Gene Lyons: Blogosphere not as radical as pundits think

It’s no exaggeration to say that the establishment media’s initial response to the blogosphere was panic. The idea of mere citizens talking back to the press was unsettling to Washington media celebrities. Pundits who’d exhibited no qualms about the sordid imaginings of, say, American Spectator or The Wall Street Journal editorial page recoiled in horror at online mockery. It was laugh-out-loud funny to see a Washington Post reporter infamous for treating Kenneth Starr’s backstairs leaks like holy writ make a show of pretending that the now-defunct Web site mediawhoresonline. com had accused her of prostitution. How the system had always worked was this: They dished it out, everybody else had to take it. Now that many print and broadcast outlets feature Web logs—blogs—of their own, it’s no longer common to hear the word “blogger” pronounced with utter disdain. Even so, competition from the groundlings still provokes unease. The latest high-minded worrier is a University of Chicago law professor and sometime politico, Cass R. Sunstein.

Rising Rates to Worsen Subprime Mess

Interest Payments Set To Grow on $362 Billion In Mortgages in 2008

By RUTH SIMON
November 24, 2007

The subprime mortgage crisis is poised to get much worse.

Next year, interest rates are set to rise -- or "reset" -- on $362 billion worth of adjustable-rate subprime mortgages, according to data calculated by Bank of America Corp.

While many accounts portray resetting rates as the big factor behind the surge in home-loan defaults and foreclosures this year, that isn't quite the case. Many of the subprime mortgages that have driven up the default rate went bad in their first year or so, well before their interest rate had a chance to go higher. Some of these mortgages went to speculators who planned to flip their houses, others to borrowers who had stretched too far to make their payments, and still others had some element of fraud.

Michael Kinsley: Who Needs Experience?

By Michael Kinsley

Saturday, November 24, 2007; Page A17

Hillary Clinton declared the other day -- apropos of whom, she didn't say, or need to -- "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president." Barack Obama immediately retorted, "My understanding is that she wasn't Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. I don't know exactly what experience she's claiming." As wit, that round goes to Obama. Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, her first experience of public office. Obama was an Illinois state senator for seven years before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. In terms of experience in elective office, this seems to be a wash.

But since she brought it up, how important is experience in a candidate for president? If experience were a matter of offices held, however briefly, the best candidate running would be Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and former so many different things that you can hardly believe this is the same person popping up again. But that is ticket-punching, not experience.

Matt Taibbi on Mike Huckabee, Our Favorite Right-Wing Nut Job

MIKE HUCKABEE, THE LATEST IT GIRL OF THE Republican presidential race, tells a hell of a story. Let your guard down anywhere near the former Arkansas governor and he'll pod you, Body Snatchers-style — you'll wake up drooling, your brain gone, riding a back seat on the bandwagon that suddenly has him charging toward the lead in the GOP race.

It almost happened to me a few months ago at a fund-raiser in Great Falls, Virginia. I'd come to get my first up-close glimpse of the man Arkansans call Huck, about whom I knew very little — beyond the fact that he was far behind in the polls and was said to be very religious. In an impromptu address to a small crowd, Huckabee muttered some stay-the-course nonsense about Iraq and then, when he was finished, sought me out, apparently having been briefed beforehand that Rolling Stone was in the house.

Carbon Capture: Miracle Cure for Global Warming, or Deadly Liability?

By Megan Tady, AlterNet
Posted on November 24, 2007, Printed on November 24, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68490/

Technology to siphon off carbon dioxide from power plants and insert it into rock formations has the government, industry and many leading environmental groups wiping their brows and sighing, "phew." They say "carbon capture and storage" could be one of the central keys to unlocking how the world beats back climate change.

But for a growing list of critics, injecting carbon dioxide into the earth is as risky as sticking a Botox needle into a brow -- who really knows what's going on under the skin? And because this climate cure comes with no prescription to radically change the world's energy diet, skeptics say carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a diversion and a false solution.

MIT: Prenatal arsenic exposure detected in newborns

MIT researchers have found that the children of mothers whose water supplies were contaminated with arsenic during their pregnancies harbored gene expression changes that may lead to cancer and other diseases later in life. In addition to establishing the potential harmful effects of these prenatal exposures, the new study also provides a possible method for screening populations to detect signs of arsenic contamination.

Paul Krugman: A thought about political discourse

A meta-thought inspired by the Social Security craziness:

Faced with a major public issue, such as the future of Social Security, one might think that the crucial thing would be to ascertain the facts. If I say “there is no crisis,” and you think there is, well, produce the evidence that shows that my arithmetic is wrong — not something I once said that you think proves that I’ve changed my mind. Making this a game of gotcha is just childish.

Paul Krugman: Banks Gone Wild

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: November 23, 2007

“What were they smoking?” asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.

The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.

The Web fuels hate speech

By Christopher Wolf

Thursday, November 15, 2007

BERLIN:

Thursday, Nov. 8th was a depressing, cold and drizzly night in Berlin. Fitting weather for the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the government-sanctioned night of terror against Jews in 1938 that was a major step towards the Holocaust.

Earlier that day, almost seven decades after Kristallnacht, human rights experts from around the world gathered in a reconstructed synagogue in Berlin's Mitte district to discuss a resurgence of anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance. The group observed that the most numerous attacks on Jews and other minorities are now coming in the form of Internet hate speech broadcast worldwide.

Inside the Data Mine

A Dig led by Onnesha Roychoudhuri

On April 20, 2007, former Qwest telecommunications CEO Joseph Nacchio was found guilty on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. “For anyone who has ever made a call in Qwest territory, the term ‘convicted felon Joe Nacchio’ has a nice ring to it,” U.S. prosecutor Troy Eid told the press. The mood was fairly universal. One securities lawyer pitched in: “The government has another notch in their belt. They’ve had a tremendous winning streak in these corporate crime cases.”

But it would have been more accurate to qualify the statement by saying that the government has had a tremendous winning streak in the corporate crime cases it chooses to pursue. We now know that the Securities and Exchange Commission has chosen not to pursue charges of insider trading in the case of a Wall Street executive named John J. Mack because of his “political clout.” And while former U.S. Attorney William Leone led the case against Qwest, he was one of the unfortunate attorneys on the Department of Justice’s “purge list,” replaced by none other than Bush-nominated Troy Eid, a former co-worker of Jack Abramoff at the firm Greenberg Traurig.

Pentagon Demands Wounded Soldier Return Re-enlistment Bonus

By Spencer Ackerman - November 20, 2007, 4:42PM

Just in time for the holidays, there's a special place in Hell just waiting to be filled by some as-yet-unknown Pentagon bureaucrat. Apparently, thousands of wounded soldiers who served in Iraq are being asked to return part of their enlistment bonuses -- because their injuries prevented them from completing their tours.

Paul Krugman: They hate me! They really hate me!

Wow. Early in my tenure at the NYT, I was advised that it’s a bad idea to devote a column to attacking another columnist — not just at the Times, but anywhere. Why? Because it makes you look small — as if you have nothing better to do than snipe at other commentators, rather than trying to deal with real problems.

But I’ve obviously touched a nerve with my recent writing on Social Security. The Beltway crowd loves their Social Security crisis, and they won’t give it up without a fight.

Today's Must Read

By Paul Kiel - November 21, 2007, 10:04AM

Why can't people just trust Rudy Giuliani?

As today's piece in The Chicago Tribune points out, Giuliani is a deviation from the mold of the successful businessman turned politician. Instead, Giuliani went from politics into business, and the success of that business relied in large part on Giuliani's continued prestige and the promise that he would eventually return to politics.

Giuliani Partners (not to be confused with Bracewell & Giuliani, the law firm he joined in 2005), which has been steadily growing since it's formation in 2002, is a consultancy. Which is a fancy way of saying that it does whatever its clients need it to do. Mostly, that seems to have been some form of security consulting -- but it's been nearly impossible to find out, because Giuliani won't say who the firm's clients are or were.

Ruling Will Cripple Probes Of Lawmakers, U.S. Says

By Susan Schmidt

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 21, 2007; Page A03

A little-noticed aspect of an appellate court decision could sharply limit investigations of members of Congress and hamper ongoing corruption probes, the Justice Department said this week in a motion seeking an emergency stay of the ruling.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was handed down in August in the case of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), but its effects complicate other investigations, including those stemming from the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

The semi-secret world of campaign bundlers

Lisa Zagaroli | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: November 18, 2007 03:00:49 PM

WASHINGTON — Johnny Taylor Jr. is connected.

The Charlotte businessman has friends all over the country who will hop on a plane and arrive at his house with a check for $2,300. That's the cost of having a chat in a private setting with a presidential candidate.

Taylor, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton to the tune of "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, is at the heart of a growing role in the U.S. political system. He's known as a "bundler," a mega-fundraiser adept at using his network of friends and business associates to help fund a candidate's campaign.

Give peace a chance

Group says wearing their shirts on campus has caused quite a stir

BY MEAGAN HAPPEL
SENIOR,

Students at Cocoa Beach Jr./Sr. High are waging a war on peace.

It all started when sophomore Skylar Stains decided to have Peace Shirt Thursdays. Skylar and her friend, Lauren Lorraine, started wearing peace shirts and soon recruited more friends to wear them. Now, the "Peace Shirt Coalition" as they call themselves, has close to 30 students from all grades.

Oil reaches new record above $99

Oil prices kept climbing on Wednesday, as the dollar remained weak, and closed near $100 a barrel.

US light, sweet crude hit a record of $99.29 in Asian trading. London Brent crude rose 50 cents to $95.99 a barrel.

Tight supplies, winter demand and continuing geopolitical concerns have contributed to oil prices climbing by about 45% since August.

Fed Expects Slowdown to Deepen

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Federal Reserve expects economic growth to slow sharply next year, and policy makers there are worried that even this forecast may prove too optimistic, according to an assessment that the central bank released on Tuesday.

In a new effort to be more open, the Fed released a detailed forecast that summarized the predictions of the Fed governors and regional bank presidents.

How the Neocon-Christian Right Alliance Brought Down the House of Bush

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on November 21, 2007, Printed on November 21, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68540/

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to investigative journalist Craig Unger in Washington, D.C., here with Democracy Now! He is author of the new book The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future. The book examines how neoconservatives secretly forged an alliance with the Christian Right during the Bush presidency and helped make the case for war in Iraq. Craig Unger is the contributing editor at Vanity Fair, also author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud.

Craig, welcome to Democracy Now!

McClellan Implicates President in Obstruction

by BooMan
Tue Nov 20th, 2007 at 11:51:51 AM EST

From former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

A Swarm of Swindlers

BOB HERBERT

Chicago

Like vultures, the mortgage lenders began circling the single-family house with the tiny front lawn on Merrill Avenue.

They knew that the woman who owned the house was old and sick and that her two aging daughters were struggling with illness and poverty as well. That was all to the good as far as the lenders were concerned. The predator’s mission is to home in on the vulnerable.

“The people that wanted to put through the loan called me about a hundred times,” said Rosa Dailey, who is 65 and going blind and needs an oxygen tank at times to help her breathe. “I kept telling them no, because I didn’t think we could afford it. But they kept saying how it was to our advantage. So I finally said: ‘All right, let’s see what we can do.’ ”

Tomgram: John Brown, Invading Washington

Over the last seven years, it's often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble. When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration -- and the Washington Consensus generally -- it turns out he isn't alone. The other night I watched Harvard academic Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage discuss the crisis in Pakistan with talk-show host Charlie Rose. The two of them had just finished co-chairing a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission that produced a report, clearly meant for the next administration, on wielding American "smart power" in the world.

Nye is an exceedingly conventional American internationalist; Armitage is a former "Vulcan" who, in the first years of the Bush administration, though Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department, was close to the neocons of the Pentagon, but may now be repositioning himself for a Democratic administration. They could be said to represent the heartland of the present Washington Consensus.

Even minute levels of lead cause brain damage in children

By Susan Lang

Even very small amounts of lead in children's blood -- amounts well below the current federal standard -- are associated with reduced IQ scores, finds a new, six-year Cornell study.

The study examined the effect of lead exposure on cognitive function in children whose blood-lead levels (BLLs) were below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standard of 10 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) -- about 100 parts per billion. The researchers compared children whose BLLs were between 0 and 5 mcg/dl with children in the 5-10 mcg/dl range.

"Even after taking into consideration family and environmental factors known to affect a child's cognitive performance, blood lead played a significant role in predicting nonverbal IQ scores," said Richard Canfield, a senior researcher in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences and senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

David Neiwert: The Urge To Purge

Submitted by David Neiwert on November 19, 2007 - 12:59pm.

Part 4 of a five-part series. Parts 1, 2, and 3.

The transformation of mainstream movement conservatives into something closer resembling far-right extremists didn’t happen overnight. It came in bits and pieces, drips and drabs, piling up in small events that seemed innocuous enough at the time. Beginning in the mid-1990s, and increasingly so in the years after 9/11, figures on the mainstream right began picking up ideas, talking points, issues, and agendas from its extremist fringes: the xenophobic, conspiracist, fanatical religious right. These ostensibly “mainstream” figures would then repackage these ideas and talking points for general consumption, usually by stripping out the overt references to racism and xenophobic hatred.

These “transmitters” were often leading right-wing media luminaries, all reliably viewed as mainstream conservatives: Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage. Some were public officials, like Sen. Trent Lott (whose ties to the segregationist neo-Confederate movement came floating to public attention in 2002), Rep. Tom Tancredo, and Rep. Ron Paul (the latter a 2008 Republican presidential candidate, despite his longtime proclivity for “New World Order” conspiracy theories). And sometimes the transmissions came from people with one foot firmly in the fringe camp who manage for a time to disguise their agendas: for instance, Jared Taylor of the white-supremacist American Renaissance, who is skilled at posing as an academic expert on race relations and is presented on TV as such; or John Tanton, the mastermind of various “immigration reform” groups whose work tends to specialize in demonizing Latinos, who is himself financed by white supremacists.

Digby: Defining Deviancy Down

Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a groundbreaking paper back in the 1960s about the alleged weaknesses of often female-headed African-American families. He described a culture of loose morals and indulgent self-destructive behavior which the right successfully demagogued into a decades long, thinly veiled racist attack on government welfare programs. The common wisdom was that welfare institutionalized and rewarded failure leading to an immoral social order. Throughout the period there were sustained conservative attacks on those who defended such programs and participated in the vast cultural transformation of the era, characterizing these behaviors as "moral depravity."

War has historic links to global climate change

Climate change and conflict have gone hand-in-hand for the past 500 years, a study reveals.

It is the first time that a clear link between war and changing global temperatures has been identified in historical data, according to the researchers involved. The results are also significant because some experts predict that current and future climate change may result in widespread global unrest and conflict.

Less is more when fighting crime

Study suggests too much money is wasted on low-risk crime targets

Both crime and prison populations could be reduced dramatically by focusing on the “power few” criminals who commit the most crime, according to Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Criminology at Cambridge University, UK. His paper will be published online this week in Springer’s Journal of Experimental Criminology.

Using data across a wide range of research, Sherman shows that most crime is committed by a small fraction of all criminals, at a tiny fraction of all locations, against a tiny fraction of all victims, during a few hours a week. By focusing police, probation, parole, rehabilitation, security and prison resources on these “power few” units with the most crime, the study shows how society could stand a far better chance at crime prevention without raising costs.

Rudy Giuliani adds war/disaster profiteer Joe Allbaugh to campaign staff

The former head of FEMA who gave America "Brownie" and helped disembody the agency will be senior advisor on homeland security issues

On October 30, Joseph Allbaugh was named Senior Advisor to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. According to a Giuliani campaign press release, Allbaugh "will advise the campaign on general strategy and homeland security."

"Rudy Giuliani is the only candidate who will keep America on offense in the Terrorists' War on Us," the press release quoted Allbaugh as saying. "The leadership he showed after 9/11 was an inspiration not only to New Yorkers but to the country. He knows what it takes to keep America safe, and as President, he will ensure that our country never goes back on defense in this war."

Ivory tower chills

by SAMER ELATRASH

Many professors keep regular blogs, but few are as widely read, and as controversial, as Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan, is both an example of how an academic may share his expertise with rigour and plain diction—and that such expertise is in demand, judging by the size of the blog’s readership, which Cole says attracts 600,000 to a million visits a month—and, depending on who you ask, an example of how Middle East scholars are too politicized and rather un-American.

Early this month, a group of Middle East historians and academics—including Princeton’s Bernard Lewis and John Hopkins political science professor Fouad Ajami, and others who generally support a robust U.S. foreign policy—started a new group called the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to counter what they say is the politicization of Middle East studies by academics such as Juan Cole and organizations such as the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which Cole is a member of and once headed. MESA is holding their annual conference in Montreal this weekend.

Cole disputes such charges, saying ASMEA is “exclusively ideological, for people on the right.” (ASMEA did not return calls from the Mirror). The biggest problem facing Middle East academics, however, is the pressure by off-campus interest groups that disagree with a professor’s stances, he says.

Glenn Greenwald: The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere

For all the self-satisfied talk about how George Bush is incapable of ever admitting mistakes or changing his mind, our elite pundit class is exactly the same way. Tom Friedman single-handedly did more than anyone else to convince liberals and Democrats to support the invasion of Iraq; the only competitors for that ignominious distinction are Colin Powell and Ken Pollack. And while he has spent the last year or so feigning angst over his years of pro-war cheerleading, he has not changed in the slightest.

Freedom's Watch Focus Groups War with Iran

Washington Dispatch: The hawkish advocacy group recently rolled out a multi-million dollar ad blitz in support of the troop surge in Iraq. It's now test marketing language that could be used to sell a war with Iran.

By Laura Rozen

November 19, 2007

Laura Sonnenmark is a focus group regular. "I've been asked to talk about orange juice, cell phone service, furniture," the Fairfax County, Virginia-based children's book author and Democratic Party volunteer says. But when she was called by a focus group organizer for a prospective assignment earlier this month, she was told the questions this time would be about something "political."

Glenn Greenwald: Rudy Giuliani's messianic paranoia

The right-wing Federalist Society, architects of many of the most extremist Bush executive power abuses, invited only one candidate to speak at their annual event -- "moderate" Rudy Giuliani. That invitation was, as The Associated Press put it, a "testament to his close ties to [Ted] Olson and other prominent members of the organization," many of whom "are advising his campaign." Giuliani, as he has done many times before, promptly "cited Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts as models for the judges he would appoint."

But far more significant was Giuliani's expressed view of what he thinks his mission will be as President.

Paul Krugman: Republicans and Race

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan’s legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement.

The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement.

The centrality of race — and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans — is obvious from voting data.

Daniel Ellsberg Says Sibel Edmonds Case 'Far More Explosive Than Pentagon Papers'

"I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers," Daniel Ellsberg told us in regard to former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

"From what I understand, from what she has to tell, it has a major difference from the Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly with criminal activity and may involve impeachable offenses," Ellsberg explained.

Lobby to Hide Cancer Dangers Has Government's Helping Hand

By Michelle Chen, In These Times
Posted on November 19, 2007, Printed on November 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67364/

Industry special interests are burying information on cancer-causing chemicals and, according to watchdog groups, the government is helping them do it -- in the name of "data quality."

In a study of the National Institutes of Health's National Toxicology Program, OMB Watch, a DC-based policy-research group, reports that industry is frustrating the work of government researchers with petitions that are light on science but heavy with accusations of anti-business "bias."

Bad Intelligence: America's History of Bungled Spying

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet
Posted on November 19, 2007, Printed on November 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68268/

On April 1, 2001, Oklahoma State Trooper C. L. Parkins stopped Nawaf Alhazmi, for speeding.

Alhazmi had a California license. Parkins ran it, as cops always do on a traffic stop. Nothing came back. He wrote Alhazmi two tickets totaling $138 and let him continue on his way.

What makes this event striking is that Alhazmi had been identified by the NSA in 1999 as associated with Al Qaeda. He had also been put on a Saudi terror watch list that year. In January 2000, he was photographed and videotaped at an Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia. A week later, on Jan, 15, he entered the United States. The CIA knew that he had a valid U.S. visa, and though they missed his arrival, they suspected he was here.

Whither Go Real Wages?

Here’s a graph at which we should all take a close look. It’s just a few data points bouncing around a chart, but it explains a lot, I think, about why so many people are unsettled by developments in the current economy.

The data are the inflation-adjusted, average weekly earnings of a representative group of workers—those who are non-managers in the service sector and blue-collar workers in manufacturing. So we’re talking about the bottom 80% of workforce.

Paul Krugman: Long-run budget math

Some commenters have asked for more about Social Security’s role in the long-run budget problem, and in particular an explanation of my assertion that the Beltway obsession with Social Security reflects ignorance. So here’s a quick, informal explanation.

Start with the current position. Last year, federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid was 8.5 percent of GDP, equally divided between Social Security and the health care programs. Dismal long-run projections, like those of the GAO, have this total rising by 10 percentage points of GDP by mid-century.

PBS' Moyers on planned media consolidation rule change

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was heavily criticized by members of the public, along with his colleagues, at the sixth and final public hearing, held on November 9, 2007, on his planned changes to rules on media consolidation.

Input from the public, leading up to the vote, is being accepted until December 11, 2007.

Paul Krugman: Played for a Sucker

Lately, Barack Obama has been saying that major action is needed to avert what he keeps calling a “crisis” in Social Security — most recently in an interview with The National Journal. Progressives who fought hard and successfully against the Bush administration’s attempt to panic America into privatizing the New Deal’s crown jewel are outraged, and rightly so.

But Mr. Obama’s Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you’d expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable.

To understand the nature of Mr. Obama’s mistake, you need to know something about the special role of Social Security in American political discourse.

'Safe' uranium that left a town contaminated

They were told depleted uranium was not hazardous. Now, 23 years after a US arms plant closed, workers and residents have cancer - and experts say their suffering shows the use of such weapons may be a war crime

David Rose in Colonie, New York
Sunday November 18, 2007
The Observer

It is 50 years since Tony Ciarfello and his friends used the yard of a depleted uranium weapons factory as their playground in Colonie, a suburb of Albany in upstate New York state. 'There wasn't no fence at the back of the plant,' remembers Ciarfello. 'Inside was a big open ground and nobody would chase us away. We used to play baseball and hang by the stream running through it. We even used to fish in it - though we noticed the fish had big pink lumps on them.'

U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.

But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

Frank Rich: What 'That Regan Woman' Knows

NEW Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful “America’s Mayor” cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.

Surely, we reassured ourselves, the all-powerful Republican values enforcers were so highly principled that they would excommunicate him because of his liberal social views, three wives and estranged children. Or a firewall would be erected by the firefighters who are enraged by his self-aggrandizing rewrite of 9/11 history. Or Judith Giuliani, with her long-hidden first marriage and Louis Vuitton ’tude, would send red-state voters screaming into the night.