Glenn Greenwald: The California marriage decision and basic civics

The Brookings Institutions' Ben Wittes has an article in The New Republic decrying the decision of the California Supreme Court striking down that state's discriminatory marriage law. Wittes' criticism of the decision reflects the standard attack on the California Supreme Court, an attack that relies upon what can only be described as profound ignorance about how our system of government works.

Wittes' principal objection is that the California court's ruling was wrong because it is contrary to evolving democratic efforts to forge a "compromise" on the issue of gay marriage and because a large majority supports the law (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

Another cost is that slow drip-by-drip accretion of power to courts, that steady undermining of the right of people to govern themselves. In California, the deprivation of that right is exquisitely on display, for the compromise the court upset involved decades of negotiation and movement. The nucleus of California's domestic partnership law dates from the late 1970s. Over time, it has grown more generous, by 2006 including all of the rights and obligations of marriage. In 2000, however, the people of California voted overwhelmingly to limit marriage itself to opposite-sex unions. The legislature has twice voted to extend marriage to gay couples -- and Governor Schwarzenegger has twice vetoed the bill. The current arrangement, in short, reflects a series of evolving compromises set against the backdrop of a quickly developing social consensus concerning the value and honor of same-sex relationships -- a process that the court treated as just so much bother on the way to a self-evident truth. Once upon a time, this bother had a name. We called it democracy.

Spending On Iraq Poorly Tracked

Audit Faults Accounting for $15 Billion in Work

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 23, 2008; D01

The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.

The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The Mosul riddle

By Pepe Escobar

"Operation Peace" in Sadr City in Baghdad is and will continue to be spun by the Nuri al-Maliki government - and by America corporate media - as a resounding "success" in controlling Iraqi militias, in this case the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Meanwhile, under the global radar, an invisible war in Mosul drags on, officially against al-Qaeda in Iraq jihadis but in fact a barely disguised anti-Sunni mini-pogrom conducted by - what else? - government-embedded militias.

Mythmaking for the Next War

by Steve Chapman

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had some 45,000 nuclear warheads. At the moment, Iran has none. But when Barack Obama said the obvious — that Iran does not pose the sort of threat the Soviet Union did — John McCain reacted as though his rival had offered to trade Ft. Knox for a sack of magic beans.

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Sen. Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment,” exclaimed McCain. “These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess.”

But if Iran is the Soviet Union, I’m Shaquille O’Neal. There is nothing reckless in soberly distinguishing large threats from small ones, and there is something foolhardy in grossly exaggerating the strength of your enemies.

Frightening Food for Thought

by John Griffin

Content conquers craft in Marie-Monique Robin’s devastating exposé Le Monde selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto).

The French journalist’s documentary format is pedestrian — lots of phone calls, talking heads, cheesy mock-dramatic background music. But her seriously researched critique of the international chemical “life sciences” giant Monsanto will freeze the blood in your veins.

You may know Monsanto for its role in those old chestnuts PCB, dioxin and Agent Orange, poisons so pervasive and so stubborn they have spread their toxic stain from pole to pole.

McCain's Team of Lobbyists

by Joe Conason | May 20, 2008

Disturbed by troubling connections and unflattering publicity, John McCain has just purged several prominent Washington lobbyists from his presidential campaign. Surely his intentions are laudable, but if Mr. McCain is consistent in ridding the campaign of such compromised people, he will find himself riding lonesome on the Straight Talk Express. That’s because nearly all of his advisers, fund-raisers and top staffers have worked on K Street, starting with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his senior adviser and spokesman, Charles Black.

BradBlog: Exclusive: Voting Machine Company Chief Lied to Chicago Officials About Ownership, Control of Company

Sequoia Voting Systems' CEO, Jack Blaine, Sent Deceptive Letter to Windy City Officials Following 'Evasive' and 'Troublesome' Testimony on his Company's Control by Smartmatic, a Chavez-tied E-Voting Firm

Documents Reveal Officials Sought to Ensure Venezuelan Company's Divestiture of Sequoia Was 'Not a Sham Transaction Designed to Fool Regulators'; Recent Reporting by The BRAD BLOG Reveals That it Was...

-- by Brad Friedman

The CEO and President of one of America's largest voting machine companies, Sequoia Voting Systems, gave both deceptive, and carefully selective, answers in his reply to a letter sent earlier this year from two high-ranking officials in Chicago, according to documents recently obtained during an ongoing investigation by The BRAD BLOG.

Dave Zirin: What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

This Friday, I will have the privilege to interview Mary Tillman, the mother of the late Pat Tillman: former NFL player turned Army Ranger, turned casualty of a criminal war.

Mary Tillman has written a book along with Narda Zacchino called Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman. It’s a heart-ripping account of one family’s lonely search for justice, and how, even aided by public outcry and heavy hitters in Congress, the truth about what actually happened to Mary’s son remains at arm’s length.

There are, after four years, six investigations and two congressional hearings, still a host of unanswered questions about how Pat was killed. Boots on the Ground is yet another attempt by Mary Tillman and her very private family to force the spotlight upon his case–and to their discomfort, put the spotlight on themselves.

House Adopts Lee Amendment to Prevent President Bush From Making Commitments Related To The Security of Iraq Absent Congressional Approval

WASHINGTON, DC - May 23 - Today, by bipartisan a vote of 234 to 183, the House adopted Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act requiring congressional approval of any agreement between the U.S. and Iraq making commitments related to Iraq’s security.

In November 2007 President Bush and Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the “Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation,” which included an unprecedented commitment to “defend Iraq against internal and external threats.”

Why the War in Iraq Is Stranger Than Fiction

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on May 24, 2008, Printed on May 24, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86356/

John Cusack's new filmWar, Inc., takes on issues few in Hollywood today would dare to: war profiteering, mercenaries, political corruption and embedded journalism. A political satire, the film stars Cusack as Hauser, a hit-man for hire who is deployed to the fictional country of Turaqistan to kill a Middle Eastern oil baron. Hauser's employer is Tamerlane, a secretive for-profit military corporation headed by a former U.S. vice president played by Dan Aykroyd. We also speak to Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Déjà Vu in South Dakota

It's baaack. In 2006 South Dakota voters defeated, 56 to 44, a ballot initiative that would have banned abortion even to save the woman's life. Prochoicers cautiously exhaled. Antichoicers got busy. Taking a leaf from polls that suggested a hefty majority would favor a ban as long as it included exceptions for drastic circumstances--rape, incest, the life or physical health of the woman--antichoicers have rolled out a new initiative, Measure 11. It contains loopholes, in theory, for rape and incest victims who report the crime to law enforcement and allow collection of their DNA and that of the fetus, as well as to women "at serious risk of a substantial and irreversible impairment of the functioning of a major bodily organ or system." An ominous sign: it was submitted to the secretary of state on March 31 with 46,000 signatures, although only 16,000 were required.

Today's Must Read

By David Kurtz - May 22, 2008, 10:10AM

The Washington Post digs deeper into that Justice Department Inspector General's report on the FBI role in detainee interrogations, specifically the contentious high-level Administration disputes over torture:

Two major policy splits are highlighted in the report's account of the long to-and-fro over the tactics. One reflected a clash of cultures between the experienced interrogators at the FBI who were looking to prosecute terrorism crimes, and military and CIA officials who were seeking rapid information about al-Qaeda and were willing to push legal boundaries to do it. The report shows that FBI agents appeared more concerned about the long view, while others wanted detainees to break immediately in the panicked days after Sept. 11, 2001.

Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News

"Number one, the illegal aliens shouldn't be here. And number two, the culture from which they come is a lot more violent than the USA."
-- The O'Reilly Factor, January 15, 2007

There are many problems facing the United States today: a faltering economy, a health-care crisis, and the continuing war in Iraq, to name a few. But viewers of some of the most prominent cable news programs are presented a different reality in which one issue stands above all others: illegal immigration.

Media Matters Action Network undertook this study in order to document how immigration is discussed and debated on cable news. When it comes to immigration, cable news overflows not just with vitriolic rhetoric, but also with a series of myths that feed viewers' resentment and fears, fostering hostility toward immigrants.

Gas tops $3.83 a gallon; oil briefly tops $135 before dropping to $130

By John Wilen, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK — Americans getting an early start on the Memorial Day weekend found that gasoline prices again it a record high overnight, reaching a national average above $3.83 a gallon. Some analysts predict gas will break past $4 as early as next week.

Oil prices, meanwhile, fluctuated Thursday after setting a record of $135.09 in overnight trading. A stronger dollar gave some investors reason to sell oil futures to lock in profits from crude's record run. But concerns about falling supplies and rising demand are expected to keep propelling prices higher in the days and weeks to come.

Wall Street's Racket Has Gone Too Far, and We're Going to Pay the Heavy Price

By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Posted on May 22, 2008, Printed on May 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86087/

"Far from normal."

Those were the words that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has used to describe the financial markets (and by extension, the economy) these heady spring days when everybody else with a rostrum, it seems, has pronounced the so-called liquidity crisis contained. There's a great wish for American finance to return to business-as-usual -- raking in fantastic fees for innovating new modes of tradable paper and engineering mergers and buyouts that generate huge fees plus $100 million kiss-offs for corporate CEOs in the noble struggle to dismantle America's productive capacity -- but apparently events are still out of hand.

Earth may hide a lethal carbon cache

Carbon locked away deep within the Earth's crust could have profound implications on our climate, according to a meeting in the US last week. It has long been assumed that this "deep carbon," buried in old carbonate rocks, fossil fuels and ice lattices, could be safely ignored when it came to analyzing the effect of greenhouse gases on climate. But now it is emerging there is much more deep carbon ready to spew out than previously thought.

A Devil's Dictionary of Finance

howl

By Nicholas von Hoffman
May 15, 2008

These days, even people who pay attention only to gallery openings and baseball scores are suddenly paying attention to what's happening on Wall Street. Investment bankers and hedge fund managers are crafting financial instruments the likes of which have never been seen by the industry, the consumer or the Federal Reserve. As mortgages melt down, the market gyrates, and the regulators make their pronouncements, here is a short list of some of the business terms and their meanings that are driving our wild financial ride.

Additional Capital: A financial lifesaver for banks and investment houses swamped by losses and the threat of bankruptcy. The additional capital raised to cover the emergency is obtained by printing and selling more stock, thus lessening the value of the stock already in existence.

Raising money under these circumstances is very expensive and sometimes involves a guarantee that the buyers of the new stock will receive some kind of dividend before anybody else gets paid--an additional sock in the nose to the current stockholders. The need to raise additional capital is not always due to the stupidity and incompetence of the people running the company. Sometimes it's for such profitable purposes as buying new machinery or expanding the factory (back in the days when we had factories).

Bear Stearns Too Big to Fail?

Antitrust Laws Required Intervention Long Before the Fed Bail Out

By Jonathan Macey 05/21/2008

Sometime during the week-end of March 14-15, the U.S. Federal Reserve decided the government of the United States could not permit the investment bank Bear Stearns to fail. Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, told the Senate Banking Committee that the bailout of Bear Stearns was necessary to protect the financial system and, ultimately, the entire economy.

Bear Stearns did not suddenly become an essential component of the U.S. economy the weekend it collapsed. Rather, the regulators at the Fed and the Treasury Dept. and the Security and Exchange Commission either hadn’t notice that Bear Stearns was too big to fail or were incapable or unwilling to do anything about the alleged systemic risks created by companies like Bear Stearns until they failed.

Why Does the Wall Street Journal Hate America?

By Scott Horton

“The military tribunals are about justice and upholding proud American traditions—not part of a debate on whether the war in Iraq was, or is, a good thing.”

A week ago Friday, Navy Captain Keith Allred, the military judge presiding in the Hamdan case, handed down a ruling in which he concluded that Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann—the legal adviser to the convening authority—had behaved impermissibly in bringing the case, and required Hartmann’s disqualification from the proceedings. In reaching these determinations, Capt. Allred twice cites “The Great Guantánamo Puppet Theater,” my article discussing the controversy about Hartmann’s conduct. And this has the editors at the Wall Street Journal seeing red.

Glenn Greenwald: Growing Responsibility for the Bush Torture Regime

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Recent ACLU-compelled disclosures of previously concealed DOJ documents reveal many of the details of what has been long known: that the highest levels of the Bush administration secretly implemented an illegal torture regime. But while those torture programs began in secret, we have gradually learned more and more about them. The more time that goes by and the more we learn — particularly if we do nothing meaningful to stop it — the more the responsibility for these policies shifts from the administration to all of us collectively.

Report Details Dissent on Guantánamo Tactics

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Last Roundup

Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?

By Christopher Ketcham

In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush's first term. Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration's various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the White House, Bush's men told him, in so many words, to take his concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location.

Holy warriors in the US Armed Forces

Separation of church and state being dissolved within the military

Recently the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), an advocacy group, along with Specialist Jeremy Hall filed suit in federal court in Kansas. This case being held in front of civil authorities alleges that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment has been violated, and that he has faced retaliation for his views. Mikey Weinstein, founder of the MRFF, says this is a systemic problem in the US Armed Forces, and is not being taken seriously enough. Organizations such as Christian Embassy, the Officers’ Christian Fellowship and Christian Military Fellowship are actively evangelizing among the various branches of US government and Armed Forces, and Weinstein argues this is unconstitutional.

Forecasters see weak economy even if housing, credit improve

By JEANNINE AVERSA AP Economics Writer | AP

May 19, 2008

First the good news: The worst of the painful housing slump and the credit crunch might come to an end this year. Now the bad: The economy will weaken further and unemployment will rise.

That's the latest outlook from forecasters in a survey to be released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics, also known by its acronym NABE. It will take time for any rays of light to poke through the economic clouds, though.

Mark Crispin Miller: Obama's inner circle & Big Media

Now that Obama clearly has what Bush the Elder once called "the Big Mo," and may therefore be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination, it's time to take a close look at his inner circle, insofar as we know who they are.

I offer this not in a spirit of detraction, which would be pointless, as Obama may just be the Democrat who faces John "Bomb Bomb" McCain. Rather, I circulate this information as a way to help us ask Obama the right questions, and, in this campaign season, wring from him a few straight answers, and the sort of strong assurances that people will remember.

Iraq Vets Testify to War Atrocities, Vow to Fight and Resist Bush Policy

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on May 20, 2008, Printed on May 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85725/

"I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable," Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. "These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions." Lemieux, a former Marine who was part of the invading force that entered Baghdad in March 2003, came to Washington, D.C., with Iraq Veterans Against the War, weeks after the fifth anniversary of President George Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" to tell Congress enough is enough. Invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., the veterans spoke firmly and eloquently before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, telling stories that were just "the tip of the iceberg," as Lemieux put it, but which nevertheless offered a frightening range of accounts: violent house raids, the killings of innocent people, "drop weapons" used to make dead civilians look like insurgents, racism in the ranks, and their own process of dehumanization as they became inured to the humanity of those who they were supposedly sent to "liberate."

Oil settles above $129 for first time

By ADAM SCHRECK, AP Business Writer
Tue May 20, 5:12 PM ET

Just in time for the start of the summer driving season: Oil near $130 a barrel and gas getting closer to an average of $4 a gallon.

Crude prices spiked to yet another trading high Tuesday as supply concerns mounted. At filling stations across the country, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline touched $3.80 for the first time, having followed oil's spectacular rise.

The June contract for light, sweet crude traded as high as $129.60 on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling at $129.07, up $2.02 from Monday's record high. The expiration of that contract, which ended with the close of Tuesday's trading, created additional volatility as traders scrambled to lock in positions.

Cash in on History

By Mary Kane 05/19/2008 09:48AM

One of the lessons from Japan's long economic crisis in the 1990s was supposed to be that ignoring bank losses and delaying any action to correct them only prolongs the pain. Japan spent almost a decade dealing with a deflated economy as it tried to recover from the bursting of its stock and property bubbles in late 1989. Banks hid losses and regulators looked the other way, which only added to the length of the slowdown. Japan's experience often is cited as an example of how not to handle a financial crisis.

Legal Theory Seeks to Curtail Tort Cases

Upcoming Supreme Court Case Could Redefine the Right to Sue Drug Makers

By Matthew Blake 05/19/2008

In 2001, after years as a lawyer for pharmaceutical and tobacco companies, Daniel Troy was tapped as President George W. Bush's general counsel of the Food and Drug Administration. Almost immediately, the FDA filed several friend of the court briefs on behalf of medical device and drug companies being sued in state courts. The briefs argued that it is not the place of state judges and juries to question the safety of a drug that FDA scientists have approved.

Troy was applying the preemption principle -- which argues that federal regulations of a product preempt consumers from suing the maker of that product in state civil courts. Troy left the FDA in 2004, but the U.S. Supreme Court subscribed to his logic earlier this year in a ruling that preempted lawsuits against makers of medical device. It could do the same this fall, in a case about consumers' right to sue drug companies. The Bush administration's once obscure legal argument for curtailing lawsuits against industry has become the nation's predominant opinion.

Paul Krugman: Stranded in Suburbia

BERLIN

I have seen the future, and it works.

O.K., I know that these days you’re supposed to see the future in China or India, not in the heart of “old Europe.”

But we’re living in a world in which oil prices keep setting records, in which the idea that global oil production will soon peak is rapidly moving from fringe belief to mainstream assumption. And Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world.

The ubiquitous Newt Gingrich slogs on

Former House Speaker appeared in an Al Gore-sponsored anti-global warming ad with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but later backtracked

He recently "counseled" Democrats and plugged his new novel about Pearl Harbor titled "Days of Infamy" on ABC's "The View" and "Good Morning America"; he appears regularly over at the Fox News Channel; he recently told the French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that Obama "is a far left-wing politician, but with a beautiful smile"; he's got a website that's pretty cool; he co-authored another best selling book; he's listed at number 36 on the Daily Telegraph's list of the 50 most influential political pundits; and now that Sen. John McCain is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, he no doubt regrets not having tossed his hat into the ring.

The Old Titans All Collapsed. Is the U.S. Next?

By Kevin Phillips
Sunday, May 18, 2008; B03

Back in August, during the panic over mortgages, Alan Greenspan offered reassurance to an anxious public. The current turmoil, the former Federal Reserve Board chairman said, strongly resembled brief financial scares such as the Russian debt crisis of 1998 or the U.S. stock market crash of 1987. Not to worry.

But in the background, one could hear the groans and feel the tremors as larger political and economic tectonic plates collided. Nine months later, Greenspan's soothing analogies no longer wash. The U.S. economy faces unprecedented debt levels, soaring commodity prices and sliding home prices, to say nothing of a weak dollar. Despite the recent stabilization of the economy, some economists fear that the world will soon face the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

Commentary: Propaganda and the media

Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: May 15, 2008 02:42:32 PM

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people.

Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed since 1951 has contained language that says no public money “shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States” without the lawmakers' prior approval.

Setting harms education of some young children, report warns

By Sarah Cassidy, Education Correspondent
Friday, 16 May 2008

Teaching young children in groups according to their ability does not increase their achievements and is damaging to those pupils allocated to the bottom groups, the biggest review into primary education for 40 years has concluded.

Bright children perform just as well whether they are taught in mixed-ability classes or in exclusive groups of high achievers, the study found. But less bright children do less well when they are taught with other lower achievers than if they study with the rest of the class, according to the latest reports of the Primary Review, led by Cambridge University.

The reports, by academics from the University of London's Institute of Education and King's College, also called for smaller classes, arguing that pupils can fall behind when they are forced to move to larger classes as they progress up the school.

The island house that powers itself - with a little help from 100mph gales

Global interest in couple's pioneering project to live off-grid - including their car

Severin Carrell
The Guardian, Monday May 19 2008

Life on the most northerly inhabited island in Britain can be very tough indeed. On Unst the winters are harsh, and the winds brutal and relentless, regularly sweeping across the treeless landscape at more than 100mph.

But Unst is the island chosen by a retired couple from Wiltshire to build one of the world's greenest houses - a "zero carbon" home powered entirely by the wind and the sun. It sits on the same latitude as southern Greenland, but will soon boast lemon trees, grapevines and green pepper plants in its greenhouse, an electric car powered by the wind, and floors heated by drawing warmth from the air.

No wonder Iceland has the happiest people on earth

Special report by John Carlin
The Observer, Sunday May 18 2008

Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to be something wrong with this equation. Put those three factors together - loads of children, broken homes, absent mothers - and what you have, surely, is a recipe for misery and social chaos. But no. Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world. To which one might respond: Yes, but - what with the dark winters and the far from tropical summers - are Icelanders happy? Actually, in so far as one can reliably measure such things, they are. According to a seemingly serious academic study reported in the Guardian in 2006, Icelanders are the happiest people on earth. (The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy.)

Frank Rich: McCain Can Run, but Bush Won’t Hide

THE biggest gift President Bush has given his party this year was to keep his daughter’s wedding nearly as private as Connie Corleone’s. Now that his disapproval rating has reached the Nixon nadir of negativity, even a joyous familial ritual isn’t enough to make the country glad to see him. The G.O.P.’s best hope would be for both the president and Dick Cheney to lock themselves in a closet until the morning after Election Day.

Republicans finally recognized the gravity of their situation three days after Jenna Bush took her vows in Crawford. As Hillary Clinton romped in West Virginia, voters in Mississippi elected a Democrat in a Congressional district that went for Bush-Cheney by 25 percentage points just four years ago. It’s the third “safe” Republican House seat to fall in a special election since March.

Tomgram: Mark Engler, How to Rule the World After Bush

A mere eight months to go until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office -- though, given the cast of characters, it could seem like a lifetime. Still, it's a reasonable moment to begin to look back over the last years -- and also toward the post-Bush era. What a crater we'll have to climb out of by then!

My last post, "Kiss American Security Goodbye," was meant to mark the beginning of what will, over the coming months, be a number of Bush legacy pieces at Tomdispatch. So consider that series officially inaugurated by Foreign Policy in Focus analyst Mark Engler, who has just authored a new book that couldn't be more relevant to our looming moment of transition: How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy.

Fear, secrecy kept 1950 Korea mass killings hidden

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Sun May 18, 1:26 PM ET

SEOUL, South Korea - One journalist's bid to report mass murder in South Korea in 1950 was blocked by his British publisher. Another correspondent was denounced as a possibly treasonous fabricator when he did report it. In South Korea, down the generations, fear silenced those who knew.

Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or wrongly identified as sympathizers. Today a government Truth and Reconciliation Commission is working to dig up the facts, and the remains of victims.