CBS confirms 2006 Raw Story scoop: Plame's job was to keep nukes from Iran

10/20/2007 @ 12:43 pm

Filed by Muriel Kane and Dave Edwards

CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."

"Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons," Plame told 60 Minutes. Plame also indicated that her outing in 2003 had caused grave damage to CIA operations, saying, "All the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases" to see where she had gone and who she had met with.

Panel: Blackwater tried to take Iraqi aircraft

WASHINGTON (AP) — Blackwater USA tried to take at least two Iraqi military aircraft out of Iraq two years ago and refused to give the planes back when Iraqi officials sought to reclaim them, according to a congressional committee investigating the private security contractor.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wants the company to provide all documents related to the attempted shipment and to explain where the aircraft are now.

Ted Rall: Onward, Christian Panderers

Pols Push U.S. Toward Theocracy

WASHINGTON--A poll finds that 55 percent of Americans think the U.S. was created as a Christian theocracy. "The strong support for official recognition of the majority faith appears to be grounded in a belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, in spite of the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions God or Christianity," says Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center.

Sadly, these morons are allowed to vote. Tragically, one of them is a major presidential candidate. "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," John McCain recently told an interviewer.

Paul Krugman: Death of the Machine

“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.” So declared Mark Hanna, the great Gilded Age political boss.

Karl Rove has often described Hanna as his role model. And predictions that Mr. Rove and his disciples would succeed in creating a permanent Republican majority — I have a whole bookshelf of volumes with titles like “One Party Nation” and “Building Red America” — depended crucially on the assumption that the G.O.P. would have vastly more money than its opponents. It might even, some thought, match the 10-to-1 advantage Hanna gave William McKinley when he ran against William Jennings Bryan.

James Watson: Master of the scientific gaffe

London's Science Museum has cancelled a sell-out talk by James Watson this Friday. It follows his remarks in an interview with the Sunday Times, in which he suggested that black people are less intelligent than white people. He was quoted as saying that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He went on to say that his hope is that everyone is equal, but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

The Science Museum said that he had "gone beyond the point of acceptable debate" and axed the talk, which was planned to be the first of several in the UK to promote his new book, Avoid Boring People. You can find out more about the book in our interview with Watson, in which he talks at length about his scientific career.

Oil prices soar. But why?

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: October 18, 2007 06:41:43 PM

WASHINGTON — When investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co. said in March 2005 that oil prices could surpass $100 a barrel, it was accused of fear-mongering. Oil prices, after all, were around $57 a barrel.

This week, competitor Barclays Capital led a research report with this statement: "The issue seems no longer to be whether oil will reach $100 a barrel, but when." That statement barely raised an eyebrow.

Prices for contracts of future delivery of oil, called futures, closed up $2.07 on Thursday to $89.47 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In after-hours electronic trading, prices hit $90.02. Prices are up almost $39 from a Jan. 18 low of $50.48 a barrel.

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again.

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.

Katha Pollitt: With Facts on Our Side

For years feminists and prochoicers have pointed out that women have abortions whether or not the procedure is legal.

That was true here before Roe v. Wade, and it is true today in countries where abortion is restricted or banned. The difference is that when abortion is legal it is a remarkably safe procedure; when it is illegal, women are injured, women die, children are left motherless. (True, these are already-existing, sinful children, not embryos or fetuses, but still.) This simple public health argument has gotten lost in a thicket of theology, sexual morality, "family values," politics, spin and outright disinformation. The coat hanger has become a political cliché, a relic of the '60s, like the peace sign. Oh, that old thing.

Katha Pollitt: How Many Times Can a Country Lose its Innocence?

I've been thinking recently about the many ways in which we conceal from ourselves the truths we know we know. At the Shocked, Shocked conference at NYU on Saturday -- the subhead of which was the comical/exasperated "Just how many times can a country lose its innocence?" -- the Yale historian David Blight gave a riveting talk about how over the second half of the 19th century the Civil War became memorialized as a conflict between "two right sides " -- Union and Confederate-- and "reconciliation" came to mean focussing exclusively on the valor of the soldiers in both armies. Slavery? Black people? Neither fit the narrative of reuniting North and South. For that, the causes and purposes of the war had to be obscured, the past -- the real past -- forgotten. The slaveowner and the slave dropped out of the public story, the soldiers in blue and gray became the star players. In this way, the country could bind up its wounds and move on triumphantly without having to confront the reconstitution of white supremacy in the South, or Northern racism either. Napoleon quipped that the winners write history, but until the civil rights movement, the history of the Civil War was largely written by the South.

Hillary's Mystery Money Men

by RUSS BAKER & ADAM FEDERMAN

[from the November 5, 2007 issue]

In the Clintons' pursuit of power, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps.

Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency. The persistently unprofitable Harken--many of whose board members, connected to powerful foreign interests and the intelligence community, nevertheless profited enormously--faced intense scrutiny in the early 1990s and again during Bush's first term.

Tomgram: Do We Already Have Our Pentagon Papers?

Bush's Pentagon Papers
The Urge to Confess
By Tom Engelhardt

They can't help themselves. They want to confess.

How else to explain the torture memorandums that continue to flow out of the inner sancta of this administration, the most recent of which were evidently leaked to the New York Times. Those two, from the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, were written in 2005 and recommitted the administration to the torture techniques it had been pushing for years. As the Times noted, the first of those memorandums, from February of that year, was "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." The second "secret opinion" was issued as Congress moved to outlaw "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment (not that such acts weren't already against U.S. and international law). It brazenly "declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard"; and, the Times assured us, "the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums."

Bioneers: Groundbreaking Ways to Repair the Earth

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on October 19, 2007, Printed on October 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65599/

Human creativity focused on problem solving can explode the mythology of resignation and despair. It is this point of view that inspires the annual Bioneers conference that takes place each fall in the San Francisco Bay area, which now streams via satellite to 19 sites across the country. The conference (10/19-21 in San Rafael, Calif.) is a gathering of scientific and social innovators who are developing and implementing visionary and practical models for restoring community, justice and democracy, as well as the Earth itself.

Speakers this year include author, Alice Walker, inventor and entrepreneur; Jay Harmon, community arts pioneer; Judy Baca, environmental justice leader; Van Jones, Whole Earth Catalog founder; Stewart Brand; and Native American activist Winbona LaDuke.

Building God's (Christian) Army

By Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor
Posted on October 19, 2007, Printed on October 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65597/

At Speicher base in Iraq, U.S. Army Spec. Jeremy Hall got permission from a chaplain in August to post fliers announcing a meeting for atheists and other nonbelievers. When the group gathered, Specialist Hall alleges, his Army major supervisor disrupted the meeting and threatened to retaliate against him, including blocking his reenlistment in the Army.

Months earlier, Hall charges, he had been publicly berated by a staff sergeant for not agreeing to join in a Thanksgiving Day prayer.

Top Air Force Official Dies in Apparent Suicide

By ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — The second-highest-ranking member of the Air Force’s procurement office was found dead Sunday in an apparent suicide, Air Force and police officials said Monday.

The civilian official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee this month after reports that the Air Force had arranged for him to be paid about $13,400 a month by a private contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while he awaited clearance from the White House for his selection as principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. He was appointed to the job, which does not require Senate confirmation, in January.

Glenn Greenwald: AT&T, other telecoms, buy victory in lawsuits

The fact that this was completely predictable does not make it any less reprehensible:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources. . . .

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Hastert To Announce Retirement As Evidence Mounts Of His Involvement In Cunningham Scandal

For months, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has insisted that he will not run for re-election in 2008. In August, The New York Times reported that Hastert “intended to serve through next year because he believed he had an obligation to complete his term.”

Yet now “Republican sources” are revealing that Hastert may announce that he plans to leave the House later this year” and retire early, triggering a special election to replace him.

Americablog: Bush administration suddenly begging for regulations in mortgage industry

by Chris in Paris · 10/18/2007 04:33:00 AM ET

Where the heck was this spirit a few years ago when it was needed? All of the hysteria that we will be hearing about from Paulson and probably soon enough Bush is purely for show because they know the economy is in serious trouble thanks to their incompetence of ignoring warning signs. (Let's not forget Mr. Bubble either, who ignored the issues related to regulating the mortgage industry.) There is nothing that is going to stop the hemorrhaging at this point and intervening now will only add to the cost for everyone including people who weren't greedy on Wall Street and Main Street.

Gonzales Investigated Subordinates Who Were Likely To Testify Against Him

Reported by Murray Waas for the Huffington Post.

Alberto Gonzales was briefed extensively about a criminal leak investigation despite the fact that he had reason to believe that several individuals under investigation in the matter were potential witnesses against him in separate Justice Department inquiries.

While Attorney General, Gonzales oversaw the probe into the disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program to the New York Times. However, many of those under scrutiny in that investigation were likely to be crucial witnesses about whether Gonzales himself had violated the law while promoting the program as White House counsel and testifying about it to Congress.

Senate Deal on Immunity for Phone Companies

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday with the Bush administration that would give telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Congressional official said Wednesday.

Senators this week began reviewing classified documents related to the participation of the telephone carriers in the security agency program and came away from that early review convinced that the companies had “acted in good faith” in cooperating with what they believed was a legal and presidentially authorized program and that they should not be punished through civil litigation for their roles, the official said.

Source: Firings likely in transport of nuclear warheads across U.S.

From Barbara Starr
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Air Force will recommend the firing and disciplining of several service members involved in the mistaken flight of nuclear warheads across the country in August, according to a military official familiar with the investigation.

The source did not want to be identified because not everyone involved has been informed.

Resign, Retire, Renounce

What should generals do if Bush orders a foolish attack on Iran?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007, at 7:17 PM ET

From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Central Command, most of America's military leaders have expressed wariness about, if not outright opposition to, the idea of bombing Iran.

So, if President George W. Bush starts to prepare—or actually issues the order—for an attack, what should the generals do? Disobey? Rally resistance from within? Resign in protest? Retire quietly? Or salute and execute the mission?

GOP Trickery Succeeds: Dems Postpone FISA Fix

By Greg Sargent - October 17, 2007, 6:47PM

Looks like the GOP parlimentary maneuver worked: According to House Dem leadership aides, the leadership has postponed the vote on the FISA bill until next week.

As noted below, GOP Rep. Eric Cantor came up with a clever way of throwing a wrench into the FISA bill, which was scheduled to be voted on today and which is opposed by Republicans.

Acid oceans warning

The world's oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth's breathable oxygen. The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet's marine life.

Freedom's Watch targeting Iran

After successfully holding the line on Congressional support for the surge in Iraq, wealthy Bush backers are turning their attention and money to drumming up support for military action against Iran

If the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran, you can credit such longtime neoconservatives as Norman Podhoretz, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen and the swarm of ideologues buzzing about Washington's right wing think tanks. You can also credit Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist outfit with unbending support for Israel. And credit also the billionaire and multimillionaire founders of Freedom's Watch for helping smooth the way.

Bush Family Planning Appointee Called Contraceptives Part Of The ‘Culture Of Death’

On Monday, President Bush appointed Susan Orr to oversee federal family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Orr, who is currently directing HHS child welfare programs, was touted by the administration as “highly qualified.”

But a look at Orr’s record shows that her strongest qualifications appear to be her right-wing credentials and endorsement of the Bush administration’s failed abstinence-only policies.

Voters unhappy with Bush and Congress

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Wed Oct 17, 7:07 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deepening unhappiness with President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress soured the mood of Americans and sent Bush's approval rating to another record low this month, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures the mood of the country, also fell from 98.8 to 96 -- the second consecutive month it has dropped. The number of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track jumped four points to 66 percent.

Digby: Valuez

With the latest attack on a working family whose child is insured under the SCHIP plan, I hope the contours of the argument are crystal clear and that the Democrats understand what is really being said here:

Like the Frost family, the Wilkerson family has already become the subject of right-wing attacks. Michelle Malkin — whose baseless smear campaign against 12-year old Graeme Frost was deemed too bogus for even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — is now trying to rally the right against Bethany.

Heralding the arrival of a “new toddler-aged human shield,” Malkin writes that “the Wilkersons made a choice” — a seeming reference to the fact that Malkin now believes she has the license to attack the Wilkersons for their public support of SCHIP. “We need more ‘partisan bickering,’ not less,” added Malkin.

Study shows reducing class size may be more cost-effective than most medical interventions

October 16, 2007 -- Reducing the number of students per classroom in U.S. primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Virginia Commonwealth University. The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions. The findings will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The researchers estimated the health and economic effects of reducing class sizes from 22–25 students to 13–17 students in kindergarten through grade 3 nationwide, based on an intervention tested in Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio), a large multi-school randomized trial that began in 1985. Project STAR is considered the highest quality long-term experiment to date in the field of education.

US economy still hurting, recession odds less than half: Greenspan

1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US economy is still reeling from housing and credit woes but faces a "less than 50-50" chance of slipping into recession, former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday.

Greenspan, in an interview with CNBC television, said the world's biggest economy is slowing as a result of of tighter credit, the outcome of the crisis in subprime housing loans.

Report criticizes of Medicare drug plan costs

By Lisa Richwine

Reuters

WASHINGTON

U.S. taxpayers and Medicare patients could have saved almost $15 billion in 2007 if private health insurers had cut expenses for prescription drug coverage and negotiated bigger discounts, a report from Democratic staff of a House of Representatives panel said on Monday.

The Medicare prescription drug benefits offered by private insurers operate with "high administrative costs, sales expenses and profits," the report said.

Life is harder now, some experts say

Generation gap: After paying the bills, middle-class pockets are emptier

By Bob Sullivan

Technology correspondent

MSNBC

Updated: 7:12 a.m. ET Oct 16, 2007

Shopping malls are packed every weekend. Restaurants can't open fast enough. Everyone seems to be wearing designer shoes, jackets and jeans and sipping $4 lattes. Credit card commercials constantly advocate splurging and, it seems, U.S. consumers are all too ready to comply.

So what's the problem? Why do so many middle class Americans with so much stuff say they feel so squeezed? If they are dogged by debt, isn’t it their own fault?

Cowboys need lawyers, too.

by Kagro X

Mon Oct 15, 2007 at 08:48:28 AM PDT

The playbook for the Republican FISA fear-fest is out, and can you guess what kind of bull they have cooked up this time?

Subscription-only Roll Call sez:

Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a "human face" on the issue, the House staffer explained. According to this aide, while Democrats' arguments about privacy may resonate with some voters, Republicans believe using real-world examples of how a weak FISA has put U.S. troops in danger will help galvanize public support for their position.

Verizon Says It Turned Over Data Without Court Orders

Firm's Letter to Lawmakers Details Government Requests

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; A01

Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.

The company said it does not determine the requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations.

Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore

By Robert Parry
October 16, 2007

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a point when he describes the rabid reaction of right-wingers to Al Gore, with the latest foaming at the mouth over the former vice president winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

But the Right is not alone in its pathological demeaning of Gore. The major news media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, have taken their share of unfair shots at Gore, ironically for reasons similar to those that Krugman attributes to the Right.

In his column on Oct. 15, Krugman observed that the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page commented on Gore’s prize simply by running a list of people whom it considered more deserving. A National Review Online article linked Gore to Osama bin Laden because the Saudi terrorist once made a remark about the dangers of global warming.

The Real Iraq We Knew

By 12 former Army captains
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; 12:00 AM

Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out.

What does Iraq look like on the ground? It's certainly far from being a modern, self-sustaining country. Many roads, bridges, schools and hospitals are in deplorable condition. Fewer people have access to drinking water or sewage systems than before the war. And Baghdad is averaging less than eight hours of electricity a day.

What Was Behind the Honey Bee Wipeout?

By Gina Covina, Terrain
Posted on October 16, 2007, Printed on October 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65289/

On Alan Wilson's table at the Oakland Farmers' Market, row after row of glass honey jars catch the early morning sun that angles down Ninth Street. Some of the honey gleams a reddish brown, some a paler amber, depending on the particular mix of flower species the bees foraged. All of it was produced by Wilson's colonies, which number a third of what he had last fall, before the infamous bee die-off that afflicted growers around the world. "I'd better get the honey while I can," one customer remarks.

The flurry of media attention given this winter's bee losses, now labeled "colony collapse disorder," has updated the world of bees for a heretofore-clueless public. Our image of honeybees is a lot like our bucolic images of farm animals -- and just as far from the brutal truth of today's corporate agriculture. We picture fields of clover, blossoming orchards, the wildflowers beneath the trees, filled with happy bees industriously gathering nectar and pollen to take back to the hive. As the bees gather pollen, they transfer it from plant to plant, thus assuring cross-pollination.

Conyers: Tell Us More

By Paul Kiel - October 15, 2007, 6:27PM

Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, delivered a pair of twin bombshells last week, when he asserted in a court filing that the National Security Agency had approached Qwest six months before 9/11 about participating in a legally dubious program, and that after the company declined, the administration yanked hundreds of millions in government contracts.

Oil hits $86 on Turkey tensions

Global oil prices have surged to fresh highs after increased tensions between Turkey and Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and concerns over production.

In New York, US light, sweet crude soared by $2.44 to settle at a record $86.13 while Brent crude added $2.20 to finish at $82.75.

John Templeton's Universe

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

[posted online on October 10, 2007]

What is the purpose of the universe, anyway? I hadn't started reading the Sunday papers with this question in mind, but after slogging through mass rapes in Congo, bombings in Baghdad and K-Fed's worthiness as a father, I could no longer dodge it. Then, in the middle of the New York Times Week in Review section--some of the priciest real estate in the print industry--I came across a two-full-page ad under the headline "Does the Universe Have a Purpose?"

The text of the ad was the responses of twelve scientist-and-philosopher-types, ranging from the purposeless (biochemist Christian de Duve) to the purpose-driven (Jane Goodall) and the just plain whiny, as in astronomer Owen Gingerich's "Frankly, I am psychologically incapable of believing that the universe is meaningless." (Suck it up, Owen, it's the only universe you've got.) I was miffed that I had not been asked to contribute my theory that this is a trial universe that has turned to be defective. But I was even more distracted by the sponsor of the ad--the John Templeton Foundation.

Pentagon, FBI misusing secret info requests: ACLU

Mon Oct 15, 3:45 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has successfully challenged key planks of US anti-terrorism legislation, said it had uncovered 455 "National Security Letters" (NSLs) issued at the behest of the Department of Defense.

Inside Bush's Bunker

For any second-term president—as the pressure grows to cement his legacy, and with many of his best aides gone—the physical bunker of an electronically sealed, sniper-patrolled White House, which restricts his access to old friends and new ideas, can lead to psychological isolation. Talking to administration insiders, the author learns why George W. Bush's disconnect is even more extreme, from the "Churchillian riff" he goes into when Iraq is discussed, to his eerie optimism, to his increasing reliance on a dwindling band of diehards.

by Todd S. Purdum | October 2007

Sometime early on the morning of January 20, 2009, if recent history is a reliable guide, George W. Bush will sit down at the carved oak desk in the Oval Office and compose a note wishing his successor Godspeed. The desk is made from timbers of H.M.S. Resolute, a British bark that was abandoned to the ice but later salvaged by an American whaling vessel and presented to Queen Victoria in 1856 as a token of friendship. When the ship was finally decommissioned, the Queen sent a desk made from its best wood to President Rutherford B. Hayes. Since then almost every president has used the desk in one way or another. John F. Kennedy Jr. played behind the hinged door in its front, which Franklin D. Roosevelt installed to hide his leg braces and wheelchair.

Interim Heads Increasingly Run Federal Agencies

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — For now, the most powerful law enforcement official in the federal government is a 47-year-old lawyer little known outside Washington.

Or inside Washington, for that matter.

He is acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, who is running the Justice Department until a new attorney general is confirmed by the Senate to replace Alberto R. Gonzales. Mr. Keisler had been in charge of the department’s civil division.

Paul Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change — therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

Group Plans to Provide Investigative Journalism

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

As struggling newspapers across the country cut back on investigative reporting, a new kind of journalism venture is hoping to fill the gap.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

The Latino Agenda for the 2008 Election

By Roberto Lovato, The Nation
Posted on October 15, 2007, Printed on October 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65195/

Karen Linares's face contorted as she stared at the thick, rusted pipe and the bottle of brown water before her. The reddish-brown props used by an environmental panelist speaking about water politics at the second annual National Latino Congreso reminded Linares of water she's seen in the numerous places she's called home.

"The LA river water running by my house is full of filth," said the 22-year-old Salvadoran-Chicana delegate to the five-day convergence of left-leaning Latinos held this past week in her hometown. "I saw the same brown water in El Salvador. In Tijuana you see the sewage trickling down the dirt roads," she said. Asked what, if any, connection existed between the water she saw in her neighborhood and the water in her parents' homelands, Linares answered, "Clear water runs upward where the money runs. Brown water runs down where poor brown people are."

Frank Rich: The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

Glenn Greenwald: The Beltway Establishment's contempt for the rule of law

The Washington Post's Editorial Page, in the establishment-defending form of Fred Hiatt, today became but the latest Beltway appendage to urge the enactment of a special law providing amnesty to our nation's poor, put-upon, lawbreaking telecoms:

There is one major area of disagreement between the administration and House Democrats where we think the administration has the better of the argument: the question of whether telecommunications companies that provided information to the government without court orders should be given retroactive immunity from being sued. House Democrats are understandably reluctant to grant that wholesale protection without understanding exactly what conduct they are shielding, and the administration has balked at providing such information. But the telecommunications providers seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.

Let's leave to the side Hiatt's inane claim that these telecoms, in actively enabling the Bush administration to spy on their customers in violation of the law, were motivated by the pure and upstanding desire to be "patriotic corporate citizens" -- rather than, say, the desire to obtain extremely lucrative government contracts which would likely have been unavailable had they refused to break the law.