Paul Krugman: Why Do Right-Wingers Mock Attempts to Care for Other People?

By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash
Posted on October 12, 2007, Printed on October 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64931/

"... [Y]ou can't have gross economic inequality and still have a functional democracy. You can't really have a society with broad equality without having a political democracy. So it is all about having basically a shared society. -- Paul Krugman, Economist, Columnist, Author of The Conscience of a Liberal

In a sea of media transcribers and mediocrity, Paul Krugman has held a longstanding spot as one of the most popular liberal columnists in the media.

Americans Don't Believe in the American Dream

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 12, 2007, Printed on October 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64831/

The American Dream is Dead, gone along with the era of good union jobs, comprehensive employer benefits and real upward mobility, and most working people are fully aware of the fact.

That's the takeaway from the latest installment of the American Dream Survey, a study of working Americans' views of the political-economy released in late September.

Abortion just as common where it's illegal

LONDON, England (AP) -- Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday.

In a study examining abortion trends from 1995 to 2003, experts also found that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries, and that half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe.

The study was done by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute in the United States and colleagues from the World Health Organization. It was published in an edition of The Lancet medical journal devoted to maternal health.

You live in a Banana Republic

by Kagro X

Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 05:00:54 PM PDT

This is a huge and wide-ranging story. Let me see if I can draw upon some of what's already been written about it to compress it into a manageable narrative.

OK, first there's this:

The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.

The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio's so-called "classified information" defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it.

Surprised? Of course not. Nor should you be.

E-mail Reveals That McConnell Staffer Propagated Smear Campaign Against Graeme Frost

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that there was mounting evidence that a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may have been involved in the right-wing campaign to smear Graeme Frost and his family.

ABC News reported earlier in the week that an e-mail sent to reporters by “a Senate Republican leadership aide” in McConnell’s office suggested that “GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about the Frosts.” A McConnell spokesman refused to deny the office’s involvement in the affair.

The $5 Billion Mulligan

Banks insist their credit problems are over. Why on earth do investors believe them?

By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007, at 2:14 PM ET

Ordinarily, investors fret when companies have to write down the value of shoddy investments. "Write-downs," "write-offs," "mark-to-market adjustments"—whatever you want to call them—are admissions that a company woefully overestimated the value of assets on its books. Write-downs should be especially worrisome when taken by banks, since they are in the business of valuing financial instruments. And yet in recent weeks, as the nation's blue-chip investment banks—Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and others—have announced multibillion-dollar write-downs because of poor lending decisions, their stocks have risen.

How Lobbying Works in the Age of the Blogosphere

By Spencer Ackerman - October 11, 2007, 4:20PM

The ACLU watched in horror and impotence this summer as the Protect America Act vastly expanded the NSA's warrantless surveillance authority. With House Democrats pushing a PAA fix that still gives civil libertarians shpilkis, the ACLU is determined not to watch history repeat itself, especially as the Senate prepares a companion bill that worries the organization even more. So the ACLU is taking an aggressive approach: passing on what it freely concedes are rumors concerning what's in the bill in order to pressure Senators against violating civil-libertarian red-lines. What follows is an example.

Humans have made the skies more moist

Study models rises in atmospheric water vapour.

Michael Hopkin

Human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapour in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades, climatologists have concluded. The rises in humidity could affect patterns of extreme storms, they warn.

Council of Europe votes against creationist teaching

Creationism is a potential threat to human rights and any attempts to incorporate it into science must be resisted, says the Council of Europe. The council is an intergovernmental body that is responsible for, among other things, the European Convention on Human Rights.

PM Carpenter: The Allure of Cryptofascism

With respect to the Fourth Amendment hatchet known as the Protect America Act, may I ask what constituency Congressional Democrats are politically nervous about other than the cryptofascist crowd?

More than enough is never enough for the Bush administration. It has sought and received legislative approval after approval that enhance its anticonstitutional aims, yet once again, enough is not enough. Yesterday the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees crafted and approved legislation that "provides authority for the government to obtain 'basket' or 'umbrella' warrants for bundles of overseas communications" -- an unwarranted offense to the Fourth Amendment -- which prompted not smiles, but rage by the administration.

Our Drinkable Water Supply Is Vanishing

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on October 11, 2007, Printed on October 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64948/

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize winner for medicine once said, "Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."

We depend on water for survival. It circulates through our bodies and the land, replenishing nutrients and carrying away waste. It is passed down like stories over generations -- from ice-capped mountains to rivers to oceans.

Charlie Savage: Cheney Plotted Bush’s Imperial Presidency ‘Thirty Years Ago’

The Bush administration has long held that President Bush’s expanded executive power is justified due to 9/11. “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it,” claimed Vice President Cheney in 2005.

But in his new book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage reveals that Cheney has been on a thirty-year quest to implement his views of unfettered executive power.

Verizon, AT&T broadband policies allow for censorship of unfriendly opinions

Companies insist they don't censor customers

Buried deep within the dense, legalistic agreements two of the country's largest telecommunications carriers force subscribers to accept are provisions that could allow the companies to cut access to subscribers who criticize them online.

Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus uncovered the little-noticed clauses in AT&T and Verizon's service contracts.

Bill Moyers: Dispensationalism, Hagee, the Coming war With Iran and Armageddon

Bill Moyers Journal this week on PBS scared my pants off. It's a look into the organization Christians United for Israel led by Pastor John C. Hagee. In short it is a universal call to all Christians to help factions in Israel fund the Jewish settlements, throw out all the Palestinians and lobby for a pre-emptive invasion of Iran. All to bring Russia into a war against us causing World War III followed by Armageddon, the Second Coming and The Rapture so these Evangelicalfascists can go to Heaven in their lifetime. The wholesale thirsty enjoyable murder of 7 billion people. And of course the Jews who now support them will all go to Hell. And they call Muslims crazy murdering fascists?

Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, The Endless Summer of Distraction

Tomdispatch Jock Culture correspondent Robert Lipsyte launches a new season of sports and politics by considering the major sports scandals that distracted us from all those other scandals of the summer. At this very moment, I'm taking a break from watching the last of my hometown teams in the baseball playoffs -- the Mets, my team of choice, hit the skids before the season ended and disintegrated in a way we only wish the Bush administration would -- to knock out a quick intro. Distracted? Who me?

Low-income students who attend urban public high schools...do just as well as private-school students with similar backgrounds

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer
Wed Oct 10, 12:29 AM ET

Low-income students who attend urban public high schools generally do just as well as private-school students with similar backgrounds, according to a study being released Wednesday.

Students at independent private schools and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public high schools when income and other family characteristics were taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

AP Gets Documents: U.S. Pursued 'Radiological Warfare'

By Robert Burns, The Associated Press

Published: October 08, 2007 11:25 AM ET
WASHINGTON In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate "important individuals" such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Approved at the highest levels of the Army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military's pursuit of a "new concept of warfare" using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations.

It is time to speak truth to US power

Published: October 8 2007 20:24 | Last updated: October 8 2007 20:24

Since the attacks of September 11 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush has sought to cast a cloak of legality over the wrongs that it has committed in the name of fighting terrorism.

Mr Bush seems to think that legal sleight of hand can be used to justify almost any tactic to battle terrorists – including, it emerged last week, simulated drowning and other cruel interrogation techniques that Alberto Gonzales, his former attorney-general, appears to have authorised by secret legal memorandum.

Bet This Doesn't Happen to White Teachers

by Steven D
Mon Oct 8th, 2007 at 09:20:35 PM EST

A 150 pound African American high school science teacher in Brooklyn suffers a heart attack and requires open heart surgery because of police brutality after (dare I say it?) driving while black:

When the violent encounter was over, Lester Jacob, 50, suffered a heart attack and was left on his own in the street by cops, who accused him of "acting." In July he underwent open-heart surgery. [...]

Jacob, an earth science teacher at James Madison High School in Midwood, heard a siren, looked in his rear-view mirror and dutifully pulled over for the radio car behind him. He wasn't prepared for what happened next. Two officers rushed up to Jacob's vehicle and pointed their guns at his head, according to a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The Upcoming FISA Battle

by BooMan
Tue Oct 9th, 2007 at 12:49:47 PM EST

The New York Times paints a bleak picture and predicts another Democratic cave-in on the upcoming debate over the FISA bill.

Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency.

Bush administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened wiretapping authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess, and some Democratic officials admit that they may not come up with the votes to rein in the administration.

But things are not as bleak as the Times would have you believe.

Paul Krugman: Same Old Party

There have been a number of articles recently that portray President Bush as someone who strayed from the path of true conservatism. Republicans, these articles say, need to return to their roots.

Well, I don’t know what true conservatism is, but while doing research for my forthcoming book I spent a lot of time studying the history of the American political movement that calls itself conservatism — and Mr. Bush hasn’t strayed from the path at all. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.

For example, people claim to be shocked that Mr. Bush cut taxes while waging an expensive war. But Ronald Reagan also cut taxes while embarking on a huge military buildup.

Hackers could skew US elections

The web may not deserve its reputation as a great democratic tool, security experts say. They predict voters will increasingly be targeted by internet-based dirty tricks campaigns, and that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks.

While politicians have been quick to embrace the internet as an enabler for democracy, established security threats like spam emails and botnets – collections of "zombie" computers remotely controlled by hackers – all open new avenues for fraudulent campaigning. So said experts at an e-crime summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week.

Who's Sorry Now?

It was a pleasant weekend for those of us who have been against the Iraq War from the beginning. The Washington Post had an article on the bitterness and regrets of those in the Bush administration who concocted and ran the war and have now left. Some of them have nightmares. Nothing like the nightmares of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or the Black Sites, but hey, a few nightmares are progress. Maybe they will have more, and then they will have mental breakdowns and they can experience electroshock therapy -- that would be a nice payback for them. In the New York Times magazine, there was an article about Kanan Makiya, an exiled Iraqi scholar who was a big cheerleader for the war, and who seems to have given Bush and Cheney a rationale that they could use as a cover for their real motives. At the end of the article, there's an interesting interview with Ali Allawi, who was the Minister of Finance in the Iraqi transitional government in 2005 and into 2006. Allawi was opposed to the war, but went to Iraq to try and put Humpty back together again. He failed. And, of course, there's Blackwater. Whoops. Americans have recently gotten a good look at our very own right wing death squad (paid for by us to the tune of 445,000 per soldier, per year), and we know there are more RWDSs where that one came from. And I loved the headline of David "the Pig" Brooks' op-ed in last week's Times, "The Republican Collapse" -- is there a lovelier phrase? I used to send letters to David Brooks asking when the New York Times was going to fire him. He never responded.

The Media's Conservative Bias

by BooMan
Mon Oct 8th, 2007 at 01:50:24 PM EST

Gallup Polls discovers that a plurality (45%) of Americans still think the national media is too liberal rather than too conservative (18%). Republicans overwhelmingly (77%) feel this way, but so do a plurality (43%) of independents. Even more bizarre, a majority (58%) of Democrats think the media's partisan balance is just about right.

The right has been railing about liberal bias in the media for forty years and it has clearly had an enduring effect on public perceptions. But the l'affair Lewinsky, the Bush Era, and the rise of the Blogosphere have exposed example after example of conservative bias. This has been captured in the Gallup poll...but barely.

Paul Krugman: Wrong is right

OK, people are having some fun with the latest from Fred Barnes:

You know, I’ve thought for a long time that Obama’s not in quite as strong a position on the war in Iraq as he really thinks he is. Remember, when he famously came out against the war, it was back in a time when the entire world believed that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he would probably be willing to use them himself at some time or pass them along to terrorists who would use them. And yet, Barack Obama was against going to the war at that point. I don’t think that shows that he is very strong on national security, which he needs to be.

Having been right on Iraq is a sign of weakness!

Right Wing Launches Baseless Smear Campaign Against 12 Year Old Recipient Of SCHIP

Two weeks ago, the Democratic radio address was delivered by a 12-year old Maryland boy named Graeme Frost. Graeme told his story of being involved in a severe car accident three years ago, and having received access to medical care because of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. He said:

If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.

The Passion of Kanan Makiya

By Todd Gitlin | bio

Dexter Filkins' piece on Kanan Makiya in the NYT Magazine is a must read in the ongoing autopsy of the Iraq catastrophe. It's also a valuable document for an anatomy of intellectual folly--make that human folly--in our time.

Makiya, the courageous, soulful, and gravely misguided Iraqi in exile, wrote two indispensable books about Iraq: one about Saddam Hussein's regime of terror (Republic of Fear), the other about the default of Arab intellectuals (Cruelty and Silence). In the 1990s, he campaigned for American intervention. He was tireless.

Regrets Only?

1. Dokan, Iraq They were well into their dinner when the talk turned to the most troubling question of all. The guests, brought here to discuss plans for the American University of Iraq, had been passing around platters of shabbout, an oily and bony fish, in the dining room of a villa owned by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, when the question came up. The six Iraqis and one Lebanese-American had gathered in this lakeside guesthouse in the mountains of Kurdistan, far from the furies of Baghdad and Basra. No one had actually posed the question; it crept up on its own. Among Iraqi exiles, particularly those who had been instrumental in persuading the Americans to invade, it was still something of a taboo.

“Leave Saddam in power?” asked Barham Salih, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, holding court in the middle. “So that he would be free to continue killing, free to invade his neighbors, so that he would be free to — I am sorry — develop nuclear weapons?” He shook his head. “No.”

Digby: Randy Conservatives

Submitted by Digby on October 6, 2007 - 1:54pm.

It's interesting that Naomi Klein's new book about "disaster capitalism" is taking the political world by storm, since it's such a downer. She offers a stark and scary explanation as to why in disasters and wars and crises of all kinds we so often see these even more disasterous "free-market" solutions. From shock therapy in Russia to the CPA in Iraq to the Republican post-Katrina planning committee at the Heritage Foundation, you see similar examples of market fundamentalist approaches to problems of vast scale that one would have until recently assumed would be undertaken by government, democratic or otherwise. Klein makes the case that this is essentially a product of a school of economic thought that has found it can not only benefit by disaster, but it benefits greatly if it actually creates disasters, frightening people into accepting what in the best case can be considered experimental solutions to problems and in the worst case provides the opportunity for greed and graft to operate without restraint.

Digby: The Legacy of Justice Thomas

Submitted by Digby on October 8, 2007 - 6:22am.

Seeing Clarence Thomas all over the television, once again using florid language drenched in civil rights era imagery to describe his victimization as a conservative black man really takes me back. The Thomas hearings were the first time I recall seeing the right wing directly appropriate liberal rhetoric and throw it back at them. (It may not have been the first time it was done, but it was the first time I noticed it --- and realized how powerful it could be.)

Thomas was an arch conservative who nonetheless used his experience as an oppressed minority to shut down debate about his ideology. It was quite brilliant in its way. It paved the way for the thousands of similar uses of liberal "politically correct" rhetoric to advance the most politically incorrect causes to come.

Unemployment Edges Up Despite New Jobs

By JEANNINE AVERSA – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fears that the country could slide into a recession eased in September as employers created the most jobs in four months and workers' wages grew solidly. The unemployment rate crept up to 4.7 percent, the highest in over a year but still low by historical standards.

Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 91.70 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, the measure most closely followed by market watchers, reached a new closing high of 1,557.59.

Mobile phone cancer risk 'higher for children'

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Last Updated: 4:07pm BST 08/10/2007

Children should not be given mobile phones because using them for more than 10 years increases the risk of brain cancer, a leading scientist has said.

People who have used their phone for a decade are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a tumour on a nerve connecting the ear to the brain, according to a group of scientists who have surveyed the results of 11 different studies.

Naomi Wolf: Blackwater: “Newly Created Thug Caste”

(Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. She has written extensively about Blackwater and joins us in the comments — jh)

Congress is finally asking questions of Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater, the private mercenary organization that massacred seventeen civilians in Iraq recently. As I mentioned before, Blackwater operates in Iraq entirely outside the rule of law and has close ties to the White House. The New York Times today reported just how close — Prince’s sister-in-law is a major Bush fundraiser and ally.

Glenn Greenwald: The remaining GOP base -- the 30%'ers and the Broder/Ignatius pundit

David Broder and David Ignatius both have excellent columns in this morning's Washington Post -- excellent because of how vividly they illustrate the shallowness and dishonesty for our opinion-making elite. Impressively, even though the two columns are ostensibly about completely different topics -- Broder writes about how terrible and self-destructive Congressional Democrats are being because they are too uncooperative and partisan (seriously) while Ignatius writes about the heroic efforts the Bush administration is undertaking to avoid war with Iran (seriously) -- they are actually identical both in their tactics and their "substance."

Both columns do nothing, literally, beyond mindlessly repeating what Bush loyalists have told them -- in Broder's case, the whole column simply recites what was told to him by RCCC Chair Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, and in Igantius's case, he does nothing but uncritically repeat what unnamed "senior administration officials" whispered into his grateful, flattered ear. There is not a critical thought expressed about any of it. Like the obedient puppets that they are, they simply adopt what they are told as their own opinions and then write it all down.

Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key U.S. Goal

Reconciliation Seen Unattainable Amid Struggle for Power

By Joshua Partlow

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 8, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

Matt Taibbi: It's the End of the Road for John McCain

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on October 8, 2007, Printed on October 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64639/

I've now seen John McCain in South Carolina twice this election season. The first time came last spring at a Republican debate, where the fatigued-looking seventy-one-year-old senator all but pulled a Monty Python crack-suicide-squad act onstage, standing up during a hail of political gunfire in a televised repartee about the torture issue.

One by one, McCain's GOP opponents had lunged toward the cameras pledging, by means of innuendo both thinly veiled and not veiled at all, boundless enthusiasm for the abuse and torture of America's terror-war detainees. Rudy Giuliani, baldly seeking to overcome his rep as a two-faced Yankee liberal who kills the unborn and dresses in women's clothes, grinned into the cameras and said he would tell his people to "use every method they could think of" to get information. The other suspect Northerner, the Mormon queer-coddler Mitt Romney, took in Giuliani's response like a frat pledge who had just been issued a beer-pong challenge, preposterously promising to one-up the field and "double Guantanamo."

Climate Change: Can We Stop It?

By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books
Posted on October 8, 2007, Printed on October 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64645/

Reviewed:

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
by Bjørn Lomborg
Knopf, 253 pp., $21.00

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility
by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Houghton Mifflin, 344 pp., $25.00

What We Know About Climate Change
by Kerry Emanuel
MIT Press, 85 pp., $14.95

Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren
edited by Joseph F.C. DiMento and Pamela Doughman
MIT Press, 217 pp., $19.95 (paper)

During the last year, momentum has finally begun to build for taking action against global warming by putting limits on carbon emissions and then reducing them. Driven by ever-more-dire scientific reports, Congress has, for the first time, begun debating ambitious targets for carbon reduction. Al Gore, in his recent Live Earth concerts, announced that he will work to see an international treaty signed by the end of 2009. Even President Bush has recently reversed his previous opposition and summoned the leaders of all the top carbon-emitting countries to a series of conferences designed to yield some form of limits on CO2.

Report says war on terror is fueling al Qaeda

By Kate Kelland
Mon Oct 8, 8:29 AM ET

Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.

A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a "fundamental re-think is required" if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.

"If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report's author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.

FIREDOGLAKE: How Do You Repudiate A Lawless Regime?

The revelation — no, reminder — that the Bush Administration reauthorized torture after calling it “abhorrent,” lied about it, and hid behind secret legal opinions issued by Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department continues to elicit public revulsion.

And the questions everyone keeps avoiding are once again staring America in the face: What are we going to do about it, America? How long are we going to allow this regime to taunt us, to disgrace our nation, to trash every legal and moral principle upon which our country was founded?

Still Crazy After All These Years

Filed under: conservatism — maha @ 9:22 am

Where to begin. Perhaps with Paul Krugman, who says right wingers have some sense of humor.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

[...]

Over the long years I’ve observed some consistent traits among righties. One is that they sincerely believe most people think the way they do, even when polls say otherwise. In fact, “most people agree with me” is a common fallback debate tactic. Some have an almost frantic need to believe they belong to a majority, possibly because it makes them feel powerful. Erich Fromm wrote that people who find autonomy isolating and bewildering often will submerge themselves in an authoritarian group. Such people often have a strong sado-masochistic streak, Fromm said. They derive pleasure both from submission to a higher authority and from aggressively dominating people who fall below them in the social/power strata. “Humor” is often a socially acceptable form of hate speech used to keep less desirable people in their place.

Paul Krugman: Europe-bashing

I was struck by something in the recent Times profile of Michael C. Jensen, who played a pivotal role in providing an intellectual rationale for gigantic executive paychecks. Now he feels some remorse – in fact, he sounds a bit like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein: “I have created a monthtah.” But he rationalizes it by saying that at least we’re doing better than those decrepit Europeans:

“As competition has intensified, corporations have flourished, but not necessarily the communities in which they are located or the workers they employ. Those are shortcomings that Mr. Jensen considers an acceptable price to pay for an American economy that he believes has outstripped Japan and Europe in growth and prosperity.”

Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.

The problems, described in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.

Pete the Parrot Departs

Good riddance to the last of the Rumsfeld generals.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 5, 2007, at 6:21 PM ET

Somehow I missed Gen. Peter Pace's Oct. 1 farewell speech at the Fort Myer parade ground, replete with a "full honor review" and four fighter jets streaking overhead. The New York Times didn't cover it, except in a photo caption. The Pentagon's Web site didn't bother transcribing his address, though it did post the introductory remarks by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

And yet Pace's departure was a significant event because it marked the end, finally, of the Donald Rumsfeld era. Pace was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the last two years. Gates decided not to renew the general's term, despite Pace's request for another. The public rationale was that Gates wanted to avoid "very contentious" confirmation hearings. There's clearly something to this. Not only was Pace the last senior official still associated with early decisions on the war (he was the JCS vice chairman at the time of the invasion), he also recently said in public that gays shouldn't be in the military because homosexual acts were "immoral."

FBI offered me $4m: Lockerbie bomb witness

MICHAEL HOWIE HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (mhowie@scotsman.com)

A WITNESS in the Lockerbie case has claimed he was offered $4 million (£2 million) by American investigators to lie to the trial judges.

Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company MEBO that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, claims he was offered the money by the FBI at its Washington HQ in exchange for making a statement that supported the main line of inquiry - that Libya was responsible for the bombing.

Frank Rich: Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen

WHAT'S the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.

Pity Clarence Thomas. Done in by what he calls "left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony" — as he describes anyone who challenged his elevation to the court — he still claims to have suffered as much as African-Americans once victimized by "bigots in white robes." Since kicking off his book tour on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, he has been whining all the way to the bank, often abetted by a press claque as fawning as his No. 1 fan, Rush Limbaugh.

Katha Pollitt: How Different Are the Top Three Dems?

The other night I got an irate e-mail from an old acquaintance on the left. He was furious because I'd quipped in an interview that if people didn't stop making sexist comments about Hillary Clinton, I might just have to vote for her. Maybe he missed the ironic conditional: he thought I supported her. He went on to excoriate Clinton: she is militaristic and ultranationalistic; she would carry on Bush's policy of a long-term occupation of Iraq, define foreign policy around the "war on terror," support the hard-liners in Israel and promote the centrist-Democratic left-smashing ideology of the DLC. We need to rebuild the left, he concluded, and that's why he was supporting... Barack Obama.

If you get your news from the progressive media, especially the web, you would think large fields of ideological difference separate Clinton, Obama and Edwards. I haven't decided who I'm voting for. I would love to see a Democratic woman President; I'm not ashamed to say that. I'd love to see a Democratic black President too. But obviously--I shouldn't have to say this--what matters is what the candidates stand for and to whom they'll be beholden if elected. My problem is, the three don't look so far apart to me--certainly not enough to justify demonizing one and canonizing another, as my left-wing correspondent does. The differences seem more like branding: the strong, experienced woman; the black (but not too black) inspirer of hope; the hands-on economic populist crusader. Or if you prefer, the evil pro-corporate phony and everyone else. No sooner had Clinton announced her healthcare plan, for example, than my colleague John Nichols denounced it as a gift to the insurance industry. Fair enough, but this is the same healthcare plan that Elizabeth Edwards said with some annoyance was copied from the one her husband--the man who cares about poor people--had put forward months before. Obama's plan is similar. Likewise, on the same day that my colleague Laura Flanders wrote that an Obama campaign rally in New York City was buzzing with progressive energy, I read in the New York Times about his attempt to woo McCain voters in New Hampshire. Both these things can be true--but isn't being all things to all people a bit, well, Clintonian?

Paul Krugman: Pathetic

The new White House “fact sheet” on the economy declares that job growth since August 2003 is the “longest continuous months of job growth on record.”

That’s literally true – the Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the great jobs boom of the 1990s do show a couple of scattered months of job decline, although these are probably statistical blips. But by any reasonable standard, job growth in the Bush years has fallen way short of growth in the Clinton years.

I've Got A Secret...Government

I guess we should have known that when the Bush Administration told us they disowned the 2002 torture memo in 2004, they really didn't mean it. And, in fact, they didn't.

The entire article in the New York Times about the secret torture memo created in February 2005 ("Torture Memo 2.0" as Jack Balkin calls it) is appalling, but this particular section really struck a nerve:

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

Utah mine investigation documents should not be public, agency says

(CNN) -- Court proceedings of the investigation into the collapse of Utah's Crandall Canyon mine should not be made public, argue attorneys for the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The records are not typically available to the public, and opening them would inhibit the amount and quality of information that could be gathered in the probe, the lawyers said in documents filed Thursday.

Senate passes intelligence bill after Democrats back down on presidential briefings, CIA jails

Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna

After a stalemate of over two years, the Senate passed the 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill Wednesday, with Democrats ceding a key provision regarding pre-war Iraq intelligence that Republicans had decried.

Sources close to the Senate Intelligence Committee say one of the compromises Democrats made to ensure the bill’s passage was to remove language demanding the White House turn over all Presidential Daily Briefings on Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Democrats are said to have been hoping to establish whether President Bush mischaracterized intelligence in the lead-up to the conflict.

Methodists battle George W. Bush over SMU Library & 'Freedom Institute'

Despite an architect being chosen, money being raised, and Karl Rove in the mix, opponents claim that it can still be stopped

President Bush may think it's a done deal, and First Lady Laura may be measuring for drapes. An architect has been chosen, and the project is proceeding to raise $500 million. And Karl Rove, who actually may be running the entire show, is also likely lining up a host of conservative think-tankers. Much of the media that covered the story only a few months ago appear to have lost interest. However, before the George W. Bush Library, with its attached public policy institute, are built at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, they must overcome rising objections within the nationwide United Methodist community.

Slain Soldier Feared 'Something Might Happen to Her'

by Ekaterin Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 04:49:07 PM PDT

This soldier was from my home state, and her story caught my attention. Several local media outlets have carried stories about the confusion surrounding the death of Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin.

From a Boston Herald article, Slain soldier told kin to investigate if she died:

The Quincy soldier mysteriously slain by a bullet to the head on a secure Afghanistan airbase feared something might happen to her after discovering "something she didn’t like," her devastated family revealed.

Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin, 30, was found with a single gunshot wound to her head behind a building at Bagram Airbase on Sept. 27.

Did White House Lie About Solution Provider's Role in Loss of 5 Million E-mails?

When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that went missing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside IT contractor.

The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according to sources close to the investigation of a possible violation of the Federal Records and Presidential Records acts.

White House Office of Administration (OA) Deputy General Counsel Keith Roberts told the House Oversight Committee on May 29 that "an unidentified company working for the Information Assurance (IA) Directorate of the Office of the Chief Information Officer was responsible for daily audits of the e-mail system and the e-mail archiving process," according to committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. That briefing came about after it was confirmed by the White House in April that millions of e-mails had vanished from Executive Office of the President (EOP) archives from 2003-2005.

Paul Krugman: Conservatives Are Such Jokers

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Hydropower Doesn't Count as Clean Energy

By Sarah Phelan, Earth Island Journal
Posted on October 5, 2007, Printed on October 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64445/

Opponents of dams have long argued against putting barriers in the natural flow of a river. Dams, they point out, prevent endangered fish from migrating, alter ecosystems, and threaten the livelihoods of local communities.

Native Americans, fishing communities, and environmentalists have made these arguments in their quest to decommission four dams on Klamath River, which runs from southwest Oregon to the coast of California. But with California requiring a 25 percent reduction in the state's carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, clean energy has suddenly entered the Klamath dam debate.

Our Most Important Mission: Prevent War with Iran

By Scott Ritter, Truthdig
Posted on October 5, 2007, Printed on October 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/63800/

The long-awaited “progress report” of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the occupation of Iraq has been made, providing Americans, via the compliant media, with the spectacle of loyal Bush yes men offering faith-based analysis in lieu of fact-based assessment.

In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq, and while those charged with oversight mill about looking to score cheap political points and/or save face, the administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.

Today's Must Read

By Spencer Ackerman - October 4, 2007, 9:23AM

Some farces, it turns out, can be avoided. The FBI team traveling to Iraq at the behest of the State Department to assist in the investigation of Blackwater's September 16 shooting at Nisour Square was supposed to be guarded by... Blackwater. (Shades of Darrell Issa's threat hover over that one.) However, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security realized yesterday that the ensuing conflict of interest would be just too egregious.

Under Blackwater's State Department contract, the company provides security for all official travel outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that security for the team would be handled by the department's Diplomatic Security Service.

Time: In Alabama, Prosecutors Chased Dem Ex-Gov, Ignored Allegations against GOPers

By Laura McGann - October 4, 2007, 11:16AM

Substantive new evidence makes it look even more likely that politics played a role in the decision to prosecute Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) on corruption charges.

Siegelman supporters have long claimed that Siegelman was targeted for being a successful Democrat in a largely Republican state.

"We Don't Speak To Evil"

The nation is Iran. And the reaction is ridiculous.

"The Evil Has Landed," shrieked the headline of the New York Daily News on the occasion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at the United Nations and Columbia University. A "madman," Rupert Murdoch's New York Post spat, setting the tone for a week of Bizarro News. On "60 Minutes," the Iranian president said there was no reason his country and ours couldn't be friends--even the best of friends.

"La la la la--we can't hear you" was the response.

Majority of Americans want local action on global warming, says poll

New Haven, Conn. — Nearly three-quarters of Americans are willing to pay more in taxes and other expenses to support local government-led initiatives designed to reduce global warming, according to a first-of-its kind survey conducted by GfK Public Affairs and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

“City and local leaders are critical players in the effort to reduce global warming, and it’s clear that their constituents want action,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale Project on Climate Change, one of the sponsors of the groundbreaking survey measuring public opinion of local government-led green initiatives. “The public is on board and willing to help foot the bill. All that’s left to do now is act.”

Still Lying

Submitted by Bill Scher on October 3, 2007 - 8:49pm.

In These Times and ThinkProgress had already taken the White House to task for pushing the lie that the SCHIP bill would raise the income eligibility limit to families earning $83,000 a year.

Of course, Bush is still saying it: "this program expands coverage, federal coverage up to families earning $83,000 a year. That doesn't sound poor to me. The intent of the program was to focus on poor children, not adults or families earning up to $83,000 a year."

Tomgram: Having a Carnage Party

We Count, They Don't

By Tom Engelhardt

Counting to Three

At least Caesar was just commenting on reality when he wrote that "all Gaul is divided into three parts." Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden attempted to create reality when an overwhelming majority of the U.S. Senate voted for his non-binding resolution to divide Iraq into three parts -- Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish autonomous zones. Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post reported that the 75-23 Senate vote was "a significant milestone…, carving out common ground in a debate that has grown increasingly polarized and focused on military strategy." Murray added, "The [tripartite] structure is spelled out in Iraq's constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution."

In Iraq, the plan was termed a "disaster" by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called the Senate resolution "a step toward the breakup of Iraq." He added, according to Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, "It is a mistake to imagine that such a plan will lead to a reduction in chaos in Iraq; rather, on the contrary, it will lead to an increase in the butchery and a deepening of the crisis of this country, and the spreading of increased chaos, even to neighboring states." In the meantime, Sunni clerics and various political parties joined in the denunciations. Only the Kurds, eager for an independent state, evidently welcomed the plan.

The Clintons and the Bushes

By Robert Parry
October 3, 2007

Editor’s Note: Given Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a Consortiumnews.com reader asked that we post the entire first chapter of Robert Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

President Clinton made clear he saw historical truth as less important than his hopes for Republican cooperation on his domestic agenda. But this willingness to sweep major scandals under the rug left the White House back door ajar for a restoration of the Bush Family dynasty a half dozen years later – with disastrous consequences for the American Republic.

The Alarming Parallels Between 1929 and 2007

Has deregulation left the economy at risk of another 1929-scale crash? Should the Fed keep bailing out speculators? Robert Kuttner testified yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee.

Robert Kuttner | October 2, 2007 | web only

Testimony of Robert Kuttner
Before the Committee on Financial Services
Rep. Barney Frank, Chairman
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.
October 2, 2007

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Robert Kuttner. I am an economics and financial journalist, author of several books about the economy, co-editor of The American Prospect, and former investigator for the Senate Banking Committee. I have a book appearing in a few weeks that addresses the systemic risks of financial innovation coupled with deregulation and the moral hazard of periodic bailouts.

In researching the book, I devoted a lot of effort to reviewing the abuses of the 1920s, the effort in the 1930s to create a financial system that would prevent repetition of those abuses, and the steady dismantling of the safeguards over the last three decades in the name of free markets and financial innovation.

Jon Stewart Dismantles Chris Matthews

If you have ever bemoaned the turn Matthews -- a former newspaperman -- has taken in recent years, you have to check out what happened on "The Daily Show" on Tuesday night. Matthews called it "the worst interview ever."

By Greg Mitchell

(October 03, 2007) -- You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when TV gasbag Chris Matthews was a respectable hard news reporter. He worked in Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Examiner from 1987 to around 2000, and also wrote columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and others. But if you have ever bemoaned the turn his career took as an interviewer/talk show host – or if you just hate the inside-the-beltway mentality of many of our leading press and TV pundits – then you would have loved Jon Stewart’s dismantling of Matthews on “The Daily Show” last night.

I have no idea if there is a back story to this epic confrontation beyond Stewart’s known hatred of loudmouth TV bullying (remember his famous attack on “Crossfire” a few years back?). But what was on the screen right in front of our noses was shocking enough, not to mention long overdue. Matthews, growing angry, called it “the book interview from hell” and his "worst interview ever," adding, "You are the worst."

Clinton stands out from the crowd

By James Coomarasamy BBC News, Washington

Hillary Clinton was always going to be at the centre of the 2008 US presidential campaign.

As the first woman with a real chance of becoming America's commander-in-chief - and the first former first lady running for the White House - the historical possibilities of her candidacy have had little trouble catching the imagination, either in the US or abroad.

But in recent weeks, a funny thing has happened. This already unique candidate has begun to stand out from the crowd even more.

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

This article is by Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Verizon Warning

We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services.

Verizon did the right thing after the problem was disclosed: it promptly dropped a misbegotten policy and said its new policy is to open its network to any legal communication. But alarm bells should be ringing on Capitol Hill, where industry lobbying, legislative goldbricking and Republican aversion to regulations have bottled up much-needed laws on digital communications.

With "Progressives" Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

By David Sirota, WorkingForChange.com
Posted on October 3, 2007, Printed on October 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64299/

It is frustrating being part of the progressive movement these days -- truly frustrating. And I say that not because I am on book deadline and exhausted, but because of what I have been reporting on for the book (which is due out in Spring of 2008, for those interested). These past few weeks have felt like a big kick in the teeth -- with these last few days a gratuitous kick in the groin.

Let's step back and look at the effort to end the war. This week we have seen Democratic Reps. David Obey, Jack Murtha and Jim McGovern propose a bill that would force President Bush to raise taxes if he wants to continue spending money on a war in Iraq -- a brilliant political move and commonsense policy. In the face of a recent Roll Call story headlined "GOP Forced to Pivot on Taxes -- Polls Say Issue Losing Power," this proposal is stunning only for how modest it is -- especially considering that even Sen. Joseph Lieberman has endorsed the concept behind it, as has Republicans like New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg and North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones.

The Religious Right's New Tactics for Invading Public Schools

By Rob Boston, Church and State
Posted on October 4, 2007, Printed on October 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64211/

In mid-August, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed something called the "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act" into law. Although the new law has an innocuous-sounding title, it's really a ticking time-bomb, opponents say.

The law requires every public school in the state to adopt a policy guaranteeing students' right to religious expression. It mandates that schools create "limited public forums" for religious and other types of speech. A student could, for example, read the morning announcements over a loudspeaker and then lapse into a prayer or mini-sermon.

Factory Orders Fall in August

Thursday October 4, 6:37 pm ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer Factory Orders Drop by Biggest Amount in 7 Months Reflecting Widespread Weakness WASHINGTON (AP) -- Orders to factories fell in August by the largest amount in seven months, reflecting weakness across a wide swath of manufacturing as the turbulent financial market made businesses more cautious.

The Commerce Department said orders dropped by 3.3 percent in August, even worse than the expected 2.8 percent decline. It was the biggest setback since orders fell 4.2 percent in January.

Chemical 'sponge' could filter CO2 from the air

12:37 03 October 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic

Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere could provide a last-ditch solution to climate change, according to calculations performed by a US scientist.

Frank Zeman at Columbia University in New York, US, believes CO2 could be efficiently extracted from the atmosphere using a relatively simple chemical process, before being buried underground.

Regional nuclear war could trigger mass starvation

13:17 03 October 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Rob Edwards

A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause one billion people to starve to death around the world, and hundreds of millions more to die from disease and conflicts over food.

That is the horrifying scenario being presented in London today by a US medical expert, Ira Helfand. A conference at the Royal Society of Medicine will also hear new evidence of the severe damage that such a war could inflict on the ozone layer.

Battle lines are drawn over conservative radio

By Alexander Bolton
October 03, 2007

House Republicans are threatening to launch a discharge petition on legislation that would ensure the future prosperity of conservative radio talk-show hosts but is expected to face opposition from Democratic leaders. On Monday evening, Republicans filed a rule with the House Rules Committee laying the groundwork for a petition that would force action on protecting radio from government regulation later this fall.

The move comes at a time when Democrats have launched a coordinated attack on conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, accusing him of disparaging American troops critical of the Iraq war as “phony soldiers.”

2007 ozone hole ‘smaller than usual’

3 October 2007
The ozone hole over Antarctica has shrunk 30 percent as compared to last year's record size. According to measurements made by ESA’s Envisat satellite, this year’s ozone loss peaked at 27.7 million tonnes, compared to the 2006 record ozone loss of 40 million tonnes.

Ozone loss is derived by measuring the area and the depth of the ozone hole. The area of this year’s ozone hole – where the ozone measures less than 220 Dobson Units – is 24.7 million sq km, roughly the size of North America, and the minimum value of the ozone layer is around 120 Dobson Units.

Paul Krugman: And now they notice?

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal reports that many business people are disillusioned with the Republican party. A graphic titled “Endangered Elephant” shows that the public now believes that Republicans are less fiscally responsible than Democrats. The new Washington Post poll says the same thing. All this seems to come as shocking news to the Journal.

But fiscal irresponsibility has been not just a characteristic, but a principle, of movement conservatism since the 1970s. Here’s Irving Kristol, explaining why neoconservatives turned to supply-side economics in the 1970s (from his essay in The Public Interest, fall 1995):

Former Presidents Can't Withhold Records

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 7:40 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Presidents don't have indefinite veto power over which records are made public after they've left office, a federal judge ruled Monday.

In a narrowly crafted ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush's 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Files raise questions on Gitmo transfers

By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 2, 7:54 PM ET

Two dozen prisoners were cleared for transfer from Guantanamo Bay last year even though U.S. military panels found they still posed a threat to the United States and its allies. Dozens more were cleared even though they didn't show up for their hearings.

One Saudi arrested in Afghanistan was approved for release after offering a peculiar account that he had gone to the Taliban-controlled country to lose weight.

Pentagon documents obtained by The Associated Press show seemingly inconsistent decisions to release men declared by the Bush administration to be among America's most-hardened enemies. Coupled with accusations that some detainees have been held for years on little evidence, the decisions raise questions about whether they were arbitrary.

Child health veto will be election issue

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
12 minutes ago

President Bush cast a quiet veto Wednesday against a politically attractive expansion of children's health insurance, triggering a struggle with the Democratic-controlled Congress certain to reverberate into the 2008 elections.

"Congress will fight hard to override President Bush's heartless veto," vowed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Republican leaders expressed confidence they have enough votes to make the veto stick in the House, and not a single senior Democrat disputed them. A two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress is required to override a veto.

Bush's Agenda in Iran

By Reese Erlich, AlterNet
Posted on October 3, 2007, Printed on October 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64221/

I went on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes recently. It was the usual food fight where right-wing zealot Sean Hannity interrupts and hogs the camera, not allowing much dissent. But I was even more interested in the stand of "liberal" Alan Colmes.

We were debating whether Iran's President Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak at Columbia University. Colmes supported free speech. But in his introduction to the segment, he repeated almost every Bush falsehood about Iran, including its supposed, immediate plans to develop nuclear bombs, killing of American soldiers in Iraq and its grave danger to Israel. Unfortunately, his views reflect those of many mainstream Democratic Party leaders as well.

Digby: Killing The King

I just watched Bill Bennett quivering with outrage that Media Matters has "smeared" Rush Limbaugh; according to him Rush didn't actually say that soldiers who spoke out against the war were "phony soldiers." Wolf, uninformed about the details as usual,looked taken aback and somewhat frightened by Bennett's wild-eyed defense, and left it up to Donna Brazile to present the facts. (She did quite well although she would have been better if armed with the details on this one.) What was interesting is that Bennett then more or less issued a veiled threat threat that they'd better be careful not to push this thing too far or the "betrayus" thing would haunt the Democrats forever. He was more animated than I've seen him in years.

Digby: Village Parties

Both Atrios and Kos flagged this poll this morning, so I hardly need to join in. But I think it's worth discussing a little bit how this fetish for bipartisanship is a Village construct. They all live together. They want everyone to get along, like back in the good old days when Tip and Bob would fight it out on the floor and then head out and get shitfaced with Wilbur Mills and John Tower. In those days the parties were not aligned ideologically and there was great political utility in having an open line of communication.

Bush's Global 'Dirty War'

By Robert Parry
October 1, 2007

George W. Bush has transformed elite units of the U.S. military – including Special Forces and highly trained sniper teams – into “death squads” with a license to kill unarmed targets on the suspicion that they are a threat to American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to evidence from recent court cases.

Though this reality has been the subject of whispers within the U.S. intelligence community for several years, it has now emerged into public view with two attempted prosecutions of American soldiers whose defense attorneys cited “rules of engagement” that permit the killing of suspected insurgents.

One case involved Army sniper Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. who was acquitted by a U.S. military court in Baghdad on Sept. 28 in the murders of two unarmed Iraqi men – one on April 27 and the other on May 11 – because the jury accepted defense arguments that the killings were within the approved rules.

TPM: Erik Prince, CEO, Blackwater

Here at TPM we're looking very closely at military security contractors in Iraq. Tomorrow, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince goes to Capitol Hill to testify before Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) House Government Reform and Oversight committee. One issue that's got our attention about Blackwater is the firm's ability to leapfrog a number of much older and well-established US firms in Iraq. And that's got us interested in Prince's Republican political credentials.

The Right’s Base Behavior

Submitted by David Neiwert on October 1, 2007 - 1:04pm.

Editor's note: I'm exceedingly pleased and proud to introduce our next guest poster, who'll be checking in with us every Monday for the rest of the year: David Neiwert, who at his blog Orcinus and his two books, In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest and Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, A Trial, and Hate Crime in America, has established himself as our premier chronicler not merely of the violent far-right, but the even more crucial subject of how the violent far-right's ideology migrates into the mainstream. -- Rick Perlstein

So Republican candidates were busy finding better things to do this week than appear at a forum where they could debate minority issues. Rudy's excuse was the best: he had to go off and hobnob with Bo Derek.

Digby's right, as usual: It's not just that the no-show reveals the undercurrent of racism that runs through the conservative movement like an ancient underground sewer -- the snub also played an important role in sending a signal to the conservative base.

Amazon jungle could be lost in 40 years, say campaigners

· Development threatens world's oldest rainforest
· Conservationists attack plans for transport routes

The Amazonian wilderness is at risk of unprecedented damage from an ambitious plan to improve transport, communications and power generation in the region, conservationists warned yesterday.

Development plans have been drawn up to boost trade links between 10 economic hubs on the continent, but threaten to bring "a perfect storm of environmental destruction" to the world's oldest rainforest, according to a report from Conservation International.

U.S. Pays Steep Price for Private Security in Iraq

By Walter Pincus
Monday, October 1, 2007; A17

It costs the U.S. government a lot more to hire contract employees as security guards in Iraq than to use American troops.

It comes down to the simple business equation of every transaction requiring a profit.

The contract that Blackwater Security Consulting signed in March 2004 with Regency Hotel and Hospital of Kuwait for a 34-person security team offers a view into the private-security business world. The contract was made public last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee majority staff as part of its report on Blackwater's actions related to an incident in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, when four members of the company's security team were killed in an ambush.

The Smear This Time

By ANITA HILL

Waltham, Mass.

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

Israel admits air strike on Syria

Israel has confirmed that it carried out a strike on a Syrian military installation last month.

Syria accused Israel at the time but Israeli officials refused to comment, and the Israeli military censor imposed a strict blackout on information.

The censor's office has now allowed some details to be released.

Absolute, 100 Percent, Unadulterated Free Speech

By Will Durst, AlterNet
Posted on October 1, 2007, Printed on October 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64070/

After all the brouhaha in New York this week, this seems like a good time to have us a little chat about free speech. Not restricted free speech. Not partial free speech. Not pseudo-, semi-, counterfeit- or limited-free speech. Not free speech on Wednesdays between two and three pm EDT. Not free speech zones and not free speech reserved for the people we like and kept from the ones we don't. No, my friends, I'm talking about your total, unfettered, full throated, in your face, front row death metal rock concert, spitting in the wind, 24/7, every square inch of your big white furry butt, gushing like runoff from a rain gutter off a cantilevered roof during a Force Five hurricane in the tropics free speech.

There's no whining about who gets to speak at what college. We're supposed to be setting an example. Doesn't matter out of which holes the free speech is coming from. The mouths of an opposition politico or the biggest little two bit dictator in the world or the personification of Lucifer himself replete with red horns and forked tail and cloven hooves. But let's leave the Vice President out of this one.

Political Absurdity Hits the Iowa Caucuses

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on October 2, 2007, Printed on October 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64109/

I was back on the campaign trail for only about four hours before I started to feel unhappy again; this was back a few weeks ago, on actor Fred Thompson's kickoff tour (see "Running on Empty" in the current Rolling Stone), specifically on a bus run between Des Moines and Council Bluffs on the afternoon of Thompson's first day of campaigning.

Thompson had had a rough start to his presidential experience. His people had chosen to start things off by having a cow-eyed former Miss Iowa named Carolyn Haugland sing the national anthem for the large crowd of press and supporters gathered at a Des Moines convention center. Haugland is something every state should have -- a right-wing beauty queen with a Hannitoid political blog ("That's when it dawned on me," she writes, "Bin Laden isn't just a terrorist. He's worse -- a liberal!") who eschews post-pageant catalog work for stridently patriotic campaign performances. Her anthem would have been fine, except that she has a mild lisp. She ended up sounding like Robin Williams doing Elmer Fudd doing Bruce Springsteen doing "Fire." "Oah de wam-m-m-pahts we watch ..." she belted. "Wuh so gaow-want-wee stwee-e-e-e-ming. And de wockets wed gware ...!"

What Makes Criminal Suspects Give a False Confession?

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on October 2, 2007, Printed on October 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64113/

When 16-year old Kharey Wise entered the Central Park Police Precinct at 102nd St on April 20, 1989, he didn't realize what he was walking into. It was the day after one of the most grisly crimes in official New York memory-the brutal sexual assault of a woman who would become known as the Central Park Jogger-and Wise had been asked to come in along with other black and Latino youths who had allegedly been in the park the night before. Wise was taken to the scene of the crime and shown graphic pictures of the woman's injuries, which included a fractured skull. Eventually, his visit to the police station would lead to an interrogation and, after nine hours of questioning, a videotaped confession that was confusing, convoluted, and chilling.

The Coming 'Stab in the Back' Campaign

the liberal media by Eric Alterman

[from the October 15, 2007 issue]

Having exposed their country to the ignominy of certain defeat in Iraq, the Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies

are seeking to salvage their crumbling reputations by blaming their critics for the catastrophe their policies have wrought. We are witnessing the foundation for a post-Iraq "stab in the back" campaign.

The tactic--Dolchstoßlegende, which means, literally, "dagger stab legend"--is associated with attacks by German anti-Semites on Jews in the aftermath of World War I and is a familiar response for frustrated American right-wingers when reality fails to live up to their ideological fantasies. Following the inevitable collapse of nationalist China, unhinged accusations of a liberal conspiracy inside the US government that purposely "lost" China to the Commies ruled the foreign policy debate. Consider these words from GOP Senator William Jenner of Indiana: "This country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union.... [A] secret invisible government...[has] led our country down the road to destruction." The China lobby--the AIPAC of its day--tirelessly policed American politics to insure that no one with national aspiration dared recognize the reality of the Communist Chinese victory.

High Court won't hear two religion case

By PETE YOST and MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writers
1 hour, 47 minutes ago

The Supreme Court returned to work Monday by sidestepping two church-state cases that social conservatives had hoped the justices would use to chart a rightward course.

The justices decided not to consider a challenge by religious groups to a New York law requiring health plans to cover birth control pills, and a California case in which an evangelical group was denied use of a public library for religious services.

Congress raises limit again as U.S. debt nears $10 trillion

Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: September 28, 2007 08:26:04 PM

WASHINGTON — As the national debt heads for the $10 trillion mark, generous Americans are sending checks to the federal government.

Donations to the Bureau of the Public Debt have topped $2.5 million so far this year. That’s the highest amount since at least 1996.

It’s not making much of a dent, though.

The Other Side of the Little Rock Nine

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on September 30, 2007 - 8:17pm.

From time to time you still see the argument that there once was a noble and idealistic conservative movement, arrayed behind the figure of Barry Goldwater, from which heights today's gutter conservatives have fallen. And it's always been one of the purposes of this blog to debunk the notion: our argument is that modern conservatism is a failure in its original conception, not merely in its perversion in the age of Bush. I was reminded of that again this weekend, listening to Tavis Smiley interview the Little Rock 9 on his radio show on the fortieth anniversary of the day President Eisenhower had to mobilize the 101st Airborne to escort them to school, after Arkansas governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to keep them out.

The Invention of an Anti-Christ

Submitted by Jon Stokes on September 28, 2007 - 8:35pm.

From Rick Perlstein: I'm excited to announce that through the rest of the year I'll be hosting several outstanding guest bloggers on The Big Con. You've already thrilled to several Digby masterpieces. Tonight, for your weekend reading, I'm proud to introduce my friend John Stokes, co-founder of the computing site Ars Technica, Ph.D. student in early Christian history, and practicing Pentecostal, whose love-hate relationship with the Southern Christian conservative milieu in which he was born and raised has produced some of the most penetrating analysis of our political moment that I know.

By Jon Stokes

I'm an XM radio fanatic, but when I'm our other car--the one with only an FM radio--I find myself listening to one of two stations: Chicago's NPR, or WBMI, the local radio affiliate of the national Moody Broadcasting Network. As a Pentecostal, I find that I often enjoy some of the programs on the MBN, which is the broadcasting arm of the conservative Christian Moody Bible Institute. Indeed, to use the common evangelical idiom, I wouldn't hesitate to say that I've been "ministered to" on occasion by this or that preacher, show host, or call-in guest.

But then there are the times when I turn on WBMI and I become sick to my stomach. This typically happens when one of the station's "news" programs comes on the air. And when the discussion turns to the Middle East, I listen with a mix of morbid curiosity and utter despair--morbid curiosity, like the kind that you have when you see a horrific car accident taking place, and utter despair, like when you realize that your family is in the back seat of one of the cars.

The Rise of the Have-Nots

The American middle class has toppled into a world of temporary employment, jobs without benefits, and retirement without security.

Harold Meyerson | September 28, 2007

Last week over lunch, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my generation, the boomers, had botched so many things. While not exactly conceding that we had, I said that the one thing none of us had anticipated was that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity. To be born, as I was, in mid-century was to have come of age in a nation in which the level of prosperity continued to rise and the circle of prosperity continued to widen. This was the great given of our youth. If the boomers embraced such causes as civil and social rights and environmentalism, it was partly because the existence and distribution of prosperity seemed to be settled questions.

Paul Krugman: Enron’s Second Coming?

In May 2005 NYSE Magazine featured an article titled “American Dream Builder” — a glowing profile of Angelo Mozilo, the chairman and C.E.O. of Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. The article portrayed Mr. Mozilo as a heckuva guy — a man from a humble background determined to help other people, especially members of minority groups, achieve the American dream of homeownership.

The article didn’t mention one of Mr. Mozilo’s other distinguishing characteristics: the extraordinary size of his paychecks. Last year Mr. Mozilo was paid $142 million, making him the seventh-highest-paid chief executive in America.

Seymour Hersh: Bush 'Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing' in Iraq

By Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith, Der Spiegel
Posted on October 1, 2007, Printed on October 1, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/63986/

Spiegel Online: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what [IAEA head Mohamed] ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.