What is up with this weather? Yesterday and today both have been brilliant sunshine, as if the rainy season were over. Here in Arenal, it is supposed to have another two months to run, but so far, the weather has been more typical of the middle of the dry season than the rainy season. Even the temperatures have been unusually warm - 81 yesterday and 82 today with a 70 degree overnight low. This is definitely not the sort of weather we are used to this time of the year.
I took advantage of the warm weather to get out in the garden for a bit. The hot, dry weather has not been too kind to the ferns in the flower boxes in front of the house, so I got those thinned out today, which they badly needed. The begonias are loving it, though, and are all in full bloom. So are the white terrestrial orchids. Spectacular flower, but without a hint of fragrance. There are a lot of spots in the garden that are needing some weeding and pruning, and if the weather and my health holds out, I plan to get out there to do some of that, too. I need to convince my gardener that he needs to keep on top of the pruning.
The small shrubs that I planted in the cinder block holes along side the driveway have been prospering, far better than I had dared hope. There is one particular clone that is dense with dark, green healthy leaves and lots of flowers, so I think I am going to take a large number of cuttings from it, and root them out to finish up that project. It will make that driveway quite attractive once they are established. The cuttings already in place are quite spectacular right now, with their purple flowers almost covering the foot-high shrubs.
I notice someone has turned around in my driveway and in the process has overturned some of the cinder blocks again. I may have to break down and cement them in place. I am getting tired of fixing that darned thing.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The United States: As I have been warning in this space several times in recent weeks, the covert war in Iraq has now spread to Syria. A Seymore Hersch article in the New Yorker reports that a composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.” Meanwhile, an orderly exit from Iraq depends on the development of a viable Iraqi security force, but the Iraqis aren't even close. Apparently, Smirkey doesn't take the problem seriously—and he never has.
European Commission Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has warned that that any of the 25 bloc nations found to have allowed secret CIA prisons on their national territory could have their EU voting rights suspended. The Council of Europe — the continent's main human rights watchdog — is investigating the allegations, and EU justice official Jonathan Faul last week formally raised the issue with White House and U.S. State Department representatives, Frattini said. "They told him, 'give us the appropriate time to evaluate the situation.' Right now, there is no response," he said. The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation. Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, the EU Justice Commissioner said he would call for tough penalties against any involved state. Frattini said suspending EU voting rights would be justified under the EU treaty, which stipulates that the bloc is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, and that a persistent breach of these principles can be punished. Clandestine detention centers would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Council of Europe's Human rights commissioner has accused the United States of running a Guantanamo-style prison in Kosovo. The official, Alvaro Gil-Robles, revealed in an interview last week that he visited the site in 2002 and was shocked to see a barbed wire-rimmed prison inside a US military base. He told the French newspaper Le Monde the camp resembled 'a smaller version of Guantanamo." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to travel to Europe next week and is expected to try to deflect growing European pressure over the CIA's secret operations.
A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has launched a stinging attack on US Vice-President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US troops. Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an interesting question. Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror," he added. "And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as well." "I look at the relationship between Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld as being one that produced these two failures in particular, and I see that the president is not holding either of them accountable... so I have to lay some blame at his feet too."
The US says it will "investigate" reports that European airports were used to move terror suspects to secret CIA-run jails, Germany's foreign minister says. Frank-Walker Steinmeier said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had assured him during talks in Washington that the claims would be clarified. Mr Steinmeier said Ms Rice understood that the public and politicians in Europe are concerned about the issue. German media says the CIA have been using German airports to move suspects. Last week, the European Union said it would formally ask the US to check reports that it operated secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe.
Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. And now his apparent suicide is raising questions. In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military. Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor. A "suicide note" found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question. "How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?" He was found in his trailer, shot dead with one bullet to the head. The Army has ruled it a suicide. As he had uncovered some corruption on the part of one of the contractors doing work for the U.S. military, not everyone is so sure.
Fighting Islamic terror with state terror: Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant. Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats. "This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there," Fernandez said. The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security. Police Chief John Timoney said there was no specific, credible threat of an imminent terror attack in Miami. But he said the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target. Both uniformed and plainclothes police will ride buses and trains, while others will conduct longer-term surveillance operations. "People are definitely going to notice it," Fernandez said. "We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears."
As debate over government surveillance rages in adult society, the US Department of Justice is quietly enticing school districts to implement controversial technologies that monitor and track students. Critics fear these efforts will normalize electronic surveillance at an early age, conditioning young people to accept privacy violations while creating a market for companies that develop and sell surveillance systems. A few of the nation’s schools are already running pilot programs to monitor students’ movements using radio frequency identification (RFID). The highly controversial programs, implemented in the name of student protection, see pupils wearing tags around their necks and submitting themselves to electronic scanning as they enter and leave school property. Now, a new federal grant could lure more districts into using these or similar technologies.
As a young Reagan administration lawyer, the Supreme Court nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., took an expansive view of government law-enforcement powers in numerous cases in which he was called upon to balance the prerogatives of police and prosecutors with the rights of individuals, according to 400 pages of documents released yesterday by the Justice Department. The documents show that Alito once advised against including a ban on capital punishment for minors, in an agreement by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Such matters should be left for individual states to decide, he said. The draft agreement called for outlawing the death penalty and life sentences without the possibility of parole for those who are younger than 18 when they commit crimes. Alito raised concerns about such a proposal. ''There are states that presently impose the death penalty on such individuals," Alito wrote in January 1987 in a memo to John R. Bolton, who was then an assistant attorney general and who now serves as US ambassador to the United Nations. ''Congress may at some point wish to have such penalties on the federal level," Alito told Bolton. ''We therefore question whether the United States should agree with this provision of the Convention."
Diebold may decide against selling new equipment in North Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state law. Diebold Inc., which makes automated teller machines and security and voting equipment, is worried it could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to make all of its code some of which is owned by third-party software firms, including Microsoft Corp. available for examination by election officials in case of a voting mishap. The requirement is part of the minimum voting equipment standards approved by state lawmakers earlier this year following the loss of more than 4,400 electronic ballots in Carteret County during the November 2004 election. The lost votes threw at least one close statewide race into uncertainty for more than two months.
If they won't join you, beat 'em: at least nine Iraq veterans vying to become the first soldiers of the post-9/11 military to be elected to the House of Representatives, according to party leaders. They say their experience makes them well-suited to help successfully extricate the United States from Iraq and to more effectively fight the war on terrorism, which they fear is being lost in the Muslim world's court of public opinion. Eight of the nine are running as Democrats. At least three are lawyers. Most went to the front lines from the Reserves or the National Guard. Some have been recruited for office by party leaders; others say they are trying to get the national parties to pay attention to them. But they are all running on their wartime experience and against the prevailing political hierarchy in Washington -- both Republican and Democrat. They are expected to inject a pivotal voice into the debate next year, a midterm election season that is likely to focus heavily on security issues such as US involvement in Iraq and homeland defense. ''We will have a very strong voice and instant credibility," said Tim Dunn, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a Democrat who served in Iraq and is now running in North Carolina's Eighth District, a seat held by four-term Republican Robin Hayes. ''We bring to the table the experience and the knowledge gained through our service, whether active duty or Reserve, so that when these decisions are made in the future we have people who can stand up and ask the right questions. People will listen to us."
Bomb 'em back to the stone age: Smirkey's vision for extricating the U.S. from the mess in Iraq is apparently to send in Iraqi troops but with American air cover, with Iraqi commanders picking the targets and calling in the strikes. The plan is causing consternation among commanders in US air force, who say it could lead to increased civilian casualties and lead to airstrikes being used as means of settling old scores. According to an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh, the possibility of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused unease in the military, with air force commanders objecting to the possibility that Iraqis will eventually be responsible for target selection. "Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame it on someone else?" a senior military planner told the magazine. "Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of al-Qaida, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?"
Struggling to keep Venezuela's Hugo Chavez as isolated as possible through whatever means is available, Washington has expressed concern over the signing of an arms deal between Venezuela and Spain. The US State Department said it was assessing whether there was US protected technology in the equipment. Under the $2 billion deal, Spain will supply eight navy patrol boats and 12 military transport planes to Venezuela. The US had tried to block the signing claiming that the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, was a source of instability in the region. But both Venezuela and Spain insisted the equipment was for peaceful purposes.
Struggling US car-parts maker Delphi has delayed plans to cut staff wages, reducing fears of a strike at the firm, the main supplier to General Motors. Delphi, which applied for US bankruptcy protection at the start of last month, had previously said it needed to cut wages and benefits to avoid collapse. Unions at Delphi, who had threatened strike action over the cuts, welcomed the one-month delay. The news came as General Motors agreed to give up agreed price reductions. GM, which owned Delphi until 1999, has agreed to temporarily give up previously agreed price reductions on Delphi parts for 2006.
As a Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito quarreled with the head of the government ethics office over proposed requirements on personal financial disclosures, according to documents released Monday. Alito's 1987 letter was issued around the time the ethics office said that his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, had violated financial disclosure requirements over a $60,000 investment with a businessman who was tied to Wedtech, a Bronx, N.Y., defense contractor that was caught up in a wide-ranging federal investigation.
How nice of the Justice Department, thanks to a FOIA request, to make legal documents related to Judge Alito available, on a very limited basis today. Only reporters were granted access, and for only 180 minutes to peruse 470 pages of information, and my estimation, it would take about 39 seconds to quickly read each page and figure out if the information was newsworthy or worth pursuing further. Not a lot time to carefully examine documents from our next possible Supreme Court justice.
Amid all the arguments over how to rebuild New Orleans, there is one universally held article of faith here: New Orleans must have a flood protection system strong enough to withstand Category 5 storms, the worst that nature can spawn. Building Category 5 protection, however, is proving to be an astronomically expensive and technically complex proposition. It would involve far more than just higher levees: there would have to be extensive changes to the city's system of drainage canals and pumps, environmental restoration on a vast scale to replenish buffering wetlands and barrier islands, and even sea gates far out of town near the Gulf of Mexico. The cost estimates are still fuzzy, but the work would easily cost more than $32 billion, state officials say, and could take decades to complete.
The U.S. cable and satellite television industry is not doing enough to help parents shield children from inappropriate content, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said on Tuesday. He suggested that providers like Comcast Corp.and DirecTV offer "family-friendly" packages of channels, permit consumers to pay for only the channels they want, or apply decency standards to subscription television. "Thus far, there has been too little response" from the industry, Martin told lawmakers during a public forum on television content. "I think the industry needs to do more to address parents' concerns." The FCC chief also said a study the agency issued last year -- showing that consumers would end up paying more if they were allowed to pick and choose the cable channels they subscribed to -- was flawed. He said an a la carte subscription TV service could be economically feasible. Decency standards for subscription television? If we're going to regulate that, why not fairness standards for "news" television?
When The Polls Are Down, Find Another Scapegoat: Smirkey has begun touring US states to rally support for his strategy to control immigration. Smirkey says he wants tighter security along the Mexican frontier, but he also plans to allow migrants with a job offer to stay in the US temporarily. Some of his own supporters resist the so-called guest-worker plan. "The program... would not create an automatic path to citizenship. It wouldn't provide amnesty," Mr Bush told border officials in Tucson, Arizona. "This program would help meet the demand of a growing economy, and it would allow honest workers to provide for their families while respecting the law," he said.
Republican Policies Strengthen America: Within days of announcing 30,000 job-cuts in the US, automobile giant General Motors Corp will this week unveil plans to increase its workforce in India by nearly 30%. The carmaker has decided to add 450 jobs at its existing plant in Halol (Gujarat) as part of plans to expand presence in India - the emerging low-cost automobile hub in the east." GM is going on a hiring spree in India, and it's add jobs both on the factory shop-floor as well in the executive cadre. GM will this week start the process to hire 450 additional people for its India venture," a senior head-hunter told The Times of India.
The price of gold has continued its relentless climb and looks set to pass the $500-an-ounce level this week. The metal's price hit an 18-year high of $498.75 (£290.66) in early trading on Monday. Its rising value is being driven by strong demand for jewelry and moves by some countries to increase their gold reserves in lieu of dollars. The threat of terrorism, uncertainties about the dollar's future and the ensuing economic uncertainty has also added to gold's image as safe investment. Analysts say that the gold price is likely to continue past the $500-an-ounce mark, even if some investors decide to take their profits at that price.
Sales of existing U.S. homes slowed in October and the inventory of unsold houses rose to the highest level in nearly 20 years, a trade group said on Monday in a report confirming the end of the nation's housing boom. Sales of previously owned homes fell 2.7 percent from September's upwardly revised 7.29 million unit annual pace, and the drop would have been even larger if not for a surge in home-buying linked to Hurricane Katrina, the National Association of Realtors said. "The housing sector has likely passed its peak ... and the boom is winding down to an expansion," NAR chief economist David Lereah said. "Many of our hot housing markets are transitioning from a sellers' market to a buyers' market." The sales slowdown was sharper than anticipated by Wall Street. Analysts had expected overall sales to slow to a 7.17 million unit pace from the originally reported 7.28 million unit pace in September. "The number just confirms the slowing growth trend that has been unfolding in the housing market, although the numbers are still at historically strong levels," said Ronald Simpson, managing director of global currency analysis at Action Economics. Existing home sales would have been down 3.2 percent had it not been for strong buying in areas outside the zone hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. For example, while sales in New Orleans fell 42 percent, sales in nearby Baton Rouge climbed 83 percent from September, the Realtors said.
Embattled drugmaker Merck & Co. said Monday it will cut 7,000 jobs — 11 percent of its work force — and close or sell five manufacturing plants in the first phase of a reorganization meant to save up to $4 billion by the end of the decade. Its shares dropped more than 4 percent in afternoon trading. The announcement, anticipated by Wall Street, comes as Merck faces the loss of patent protection in June for its blockbuster cholesterol drug Zocor and thousands of lawsuits and billions of dollars in potential liability from its recalled painkiller Zocor now generates about 20 percent of Merck revenues and is the world's second-biggest drug. Because of the coming competition from generic drug makers, Merck expects Zocor sales to drop to $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion in 2006 from $4.2 billion to $4.5 billion this year.
Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a doctor's waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks. Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infections. Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements like dinners, golf outings and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands. But now that federal crackdowns and the industry's self-policing have curtailed those gifts, simple one-on-one human rapport, with all its potentially uncomfortable consequences, has become more important. Hence the use of cheerleaders.
First O'Donnell, now Chris Matthews: "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs" On the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews said: "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left," adding, "I mean, like him personally." In fact, polling data reveals that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of President Bush, and his overall approval ratings hover from the high 30-percent range to the low 40s. Keep your personality-cult to yourself, Chris. Personally, I find Smirkey to be arrogant, uncaring, close-minded and extremely hubristic. And I don't much like that. I certainly don't admire it. Because I don't buy into the personality cult, does that make me a "whack-job"?
Plenty Of Money For Tax Cuts For The Rich, But No Money For Government: The nation's top aviation official called Monday for federal mediators to intervene in troubled talks between the government and air traffic controllers. The relationship between the Federal Aviation Administration and the union is at its lowest point in many years. Contract talks began in July but have made little progress, prompting FAA Administrator Marion Blakey to call for mediators. Blakey said that salary and scheduling are the major issues. She charged the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is out of touch with the tight finances of the FAA and the airline industry. Controllers say they are overworked because the FAA froze hiring after many controllers left. They claim safety could be compromised, although FAA officials dispute that. Mediators could be brought in if the union agrees to them. Blakey said if the union does not want mediators, FAA negotiators will stay at the table. The last contract expired in 2003 but it was extended for two years with minor changes.
News From The Wreckage Of The U.S.S. Bush: Even as his poll numbers tank, Smirkey is described by aides as still determined to stay the course. He resists advice from Republicans who fear disaster in next year's congressional elections, and rejects criticism from a media establishment he disdains. "The President has always been willing to make changes," the senior aide said, "but not because someone in this town tells him to - NEVER!" For the moment, Bush has dismissed discreetly offered advice from friends and loyalists to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and bring back longtime confidant Karen Hughes from the State Department to shore up his personal White House staff. "He thinks that would be an admission he's screwed up, and he can't bring himself to do that," a former senior staffer lamented. So aides have circled the wagons as Bush's woes mount, partly hoping they can sell the President on a December blitz of media interviews to help turn the tide. Well, they better be careful about what they hope for - Smirkey's emotional instability and his inability to speak extemporaneously may just backfire, showing him to be the mediocre intellect he is.
A British member of parliament and newspaper publisher, Boris Johnson, has offered to print the censored Al Jazeera memos in his newspaper, if the source will simply pass him a copy. On his web site, he writes, "The Attorney General's ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act ... we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up. If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. .. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for." Mr. Johnson, you needn't to run afoul of the Official Secrets Act. I am quite willing to publish them here on my web site. I am neither British nor in the United States or Britain, and can do so without violating any law. How about it?
News From The Talibaptist Jihad: The phrase "God Bless America" would be added to Alabama's already crowded license plates if a bill proposed by a state legislator becomes law. State Rep. Steve Hurst, D-Munford, has prefiled a bill in the Alabama House that would require most Alabama car tags to include the phrase "God Bless America." Some specialty license plates and motorcycle tags would be exempt. Hurst said he got the idea when the saw the words "God Bless America" on a specialty prisoner of war car tag. Hurst said he believes the plates could be designed so that there would be room for "God Bless America" without removing "Heart of Dixie" or "Stars Fell on Alabama." There have been efforts in recent years by some black lawmakers to remove "Heart of Dixie" from car tags because they view it as a reference to the segregated South. Rep. Jimmy Martin, D-Clanton, said he plans to reintroduce a bill that would permit the posting of "In God We Trust" on classroom walls in Alabama public schools. Martin said he hasn't seen Hurst's bill, but likes the idea. "The concept of 'God Bless America' sounds like a good idea," Martin said. The bill to post "In God We Trust" on classroom walls has been introduced the last two years, but hasn't received final passage. "I thought why don't we do the same thing for all the tags in the state of Alabama. That will let all the people in America know that we are a Bible Belt state," Hurst said. Well, Mr. Hurst, you're also in a state with one of the poorest public education systems in America, lowest per-capita income and a state synonymous with racism. Could there be a connection?
Fundamentalism is hampering global efforts to tackle climate change, according to Britain's top scientist. In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford is to warn that core scientific values are "under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East". Scientists must speak out against the climate change "denial lobby", he says. Lord May completes his five-year term as president of the UK's academy of science on Wednesday. "Ahead of us lie dangerous times," he will say in his fifth and final anniversary address.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Two new studies predict that climate change will make dry regions of Africa drier still in the near future. Computer models of the global climate show the Sahel region and southern Africa drying substantially over the course of this century. Sahel rainfall declined sharply in the late 20th Century, with droughts responsible for several million deaths. The research comes just after the latest United Nations summit on climate change opened in Montreal. "Our model predicts an extremely dry Sahel in the future," said Dr Isaac Held of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), whose team publishes its research in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "If we compare it against the drought in the 1970s and 80s, the late 21st Century looks even drier - a 30% reduction in rainfall from the average for the last century," he told the BBC News website.
Scandals Du Jour: New evidence is emerging that the top Democrat on the Senate committee currently investigating Jack Abramoff got political money arranged by the lobbyist back in 2002 shortly after the lawmaker took action favorable to Abramoff's tribal clients. A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians told The Associated Press that Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record)'s political group just three weeks after the North Dakota Democrat urged fellow senators to fund a tribal school program Abramoff's clients wanted to use. The check was one of about five dozen the Coushattas listed in a tribal ledger as being issued on March 6, 2002, to various lawmakers' campaigns and political causes at the instruction of Abramoff, tribal attorney Jimmy Faircloth said Monday.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence to a second grand jury this week in his two year-old investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson that could lead to a criminal indictment being handed up against Karl Rove, President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, attorneys close to the investigation say. Rove has remained under intense scrutiny because of inconsistencies in his testimony to investigators and the grand jury. According to sources, Rove withheld crucial facts on three separate occasions and allegedly misled investigators about conversations he had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. The attorneys say that Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston -- who was also a special assistant to President Bush -- testified in August about why Cooper’s call to Rove was not logged. Ralston said it occurred because Cooper had phoned in through the White House switchboard and was then transferred to Rove’s office as opposed to calling Rove’s office directly. As Rove’s assistant, Ralston screened Rove’s calls.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today dismissed allegations of Iraqi security force abuses as "unverified comments" and not a sign that the US-trained force is unprepared to take over security. Mr. Rumsfeld's comments follow reports of kidnappings and execution-style killings of Sunnis, allegedly by men in Iraqi police uniforms and vehicles. The New York Times said mounting evidence suggests that Iraqi security forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods, and Sunnis are convinced the Shiite-led Government is waging a campaign of terror against them.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, fought back tears as he resigned on Monday after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for help in securing Defense Department contracts. Cunningham, 63, an eight-term congressman and decorated Vietnam War pilot, admitted taking cash, antiques, a yacht, vacation expenses and money for his daughter's graduation party from several defense contractors between 2000 and 2005. "I am resigning from the House of Representatives because I've compromised the trust of my constituents," Cunningham told reporters after a hearing in San Diego federal court. Among other things, prosecutors said, Cunningham was given $1.025 million to pay down the mortgage on his Rancho Santa Fe mansion, $13,500 to buy a Rolls-Royce and $2,081 for his daughter's graduation party at a Washington hotel. ''He did the worst thing an elected official can do - he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there,'' U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said.
To tax or not to tax, that is the question. A proposal to impose a special tax on sexually oriented businesses is creating a dilemma for some legislators. They're socially conservative and would like to combat pornography and discourage the opening of new shops that sell X-rated videos and magazines and other products, such as sex toys. But some also have signed a pledge not to raise taxes. That has a few talking about tying the proposed porn tax to proposals to cut taxes elsewhere. Among them is Sen. Kay O'Connor, R-Olathe, who told the Lawrence Journal-World she would like to support a tax on sexually oriented businesses because, "We shouldn't make life too terribly easy for them." But, she added, "A pure tax increase, I would have to vote no." Earlier this month, a legislative committee agreed to draft legislation modeled on proposals in Oklahoma and Utah to impose a 10 percent tax on products and services sold by sexually oriented businesses. Backers argue the tax could raise $1.5 million a year.
Tour Of My Neighbor's New House
Weather has been sensational the last two days. If the Arenal rainy season is still on, you'd be hard-pressed to tell it. The weather has been bright and sunny all day long, with occasional light, puffy clouds the only interruption to the brilliant sunshine. Yesterday, the temperature reached 78 degrees, and after an overnight low of 66, it reached 80 in today's bright sunshine. I have had to turn the fan on in my office to keep cool. The cold temperatures for this weekend predicted by the Meteorological Institute simply didn't materialize, and it was another couple of brilliantly perfect days in paradise. Eat your heart out up there in the Great White North.
Well, it was such a perfect day, and feeling better today than I have in a while, I decided that I couldn't resist going for a nice, long, if somewhat slow walk around the peninsula. I walked up the road going to the point on the peninsula to check out the lake view and see if the volcano was visible today. There was some visibility of the west flank, where there were some smoking boulder trails, evidence that the volcano is continuing its recent activity. But I could not see the summit today, as there were lots of low clouds present in that direction. Continuing up the road, I discovered that a house is just being started on a hilltop about a half mile from my house. It appears to be a small house, so I suspect it is a Tico that is building it. It is also on a really tiny lot - close to the minimum. There is a stack of blocks, some piles of sand and the foundations have been laid out, but so far there has not even been much digging for the footings.
Walking up the road towards the cemetery, I walked up past my neighbor's new home, hoping he would be home and I could check out the place. So I was eager for a tour to check it out. Turned out he was there, and invited me in for a quick tour.
All the doors and windows are in, about half of the interior walls are painted, and the tile is down in the bathroom and much of the floors. He's done a very tasteful job on the inside, with gorgeous tilework on the floors - they're a light tan, subtly patterend tile, a tile I like very much, and his bathroom tiles are a pastel blue patterned tile. Walls are a color similar to the floors and complement the natural wood ceilings quite nicely. All in all, it is a beautiful house. He is still planning on selling it, and we discussed his asking price. I think he's right in the ballpark for a new house, and I am glad to see him getting well over twice what he has in it. He says it grieves him to have to sell, as he really likes the place, but I think he is doing the right thing - the house will probably never be worth more than it is right now, and with the profit, he can buy another lot and build another, much larger house. All in all it is a very salable house, and should not be on the market for long.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: The U.S. military will soon be able to spy on you at will unrestrained by the niceties of the Bill of Rights or the Posse Comitatus Act: The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world. The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counter-Intelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts - including protecting military facilities from attack - to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage. The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public. "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the data-sharing amendment would still give the Pentagon much greater access to the FBI's massive collection of data, including information on citizens not connected to terrorism or espionage. The measure, she said, "removes one of the few existing privacy protections against the creation of secret dossiers on Americans by government intelligence agencies." She said the Pentagon's "intelligence agencies are quietly expanding their domestic presence without any public debate."
Smirkey's growing truly desperate to show some progress in the war - he has asked US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad to reach out to Iran for assistance in subduing the unrest in Iraq - the first high-level US contact with Tehran in decades, Newsweek magazine has reported. “I’ve been authorized by the president to engage the Iranians,” Khalilzad told Newsweek. “There will be meetings, and that’s also a departure and an adjustment,” he said in an interview with the magazine. ABC television confirmed the proposed US approach to Iran on its This Week program yesterday, reporting that Khalilzad was to make direct contact with the Iranian government about the ongoing insurgency in Iraq. The contact would be the first high-level communication at the senior level between Washington and Tehran since relations ruptured in 1979. Of course, asking Shi'ite Iran for help is going to only antagonize the Sunnis who are at the heart of the insurgency.
Billions for pork, but no money for government: Taxing hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars and billing drivers for miles driven are among the approaches being suggested to avert a shortfall in money to maintain the nation's highways. Less than four months after President Bush signed a six-year, $286.4 billion highway and public transit act, filled mostly with more than 6,000 pork projects for local constituencies, a report commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce said that the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money and that Congress needs to think about new revenue sources. ''Decisions are going to have to be made in the very near future," said Ed Mortimer, the business lobby's director of transportation infrastructure, acknowledging it could be a tall order. The next highway bill is years away and lawmakers may be loathe to return to a measure that was widely criticized for being padded with thousands of special-interest projects.
Faced with growing numbers of retirees, pension plans are pouring billions into hedge funds, the secretive and lightly regulated investment partnerships that once managed money only for wealthy investors. The plans and other large institutions are expected to invest as much as $300 billion in hedge funds by 2008, up from just $5 billion a decade ago, according to a study by the Bank of New York and Casey, Quirk & Associates, a consulting firm. Pension funds account for roughly 40 percent of all institutional money. This month, the investment council that oversees the New Jersey state employees pension fund said it would put some of its money into hedge funds for the first time, investing $600 million over the next several months. "It's very inappropriate when the company is offering a pension plan that is guaranteed by the federal government," said Zvi Bodie, a professor of finance and economics at Boston University who writes and lectures on sophisticated investment techniques and is enthusiastic about hedge funds in other contexts. Hedge funds are meant to be only for wealthy, sophisticated investors so regulators have not monitored them as they have stocks or mutual funds, although there have been calls for increased regulation. More recently, hedge funds have made headlines when they ran into trouble: Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose principals included two Nobel Prize-winning economists, nearly collapsed in 1998; and this summer, Bayou Group, a $450 million hedge fund based in Connecticut, shut down after most of its money disappeared. Its two officers have pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
A senior al-Jazeera executive is in the UK to demand publication of a memo in which George Bush allegedly discusses bombing the TV station's HQ. Wadah Khanfar, al-Jazeera's director general, is hoping to meet UK government officials to press its case. A spokesman for al-Jazeera told the BBC News website that the channel only wanted the record set straight. Downing Street said: "We are quite happy to talk to al-Jazeera as we are to other broadcasters." The Italian La Stampa newspaper has reported that Mr Khanfar had "demanded an urgent meeting" with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mr Khanfar told La Stampa: "We want to know whether Bush really did want to attack al-Jazeera last year and was dissuaded from doing so by the British prime minister, as the British press has claimed. "We will be silent only when we get the truth."
The widow of an al-Jazeera journalist killed in Iraq by an American attack is considering suing the US Government. Kuwaiti-born Tariq Ayyoub, 35, died when the station's Baghdad office was bombed in April 2003. Now his wife Dima may take legal action. On Tuesday the Daily Mirror reported that George Bush planned to attack al-Jazeera's HQ in Doha, capital of Qatar. Dina said: "The report proves the cold-blooded murder of my husband. America always claimed it was an accident. But I believe the new revelations prove that claim was false or at least not trustworthy. I will seek legal advice in light of this new information to achieve justice." The UK Government has banned the media from publishing details of documents telling how the President wanted to bomb the Doha station in April 2004 until Tony Blair talked him out of it.
Smirkey's temper tantrum about Al Jazeera has prompted Tony Blair to claim that the memo describing it is all just a "conspiracy theory." Well, if it's just a conspiracy theory, Tony, why are you so nervously invoking the Official Secrets Act to keep the newspapers from talking about it? There are also plenty of other newspapers, inside and outside of Britain, who have said they are willing to publish the memo which is the source of this controversy, in spite of the Official Secrets Act. These are among the comments appearing in a new blog being written by the threatened staffers at Al Jazeera.
The Council of Europe pledged Friday to unearth the truth behind allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency operated covert prisons in Europe and secretly transported terrorist suspects through European airports. A report presented in Bucharest by the chairman of the council's Legal Affairs Committee, Swiss liberal Dick Marty, suggested that satellite images could be used to determine whether the CIA had constructed or dismantled prison facilities. Europe's top human rights watchdog stepped up its probe into alleged secret CIA detention centers Wednesday, while more EU governments were investigating possible CIA flights across their countries. Council of Europe Chairman Terry Davis urged European countries to provide full information on the issue, joining a formal probe the body launched two weeks ago. Austria's air force was investigating allegations that a CIA transport plane containing suspected terrorist captives flew through the neutral country's airspace in 2003, and Denmark said it would ask U.S. authorities for details about the alleged transport of detainees on planes said to be used by the CIA over Danish territory. Bulgaria was the latest country to deny reports of involvement, saying the CIA's planes never landed at the Sarafovo airport near the Black Sea port of Burgas as alleged by the media.
Germany called on Washington Saturday to set the record straight on allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency made secret flights across Europe so as to transport terrorist suspects for torture-based interrogation. An evaluation must be made on the basis of facts and not from newspaper reports, Germany's new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on the eve of a visit to Washington. "What is to be read, would indeed give cause for concern," Steinmeir told the weekly Bild am Sonntag, following an almost daily round of German media report on claims that secret CIA flights had touched down in Germany. Steinmeier went on to welcome British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's call for the U.S. officially to clear up questions surrounding the claims of secret flights. Britain currently holds the European Union's sixth month rotating presidency. The row over the flights is threatening to overshadow Steinmeier's trip to Washington, which was aimed at setting the scene for a visit to the U.S. by new German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the coming months.
Does not play well with others: Britain has rejected a proposal by John "two-tone" Bolton, America's combative ambassador to the United Nations, to block the upcoming UN budget as a tactic to push through disputed reforms. The rare public disagreement between the two close allies comes as the showdown over reforms at the UN's New York headquarters becomes increasingly acrimonious. Britain has rebuffed a Bolton move to join him in refusing to pass the organization's 2006 budget until member states approve wide-ranging management reforms. To the irritation of Mr Bolton, many developing nations are bitterly opposed to changes that they claim are driven by American political pressure. He suggested last week that talks on the 2006 and 2007 budgets could be postponed as a means to overcome the trenchant resistance from the "G77" bloc of developing countries.
Three months ago, Katrina all but scoured the beach town of Pass Christian, Mississippi, a town of 8,000, off the face of the Earth. To walk its streets today is to see acres of wreckage almost as untouched as the day the hurricane passed. No new houses are framed out. No lots cleared. There is just devastation and a lingering stench and a tent city in which hundreds of residents huddle against the first chill of winter and wonder where they'll find the money to rebuild their lives. Billy McDonald, the white-haired mayor whose house was reduced to a concrete slab by 55-foot-high waves, works out of a trailer. He doesn't expect the word "recovery" to roll off his lips for many months. This is the other land laid low by Katrina's fury. Like New Orleans to the west, hundreds of square miles of Mississippi coastland look little better than they did in early September, and many people here harbor anger that the federal government has fallen short and that the nation's attention has turned away. At least 200,000 Mississippians remain displaced, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is short at least 13,000 trailers to house them.
Judge Samuel Alito has said he did not break a federal ethics law when he ruled in a case involving the company that handles his mutual fund investments. Legal experts are divided over whether Alito did anything wrong in the case three years ago. Of more immediate concern is his explanation of his role in that case - along with questions about what his recusal practices will be if confirmed to the high court. Judges, including Supreme Court justices, are required by law to stay out of cases in which they have a financial stake. Members of the high court, however, decide for themselves when to recuse with no oversight. Alito serves on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia and has most of his money in mutual funds. When he joined the court in 1990 he told senators he would avoid cases in which Vanguard Group was a party. Senators questioned him about the 2002 Vanguard case, which was the subject of a conflict of interest complaint filed by the woman who lost her lawsuit. Alito withdrew after first ruling against her and the decision was reaffirmed without his participation.
The crash risk for truck drivers in the last hour of a now-legal 11-hour day behind the wheel is more than three times higher than during the first hour, a Penn State research team has found. For 60 years, federal rules limited truckers to driving 10 consecutive hours. However, in January 2004, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration raised the limit to 11 hours and reaffirmed the change in October this year. Dr. Paul Jovanis, professor of civil engineering who led the Penn State study, says, "Our analysis of data from three national trucking companies during normal operations in 2004 shows that the crash risk is statistically similar for the first six hours of driving and then increases in significant steps thereafter. The 11th hour has a crash risk more than three times the first hour." Jovanis notes, "Our findings, using data from 2004 and from the 1980s, establish a consistent pattern of increased crash risk with hours driving, particularly in the 9th, 10th and 11th hours." In their most recent study, the researchers also found that multi-day driving schedules, over 7 days, were associated with significant crash risk increases similar in magnitude to extended driving time. In addition, separate analyses of the records of drivers who operate trucks that have sleeping compartments with those that don't have sleeping compartments show that there is a strong association of crash risk and driving time for sleeper operations, especially in the 8th, 10th and 11th hours. Non-sleeper operations associate crash risk with multi-day driving somewhat more strongly than with driving time.
NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade yesterday to bring viewers the news that an M&M balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters. In fact, when the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade - even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene. At 11:47 a.m., as an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-old sister were being treated for injuries, the parade's on-air announcers - Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker - kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square, where the parade ends. "Will these classic candymen get out of this delicious dilemma?" Mr. Roker asked, referring not to the accident but to the premise of the attraction, a red M&M's attempt to save his yellow counterpart, who had been blown from the basket of a hot-air balloon. Ten minutes later, the upbeat broadcast ended without mention of the accident in Times Square.
Spanish Defence Minister Jose Bono is travelling to Venezuela to oversee the signing of an arms contract that is opposed by the US. Madrid has agreed to sell military patrol boats and transport planes to Caracas in deal worth more than $1.5bn. The two countries insist the equipment is for peaceful purposes, such as to help in the fight against drug gangs. But the US regards Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a destabilising influence in the region. US ambassador Eduardo Aguirre had asked the Spanish authorities not to go ahead with the sale. He said Washington was considering whether to allow Spain to sell aircraft made with US technology, which would require a US export license. Spain's Deputy Prime Minister, Teresa Fernandez de La Vega, confirmed Mr Bono's visit to Caracas. But she insisted the deal had been negotiated with "scrupulous respect for international law".
Brownie's back: The man who lost his job as head of the US response to Hurricane Katrina has started up a new firm - dealing with disaster readiness. Michael "I'm A Fashion God" Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was forced to quit as anger at the crisis response grew. He said he hopes his new consultancy will help others avoid a similar fate. About 1,200 people were killed when New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were flooded following Hurricane Katrina in August. Tens of thousands of families were forced out of their homes, and many have still not returned. Mr Brown said his experience could be used to demonstrate how firms and agencies can better prepare themselves for unseen problems, and how to react when they arise. Well, he's demonstrably an expert on how to do emergency response, all right - he should have no trouble finding clients, ya think?
Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently appeared on nationally syndicated radio and again reiterated his deep concern that foreign troops are mobilizing outside and inside America to be used as assets in a martial law takeover by the Bush administration. "It's a horrible precedent and it's all part of the NAFTA scheme and globalization and world government," Paul told the Alex Jones Show. "Obviously they shouldn't be permitted. What I'd like to see is that we don't have our troops in foreign countries and if we needed a national guard that they were back here at home, that's the bigger problem. Then if there were foreign troops on our soil maybe our state officials could deal with that with their own national guard."
Engineers responsible for monitoring the levees that failed following Hurricane Katrina were never told that canal water had been pooling in yards beside a flood wall months before the storm, an Army Corps of Engineers manager said Friday. Residents living along the 17th Street Canal told The Times-Picayune newspaper in an article published Friday that they had complained to the city Sewerage and Water Board nearly a year ago about water pooling in their yards. City workers came out and concluded environmental testing was needed to determine if water was seeping through the levee, said Beth LeBlanc, whose home is about 100 yards from where the levee later failed. But no one, including the Sewerage and Water Board, informed the Corps of Engineers or the Orleans Levee District, said Jerry Colletti, the Corps' operations manager for completed works in the New Orleans District.
A federal conservation official has raised serious doubts about the recently approved plan to scrape hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of hazardous chemicals from the bottom of the Hudson River, and raised the possibility that the long-delayed cleanup may never be completed. The official, a coastal resources expert in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a confidential memo that General Electric intends to leave substantial amounts of contaminants in the river, capping them with additional material rather than removing them. But the cap could be washed away in a storm, releasing the remaining PCB's beneath, the memo said. The official also said G.E.'s plan - one of the largest industrial cleanups ever attempted - would not do enough to rebuild the natural habitat destroyed by the cleanup, but would leave nature to take its course, an approach that would reduce the chances that the river bottom would ever recover.
Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave: The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida, it was claimed yesterday. Mr Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant" in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad. After his arrest in 2002 the Brooklyn-born Muslim convert was also accused by the administration of planning to blow up apartment blocks in New York using natural gas. The administration had used his case as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaida inside America. But to convict him, the prosecution would have to depend on testimony, apparently coerced, from two al-Qaida members that the CIA is believed to be holding in its secret prison archipelago overseas. Officials feared that that testimony at trial could expose classified information about the CIA prison system in which the men were thought to be held.
This has not been a happy Thanksgiving for Smirkey, but he need just look across the Atlantic to know it could be worse. His only reliable ally, Britain's Tony Blair, now seems to be facing the full-scale parliamentary inquiry into the Iraq war - its justification, conduct and aftermath - that Bush has been able to avoid. Leading opposition figures from the Conservative, Liberal-Democratic, Scottish National and Plaid Cymru (Welsh) parties have banded together to back the cross-party motion titled 'Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq' to demand that the case for an inquiry be debated in the House of Commons. They seem assured of the 200 signatures required to get such a debate - and then the loyalty of Blair's dismayed and disillusioned Labor members of Parliament will be sorely tested. "This apparently modest motion may be the iceberg toward which Blair's Titanic is sailing," said Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
Not only did the Bush administration deceive the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, it is now deceiving them about the deceptions. In a burst of political tantrums, the president and the vice president have shouted that it was "irresponsible" to assert that there had been deception and it was unfair to the troops fighting in Iraq. Is the administration lying about its lies? Consider some of the evidence. Vice President Dick Cheney and the president both insisted that Iraq was trying to import "yellowcake" uranium for nuclear weapons. Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and the vice president warned of "mushroom clouds." Bush says that everyone agreed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He has said in the past that it was not his fault that all the intelligence agencies of the world believed that they did. Therefore, the intelligence agencies of the world were to blame for the mistake, he wasn't. Everyone in Washington, he argues, supported the war. The buck stops in the Oval Office. If the president was not deliberately lying to the American people, he nonetheless presided over what was in effect and in truth a massive deception. He would be much wiser to admit his mistake and assume responsibility, but it is apparently not in his character to do so.
Dueling rallies draw small crowds, but anti-war protesters still outnumbered pro-war by 20 to 1 even in Crawford, Texas: A repeat of last summer's dueling rallies against the war and in support of Smirkey drew much small crowds to Crawford on a cool, rainy Saturday. About a dozen Bush supporters stood downtown with signs, one reading: "Real America won't wimp out." Throughout the morning, shoppers and a few tourists leaving souvenir stores stopped in the tent to voice their support for the president. Closer to Smirkey's ranch, where the president celebrated Thanksgiving with his family, about 200 people rallied around Cindy Sheehan in a continuation of California woman's summer protest against the war that claimed her son.
The White House for the first time has claimed ownership of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own. It also signaled its acceptance of a recent US Senate amendment designed to pave the way for a phased US military withdrawal from the violence-torn country. The statement late Saturday by White House media whore Scott McClellan came in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said US forces will begin leaving Iraq next year "in large numbers." According to Biden, the United States will move about 50,000 servicemen out of the country by the end of 2006, and "a significant number" of the remaining 100,000 the year after. The blueprint also calls for leaving only an unspecified "small force" either in Iraq or across the border to strike at concentrations of insurgents, if necessary. Less than two weeks ago, McClellan blasted Democratic Representative John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), saying that by calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the congressman was "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore."
The United States of America, A Third-World Country: Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat. Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city. "It's becoming an epidemic," said Jeffrey Eisenberg, the owner of Pest Away Exterminating, an Upper West Side business that receives about 125 bedbug calls a week, compared with just a handful five years ago. "People are being tortured, and so am I. I spend half my day talking to hysterical people about bedbugs." Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. "It's definitely a fast-emerging problem," said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.
Washington D.C. district officials routinely violate city spending laws, avoiding competitive bidding, masking purchases under unrelated contracts and paying vendors without contracts or legal authority, according to D.C. records. Out of $2.5 billion in purchases last year, the city spent roughly $425 million in unauthorized payments and no-bid contracts, according to a Washington Post review of thousands of documents, including the database that lists every dollar spent by the city over the past five years. Studies of no-competition contracts elsewhere indicate that the city is overpaying by $50 million a year. In one case, the city has given a start-up computer consulting company 146 no-bid contracts worth a total of $13 million since 2003. The company has grown to 54 employees and has new offices in Northwest Washington. The examination found problems that go far beyond sloppy paperwork as employees skirt the laws designed to prevent waste and fraud. In making purchases from riot gear to consulting services, for example, employees repeatedly send lucrative contracts to favored companies and pay huge cost overruns without getting permission for the spending.
Trickle-Down Economics Trickling On You: You can't sell something to someone who has no money: The official holiday shopping season appears to have gotten off to a lukewarm start, according to results announced Saturday by a national research group that monitors retail sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was one bright spot in the crowd, reporting its sales exceeded expectations. According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks total sales at more than 45,000 retail outlets, the overall sales on Friday were relatively unchanged compared to a year ago, despite heavier discounting and expanded hours that drew a surge of shoppers to stores in the early morning hours. The Chicago-based research group reported total sales Friday at $8 billion, down 0.9 percent from a year ago. As the nation's retail executives began poring over - and in some cases, despairing over - sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern was hard to miss: consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $487 laptops and 5 a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past smaller stores at the mall.
US initial jobless claims rose by 30,000 in the week ending November 19 from the prior week, according to figures released by the Labor Department. The figures were higher than expected and were partly due to claims following job losses caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The advances were the highest in two months and come after last week's figures which showed a four-month low in first time claims. Veteran's Day was cited as the reason for that low, with fired workers unable to file their claims in states such as California. Claims are expected to be up again later this month following this week's announcement that 30,000 jobs are to go at General Motors, the US car manufacturer. The group made the cuts amid fears that the company was about to go bankrupt.
Former General Motors parts unit Delphi, which is in bankruptcy protection, has said that it will close all its US plants unless trade unions agree to wage cuts to rescue America's largest auto parts-maker. Delphi CEO Steve Miller, who received a signing-on hello bonus of $3.7 million last summer, said that he hasn't received union counteroffers to his proposal, which includes reducing wage levels from an average $27 per hour to as low as $9 and slashing up to 24,000 jobs over a three-year period. Motor union UAW President Ron Gettelfinger called Delphi's offer an "insult."
News From The Talibaptist Jihad: For more than 30 years, public television station KOCE has dedicated coverage to Orange County in a media market otherwise dominated by the news and glitz of nearby Los Angeles. But the small station is now battling in court to prevent Daystar, one of the nation's largest Christian networks, from taking over its airwaves. The conflict began in 2003, when the Coast Community College District decided to sell KOCE-TV to the KOCE Foundation, the station's fundraising arm, over competing bidder Daystar. Daystar Television Network sued, claiming its bid should have been selected because the sale was completed under a state law that allows college districts to sell surplus property "for cash" to the highest bidder. A lower court ruled in favor of the college district and the foundation, but that ruling was overturned on appeal. On Tuesday, a state appeals panel reheard arguments in the case - a highly unusual move - following a petition from KOCE, the foundation and the district.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: The receeding ice in the Arctic has created a klondike of a gold rush: The 14 million sq km Arctic Ocean is home to 25 per cent of the planet's unextracted oil and natural gas. With a population of four million, the region is much more stable than the Middle East. Global warming, in combination with the current high oil price, makes it ever more accessible. Yet the bordering countries - Russia, Canada, the US, Norway and Danish Greenland - have yet to agree on who owns what. Long-forgotten bays, waterways and islands are moving to the top of the international agenda. Meanwhile, evidence suggests the Klondikers are right to head north. According to data published last month, the area covered by ice in September - 5.3 million sq km - was the lowest since records began in 1978. In August the Akademik Fyodorov became the first ship to reach the North Pole unassisted by an icebreaker. Norway and Russia are soon to resume talks - stalled for two years - over a disputed area of the Barents Sea. While an agreement exists between them allowing fishing in part of the area, known as the Grey Zone, both countries want access to the larger disputed area for oil and gas exploration. Immediately to the east of the area, the Russians have discovered the 1,400sq km Shtokman field, the largest offshore gas deposit in the world.
News From Smirkey's War: Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday. "People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told British newspaper The Observer. "People are remembering the days of Saddam," said Allawi, a secular Shi'ite and former Baathist who is standing in elections scheduled for Dec. 15. "These are the precise reasons why we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things. "We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi in an apparent reference to the discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured. "A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations." Allawi said the Interior Ministry, which has tried to brush off the scandal over the bunker, was afflicted by a "disease". If it is not cured, he said, it "will become contagious and spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government".
A "trophy" video appearing to show British security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal. The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. The video, which first appeared on a website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on "route Irish", a road that links the airport to Baghdad.
Four U.S. soldiers face disciplinary action for burning the bodies of two Taliban rebels - a videotaped incident that sparked outrage in Afghanistan - but they will not be prosecuted because their actions were motivated by hygienic concerns, the military said Saturday. TV footage recorded Oct. 1 in a violent part of southern Afghanistan showed American soldiers setting fire to the bodies and then boasting about the act on loudspeakers to taunt insurgents suspected to be hiding in a nearby village. Islam bans cremation, and the video images were compared to photographs of U.S. troops abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Afghanistan's government condemned the desecration. Muslim clerics warned of a violent anti-American backlash, though there have been no protests so far.
Scandals Du Jour: The New York authorities investigating financial irregularities at insurance giant AIG have dropped criminal charges against former boss Maurice Greenberg. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had brought a lawsuit accusing Mr Greenberg of manipulating the firm's finances to boost its share price. He has now decided to pursue the action in a civil case. Mr Greenberg led AIG for 38 years, but stood down in March following investigations into some of its deals. He has previously refused to answer questions from regulators, invoking rights under US law which protect people from self-incrimination. In May, AIG admitted that it had overstated its net profit for the five years to 2004 by 10%, or $3.9bn.
The Justice Department's wide-ranging investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has entered a highly active phase as prosecutors are beginning to move on evidence pointing to possible corruption in Congress and executive branch agencies, lawyers involved in the case said. Prosecutors have already told one lawmaker, Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), and his former chief of staff that they are preparing a possible bribery case against them, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It has been three years since White House officials and some Senate Republicans orchestrated Trent Lott's ouster as Senate majority leader amid an uproar over racially insensitive remarks. Now, as he contemplates his future, Mr. Lott is tweaking the Republican elite at every turn and jangling the nerves of official Washington as never before. As he considers whether to run for re-election next year, Mr. Lott, Republican of Mississippi, is also dropping hints about a possible bid for a return to the Senate leadership. Democrats are enjoying the show. Some Republicans are cringing, but others are eyeing Mr. Lott with some appreciation. During an appearance last weekend at the University of Mississippi, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, predicted that Mr. Lott would become Republican leader again, adding, "I will tell anyone that of all the majority leaders we've had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader we've had." Others say Mr. Lott seems liberated. "He's a free agent," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. "A happy warrior," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, adding, "I think he kind of relishes being a bomb thrower right now."
News Of The Weird: A deadly kiss: a Quebec teenager with a peanut allergy has died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier. Fifteen-year-old Christina Desforges died Monday. She went into anaphylactic shock and in spite of being given an adrenalin shot, could not be revived. Desforges lived 250 km north of Quebec City in Saguenay. The official cause of the teen's death has not yet been released. Pediatric allergist Karen Sigman told CTV's Tania Krywiak if peanuts are still on the tongue or the lips, they can still cause a reaction. Sigman says teenagers with allergies have to let their friends know. "If they're going to be dating somebody that they have to tell the people they're close to that they're allergic to make sure the people they're with aren't in contact with those nuts or peanuts," Sigman said.
The rainy season was back today, with clouds, drizzle and slightly cooler temperatures today after a largely sunny and dry day yesterday. The dry, sunny weather meant we had temperatures as high as 78 yesterday, but the heavy overcast all day meant it barely climbed to 71 today after a low overnight of 68. I suspect it will be considerably cooler tonight - as I write this, it is already down to 69 and dropping after the sun has gone down and darkness has set in. The Meteorological Institute is predicting colder temperatures this weekend - even colder than we have had during the week.
Yesterday was thanksgiving, of course, at least in the States. It is an ordinary Thursday here, as this country has no official Thanksgiving holiday. But since Arenal is a gringo colony with a substantial American population, it is hardly surprising that one of the American-owned and managed hotels, the Aurora Inn, was having a big Thanksgiving bash for the local gringo population. Knowing that some of my friends from town were likely to be there, I decided to head over there and have dinner, as I had no invites from anyone in town for a private Thanksgiving day dinner. Yeah, the hotel dinner at $12 per person was a bit pricey, but I figured it would be a good chance to catch up on local gossip while enjoying a decent meal for a change. I went to town just a bit early - arrived at about two, and found out that the information I had been given, that it was going to happen between noon and three, was incorrect - turned out to be between three and six. So I did my weekly grocery shopping and went back home to wait for a bit later.
By three thirty, I was truly starving, so I headed back over to the hotel. By now, the crowd had started to gather, maybe fifteen or twenty people. Sure enough, they had roast turkey with all the trimmings - sweet potatoes, gravy, several vegetables, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and even proper pumpkin pie, a real rarity around here. I sat down with some folks I met out front while waiting, and had some hors d' ovres for a while while the main meal was being set out on the steam tables, and got to know some folks I had known about but had never met. We had a great time getting to know each other and exchanging war stories. They were some interesting folks - had traveled all over the world and had decided to settle here. It was great getting their perspectives on things. A very pleasant afternoon indeed.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Not In The United States: As you reflect on yesterday's gorging on turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce yesterday, and slowly recover from the king-sized indigestion, it is worth a moment of your time to learn and reflect upon the true history of this holiday. It isn't quite the story you were taught in grade school. And what happened then is happening elsewhere today, as is clear when you read the news from Smirkey's war. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The California Secretary of State has invited Black Box Voting to hack away at some Diebold voting systems. The testing is set for Nov. 30. Diebold Election Systems has been trying to re-certify its “TSx” touch-screen machines in California. Diebold has added stronger passwords and encryption, but even the consultant hired by California to evaluate the system reported that the voting system remains vulnerable to alteration of vote results. This week, officials at the California Secretary of State's office invited Black Box Voting, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group for elections, to try hacking into the Diebold system. A specific testing protocol was provided by Diebold and the California Secretary of State’s office. Though the opportunity was welcomed by Black Box Voting, negotiations remain on the procedures. Black Box Voting contends that the proposed testing violates California Election Code §19202, which governs the request for voting machine testing formally submitted to the state of California by Black Box Voting on June 16, 2005. Also, Black Box Voting identified areas of bias in the proposed procedures, which would violate normal scientific protocol and cause voters to lack confidence in the results. At issue is Diebold’s insistence on being involved in setting up the testing procedures, and Diebold’s provision of hand-picked machines, using new voting systems not currently in use in California. Though the formal request for replication of Black Box Voting security tests was made in June 2005, Diebold delayed the test required by §19202 for more than five months. Diebold is now “permitting” the testing only under conditions Diebold controls, using machines only Diebold provides. The proposed procedure contaminates the results. Black Box Voting has offered to resolve procedural defects in such a way as to “enhance public confidence” as required by §104 (c) in the California certification procedures. Instead of voting machines hand-picked by the vendor which have never been used in elections, Black Box Voting wants to test a randomly selected voting system used in the last election - the machines that elected the California governor and the president.
State officials have asked the CBS television show "60 Minutes" to postpone Sunday's scheduled segment highlighting a scientist's allegations that New Orleans is sinking and that residents should be induced to leave the city. Tim Kusky, a professor in the earth sciences department at St. Louis University, asserts on the show that New Orleans residents should "face the fact that their city will be below sea level in 90 years." He also recommends a "gradual pullout from the city, whose slow, steady slide into the sea was sped up enormously by Hurricane Katrina," according to a preview of the program. In a letter to CBS, Andy Kopplin, executive director of Louisiana Recovery Authority, asked the network to reconsider airing it. "We are very concerned about the preview of your story on New Orleans' future posted on the '60 Minutes' website and hope it is not an accurate reflection of your work," Kopplin wrote.
Don't ask for an XBox 360 for Christmas: Microsoft's Xbox 360, the much-anticipated video game system that made its debut earlier this week, is apparently experiencing some technical glitches -- screens freezing only minutes into a game, for example -- and that has left some users pretty upset. At gamer-oriented Web sites, Xbox 360 owners have reported system crashes in games such as the space-marines-vs.-aliens title Quake 4.One owner complained that his new console tries to read the shooter game Perfect Dark Zero as a DVD movie. Another posted a video file of the game Project Gotham Racing 3 freezing up before the player had even finished the first lap of the driving game. Brian Crecente, who runs the game-fan site Kotaku.com, said his Xbox 360 locked up three times, causing him to lose a couple of hours' worth of progress in a Western-themed action game called Gun.
Smirkey gets his mind changed: Tony Blair was "doubled crossed" by Smirkey's aides in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the former diplomat at the center of a political crisis engulfing the White House. Joe Wilson, the husband of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent who was allegedly 'outed' by senior administration figures, made the claim in an interview for the BBC. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today program, Mr. Wilson said: "I watched the way that the British built their case, and it was a disarmament case as best I could see it. "Mr Blair came to the US when Mr. Bush was talking about regime change, and when he left Mr. Bush started talking about disarmament as the objective.
A top US official acknowledged mounting European Union pressure for Washington to come clean about reports of secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe while stressing his country's right to protect itself against terrorists. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dan Fried said he had discussed the matter with various European officials during talks in Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and Brussels last week, but he refused to elaborate. "I don't want to attempt to characterize our discussions with allies on this," he told AFP. "The issue came up in a number of ways, in a number of places." Fried also declined comment on the European Union's plan to formally ask Washington to clarify reports about the secret CIA prisons known as "black sites". He underlined, however, the US right to wage a battle against terrorism.
A dozen Iraq war protesters were arrested on Wednesday as they tested a new ban on camping and parking on roads near Smirkey's Texas ranch where he is spending the Thanksgiving holiday. The demonstration was timed to coincide with Bush's break at his 1,600-acre (650-hectare) spread and the arrival of the accompanying White House media entourage. The group included Dede Miller, the sister of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Iraq and who became an icon for the peace movement after her 26-day vigil outside Bush's ranch in the summer. Sheehan was scheduled to arrive in Crawford on Friday. McLennan County sheriff's deputies warned the protesters - who had pitched tents by the roadside - and then arrested them for trespassing.
The Rev. Jerry Zawada has already served a federal prison term for trespassing on government property to protest a Fort Benning school he blames for human rights abuses in Latin America. On Sunday, the 68-year-old Catholic priest risked another one. Zawada was among at least 41 protesters arrested during an annual protest calling for the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the Army's School of the Americas, organizers said Sunday. School of the Americas Watch, the group that sponsors the annual rally, alleges the school's graduates have committed murders, rapes and tortures in Latin America. Military officials, of course, deny the charges.
Want to buy or build in New Orleans? Get out your wallet: Nervous insurers are steering clear of hurricane-hit New Orleans, posing new problems as people here try to rebuild or relocate. Almost three months after Hurricane Katrina damaged tens of thousands of homes, insurance companies worry about safety, regulations and future risk. Existing homeowners argue about payouts, and would-be buyers struggle to find any insurance at all. "We were ready to sign a contract on a house, but we can't get insurance," said Steve, whose company is moving him to New Orleans and who asked Reuters not to use his second name. "I'm baffled why the real estate companies still show houses." It is generally impossible to get a mortgage on a house without insurance. "There are only a few companies that are writing policies right now, and everything is running slowly," realtor Muffin Labourisse, whose company is still showing and selling houses, said of the city's post-hurricane real estate reality.
"Let's do it." With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days. After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person to be executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die.
The number of U.S. children and teens who were diagnosed with depression more than doubled between 1995 and 2002, while the use of antidepressant drugs rose and the use of psychotherapy or counseling declined. The findings, say researchers, point to possible instances of inappropriate prescribing to children. While guidelines call for children to be treated with either mental health counseling or a combination of counseling and medication, the study found a trend of antidepressants replacing talk therapy. In addition, although only one antidepressant, Prozac (fluoxetine), has been specifically approved for patients younger than 18, prescriptions for other antidepressants rose after 1995 as well - with children receiving prescriptions for them on an "off-label" basis.
The internet entrepreneur Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist site provided a hugely successful free alternative to classified advertising, has trained his sights on the old-fashioned newspaper industry. Mr Newmark - whose craigslist.org is the seventh-most visited internet site in America, just after eBay - has diverted millions of dollars of advertising revenue away from newspapers. At a seminar at the Said Business School at Oxford University this week, Mr Newmark rehearsed his new media paradigm: the combination of improving Web technology and a popular groundswell of distrust for reporters - especially, he says, because of ill- informed reporting of the Iraq war and its build-up - means that ordinary people are ready to take over the newsroom. Mr Newmark said that he expects to launch a project in the coming weeks to harness the "wisdom of the masses" that has fuelled his advertising site and apply it to daily journalism.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has sought to deflect a growing dispute with Mexico by blaming the US for sowing discord in Latin America. Wearing a wide-brimmed Mexican sombrero, Mr Chavez told thousands of supporters at a weekend rally in Caracas that the row was not with the Mexican people but their pro-US president, Vicente Fox. Venezuela and Mexico downgraded their diplomatic relations last week in a dispute over Mexico's support of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Matters came to a head when Mr Chavez called his Mexican counterpart a "lapdog of the American empire" and later warned Mr Fox "not to mess" with him.
Only On Fox: Fox says GM layoffs will make things "better for everyone involved." Compassionate Conservatism reared its heartless head on Your World w/Neil Cavuto during a roundtable discussion about today's announcement that General Motors will cut 30,000 jobs and close 10 plants in the US and two in Canada. Cavuto opened the segment with, "So, should you be worried?" Wayne Rogers, a very frequent guest on Fox's "business news" programs, seemed to think not. He said, "People have been guaranteed a certain standard of living and almost think it's their right to have that." "That is not guaranteed anymore and people are going to have to work it out differently." Fox's Dagen McDowell said, "You can't count on Uncle Sam. The future of Social Security's clearly in question. You can't count on the company you're working for." Jonathan Hoenig, another very frequent guest said, "It's terrible that 30,000 people are going to lose their jobs right before the holidays. I mean, it breaks your heart, but the truth is, ultimately, it's going to be better for everyone involved. People will rely on their own efforts to prepare for retirement and save, not hope that GM or Delta or United don't go bankrupt."
Why I Am Embarrassed To Show My Passport: John Bolton, the abrasive U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been dubbed by one New York newspaper as "a human wrecking ball", is living up to every critic's gloomy expectations. Last week, he threatened U.N. member states, specifically the 132 developing nations, that if they don't play ball with the United States, Washington may look elsewhere to settle international problems. "It is obvious," Jim Paul of the New York-based Global Policy Forum told IPS, "that Washington has once again threatened the United Nations with its usual warning: 'Do what we say, or we will send you into oblivion"'. He said Bolton's message is clear, "If you don't, we will wreck you." Addressing a gathering at Wingate University in North Carolina last week, Bolton said: "Being practical, Americans say that either we need to fix the institution (the United Nations), or we'll turn to some other mechanism to solve international problems." Yeah, John, like the United Nations is there to solve America's problems?
Qataris, including senior officials, reacted with shock on Wednesday to newspaper reports in Britain suggesting that Smirkey had discussed bombing the Doha headquarters of the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera. The report, in Tuesday’s edition of the British Daily Mirror, was based on what the newspaper reported were leaked minutes of a conversation between Mr Bush and Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, on April 16 2004. On Tuesday the British government threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed contents of the document, a move that reinforced suspicions in Qatar that the report might be genuine. “I thought this was just a rumor, but now the UK has used the [threat of the] secrecy act to stop it, it raises more questions. It makes this high profile and we would be really interested to know what is going on,” a senior member of the ruling Al-Thani family said.
A county commissioner, who helped push through a new county ordinance to prevent protests in front of Smirkey's Texas ranch, has admitted publicly that he did so at the urging of the White House. When asked to confirm it later, he denied it. “The ordinance was very plainly meant to prevent people from protesting in front of Bush's ranch,” Dave Jensen, a 54-year-old former Marine told reporters. “We feel that's a First Amendment issue. It's intentionally designed to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.” Ray Meadows, the McLennan County commissioner who sponsored the ordinance to restrict free speech, admits he did so at the White House’s urging. “Of course I did,” he bragged to a county resident when asked at a public hearing on the ordinance. Meadows later claimed the White House didn't have anything to do with ordinance, claiming he proposed it to protect "property owners." Of course, Bush is also a property owner. War protesters say they are determined to demonstrate outside President Bush's ranch during the Thanksgiving holiday despite the arrests of a dozen people on Wednesday. The group had pitched six tents along the road in defiance of new local bans on roadside camping and parking. Many in the group held up signs, including one that said "Give me liberty or give me a ditch." More than two dozen McLennan County sheriff's deputies arrived and asked if they wanted to walk out on their own or be carried. Two chose to be carried. A dozen others left after deputies warned them they would be arrested
Controversy over the use of European airports by CIA aircraft and alleged secret prisons simmered on in several European capitals as Washington acknowledged mounting pressure over the issue. In Spain Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, on the defensive, said that the government had acted in "conformity with the law" regarding secret Central Intelligence Agency flights that landed at Spanish airports. The government - headed by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, one of whose first actions on taking power last year was to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq - has promised "the greatest transparency" over the affair. The Netherlands has warned Washington that if it continued to "hide" over reports of secret prisons in eastern Europe, Dutch contributions to US-led military missions could be affected, the ANP news agency reported. "The US should stop hiding. It will all come out sooner or later," Foreign Minister Ben Bot told the Dutch parliament. Bot added that the Americans "are on the borderline" in their fight against terrorism. The minister would not say at what point the Netherlands might end their cooperation with Washington. An Austrian opposition politician called on Thursday for a wider investigation into possible CIA flights over Austria and accused U.S. intelligence of running a de-facto covert airline he derisively dubbed "Kidnap Air." The lawmaker, Peter Pilz of the Green Party, urged the public prosecutor's office to get involved, insisting there was probably more than one flight over Austria. "If the U.S. government authorities believe they have the right to kidnap people and transport them over European borders, that must have consequences in all member states of the European Union," Pilz told reporters. On Wednesday, Austria's air force commander said a CIA transport plane suspected of carrying terrorist suspects flew over the country on its way to the Central Asian nation of Azerbaijan on Jan. 21, 2003.
The US has threatened to block a record-breaking arms deal under which Spain would sell ships and aircraft to Venezuela, in another sign of increasingly fraught relations between the Bush administration and the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The US claimed that a $1.1 billion arms deal with Mr Chavez, who is a vocal supporter of Cuba's Fidel Castro and a fierce critic of the Bush administration, could destabilize the region. The deal, due to be signed in Caracas on Monday, includes four coastal patrol ships, four corvettes, 10 C-295 transport planes and two maritime surveillance planes. It would be a massive boost to Spain's ailing shipyard industry and to the rest of its defense industry.
Proof Of Smirkey's Manipulation Of Iraq Intelligence: From “Saddam Hussein’s Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction” [White House website]: "In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. … Mr. Saeed said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations - and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs." None of al-Haideri’s claims were true. Rolling Stone reveals that the administration’s use of al-Haideri’s lies to justify the Iraq war were “the product of a clandestine operation…that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling a war.” At the center of this operation was John Rendon and The Rendon Group, “a controversial, secretive firm that has been criticized as ineffective and too expensive,” paid more than $56 million by the government since the 9/11 attacks. (Taxpayers are paying Rendon himself $311.26/hour.) The Rendon Group personally set up the Iraqi National Congress and helped install Ahmad Chalabi as leader, whose main goal - “pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein” - Rendon helped facilitate. Pentagon documents show that Rendon has the highest level of government clearance (above Top Secret), which helped it with its INC work - “a worldwide media blitz designed to turn Hussein…into the greatest threat to world peace.”
Habeas-Corpus Death Watch: A former Pakistani businessman and accused al-Qaida operative held two years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has sued to get a copy of the King James Bible. Saifullah Paracha, 58, said he is entitled to a copy of the Bible, a scripture accepted by Islam, in addition to the Koran, which is available to Guantanamo detainees. In response to his Washington suit, U.S. officials said some books are withheld because they could "incite" inmates. The government also said allowing Paracha to have a Bible would set off a "chain reaction" among 170 other detainees suing the government, the Los Angeles Times reported. The government has, however, cleared Paracha to receive William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar," which his lawyer mailed in September. Paracha is accused of conspiring to ship chemical components to the United States.
Privatizaton Solves All Problems: How yummy - and just in time for Thanksgiving: The Pentagon repeatedly warned contractor Halliburton-KBR that the food it served to US troops in Iraq was "dirty," as were as the kitchens it was served in, NBC News reported on Friday. Halliburton-Kellogg Brown and Root's promises to improve "have not been followed through," according to a Pentagon report that warned "serious repercussions may result" if the contractor did not clean up. The Pentagon reported finding "blood all over the floor," "dirty pans," "dirty grills," "dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats ... and vegetables" in four of the military messes the company operates in Iraq, NBC said, citing Pentagon documents. The report came as President George W. Bush fended off Pentagon reports that Halliburton-KBR overcharged US$61 million for gasoline it sold the military in Iraq. Dick Cheney ran Halliburton for five years until becoming vice president. The company feeds 110,000 US and coalition troops daily at a cost of US$28 per troop per day, NBC said. Interesting that that kind of money is enough to feed me for a week, and I don't exactly starve.
No Money For Government, But Lots Of Money For Tax Cuts For The Rich: A large deficit in NASA's troubled shuttle program threatens to seriously delay and possibly cripple President Bush's space exploration initiative unless the number of planned flights is cut virtually in half or the White House agrees to add billions of dollars to the human spaceflight budget. Sources familiar with ongoing negotiations between NASA and the White House say the administration has no intention of spending extra money to deal with a shortfall that some space experts say could exceed $6 billion from 2006 to 2010, when NASA plans to retire the shuttle for good.
News From The Talibaptist Jihad: Demonstrating how out of touch it is with reality, the Catholic Church has announced that it is going to ban from its priesthood anyone who has "deep seated" gay tendencies - which, of course, is just about all gay men, and a high percentage of those wearing the Catholic Church's clerical robes. Gay rights activists and liberal Catholics are now girding for a long battle over the Vatican's tougher stance on homosexuality, predicting the Church would lose thousands of followers in the United States, but also make it much more difficult to provide clerics for the parishes that need them. The policy, drafted to deal with scandals over pedophile priests that erupted in Boston in 2002 and spread across the United States, says the Church can admit those who have clearly overcome homosexual tendencies for at least three years. But practicing homosexuals and those with "deep-seated" gay tendencies and those who support a gay culture should be barred, it said. Conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church and in other religions welcomed the stand. "We are calling on all Catholics of goodwill to speak to their priests and to express their outrage at this decision," said Harry Knox a director of Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group based in Washington.
Wakulla Correctional, south of Tallahassee, is Florida's newest "faith and character-based" prison, the third in the state to offer inmates access to evening programs aimed at using their faith - no matter what it is - to strengthen their character. State prison officials hope that it may help motivated inmates refocus on what their life might be like outside if they change their behavior. They must volunteer to participate. In addition to offering extra religious study opportunities, the programs offer practical classes, like life skills and anger management.
Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment that would outlaw gay marriage in Massachusetts said on Wednesday they had more than double the number of signatures needed to put the issue to voters. But gay rights lawyers threatened a legal challenge to stop the ballot initiative, underscoring deepening tension over the divisive issue a year after Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize gay marriage. A loose coalition of conservative and Christian groups seeking to ban same-sex marriage had to gather at least 65,825 signatures before state lawmakers could decide whether to put the question to a public referendum in 2008.
News From Smirkey's War: More results from the "Salvador Option" death squads: Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms shot dead an aging Sunni tribal leader and three of his sons in their beds on Wednesday, relatives said, in the latest attack to highlight Iraq's deep sectarian rifts ahead of a December poll. A Defense Ministry official denied Iraqi troops carried out the pre-dawn slayings in the Hurriya district of Baghdad and said the killers instead must have been terrorists in disguise. "Iraqi army uniforms litter the streets and any terrorist can kill and tarnish our image, killing two birds with one stone," the official said.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the last 650,000 years. That is the conclusion of new European studies looking at ice taken from 3km below the surface of Antarctica. The scientists say their research shows present day warming to be exceptional. Other research, also published in the journal Science, suggests that sea levels may be rising twice as fast now as in previous centuries. The evidence on atmospheric concentrations comes from an Antarctic region called Dome Concordia (Dome C).
Global ocean levels are rising twice as fast today as they were 150 years ago, and human-induced warming appears to be the culprit, say scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and collaborating institutions. While the speed at which the ocean is rising -- almost two millimeters per year today compared to one millimeter annually for the past several thousand years -- may not be fodder for the next disaster movie, it affirms scientific concerns of accelerated global warming. In an article published in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Science, Rutgers professor of geological sciences Kenneth G. Miller reports on a new record of sea level change during the past 100 million years based on drilling studies along the New Jersey coast. The findings establish a steady millimeter-per-year rise from 5,000 years ago until about 200 years ago.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: It was 1959 when Dick Cheney, then a student at Yale University, turned 18 and became eligible for the draft. Eventually, like 16 million other young men of that era, Mr. Cheney sought deferments. By the time he turned 26 in January 1967 and was no longer eligible for the draft, he had asked for and received five deferments, four because he was a student and one for being a new father. Although President Richard M. Nixon stopped the draft in 1973 and the war itself ended 29 years ago on Friday, the issue of service remains a personally sensitive and politically potent touchstone in the biographies of many politicians from that era. For much of Mr. Cheney's political career, his deferments have largely been a non-issue. In an increasingly vituperative political campaign, Mr. Cheney this week again questioned the credentials of Senator John Kerry and his ability to be commander in chief. Mr. Kerry, who was decorated in Vietnam and has made his service there a central element of his campaign, fired back. Putting Mr. Cheney's record in the spotlight, Mr. Kerry said that he "got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do." Dick, I'd rather have a military veteran commanding the military than a draft-dodging Vice President of Torture.
Michael Scanlon, a former top official for Representative Tom DeLay and onetime partner of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has agreed to plead guilty in a deal with federal prosecutors, according to his lawyer. The deal reveals a broadening corruption investigation involving top members of Congress. Criminal papers filed in federal court outlined a conspiracy that not only named Mr. Scanlon but also mentioned a congressman, identified only as Representative No. 1, as part of the exchange of favors from clients funneled to lobbyists and officials. This was the first time that a member of Congress, identified by lawyers in the case as Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio, has been implicated in criminal papers as part of the inquiry, which has sprawled from Indian casinos to the lucrative lobbying firms of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon and then reached to the Republican leadership. Federal prosecutors announced a single conspiracy charge against Mr. Scanlon on Friday, in advance of a Monday court hearing at which he is expected to plead guilty in exchange for his cooperation. Investigators accused Mr. Scanlon of conspiring to defraud Indian tribes of millions of dollars as part of a lobbying and corruption scheme.
A lawyer recruited 29 people, including some from a Bible study class, to stage more than 60 automobile crashes on Los Angeles freeways and collected millions of dollars in bogus insurance claims, authorities said Wednesday. Personal injury lawyer Bernard Laufer, 52, of Huntington Park was arrested Tuesday morning at his office on suspicion of leading the ring, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said. Although no one was seriously injured in the accidents, one victim was forced to close his business after his truck was totaled, officials said. "This is extraordinarily important to every citizen who's on the freeways," Garamendi said. "Purposely stopping a car on a freeway can lead to death. These schemes are dangerous, they are reckless and they are deadly." The ring operated for at least 18 months, targeting sport utility vehicles and commercial trucks on several Southland freeways, including the 101, 60, 10 and the 15, authorities said.
News Of The Weird: According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Curtis Talley, 83, is a sex offender living in Seminole county, Florida. If you go to the FDLE's sex-offender registry at www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sopu and type in Talley's name, you'll find his listing and photo. You'll see that he committed sexual battery. You'll see that his crime was against a minor. You could study his yellowed eyes and note that his last known address is in Altamonte Springs. You might wonder why men like Talley are out on the streets, but if you live in Altamonte Springs you'll likely be thankful that the FDLE has alerted you to this menace. Now you can be vigilant, right? No need. Talley won't be bothering you. He's been dead for three years. He's one of hundreds of "ghosts" on the FDLE's website who, for one reason or another, are never taken off, even though they've shuffled off this mortal coil. The only thing Talley's record – and the hundreds like it – does these days is inflate the number of sex offenders users of FDLE's website believe are loose on the streets of Florida. As of Nov. 16, there were 541 dead or reported dead on the state rolls. It's FDLE's policy that offenders' names will remain on the rolls for one year after their death. "If the public is checking regularly, they can be informed that an offender living nearby is n