Getting Worse Before Things Get ... Worse

This morning in Iraq a group of Sunni militants attacked an ancient Shiite temple in Samara, causing masstive damage. Thousands of Shiites are protesting, and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has declared 3 days of mourning for the destruction caused to the beautiful, golden-domed structure, which containes tombs of two descendents of Muhammad.

Things just got a whole hell of a lot worse in Iraq. Those Americans who thought this would be easy may be in for quite shock as American soldiers become increasingly intertwined in an Iraqi civil war, between Sunni, Shia, Kurds, and everybody else who has a stake in the country. America, however, will find it harder and harder to pull out- if we do, Iraq may fall into pure chaos. If we don't, American soldiers are exposed to even more indiscriminate and confusing circumstances than before. This could be the genesis of the movement from Insurgency in Iraq to Chaos.

Sunni militants are already attacking Shia holy sites in retaliation.

Light Blogging

Extremely light blogging through the week- sorry! Work demands it!

Apology Accepted

I love it. Harry Whittington, shot by Dick Cheney, actually apologized for Dick Cheney's inconvenience.

"We all assume certain risks in whatever we do," Whittington said. "Whatever activities we pursue and regardless of how experienced, careful and dedicated we are, accidents do and will happen."

Whittington, wearing a suit and tie, appeared with several bruises on his face and neck. His discharge from the hospital came earlier than expected.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week," Whittington said.

See? It was his fault!

We're Losing The Propaganda War

Donny had a busy day today. First up:

US lags in propaganda war: Rumsfeld
The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.

Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Pentagon chief said today's weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said.

And then, he discussed one of the pieces of the puzzle that serves to alienate the rest of the world and fuel the very extremists he's claiming are winning the war of propaganda:

Rumsfeld rejects calls for Guantanamo closure
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday rejected calls from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others to close Guantanamo Bay prison, and firmly denied accusations of torture and abuse.

"He's just flat wrong. We shouldn't close Guantanamo," Rumsfeld said of Annan. "We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people who if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans. ... To close that place and pretend that really there's no problem just isn't realistic."

Holy crap, Rummy! I can't possibly see how these things could possibly be related!

Coupled with the resurgence of the fact that America's has tortured sordid the enemy, under Rumsfeld's watch and perhaps under his orders to do so.

Why are the extremists winning propaganda war?

It has less to do with American's being slow to embrace new propaganda technology.

And much much more to do with America's being too-swift to arm the extremists with ridiculous, hipocritcal events that serve, directly, as propaganda for them. Rumsfeld does more every day to inflame the enemy's propaganda; and every time he staunchly refuses to accept appropriate ethical criticism, like the UN's report about Guantanamo, he just gives more propaganda right to them.

What a disgusting lack of perspective.

Freedom Pastries

Iran continues to prove that it has learned its best tricks in terms of international politics, embattled divisive ideology, electoral politics, and domestic propaganda from the best of all masters: The American State.

Here, while continuing to enrich their "preemptive" nuclear capabilities, they've also taken the high-road somewhere else, using the model of Washingtonian nonsense. Instead of engaging in meaningful and open debate with non-supportive parties or even ideological enemies, they're renaming their cafeteria food:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranians love Danish pastries, but when they look for the flaky dessert at the bakery they now have to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."

Bakeries across the capital were covering up their ads for Danish pastries Thursday after the confectioners' union ordered the name change in retaliation for caricatures of the Muslim prophet published in a Danish newspaper.

"Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of now the name of Danish pastries will give way to 'Rose of Muhammad' pastries," the union said in its order.

"This is a punishment for those who started misusing freedom of expression to insult the sanctities of Islam," said Ahmad Mahmoudi, a cake shop owner in northern Tehran.

Man. That sounds familiar...

"This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration.


Ney, whose committee has authority over the House cafeterias, directed the change, after colleague Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, circulated a letter suggesting such a move. Jones said he was following the example of a local restaurant owner in his North Carolina district.

"I represent a district with multiple military bases that have deployed thousands of troops," Jones said in a statement. "As I've watched these men and women wave good-bye to their loved ones, I am reminded of the deep love they have for the freedom of this nation and their desire to fight for the freedom of those who are oppressed overseas. Watching France's self -serving politics of passive aggression in this effort has discouraged me more than I can say."

The name change was criticized by one young man in a House cafeteria.

"That's completely ludicrous to me," he said.

Bob Ney, of course, is in the middle of of the Abramoff scandals and faces possible indictment. But more disturbingly, the Political Cortex exposes where Iran may have learned this trick of culinary indictment. Bob Ney personally lobbied Sec. of State Colin Powell to significantly reduce sanctions on Iran so that his cronies could sell US airplane parts to the sworn-enemie and axis of evil member.

[What's that that our friends on the Right call people who cozy up to the enemy...??]

Oh well. I'm sure we all get to look forward to anti-pastry ribbon magnets on every Toyota truck in Tehran in the coming weeks.

Guantanamo and the UN

In some tough timing that coincides with the relase of many new, gut-wrenching photos from Abu Ghraib torture, the UN is calling for Guantanamo to be closed, and detainees released or prosecuted immediately:

"The United States government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay," the human rights rapporteurs declared.

Until that happened, the U.S. government should "refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", they added.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, who has frequently urged the United States to try the detainees or free them, told the BBC in London that the jail should be shut.

Many of the 500 inmates of the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba have been held for four years without trial. The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan.

Adding its voice to the clamour, the European parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday for a resolution urging the prison be closed and inmates given a fair trail.

The White House, calling the Guantanamo detainees "dangerous terrorists", dismissed the report as a reworking of past allegations and said that inmates were humanely treated.

It "appears to be a rehash of some of the allegations that have been made by lawyers for some of the detainees and we know that al Qaeda detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations," said spokesman Scott McClellan.

He also indicated that the calls to close the jail would fall on deaf ears.

"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about that are there and I think we've talked about that issue before and nothing's changed in terms of our views," McClellan added.

But Amnesty International backed the call for shutting down Guantanamo, which it said represented "just the tip of the iceberg" of U.S.-run detention facilities worldwide.

"The U.S. can no longer make the case, morally or legally, for keeping it open," the London-based group said.

Harsh treatment, such as placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures, and threatening them with dogs could amount to torture, which is banned in all circumstances, the report said.

"The excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and forced-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture," it added.

The five investigators said they were particularly concerned by attempts by the U.S. administration to "redefine" the nature of torture to allow certain interrogation techniques.

Washington, which denies any international laws are being broken, accused the U.N. investigators of acting like prosecution lawyers with the report, selecting only those elements that backed their case.

Mr. McClellan - just so that you know- just so we're clear here: if the UN adopts language that "sounds like a rehash of some of the allegations that have been made by lawyers of detainees" throughout this process, then guess what- the UN agrees with those lawyers. That doesn't bode well for your case.

All this says is that the argument that human rights lawyers have been making for the past 4 years against Guantanamo is correct. And that you and The Administration have bankrupted your moral authority in support of keeping Guantanmo open.

The All Powerful

Dick Cheney, fresh from telling the world his woe and sadness after shooting his friend, has had another demon to face of late: Scooter Libby says Papa Dick told him to leak a covert CIA operative's name in the wake of Joseph Wilson's scathing editorial denouncing the most compelling Administration evidence that Iraq wanted nuclear arms. Thus, Cheney begat the Plame Affair.

Cheney's response to Libby's claim is of vital interest, and, like the media blackout of his hunting accident, telling of Cheney's disdain for American public values.

Cheney says he can assume any and all powers he wishes, including the power to declassify information at will in order to enact a political vendetta against political enemies; apparently including declassifying the identity of under cover CIA agents. Again- what's of vital harm here is the continued attempt by The Administration to claim any and all powers of government, up to and including what information is shared and what information is locked.

To Dick Cheney, you and I don't get to know anything unless he says it's okay to know it.

That's Not All

By the way... there's more to the illegal surveillance story - more spying programs, that is:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans' Constitutional rights.

Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a "special access" electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress.

Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution's protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws. He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees - members or their staff - because they lack high enough clearance.

Neither could he brief the inspector general of the NSA because that office is not cleared to hear the information, he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said they believe a few members of the Armed Services Committee are cleared for the information, but they said believe their committee and the intelligence committees have jurisdiction to hear the allegations.

"Congressman Kucinich wants Congressman Shays to hold a hearing (on the program)," said Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman. "Obviously it would have to take place in some kind of a closed hearing. But Congress has a role to play in oversight. The (Bush) administration does not get to decide what Congress can and can not hear."

Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.

Tice was one of the New York Times sources for its wiretapping story, but he told the committee the information he provided was not secret and could have been provided by an private sector electronic communications professional.

Get that? The security clearance in these programs are so high that we can't even determine their legality.

All part of the master plan from The Administration- lock it so far out there nobody can even approach the key.

About To Be Derailed

While shooting somebody in the face with a shotgun is not illegal if it's accidetal, during a hunting trip, and the other guy's fault, setting up a spy ring to bypass existant surveillance law in order to dodge any congressional, judicial, or popular review, still is illegal.

And that's exactly why The Administration has done everything in their power to derail an official congressional investigation into the program:

Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.

They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work.

The Administration views the closed-door sessions with Congress to be a great "concession," when in actuality, it is Congress who apparently is ready to concede.

We're concerned with two things when it comes to the domestic spying program by the president: a) the privacy and civil liberties of every American citizen, and b) the attempt to consolidate absolute power in the Executive branch.

And that's what's frightening: if Congress doesn't officially and openly represent the 50% of Americans who are very concerned about this program and it's effects, then they're just giving up whatever shreds of power they have. If our representative body concedes to these guys desires- then effectively they've forced it upon a public that doesn't agree.

Zane V. Keifer

America and Turkey seem to be playing out some not-so-hidden hostilities with one another through the lenses of cameras:

ISTANBUL -- In "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq," U.S. soldiers shoot small children at point-blank range, harvest kidneys from Iraqi prisoners for shipment to Tel Aviv, blow a Muslim cleric out of his minaret and, to top it all off, display utter contempt for Turkish foreign policy. The feature film set a box office record in its first weekend, after opening in more theaters than any movie in Turkish history.

Meanwhile, the American television series "24" did not open at all in Turkey last fall, despite high ratings over the three previous seasons for agent Jack Bauer and the swashbuckling Counter-Terrorist Unit. The problem: In season four, the terrorists intent on destroying America were Turks.

"It's kind of like firing missiles at each other!" Yasar Aktas said of the pop culture war now playing between the United States and Turkey. The unemployed cook was one of 1.75 million people who saw "Valley of the Wolves" in its first six days in Turkey. It opened last week in Europe, where the U.S. Army issued a notice warning U.S. service members to stay away from affected multiplexes and "to avoid getting into discussions about the movie with people you don't know."

That two NATO allies that often speak of mutual respect regard each other so darkly on-screen says a good deal about the uneasy state of relations between Turkey and the United States, each of them proud, a bit insular and deeply concerned about the war in Iraq. But as protests roil an Islamic world deeply offended by caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, whose depiction the faith forbids, the state of entertainment in Muslim Turkey also offers a lesson in how easy it remains for cultures to talk past each other, even -- perhaps especially -- in an era of global satellite communication. It's hard seeing eye to eye when perspectives are profoundly different.

The US various media industries used to be the absolute force in international culture. We could assert and redefine anybody through our ideological lens at will.

While it's easy to demonize the enemy in film [think cold-war era Russian enemies in Rocky, Die Hard, etc], the US never really has faced the inevitable. That's what makes this interesting: we're finding just how subversive the non-dominant media of the world can be. Al Jazeera, for instance, is a threat not because of its inaccuracies, but because the US media can't control it.

And here we see just how directly other countries and groups of people may express their disdain for American activities.

Minor Heart Attack

Harry Whittington, who suffered a shotgun blast to the face, shoulder, and chest from Vice President Dick Cheney, was moved back into the ICU today. One of the lead shotgun pellets lodged next to his heart caused an irregular heartbeat, and, ultimately, a "minor" heart attack. That's the scary, personal news.

Atrios points out the disregard on the right and in certain wings of the media for the seriousness of this injury up to this point here and here.

The scary Administrative news, however, is of the kind we all have come to know: complete disregard and non-disclosure.

For 22 hours, the White House concealed the fact that Vice President Cheney had inadvertantly shot a 78-year old man, Harry Whittington.

The White House continues to withhold critical information from the press. In a press conference today, hospital administrator Peter Banko said that the White House had been informed that Mr. Whittington suffered a heart attack between 9:30-10AM this morning.

But at today’s White House Press Briefing, which started after 12PM, Scott McClellan didn’t tell the press. CNN confirmed that McClellan “was notified [about the heart attack] just before the briefing.” But McClellan suggested to reporters that he had no new information

And this is the reason that Cheney's hunting accident is of vital public interest. It is another, deeply disturbing event where The Administration can play out their efforts of non disclosure and negligence to their public. In this event they remain emotionally and intellictually detached and disengaged while refusing to disclose any relevent information, or acknowledge any wrongdoing or error. It wasn't Cheney's fault, his hunting buddy, dressed in bright orange, snuck up on him; etc.

The same story as any of their screwups. Just that this time... Cheney shot a man in the face.

Lagging Information

Bush Did Not Learn for Several Hours That Cheney Shot Hunter

The incident occurred Saturday but was not made public for nearly 24 hours – and then by a private citizen.

And looking back...

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

"If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?"

In other words, in an Administration where there's such disturbing disconnect between what they say, what they do, and what they know, there's nothing too surprising here.

Par for the course.

Plame in Iran: Cheney's First Friendly Fire Incident

On Saturday, Mr. Cheney shot a hunting friend in the face, a big Bush/Cheney friend and donor named Harry Whittington. [While "covering" the story for CNN, Chris Matthews called "Mr. Whitting... or whatever his name is." Nice and dismissive, Mr. Journalist, of the victim of a serious injury at the hands of the VP] Fortunately for everyone involved, Mr. Whittington is stable and doing well.

Yet well before his friendly fire incident on home territory, Mr. Cheney accidentally engaged in a much more threatening incident of and accidental shooting. Substitute Mr. Cheney's rich lawyer friend Mr. Whittington with The American Public; substitute Mr. Cheney's 28-guage with the building nuclear arms of Iran.

What am I talking about?

The Plame Affair.

You'll remember that last week Scooter Libby disclosed that his boss authorized him to leak classified information to the media about the CIA's WMD intelligence as a way to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
This directly led to the outing of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent. Dick, Scooter, and Karl wanted the world to think that Wilson's motivation was his wife's doing- that she had sent him to Africa to uncover the secret traffic of Nigerian uranium to Iraq. Wilson, upon hearing the President's Big Speech, wrote saying that, no, in fact, Iraq was not seeking Nigerian yellowcake.

And Plame's role was exposed. Every case she was working on immediately became threatened- every contact she'd made, every aspect of her job immediately destroyed by her outing. All of the intelligence that Plame's years of work instantly put at great, immeasurable risk by the actions of The Administration.

Well, Iraq wasn't looking for yellowcake when we invaded them, but guess who was? Iran.

And guess what country, it turns out, that Plame had been spending all her time on, and what intelligence, it turns out, has been utterly compromised by the actions of The Administration, and apparently by the Vice President himself?

The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.

Wow. HuffPo's Steve Clemons:

But another dimension of this story has to do with an assessment of the damage that her outing caused this nation. As we now start down a path towards harder-edged threats against Iran, allies will naturally question the quality of our intelligence given our failures on Iraq WMDs.

If Cheney & Co. outed one of the key intelligence operations monitoring the inputs and outputs of Iran's nuclear program -- then Cheney & Co. did vast damage to our ability to know what is real and contrived inside Iran.

Pretty frightening. Looks more and more like our Veep has pulled the trigger and missed what he aimed for- with dramatic and terrifying consequences- more than once since he's been in office.

Gun Play

Oh my:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

...
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

It just isn't Dick "Big Time, Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney's week. First he gets fingered by Scooter Libby as the final say authorizing the leak of confidential information in the Plame Affair case, and then he shoots a fellow hunter in the face.

Wow.

Hope for a speedy recovery for Mr. Wittington.

[Note: Photo is not of Mr. Cheney in the act of firing upon Mr. Wittington. It is, however the photo that the Yahoo news service carries in its reporting of this story in the links above. It depicts Big Time recieving the gift of a new rifle from NRA President Kayne Robinson, Right, and VP Wayne R. LaPierre, at an event in 2004.]

Clerical Error

Anybody want to explain to me, how in the hell, exactly, you can tell people that you did NOT sign a bill which will sell off millions of acres of federal lands, such as forests, nature reserves, etc for private use when, in fact, not only did you sign the bill- not only did you ENDORSE the bill...

but you CO SPONSORED IT. Somebody explain this one to me?

Because that's exactly what Wyoming's Representative Barbara Cubin (R) is saying. Her explanation?

"Clerical Error."

Seriously. As in "Oops, I accidentally signed a piece of paper co-sponsoring a bill I do not, at least publically and openly, support, because it goes against the values of my constituancy."

"I sincerely believe I did not put pen to paper to sponsor that legislation," she wrote in an opinion piece submitted to the Casper Star-Tribune. "I believe the error that occurred was clerical in nature, but how do I prove a negative? How do I prove I did not sign?"

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., introduced the bill Sept. 21 with a dozen original co-sponsors listed, including Cubin.

The measure would require the federal government to sell off quickly 15 percent of national forest lands and 15 percent of lands managed by Interior Department agencies, except national parks, to raise funds for Hurricane Katrina and other disaster relief.

Cubin originally told the Gazette Washington Bureau that although she had no intention of co-sponsoring the bill, in a shuffle of paperwork she accidentally may have signed papers that listed her as a co-sponsor.

"If (her signature is there) we can only surmise that what happened is the wrong piece of paper got signed at a weekly members' lunch meeting when a number of bills and letters get passed around to sign while speakers are giving their presentations," Cubin spokesman Joe Milczewski said in early January.

"I sincerely believe I do not read anything that I sign, even when it determines federal legislation."

Come on. What a joke.

"This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented," said Char Miller, professor of environmental history at Trinity University in San Antonio, who has written extensively about the Forest Service. "It signals that the lands and the agency that manages them are in deep trouble."

The U.S. Forest Service has earmarked more than 300,000 acres for sale in 32 states.

In a companion proposal inserted into this week's massive 2007 budget, White House officials directed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials to sell off at least $350 million worth of public land, with the funds to go directly to the general treasury.

Heard This One Before?

Highly intelligent, influential, career worker in top-level position says that The Administration misused intelligence to promote a political agenda in order to invade Iraq.

I'm sure you have heard it before. Because it's come up quite a bit.

But add to the list former CIA counterterrorism specialist Paul Pillar. Pretty vital, and damning, reading.

On the Court In the Axis of Evil

There's an interesting story in the WaPo about American professional basketball players who move through the European and Asian professional circuit after their careers in the NBA end. Some of them land in unexpected places- Iran and Syria:

He shook his head, just inches from the ceiling in his bleak, two-bedroom apartment overlooking the Sadr Expressway, its traffic roaring through the gray of Tehran in winter. The bed was in the living room, to be closer to the satellite television that players describe as their life-support system. "I never watch Iranian TV," Joseph said. "Always some military guy on."

On the coffee table: old issues of People and a basketball magazine. "Oh, I got to keep my place a little Americanized," he said. The one book in the room was The Essential Atlas of the World.

Joseph was saying that China at least had TGIFridays and Outback Steakhouses. Iran is simply more foreign. Boxes of tissues take the place of napkins, and bathroom light switches are outside the door. Clothes dryers are novelties. The lemon that restaurants put on the food makes everything taste the same. And cutlery?

"I ordered a steak and they bought me a spoon," Joseph said.

The Americans not only have adjusted to Iran's duality, they also abet it. Officially, Saba Battery -- a Tehran-based team that belongs to the Defense Ministry -- refuses to employ Americans. The pretense was imposed by its owner, an arm of a government that has no diplomatic relations with Washington and regularly renews the paint on the "Death to America" slogans still scattered around the capital.

Joseph's connection to the Great Satan is at least ambiguous. Though he lives outside Albany, N.Y., he remains a citizen of Dominica, the Caribbean island where he was born and raised.

But Pitts, born and raised in Seguin, Tex., is officially listed on the team roster as a citizen of Senegal. He even has a Senegalese passport, though he's not sure how he came by it.

"My agent got it for me," he said. "Basically, I'm here for the money."

No real point other than the interesting situation.

Torture is a Moral Issue

At least some American Christian religious groups get it:

Torture Is A Moral Issue: A Statement of the National Religious Campaign against Torture
by Chuck Currie

Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 12:39:04 PDT


Dr. George Hunsinger from Princeton Theological Seminary sent me the following note a few days back:


Please join in endorsing this statement of faith leaders


Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. It degrades everyone involved --policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.


Torture and inhumane treatment have long been banned by U.S. treaty obligations, and are punishable by criminal statute. Recent developments, however, have created new uncertainties. By reaffirming the ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as well as torture, the McCain amendment, now signed into law, is a step in the right direction. Yet its implementation remains unclear.


The President's signing statement, which he issued when he signed the McCain Amendment into law, implies that the President does not believe he is bound by the amendment in his role as commander in chief. The possibility remains open that inhumane methods of interrogation will continue.


Furthermore, in a troubling development, for the first time in our nation's history, legislation has now been signed into law that effectively permits evidence obtained by torture to be used in a court of law. The military tribunals that are trying some terrorist suspects are now expressly permitted to consider information obtained under coercive interrogation techniques, including degrading and inhumane techniques and torture.

We urge Congress and the President to remove all ambiguities by prohibiting:

• Exemptions from the human rights standards of international law for any arm of our government.
• The practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby suspects are apprehended and flown to countries that use torture as a means of interrogation.
• Any disconnection of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" from the ban against "torture" so as to permit inhumane interrogation.
• The existence of secret U.S. prisons around the world. Any denial of Red Cross access to detainees held by our government overseas.
• We also call for an independent investigation of the severe human rights abuses at U.S. installations like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now --without exceptions.


Click here to endorse the statement.

Mixed Messages

It is a day of lists. Bush released a really informative list of 10 major terror plots that he's been able to prevent, including a 2002 plot to attack LA. While those disrupted plans leave something to be missed in terms of informative detail, Bush recently released another list.

In line with his new budget recommendations, Bush is requesting cuts to over 100 domestic programs that should be "eliminated and/or trimmed back" to bring his skyrocketing expenditures back to earth. Among the programs The Administration admits aren't performing and should be eliminated [and/or trimmed back]:

• Dept of Homeland Security Border Patrol
• Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Aids to Navigation
• Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Drug Interdiction
• Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Polar Icebreaking Program
• Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Search and Rescue
• Dept of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Automation Modernization Program
• Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program
• Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office State Homeland Security Grants Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Infrastructure Protection Cyber Security
• Dept of Homeland Security Science and Technology: Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Air Cargo Security Programs
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Aviation Regulation and Enforcement
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Baggage Screening Technology
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Federal Air Marshal Service
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Flight Crew Training
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Passenger Screening Technology
• Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Screener Workforce

ACK!

Dear lord! Thank God for illegal wiretapping! Because if these guys don't catch these terrrist plots early, and the terrists make it anywhere outside of their homes and/or prisons, then we're totally doomed!

So when I look at these lists, I can't help but wonder: what am I supposed to believe? They're telling me they're protecting me, and they're telling me they can't protect me. Crikey!

Tell All

First Jack, then Scooter... What other big name Administration ideologues, sleazeballs, and incompetent insiders are turning heel on their beloved?

Potentially, Mr. Michael Brown, disgraced "heck of a job" leader of FEMA, who boldly led the disaster managment forces of Homeland Security into new levels of worthlessness and betrayal:

Brown's stance, in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, follows senators' complaints that the White House is refusing to answer questions or release documents about advice given to Bush concerning the August 29 storm.

Brown quit as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency days after Katrina struck. He left the federal payroll November 2.

In a February 6 letter to White House counsel Harriet Miers, Brown's lawyer wrote that Brown continues to respect Bush and his "presidential prerogative" to get candid and confidential advice from top aides.

The letter from Andrew W. Lester also says Brown no longer can rely on being included in that protection because he is a private citizen.

"Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications," the lawyer wrote.

Brown's desire "is that all facts be made public."

In other words, Brownie's sudden push toward nobility is based entirely around the premise that his former boss had better provide him with legal protection. Even when he's about to divulge some of the most vital communications during the worst breakdown of American domestic life in recent memory, the only way he can do so is by essentially ransoming it. Were his desire that all facts be made public, he would have stated them when he was testifying in front of Congress and had that legal protection.

And yet... America deserves to know what he knows. Come clean. Do at least one thing right, Brownie.

And why aren't the Dems out there demanding that, with this new information, Brownie be held legally responsible to testify?

Domestic Spying: The Internet Edition

Here's a hairy situation: What do you do to cull information about terrorism when so much of it is propagated or otherwise indicated digitally, on the internet?

Well, you just datamine the entire internet, see. And the nice thing is, you don't have to worry about that whole question of domestic or international; or really any of the legal questions any more. Anybody wondering why, exactly, the Feds are so interested in Google search records? Turns out, it's not just for the records- it's for building their own system to do the same:

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."

The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.

...
A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity.

What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building.

...
Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."

It sure would be interesting to see what terror plots this has prevented. Of course... the world may never know...

Authorized

Quite an intriguing news day today. First up- Libby's squealing... kind of. And it's not pretty for the Veep:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

According to sources with firsthand knowledge, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Pretty telling information there. Cheney had authorized Libby to leak information to the press that would aid their case in the public debate. But did Cheney do anything to authorize Libby to leak this classified information with the specific intention of outing CIA agent Valeria Plame, Administration and war-critic Joseph Wilson's wife?

Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized to share parts of the NIE with journalists in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to rebut charges then being made by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war.

Wilson had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to investigate allegations that the African nation of Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon. Despite the fact that Wilson reported back that the information was most likely baseless, it was still used in the President's 2003 State of the Union speech to make the case for war.

But besides sharing details of the NIE with reporters during the effort to rebut Wilson, Libby is also accused of telling journalists that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had worked for the CIA. Libby and other Bush administration officials believed that if Plame played a role in the selection of her husband for the Niger mission, that fact might discredit him.

Intriguing. While this case is still very complex, the threads are beginning to wind even tighter. Looks like speculations that Cheney was very involved in this, for purely political reasons, are more and more correct.

Contradictory Intelligence

This is interesting: a crack in the reasoning for The Administration's authorization of the NSA to illegally tap international calls:

The question from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing Monday was: Why stop there? Why not intercept domestic calls, as well?

"I don't understand why you would limit your eavesdropping only to foreign conversations," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The committee's debate highlighted one of the most significant apparent contradictions in the administration's defense of the spying program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some calls to and from the United States and contacts overseas.

Many national security law experts said yesterday that the distinction makes little sense legally, because the administration concluded that President Bush has the constitutional authority to order wiretaps on U.S. citizens and residents without court approval.

Once that threshold is crossed, numerous experts said yesterday, there is little reason to limit the kind of calls that can be intercepted. It is irrelevant where the other contact is located, they said.

"The rationale for this surveillance has nothing to do with anything tied to a border," said Geoffrey R. Stone, a University of Chicago law professor critical of the administration's legal justifications for the NSA program.

"There's no pragmatic reason and no principled reason why, if it is okay for NSA to listen in on phone calls between someone in Detroit and Pakistan without a warrant, they also can't listen in on a phone call between Detroit and New York," Stone said.

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration who is among a number of prominent Republican critics of the NSA program, said the argument underscores what he views as a lack of consistency in the administration's legal arguments.

"If it's good enough for international calls, then it should be good enough for domestic calls, too," Fein said.

So this restriction, by The Administration, doesn't make sense, given their reasons for pursuing the program. If you're going to spy illegally, without warrants, you might as well just spy illegally, without warrants, across the board. Why hold back? And if your fear is that there are cells of terrorists in the states taking guidance and collaborating, why wouldn't you want to snare that communication as well?

Gonzales told senators that Bush had considered including purely domestic communications in the spying program. The idea was rejected in part because of fear of public outcry. He also said the Justice Department had not fully analyzed the legal issues of such a move.

So Gonzales states that the reason not to do this are purely political- that once American's know that they are being spied upon without any legal authority to do so, they become annoyed and stop supporting you.

Not because it has any legal justification to do one without the other. Just because they were afraid people wouldn't like it if they were spied on.

But they are being spied on. And people don't like it.

Plus, it's questionable that it's doing any good anyway.

Renting V. Owning

The new House Majority leader, taking over for Tom Delay with a mild agenda of ethics reforms, knows that in this housing market, it really makes just as much sense to rent rather than buy:

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.

Milne's clients -- including restaurant chains and health insurance companies -- hired him to lobby on issues at the heart of Boehner's work, including minimum-wage increases, small-business tax breaks and tax-free savings accounts to help cover insurance costs, congressional lobbying records show.

In the weeks preceding last week's GOP leadership elections, Boehner acknowledged his close ties to the lobbying community, but he assured Republican lawmakers that all of his relationships were ethical and he campaigned on a platform of change and reform. Seymour reiterated that message last night.

...
Boehner's work closely coincides with the interests of Milne. In 2002, the House approved the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act, a tax measure originally drafted by Boehner, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) as the Back to Work Act. The measure eventually was signed into law.

Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that one of Milne's clients, Fortis Health Plans, hired him to lobby the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act.

This is very cute. I wonder who did the window treatments in Boehner's basement apartment? But really, he doesn't stay there that often- he is very well travelled, and wants to remain that way - spending over $150,000 on lobbyist travel grants for the past few years.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... indeed.

It is important to remember that Boehner has been elected by house republicans- he represents their interests. If they continue to support their newly elected leadership direction, voters will remind them that corruption leads to job-loss- theirs.

Nobel Peace Prize Nominations of Note

Every now and again, a really valuable person gets nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Somebody with the dignity, reserve, and capability to enact really positive social change finally gets noticed with the simple nomination- demonstrating their even-headed personalities and good work to end major conflict around the world, peacefully.

This year, however, we have the great moustachioed man, the [temporary] US enjoy to the UN- John Bolton.

Two Americans who played a major role in exposing Iran's secret nuclear weapons plans have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and longtime Iran investigator Kenneth R. Timmerman were nominated for their repeated warnings and documentation of Iran's secret nuclear buildup and revealing Iran's "repeated lying" and false reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

...
Bolton and Timmerman were formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Sweden's former deputy prime minister and Liberal party leader Per Ahlmark.

Ahlmark is meeting with journalists, opinion leaders and policymakers in Washington this week at the invitation of the Jewish Institute for National Security Afffairs (JINSA).

Congrats to the new nominees. Couldn't have happend to an individual more interested in solving internationl issues peaceably in the interest of all parties involved. Because we wouldn't be taking Iran to the Security Council [which, of course, the US, and therefore, Bolton is currently President of] because Iran had expelled UN investigators if it wasn't for their work, right? I mean, hey, if this all goes the right way, and all the cards land in the right places, Bolton and Timmerman may have been nominated for a Peace Prize which began and continues the march toward war- and, depending on what happens at the Security Council, of which Bolton himself will largely influence the outcome.

Lovely how that all ties up nice and tight, isn't it?

Truth told, had we spent intelligence and UN resources on Iran at the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, we'd probably all have a much better idea what the hell is happening over there. We also might have a less-extremist-ultra-conservative, combatative president in Iran, who might be more willing for diplomacy and less willing to blow everybody up.

The Critics of Oil Independence

Trivia Time!

In response to Bush's SotU speech, where he stated [metaphorically, of course] that he would end America's addiction to oil by reducing our dependence on Mid East oil exports by 75% by 2025, who said this:

• "Realistically, it is simply not feasible in any time period relevant to our discussion today," and claimed that it is a "misperception" that the US could reach oil independence, and that it is not only a bad idea to attempt it, but also impossible.

If you said Exxon Sr. VP Stuart McGill, you're correct!

Here's another headscratcher - who said:

• "In terms of energy policy, the U.S. seems to be sending mixed messages," ... by encouraging production growth with a new energy law, but derailing investment by considering special taxes on oil company profits.

If you said Chevron Executive VP George Kirkland, right again!

Now, can anybody explain to me why the number two oil corporation in the world, Chevron, and the corporation that netted the highest profits of any company in the history of corporations might be against making strides to reduce our independence on oil? Hmm.

Not to say that The Administration's plan is worth anything. But sometimes you have to consider the motivations of the critics, as well.

Shaken by Medicare

The President, at the State of the Union address, announced his plan to re structure America's health care system. Actually, he announced that he had a plan, but we thus far have heard virtually nothing about the plan itself.

But any and all of us should be very concerned in light of The Administration's recent overhaul of Medicare. Why? Because so far, those who have benefitted from the supposedly easier system have been scarce.

While those whose lives are thrown into more difficulty, confusion, and beaurocracy as a result of the changes has increased. Seniors can't get their medication. Low income families have to change doctors and pharmacists, and can't get theirs.

But there's another population shaken to the core by these changes:

A 43-year-old client of Knoll's mental health agency, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder, had come from his pharmacy frustrated to the point of meltdown. There were snags in his new Medicare drug plan. Of his four medicines, it would fill only two.

"I'm not going to take any of them anymore," he yelled, according to the report by caseworkers. Before they could do anything, he grabbed the prescription bottles he'd just gotten, ran for the restroom and dumped both in the toilet.

"He flushed everything he had on hand," recounted Knoll, executive director of Threshold Services in Silver Spring, whose staff spent day after day last month grappling with the many ramifications of the government's troubled program. Threshold came to the rescue of clients who couldn't get any medications or who, despite their pills, were in increasing distress because of all the confusion. It reimbursed several who'd mistakenly paid hundreds of dollars for pills that should have cost them a few dollars -- and replenished the supply of the client who had thrown his away.

"I'm not saying it's the federal government's fault he flushed his meds," Knoll said. "I'm saying it's the federal government's fault he couldn't get his meds. It's not surprising that people with mental illness respond in ways that people with mental illness respond."

Since the prescription program made its debut Jan. 1, some of the estimated 2 million mentally ill Americans covered because they receive both Medicare and Medicaid have gone without the drugs that keep their delusions, paranoia, anxieties or stress in check. Mental health service providers and advocacy organizations nationwide say they worry that scores are at high risk of relapse. Numerous people have been hospitalized.

"The continuation of medications is absolutely critical to keep them in community living," said Steven S. Sharfstein, chief executive of the Shepherd-Pratt Health System in Baltimore and president of the American Psychiatric Association. Last week, the association joined other mental health groups in a lengthy talk with Medicare officials about the myriad problems.

"I really don't know what the future will bring. . . . I have a very deep concern that psychiatric patients will suffer disproportionately," Sharfstein said. "If by the end of February or March, if [federal officials] haven't figured this out, we could have an epidemic on our hands."

...
But repeatedly, she and others say, people have fallen through the program's cracks and discovered they have no insurance -- and have either run out of pills or rationed their medicine because they feared they would be left without.

Or they have been assigned to plans that will pay for some but not all of their psychiatric prescriptions -- an untenable and potentially dangerous situation given the complicated multiplicity of drugs people often take, with some pills to treat symptoms and others to counteract side effects. Unlike many medicines, psychiatric drugs are not easily substituted.

In Alexandria last month, a mother of two with a history of homelessness and attempted suicide left a drugstore empty-handed after being told her antidepressant was not covered. "For her, it was overwhelming," said Lix Wixson, director of acute care at the local Community Services Board. "She shut down."

Though Tom Cruise thinks the AntiCentenarian is being "glib," we actually think that those who can actually join society once again due to psychiatric medication deserve to- they have that right. It's a human right- it's humane. And it seems as though there have been systemic oversights time and time again with this Medicare restructuring, and those who have the most to lose from it... lose it all.

31 Days in Iraq

The NYT has a striking graphic map showing incidents in Iraq over the past 31 days. Check it out here.

The New Era of GOP Leadership: Boehner

And guess what? The new House Majority Leader thinks that, in spite of tremendous corruption in Congress based around abuses by Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay and their calculated system of dirty business, despite the fact that now at least one GOP Representative has resigned and plead guilty to corruption charges from lobbiests, and Boehner's successor as Majority Leader put in place such a system that has him currently under indictment for his work with lobby groups...

Boehner, who ran on a ticket of GOP reform in the government to some extent, says that everything is just hunky dory. Don't change a thing, he says, when it comes to the way lobbyists work in Congress:

Newly elected House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he opposed efforts to ban privately funded travel for members of Congress and provisions in spending bills that fund lawmakers' pet projects.

The views of Boehner, elected by his GOP colleagues on Thursday to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), make it less likely that the more far-reaching proposals to restructure lobbying will become law. In interviews on a pair of television talk shows, Boehner amplified his earlier concerns about such broad responses to the Jack Abramoff scandal, including proposals offered by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

"In the past, when these scandals have erupted, what's happened is Congress has overreacted, and two days later nobody knew what happened," he said on "Fox News Sunday." He said he would favor more disclosure of dealings with lobbyists but would not seek complete bans on travel or "earmark" provisions. "Bringing more transparency to this relationship, I think, is the best way to control it. But taking actions to ban this and ban that, when there's no appearance of a problem, there's no foundation of a problem, I think, in fact, does not serve the institution well."

That's just a lovely position, isn't it?

Although, one could certainly assume that it is a perfectly reasonable position coming from such a noble, ethical Congressman like Rep. Boehner, who, literally, handed out checks from the Tobacco lobby on the floor of the House during voting sessions.

Gonzales on the Spot

Watch the Gonzales testimony in front of Congress live on C-SPAN now. And yes, it's every bit as spinetingly thrilling as you'd imagine it to be!

Check the liveblogging over at Aravios' place, Americablog, and over at Greenwald's place, Unclaimed Territory.

Since I've been watching, Sen. Biden has just said [filtered, of course, through the AntiC] that if Gonzales is unable to provide testimony saying that no innocent American's are being spied on, that the program was providing adequate and meaningful intelligence, and that the program did not violate extant law, then The Administration had best find somebody who could testify as such; or face the legal conesequences of the program.

Looks like it's wrapping up pretty soon. Check it out.

----

Gonzoles: Of course the President is willing to hear Congress' ideas on how to make this program legal. And yes, FISA has active provisions already. However: it is a) necessary in a time of war and b) part of his inherent authority under the constitution.

Every time The Administration uses this argument should be seen as an effort toward authoritarianism. It's shocking to hear, actually: that they're willing to listen to the ideas of the other two branches of government, but that their ideas are predetermined to be invalid [unless they fit their scheme] because The President is The President.

Ridiculous.

----

Gonzales: If The President had authorized Domestic spying, the outrage would be twice as bad.

What? Of course it would be!

Also- some protester just called Gonzales a fascist and was ejected from the meeting. Now that is exciting C-SPAN action!

-----

The difference between Dems on the committee and "Certain republicans:"

Dems: Why did the President say that he only engages in wiretaps with a search warrant?
Why did the President authorize this without any congressional or judicial oversight?
Why won't the President offer assurances that this event does not impinge upon their civil rights?

Republicans:
Isn't the superbowl a great target for an Al Qaeda attack?
You guys don't realize that America has far more military restraint than any military in history.

Cute, fellas. What a ridiculous way to think about these issues. Completely childish.

Not a Significant Bullet

We here at the AntiC are huge Werner Herzog fans - both his work as a filmmaker and his work as One Of The Most Intriguing People... EVER. Just thought I'd get that out in the open. And he's a minor spectre in two very intriguing stories in the news, so we have to give a mention.

He, of course, was the ghostly figure that came upon Jaoquin Pheonix' upturned car the other night, saving the Johnny Cash wannabe's life:

"I remember this knocking on the passenger window. There was this German voice saying, 'Just relax.' There's the airbag, I can't see and I'm saying, 'I'm fine. I am relaxed. Finally, I rolled down the window and this head pops inside. And he said, 'No, you're not.' And suddenly I said to myself, 'That's Werner Herzog' There's something so calming and beautiful about Werner Herzog's voice. I felt completely fine and safe. I climbed out. I got out of the car and I said, 'Thank you,' and he was gone."

But that's not the best of it. In a BBC interview, following this incident... during the interview... he was shot with an air rifle by a crazed fan [AntiC readers- we're watching you...]. But he is, after all, Werner Herzog. How'd he handle it?

The 63-year-old was chatting with movie journalist Mark Kermode about his documentary Grizzly Man, when a sniper opened fire with an air rifle.

Kermode explains, "I thought a firecracker had gone off.

"Herzog, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, said, 'Oh, someone is shooting at us. We must go.'

"He had a bruise the size of a snooker ball, with a hole in. He just carried on with the interview while bleeding quietly in his boxer shorts."

An unrepentant Herzog insisted, "It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid."

Wow.

Why isn't this guy running the world, again?

The Bankrupting

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will emphasize domestic-spending austerity when he unveils a $2.7 trillion budget on Monday that aims to counter a spendthrift image and rally Republicans in an election year.

The budget for fiscal 2007, which begins October 1, is expected to propose cuts in an array of discretionary programs and $36 billion in cost savings over five years from Medicare, one of the largest U.S. entitlement programs.

Bush vowed in his State of the Union address last week to reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs "that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities." The cost reductions would total $14 billion, he said.

Fun, that. The President also says that we're well on the way to cutting our deficit, though that isn't happening. And while he's practicing "austerity" at the cost of social programs domestically, he's bankrupting Medicare and other programs, while increasing his war spending. And, of course, demanding that his tax cuts become permanent, insuring that we'll be forever indebted to foreign nation investors [China, South Korea, Japan, etc], while having none of the domestic benefit [health care, social security, education] that would come from having any kind of adequate financing.

But hey. At least we get to support this lovely war.

And the next one.

Interning for NASA

The AntiC is somewhat late to this story, but it's important enough to hit.

A week after a leading NASA climatologist exposed the fact that The Administration has been directing science initiative within NASA to fit the Bush ideology.

What's particularly frightening about this effort is the simple lack of any kind of respect for the highly-capable scientists at NASA. They have been told for the last two years that they must accept creationism and modify the concept of the Big Bang theory to fit their ideology. And they're being mandated to do this by a 24 year old former Bush-Cheney intern.

When ideological, political war-room interns take over the very definitions of science at NASA- expect the worst.

Starting early in 2004, directives, almost always transmitted verbally through a chain of midlevel workers, went out from NASA headquarters to the agency's far-flung research centers and institutes saying that all news releases on earth science developments had to allude to goals set out in Mr. Bush's "vision statement" for the agency, according to interviews with public-affairs officials working in headquarters and at three research centers.

Many people working at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said that at the same time, there was a slowdown in these centers' ability to publish anything related to climate.

Most of these career government employees said they could speak only on condition of anonymity, saying they feared reprisals. But their accounts tightly meshed with one another.

...
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.

Casting The Net

Tomorrow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [of the "torture memos" fame] will testify in front of a congressional committee that The Administration's super double secret NSA phone tapping surveillance program is legal, meaningful, precision targetted, and vital in the war on terror.

This will be the big moment in a recent publicity blitz by Administration big wigs in support of the program, though they have been suspiciously short on details. Porter Goss, head of the CIA, says that the outing of the program puts America at great risk, and demands that the investigation be into the leak- not into the program itself.

But all of these attempts to justify the program defy any reasonable understanding of what's going on. If the program were so essential, it would have documented and known positive effects in the war on terror. These cases simply do not exist.

It would be so targeted that no innocent American could be trapped in the system. These assurances do not exist.

It would be so cutting-edge and necessary that no law currently provides the the provisions for this action. This, of course, is shockingly untrue- the FISA court exists for this reason- to provide warrants retroactively in wiretapping cases of great importance.

So Gonzales is going to go in front of Congress and propose that this violation of the law is so utterly necessary, we're doomed if we don't adhere to it.

It's really madness. Totally ridiculous positioning- and yet, somehow, these guys are able to capitalize off of American ambivalence to these issues.

We'll see what happens tomorrow with this...

The Bait

Bush wanted to paint a US spyplane in UN colors, fly it over Iraq, and have the Iraqis shoot it down.

This would have given him enough reason to invade. Because, you see, they knew the WMD evidence wasn't complete. They knew that Saddam's heinous past wasn't compelling enough to invade, destroy, and occupy a nation.

No. I'm serious:

President Bush said that:

"The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would 'twist arms' and 'even threaten'. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway.''

Prime Minister Blair responded that he was: "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam."

But Mr Blair said that: "a second Security Council resolution would provide an insurance policy against the unexpected, and international cover, including with the Arabs."

Mr Sands' book says that the meeting focused on the need to identify evidence that Saddam had committed a material breach of his obligations under the existing UN Resolution 1441. There was concern that insufficient evidence had been unearthed by the UN inspection team, led by Dr Hans Blix. Other options were considered.

President Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

He went on: "It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated."

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Mr Sands said:

"I think no one would be surprised at the idea that the use of spy-planes to review what is going on would be considered. What is surprising is the idea that they would be used painted in the colours of the United Nations in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach. Now that plainly looks as if it is deception, and it raises some fundamental questions of legality, both in terms of domestic law and international law."

Taking It Literally

Think Progress has compiled a brilliant list of some of the Other Things Bush Has Said That You Shouldn't Take Literally:

Yesterday, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman admitted that when President Bush said that he had a plan to cut America’s dependence on Middle East oil by 75 percent, he didn’t really mean it:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.

Here are some other statements by Bush that are not to be taken literally –

Bush, 4/20/04:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.

Bush, 6/10/04:

Q Given — given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney’s discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent’s name?

THE PRESIDENT: That’s up to —

Q And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Bush, 9/15/05:

And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.

President Bush, 1/11/06:

[W]hen an American President says something, he better mean it….in order to be able to have credibility in this world, when we speak, we better mean what we say.

You’re on notice: don’t take Bush at his word. He may just be using words as a metaphor to represent something completely different.

[all emphasis theirs]

So how are we supposed to respond when, time and time again, The Administration presents pure myth rather than viable substance? Apparently, they expect us to simply pretend that we didn't notice that they lied; or pretend that we didn't notice that they didn't follow up on it.

It's ridiculous, too- because they've found so much success with this. It's not an anomoly. Time and again they manipulate the language in front of our eyes- reneging on important statements so they don't have to be held accountable to them.

They're willing to say it. But that's all they're willing to do.

The Voting Record

Kos points out what can only be a very bad, if illuminating, omen:

Is this funny or scary?

"House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting."

Excuse me? Kos likens the Republican vote for House leadership to the management of Florida's election, 2000.

I, however, believe it is much more closely related to the corrupt election of Mike V. to the venerable post of Recess Announcer in my 3rd grade class- where he won with 28 votes, but only 20 students were in the class.

And most of them were out sick.

House Republicans- as power hungry and corrupt as an 8 year old elementary kid- but with actual access to power. Scary!

And now, after a second whack at it, we meet our new Majority Leader:

Sen. John Boehner.

Reducing The Addiction to Foreign Oil

Apart from the HSA announcement at the SotU speech last night, The President dropped another bombshell [and no, I'm not talking about his strange apparent fear of Humanzees, Manimals and Humicorns] on the Union last night:

He will singlehandedly reduce America's Addiction to Foriegn Oil, replacing 75% of our imports by the year 2025 with alternative energy supplies!

Holy shmoly, did we just hear that correctly?

Along with everybody else who saw and heard the speech, the WaPo sure thinks so:

President Bush set an ambitious goal in his State of the Union address: break the country's addiction to oil and move beyond a petroleum-based economy.

Bush's remarks on Tuesday night follow in the path of previous U.S. presidents, including Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter, who pledged to limit reliance on foreign oil.

...
That growing demand has made the United States all the more dependent on oil from what Bush called "unstable parts of the world."

He said technological breakthroughs encouraged by his plan "will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

Yessir, undoubtedly that's what Mr. President said in his State of The Union Address. It's right there. Right in front of you: This administration has said that we'll remove 75% of our imported oil energy needs and replace it with alternative fuel models.

Except...

This little political stunt - you know, the one where anti-environmental oil-baron moron President Bush tries to, and succeeds with getting compared to nuclear scientist Nobel prize winning former president Carter [and disgraced, resigned president Nixon] doesn't sit so well with some figures pretty high up there- and people not traditionally at odds with The Administration.

Wondering who I'm talking about?

I mean... yes... The Administration doesn't agree with The Administration!

Let me be clear. In a follow-up interview with journalists about the new energy policies set forward, a panel including Bush's own Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman pointed out this dubious truth:

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region," he said.

See, it's a metaphor.

Or it's just an outright political manipulation- yet another fabricated "truth", with the president staring straight out at all of America- and not coming clean. Writing poetry, metaphors for us to intrepret. Playing language games.

The Delete Button

[via Atrios]

Talking Points Memo uncovers some exceedingly worrisome tidbits tucked away in a paragraph's report about the ongoing CIA leak investigation:

But down there in the last graf there's this ...

Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy.

Does that seem a bit odd?

Fitzgerald's letter says that "we have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."

Ouch. That's not a particularly pleasant possibility, is it? Atrios points to this article, where then-counsel Alberto Gonzoles admittedly alerted Andy Card to the investigation 12 hours before he alerted other staff members, opening a window of opportunity...

Comforting.

The HSA

Last year, oh, around this time, The Administration tried to distract America from the the crisis in Iraq- the deterioration of the occupation over 2004 - by proposing a bold new initiative to the people: Social Security Reform. The President's plan: privitize with personal social security accounts!

The President then went on a barnstorm tour to sell America on his bold new plan- but this did not go well for America. You see, the more he talked about the plan, the more detail he exposed, the less America seemed to like the idea that their savings should be locked into an account which would do more to benefit private corporations than it would the public.

Thus, The Administration set into motion the first action of a terrible year for them; and their social security plan was soundly abandoned. Following this was more torture scandals, the heating investigation of the CIA leak and ultimate indictment of a top-level Administration official, chaos in Iraq, dismal ineptitude in the aftermath of hurricane after hurricane including Katrina, a wire tapping scandal, and more.

This one event so-burned the President that he could not get past mentioning it in last night's State of the Union- and was shocked with half of the governing body actually stood and applauded this failure.

And now he's followed it with the exact same. They've decided to end this horrible year by returning to exactly where we started. Replace Social Security with Health Care. Replace private social security accounts with private HCA's [health care accounts. Cute.] [Let's make America more Health Accountable!! Yeah! you see what I did there?]

Mr. President was scant on details then, but they're leaking out slowly. Expect the debate to be fierce. I predict, as well, that the more people know about this program, the less they'll like it.