Waxman: State Department Gags Analyst Who Warned Of Niger Forgery

Three months before President Bush uttered his infamous 16 words, claiming there was evidence that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear weapon, a State Department analyst named Simon Dodge had determined that the evidence for the claim was likely fraudulent.

Dodge emailed his assessment to fellow intelligence analysts in October 2002, and then again in January 2003 (two weeks before Bush’s State of the Union), saying the documents supposedly from Niger were “probably a hoax” and “clearly a forgery.”

Karl Rove's Coaching Session

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, May 4, 2007; 1:50 PM

Back on March 5, several top Justice Department officials were summoned for an emergency meeting at the White House. On the agenda: Going over "what we are going to say" about why eight U.S. attorneys had been summarily fired.

The reason for the urgency: principal associate deputy attorney general William Moschella was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee the next day.

Maverick Candidate Mike Gravel

Posted on May 4, 2007

Elder Statesman and presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s performance in the first Democratic debate took him from off the radar to Truthdigger of the week. Naturally we just had to pick his brain. The former senator from Alaska who helped end the draft tells Truthdig why he’s running, why there are so few mavericks in politics these days and why war makes him angry.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

Transcript:

James Harris: This is Truthdig. James Harris, Josh Scheer. On the phone: special guest, presidential candidate for 2008, Mike Gravel. Let me start by saying a few things about this. In doing the research after that very spicy debate you were engaged in last Thursday, I found out that you published one of the exclusive issues of the Pentagon Papers. You also helped end the draft following the Vietnam War. Mr. Gravel, I want to ask you—the way you were treated by the media after that Democratic presidential debate seemed to me—they seemed to vilify you, they seemed to paint you as a lunatic, though you stand on the side of issues that a lot of Americans believed in. How do you feel about the way you were treated after that debate?

The Conservative Alternative Reality

Isaiah J. Poole

May 04, 2007

Isaiah J. Poole is the executive editor of TomPaine.com.

If Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate left you feeling as though you were watching 10 white men from some alternate universe, you would not have been as surprised if you had seen a debate at the National Press Club in Washington just hours earlier.

There, William Kristol, one of the main architects of the modern conservative movement, went head to head with Robert Kuttner, founding editor of the progressive magazine The American Prospect, at a conference sponsored by The American Prospect and the Campaign for America’s Future. Kristol helped build the alternate universe in which nearly all of the Republican candidates, with the exception of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, spend most, if not all, of their time.

Climate change impacts stream life

Climate change is warming Welsh streams and rivers, affecting the number and variety of some of their smallest animals, a major Cardiff University study has found.

Coral Ridge Ministries shuts down two projects aimed at influencing the political process

CRM spokesperson claims closing the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and the Center for Christian Statesmanship is not tied to founder D. James Kennedy's ill health

When the slate of conservative dream-teamers joined some 1,300 attendees at this year's Reclaiming America for Christ conference in early March, few in the crowd could have predicted that within two months the gathering's high-powered sponsoring organization would shut its doors. In late April, that's exactly what D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries did when they announced they were closing the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ.

Sarasota race to be examined

By BILL ADAIR
Published May 3, 2007

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WASHINGTON - Frustrated by a lack of action by Florida courts in the Sarasota election dispute, a congressional task force voted Wednesday to formally launch an investigation.

The panel voted 2-1 along partisan lines to investigate whether problems with electronic voting machines altered the outcome in the 13th Congressional District in November.

Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner by 369 votes, but Democrat Christine Jennings has challenged the results because nearly 18, 000 voters did not make a selection in the race. Jennings has said a software or hardware glitch prevented thousands of votes from being counted.

China’s labour law raises US concerns

By Geoff Dyer in Shanghai

Published: May 2 2007 18:45 | Last updated: May 2 2007 18:45

Fake DVDs and the undervalued renminbi have been the main points of discussion in the US about the rise of the Chinese economy. But another issue is gathering steam in the US – a new law that seeks to boost the employment rights of Chin­ese workers and give trade unions more influence.

While the bill was discussed behind closed doors by legislators in Beijing last week and the latest version is still a secret, the law is the subject of an increasingly bitter war of words in the US between business groups and trade unions unhappy about outsourcing jobs to Asia.

Last week the United Steelworkers, one of the biggest industrial unions, came out in favour of the law and accused US business groups of trying to block reforms. Leo Gerard, the USW president, criticised what he called the American Chamber of Commerce’s “immoral campaign to undermine Chinese workers rights”.

NYT Editorial: Spying on Americans

Published: May 2, 2007

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.

DHS Sweats Out National ID Town Hall Meeting

Ryan Singel 05.02.07 | 2:00 AM

DAVIS, California -- Department of Homeland Security officials got an earful Tuesday during a webcast town-hall-style meeting on the controversial Real ID initiative -- a federal government plan to standardize state-issued ID cards and link identification databases nationwide.

States and civil liberties groups have been bristling at the requirements of the Real ID Act, which would require states, starting in 2008, to revalidate citizens' birth certificates, store copies of the documents, and interconnect their databases to prevent duplicate licenses. Current holders of driver's licenses would have to return to their state motor vehicle departments with certified source documents to re-up their licenses as part of the proposed upgrade, which DHS estimates will cost states and citizens $20 billion.

Matt Taibbi: Election '08: One Long Humiliation Contest

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted May 3, 2007.

It must be somehow beneficial to the American power apparatus to demean the individuals who seek to occupy its highest offices.

The strangest thing about the premature reappearance of the presidential debates is the palpable, seething contempt they inspired in commentators everywhere, liberal and conservative. One after another, columnists lined up to shit on the candidates, calling them names like phony and desperate and grasping and clown, and rightly so -- for there was something obviously perverse and obnoxious about these terminal ambition cases hogging the airwaves already, pushing us to get on board with their insane power-fantasies a full fifteen months before most of us should even start thinking about the next election.

An American Enterprise Institute analyst graded the candidates on their "creepiness" factor. The Houston Chronicle compared the debates to a stock car race, where everybody is really watching in hopes of seeing a crash. The Cleveland Plain Dealer said the debate was like a "political beauty pageant in which the mission of the contestants was to hop, skip and swerve without falling on their faces," the result "more dizzying than edifying." And so on and so on... more than one reporter cracked that it was a far cry from Lincoln-Douglas, etc.

Daily Kos: The Embers of 1968

by jiacinto

Mon Apr 30, 2007 at 06:29:45 PM PDT

I have been busy with work lately and haven't had time to write. However, as I have been thinking, this is a post that I have been wanting to write for a long time. I have some free time tonight, so I will write it.

First of all, as many of you know, I don't see myself as an activist. I am probably more moderate than many people here would like me to, but my greatest contribution has been in analyzing races in competitive states and districts.

And this is what I will do in this thread beneath the fold.

Daily Kos: Class and Labor: The Haymarket "Riot"

by BentLiberal

Tue May 01, 2007 at 06:16:40 PM PDT

News Item (May 1, 2007):

Immigration protests planned nationwide

LOS ANGELES - Demonstrators demanding a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants hope that nationwide marches will spur Congress to act before the looming presidential primaries take over the political landscape.

So just what do these "illegals" think they're doing and what does this have to do with class and labor?

Everything.

Sen. Tim Johnson Returns Home

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2007

(AP) Sen. Tim Johnson has returned to his residence outside Washington, more than four months after he suffered a brain hemorrhage, his office said Monday.

"It is wonderful to take this next step with family and friends," Johnson's office quoted the South Dakota Democrat as saying. "As I continue with my therapy, I also get more and more work from the office."

Four Years After 'Mission Accomplished'

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, May 1, 2007; 1:14 PM

There may be no more vivid illustration of the collapse of President Bush's public image than the changing perceptions of his "Mission Accomplished" moment.

Four years ago today, Bush flew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in "Top Gun" style, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and proudly declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

Residency Clause Adds Fuel To Dispute Over U.S. Attorneys

One Prosecutor Gets an Exemption, Another Gets Fired

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; Page A03

On Nov. 10, 2005, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sent a letter to a federal judge in Montana, assuring him that the U.S. attorney there, William W. Mercer, was not violating federal law by spending most of his time in Washington as a senior Justice Department official.

That same day, Mercer had a GOP Senate staffer insert into a bill a provision that would change the rules so that federal prosecutors could live outside their districts to serve in other jobs, according to documents and interviews

Pelosi calls out Bush for 1999 statement on timetable

Reacting to President Bush’s veto of the Iraq supplemental bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted this evening that Bush once believed it was important for a president to lay out a timetable:

The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him. The president said, in his comments, he did not believe in timelines, and he spoke out very forcefully against them. Yet in 1999, on June 5th, then-Governor Bush said, about President Clinton, “I think it’s important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they would be withdrawn.” Despite his past statements, President Bush refuses to apply the same standard to his own activities. Standards — that’s the issue.

Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.

Embattled Interior Official Julie MacDonald Resigns In Wake of Inspector General Report

May 02, 2007 — By the Center for Biological Diversity

WASHINGTON, D.C. — According to the Endangered Species and Wetlands Report, a high-level Bush administration appointee has resigned in the aftermath of a devastating Inspector General investigation, just days before a House congressional oversight committee will hold a public hearing on her violations of the Endangered Species Act, censorship of science, and brutalizing of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff.

Julie MacDonald tendered her resignation on April 30, 2007. She was the Department of Interior's Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, a position that oversees the entire U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species program. As revealed in numerous media exposés and a recent Department of Interior Inspector General investigation, MacDonald used her position to aggressively squelch protection of endangered species. She rewrote scientific reports, browbeat U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, and colluded with industry lawyers to generate lawsuits against the Fish and Wildlife Service.

How to Stop the Planet From Burning

By George Monbiot, South End Press
Posted on May 2, 2007, Printed on May 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51006/

We know that climate change is happening. But can it be stopped? George Monbiot's book "Heat" shows how it can.

The following is an excerpt from George Monbiot's Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning (South End Press, 2007).

All over Washington, you can hear the giant scraping sound of officials and legislators frantically back-tracking. After years of obfuscation, denial, and lies about climate change, all but the most hardened recidivists are rebranding themselves as friends of the earth.

In February, two senior White House officials published an open letter seeking to correct inaccurate stories in the press "that the President's concern about climate change is new. In fact," they reported, "climate change has been a top priority since the President's first year in office." To prove it, they had found 37 words Bush said about the subject in 2001; 46 words in 2002; and 32 words in January 2007. In January 2007 he had even managed to say "climate change." This demonstrated, they claimed, that he has shown "continued leadership on the issue."

Still under fire for Ohio election tricks, Kenneth Blackwell regroups

Landslide Republican gubernatorial loser signs on with Tony Perkins' Family Research Council

Over the years he's carried enough water for the GOP to fill up a good part of Lake Erie. He's done enough dirty work to pave the Interstate from Cleveland to Columbus. He is credited with being part of the team that helped double President George W. Bush's vote count among Blacks in Ohio in 2004, and is charged, by critics, of having tampered with that vote. So despite his humiliating defeat in the state's gubernatorial election last November, he remains a darling of both religious and economic conservatives.

Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

By John Solomon and Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 29, 2007; Page A01

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."

NYT OP ED: Who’s Watching Your Money?

By ROBERT M. MORGENTHAU

IN a ruling this month, the United States Supreme Court upheld an ill-advised regulation issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that exempted subsidiaries of national banks from regulation by state banking authorities. This regulation makes the comptroller the exclusive regulator of these banks, even though the office is financed almost entirely by the banks it oversees.

In the case, Watters v. Wachovia Bank, the court held that the National Bank Act barred Michigan’s bank regulator from overseeing the activities of the mortgage-lending subsidiary of Wachovia, a national bank, even though the subsidiary itself was a state-chartered institution. The court thus rejected the arguments of the attorneys general and bank regulators in all 50 states.

Warnings On Student Lenders Unheeded

Bush Aides Derailed New Rules in 2001

By Amit R. Paley

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2007; Page A01

The Bush administration killed a proposal to clamp down on the student loan industry six years ago following allegations that companies sought to shower universities with financial favors to help generate business, according to documents and interviews with government officials.

The proposed policy, which Education Department officials drafted near the end of the Clinton presidency and circulated at the start of the Bush administration, represented an early, significant but ultimately abortive government response to a problem that this year has grown into a major controversy.

'They sold out the world for an F-16 sale'

04/30/2007 @ 11:25 am

Filed by Luke Ryland

Onetime CIA analyst alleges Cheney, Libby lied to Congress about Pakistani nukes

In the era of Ronald Reagan, intelligence officer Richard Barlow was an analyst for the CIA, monitoring Pakistan's nuclear program. In 1989, he moved over to the Pentagon, where he worked for then-Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. Barlow lost that job when he raised objections to his bosses about senior Pentagon officials allegedly lying to Congress concerning Pakistan’s emerging nuclear program.

In a series of interviews with RAW STORY conducted over several weeks, the onetime intelligence officer revealed new details about intelligence on Pakistan’s nuclear program—and efforts by the US to quash attempts to stop development. Barlow's story also casts light on recent efforts by the current administration to keep information from Congress on Iraq and other matters.

Daily Kos: DOJ "Civil Rights Lawyer" Gets Cash Award for Suppressing Black Voters

by IceJustIce

Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 06:04:01 AM PDT

Crossposted (with permission) from ePluribus Media

by Publius Revolts

Yesterday morning's Washington Post story by Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein tells the story of Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Voting Section Lawyer Joshua Rogers, a

University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. about the time the judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile to civil rights.

According to the Post story, "[a] few months after he arrived, that lawyer [Rogers] was given a cash award by the department."

War Called Riskier Than Vietnam

Military Experts Fretful Over Long-Term Consequences

By Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 29, 2007; Page A19

President Bush recently said that "there's a lot of differences" between the current war in Iraq and the Vietnam War.

As fighting in Iraq enters its fifth year, an increasing number of experts in foreign policy and national strategy are arguing that the biggest difference may be that the Iraq war will inflict greater damage to U.S. interests than Vietnam did.

Is This Why Goodling Invoked The Fifth Amendment?

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Law Related
Posted on Sat Apr 28, 2007 at 10:22:50 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)

Anonymous Liberal has unearthed what appears to be an incriminating e-mail in which Monica Goodling instructed DOJ personnel to destroy documents that were clearly pertinent to an ongoing Congressional investigation. The e-mail, dated February 12, 2007, states in relevant part:

These are new and updated USA documents which can be used with the media or friendlies. Please delete prior versions. . .

Why could this be a criminal situation? Because of the federal obstruction statute.

The Real Headline from the Dems' Debate: "Nothing Happened"

Every news outlet seems to be leading with the debate the Democratic presidential candidates had in South Carolina last night. The reporters had to mine a thoroughly uneventful evening for a news hook, and so if you look around the web you'll find stuff like, "Everyone attacked Obama!" or "Obama was great, Hillary was awful!" or "Democrats target Bush!" Or whatever. In reality, here's what happened: nothing.

Provo, Utah Business Community Forms Blacklist Of Protesting Students

First, the Provo School District denied a venue to Brigham Young University students who wanted a place to hold an alternative commencement ceremony. The students, who did not want to attend the official ceremony with speaker Dick Cheney, had been promised space at a local high school, but then a memo suddenly appeared, telling all principals to deny use of their schools for the event.

'Cleared' inmates still held at Guantamo

04/29/2007 @ 10:56 am

Filed by RAW STORY

Over a fifth of inmates cleared for release at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay still remain there, reports the Washington Post.

"Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions," writes Craig Whitlock.

Letter to the Editor in Stars & Stripes: Painful questions about Iraq

It’s now more than four years since we invaded Iraq. It’s time the American people ask themselves some painful questions. Namely, are we a nation of hypocrites? Consider the following:

n Pre-emptive warfare: The world agrees it was wrong when Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler and even Saddam Hussein did it; why then is it somehow permissible for America to pre-emptively invade other sovereign nations? Wasn’t Pearl Harbor also pre-emptive warfare?

n Iraq war: Why did the U.S. ultimately spit in the face of the United Nations to invade Iraq for apparently spitting in the face of the U.N.? Why did we also use “dangerous nuclear weapons” in the form of depleted uranium as we invaded Iraq looking for supposed “dangerous nuclear weapons programs”?

Frank Rich: All The President's Press

SOMEHOW it’s hard to imagine David Halberstam yukking it up with Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz and two discarded “American Idol” contestants at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Before there was a Woodward and Bernstein, there was Halberstam, still not yet 30 in the early 1960s, calling those in power to account for lying about our “progress” in Vietnam. He did so even though J.F.K. told the publisher of The Times, “I wish like hell that you’d get Halberstam out of there.” He did so despite public ridicule from the dean of that era’s Georgetown punditocracy, the now forgotten columnist (and Vietnam War cheerleader) Joseph Alsop.

The War in Washington

By Elizabeth Drew

On no other issue has the Democratic takeover of Congress in January—presenting President Bush with an opposition Congress for the first time in his presidency—been more dramatic than on the Iraq war. Under the Republicans, Congress undoubtedly would not have taken the steps it has toward forcing a drawdown of US forces from Iraq—which a majority of members in both parties favor, no matter what they say publicly. Though both the House and the Senate took important steps in late March toward pressing the President to wind down the war, politicians in both parties are struggling to catch up with both the public's increasingly negative opinion of the war and the facts about what's actually happening in Iraq.