he does not believe in a supreme being, making the Fremont Democrat the first member of Congress — and the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. — to publicly acknowledge not believing in God.

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

During recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy'

In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."

Frank Rich: Why Libby’s Pardon Is a Slam Dunk

The New York Times

March 11, 2007

EVEN by Washington’s standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.

A president who tries to void laws he doesn’t like by encumbering them with “signing statements” and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn’t going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is “pretty much going to stay out of” the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans’ political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.

Daily Kos: The real reason Halliburton's moving to Dubai

by theyrereal

Sun Mar 11, 2007 at 06:27:44 PM PDT

In one of my first diaries on Dailykos, I wrote about how Halliburton was skirting the laws of the United States by having its "affiliate" in Dubai act as a "launderer" of business products and money so that it could sell illegal items to illegal countries:

Most people probably don't realize that Halliburton, our Vice President's company, has been trading for years with most of the folks on the United States' "axis of evil" list, including Iran, Saddam's Iraq, and Libya.

One of the simple ways around this is to simply export the illegal stuff to the United Arab Emirates, where trading activity accounts for the biggest single chunk (16.5%) of a $20 billion economy, to be re-exported to the offending countries.

It seems in light of today's announcement that Halliburton is brazely moving their headquarters to Dubai, that now might be a good time to revisit this damning information .....

Halliburton Will Move HQ to Dubai

Halliburton Will Shift Headquarters From Houston to Mideast Financial Powerhouse of Dubai

By JIM KRANE

The Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday.

"Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston," spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE."

Halliburtonomics

Posted by Karen Tumulty

Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts.

Al Gore's Carbon Solution Won't Stop Climate Change

By David Morris, AlterNet. Posted March 12, 2007.

These days, everyone thinks that carbon trading is the solution to our climate crisis -- from Congress members to Al Gore to the folks organizing the Oscars. Here's why they are wrong and what we can do instead.

At the Oscars, former Vice President Al Gore and megastar actor Leonardo DiCaprio informed a billion viewers that this was the first "green Oscar," at least with respect to global warming. The hosts had purchased sufficient greenhouse gas offsets to allow them to free the event of any responsibility for increasing greenhouse gases.

Two days later, Al Gore and emission offsets were again in the news when reports circulated that his Nashville house consumed 20 times more energy than a typical house. His spokesman responded: The Gore family had purchased green electricity and carbon offsets in sufficient quantities to render the house's net contribution to global warming as zero.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Challenging the Workplace Dictatorship

By Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet. Posted March 12, 2007.

George Orwell's "1984" is already here and it's called the American workplace, but finally there's a law in the works that might make jobs livable.

With the Employee Free Choice Act heading toward a Senate vote, conservative columnist George F. Will has suddenly developed a tender concern for workers' rights. The act "strips all workers of privacy," he fumed in the Washington Post last week, and will repeal "a right -to secret ballots -- long considered fundamental to a democratic culture ..." As Will sees it, the unions are backing the act out of sheer desperation: Since they can't seem to win a fair fight for workers' allegiance, they want government to take away the workers' rights and help herd them into union membership.

Even Republicans Hate Our Health Care System

By David Moberg, In These Times. Posted March 12, 2007.

Our health care system has gotten so bad that even Republicans acknowledge that it's broken -- so what's the best way to deal with it?

Like the creature from the Black Lagoon, the health insurance monster has returned, creeping back onto the public stage. After President Clinton's jury-rigged pen to contain the monster collapsed in 1994, it never really went away. Political leaders tried to ignore the beast or deal piecemeal with its ravages, but it pushed more unsuspecting civilians into the uninsured pit, devoured more family budgets, squeezed even giant corporations' ability to compete globally, and raised fear and insecurity among the populace.