Digby

Impeachment

Has there ever been a president who deserved it more? I don't think so. Looking at this as someone who believes that until we hold them accountable for their crimes, these zombie crooks will keep doing this over and over again until our country is unrecognizable, my instinct is to scream it from the rafters. But I'm still not convinced that the Democrats should try to impeach. The problem for me is threefold and it has nothing to do with the merits of the case or the desirability of doing it. It's about the political landscape.

The Libby Motion

This is rich:

Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Bush’s decision to grant a commutation rather than an outright pardon has started a national conversation about sentencing generally.

“By saying that the sentence was excessive, I wonder if he understood the ramifications of saying that,” said Ellen S. Podgor, who teaches criminal law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla. “This is opening up a can of worms about federal sentencing.”

Digging Deeply

This is a very touching story about Bush's many weeks of agonized deliberation and careful thought about whether he should pardon Libby or commute his sentence. It is a portrait of a man wracked by the weight of presidential responsibility. It was, after all, among the most important decisions a leader ever makes. A man's life was at stake.

Because the deliberations were so closely held, those who spoke about them agreed to do so only anonymously. But by several different accounts, Mr. Bush spent weeks thinking about the case against Mr. Libby and consulting closely with senior officials, including Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel; and Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s departing counselor.

Mole Rat

Hollywood Fred the TV prosecutor is always in the front lines helping out his crooked Republican friends:

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

Excessive

In another installment of our day long fourth of July tribute to the depth and quality of the president's dedication to justice and mercy, here's yet another example for us to ponder. And this one touches on yet another scandal --- the US Attorney purge:

Thursday, June 28, 2007; A07

Paul K. Charlton, one of nine U.S. attorneys fired last year, told members of Congress yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has been overzealous in ordering federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, including in an Arizona murder case in which no body had been recovered.

Justice Department officials had branded Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Phoenix, disloyal because he opposed the death penalty in that case. But Charlton testified yesterday that Gonzales has been so eager to expand the use of capital punishment that the attorney general has been inattentive to the quality of evidence in some cases -- or the views of the prosecutors most familiar with them.

No Dice

For the final installment of our day long Independence Day tribute to President Bush's commitment to truth, justice and the American way, I direct you to Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings:

So I asked myself: self, if George W. Bush is so worried about excessive sentences, how has he acted in previous cases in which a sentence might seem excessive? Herewith, some examples, which I'll put below the fold. Here's the short version: Serving twelve years for a rape that DNA testing shows you didn't commit does not get you a pardon. Being represented by a lawyer who slept through large chunks of the trial does not get you a pardon. Being convicted of murder in proceedings that a court-appointed special master describes as ""a breakdown of the adversarial process" caused by the incompetence of your lawyer does not get you a pardon, even when someone else confesses on tape to the murder you were convicted of.

Very Close To The Tree

All over TV today I'm hearing references to Clinton's allegedly self-serving last minute pardons and how Scooter's commutation pales by comparison. Scott Stanzel in the press briefing put it this way:

Q Scott, what do you say to Democratic critics who say that the commutation of Libby's sentence was intended to mollify conservatives, his own Republicans included, who were beginning to break with him on issues ranging from immigration to Iraq?

MR. STANZEL: Well, if that was what we were responding to, then a full pardon would have been the answer of the day, because that's what many people -- many conservatives were asking for. And that is what the President did not do. He respected the jury verdict. There's still the hefty fine and the probation. And it's interesting to me -- there's much hypocrisy in Washington, D.C., but it seems to me that the hypocrisy demonstrated by Democratic leaders on this issue is rather startling. When you think about the previous administration and the 11th hour fire sale pardons, and issues that were provided commutations on the last day in the numbers of the hundreds, in the final time between the post-election period, it's really startling that they have the gall to criticize what we believe is a very considered, a very deliberate approach to a very unique case.

Overtipping

I was reading this post by Steve Benen about the latest John Solomon journalistic abortion on the endlessly fascinating topic of John Edwards' hair and I wondered if anyone knows whether the first tip on this story came from an oppo shop. (If you know, drop me a line.)

Here's why I'm curious. It is my understanding that reporters will receive a tip about something like this then do their own investigation and report the tip if it turned out to be true.(Or in the case of Barbara Comstock's 2000 operation, at least, actively seek out nasty nuggets of irrelevant slander to fuel the next day's smear cycle.) Journalistic ethics only require that the story be factual to justify running it, and since the tips are usually on background, it is not reported that it comes from an opposing campaign.

Mr. and Mrs. Nut

A number of people have blogged about this fascinating little James Fallows anecdote at the Atlantic blog and it's a really good one.

At the first meeting, one Republican woman on the commission said that the overwhelming threat was from China. Sooner or later the U.S. would end up in a military showdown with the Chinese Communists. There was no avoiding it, and we would only make ourselves weaker by waiting. No one else spoke up in support.

The same thing happened at the second meeting -- discussion from other commissioners about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, anarchy of failed states, etc, and then this one woman warning about the looming Chinese menace. And the third meeting too. Perhaps more.

I Heart Shuster

If you get a chance, watch David Shuster turn Fouad Ajami into a blubbering puddle of melting playdough on Hardball today. It is an awe inspiring performance by a reporter who knows the facts and refuses to let these neocon liars bluster and bloviate about irrelevancies.

The Village

I was awfully pleased this morning to see that Dan Froomkin and I are of the same mind when it comes to this silly "Clinton did it, too" defense of Scooters Skate:

[A]s it happens, the previous granting of clemency that is most analogous to what Bush did dates back neither to the Clinton or even the Nixon era, but to Bush's father's presidency.

In 1992, on the eve of his last Christmas in the White House, George H.W. Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair, in which he himself was also loosely implicated.

Guts

Bush Rips Democratic Lawmakers' Failures

President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.

"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."

Thom Hartman: American Rebellions (from 2003)

by Thom Hartmann

They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to government-backed global trade that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party

On a cold November day, activists gathered in a coastal town. The corporation had gone too far, and the two thousand people who’d jammed into the meeting hall were torn as to what to do about it. Unemployment was exploding and the economic crisis was deepening; corporate crime, governmental corruption spawned by corporate cash, and an ethos of greed were blamed. “Why do we wait?” demanded one at the meeting, a fisherman named George Hewes. “The more we delay, the more strength is acquired” by the company and its puppets in the government. “Now is the time to prove our courage,” he said. Soon, the moment came when the crowd decided for direct action and rushed into the streets.

The Mahablog: The Natives Are Restless

Filed under: Bush Administration, News Media, Congress — maha @ 9:16 am

Today David Broder looked through his telescope and spotted native savages just beyond the Potomac.

The belief that official Washington is deaf to the people’s wishes is a staple of political rhetoric for both Republicans and Democrats — even those, including Thompson, who have operated inside the Beltway for decades.

Let a reporter who is not running for anything suggest that exactly the opposite may be true: A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.

The sight of those spears and feathers and tribal campfires must’ve upset poor Broder’s chintz-and-teacup sensibilities.

New Iran Regime-Change Think Tank Opens in DC

By Spencer Ackerman - July 6, 2007, 1:18 PM

Meet Mahtaub "Mattie" Hojjati. A well-connected government and business consultant Hojjati is about to embark on a new career: revolutionary provocateur. She has two missions: to hasten the overthrow of the Iranian regime, and to convince the American public to support her.

Under the byline of Mattie Fein -- her husband is Bruce Fein, the prominent Reagan-era Justice Department lawyer last seen calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney -- Hojjati penned an op-ed in the Washington Times last week heralding the creation of a new think tank, known as the the Institute for Persian Studies, devoted to pushing the regime over the abyss. From her perspective, the nearly 30-year old Iranian Revolution is in a terminal phase. "The cue that most of the population is looking for is international support," she tells TPMmuckraker, "but right now, they're getting mixed signals."

The Clinton-Did-It Flimflam

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, July 6, 2007; 12:32 PM

The White House, which has been so adept at distracting the media from critical issues -- "Oh, look! A shiny penny!" as one of my readers puts it -- tossed out the shiniest penny of all yesterday.

Rather than address the most weighty criticism of President Bush's decision to commute former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby's prison sentence -- that it was part and parcel of a longtime cover-up of White House misdeeds -- press secretary Tony Snow lashed out at former President Bill Clinton and his would-be president wife for actions that date back more than six years.

Hedges, Private Equity, and the Little Guy

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=hedges_private_equity_and_the_little_guy

What happens to corporate and government pension plans when the bottom falls out on hedge funds?

Robert B. Reich | July 6, 2007

With the bond market dropping and the bull market slowing, hedge funds and private equity funds are all the rage on Wall Street, and their managers are raking in fortunes. These funds are so unregulated they can get high returns from risky deals unavailable to mutual funds or publicly-traded companies. And with lots of money sloshing around the global economy, those risky deals don’t seem all that risky. But what happens when the bottom falls out?

It’s one thing if wealthy investors lose the shirts off their backs. They still have plenty of freshly-ironed ones in the closet. In fact, the argument for not regulating hedge funds and private equity funds is that their investors are big enough and tough enough to take care of themselves.

A Farewell to Arms Control

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/06/2333/

by Scott Ritter

The organization that was at the center of the maelstrom of the Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, responsible for bringing the world to the brink of war on no fewer than a half-dozen occasions during the 1990s, and then unable to prevent a war in March 2003, has departed the global scene. It left not with a dramatic flair befitting its former status, but rather with barely a whimper, reduced to nothing more than a historical footnote in the grand tragedy that has become Iraq. The United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), successor to its more accomplished parent, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), was found to be redundant by an act of the United Nations Security Council, which created its disarmament mandate over 16 years ago when it passed Security Council Resolution 1687 in April 1991. The United States and Great Britain had been trying to close down the weapons inspection operation since the invasion of Iraq, citing the demise of Saddam Hussein and the occupation of Iraq by coalition forces as evidence that the U.N.-mandated inspection process was now moot.

Two Degrees From Devastation

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3234/two_degrees_from_devastation/

George Monbiot’s book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning argues that we must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent By Phoebe Connelly

George Monbiot has a challenge for those concerned about global warming: Stop flying. Of all the harmful things you can do to the earth, it’s hard to top traveling on a plane. Flying from, say, New York to London emits more than one ton of carbon dioxide per passenger.

Consequently, his current book tour might be the British journalist’s last trip to the United States. He’s here to promote Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, which argues that the only way to stop the current climate crisis is to cut greenhouse gas emissions 90 percent, starting immediately. The rationale goes like this: If concentrations of carbon dioxide in 2030 remain as great as they are today, the world will likely experience two degrees centigrade of warming above pre-industrial levels. Two degrees is the point at which, he writes, “certain major ecosystems begin collapsing. Having, until then, absorbed carbon dioxide, they release it. Beyond that point, in other words, climate change is out of our hands.” In Heat, he lays out the science behind this, as well as practicable suggestions for making these cuts.

Cannonfire: Getting Rich

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/07/getting-rich.html

Eleanor Clift (accessed by way of Josh Marshall) has offered the wisest "take" on Libby. Remember when we all expected Scooter to sing a song implicating Cheney and/or Rove? Instead, his lawyers barely put up a defense. Libby must have known all along that he would never do one day behind bars.

The President's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence has caused W's defenders to dredge up Bill Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. We have already taken one retrospective look at the Rich affair (scroll down or go here), and we have noted a delicious irony: Clinton's thinking was swayed, in part, by Rich's lawyer -- Scooter Libby.

Curious Crime Spree in Alabama

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000437

Seems that people who raise their voice in support of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman are often the victims of unfortunate accidents. Ask Dana Jill Simpson, the Rainsville Republican lawyer who notes that as soon as she told some friends that she had resolved to file an affidavit exposing what was going on in the Siegelman case, unfortunate accidents started happening. Like a fire at her home, and a brush with a motor vehicle operated by an off-duty law enforcement officer that resulted in her car being totaled. Well, maybe these were just accidents. In fact, Simpson seems convinced they were. But it’s clear that she has some vague and lingering doubts.

And then, following the sentencing phase of the Siegelman trial, his lawyer, Susan James, reports that her office was ransacked. These weren’t your ordinary vandals, it seems. They left computers, television sets, champagne and bottles of alcohol untouched. And they focused with laser-like intensity on her client files.

Outsourcing Intelligence

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000450

Beginning in 2002, it was apparent that Rumsfeld and Cheney had jointly developed a plan aimed at shifting the center of gravity in the U.S. intelligence community away from the Central Intelligence Agency and towards the Pentagon. In a sense it was always there. The portion of the national intelligence budget claimed by the Defense Department always dwarfed the CIA’s cut. Nevertheless, the CIA had the edge in analytical areas that mattered to Rumsfeld and Cheney. Among other things, these areas were essential to making a case for a war against Iraq. As we now know, the CIA and the National Intelligence Council had been skeptical of claims advanced and pushed by Cheney and Rumsfeld about Iraqi capabilities in the area of weapons of mass destruction.

The Invincible President

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_invincible_president

How the supposed "uniter" consolidated his power by fostering division.

Ezra Klein | July 5, 2007

"President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man," wrote The New York Times. "A leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants."

If the Buddha and Machiavelli had a child, this would be the type of liberation he'd speak about: Liberation from the suffering imposed by democratic checks and balances. It is a liberation George W. Bush has pursued with a single-minded vigor. From the beginning, he has consciously sought to govern from division, realizing early on that popularity can actually constrain an administration, and consensus is just another word for compromise.

Shut Up And Sing

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/shut_and_sing?tx=3

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 6, 2007 - 10:47am.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius makes a fundamentally authoritarian argument this morning:

Based on the tone of the national debate today, it seems likely that the American public would react angrily — but not just at the terrorists.

Liberals would blame the Bush administration for making America a more vulnerable target. Didn’t the war in Iraq inflame Muslim terrorists around the world? Wouldn’t we have been safer today if we had focused on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan rather than embarking on a costly war that has sapped the military and CIA and added to America’s enemies? These arguments aren’t imaginary: We hear them every day, almost as rehearsals for the post-attack finger-pointing.

Libby Pays The Man

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0705071libby1.html

Sentence commuted, convicted felon scoots to take care of 250K fine

JULY 5--On the same day that President George W. Bush wiped away his 30-month prison sentence, convicted former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby purchased a $250,400 cashier's check to cover fines imposed by the federal judge whose sentence was gutted by the presidential commutation. A copy of the July 2 cashier's check (which you can find below) was docketed today in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Paul Krugman: Sacrifice is for Suckers

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/07/paul-krugman-sacrifice-is-for-suckers.html

On this Fourth of July, President Bush compared the Iraq war to the Revolutionary War, and called for “more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.” Unfortunately, it seems that nobody asked the obvious question: “What sacrifices have you and your friends made, Mr. President?”

On second thought, there would be no point in asking that question. In Mr. Bush’s world, only the little people make sacrifices.

You see, the Iraq war, although Mr. Bush insists that it’s part of a Global War on Terror™, a fight to the death between good and evil, isn’t like America’s other great wars — wars in which the wealthy shared the financial burden through higher taxes and many members of the elite fought for their country.

National Hurricane Center Staff Mutinies

Friday July 6, 2007 4:01 AM

By JOHN PAIN

Associated Press Writer

MIAMI (AP) - Nearly half the National Hurricane Center's employees urged the federal government to replace their boss Thursday, saying they need to return their focus to protecting people from dangerous tropical weather.

A growing number of staffers believe that center Director Bill Proenza has damaged public confidence in their ability to forecast storms. Proenza has repeatedly and publicly criticized the government for failing to provide enough funding and to replace an aging weather satellite.

Americablog: General Odom's prescription for supporting the troops: withdraw; cut off funds; and impeach

by John Aravosis (DC) · 7/05/2007 07:53:00 PM ET
Discuss this post here: Comments (67) · digg it · reddit · FARK · · Link

General Odom was the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) under Reagan (think "Minority Report," and you have the NSA). They're the super-duper secret spy agency that's way more top secret than even the CIA. This guy's credentials are beyond stellar. Here is an excerpt of his recent essay:

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

In Iraq, contractors outnumber troops

Figures illustrate large role private firms play in war effort

By T. Christian Miller

Los Angeles Times

July 4, 2007

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.

More than 180,000 civilians -- including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis -- are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Including the recent troop surge, 160,000 troops and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

Independence Day

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 4, 2007 - 9:29pm.

I want to celebrate Independence Day by recommending a new book. It's not about conservatism per se. But it's one of the best manifestos I've seen about just how disastrous the conservative vision for American has truly been.

It's called The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat In Winner-Take-All America, and it's by a young writer named Daniel Brook.

Brook's got guts. Because frankly, his topic - the fate of the best and brightest graduates of our top-flight universities - sounds like a subject for whiners. Who cares about them, right? They'll do fine on their own. What do the lifestyle and career choices they make after college have to do with the well-being, moral and material, of the rest of us?

FDR's Latest Critics

Was the New Deal un-American?

By Eric Rauchway
Posted Thursday, July 5, 2007, at 7:18 AM ET

Seventy-five years ago this week, on July 2, 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for president and pledged "a new deal for the American people." He promised public works, agricultural price supports, new mortgage markets, working-hours legislation, securities regulation, freer world trade, reforestation, and repeal of Prohibition. Congress passed laws for all these goals and added, in his first term alone, watershed management, legalization of labor unions, deposit insurance and a stronger Federal Reserve Board, and Social Security. All these remain: We live in the nation the New Deal made.

Mortgage brokers are in Congress' sights

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 05, 2007 07:05:47 AM

WASHINGTON — Mortgage brokers, who originate up to two-thirds of home loans, have exploited their lack of federal regulation to loosen lending standards in ways that sparked today's high mortgage-default rates among borrowers with weak credit.

Hearings before Congress this year made it clear that mortgage brokers and nonbank lenders took advantage of a regulatory gap to make unsound home loans to people with the weakest credit history, preying especially on minorities and the working poor.

Now Congress must decide how best to bring brokers, who originated about 70 percent of so-called sub-prime loans over the past two years, under some form of federal regulation.

Superman Scooter

The Neocon corner has been training its well coordinated and still considerable press fire power (The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and Commentary in the lead, as usual) for some time in the defense of Scooter Libby, and yesterday evening it erupted in a display of triumph. Only left-wing kooks, they say, will be troubled by Bush’s decision that Scooter should do no time.

Sorry Thomas Friedman, The World Is Round

By Stephen Marshall, The Disinformation Company
Posted on July 5, 2007, Printed on July 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55418/

The following is an excerpt from Stephen Marshall's new book, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The New Liberal Menace in America.

Now every true revolution has a scribe, someone who is able to channel the zeitgeist into a passionate, living chronicle that fuels the insurgency and propels it to its ultimate historical destiny. The French Revolution had Voltaire, the American had Thomas Paine. For the new capitalist revolution, there is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. I know this because as I walk through the business class cabin of my United Airlines flight, passing all the young legionnaires of the jet-set globalist contingent, I count four copies of his bestselling book, The World Is Flat, and that's just in the first three rows. Seeing the books reminds me that Friedman was the only major figure to refuse my interview request. It's a drag, because there is probably no other liberal who fits the description of a wolf in sheep's clothing than America's preeminent globalization advocate.

Mixed Motives: A Conflation of Concerns on Iraq

By Chris Floyd | bio

Seth Gitell asks: What to do if and when Iran develops a nuclear weapon? Why, I imagine the United States will do what it has done with North Korea: finally sit down and negotiate. Or perhaps, as with India -- which illicitly created a bristling nuclear arsenal that destabilized a volatile region of the world -- we'll just shrug our shoulders and strike juicy deals that "legitimize" their illegal nuke program. Or maybe we'll follow the Bush example with Pakistan -- which not only built its own illicit nuclear arsenal but peddled the technology to "rogue states" around the world -- and give the Iranians billions of dollars in arms and aid. Or we could even adopt the approach used with Israel -- yet another nation with an illicit nuclear arsenal outside all international supervision -- and award Iran with unlimited military and economic largess and unstinting support for its treatment of certain religious and ethnic minorities within its borders.

A Memo for David Brooks

MEMORANDUM
From: Copy Desk
To: David Brooks
July 3, 2007

Mr. Brooks, our apologies. There was a snafu yesterday, and we neglected to send you the edited version of your latest column, which contained several queries from us. What appeared in today's Times was the copy you initially filed--with all those queries obviously unaddressed. Again, we apologize for the error and hope this did not cause you any trouble or embarrassment. For the record, below is the marked-up version of your column.

By DAVID BROOKS

In retrospect, Plamegate was a farce in five acts. The first four were scabrous, disgraceful and absurd. Justice only reared its head at the end. [Powerful opening. Setting the bar high. Must be proved.]

American dream still burns bright for many – but results vary

Men in their 30s earn about $5,000 less in real terms than their fathers' generation did, according to a new study.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

If the American dream means doing better than your parents did, then Mike Brockman's not living it. Single, with a 10-year-old daughter, he's a server at a Black Angus restaurant in Mesa, Ariz. His father at his age had a good, steady job as a machinist at TRW.

Today "there aren't the kind of jobs available you used to get with a high school education, and work yourself up," says Mr. Brockman. "Now you have to have training or experience to start – then you can work your way up from there."

The Libby Cover-up Completed

By Robert Parry
July 3, 2007

President George W. Bush’s decision to spare former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from jail marks the final act of a crime and cover-up that began four years ago when Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials launched a campaign to discredit a critic of the Iraq War.

That campaign started with the leaking of sensitive classified information, the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, destroying her career and jeopardizing the lives of her agents in other countries. That was followed by White House lies being told to both investigators and the public in order to shield the President from dangerous political fallout.

By commuting Libby’s 30-month jail sentence on July 2 – and dangling the possibility of a full pardon later – Bush has moved to ensure that Cheney’s former chief of staff keeps his mouth shut and that the full story is never told.

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment: You ceased to be the President of the United States

By: Nicole Belle on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 7:01 PM - PDT

Keith Olbermann delivers arguably his most pointed and most powerful Special Comment yet on the ramifications of Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence.

Frank Rich: When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal

By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 01 July 2007

Who knew that mocking the Constitution could be nearly as funny as shooting a hunting buddy in the face? Among other comic dividends, Dick Cheney's legal theory that the vice president is not part of the executive branch yielded a priceless weeklong series on "The Daily Show" and an online "Doonesbury Poll," conducted at Slate, to name Mr. Cheney's indeterminate branch of government.

The ridicule was so widespread that finally even this White House had to blink. By midweek, it had abandoned that particularly ludicrous argument, if not its spurious larger claim that Mr. Cheney gets a free pass to ignore rules regulating federal officials' handling of government secrets.

Al Gore: Moving Beyond Kyoto

The New York Times

Sunday 01 July 2007

Nashville - We - the human species - have arrived at a moment of decision. It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a species, but that is nevertheless the challenge that is before us.

Our home - Earth - is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

Without realizing the consequences of our actions, we have begun to put so much carbon dioxide into the thin shell of air surrounding our world that we have literally changed the heat balance between Earth and the Sun. If we don't stop doing this pretty quickly, the average temperature will increase to levels humans have never known and put an end to the favorable climate balance on which our civilization depends.

The Foreclosing of America (Part 1 of 3)

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 3, 2007 - 9:10am.

"The more ownership there is in America, the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country." -George W. Bush, June, 2004

The month of June come and gone. And down by the White House, a dog didn't bark. Most years, President Bush has celebrated June - National Homeownership Month - with a splashy speech. Not this year. This year, he stayed as far from the topic as he could get - a topic Karl Rove had hoped to make a cornerstone of his planned thousand-year Republican reign. What went wrong? In the next few posts I'll endeavor to explain.

First, a demonstration of the sheer size of the political bet the Republicans placed on exhorting as many Americans as possible to own their own homes. Exhibit A: the March, 2005 special issue on the "Ownership Society" of the magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, of the conservative movement's flagship think tanks. There are, lead author James Glassman wrote, three aims of Bush's dreamed-of Owernship Society: to "reform" Social Security, to "boost the economy by cutting taxes on dividends," and "to make home buying easier."

Book claims Reagan 'rescued' by Hollywood studios

07/02/2007 @ 12:25 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

A new book claims Hollywood movie studios paid off former President Ronald Reagan before his run for California governor with a sweetheart land deal that netted the former Screen Actors' Guild president nearly $2 million, the New York Post reports.

According to the Page Six item, the book, "Hollywood Confidential," documents how Reagan spent $85,000 in 1951 for hundreds of acres of less-than-prime land in Malibu.

'Scepticism' over climate claims

The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.

The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults - interviewed between 14 and 20 June - found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change.

Satellite images reveal link between urban growth and changing rainfall patterns

For the first time, scientists have used satellite images to demonstrate a link between rapid city growth and rainfall patterns, as well as to assess compliance with an international treaty to protect wetlands. The results have been published in two studies co-authored by Karen Seto, assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences and a fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

''The exciting thing is really for the first time, using a time series of satellite images, we can monitor Earth in a way that we haven't been able to,'' Seto said. ''It's not just about urban growth or wetlands-it could be about desertification or deforestation-but it's really just this issue of human modification of the Earth.''

How We Can Survive the Age of Energy Anxiety

By Peter Teague and Jeff Navin, The American Prospect
Posted on July 3, 2007, Printed on July 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55838/

This article is reprinted from the American Prospect.

The camera pans in on a scene in a simple American bedroom. An elderly woman sits on the bed, getting dressed to venture out into the cold. She puts on an old coat, over the top of another coat, and then a scarf and hat. Just when we think she's going to get up, she turns off the lamp, lies down, and pulls the covers up.

Fade to black.

Fighting the War on Terror: Democratic Opportunity, Republican Illusion

By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet
Posted on July 3, 2007, Printed on July 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55812/

Here's what we know: Democrats want to leave Iraq because it will allow us to focus on the world and make us safe from terrorism. Democrats are pushing for the adoption of the 9/11 Commission recommendations because we want to secure America. So is that message getting through? Clearly, not as well as they would like it to.

Republican inaction about common-sense measures to make America more safe has opened the door for Democrats to take back this issue. Republicans are playing a weak hand on security, but they play it -- they don't fold or sit on it. Democrats have a strong hand to play on security, but you can't win if you don't play.

Bush Lets Libby Walk

By David Corn, The Nation
Posted on July 3, 2007, Printed on July 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55850/

It's appropriate.

The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying.

Before the ink was dry on today's court order denying Scooter Libby's latest appeal -- a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction -- George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence.

Transportation Dept. fought emissions law

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Environmental Protection Agency deliberated on whether to allow California to implement its greenhouse gas law, another federal agency sought to mobilize state and federal lawmakers against the state's petition, documents show.

The 71 pages of Transportation Department e-mails and memos were released Friday to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who has contended that the Transportation Department's intervention with EPA was inappropriate and possibly illegal.

Secret document airs 'Terror Spectacular' fears

07/01/2007 @ 9:37 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

"A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror 'spectacular' this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document," ABC News reported Sunday on a blog.

A senior official with the Department of Homeland Security told ABC News that the document bears eerie resemblance to intelligence released in 2001 shortly before 9/11.

Recycling Iraq Lies: The Washington Post and the Mysterious Miss Shelton

A. Alexander, July 1st, 2007

Out of the blue, so it seemed, the Washington Post recently published an op-ed piece titled, "Iraq, al-Qaeda and Tenet's Equivocation." It was written by someone named Christina Shelton. As the author appeared to go out of her way to, in the most amateurish and laborious manner imaginable, rehash tired and thoroughly disproved tales of ties between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda; knowing who this Christina Shelton was, seemed central to understanding the true motivation behind the publication.

It should be noted that the contemporary recycling of the Iraq-al Qaeda yarn, is not happening by accident. A recent poll found that 41 percent of the American people continue to believe that, falsely of course, Saddam was somehow tied to the attacks on September 11, 2001. They didn't sanction the poll obviously, but the Bush administration does read and watch the news. They know there remains a healthy portion of the population that the government had intentionally misled and misinformed, who still believes the pre-war lies. That is why this past week, shortly after the poll was released, Mister Bush scurried off to a friendly public gathering among members of the Navy. He wanted to further the administration's latest narrative, a fictionalized theme asserting that al Qaeda is currently overrunning Iraq. It is a claim that not even Mister Bush's own senior intelligence analysts support.

‘It is Their Right, It is Their Duty, To Throw Off Such Government‘

by Caroline Arnold

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

– Declaration of Independence, 1776

Since we declared independence from a tyrannical government 231 years ago, we’ve done the best we could with the idea of democracy. It hasn’t been very good, but it got us by until a few years ago.

As we grew in population, wealth and power we created ever larger systems in both the public and private sectors. We mostly managed those systems with Command & Control, providing democratic processes and Constitutional “checks and balances” to keep power from accruing to individuals or private entities in government.

US consumers pay highest energy bills in decades

High oil prices are dampening consumer confidence.

By Ron Scherer | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

New York - The summer heat is sweltering, so you turn up the air conditioning. The kids need a trip to the beach, but first you need to fill up the family car. And your freelance business requires that you spend a few hours on the computer tonight.

Kilowatts, gallons — they all add up. Energy is now sucking money out of Americans' bank accounts at a record level — hitting $612 billion at an annual rate in the month of April, the last month of data. Over the past two years, energy bills as a share of income have risen and are now at their highest point since 1987, but still below the levels of the 1970s and early 1980s. For low-income households, some economists estimate energy consumption as a percentage of income is closing in on 10 percent.

A Primeval Tide of Toxins

Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006

MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

Unimpeachably Impeachable

By Ray McGovern
July 2, 2007

Last week’s four-part Washington Post feature on Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt in my mind as to whether he and President George W. Bush have committed the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment.

While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first.

Subpoenas from Capitol Hill are flying downtown into executive office buildings like paper airplanes, but the potential for obfuscation and delay is immense, and the danger to the Republic speaks for a more urgent, simpler approach.

Lobbyists Keep Country-Of-Origin Labels Off Meat, Produce

The New York Times | Andrew Martin | July 2, 2007 09:56 AM

Behind the contradiction is a lesson in political power in Washington, where lobbyists and members of Congress have managed to hold off the enforcement of a five-year-old law that required country-of-origin labeling on meat and produce as well as fish.

Now, with Democrats in control of Congress and mounting questions about the safety of food imported from China, proponents of the labeling law say they believe that they finally have momentum on their side.

Shrum and Dumber: The Memoirs of a Political Consultant Who Knew How to Lose

By Matthew Yglesias, Washington Monthly
Posted on July 2, 2007, Printed on July 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55255/

Reviewed: "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner" by Bob Shrum -- a strategist and consultant to presidential candidates Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, John Kerry and many other Democrats.

Walking around Washington, D.C., telling people you're reading Bob Shrum's forthcoming memoir turns out to be a fantastic small-talk gambit. People are astounded, confused, sympathetic. Someone gave him a book deal? Who would read that? Who would buy it? Good questions, all. But none quite as good as the question of why Shrum wrote the book.

Christian Reconstructionists Are Trying to Take Dominion in America -- and They Have Powerful Friends

By Jeremy Leaming, Church and State
Posted on July 2, 2007, Printed on July 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55717/

Tucked away a few miles off Interstate 40 just outside Asheville, N.C., the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center provides Southern Baptists with a remote place to facilitate the nurturing of "Biblical Solutions for Life."

The sprawling 1,300-acre compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains is made up of chapels, a book store, café, guest housing, drab-colored brick buildings, fences topped with barbed wire and plenty of wooded grounds for religious contemplation or recreation. It is not easily or quickly located; its address cannot be found via a Google Maps search or traced on a Global Positioning System (GPS).

Bush is Bluffing: The Farce of 'Executive Privilege'

By Eric Weiner, NPR Online
Posted on July 2, 2007, Printed on July 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55718/

President Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to coin the phrase "executive privilege," but not the first to invoke its principle: namely, that a president has the right to withhold certain information from Congress, the courts or anyone else — even when faced with a subpoena. Executive privilege, though, is a murky and mysterious concept. Here, an attempt to clarify the murk.

Is This the Beginning of the End for Damming America's Big Rivers?

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on July 2, 2007, Printed on July 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55587/

Usually shareholders meetings don't include traditional Native American salmon bakes and intertribal healing dances. But at the recent shareholders meeting for Berkshire Hathaway -- owned by investment icon Warren Buffett -- Omaha, Neb., got a taste of native culture -- all the way from the Pacific Northwest.

Yet the tribes -- the Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa of California, and the Klamath Tribes of Oregon -- weren't there to sing Buffett's praises like most of the attendees. They were there to introduce people to threatened native cultures and let Buffett know he made a really bad investment a few years back when his subsidiary Mid-American Energy Holdings bought power company PacifiCorp.

Digby: Obstruct The Obstructionists

I know everyone is probably headed out for the holiday, but if you have time for one more thing, read this post by Robert Borosage of the Campaign For America's Future:

In its first 40 hours, the new majority of the House of Representatives kept their promise to voters and passed legislation—increasing the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, empowering Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, cutting interest rates on student loans in half, revoking big oil subsidies and using the money to invest in renewable energy—that provided a down payment for a new direction for this country.

Digby: Integrity

Watergate conspirator Egil Krogh has an essay in the NY Times today that is worth reading. He writes about his experience in Richard Nixon's white house, when "national security" became the catch-all excuse for political lawbreaking and he explains how he came to regret what he had done:

I no longer believed that national security could justify my conduct. At my sentencing, I explained that national security is “subject to a wide range of definitions, a factor that makes all the more essential a painstaking approach to the definition of national security in any given instance.”

Digby: Week-end Follow-up

I have a couple of fascinating articles to recommend for you today if you're looking for something to think about besides a picture of a burning car. (Don't you think it's a little irresponsible for the press to fail to report all the good news in Glasgow today?)

The first is this great article by Rick Perlstein in the Columbia Journalism Review about the phenomenon of the "average American" which the likes of David Broder and Melinda Henneberger have made into their special professional niches.

In my post about Henneberger's rather dishonest anti-choice op-ed, I discussed this notion of elite reporters making anthropological forays into the exotic heart of middle America and inevitably returning totally reassured that all those good-hearted average Joes and Janes were actually just, like, them.

Digby: Flying Squads

McClatchy has a new article up called "Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?"

Uhm, yeah.

And here was an early clue:

Between 1958 and 1962, when Rehnquist was a private attorney in Arizona, he served as the director of Republican "ballot security" operations in poor neighborhoods in Phoenix. Rehnquist was part of Operation Eagle Eye, a flying squad of GOP lawyers that swept through polling places in minority-dominated districts to challenge the right of African Americans and Latinos to vote. At the time, Democratic poll watchers had to physically push Rehnquist out of the polling place to stop him from interfering with voting rights.

Digby: Mister Roberts

Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left makes a nice point today in his post called The Invidiousness of Expert Broderism, about the detached nature of the discussion surrounding the Supreme Court term by liberals and moderates who backed the Lieberdem impulse to put John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the high court because they were ... well, great guys. (They'd had beers with them!)

My personal feeling is that this court is going to practice a form of radical right wing judicial activism that will transform our country over the next generation. (Remember, everything the right accuses the left of doing is what they actually are doing.) Democrats will spend a major amount of time when they are in power trying to find legislative and executive remedies for the dramatic judicial tilt toward big business, fundamentalist religion and racist, discriminatory outcomes --- which will have been made in service to the Republican party and its donors. (After Bush vs. Gore I think we can finally dispense with any notion that the justices are non-partisan.)But we knew that didn't we, when the gang of 14 decided they needed to keep their powder dry for a rainy day?

Undoing Bush: how to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect

The Constitution
by David Cole

The courts
by Dahlia Lithwick

Civil service
by Ken Silverstein

The environment
by Bill McKibben

Science
by Chris (Chris C.) Mooney

The economy
by Dean Baker

The marketplace of ideas
by Jack Hitt

Intelligence
by James Bamford

The military
by Edward Luttwak

Diplomacy
by Anne-Marie Slaughter

The national character
by Earl Shorris

Wolfowitz Returns Home To Neoconservative Think Tank AEI

Former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz — who resigned last month after being embroiled in a corruption scandal at the World Bank — announced that he has found a comfortable landing pad from which to continue to disseminate his right-wing ideology:

Paul Wolfowitz vowed to continue in political life after he steps down as president of the World Bank this weekend following an internal revolt. … He said he would be joining the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, as a visiting scholar, which would allow him to continue influencing public policy.

Prior to his recent government service, Wolfowitz served as a member of AEI’s Council of Academic Advisors.

Cheney and the Constitution

Aziz Huq

If it weren't so frightening, the irony would be delicious: A Vice President who has done more than any other to push the envelope on executive privilege at the expense of the courts and Congress takes the position that his office has both legislative and executive functions so as to avoid accounting for the use of classified materials.

Any veneer of intellectual legitimacy that executive power defenders have caked on their vision of a monarchical executive evaporates in the glare of this naked opportunism. And the scope and nature of today's constitutional crisis comes into clearer focus.

New NSA Whistleblower Speaks

By David Swanson

A former member of U.S. military intelligence has decided to reveal what she knows about warrantless spying on Americans and about the fixing of intelligence in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion. The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes. But Kinne had been eavesdropping on two nongovernmental aid workers driving in Iraq who were panicked and trying to find safety before the bombs dropped. She focused on trying to protect them, and was reprimanded for the delay in translating the fax. She then challenged her officer in charge, Warrant Officer John Berry, on the credibility of the fax, and he told her that it was not her place or his to challenge such things. None of the other 20 or so people in the unit questioned anything, Kinne said.

In Iraq, a Private Realm Of Intelligence-Gathering

Firm Extends U.S. Government's Reach

By Steve Fainaru and Alec Klein

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 1, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- On the first floor of a tan building inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the full scope of Iraq's daily carnage is condensed into a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation.

Displayed on a 15-foot-wide screen, the report is the most current intelligence on significant enemy activity. Two men in khakis and tan polo shirts narrate from the back of the room. One morning recently, their report covered 168 incidents: rocket attacks in Tikrit, a cow-detonated bomb in Habbaniyah, seven bodies discovered floating in the Diyala River.

Home Values Slashed in Half? The Housing Bubble Is About to Burst

By Dean Baker, TruthOut.org. Posted June 30, 2007.

A somber tour of the housing market.

The latest data on housing sales showed that the inventory of unsold homes climbed to 4.4 million in May, yet another record. The current inventory would be more than a full year of housing sales in the mid-nineties, before the housing bubble began to take off. There is also a record inventory of new homes for sale. Economists usually expect that excess supply leads to a drop in prices, and in this case, there is a considerable excess supply of houses.

In fact, house prices by many measures are already falling. The National Association of Realtors reports that the median price of an existing home is down by 2.1 percent from its year-ago level. Prices have fallen by much more in some local markets. For example, an index constructed by Yale economist Robert Shiller shows that house prices are down by 4.9 percent in the Boston area and by 6 percent in San Diego. Adjusting for inflation, Shiller's measure implies that the real price of an average house in San Diego is down by almost 10 percent from its year-ago level. That's real money in a city where middle-income families might have purchased a $700,000 house in 2006.

Don't Misunderestimate Dick Cheney

By John Dean, FindLaw.com. Posted June 30, 2007.

It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. Also: shocking video of Colin Powell on Cheney's secret meetings with Bush.

Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.

The Real ANWR

A Canadian mining corporation, Northern Dynasty Minerals, is trying to create one of North America's largest open pit gold and copper mines in the heart of Alaska's Bristol Bay - a wonderland of fish-filled lakes, rivers and streams - home to some of the last great wild salmon runs and rainbow trout.

Most Americans who keep up on the news are familiar with the fight over drilling for oil exploration in the ANWR preserve but the real threat to Alaska's fishing and hunting ecological systems is not ANWR, but rather the proposed development of an open pit mining district at the headwaters of the two most famous salmon producing river drainages in Alaska.

Supremely Bad Decisions

by BRUCE SHAPIRO

[posted online on June 29, 2007]

Chief Justice John Roberts's astonishing claim in the Supreme Court's final ruling of the term, that he is "faithful to the heritage" of Brown v. Board of Education--while explicitly invalidating desegregation programs based on race--shows not just how far the Court has swung to the right but the profound corruption of ideas and language that motivate the Court's activist, conservative bloc.

Indeed, the entire final week of the Supreme Court term amounted to a grudge match on some of the right's longest-held policy grievances. Antitrust and New Deal-style business regulation? Strike down the nearly century-old ban on manufacturers fixing minimum prices! Free speech? Let school principals suspend a student for off-campus anti-drug satire--and along the way undo student free-speech rights granted during the Vietnam War! Racial discrimination? Ban race-based remedies for race-based segregation!