Justice Department Moving to Immunize Snooping Telcos

Two months ago, President Bush won congressional approval to immunize the nation's telecommunications companies from lawsuits accusing them of helping Bush funnel Americans' electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants -- all in the name of national security following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

But the telecoms, facing 36 lawsuits commingled as one in a San Francisco federal court, still haven't been granted immunity in the lawsuits alleging they breached their customers' Fourth Amendment right to privacy. On Friday, however, Justice Department special counsel Anthony Coppolino said the government would comply with the immunity bill's procedural hurdles by Sept. 19 to seek blanket immunity on behalf of the companies.

Nitrogen emerges as the latest climate-change threat

By Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Scientists are raising alarms about yet another threat to Earth's climate and human well-being. This time it's nitrogen, a common element essential to all life.

For years, people have been bombarded with warnings about the harmful effects of carbon — especially in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas widely blamed for global warming.

Now, it's becoming clear that human activities, such as driving cars and raising crops, also are boosting nitrogen to dangerous levels — polluting air and water and damaging human health.

U.S. inaction on oil royalties suit could have cost millions

WASHINGTON — Senior Justice Department officials blocked the U.S. attorney in Colorado from supporting a whistleblower's suit last year, jeopardizing the government's prospects for recovering as much as $40 million from a major oil company for its alleged underpayment of royalties.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said Washington overruled his request to enter the case against the Kerr-McGee Corp. A lawyer for the whistleblower said he was told that decision was made "at the highest levels" of the Justice Department, then run by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Study Finds Recent Global Warming Unprecedented in 1,300 Years

by Renee Schoof

WASHINGTON - A new scientific study adds evidence that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fluctuated a bit over time, but that the sharp increase during the past few decades is bigger than anything in at least 1,300 years.

The report was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its conclusion is that temperature increased and decreased a little over the centuries, but the fluctuations were small enough that the line was roughly flat, like the shaft of a horizontal hockey stick. Then, from about 1980 to now, temperature increased sharply, more than any increase before - like the blade of the hockey stick.

Dan Froomkin: What Is the Bush Doctrine, Anyway?

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 12, 2008; 11:32 AM

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's evident cluelessness when asked in an interview yesterday if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine is appropriately being seen as emblematic of her ignorance of foreign policy.

But as it happens, I'm not sure anyone is entirely clear on what the Bush Doctrine is at this particular moment.

Anything Goes, Apparently

It seemed inevitable that bad things would happen when President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney packed the top posts at the Department of the Interior with lobbyists who had spent their careers representing the very industries they were now being asked to regulate. But it was left to Earl Devaney, the department’s inspector general — and the busiest gumshoe inside the federal bureaucracy — to demonstrate just how bad things could be.

In three extraordinary reports delivered to Congress this week, Mr. Devaney found that officials at the Minerals Management Service — the division responsible for granting offshore oil leases and collecting royalties — accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drugs and sex with oil company employees as part of what he described as a broader “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.”

GOP Contempt: What This Election Is Coming Down To

by P.M. Carpenter

Is the Republican well of contempt for the American voter bottomless? I'm not asking about mere tactical cynicism. In politics, that's a given, it seems to me. No, I mean contempt -- a profound, institutional contempt that knows no final depth.

This is no idle speculation or query. With every passing day of this presidential campaign the GOP pushes one more Democrat, one more independent, one more thoughtful conservative to ask the very same question and for damn good reason. The GOP is daring us in so many ways and on so many fronts.

Amid a Painful Economic Meltdown, Will Obama Be Bold Enough to Win?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on September 13, 2008, Printed on September 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98495/

Voters may not follow every twist and turn of the election -- they may not brush up on each of the candidates' policy proposals -- but they know when they're hurting economically, and almost unprecedented numbers now say the country is on "the wrong track."

The Bush years have been bad. In fact, as economist Jared Bernstein noted, when one compares the economic peak of the past cycle, in 2000, with the high point of the business cycle that just ended in 2007, households in the middle actually lost ground, earning $300, adjusted for inflation, less than they did in 2000. The worst this group had done in previous business cycles occurred during the 1970s, when median income "only" increased by about $2,000. In comparison, the income for a family in the middle rose by almost four grand during the 1990s.

The Sorrow and the Pity

When it comes to foreign policy, Sarah Palin doesn't know what she's talking about.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Sept. 12, 2008, at 1:43 PM ET

Judging from the excerpts shown Thursday on ABC's World News and Nightline, there are several appropriate responses to watching Sarah Palin answer Charlie Gibson's questions on foreign policy and national security—sorrow, pity, incredulity, fear.

Gov. Palin was obviously briefed by Sen. John McCain's advisers, and briefed fairly well. She recited what were plainly the main points of these tutorials with an assertive confidence familiar to those who engaged in high-school debate competitions.

Debunked: Ten Conservative Myths About National Security

By Sara Robinson
September 12th, 2008 - 1:59am ET

True confession: I was terrified on 9/11—for all the right reasons.

I wasn't afraid of the terrorists. There are plenty of countries where people have lived for decades under the constant threat of unholy acts of terror—and yet people still get on buses and subways and airplanes, and life goes on. I'd like to think that Americans are at least as courageous as Israelis or Indonesians. Our "land of the free and home of the brave" mythos insists we should be. So I was damned if I was going to respond to the crisis by giving into irrational fears and thereby, as we used to say, "let the terrorists win."

August foreclosures hit another record high

There were 304,000 homes in some stage of default last month, and 91,000 families lost their homes.

By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: September 12, 2008: 9:51 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Foreclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and 91,000 families lost their houses.

More than 770,000 homes have been repossessed by lenders since August 2007, when the credit crunch took hold.

Curbing coal emissions alone might avert climate danger, say researchers

Oil and gas seen to have lesser effect

An ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels might be kept below harmful levels if emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades, say researchers. They say that less plentiful oil and gas should be used sparingly as well, but that far greater supplies of coal mean that it must be the main target of reductions. Their study appears in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

The burning of fossil fuels accounts for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric CO₂ since the pre-industrial era, to its current level of 385 parts per million. However, while there are huge amounts of coal left, predictions about when and how oil and gas production might start running out have proved controversial, and this has made it difficult to anticipate future emissions. To better understand how the emissions might change in the future, climatologist Pushker Kharecha and director James Hansen of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies—a member of Columbia University's Earth Institute--considered a wide range of scenarios.

The Middle-Class Squeeze 2008: A Drum Major Institute for Public Policy Overview

Being middle class used to mean having a reliable job with fair pay; access to health care; a safe and stable home; the opportunity to provide a good education for one’s children, including a college education; time off work for vacations and major life events; and the security of looking forward to a dignified retirement. But today this standard of living is increasingly precarious. The existing middle class is squeezed and many of those striving to attain the middle-class standard find it persistently out of reach. With this overview, DMI brings together the latest data to shed light on this troubling state of affairs.

Paul Krugman: Blizzard of Lies

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

A Tangled Story of Addiction

Consequences of Cindy McCain's Drug Abuse Were More Complex Than She Has Portrayed

By Kimberly Kindy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; Page A01

When Cindy McCain is asked what issues she would champion as first lady, she often cites one of the most difficult periods of her life: her battle with -- and ultimate victory over -- prescription painkillers. Her struggle, she has said repeatedly, taught her valuable lessons about drug abuse that she would pass on to the nation.

"I think it made me a better person as well as a better parent, so I think it would be very important to talk about it and be very upfront about it," McCain said in an interview with "Access Hollywood." In an appearance on the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno," she said she tries "to talk about it as much as possible because I don't want anyone to wind up in the shoes that I did at the time."

Palin would support war with Russia

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Friday, September 12, 2008

(09-11) 19:39 PDT --

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, emerging from media silence for her first serious interview as the GOP vice presidential pick, said Thursday that the United States might have to go to war if Russia were to invade Georgia again.

And on the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, she appeared entirely unfamiliar with the Bush Doctrine, the central foreign policy tenet of the current administration, which asserts the right to wage preventive strikes in the aftermath of such terrorist attacks.

‘Jim Crawford’ Republicans

The GOP is working to keep eligible African-Americans from voting in several states.

Jonathan Alter
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 2:37 PM ET Sep 11, 2008

It was a mainstay of Jim Crow segregation: for 100 years after the Civil War, Southern white Democrats kept eligible blacks from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court declared these assaults on the heart of American democracy unconstitutional.

Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

James Fallows: The Palin interview

It is embarrassing to have to spell this out, but for the record let me explain why Gov. Palin's answer to the "Bush Doctrine" question -- the only part of the recent interview I have yet seen over here in China -- implies a disqualifying lack of preparation for the job.

Not the mundane job of vice president, of course, which many people could handle. Rather the job of potential Commander in Chief and most powerful individual on earth.

Digby: Win, Win, Lose, Lose

I get accused of being unnecessarily gloomy, but I'm positively giddy with optimism compared to K-Drum:

John McCain has obviously decided that he can't win a straight-up fight, so he's decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?

If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.

Palin Foreign Policy: War with Russia

From ABC News:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY

More of the first excerpts from the Charlie Gibson interview here and here.

Here's the exchange on Russia:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

Atrocity in Azizabad: More Child Sacrifices on the Terror War Altar

Monday, 08 September 2008

Every day, the shame mounts, the lies grow more brazen and more brutal, and the dishonor spreads and deepens -- ineradicable, like a white garment soaked with blood.

The atrocity in Azizabad, an Afghan village hit by an American airstrike on the night of August 22, is by no means the worst depredation of the so-called "War on Terror," which has left more than million innocent people dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia over the past seven years. But the mass death visited upon the sleeping, defenseless citizens of Azizabad encapsulates many of the essential elements of this global campaign of "unipolar domination" and war profiteering: the callous application of high-tech weaponry against unarmed civilians; the witless attack that alienates local supporters and empowers an ever-more violent and radical insurgency; and perhaps the most quintessential element of all -- the knowing lies and deliberate deceits that Washington employs to hide the obscene reality of its Terror War.

Glenn Greenwald: The Government, the Media and Afghanistan

On the night of August 22, the U.S. committed what Chris Floyd, in a richly detailed and amply documented piece, calls an "atrocity" in the Afghan village of Azizabad, near the western city of Herat. The U.S. conducted a massive midnight airstrike on the village, killing scores of unarmed civilians, including large numbers of women and children. That was preceded just weeks earlier by another U.S. airstrike in Eastern Afghanistan which "killed 27 people in a wedding party -- most of them women and children, including the bride."

What makes the Azizabad attack particularly notable is the blatant and now clearly demonstrated lying engaged in by the U.S. Government regarding this incident, with the eager propagandistic assistance of what we are constantly told is the "legitimate news arm" of Fox News -- namely, Brit Hume's show and his stable of "legitimate news reporters." Working in unison, Fox and the Pentagon continuously denied claims that large numbers of civilians had been killed in the airstrike, accusing the villagers of lying and U.N. investigators of having been "duped." But a mountain of documentary evidence and independent investigations have now conclusively confirmed that it was the U.S. Government that was lying and the villagers' claims which were true along, forcing the military to "reinvestigate" its own conclusions.

Did speculators use unregulated markets to drive up oil prices?

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have uncovered evidence that oil speculators operating in unregulated "dark markets" may have helped drive the price of crude oil to record highs this year, McClatchy has learned.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to issue a long-awaited report before Monday, perhaps as early as Thursday, on what role oil speculators played in the 50 percent rise in oil prices earlier this year. The report isn't expected to declare that speculators are the main cause of the price rise, a conclusion the agency rejected in an interim report in July.

Michael Kinsley: Why Do Lies Prevail?

John McCain was not offended when Barack Obama described McCain’s policy agenda as putting “lipstick on a pig.” I can’t prove that, but it seems so obvious to me that it’s more like a fact than an opinion. Nor could McCain possibly have thought that Obama was calling McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, a pig, since Obama didn’t even mention Palin. If Obama had even thought that his words would be misinterpreted as calling Palin a pig, he wouldn’t have said them. That also seems obvious. The whole controversy is ginned up, a fraud, a lie. All obvious.

Commentary: Bush's Last-Minute Rush to Dismantle Public Protections

by Gary D. Bass, OMB Watch Executive Director

Those who keep an eye on the federal government know the Bush administration is not friendly toward regulation — particularly health, safety, environmental, civil rights, and consumer protections. When they have been forced to regulate, Bush officials have advanced policies that mostly let the market control the game, while the idea of strong government intervention has been left to gather dust. However, even outside the recent regulatory takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, events show the administration is starting to kick things into high gear on regulations, trying to lock the next administration into a Bush legacy.

In May, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten issued a memo that set deadlines for agency regulations during the remaining months of the Bush administration. Bolten said he wanted to stop last-minute regulatory activity — commonly known as midnight regulations. To avoid this, except in "extraordinary circumstances," Bolten said agencies should propose regulations that they want to finalize no later than June 1 and that all final rules should be published by Nov. 1.

Iraq Cancels Six No-Bid Oil Contracts

By ANDREW E. KRAMER and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.

George Lakoff: Don't Think of a Maverick! Could the Obama Campaign Be Improved?

Throughout the nomination campaign I was struck by how well the Obama campaign was being run, especially how sophisticated the framing was. I was heartened that my five books on the subject might have had a real effect. But recently I have begun to wonder. It looks like, in certain respects, the Obama campaign is making some of the same mistakes of the Hillary campaign and the Kerry and Gore campaigns.

The Dayton speech on education had fine policy, but was the first really deadly dull Obama speech I've heard. It started out with lots of numbers. True, but dull. And he is promising more of the same policy wonk speeches. He's right that we are facing serious realities, and he's right to say what he intends to do, but the old inspiring Obama just isn't there. And the surrogates - Biden and Hillary - are policy-wonking it, too.

No victory in Iraq, says Petraeus

The outgoing commander of US troops in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has said that he will never declare victory there.

In a BBC interview, Gen Petraeus said that recent security gains were "not irreversible" and that the US still faced a "long struggle".

When asked if US troops could withdraw from Iraqi cities by the middle of next year, he said that would be "doable".

Almost All Americans' Wages are Plummeting

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports the sobering news that, since 2000, real wages have fallen for every educational group in America except folks with professional degrees (doctors, lawyers, and the like). All other groups, even those with master's degrees and Ph.D.'s, saw declining wages over this period. The WSJ piece is based on recently released Census data (you can find the most recent Census Bureau report on income and earnings here).

Can Any Candidate Clean Up Bush's Massive Post 9/11 Mess?

By Andrew J. Bacevich, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on September 11, 2008, Printed on September 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98339/

Can anyone be surprised that, once again, the attacks of 9/11/01 were reflexively ground zero for embattled Republicans? George W. Bush led the way at the Republican National Convention, saying of John McCain, "We need a president who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001." In his convention keynote address, Rudy Giuliani followed suit, zapping Obama and his supporters this way: "The Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11. They are in a state of denial about the threat that faces us now and in the future." Post-convention, it's evidently time to assure the nation that Sarah Palin is just the pit bull to handle the next 9/11. Now comes the news that this Thursday, the endless presidential election campaign will finally make it -- quite literally -- to Ground Zero. Barack Obama and John McCain will "put aside politics" and appear together for the yearly ceremonies. By now, however, it's far too late to "put aside" 9/11, no less remove it from American politics. Our world has been profoundly reshaped, after all, by the decisions Bush and his top officials made in the wake of those attacks.

Officials: Bush OK'd US raids inside ally Pakistan

By PAMELA HESS and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writers
1 hour, 45 minutes ago

President Bush has secretly approved U.S. military raids inside anti-terror ally Pakistan, according to current and former U.S. officials. The high-risk gambit prizes the death or capture of al-Qaida and Taliban extremists over the sensitivities of a shaky U.S.-backed civilian government that does not want to seem like Washington's lapdog.

Bush acted in July to give U.S. forces greater leeway to cross from outposts in Afghanistan into the rugged area along the Pakistan border. Pakistan's central government has little control in this area, where extremists have found what U.S. officials say is a comfortable safe haven.

Dragging Down the World

That hot new theory that the global economy doesn't depend on the United States anymore? It's completely wrong.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008, at 5:02 PM ET

"Decoupling," a promising economic idea imported from abroad, lasted a little longer than Coupling, an exciting entertainment imported from abroad. Coupling is a British sitcom that NBC adapted with much fanfare and cancelled after four episodes. "Decoupling" is the notion that the rest of the global economy could power ahead even as its biggest single motor, the United States, stalled. Decoupling was trumpeted by many of the international grandees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January and gained currency in certain circles (including the one surrounding my desk). But now it, too, seems to have been cancelled.

Oil companies gave sex, drinks, gifts to federal overseers

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

Interior Department officials, while handling billions of dollars in oil and gas royalty payments, engaged in illegal sex with industry employees and accepted meals, drinks, ski junkets and golf outings from major oil companies, internal investigators reported Wednesday.

Old growth forests are valuable carbon sinks

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis to be published Friday in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually "carbon sinks" - they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries.

However, these old growth forests around the world are not protected by international treaties and have been considered of no significance in the national "carbon budgets" as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol. That perspective was largely based on findings of a single study from the late 1960s which had become accepted theory, and scientists now say it needs to be changed.

Thomas Frank: The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death

It tells us something about Sarah Palin's homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969, Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.

Mocking Constitutional Rights

By Nat Parry
September 10, 2008

On the third day of the Republican National Convention, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin mocked Barack Obama for believing that individuals accused of terrorism actually have rights under the law.

"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America,” Palin said, “and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

The implication was that those suspected of being terrorists have no rights under domestic or international law. The line elicited thunderous approval from the party faithful gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As the GOP delegates cheered, civil libertarians were reminded of the contempt that the Bush administration has shown to basic legal principles in its prosecution of the “war on terror,” and the resounding approval these policies have gotten from the Republican Party as a whole.

New Report: Green Investment Will Yield Two Million New Jobs in Two Years

Report Outlines Rapid Recovery Economic Program That Moves America Toward a Clean Energy Future

WASHINGTON - September 9 - As America confronts the current energy crisis, a new report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and partner labor and environmental groups shows that the U.S. can create two million jobs by investing in clean energy technologies that will strengthen the economy and fight global warming. The report finds that investing in clean energy would create four times as many jobs as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.

"This new report shows that investing in clean energy is a win-win solution. Shifting to clean energy will put more people to work, provide consumers relief at the pump, help reduce global warming pollution and revitalize our economy at a time when many Americans are hurting," said Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC.

US warned over raids in Pakistan

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community's focal point for estimating future developments, warned the George W Bush administration last month that a decision to launch commando raids by US troops against al-Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province region would carry a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government, according to sources familiar with the intelligence community's response to the issue.

That blunt warning was conveyed to the White House in an oral briefing by a top official of the NIC two or three weeks ago, according to Philip Giraldi, former operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency Directorat of Operations - now known as the National Clandestine Service - who maintains contacts with the intelligence community.

Tyranny on Display at the Republican Convention

by Chris Hedges

St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where, as one protester told me by phone, "people have been pepper-gassed, thrown on the ground by police who had drawn their weapons, had their documents seized and their tattoos photographed before being taken away to jail." It is a future where illegal house raids are carried out. It is a future where vans containing heavily armed paramilitary units circle and film protesters. It is a future where, as the protester said, "people have been pulled from cars because their license plates were on a database and handcuffed, thrown in the back of a squad car and then watched as their vehicles were ransacked and their personal possessions from computers to literature seized." It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism.

The rise of the corporate state means the rise of the surveillance state. The Janus-like face of America swings from packaged and canned spectacles, from nationalist slogans, from seas of flags and Christian crosses, from professions of faith and patriotism, to widespread surveillance, illegal mass detentions, informants, provocateurs and crude acts of repression and violence. We barrel toward a world filled with stupendous lies and blood.

Mortgage Workouts Not Solution

Part 1: Programs Act as Band-Aids

By Mary Kane 9/8/08 6:00 AM

When the foreclosure crisis began to heat up last fall, troubled borrowers got this advice: Call your lender and try to work things out. The Bush administration led the way on this, unveiling its Hope Now program — a hotline to connect borrowers with mortgage counselors and servicers to re-do loans on easier terms.

President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. touted the approach as a private sector-led effort to help homeowners who were falling behind on their payments. Hotlines and efforts like Hope Now sprung up at the state level as well.

White Christian America versus Everybody Else

By Sara Robinson

September 4th, 2008 - 1:46pm ET

---

In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it's statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.

This has left us in an interesting situation where the vast bulk of the country's swing voters are white Christians with progressive tendencies, who can be induced to vote either way depending on what values you can activate in them. This gives them political power far beyond their actual numbers, because winning a presidential election is largely reduced to being able to find and work the political, cultural, and religious sweet spots of this one group.

Frank Rich: Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage

SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

Sarah Palin's Secret Emails

The Palin administration won't release hundreds of emails from her office, claiming they cover confidential policy matters. Then why do the subject lines refer to a political foe, a journalist, and non-policy topics?

In June, Andrée McLeod, a self-described independent government watchdog in Alaska, sent an open records act request to the office of Governor Sarah Palin. She requested copies of all the emails that had been sent and received by Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey, two top aides to Palin, from February through April of this year. McLeod, a 53-year-old registered Republican who has held various jobs in state government, suspected that Frye and Bailey had engaged in political activity during official business hours in that period by participating in a Palin-backed effort to oust the state chairman of the Alaska Republican party, Randy Ruedrich. (Bailey has been in the national news of late for refusing to cooperate with investigators probing whether Palin fired Alaska's public safety commission because he did not dismiss a state trooper who had gone through an ugly divorce with Palin's sister.)

U.S. Takeover of Fannie, Freddie Offers `Stopgap'

By Rebecca Christie and John Brinsley

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is aimed at keeping the companies going into 2009, while leaving the next president and Congress to decide their long-term structure.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart yesterday placed the two firms in a government-operated conservatorship, ousting their chief executives and eliminating their dividends. The Treasury may purchase up to $200 billion of stock in the firms to keep them solvent.

Glenn Greenwald: The right dictates MSNBC's programming decisions

MSNBC's announcement that it is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews with David Gregory as anchors for its main political events (the upcoming presidential debates and election) vividly illustrates several long-obvious facts. First, nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line. From today's New York Times article identifying some of the causes for MSNBC's decision:

The change -- which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle -- is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left. . . . When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted "NBC" . . . . Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. . . . The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. . . . Al Hunt, the executive Washington bureau chief of Bloomberg News, said that the entire news division was being singled out by Republicans because of the work of partisans like Mr. Olbermann.

Paul Krugman: The Power of De

Save the home lenders, save the world? If only it were that simple.

The just-announced federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage lenders, was certainly the right thing to do — and it was done fairly well, too. The plan will sustain institutions that play a crucial role in the economy, while holding down taxpayer costs by more or less cleaning out the stockholders.

But Sunday’s action needs to be seen in a larger context — that of the attempt by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to contain the fallout from the ongoing financial crisis. And that’s a fight the feds seem to be losing.

America's Most Dangerous Librarians

NEWS: Meet the radical bookworms who fought the Patriot Act—and won.

By Amy Goodman and David Goodman
September/October 2008 Issue

They looked like they had walked off a film set, the two men standing at the door of the Library Connection in Windsor, Connecticut, as they flashed fbi badges and asked to speak to the boss. Director George Christian courteously shepherded them into the office. By the hum of the Xerox machine, one agent explained to Christian that the bureau was demanding "any and all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person or entity" that had used computers between 4 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. on February 15, 2005, in any of the 27 libraries whose computer systems were managed by the Library Connection, a nonprofit co-op of library databases. He handed Christian a document called a national security letter (nsl); it said the information was being sought "to protect against international terrorism."

Watch Rachel Maddow's Debut Show Launch on MSNBC Tonight: She Fights Lies Uttered by Politicians, Repeated by Media

By The Masher, AlterNet
Posted on September 8, 2008, Printed on September 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/97942/

Rachel Maddow, Air America's homegrown star and the hottest new face on TV, is launching her very own new show tonight -- Monday, Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. on MSNBC -- and the Masher couldn't be happier. There are thousands of people -- Facebookers and all -- who are planning parties to watch the debut. Let's all watch it by the millions and blow those ratings through the roof and show the MSM turkeys that smart, provocative, truth-telling journalism and commentary has a potential massive audience.

It goes without saying that Maddow has myriad fans from every walk of life. (Feel free to visit the "unofficial" Rachel Maddow fan site.) Still, the Masher finds it rather astounding how much goodwill and admiration is being beamed to Maddow -- and how many unabashed sexual crushes. She must be feeling a super glow. When AlterNet posted The Nation's article about Maddow by Rebecca Traister, the staff was astounded. AlterNet commenters are a very critical and cranky bunch -- and many a writer has freaked out, run away and decided not to engage with the sharp-tongued denizens of the AlterNet underground. But not for Maddow. It was a near-unanimous lovefest. There were hundreds of glowing love letters (hopefully we'll get a chance to share some of them with you soon).

Sarah Palin's 9 Most Disturbing Beliefs

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet
Posted on September 8, 2008, Printed on September 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/97907/

Let's forget for a moment that Sarah Palin likes to kill moose, has lots of children and was once voted the second-prettiest lady in Alaska; that's all part of the gusher of sensationalist, but not particularly substantive, news that has dominated coverage of the Alaska governor's addition to the Republican ticket.

Before the next news cycle brings the shocking information that Palin was actually impregnated by Bigfoot, we need to shift the discussion to what really matters about her in the context of the White House: her dangerous views.