NSA Sought Data Before 9/11

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Nov. 2, 2007

Beginning in February 2001, almost seven months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government's top electronic eavesdropping organization, the National Security Agency, asked a major U.S. telecommunications carrier for information about its customers and the flow of electronic traffic across its network, according to sources familiar with the request. The carrier, Qwest Communications, refused, believing that the request was illegal unless accompanied by a court order.

After terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, the NSA again asked Qwest, as well as other telecom companies, for similar information to help the agency track suspects with the aim of preventing future attacks, current and former officials have said. The companies responded in various ways, with Qwest being the most reluctant to cooperate. However, in February 2001, the NSA's primary purpose in seeking access to Qwest's network apparently was not to search for terrorists but to watch for computer hackers and foreign-government forces trying to penetrate and compromise U.S. government information systems, particularly within the Defense Department, sources said. Government officials have long feared a "digital Pearl Harbor" if intruders were to seize control of these systems or other key U.S. infrastructures through the Internet.

US network names Iraqi who pushed US case for war

US television network CBS said Thursday it had identified a man known to intelligence agents as "curve ball," whose fake story of biological weapons drove the US argument for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The network's 60 Minutes program identified the man as an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999.

Paul Krugman: Prostates and Prejudices

“My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? Eighty-two percent,” says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. “My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine.”

It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn’t. And thereby hangs a tale — one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I’m sorry to say, about what’s wrong with political news coverage.

Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels — bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.

The calamity of Iraq has not even won us cheap oil

We knew the war was built on lies - but to have increased petrol prices as well as terror will surely seal history's verdict

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Friday November 2, 2007
The Guardian

Although "the judgment of history" has a sonorous ring, it doesn't necessarily require the long gestation that phrase might imply: sometimes there's no need for the owl of Minerva to hang around waiting for the sun to go down. When one eminent historian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton, pronounces bluntly that George Bush the Younger is "the worst president in American history", and another, Tony Judt of New York University, calls the Iraq war "the worst foreign policy error in American history", not many of us will argue with them.

And yet history still doesn't know the half of it. It has long since ceased to be a matter for debate that the Iraq adventure began in mendacity and ended in calamity. Sir Richard Dearlove's public penitence this week merely confirmed what he had already said privately, and not only has every single one of the original official reasons for the invasion been falsified, they have all been stood on their heads. Now even what many suspected was the ulterior motive - a war for oil - has gone awry

Chris Dodd Speaks for All Of Us

Submitted by Bob Fertik on October 26, 2007 - 11:59am.

Finally! After six years of shock and silence, one Senator is finally standing up for the Constitution - and America's real national security. Watch Chris Dodd's historic speech here.

Mr. President, for six years, this President has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t respect the role of Congress nor does he respect the rule of law.

Every six years as United States Senators we take the oath office to uphold the Constitution. Our colleagues on the House side take that oath every two years. That is important.

Did Blackwater sneak silencers into Iraq?

By Aram Roston

Investigative producer

NBC News

updated 11:56 a.m. ET, Thurs., Nov. 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - Federal agents are investigating allegations that the Blackwater USA security firm illegally exported dozens of firearms sound suppressors — commonly known as silencers — to Iraq and other countries for use by company operatives, sources close to the investigation tell NBC News.

Investigators from various federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department and the Commerce Department, are digging into the allegations that the company exported the silencers without getting necessary export approval, according to law enforcement sources, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. The sources said the investigation is part of a broader examination of potential firearms and export violations.

Who Really Set the California Fires?

By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 1, 2007, Printed on November 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66706/

You can't have too much of a good thing, so let me just quote Mike Davis from 1998 to introduce Mike Davis 2007 on the California fires. In Ecology of Fear, his 1998 book on southern California, he wrote just about everything you'd ever need to know if you didn't want to be surprised by the raging Santa Ana-driven wildfires of 2003 or 2007. After all, there's nothing new about the burning phenomenon on what Davis then dubbed "the fire coast." "A great Malibu firestorm," he wrote, "could generate the heat of three million barrels of burning oil at a temperature of 2,000 degrees." No wonder Cold War era researchers used those California fires to model the behavior of nuclear firestorms.

How to save the planet

The Environment Agency has asked a panel of experts to compile the ultimate to-do list - in order of priority. Leo Hickman assesses whether they got it right

See the full top 50 here (pdf)

Leo Hickman
The Guardian

Thursday November 1 2007

Just where do you start when you want to "save the planet"? And in which areas should you focus most of your efforts? In a rather brave thought experiment, the Environment Agency has assembled a group of the country's leading environmental experts to draw up a list of actions that we should all undertake if we are to try to avert the environmental horrors so often forecast if we continue with our "business as usual" lifestyles. This list contains suggestions for government, companies, councils, religious leaders, scientists and others to consider, but it also includes actions that individuals can attempt. More unusually, though, it lists the actions in order of priority.

The sad decline of Michael Mukasey

When President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey as attorney general his distinguished career was offered as guarantee of his integrity and independence. A former federal district judge, senior partner at a major law firm and former assistant U.S. attorney, well known and widely respected by the New York bar, he appeared to have the experience and balance needed to restore trust to the battered Justice Department. The previous attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, had been an eager plaything of the White House, a factotum from Texas who faithfully followed orders to politicize and purge for partisan purposes. While Mukasey espouses conservative views upholding an expansive interpretation of the executive, and argues that warrantless domestic surveillance is therefore justified, Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee were still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The Anti-Choice Movement's Bag of Dirty Tricks

By Jeanine Plant, AlterNet
Posted on November 1, 2007, Printed on November 1, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66453/

Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion, the recent documentary by Stephen Fell and Will Thompson, is an eye-opening, must-see portrait of the pro-life movement's win-at-all-costs philosophy. It goes beyond the movement's robotic way of staying on-message and reveals anti-choicers' unrepentant, and often subtle, employment of dirty tricks. What makes these tricks so disturbing -- and, arguably, effective -- is that most of them aren't coming from extremists perpetuating bald-faced lies. Instead, it's the reasonable-seeming, public-relations-type woman who pushes misinformation about a link between abortion and breast cancer. It's the young student with a Northface backpack who displays horrifying visuals of aborted fetuses on university campuses. It's the nonthreatening, formerly pro-choice 19-year-old who shares her own heartbreaking abortion story.

Stocks Plunge; Dow Drops More Than 360

Thursday November 1, 5:55 pm ET
By Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer

Wall Street Plunges on Fears That Interest Rate Cuts Will End Even As Economy Is Weakening

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street plunged Thursday, pulling the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 360 points as investors found themselves confronted by two uncomfortable prospects: an end to interest rate cuts and a slowing economy.

Mindful of a warning from the Federal Reserve Wednesday about inflation, the market nervously watched the price of oil, which passed $96 a barrel overnight for the first time before dipping on profit-taking. The Fed, which cut interest rates a quarter point, said in a statement that inflation remained a concern, and oil's ascent to another record raised the possibility not only that the Fed might stop cutting rates, but that it might even consider raising them if inflation accelerates.

Katha Pollitt: David Horowitz, Feminist?

[from the November 19, 2007 issue]

I couldn't get in to hear David Horowitz give the big, climactic speech for Islamofascism Awareness Week at Columbia. Like an idiot, I had assumed it was a normal public event and I could just walk in; but the nice Young Republican checking IDs at the credentials table told me that all attendees, including journalists, were supposed to have signed up online three days earlier. At that point a real reporter would have figured out how to sneak in, but I slouched meekly away. So I'm relying on the International Herald Tribune when I report that a grand total of 100 people were on hand to hear Horowitz speak. According to the Columbia Spectator, in that speech he claimed that "nooses have been put figuratively on the doors of the College Republicans," that the Week was held in defense of moderate Muslims, that the Iraq War was Jimmy Carter's fault and that the Columbia University women's studies department does not deal with the oppression of women in Muslim countries. Add his audience to the eighty people who, according to my Nation colleague Esther Kaplan, showed up two days earlier to hear Ibn Warraq, Christina Hoff Sommers and Phyllis Chesler (best Chesler snippet from Esther's tape: If the jihadists win, we'll become veiled "sex slaves"), and it's obvious that we should all take public-relations lessons from Horowitz. Once again, through his patented combination of egomania and chutzpah, he managed to get the media all riled up about something few on campus bothered to show up for.

Booman Tribune: Rockefeller is Selling Us Out

by BooMan
Wed Oct 31st, 2007 at 02:26:31 PM EST

Today, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, penned an editorial in the...drum roll...Washington Post, explaining his rationale for immunizing the telecommunications corporations from accountability for their wanton lawbreaking.

Rockefeller became the chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee in January of 2007. Verizon employees immediately bundled their donations to him to the tune of nearly $25,000. Why would they do that?

Katrina victims increasingly depressed, traumatized, and suicidal as relief efforts drag on

According to the most comprehensive survey of people affected by Hurricane Katrina, results of which are being presented today to the US Senate, the percentage of pre-hurricane residents of the affected areas who have mental disorders has increased significantly compared to the situation five to eight months after the hurricane. These findings counter a more typical pattern from previous disasters where prevalence of mental disorders decreases as time passes.

Hung Jury in Terror Finance Case

By TChris, Section Terror Trials
Posted on Tue Oct 23, 2007 at 09:51:00 AM EST
Tags: Holy Land (all tags)

The government's most celebrated effort to prosecute a Muslim charity for financing terrorism ended in a bust.

A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government’s flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts. ...

War In Context: The box on the Euphrates

By Paul Woodward, War in Context, October 29, 2007

Writing in The American Conservative, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi sees in the Syrian-nuclear-reactor story the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign:

In the intelligence community, a disinformation operation is a calculated attempt to convince an audience that falsehoods about an adversary are true, either to discredit him or, in an extreme case, to justify military action. When such a campaign is properly conducted, information is leaked to numerous outlets over a period of time, creating the impression of a media consensus that the story is true, as each new report validates earlier ones.

11 Solutions to Halting the Environmental Crisis

By Yifat Susskind, AlterNet
Posted on October 31, 2007, Printed on October 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66451/

You probably don't need to be told that the threat of climate change is real. If you're concerned about the issue, it's fairly easy to conjure the apocalyptic scenes of widespread drought, frequent deadly storms, mass hunger, and wars over natural resources like oil and water. Much harder to come by are examples of positive actions that can avert these disasters and ease the crisis in places where they are already in play. So let's skip the litany of catastrophes that await if global warming is not controlled. Instead, why not focus on some solutions? None are perfect or complete, but each offers a model of positive change that is more than theoretically possible -- it is already happening.

Noam Chomsky Weighs In On 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

By Adam Howard
Posted on October 30, 2007, Printed on October 31, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/howard/66473/

While acknowledging that he may be out-of-step with many of his colleagues on the left, Chomsky talks about why he doesn't believe that 9/11 was an "inside job."

Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

Four and a half years ago, after reading the Robert Novak column that outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative specializing in counter-proliferation work, I wrote an article in this space noting that this particular leak from Bush administration officials might have been a violation of a federal law prohibiting government officials from disclosing information about clandestine intelligence officers and (perhaps worse) might have harmed national security by exposing anti-WMD operations. That piece was the first to identify the leak as a possible White House crime and the first to characterize the leak as evidence that within the Bush administration political expedience trumped national security.

The importance of mangrove conservation in tsunami prone regions

Agricultural expansion rather than shrimp farming is the major factor responsible for the destruction of tropical mangrove forests in the tsunami-impacted regions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka, according to a new study published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Giri and other researchers used more than 750 Landsat satellite images to identify the remaining mangrove forests of the region, to quantify the rates and causes of change from 1975 to 2005, and to identify deforestation ‘hot spots,’. Landsat is the world’s longest continuously acquired collection of space-based land remote sensing data. The study found that the major factors responsible for mangrove deforestation in the study area include agriculture encroachment (81%), aquaculture (12%), and urban development (2%). However, shrimp farming is on the rise in Indonesia and Thailand.

Juan Cole: US Sanctions on Iran

The Bush administration announced wideranging new sanctions on Iran on Thursday, which target three Iranian banks, nine companies associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and several individuals, as well as the IRGC (roughly analogous to the National Guard in the US, i.e. a populist adjunct to the formal Iranian army).

These unilateral sanctions clearly reflect frustration on the part of Bush/Cheney that they have not been able to convince the UN Security Council to apply international sanctions. (Iran has not been demonstrated to be doing anything that is illegal in international law.)

The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad

The new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest, least welcoming, and most lavish embassy in the world: a $600 million massively fortified compound with 619 blast-resistant apartments and a food court fit for a shopping mall. Unfortunately, like other similarly constructed U.S. Embassies, it may already be obsolete.

by William Langewiesche November 2007

When the new American Embassy in Baghdad entered the planning stage, more than three years ago, U.S. officials inside the Green Zone were still insisting that great progress was being made in the construction of a new Iraq. I remember a surreal press conference in which a U.S. spokesman named Dan Senor, full of governmental conceits, described the marvelous developments he personally had observed during a recent sortie (under heavy escort) into the city. His idea now was to set the press straight on realities outside the Green Zone gates. Senor was well groomed and precocious, fresh into the world, and he had acquired a taste for appearing on TV. The assembled reporters were by contrast a disheveled and unwashed lot, but they included serious people of deep experience, many of whom lived fully exposed to Iraq, and knew that society there was unraveling fast. Some realized already that the war had been lost, though such were the attitudes of the citizenry back home that they could not yet even imply this in print.

Glenn Greenwald: A bizarre, unsolicited e-mail from Gen. Petraeus' spokesman

I received this morning an unsolicited email from Col. Steven A. Boylan, the Public Affairs Officer and personal spokesman for Gen. David G. Petraeus (see UPDATE III below). The subject line of the email -- which I am publishing in full, unedited form here -- is "The growing link between the U.S. military and right-wing media and blogs," which is the title of the post I wrote earlier this week regarding the politicization of the Army in Iraq, as evidenced by its constant coordination with, and leaking to, the likes of Matt Drudge, The Weekly Standard, and the most extremist right-wing blogs -- in the TNR/Beauchamp case and also more generally.

Hopefully crazy: the right's unAmerican yearning for a John Wayne government

Yesterday was a good day for crazy.

Last week I asked if it wasn't time for Congress to ask -- and not entirely rhetorically -- Is the president mad? But yesterday, the somewhat more widely read New York Times took a double-barreled survey of the psychiatrically troubled recesses of the conservative mind, and crazy, hands down, was king.

Immunity deals 'routine' for contractors

By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writers
15 minutes ago

Limited immunity has been routinely offered to private security contractors involved in shootings in Iraq, State Department officials said Tuesday, denying such actions jeopardized criminal prosecution of Blackwater USA guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to discuss specifics of the agency's role in the investigation, but said any immunity deals should not stop the Justice Department from prosecuting.

Frog killer fungus 'breakthrough'

By Kim Griggs
Science reporter, Wellington

New Zealand scientists have found what appears to be a cure for the disease that is responsible for wiping out many of the world's frog populations.

Chloramphenicol, currently used as an eye ointment for humans, may be a lifesaver for the amphibians, they say.

The researchers found frogs bathed in the solution became resistant to the killer disease, chytridiomycosis.

U.S. Stands in the Way of International Pipeline Deal

By Abbas Maleki, MIT Center for International Studies
Posted on October 30, 2007, Printed on October 30, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65315/

A major natural gas pipeline that would stretch from the fields of southern Iran to Pakistan and India -- itself a remarkable prospect -- is being planned. But it faces serious hurdles, not least the fierce opposition of the U.S. government.

The history of relations between Persia and the Indian subcontinent is more than 2000 years old. Until 200 years ago, Persian was the language of literature and government in India. After separation of Pakistan from India, Iran faced a dilemma of its relations with these two new states. During the Shah's era, Iran preferred to have close relations with Pakistan, although economic ties with India were not ignored. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Pakistan's support of hardliners in Afghanistan, Iran found India as a new partner in Asia. India has been slowly but surely forging a comprehensive relationship with Iran on energy and commerce, infrastructure development, and military ties. Iran looks to India as a developed, democratic, and politically lucrative country for cooperation. For instance, some 8,000 Iranian students are studying in India, compared with 2,000 in the United States.

The Business Press and Me: a Case of Unrequited Love

By Naomi Klein, Comment Is Free
Posted on October 25, 2007, Printed on October 30, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66106/

On a recent visit to Calgary, Alberta, I was taken aback to see my book on disaster capitalism selling briskly at the airport. Calgary is ground zero of North America's oil and gas boom, where business suits and cowboy hats are the de facto uniform. I had a sudden sinking feeling: did Calgary's business class think The Shock Doctrine was a how-to guide - a manual for making millions from catastrophe? Were they hoping for tips on landing no-bid contracts if the US bombs Iran?

When I get worried about inadvertently fueling the disaster complex, I take comfort in the response the book has elicited from the world's leading business journalists. That's where I learn that the very notion of disaster capitalism is my delusion - or, as Otto Reich, former adviser to President George Bush, told BBC Business Daily, it is the work "of a very confused person".

Studs Terkel: The Wiretap This Time

Chicago

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.

Paul Krugman: Fearing Fear Itself

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Why California's Wildfires are America's Future

Sharon Begley

I'm pretty conservative about attributing weird weather and other climate anomalies to global warming: all you can say is that a record-setting hot October, or a string of 70-degree days in January in New York, is consistent with what a greenhouse world would be like. But when scientists go on record with a specific prediction of how climate change will play out, and when it indeed plays out that way, attention must be paid.

Last year, a study in the journal Science found that "large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons." The greatest increases were in forests of the Northern Rockies, but was seen throughout the west The pattern of western fires matched what would be expected not from changes in land use--mostly logging and ranching--but from climate change.

As Democrats Criticize, Health Care Industry Donates

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Oct.28 — In a reversal from past election cycles, Democratic candidates for president are outpacing Republicans in donations from the health care industry, even as the leading Democrats in the field offer proposals that have caused deep anxiety in some sectors of the industry, according to campaign finance records.

Hospitals, drug makers, doctors and insurers gave candidates in both parties more than $11 million in the first nine months of this year, according to an analysis done for The New York Times by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks campaign finance.

Taser time on America's public lands

The U.S. Forest Service 'is experiencing confusion and drift in its central identity and direction, and ambiguity in the way it allocates power and responsibility,' a recent survey of Forest Service workers found

At about the same time University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was getting tasered by overly heated campus security guards during an appearance by Sen. John Kerry, TASER International Inc. announced that it had received an order from the United States Forest Service for 700 TASER (r) X26 electronic control devices and related accessories.

Tomgram: Thoughts on Getting to the March

The Bureaucracy, the March, and the War

American Disengagement
By Tom Engelhardt

As I was heading out into a dark, drippingly wet, appropriately dispiriting New York City day, on my way to the "Fall Out Against the War" march -- one of 11 regional antiwar demonstrations held this Saturday -- I was thinking: then and now, Vietnam and Iraq. Since the Bush administration had Vietnam on the brain while planning to take down Saddam Hussein's regime for the home team, it's hardly surprising that, from the moment its invasion was launched in March 2003, the Vietnam analogy has been on the American brain -- and, even domestically, there's something to be said for it.

As John Mueller, an expert on public opinion and American wars, pointed out back in November 2005, Americans turned against the Iraq War in a pattern recognizable from the Vietnam era (as well as the Korean one) -- initial, broad post-invasion support that eroded irreversibly as American casualties rose. "The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq," Mueller wrote, "is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War." He added, quite correctly, as it turned out: "And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline."

Wrongly accused

IMMIGRATION | Think illegals are more likely to be involved in crime? Think again

October 29, 2007

BY ERIC HERMAN Staff Reporter/eherman@suntimes.com

Some say undocumented immigrants -- illegal aliens, as they're often called -- spread crime when they come to the U.S. Others say that is a myth.

Reliable statistics on crime by undocumented immigrants are hard to come by. But the Chicago Sun-Times has learned that less than 4 percent of the adults in Illinois prisons have been identified as illegal immigrants. And as of mid-July, less than 3 percent of the inmates in Cook County Jail were illegals.

Your Privacy Is Someone Else's Profit

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet
Posted on October 29, 2007, Printed on October 29, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66090/

On the 24th of October, presidential candidate Barack Obama, D-Ill., added his name to the list of senators, led by Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who oppose immunity for telecoms who have participated in domestic spying. As this debate heats up in the Senate and in the papers, Americans are confronted with an unsettling reality: Private companies have more control over our personal information than we do.

While the interactive revolution was touted as the democratization of information, it has also greatly accelerated the consolidation of power in the hands of both government and industry. Whether we're talking on our cell phones, paying bills online, or doing research for a paper, our communications now leave an elaborate footprint. It is these footprints that advertisers are so hungrily compiling, creating massive databases to track our daily movements in order to better pitch us products down the line -- or to share with the government.

Family Security Matters Advisers Have Ties To Their Own ‘Most Dangerous’ Organizations In America

Yesterday, the conservative front group Family Security Matters (FSM) released its list of “The Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America.” Among the top 10 “hate” organizations were MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, and “Universities and Colleges.” ThinkProgress earned the 10th spot in the rankings.

Red meat and alcohol 'raise the risk of cancer'

Denis Campbell, health correspondent
Sunday October 28, 2007
The Observer

Eating red meat and drinking alcohol in even small quantities increases the risk of developing cancer, a group of world renowned scientists will warn this week.

People should minimise their consumption of both in order to safeguard their health, the biggest inquiry ever undertaken into lifestyle and cancer will recommend.

In addition, the millions of people who are now obese are running as great a risk of getting cancer as smokers do, a major global report by the World Cancer Research Fund will also warn.

Frank Rich: Rudy, the Values Slayer

WITH the new president heading off to his Texas vacation during that slow news month of August 2001, I wrote a column about a man who would never be president: Rudy Giuliani. Banished from Gracie Mansion after dumping his second wife for Judith Nathan, New York’s lame-duck mayor had been bunking for two months with a gay couple. No brand-name American politician had ever publicly done such a thing, so I decided to pay a visit to Rudy’s home away from home.

His Honor was out that day, but Howard Koeppel, a garrulous Queens car dealer, and his partner, Mark Hsiao, a Juilliard-trained pianist, were gracious tour guides to their 32nd-floor apartment on East 57th Street. I asked Mr. Koeppel, a born comic, whether it was unexpected that Rudy would live with an openly gay couple. “I don’t know if it’s any more unusual than him wearing a dress,” he deadpanned. On a more sober note, Mr. Koeppel told me that the connubially challenged mayor was an admirer of his and Mr. Hsiao’s relatively “idyllic life” and had assured them that “if they ever legalized gay marriages, we would be the first one he would do.”

Mitt Romney: Will Republicans Elect a Bloodsucking CEO?

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on October 27, 2007, Printed on October 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66068/

Here's Mitt Romney in a nutshell: During a town-hall event at a chapel in Merrimack, New Hampshire, some stammering yahoo in the back row gets up and asks the slick Mormon venture capitalist just exactly what he means when he says he plans to "change the face of the Middle East." "I want to know where you stand on that," the yutz pleads. "Your answer will determine whether I want to vote for you." Romney smiles, humbly accepting the challenge. When it comes to the satanic art of presidential campaigning, this lean, heavily moussed political athlete is a stone prodigy, a natural who glides through campaign events with the aid of some dark supernatural power -- a tie-clad, sweat-resistant cross of Roy Hobbs and Rosemary's Baby. As he ponders the question about the Middle East, you can almost see the Terminator display screen behind his eyes, calibrating to the hundredth of a centimeter the exact distance to his questioner and quickly selecting from a prefab list of responses.