You don't have to hate other groups to love your own, researcher says

Shiite vs. Sunni. Red state vs. Blue state. Immigrant vs. native. While it may appear that conflict is an inevitable part of interaction between groups, research actually suggests that fighting, hating and contempt between groups is not a necessary part of human nature, according to an Ohio State University professor of psychology.

Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: August 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

The Worsening Nightmare

This will be my last post in the foreseeable future about the coming attack on Iran, widening war in the Middle East and beyond, and concerning the likely dire consequences within the United States. I will undoubtedly note stories and developments of special significance -- but as for documenting the inexorable path leading to actions that will be the moral and political equivalent of Nazi Germany's attack on Poland, no. No more of that. If you want to remain informed about the steps of our descent into hell, I recommend you follow Chris Floyd, Antiwar.com, and Counterpunch. (That list isn't intended to be exclusive by any means; those are a few of the best sites for "alternative" views of current events, and ones that I myself keep apprised of.)

Odds grow for recession, but lenders hold the key

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 16, 2007 06:41:49 PM

WASHINGTON — Wall Street's woes are raising the risk that the U.S. economy could sink into recession late this year or early next year.

Although few economic analysts put the odds of recession at better than 50 percent, most are now upping their probabilities.

"We've lowered our 2008 growth forecast to 1.5 percent, down from 2.3 percent previously and 1.8 percent in 2007. We now expect a consumer recession, for the first time in 17 years," said a revised forecast issued Thursday by Merrill Lynch.

Shaky Financial Ground Awaits Many American Retirees

The burden of long-term economic security in the United States is moving away from employers and the government onto the shoulders of workers - a transformation that Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker calls "The Great Risk Shift." The latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR) tackles the surrounding issues that older Americans will now face.

This publication presents analyses from five leading figures associated with identifying and tracking the shifting policy landscape of risk and responsibility. Hacker himself contributes the lead article -- outlining the trends and noting their dramatic consequences.

Glenn Greenwald: The Padilla verdict

Thursday August 16, 2007 16:18 EST

A federal jury in Miami today unanimously found U.S. citizen Jose Padilla guilty of "conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas." In so doing, the jury dealt an enormous blow not only to Padilla himself, but also to the theory which the Bush administration cited to justify its most extremist power over the last six years -- namely, the power to imprison U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, with no charges of any kind.

Padilla's story is by now depressingly familiar. Arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in April, 2002, he was declared to be an "enemy combatant" by George Bush and imprisoned in a naval brig for the next three-and-a-half years with no charges brought against him. The day following his arrest, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called a hastily arranged news conference in Moscow to announce that Padilla was attempting to detonate a radiological weapon in the U.S., and from that point forward, the media referred to him as the "Dirty Bomber."

Whose Report Is It, Anyway?

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, August 16, 2007; 12:26 PM

The "Petraeus Report" -- the supposedly trustworthy mid-September reckoning of military and political progress in Iraq by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker -- is instead looking more like a White House con job in the making.

The Bush administration has been trying for months to restore its credibility on Iraq (as well as stall for time) by focusing on Petraeus -- President Bush's "main man" in Iraq -- and his report to Congress. But now it turns out it that White House aides will actually write the "Petraeus Report," not the general himself.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Tough Oil on Tap

News stories just out report that the Bush administration is planning to designate Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist" in order to tighten sanctions on that country. This follows a many-months-long drumbeat of U.S. claims against Iran -- for arming not just Shiite militias (and Sunni insurgents) with the most sophisticated roadside bombs to attack American troops, but the Taliban as well (an especially unlikely charge).

Pentagon Paid $999,798 to Ship Two 19-Cent Washers to Texas

Tony Capaccio
Thu Aug 16, 11:59 AM ET

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

ACLU Challenges Louisiana Law Funneling Taxpayer Funds to Favored Churches

(8/13/2007)

Group Calls Cash Grants Unconstitutional

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org

NEW ORLEANS – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a lawsuit today asking a federal judge to halt the payment of state taxpayer money to two Louisiana churches.

"The government cannot simply choose to subsidize its favorite houses of worship with taxpayer dollars," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns

By Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN

(CNN) -- Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

Dear Cindy: Please Don't Run

On July 25, Cindy Sheehan announced that since Nancy Pelosi failed to move to impeach Bush and Cheney by Sheehan's deadline two days earlier, she will run as an independent for Pelosi's seat in Congress. I have a lot of respect for Sheehan, but I hope she'll reconsider.

First of all, should impeachment really be a litmus test? Sure, it would be emotionally satisfying to haul the president before the Senate--look how much fun the Republicans had with Clinton. I understand why some of my Nation colleagues are so keen on it. But it's not going to happen--the numbers in Congress and Senate aren't there , and I don't care how many people sign petitions and call their congressperson, that is not going to change. Despise the Democrats for caving in -- on war funding, on FISA, on abstinence-only education. Pressure them, confront them, make them feel your wrath. But to insist that they work themselves into a lather for what is essentially a symbolic gesture with no chance of success? I don't see the point of that.

An Act of Economic Madness

News stories just out report that the Bush administration is planning to designate Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist" in order to tighten sanctions on that country. This follows a many-months-long drumbeat of U.S. claims against Iran -- for arming not just Shiite militias (and Sunni insurgents) with the most sophisticated roadside bombs to attack American troops, but the Taliban as well (an especially unlikely charge). It also follows a growing eagerness in Congress for passage of the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act; reports of rising administration frustration over the UN Security Council's unwillingness to pass a third round of sanctions against Iran; a flurry of insider leaks that the Cheney wing of the administration is again pushing for military action against the Iranians and that the Vice President himself has urged the launching of "airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps"; reports that neocon think-tanks and pundits are joining the attack-Iran fray; constant claims from the President's commanders and diplomats that the hand of Iran is behind any administration misstep in the Middle East. In this context, it's worth remembering that the President has long claimed he would not leave office with the Iranian nuclear situation unsettled.

Humans fostering forest-destroying disease

Enjoying your August vacation? Well, (as they say in the summer movies) there’s a killer in the woods. Its strike has been consistently quiet, sudden, and deadly. Unknowingly, we have all been playing into its hands… But put down that rock -- you personally are not in any danger. It’s the woods themselves that are getting axed and you may be an accomplice.

Melodrama aside, the threat is very serious – the killer is an invasive, forest-destroying plant disease known as Sudden Oak Death. Caused by an (apparently) non-native water mold (Phytophthora ramorum), the disease affects a broad range of woody plants, and is particularly lethal to our native oaks. In the last few years, it has infected and killed large stands of western oaks with alarming suddenness (hence the name). From its initial California appearance sometime in the mid-1990’s, the disease has been spreading rapidly, changing the landscape as it goes.

Swift-Boating Hillary Clinton

After years of systematically trying to destroy her reputation and derail her political career, GOP operatives and surrogates again have Hillary Clinton in their crosshairs. Has she already taken their best?

A recent USA Today/Gallup Poll found that New York Senator Hillary Clinton "has significantly widened her lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination." While it is still many months away from the first primaries and it is by no means a done deal, the former First Lady appears to be heading for the nomination.

DOD Stops Plan to Send Christian Video Game to Troops in Iraq

August 15, 2007 11:19 AM

Anna Schecter Reports:

Plans by a Christian group to send an evangelical video game to U.S. troops in Iraq were abruptly halted yesterday by the Department of Defense after ABC News inquired about the program.

Operation Start Up (OSU) Tour, an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among soldiers, will not be sending the "apocryphal" video game in care packages as planned, according to the department.

Rove's Science of Dirty Tricks

By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate
Posted on August 16, 2007, Printed on August 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59894/

Karl Rove's resignation as deputy White House chief of staff cements the political future of the waning Bush administration. George W. will have little to do except wield his veto pen; he doesn't need the steadying hand of Rove for that, or his strategic insight.

As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign "in order to spend more time with family," a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed "Bush's Brain" by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore -- yet very little sticks to the man. Bearing in mind that we presume innocence until guilt is proved, read on:

Democrats Beware: An Economic Populist Is Rising In the GOP's Presidential Primary

By David Sirota, Working Assets
Posted on August 14, 2007, Printed on August 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59706/

Leave it to the New York Times' crack campaign team to take what is a truly interesting story from the Republican presidential primary and boil it down into an uninteresting, hackneyed attempt to mimic People magazine-style nonsense (Suggestion for a new Times slogan: All the fluff that's fit to print). The Gray Lady - like almost every other major news outlet that is covering the campaign - uses former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's (R) surprising second-place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll as an excuse to write not about the unique nature of Huckabee's substantive message, but to make the claim that the only reason he is getting ahead is because his "humor amounts to a style of politicking that many audiences have found engaging."

Existing Home Sales Fall in 41 States

Wednesday August 15, 7:08 pm ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer Existing Home Sales Fall in 41 States While Home Prices Are Down in a Third of Cities Surveyed WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of existing homes fell in 41 states during the April-June quarter while home prices were down in one-third of the metropolitan areas surveyed, a real estate trade group reported Wednesday.

The new figures from the National Association of Realtors underscored the severity of the current housing slump, the worst downturn in 16 years.

However, Realtors officials said they saw some glimmers of hope in the data. They noted that existing home prices were up in 97 of the 149 metropolitan areas surveyed compared with the sales prices of a year ago.

TPM Muckraker: Tom DeLay Briefed on Warrantless Surveillance in March '04

By Spencer Ackerman - August 15, 2007, 11:26 AM

Here's something that comes to us via very-alert DailyKos diarist drational. The day after Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card ran to John Ashcroft's hospital room to have him overrule acting attorney general James Comey's determination that the administration's warrantless surveillance program was illegal, the White House gave a briefing on the super-secret program to none other than Tom DeLay.

Practically no members of Congress knew about the surveillance. The White House typically limited Congressional notification about the program to the bipartisan political leadership of the House and Senate and the heads of the Congressional intelligence committees -- the so-called Gang of Eight. DeLay, then the top House Republican, has no intelligence experience, and just the day before, at the White House, House Speaker Dennis Hastert received a briefing about the program, making DeLay's presence the next day redundant. The second-ranking House Democrat in 2004, then-whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, didn't receive a similar briefing.

Foreclosures hitting hard

Posted on Wed, Aug. 15, 2007
Foreclosures hitting hard
Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 15, 2007 05:36:16 PM

WASHINGTON — A central California agricultural town, the automobile capital of the world and a down-on-its-luck gambling hotspot had the nation's highest rates of foreclosure filings for the first half of 2007, according to real estate data released Tuesday.

Stockton, Calif., Detroit and Las Vegas — three areas with vastly different economies and demographic trends — have all been hit hard by the nation's growing foreclosure crisis, which is ravaging both major urban areas and Middle America.

Despite violence drop, officers see bleak future for Iraq

Posted on Wed, Aug. 15, 2007

Despite violence drop, officers see bleak future for Iraq

Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 15, 2007 11:14:36 AM

BAGHDAD — Despite U.S. claims that violence is down in the Iraqi capital, U.S. military officers are offering a bleak picture of Iraq’s future, saying they’ve yet to see any signs of reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims despite the drop in violence.

Without reconciliation, the military officers say, any decline in violence will be temporary and bloodshed could return to previous levels as soon as the U.S. military cuts back its campaign against insurgent attacks.

US spy satellites to be used on Americans

08/15/2007 @ 8:35 am

Filed by Nick Juliano

Local and federal agencies are to have vastly expanded access to information gathered from spy satellites in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports.

Information from "some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools" will soon be at the disposal of a wide array of law enforcement agencies at all levels of government, reports Robert Block in the Journal Wednesday. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell decided to increase access to the spy data earlier this year and asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to facilitate access to the spy data by civilian agencies and law enforcement.

The age of endarkenment

Why is no one questioning the rise of new-age nonsense in the name of science, asks David Colquhoun

Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday August 15 2007

"Education: Elitist activity. Cost ineffective. Unpopular with Grey Suits. Now largely replaced by Training." Michael O'Donnell, in A Sceptic's Medical Dictionary (BMJ publishing, 1997)

The enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the real world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Real universities were created and eventually democracy took hold. The modern world was born. Until recently we were making good progress. So what went wrong?

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable. This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

STUPID AND EVIL

By David Podvin

Conservatives believe America must fight the terrorists over there or we will have to fight them over here, so George W. Bush has deliberately transformed Iraq into the Middle Eastern version of a roach motel. The concept is that while Americans maintain occupation villains from throughout the Islamic world will flock to the country and – as the commercial famously boasts – they will check in but they won’t check out.

The strategy has two major flaws, the first of which is that it’s demonstrably stupid. Al Qaeda has more members now than it had on 9/11. Rather than being a graveyard for the jihadist movement Iraq has become an incubator, producing terrorist hatchlings by the ton. No matter what transpires in Iraq Bush’s enhancement of the al Qaeda membership roll will inevitably make America less secure. This disturbing little fact would deter normal people from staying the course, but if conservatives were normal people they wouldn’t be conservatives.

Bush's lethal legacy: more executions

The US already kills more of its prisoners than almost any other country. Now the White House plans to cut the right of appeal of death row inmates...

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

Published: 15 August 2007

The Bush administration is preparing to speed up the executions of criminals who are on death row across the United States, in effect, cutting out several layers of appeals in the federal courts so that prisoners can be "fast-tracked" to their deaths.

With less than 18 months to go to secure a presidential legacy, President Bush has turned to an issue he has specialised in since approving a record number of executions while Governor of Texas.

US delegation views slow recovery from Katrina nearly 2 years after storm

NEW ORLEANS: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday led a Democratic congressional delegation on a tour of areas still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina nearly two years after the storm, trying to determine where more federal help is needed.

Katrina and its aftermath were a "challenge to the conscience of the country in a huge way," Pelosi said.

Pakistan: "The Taliban's Godfather"?

Washington D.C., August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Petraeus’ September Report Will Be Written By The White House

The Los Angeles Times reports that Gen. David Petraeus’ upcoming Sept. 15 report on Iraq will be authored by the White House:

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

The Myths of World War II

By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
Posted on August 13, 2007, Printed on August 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59653/

Back in April, the Library of Congress Veterans History Project and the Public Broadcasting Service announced a collaborative initiative to collect war stories, which will include Ken Burns' new film, The War, slated to air on September 23.

Given Burns' masterful look back on the two best cultural gifts America has ever given the world -- jazz and baseball -- I'm looking forward to his soon-to-be-released documentary.

Fox News Caught Editing Al Franken's Wikipedia Entry

Posted by Matt Stoller on August 15, 2007 at 5:54 AM.

This post, written by Matt Stoller, originally appeared on Open Left

There's a new tool out there that lets you search the destination IP addresses for people editing wikipedia entries. Arthur Bergman found that folks at Fox News's IP address were editing Al Franken's entry. Apparently, Fox News propagandists deleted Franken's statement that Fox News's legal case against Franken was ""literally laughed out of court" and that "wholly (holy) without merit" is a good characterization of Fox News itself." The Fox News users also added a 'liberal' adjective when characterizing the NPR show 'Fresh Air'.

The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products

By Vanja Petrovic, AlterNet
Posted on August 15, 2007, Printed on August 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59714/

American industry would have you believe that taking potentially hazardous and toxic chemicals out of everyday consumer products -- removing phthalates from children's toys and cancer-causing coal tar from hair dye -- would damage our economy and result in a loss of American jobs. In his latest book, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, Mark Schapiro busts this myth and reveals the grim fact that some companies, whether American or international, often have two production lines: one that manufactures hazard-free products for the European Union and another that produces toxin-filled versions of the same items for America and developing countries.

Glenn Greenwald: The Islamists Are Coming

Glenn Reynolds today sends his readers to this absolutely exquisite essay from Roger Simon of Pajamas Media, who explains why his support for gay marriage and women's rights leads him to be such a committed warrior in the War against Islamofascism:

I never cease to be amazed –- and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. They act as if the threat is not real and is only a blip caused by a post 9/11 overreaction by George Bush, thus ignoring virtually all of Western history since the year 800, not to mention the overwhelming demographic changes of recent decades. (John Edwards –- interestingly an opponent of gay marriage -- recently called the "War on Terror" a bumper sticker. At least, he’s consistent.).

Paul Krugman: It's All About Them

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 13 August 2007

Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your father's political campaign.

Last week, at one of Mitt Romney's "Ask Mitt" forums, a woman in the audience asked Mr. Romney whether any of his five sons are serving in the military and, if not, when they plan to enlist.

The candidate replied with a rambling attempt to change the subject, but near the end he let his real feelings slip. "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation," he said, "and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I'd be a great president."

Glenn Greenwald: The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq

Last Wednesday, I interviewed Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution regarding the trip he recently took to Iraq and the highly publicized Op-Ed in the New York Times about his trip, co-written with his Brookings colleague, Ken Pollack. The full transcript of the interview, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, can be read here.

O'Hanlon's answers, along with several other facts now known, demonstrate rather conclusively what a fraud this Op-Ed was, and even more so, the deceitfulness of the intense news coverage it generated. Most of the critical attention in the immediate aftermath of the media blitz focused on the misleading depiction of the pro-war Pollack and O'Hanlon as "critics of the administration." To his credit, O'Hanlon acknowledged (in my interview with him, though never in any of the media appearances he did) that many of the descriptions applied to him -- including Dick Cheney's claim that the Op-Ed was written by "critics of the war" -- were inaccurate:

First, I think that to an extent, at least, it's certainly fair to go over a person's record when that person themself is being held up as playing a certain role in the debate. So while I'm not entirely happy with some of the coverage I've received here [on this blog] and elsewhere, I agree with the basic premise: that if I'm being held up as a "critic of the war", for example by Vice President Cheney, it's certainly only fair to ask if that is a proper characterization of me. And in fact I would not even use that characterization of myself, as I will elaborate in a moment.

TPM Muckraker: Today's Must Read

By Spencer Ackerman - August 13, 2007, 9:31 AM

Here's a guide for future intelligence chiefs who want to take a shortcut around the law. Start out with a genuine problem. Propose a genuine solution, but build into it a bit more leeway for intelligence collection. Negotiate slowly and deliberately. Then use the threat of a terrorist attack at the end of the congressional session to ram through an evisceration of the problematic law, carving out from it all meaningful protections for American citizens. Watch a stunned opposition acquiesce.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times present that general outline to explain how the Bush administration gutted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act earlier this month. As reported earlier, the FISA Court ruled in March -- the Post provides the date -- that foreign-to-foreign communications, previously unprotected under FISA, required warrants for surveillance as they passed through U.S. communication switches. Admiral Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, saw the National Security Agency "losing capability," in the words of one intelligence official, due to a surveillance backlog generated by the Court ruling.

In Fundraising's Murky Corners

Candidates See Little of Millions Collected by Linda Chavez's Family

By Matthew Mosk

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 13, 2007; Page A01

Linda Chavez rose to prominence in the 1980s as a tart-tongued Reagan administration official and candidate for the Senate, eventually becoming a well-known Latina voice on social issues and President Bush's choice to lead the Labor Department. With her conservative celebrity came book deals, a syndicated column, regular appearances on the Fox News Channel -- and a striking but little-known success at political fundraising.

In the years since she was forced to pull her nomination as Bush's labor secretary after admitting payments to an illegal immigrant, Chavez and her immediate family members have used phone banks and direct-mail solicitations to raise tens of millions of dollars, founding several political action committees with bankable names: the Republican Issues Committee, the Latino Alliance, Stop Union Political Abuse and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee. Their solicitations promise direct action in the "fight to save unborn lives," a vigorous struggle against "big labor bosses" and a crippling of "liberal politics in the country."

Author Mansfield Envisions a "Better Society...Less Open to Non-Christian Religions"

By DonByrd

Last week, USAToday published a troubling On Religion column by Stephen Mansfield. In it, the author of The Faith of George Bush called up all of the standard church-state myths and misdirections: that the Founders intended America to be a Christian nation, that religion is being stripped from the public square, that there is no constitutional wall of separation, that preachers are now forbidden from speaking out on the issues of the day by godless "storm troops" like the ACLU... Sadly, we hear these untruths often.

But in a recent interview with Focus on the Family, promoting his new book, Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America ... and What's Happened Since, Mansfield painted a shockingly blunt picture of his goals. Read on for the details...

The Real Reason for Rove's Resignation

Posted by Jane Hamsher at 7:59 AM on August 13, 2007.

Jane Hamsher: What does the mainstream press know, that they're not telling us, about Rove's resignation announcement?

This post, written by Jane Hamsher, originally appeared on FireDogLake

Watching the morning kabuki on television about Rove's resignation is quite something. They're all taking it at face value and nobody is speculating as to what the truth of the matter might be. You know that behind the scenes they're saying something else amongst themselves, but they really just do not see their identity as journalists who report what they know. Their loyalty is to a "tribe," a whispering coffee klatch that viewers simply do not get a chance to be a part of.

Karl Rove to leave White House

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
45 minutes ago

Karl Rove, the political mastermind behind President Bush's races for the White House and an adviser with unparalleled influence over the past 6 1/2 turbulent years, announced his resignation Monday, ending a partnership stretching back more than three decades.

It was a major loss for Bush as he heads into the twilight of his presidency, battered in the polls, facing a hostile Democratic Congress and waging an unpopular war. A half dozen other senior advisers have left in recent months, forcing the White House to rebuild its staff at the same time the president is running out of influence.

Rising temperatures "will stunt rainforest growth"

Plants suffering in the heat could make global warming worse.

Michael Hopkin

Global warming could cut the rate at which trees in tropical rainforests grow by as much as half, according to more than two decades' worth of data from forests in Panama and Malaysia. The effect — so far largely overlooked by climate modellers — could severely erode or even remove the ability of tropical rainforests to remove carbon dioxide from the air as they grow.

The study shows that rising average temperatures have reduced growth rates by up to 50% in the two rainforests, which have both experienced climate warming above the world average over the past few decades. The trend is shown by data stretching back to 1981 collected from hundreds of thousands of individual trees.

FRANK RICH: Shuffling Off to Crawford, 2007 Edition

The cases of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch were ugly enough. So surely someone in the White House might have the good taste to draw the line at exploiting the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But nothing is out of bounds for a government that puts the darkest arts of politics and public relations above even the exigencies of war.

As Jane Mayer told the story in last week’s New Yorker, Mariane Pearl was called by Alberto Gonzales with some good news in March: the Justice Department was releasing a transcript in which the long-incarcerated Qaeda thug Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of her husband. But there was something off about Mr. Gonzales’s news. It was almost four years old.

Video Surfaces of Cheney, in 1994, Warning That An Invasion of Iraq Would Lead to 'Quagmire'

By E&P Staff

Published: August 12, 2007 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK It's not the first time that citizen "investigative journalists" have uncovered some embarrassing, or telling, nugget from the past that apparently remained buried for years. But it has happened again with the posting of a now wildly popular video on YouTube that shows Dick Cheney explaining in 1994 that trying to take over Iraq would be a "bad idea" and lead to a "quagmire."

The people who put it up come from a site called Grand Theft Country, the on-screen source appears to be the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the date on the screen is April 15, 1994. That looks right, by the age of Cheney.