Yesterday was a dry-season kind of day, with sunny skies most of the day and warm temperatures, and an incredibly clear night yesterday evening. But today it was back to more normal weather for this time of the year. Light, intermittent rains in the morning, a sunny midday, and rain this evening, at times heavy enough to blank out the satellite TV reception. High was 82, and low overnight was 71.
The weather was so clear last night that I got out the binoculars and had a peek at Jupiter in the southeastern sky, just as soon as it was dark. Being one of the clearest nights in some time, I figured it would be an opportune time to take up the suggestion of a recent article in Science Daily that suggested that the seeing of Jupiter is about as good as it gets these days, and the Great Red Spot is even visible with high powered binoculars. Well, mine aren't high powered, but I figured they are quite good quality, so it would be worth seeing what I could see with them. No Great Red Spot, in fact, my seven-power binoculars barely show Jupiter as a disk, but what I could clearly see was two of Jupiter's moons. The first time I had ever seen them with these binoculars.
I have been having some chest pains today, so I didn't get out and walk much, but did have a brief, slow cruise around the garden to see how things are doing. The petra vines that I planted from seed sometime back have finally established themselves and have really started to grow - one is finally taking off and starting to grow up a trellis. I hope it means I'll soon have some flowers from them. The bougainvillea cuttings planted last Friday are doing well, too, and have not wilted, so I suspect they may take. Sure hope so.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: The US Supreme court has limited the rights of government whistle-blowers by ruling that they are not protected under the First Amendment. The ruling, which was passed by a 5-4 vote, means employees are not protected by free speech laws when speaking out during the course of their duties. The decision will affect all of the nation's 20 million public employees. But it was criticised by civil rights groups, who said it would discourage employees from exposing misconduct. In practice, it will strengthen the government's ability to discipline public employees who make allegations of official misconduct. The decision was seen as a victory for the Bush administration, which has argued that the move will protect the government from cases filed by disgruntled workers posing as legitimate whistle-blowers. But critics predicted the impact would be widespread. "In an age of excessive government secrecy, the Supreme Court has made it easier to engage in a government cover-up by discouraging internal whistle-blowing," Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters.
President Bush learned of reports that U.S. Marines killed two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians only after reporters began asking questions, the White House said Tuesday. Asked when Bush was first briefed about the events in Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in western Iraq, White House press secretary Tony Snow replied Tuesday: "When a Time reporter first made the call." Bush was briefed on the incident and investigation by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, Snow said. He would not detail Bush's personal involvement since. "I think anybody who's heard the story has a personal interest and it's impossible not to," he said. "But the president also is allowing the chain of command to do what it's supposed to do in the Department of Defense, which is to complete an investigation. The Marines are taking an active and aggressive role in this."
The United States, in a policy shift, is ready to directly join talks on Iran's nuclear program if Tehran suspends all uranium enrichment activities, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said. Rice made the offer of the first substantive talks with Iran since diplomatic relations were broken off 26 years ago on Wednesday as she prepared to leave for a crucial meeting of world powers in Vienna on Tehran's suspected nuclear arms program. "To underscore our commitment to a diplomatic solution and to enhance the prospects for success, as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran's representatives," she said in prepared remarks.
The Associated Press ran a story yesterday (byline John Solomon), reported here, attacking Senator Harry Reid for accepting tickets to a boxing match in Nevada as the guest of the Nevada state government (something that appears totally fine under Senate ethics rules). AP then comes under some rather severe criticism from bloggers, this blog included, because the article notes in its second paragraph that rather than doing the bidding of the Nevada boxing folks, Reid was in fact pushing legislation they didn't like - i.e., Reid was not in the pocket of the Nevada boxing folks. Today, Josh Marshall discovered that AP appears to have edited its story and deleted the sentence that makes clear that Harry Reid was pushing legislation the Nevada boxing folks didn't like. I.e., AP just happened to delete the key line of their story that proves that Harry Reid isn't dishonest. And AP happens to delete this line from their story right after we all criticize them, using the line as proof that AP's story doesn't hold water.
CNN reports that 1,500 troops are being moved from Kuwait into Iraq's Anbar province, the Sunni stronghold in the west. WaPo and NYT put it at either 3,500, or a full brigade. (The discrepancy, I think, is that CNN is reporting the troops that have already moved; NYT and WaPo are reporting the total number in Kuwait that will eventually be deployed.) This is a tremendously bad sign, and indicates that Anbar province, and likely the city of Ramadi in particular, are beyond out of control. There is no indication that the move is in response to any particular increase in numbers of fighters from other parts of Iraq or neighboring countries, meaning that the surge in violence is home-grown. Although the insurgent learning curve has thus far been surprisingly gradual, they're getting better at their deadly craft and we don't appear to have an answer. The articles also indicate a disturbing trend of Al Qa'ida recruitment successes among the indigenous Sunni population. As that occurs, huge swaths of western Iraq will become terrorist havens, camps, training areas, etc. If we can't control the cities, we're certainly not controlling the countryside.
President Bush reportedly will hold a Rose Garden press conference on June 5 to press Congress to enact the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, in spite of the fact that congressional Republicans are deeply divided on the issue. The conservative Weekly Standard reports that Bush will gather supporters of the amendment behind him as he makes his pitch. "President Bush is once again placating extremists and pushing discrimination when he should be finding solutions for the real challenges facing Americans," Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese told 365Gay.com. "It's despicable that he would use this opportunity and the spotlight of the Rose Garden not to unite the country, but to advocate discriminatory and divisive politics." June 5 is the same day that the proposed amendment will be debated in the Senate. While most Republicans were solidly behind the amendment in 2004, the party is deeply divided this time. Earlier this month First Lady Laura Bush said the marriage issue should not be used as an election tool. The Human Rights Campaign recently came under criticism for endorsing the re-election of Republican Rep. Mary Bono (Calif.). But the organization says Bono is illustrative of moderate Republicans who support LGBT issues. Bono voted against the marriage amendment in 2004 and has announced her opposition to reintroducing it. She also supported LGBT inclusion in hate crime law and worked to see its passage in the House, although the measure later died in the Senate.
A major figure in the Election Day phone-jamming scandal that embarrassed and nearly bankrupted the New Hampshire GOP is out of prison and back in the political game. Charles McGee, the former executive director of the state Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and served seven months for his part in the scheme to have a telemarketer tie up Democratic and union phone lines in 2002. He's back at his old job with a Republican political marketing firm, Spectrum Monthly & Printing Inc., and will be helping out at the firm's "GOP campaign school" for candidates. Richard Pease, the firm's co-president, said McGee would be available to advise candidates at the two-day event, planned for next weekend in Manchester. McGee's role at the school was reported Thursday by the New Hampshire Union Leader. "Chuck will work with the candidates in any way they want," Pease said. "If they want his advice, if they want his... experience, it's there for them to take or leave." Pease said he had no problem with McGee, who is a vice president in the firm, returning to advise politicians. "He made a mistake. He admitted to it. He served his time," Pease said. "He's certainly not going to be standing there and advocating breaking the law," Pease said. He said McGee declined to comment about his role at the school. In court, McGee acknowledged that the phone-jamming of get-out-the-vote drives by Democrats and organized labor was his idea, inspired by a lesson he learned in the Marine Corps: cut off your opponent's communications. The calls had the desired effect for two hours the morning of Election Day, but then the scheme began to unravel. Two other people have been sentenced to prison in the phone jamming.
It was a weekend for sequels -- both at the movie box office (where X-Men 3 opened big), and on the political stump, where the GOP trotted out yet another haven't-we-seen-this-before installment of its election-year script, featuring lots of tough dialogue about fighting terrorism. The yawn-inducing preview was rolled out at the president's Memorial Day weekend speech at West Point. After his grudging concession last week that his brand of "tough talk" had "sent the wrong signal to people" he was right back at it again, reiterating his commitment to pre-emptive strikes and his post-9/11 dictum that there is "no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them." Aside from attempting to recast Bush as a 21st-century Harry Truman (see Marty Kaplan take a Ginzu knife to this comparison here), the president's entire address was cobbled together from bits of previous speeches -- a worn-out collection of his War on Terror Greatest Hits. He's becoming more and more like one of those aging rock bands that hasn't had a hit -- or a fresh idea -- in years but keeps on touring, playing all the same old songs. The political equivalent of Def Leppard or Motley Crue.
Traveler's privacy rights in Europe to be restored?: The EU's top court scrapped a decision forcing airlines to give data about European passengers to US authorities as part of their post-September 11, 2001 security crackdown. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the decision to approve the data transfers, taken in May 2004 by EU governments and the European Commission, was "founded on an inappropriate legal basis." The Luxembourg-based ECJ gave the EU and the United States until September 30 to negotiate a new agreement. The so-called Passenger Name Record data transfers can continue until then. The agreement between Brussels and Washington, which was blasted by civil liberties groups, was forged as a stream of aircraft was stopped entering the United States over concerns that suspicious passengers were aboard. One high-profile case saw British singer-songwriter and peace activist Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, deported, apparently in error. But the ECJ based its ruling on a legal technicality and did not investigate whether anyone's rights were being infringed. In November, an EU judge rejected claims that the privacy of passengers had been violated. Under the deal, airlines had to provide the US authorities with more than 30 pieces of data on passengers and crew - including credit card information, addresses and telephone numbers - 15 minutes before a flight's departure. US and commission officials said they were confident a fresh agreement could be reached. Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary of state for the Department of Homeland Security, said he expected "a solution that will keep the data flowing and the planes flying".
Iran said on Tuesday it wanted to resume nuclear negotiations with the EU and could even talk to Washington if its arch-foe "changed behavior." Tehran also said it was willing to negotiate on the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges it uses for research, but stressed it would not stop running the devices entirely as the U.N. Security Council has called for. The mixture of conciliatory and defiant statements was unlikely to satisfy the United States and its allies, who suspect Iran could use even limited enrichment facilities to master the technology required to make atomic weapons.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Department of Defense to expedite a public information request seeking details on government monitoring of student antiwar protests at the University of California, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that plaintiffs demonstrated a "compelling need" for details about an issue of "significant importance to public policy and public protests." The ruling stems from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted in February by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California seeking details on the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. The request followed an NBC News report that TALON contained entries on dozens of nonviolent protests, including anti-recruiting events in April on the UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses. Mark Schlosberg, police practices policy director of the ACLU of Northern California, said the government provided some of the documents they asked for but has yet to fully process the request. "It's important the public learn about what's going on with their government," Schlosberg said. The ruling gives no deadline for the information's release, but Schlosberg said it "guarantees the request will go to the front of the line."
Afghanistan's parliament approved a motion calling on the government to prosecute the U.S. soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash that sparked the worst riots in Kabul in years, officials said Wednesday. Meanwhile, hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters attacked and briefly occupied police headquarters in a remote central town Wednesday after driving out security forces, officials said. The assembly passed its nonbinding motion Tuesday, one day after a U.S. truck plowed into a line of cars, killing up to five Afghans and sparking anti-foreigner riots throughout the city, said Saleh Mohammed Saljuqi, an assistant to the parliamentary speaker. "Those responsible for the accident on Monday should be handed over to Afghan legal authorities," Saljuqi cited the motion as saying. A U.S. military spokeswoman, Lt. Tamara D. Lawrence, said she had not seen the motion and declined to comment. U.S. troops fired in self defense when a road accident in Kabul triggered a riot, the military said on Wednesday, as Afghan lawmakers demanded the prosecution of a soldier driving a runaway truck that killed at least five people. "Our initial investigation... shows fire came from the crowd, and our soldiers used their weapons to defend themselves," Colonel Tom Collins said, giving the fullest U.S. account so far of events on Monday that led to the worst anti-American riots in the city since the Taliban's ouster in 2001.
Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," is running far and away number one in per-screen revenues at the box office, nearly three times as much as its nearest competitor - indicating that it is badly under-distributed. The web site Boxofficemojo.com, which tracks what films are doing well, rate it number 22 in overall revenues, but easily number one in per-screen revenue. So why is it being so absurdly under-distributed? Good question - maybe we should ask the cineplex managers why they're not showing this gold mine.
President Bush welcomed the new Iraqi ambassador to the United States at a White House credentialing ceremony Tuesday, saying, "The United States stands ready to help the Iraqi democracy succeed." But the ambassador took the opportunity to complain about what he believes is the murder of his cousin by U.S. troops. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer spoke later in the day with Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie about U.S. military investigations into alleged killings of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last year by U.S. Marines. BLITZER: What do you know about what happened at Haditha? SUMAIDAIE: Well, I heard the report very soon after the event in November from some relatives. And as it happened, my own security detail [man] comes from that neighborhood. And his home is hardly a hundred yards from the home which was hit. And he was in touch through the Internet with his folks and neighbors. And the situation which he reported to me was that it was a cold-blooded killing. BLITZER: By who? SUMAIDAIE: By the Marines, I believe. Now, at that time, I dismissed the initial reports as incredible. I found it unbelievable, frankly.
The number of Guantánamo Bay detainees participating in a hunger strike has ballooned from three to around 75, the U.S. military said Monday, revealing growing defiance among prisoners held for up to 4 -1/2 years with no end in sight. Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand called the hunger strike at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba an "attention-getting" tactic to step up pressure for the inmates' release and said it might be related to a May 18 clash between detainees and guards that injured six prisoners. "The hunger-strike technique is consistent with al-Qaida practice and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them back to the battlefield," Durand said from Guantánamo Bay.
Why The Democrats Are Not An Option: To coincide with Israeli PM Olmert's visit, the Democratic Leadership Council published a statement celebrating "Zionism" and condemning Islam. If their publication had not come from a man who purports to be a leader of the political opposition to the deeply unpopular right-wing Republican regime one might be inclined to surmise that it had been issued by the so-called Israel Lobby. In what was meant to be a moving personal account of his fifth trip to Israel, Al From, the founding father and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), defined Zionism as, "a good idea filled with hope." On his journey, Mr. From visited the summit of Mount Hadar where he experienced a moving vision of Israeli 'hope' locked in conflict with Palestinian 'anger.' In order to succeed with his plan for the reform of the Democratic Party, Governor Dean faces the stalwart opposition of Mr. From and his neoconservative cronies at the DLC and many powerful Democratic office holders as well, who are still under their sway. These neoconservative Democrats include: Governor Tom Vilsack, Senator Evan Bayh, Senator Joe Biden and Senator Hillary Clinton. These Democrats are committed to the DLC vision of America's future as defined by Mr. From, most recently in his glowing account of Zionism and its Manichean conflict with Islam.
What Does This Tell You?: A Swiss investigation into an international nuclear smuggling network is being hampered by a lack of cooperation from the United States. Authorities in Bern say they asked US officials for judicial assistance a year ago but have yet to receive a reply. Washington's failure to respond to "multiple" Swiss appeals was revealed last week by former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright. He told a US hearing into the nuclear trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, that he found the lack of cooperation by the US "frankly embarrassing". "It is difficult to understand the actions of the US government. Its lack of assistance needlessly complicates this important investigation," said Albright, who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office said it still expected a response to its requests for assistance. "We are confident we will get an answer because it is in the best interests not only of Switzerland but also the United States that the criminal investigation led by the Swiss authorities in this difficult matter of nuclear proliferation can be carried out successfully," spokesman Hansjürg Mark Wiedmer told swissinfo.
Rearranging The Deck Chairs On The Hindenberg: President George W. Bush nominated Henry Paulson, a top Wall Street banker who has had extensive business dealings with China, to be the new US treasury secretary, in place of John Snow. The move comes amid a wholesale shakeup in the Bush administration in the face of weak approval ratings for the president. Recent surveys show that despite the robust growth of the US economy, many voters give poor marks to the administration for its economic management. Bush held a 33 percent approval rating, the lowest of any US president in 25 years, in a recent ABC News and Washington Post poll. Paulson has served as chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group since May 1999. Another former Goldman CEO, Robert Rubin, served as treasury chief under president Bill Clinton, from 1995 to 1999.
Liberal Biased Media Watch: Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products. Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items. The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items. The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
Reporting the House's passage of a bill that would permit oil exploration in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), May 26 articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Associated Press overstated the amount of oil that could be produced if the bill becomes law. The Times reported that "[b]ackers of the drilling" say "10.3 billion barrels of oil would lead to greater energy independence." The Post similarly reported that "proponents say... 10.4 billion barrels" would be added to "the nation's oil reserves." Both USA Today and the AP wrote that "federal geologists" estimate the land holds between 5.4 billion and 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, with the AP adding that the land set aside for drilling is "likely to hold about 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil." But these estimates appear to be based on the amount of "technically recoverable" oil purportedly contained in the entire ANWR region, not the mean estimate for the smaller area addressed by the House bill. Moreover, the articles do not address economic factors that could further constrain oil production in the drilling area. A 1998 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment states: "The total quantity of technically recoverable oil within the entire [ANWR] assessment area is estimated to be between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels... with a mean value of 10.4 billion barrels." But the amount of technically recoverable oil in the ANWR 1002 area "is estimated to be between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels... with a mean value of 7.7 billion barrels."
Thou Shalt Never Speak Ill Of A Fellow Republican: U.S. Sen. John McCain on Tuesday canceled an appearance for a Republican congressional candidate who has attacked his opponent for supporting McCain's immigration bill. McCain, R-Ariz., was scheduled to speak Wednesday at a breakfast fundraiser for Brian Bilbray, who is in a close runoff race with Democrat Francine Busby to fill the seat left vacant by disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham was sentenced in March to more than eight years in prison for accepting bribes. The winner of the June 6 special election will fill the remaining seven months left in Cunningham's term. Bilbray, a former congressman who worked as a lobbyist for an anti-immigration group, has repeatedly attacked Busby for supporting the immigration bill passed last week in the Senate. McCain was a principal architect of the bill.
Republican Policies Build A Strong America: The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index fell to 103.2, down from the revised 109.8 in April. Still, May's reading was better than the 100.9 expected by analysts. The decline stalled a rebound seen since November in the aftermath of last year's Gulf of Mexico hurricanes, except for a sharp dip in February when short-lived pessimism over the job market hurt consumer sentiment. "Consumer confidence, which reached a four-year high in April, lost ground in May," said Lynn Franco, director of the New York-based Conference Board Consumer Research Center, in a statement. "Apprehension about the short-term outlook for the economy, the labor market and consumers' earning potential has driven the Expectations Index down to levels not seen since the aftermath of the hurricanes last summer." Still, Franco said, consumers rate current conditions favorably. The Expectations Index, which measures consumers' outlook over the next six months, fell to 83.7 in May, from 92.3 in April. The Present Situation Index, which measures how shoppers feel now about economic conditions, slipped to 132.5 from 136.2. Economists closely monitor consumer confidence because consumer spending accounts for two thirds of all U.S. economic activity.
Your President Would Never Lie To You: Bush’s spokesman tacitly admitted that Bush lied to the press about the timing of Treasury Secretary John Snow’s departure in order not to upset the markets. Think Progress: "On May 25th, President Bush said that Treasury Secretary John Snow had not given him any indication that he was leaving soon: BUSH: Secretary of Treasury Snow? Q: Has he given you any indication he intends to leave his job any time soon? BUSH: No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job." In fact, not only had Snow indicated he was leaving, President Bush had already settled on his replacement.
Guilty Of Getting Caught: Several US Marines could face the death penalty after one of their number took horrific photographs of a massacre in Iraq on his mobile phone. The photographs, seized by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), show many victims shot at close range in the head and chest, execution-style, according to sources who have seen them. One image shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer. Both have been shot dead. Similar photographs taken by a Marines intelligence team which arrived on the scene later show that soldiers "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results", according to a US official quoted by the Los Angeles Times yesterday. The killing of more than 20 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November, first reported in the IoS two months ago, has become an international scandal after evidence from two official investigations was shown to Congressmen in the past 10 days. Democrat John Murtha, a former Marines colonel who has retained close links to the military despite his denunciation of the Iraq occupation, said Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood". Lance Corporal Andrew Wright, 20, and Lance Corporal Roel Ryan Briones, 21, both members of the Marine unit based at Camp Pendleton, photographed the scene in the western Iraqi city of Haditha with personal cameras they happened to be carrying the day of the attack. Briones later had his camera confiscated by Navy investigators, his mother said, while Wright's parents said their son was co-operating with the Navy investigation, but declined to comment further.
Wounded U.S. soldiers are being patched up and returned to battle before they are healed. The wounds in this case are to the psyche, caused by the trauma and horror that are as integral to war as guns and death. In Iraq and Afghanistan, when "suck it up" fails to snap a soldier out of depression or panic, the Army turns to drugs. "Soldiers I talked to were receiving bags of antidepressants and sleeping meds in Iraq, but not the trauma care they needed," says Steve Robinson, a Defense Department intelligence analyst during the Clinton administration. Sometimes sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers are prescribed by qualified personnel. Sometimes not. Sgt. Georg Anderas Pogany told Salon that after he broke down in Iraq, his team sergeant told him "to pull himself together," gave him two Ambien, a prescription sleep aid, and ordered him to sleep. Other soldiers self-medicate. "We were so junked out on Valium, we had no emotions anymore," Iraq vet John Crawford told "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross. He and others in his unit in Iraq became addicted to Valium. The issues around mental health and medication are exacerbated for the more than 378,000 troops who have served multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. Post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) caused by a previous tour are cropping up in later ones.
News From The Talibaptist Jihad: This is just plain sick. Many Christian activists complain, correctly, that the violence contained in the "Purpose-Driven Life" videogames could have a direct impact on American society. I guess killing people who are for a "separation of Church and state" is fair game. Will these be handed out at the next "Justice Sunday" event? Jonathan Hutson: "Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life"
The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families announced Tuesday that it had secured more than twice the number of signatures it needed to refer the abortion ban passed by the 2006 Legislature to a vote of the people this fall. At a press conference at the Downtown Holiday Inn, officials with the campaign said they had 37,846 signatures - more than double the 16,728 they needed to get. Those signatures still need to be validated. Supporters of the repeal said they had 1,200 volunteers from 138 communities circulate the petitions. None of the volunteers were paid, they said. The abortion ban passed by the 2006 Legislature "is the wrong approach to reducing unintended pregnancies," former South Dakota Attorney General Roger Tellinghuisen said Tuesday. Tellinghuisen was one of three opponents of the ban who participated in a teleconference before members of the group traveled to Pierre to file a petition to force the abortion law to a public vote. The group planned to file nearly 38,000 signatures with the secretary of state in Pierre early Tuesday afternoon. That’s about 20,000 more than required for a referral - the process by which citizens may veto actions of the Legislature.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Climate researchers at Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology separately reported new evidence yesterday supporting the idea that global warming is causing stronger hurricanes. That claim is the subject of a long-running scientific dispute. And while the new research supports one side, neither the authors nor other climate experts say it is conclusive. In one new paper, to appear in a coming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, Matthew Huber of the Purdue department of earth and atmospheric sciences and Ryan L. Sriver, a graduate student there, calculate the total damage that could be caused by storms worldwide, using data normally applied to reconciling weather forecast models with observed weather events. In the other new study, Dr. Emanuel and Michael E. Mann, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, compared records of global sea surface temperatures with those of the tropical Atlantic and said the recent strengthening of hurricanes was attributable largely to the rise in ocean surface temperature.
Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report. And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas - a chemical that traps heat similar to the way a greenhouse does -- that's considered a major contributor to global warming. Greenhouse gases have been steadily increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Poison ivy is common in woods around the country, making it a bane of hikers, campers, fighters of forest fires, even backyard gardeners. Its itchy, sometimes blistering rash is one of the most widely reported ailments to poison-control centers, with more than 350,000 reported cases a year.
The Dutch can expect wetter winters and a threatening rise in sea levels of up to 35 centimeters (14 inches) by 2050, said a report Tuesday by the national weather service. While many countries discuss global warming and greenhouse gas emissions as theories, the Dutch see climate change as a matter of survival demanding concrete action. "Sixty percent of our country lies beneath sea level, so the effect of a rise in the level of the oceans is very noticeable," said Melanie Schultz van Haegen, the secretary of transport and water, after receiving the report from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute known by its Dutch acronym KNMI. But she said there was "no acute danger" to the country's sea defenses, which are among the best in the world.
Scandals Du Jour: Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing. Reid took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority. He defended the gifts, saying that they would never influence his position on the bill and he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's number one businesses," he said. "I love the fights anyways, so it wasn't like being punished," added the senator, a former boxer and boxing judge.
Today has been more of the same early rainy-season weather, with cloudy mornings and afternoons, and bright, sunny weather in between. Fairly painless as rainy season weather goes, but it will get progressively rainier as the season progresses. And it will also get considerably rainier if we get any hurricane weather this year. Temperatures were moderate, with a low of 72 and a high of 80 today. The light rain the last couple of days has been just about perfect for bougainvillea planting that was done on Friday. Let's hope they take root and grow.
Thursday is the beginning of the official hurricane season in the United States, but that doesn't mean that much here. There is already a tropical storm swirling away in the Eastern Pacific, just south of the Pacific Mexican coast. It will probably move off to the Northwest, and won't likely either turn into much or threaten any land areas. Of course that is what was said about last year's first Pacific storm, and against all precedent, it came ashore in El Salvador and did a lot of damage and left a lot of people homeless.
The Meteorological Institute here has issued its forecast for this hurricane season and is predicting an active, but not severe hurricane season for Costa Rica. We should get the outer effects of two storms this year, but neither will hit us hard on. Costa Rica is just below the hurricane belt, and so we don't get hurricanes here but very rarely - the last to hit us directly was in 1964. So we're not holding our breath.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: Smirkey and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have agreed on a timetable for American intervention to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Bush told Olmert that the plans for US intervention are congruent with the timetable put up by the later during their discussion, a media report said on Thursday. He assured the Israeli premier that Washington would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear capability, Ynetnews reported. According to Israeli intelligence assessment, Iran will acquire the necessary nuclear technology to build a nuclear weapon within a year, Olmert said during the talks. The prime minister also expressed concern over diplomatic foot-dragging at the United Nations, where the United States has faced Russian and Chinese opposition to push for tough sanctions against Iran. Despite the US assurance, officials in Washington have cast doubt over its ability to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology, the news portal said. "I am very, very, very satisfied," Olmert told Israeli reporters after talks with Bush.
Assigning staff to build a dictatorship: An aide to Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has the job of seeing to it that new legislation would not infringe on presidential power. David Addington, Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, also is the Bush administration's chief architect on the "signing statements" procedure which the president has tacked onto more than 750 laws, the Boston Globe says. That designation says the president has the right to ignore those laws conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution. Such items as the option of bypassing a ban on torture and numerous requirements on providing certain information to Congress fall under that umbrella. Using signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all previous administrations combined.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday urged telecommunications officials to record their customers' Internet activities, CNET News.com has learned. In a private meeting with industry representatives, Gonzales, Mueller and other senior members of the Justice Department said Internet service providers should retain subscriber information and network data for two years, according to two sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity. The closed-door meeting at the Justice Department, which Gonzales had requested, according to the sources, comes as the idea of legally mandated data retention has become popular on Capitol Hill and inside the Bush administration. Supporters of the idea say it will help prosecutions of child pornography because in many cases, logs are deleted during the routine course of business. In a speech last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Gonzales said that Internet providers must retain records for a "reasonable amount of time." "I will reach out personally to the CEOs of the leading service providers and to other industry leaders," Gonzales said. "Record retention by Internet service providers consistent with the legitimate privacy rights of Americans is an issue that must be addressed."
Internet users are being urged to stand up for online freedoms by backing a new campaign launched by human rights group Amnesty International. Amnesty is celebrating 45 years of activism by highlighting governments using the net to suppress dissent. The campaign will highlight abuses of rights the net is used for, and push for the release of those jailed for speaking out online. It will also name hi-tech firms aiding governments that limit online protests. Called Irrepressible.info, the campaign will revolve around a website with the same name. While the human rights group has run separate campaigns about web repression and the jailing of net dissidents before now, Irrepressible.info will bring them all together. It aims to throw light on the many different ways that the freedom to use the net is limited by governments. For instance, said a spokesman for Amnesty, around the globe net cafes are being closed down, home PCs are being confiscated, chat in discussion forums is being watched and blogs are being censored or removed.
The FBI is focusing on at least eight different suspected bribery schemes as part of its corruption probe of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), according to a federal affidavit and sources familiar with the investigation. A key part of the FBI probe has centered around Jefferson's dealings with a Louisville high-tech company, iGate Inc., that was marketing broadband technology for the Internet and cable television in Africa. But an affidavit used in last weekend's controversial search of Jefferson's Capitol Hill office stated that authorities are looking at "at least seven other" bribery schemes in which Jefferson "sought things of value in return for his performance of official acts." Some of those schemes may be beyond the statute of limitations but could help show a pattern, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The records and materials seized during the FBI raid could shed more light on these areas, according to the affidavit. Investigators are looking at a number of companies listed under the names of Jefferson, his wife or other relatives, according to court documents. Since January, two people, including iGate's owner, Vernon L. Jackson, have pleaded guilty to bribing him. Federal authorities have alleged in court documents that Jefferson took more than $500,000 in bribes in exchange for using his official position to promote iGate's technology in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon. The FBI said it videotaped Jefferson taking a $100,000 payoff on July 30, 2005.
The debate over immigration, which has filtered into almost every corner of American life in recent months, is now sweeping through the woods, and the implications could be immense for the coming wildfire season in the West. As many as half of the roughly 5,000 private firefighters based in the Pacific Northwest and contracted by state and federal governments to fight forest fires are immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And an untold number of them are working here illegally. A recent report by the inspector general for the United States Forest Service said illegal immigrants had been fighting fires for several years. The Forest Service said in response that it would work with immigration and customs enforcement officers and the Social Security Administration to improve the process of identifying violators. At the same time, the State of Oregon, which administers private fire contracts for the Forest Service, imposed tougher rules on companies that employ firefighters, including a requirement that firefighting crew leaders have a working command of English and a formal business location where crew members can assemble.
Cronies R Us: Smirkey is leaning toward having his old friend Donald Evans take over the Treasury Department, according to media reports. The New York Times on Saturday became the latest media outlet to report that the former Commerce Department secretary and long-time Bush friend from Texas was a leading contender to succeed John Snow, who has indicated he wishes to step down by early July. The Wall Street Journal online was first to report that Evans had emerged as the front-runner. A Republican with close ties to the White House also told Reuters on Friday that he believed Evans was the leading candidate. A barrage of media stories in the past two days have suggested that Snow may leave within a month and people with close ties to the administration have said they believe the White House is moving close to a decision on his successor. Two Republicans who speak regularly with the White House told Reuters that the administration had largely settled on a candidate but was not yet ready to make an announcement. Evans traveled with Bush on his trip to West Point, New York, on Saturday to address graduates at the U.S. Military Academy.
Smirkey has eaten a rare serving of humble pie: Junior admitted on Thursday that his bellicose "bring 'em on" taunt to Iraqi insurgents was a big mistake, as he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair carefully avoided setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq. Meeting at a time when a new Iraqi unity government offers the promise of a way out of an unpopular war that has damaged their standings at home, Bush and Blair were remarkably reflective on some of the grievous mistakes that critics say has intensified anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. At a joint news conference with Blair, after three years of war that has killed more than 2,400 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, Bush was asked what mistake he most regretted. The Texan said that he regretted saying "bring 'em on" when responding in July 2003 to a question about the Iraqi insurgency. On Thursday, Bush said the remark was "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people." "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. "Wanted, dead or alive"; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," he said.
Lawyers for AT&T accidentally released sensitive information while defending a lawsuit that accuses the company of facilitating a government wiretapping program. AT&T's attorneys this week filed a 25-page legal brief striped with thick black lines that were intended to obscure portions of three pages and render them unreadable (click here for PDF). But the obscured text nevertheless can be copied and pasted inside some PDF readers, including Preview under Apple Computer's OS X and the xpdf utility used with X11. The deleted portions of the legal brief seek to offer benign reasons why AT&T would allegedly have a secret room at its downtown San Francisco switching center that would be designed to monitor Internet and telephone traffic. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class-action lawsuit in January, alleges that the room is used by an unlawful National Security Agency surveillance program. "AT&T notes that the facts recited by plaintiffs are entirely consistent with any number of legitimate Internet monitoring systems, such as those used to detect viruses and stop hackers," the redacted pages say. Another section says: "Although the plaintiffs ominously refer to the equipment as the 'Surveillance Configuration,' the same physical equipment could be utilized exclusively for other surveillance in full compliance with" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The redacted portions of AT&T's court filing are not classified, and no information relating to actual operations of an NSA surveillance program was disclosed.
With hundreds of computerized sensors and components, today's average car has more computing power than the Apollo 11 lunar module that took Neil Armstrong to the moon. But as technology advances, those without specialized knowledge and tools are finding automobiles harder to repair. The result, according to consumer advocates, is that motor vehicle owners must increasingly rely on expensive dealerships to unlock manufacturer security codes and to identify and repair problems. A bill currently under consideration in Congress would establish consumers' prerogative to choose who repairs their vehicles by requiring auto manufacturers to release all of the information needed to diagnose and fix problems. The Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act would require automakers to provide the same information to the public that they grant to authorized dealers. Exceptions made to protect a company's "intellectual property" related to the design and manufacture of auto parts. The Act would also enjoin the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish regulations to govern manufacturers' to provision of the required information.
The deaths of five Kentucky mineworkers early last Saturday brought the total number of coal miners killed this year to 31 - the highest number since 2001 - and sparked renewed calls for fixes to the nation's mine-safety programs. In released statements and comments to the media, mine safety officials, the United Mine Workers, and the National Mining Association all called on lawmakers to push through legislation aimed at making the notoriously dangerous job safer. Initial reports show that three of the five men suffocated to death and the lone escapee was using the same model air pack that reportedly failed the Sago mineworkers killed at the start of the year, the Associated Press reported. According to Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) records, the Harlan County, Kentucky mine is operated by Kentucky Darby LLC and has been cited at least 264 times for over $27,000 since 2001, a number and amount characterized by the MSHA as normal, Knight-Ridder reported.
According to a county-by-county study published in Social Science Quarterly last week, the world’s largest retailer is "unequivocally" tied to rising family poverty rates during the 1990s. The study provides the first the first-ever peer-reviewed assessment of what critics have termed "The Wal-Mart Effect" may very well be real. About 20,000 families fell into poverty as Wal-Mart expanded between 1987 and 1998, the study authors wrote, and counties with a higher concentration of Wal-Mart stores saw faster rates of poverty growth. The group also found nearly double the rate of increased food-stamp program enrollments in counties with more Wal-Mart stores. In addition, Wal-Mart’s market pressure may do more than just force smaller stores to close; it could drive better-educated and more leadership-savvy people to flee suburban and rural areas for better opportunities in cities, the study said. "By displacing the local class of entrepreneurs, the Wal-Mart chain also destroys local leadership capacity," the study authors wrote.
The town of Hercules, California, has upscale aspirations and its vision of the good life rules out a Wal-Mart store. Similarly, three Maine towns are considering a "box-free" zone to prevent Wal-Mart from opening in an area of coastal New England known for its colonial charm, an idea mirroring wealthy and quaint Nantucket's recent ban on chain stores. The city council of the mixed-race bedroom community of 23,000 east of San Francisco voted this week to invoke eminent domain to block Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) from building a 99,000 square foot (9,200 sq meter) store near the town's waterfront. The area is the centerpiece of Hercules' redevelopment effort, which aims to create a destination on par with high-end Sausalito across the bay. That would complement Hercules' plan to market itself as an "anti-suburb" with new neighborhoods appealing to home buyers nostalgic for old-fashioned residential areas within cities. The unusual move stunned California's big-box retailers, who usually benefit from eminent domain, which allows government to take private property for its use or for use by third parties if their projects would benefit the public. "To use eminent domain is such an abuse of the process," said Rex Hime, president of the California Business Properties Association, which represents large retailers.
Why I Am Embarrassed To Present My Passport: A group of US volunteers that has been patrolling the frontier with Mexico to stop illegal immigrants has started building a fence along the border. The Minutemen group plans to erect a combination of barbed wire, razor wire and steel barriers along a 10-mile (16km) stretch of privately-owned land. Hundreds of volunteers gathered in Arizona for an inauguration ceremony. The Minutemen have long campaigned for a secure fence along the border. The group has now begun building its fence at the site where it conducted its first patrols in November 2002. "Many have talked of building a secure fence between Mexico and the United States," the group said on its website, adding that it is now "taking action" and "doing the job the federal government will not do." A spokeswoman for the group told the Associated Press news agency it would take three weeks to build the fence, costing an estimated $100,000. She said the group had already raised $380,000 to build more fences.
On the May 24 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, just days after unveiling his "Nitwit of the Week" award, host John Gibson asserted that there was no reason why Mexico should not be able to "support [its] own people" as well as Saudi Arabia since "Mexico is the second ... largest exporter of oil to the United States, outranking even Saudi Arabia." But Gibson's reasoning is contradicted by several inconvenient facts. Gibson added: "[H]ave you noticed how Saudis live? Why can't Mexicans live like that if you've got so much oil?" But Gibson's reasoning is contradicted by several facts. First, oil is a global commodity that can be sold to any country; second, Saudi Arabia's proved oil reserves are more than 20 times greater than those of Mexico, and, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, Mexico's estimated 2005 oil revenue was less than six times that of Saudi Arabia. Third, Mexico has a population nearly four times that of Saudi Arabia, meaning that benefits it receives from oil revenue must be dispersed among a significantly larger population. Attempting to assess blame for illegal immigration during his "My Word" segment, Gibson asserted that "[t]he guy most responsible for us having this problem [is] Vicente Fox, el presidente of Mexico." Mexico's proved oil reserves amount to approximately 13 billion barrels as opposed to Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels. As the EIA also noted, Saudi Arabia's estimated 2005 oil revenue rose to around $153 billion while Mexico's amounted to roughly $24 billion. Moreover, while Mexico's gross national product (GNP) is nearly three times that of Saudi Arabia when factoring purchasing power parity (a currency conversion statistic), Mexico's population is well over 100 million compared with Saudi Arabia's 27 million. As a result, Saudi Arabia's per capita GDP -- $12,900 -- is slightly higher than Mexico's -- $10,100.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday bluntly accused the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia of trying to stir up military rebellion against his leftist ally Bolivian President Evo Morales. "The (U.S.) embassy in Bolivia is already whispering in the ears of the Bolivian military to turn them against the government of Evo Morales," said Chavez, wearing a traditional red poncho and bead necklace, at the sacred pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku high in Bolivia's Andean plateau. "There's a plan against Bolivia, and the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia is the head of this plan," he said during his weekly Venezuelan television show, broadcast from Tiwanaku in front of an audience of Bolivian indigenous leaders.
Liberal Biased Media Watch: In his Washington Times column, Donald Lambro repeated the oft-debunked claim that Democrats received money from Jack Abramoff and used months-old polling data to claim that a "plurality" of Americans view congressional ethics scandals as affecting both Democrats and Republicans equally. In fact, more recent polling indicates that the public views ethics scandals as more of a Republican problem than a bipartisan issue. Lambro cited a February 9 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and a March 10-13 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll to back up his claim that a "plurality" of Americans see corruption as bipartisan. However, Lambro ignored a more recent CBS News/New York Times poll, conducted May 4-8, that asked respondents: "Do you think the Republicans in Congress are more financially corrupt, or are the Democrats in Congress more financially corrupt?" According to the poll, 40 percent of respondents considered Republicans more corrupt (an eight-point increase from April), while 30 percent considered both parties equally corrupt (a seven-point decrease). Fifteen percent found Democrats more corrupt -- an increase of 2 percent since April.
The over-hyped false alarm of a construction drill that caused a mass panic over rumors of gunshots in the Rayburn Building on Friday and the way in which it was reported by the servile media was a means of indoctrinating Americans to the procedure of martial law lock down of a major city. Following reports of gunfire in the Rayburn Building, House members were ordered to stay inside and shut all the doors. Parts of the Capitol complex, including the Capitol itself, were locked down during the height of the search. Police went door to door inside the buildings as an FBI SWAT team ordered House members to put their hands on their heads and frog-marched them out of a committee room and through a metal detector. Two women reported a man with a gun inside a Rayburn gym as another panicked and had to be taken to hospital. The gunman turned out to be a plain clothed police officer and the source of the 'gunfire' was an air hammer or a pneumatic drill being used in construction work on nearby elevator. The construction drill created the perfect mandate for another type of drill, that of authoritarian martial law city shutdown. The opportunity to parade SWAT teams, sniffer dogs, police with assault weapons and armed FBI tactical units wearing flak jackets did not go to waste.Americans were told in no uncertain terms that in times of crisis, the men in black uniforms enforcing mandatory relocation and quarantines were here to help. Fox News was salivating over the non-incident to the same degree that they rubbed their hands over the Pentagon tape flop. After two and a half hours of continual coverage and with it becoming blindingly obvious that there was no shooting incident, Fox told its viewers that they were seeing "our government work and work the way it is supposed to do," despite the fact that the lurking enemy to which our omnipotent government was responding was nothing more than a work tool.
Republicans Don't Tolerate Spying Against America: The Bush administration promoted David Satterfield, an alleged informant for a former AIPAC lobbyist facing trial in a classified information case. The State Department last week announced Satterfield's promotion to senior adviser on Iraq to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. Satterfield was promoted from deputy ambassador to Baghdad. Satterfield is cited in the indictment against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy director, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, as one of three government officials who shared information with Rosen. Satterfield is described as meeting with Rosen in 2002, when Satterfield was second in command at the State Department's Near East desk. Prosecutors refuse to explain why Satterfield escaped prosecution for leaking information.
Republicans Know What Really Matters: Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) tried to argue that banning flag-burning and same-sex marriage are two of the nation's most pressing priorities, which is why he put them on the Senate agenda for June: HOST: "Are gay marriage and flag burning the most important issues the Senate can be addressing in June of 2006?" FRIST:"When you look at that flag and you tell me that right now people in this country are saying it’s okay to desecrate that flag and to burn it and to not pay respect to it, is that important to our values as a people when we’ve got 130,000 people fighting for our freedom and liberty today? That is important. It may not be important here in Washington where people say, well, it’s political posturing and all, but it’s important to the heart and soul of the American people. - Why marriage today? Marriage is for our society that union between a man and a woman, is the cornerstone of our society. It is under attack today."
Republican Policies Benefit the American People: As you're trying to figure out a way to pay down your credit card debt and make the payments on your second and third mortgages, try to imagine the dilemma of having so much cash in your bank account that you didn't know what to do with it. This is of course a pipe dream for the average American, but is now reality for the country's biggest corporations. The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index - which excludes financial, transportation and utility companies - have a staggering $643 billion in cash and equivalents. Wall Street analysts remain unsure how companies will spend this record hoard. Even an unprecedented $500 billion of stock buybacks over the past six quarters have failed to stop companies from building lofty amounts of cash on hand. "We're in a time that is out of whack with all historical numbers," said Howard Silverblatt, equity market analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People are demanding why corporations need so much cash, [and want to know] what are they going to do with it. In spite of stock buybacks, dividends and acquisitions, this cash is still going to take a while to spend." Companies began propping up their reserves through 16 straight quarters of double-digit profit growth. The money tucked away in corporate coffers has now gotten to the point where it's having a major impact on quarterly earnings, with Standard and Poor's reporting that income earned on the interest rose 37.9 per cent in 2005 and is expected to increase another 64 per cent this year.
Republicans Believe In Honesty And Truthtelling: John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia." He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares. "They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat." Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism. But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly - because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case. The Swift boat group continues to spend money on Washington consultants, according to public records, and last fall it gave $100,000 to a group that promptly sued Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, for allegedly interfering with the release of a film that was critical of him. Some of the principals behind the Swift boat group continue to press their claims. John O'Neill, the co-author of the group's best-selling manifesto, "Unfit for Command," criticizes Mr. Kerry on television talk shows and solicits money for conservative causes and candidates. In a South Carolina newspaper, William Schachte recently reprised his allegation that he was aboard the small skimmer where Mr. Kerry received the injury that led to his first Purple Heart, and that Mr. Kerry actually wounded himself. Swift boat message boards and anti-Kerry Web sites still boil with accusations that Mr. Kerry fabricated the military reports that led to his military decorations.
Harvard University - Down with meritocracy, up with plutocracy: Blake Gottesman, aka "Peanut," Smirkey's personal aide, is stepping down in August to attend Harvard Business School, despite the fact that he never finished college - a requirement for HBS. Did the president, who purports to be against affirmative action, pull some strings at his alma mater?
Making Afghanistan Safe For Freedom And Liberty: Thousands marched angrily through Kabul on Monday after security forces opened fire on protesters, killing at least seven Afghans and wounding 40 in clashes sparked by a fatal traffic accident involving a U.S. military truck. The truck, part of a U.S. convoy, had careened out of control and crashed into a dozen vehicles, killing at least one person and injuring six. A furious crowd then hurled stones and smashed windows of the convoy vehicles, according to a U.S. military statement. One of the besieged U.S. vehicles appeared to fire in the air, according to the statement. Afghan police also opened fire when they came to the assistance of the U.S. troops, and it was unclear who was responsible for shooting into the angry crowd. Some eyewitnesses blamed the U.S. troops, others blamed the police and some blamed both. "There are indications that at least one coalition military vehicle fired warning shots over the crowd," a U.S. military statement said.
Making Iraq Safe For Freedom And Liberty: The coach of Iraq's tennis team and two players were shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday, said Iraqi Olympic officials. Coach Hussein Ahmed Rashid and players Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda were killed in the al-Saidiya district of the capital. Witnesses said the three were dressed in shorts and were killed days after militants issued a warning forbidding the wearing of shorts. The coach was murdered along with two of his players, outside his home in the capital's southern al-Saidiyah neighborhood on Thursday, Olympic Committee chairperson Amr Jabar told Agence France-Presse. A witness, who asked not to be named, said the shorts-clad tennis players had just left some laundry at the cleaners, when gunmen stopped their car and asked them to step out of the vehicle. When two did so they were shot in the head. The third was then dragged from the car, thrown on the bodies of his teammates, and shot as he lay on the ground. The gunmen then kicked the corpses before stealing the car and making their escape, the witness said. He added that fundamentalists had been distributing leaflets recently warning residents of the area not to wear shorts.
The al-Qaeda organization has selected Abdulhadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi national from northern Iraq, as the new commander of its global operations. The appointment comes following the seizure of Abu Faraj al-Libi by Pakistani forces in May. Al-Qaeda has a large following in Iraq particularly among Sunni Muslims. It operates through different organizations under various nomenclatures. But it first surfaced among Iraqi Kurds in the north where it operated from the inaccessible mountains east of Sulaimaniya and close to the borders with Iran. Known then as Ansar al-Islam, the militant group had destabilized most of the Kurdish north and was planning to control Sulaimaniya, the second largest Kurdish city. Fearing the onslaught, Kurdish leaders sought military assistance from their tormentor former leader Saddam Hussein who was reported to have supplied them with arms and men to contain the group. But the Ansar group expanded operations across Iraq following Saddam Hussein’s downfall and the occupation of Iraq by U.S. troops. The group has changed its name into Ansar al-Sunna and is currently, with other rebel groups, spearheading anti-U.S. operations in the country and the campaign of bombings directed against government troops and installations. The new Iraqi-born al-Qaeda leader is married and with children and is believed to be in his forties. His wife is said to accompany him during his travels across the country.
Weather has been classic early rainy season. Rain in the early morning, clearing by midday, followed by clouding in the early afternoon and rain by nightfall. The one exception to this has been that it has been starkly clear tonight - as I write this a bit after nine, it is a brilliantly clear night, with stars shining through the rainy season haze. This has kept the temperatures down, with an overnight low of 71 and a high today of only 76. With my dieting keeping my metabolism at half speed, it seems like 76 is downright chilly to me. I have been wearing a heavy shirt all day.
The rain has washed a lot of the clay left behind in the street by the desagua (drainage ditch) cleaning, and has washed it into the pond, much as I had expected would happen. The street is still quite muddy, so there is a lot more that is going to end up in there before the street is finally clean. It will probably be a month before that happens, I suspect. The recent rains have raised the water level in the pond to the outlet level, so it is starting to drain again. But there have not been enough rains yet to start the springs along the eastern edge of my property line - it is those springs that provide much of the water for that pond.
My health has continued to mend. I am getting out and doing more all the time. When the gardener was here yesterday, we cut some bougainvillea branches and replaced some of the cuttings along the fence that didn't take root and get established. I went out there and helped with that a bit. The gardener also pitched right in and cleaned up some of the mess left behind by the road grader on Thursday at the new runout. He has got it all smoothed out and ready for the grass to grow in and make a nice, attractive spot there at the end of the pond. All and all, I am quite happy with how it is going to look once the grass grows back in.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: Memorial Day carries special significance this year as U.S. soldiers continue to fight in Iraq. Foreign Policy magazine spoke to Jon Soltz of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America political action committee, which supports veterans running for U.S. Congress: FP: What are you hearing from soldiers in Iraq? JS: The best data are a recent Zogby poll, which showed that 75 percent of soldiers in Iraq don’t know of a clear strategy for victory there. I think tactically the soldiers have performed brilliantly - from adapting to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to dealing with sheiks - and trying to do a mission they haven't trained for in the last 25 to 30 years. Strategically, there are tremendous issues. The amount of military force required in Iraq has broken the Army, and specifically the National Guard and Reserves. FP: How would you rate the administration's policies relating to veterans? JS: The veteran who walks into the Department for Veterans Affairs (VA) today is drastically worse off than he or she was four or five years ago. They pay more for their prescription drugs. There is now a fee for them to enroll into the system. Iraq war veterans put a tremendous demand on the VA, specifically because we’ve deployed so many members of the Guard and Reserves. There's also a problem with diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A lot of people with PTSD get diagnosed with "adjustment disorder" primarily because there's not enough money in the VA budget to provide these heroes with the disability payments they should be given. FP: Why are so many Iraq war veterans in debt? JS: If you're making $80,000 a year in the civilian world and then you get called up and make $25,000 or $30,000 fighting in Iraq, you take a tremendous hit. There is some legislation supported by Sen. Evan Bayh to end the "patriot penalty." It would help families make up that difference. There's also the problem of insurance scams on military bases. [Insurance salespeople] try to get 19- or 20-year-old kids - who don't know a lot about finance - to buy life insurance and mutual funds that charge high fees. When soldiers come home, many of them have a lot of money from their deployment because they had nothing to spend it on, and they end up being targeted by loan sharks.
A security consultant working with a major telecommunications carrier has told Seymore Hersh that his client set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center. This link provided direct access to the carrier's network core-the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. "What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records," the consultant said. "They're providing total access to all the data." "This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order," a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration's goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. "The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence," the former official said. The N.S.A. also programmed computers to map the connections between telephone numbers in the United States and suspect numbers abroad, sometimes focussing on a geographic area, rather than on a specific person-for example, a region of Pakistan. Such calls often triggered a process, known as "chaining," in which subsequent calls to and from the American number were monitored and linked. The way it worked, one high-level Bush Administration intelligence official told me, was for the agency "to take the first number out to two, three, or more levels of separation, and see if one of them comes back"-if, say, someone down the chain was also calling the original, suspect number. As the chain grew longer, more and more Americans inevitably were drawn in.FISA requires the government to get a warrant from a special court if it wants to eavesdrop on calls made or received by Americans. (It is generally legal for the government to wiretap a call if it is purely foreign.) The legal implications of chaining are less clear. Two people who worked on the N.S.A. call-tracking program told me they believed that, in its early stages, it did not violate the law. "We were not listening to an individual's conversation," a defense contractor said. "We were gathering data on the incidence of calls made to and from his phone by people associated with him and others." Similarly, the Administration intelligence official said that no warrant was needed, because "there's no personal identifier involved, other than the metadata from a call being placed."
Three chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union sued AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. in state court Friday to block the telecommunications companies from providing phone records to the federal government. Two complaints filed in San Francisco Superior Court claim the companies violated state law by helping the National Security Agency assemble the largest database in the world. The complaints name 17 individuals as plaintiffs, including a former congressman, a nationally syndicated journalist and a psychiatrist. The allegations, which a spokesman from Verizon denied, are based on a May 11 article from USA Today, which said AT&T, Verizon and other companies provided the NSA with records showing the calling patterns of millions of phone customers in the United States. Data included phone numbers of both parties, call time, date and length of call. "The fact of making the call needs to remain private," said ACLU lawyer Ann Brick. Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni said the suit against his company was meritless. He declined to elaborate. In a written statement, Verizon denied news reports that it entered into an agreement with the NSA to provide data from its customers' domestic calls. AT&T issued a statement that said it does not provide caller records to law enforcement officials or government agencies without "legal authorization."
In a move more befitting, perhaps, the presidential Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires circa 1982, and not the Rose City of Portland circa 2006, the FBI has been accused by Portland Mayor Tom Potter of "trying to place an informant inside the offices of Portland's elected officials and employees, in order to inform on City Council and others." Since the end of the Age of Aquarius, when thousands of Californians began to migrate north to Oregon, Portland has never been particularly welcoming to the executive branch of the federal government - especially when said branch is in Republican control. Portland's two Representatives in Congress are Democrats, and Portland's county, Multnomah, voted for John Kerry over Bush in 2004 by nearly a 3-to-1 ratio. "Portlanders seem proud of their bluer-than-blue reputation, of the bumper stickers that proclaim 'Keep Portland Weird.' So maybe it was predictable that the city mocked as Little Beirut by conservatives is considering a symbolic declaration of independence." And tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, with no Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain to worship, Portland has made its commitment to progressive politics the city's calling card. Moreover, in April 2005, the City Council voted, along with the mayor - and with overwhelming support from the citizenry - to withdraw Portland's participation in the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force project. By state law, police officers in Oregon are barred from investigating citizens based solely on their political, religious or social leanings, and Portlanders will be quick to point out that it was the Feds, and not local cops, who erroneously arrested local attorney Brandon Mayfield in connection to the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in May 2004. After the bogus fingerprint evidence used to arrest him fell through, the only credible "reason" behind the police action turned out to be Mayfield's religion, which happened to be Islam. "In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing," wrote Mayor Potter in an open letter to the city, "I believe the FBI's recent actions smack of 'Big Brother.' Spying on local government without justification or cause is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you, either."
A string of recent court filings in the CIA leak case provide new details of Vice President Cheney's role at the center of an administration effort to rebut an outspoken critic of the White House's rationale for the Iraq war in the summer of 2003. They include his repeated discussions of the issue with his top aide and his part in a counteroffensive that resulted in the unmasking of a CIA officer. Cheney -- who helped devise the White House argument that Iraq had an extensive program to build weapons of mass destruction before the war -- is described in the filings as upset by Wilson's criticism, which the vice president saw as a direct assault on his credibility. Fitzgerald does not describe Cheney's actions as illegal or even improper. But the filings make it clear that Cheney had a larger role in the effort to rebut Wilson than was previously known and that his actions could put him in an uncomfortable place: on the witness stand as a sitting vice president.
Of all the symbols and faiths recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Wicca and its emblem - a circle around a five-pointed star - are not among them. The department is reviewing a request to include the symbol, but when a decision will come is unclear. That has angered many. The state's top veterans official, Tim Tetz, said he was "diligently pursuing" the matter with Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. "Sergeant Stewart and his family deserve recognition for their contributions to our country," said Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services. "It's unfortunate the process is taking so long, but I am certain Sgt. Patrick will ultimately receive his marker with the Wiccan symbol," he said Thursday.
A Zogby Interactive poll finds that U.S. voters are more distrustful than ever of political and corporate leaders. Only 3 percent believe Congress is trustworthy; 7 percent think business leaders are; 24 percent say President George W. Bush can be trusted; and 29 percent trust the courts. The poll was commissioned by Jim Lichtman, an ethics specialist whose latest book is "What Do You Stand For?" Three out of four respondents said they trust politicians less than they did five years ago. Seventy-five percent of those polled said their friends, neighbors and co-workers are trustworthy, and an overwhelming majority -- 97 percent -- described themselves as trustworthy.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he has leg-pressed 2,000 pounds, but some say he'd be in a pretty tough spot if he tried. The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds." According to the CBN Web site, Robertson worked his way up to lifting a ton with the help of his physician, who is not named. The posting does not say when the lift occurred, but a CBN spokeswoman released photos to The Associated Press that she said showed Robertson lifting 2,000 pounds in 2003, when Robertson was 73. He is now 76. The Web posting said two men loaded the leg-press machine with 2,000 pounds "and then let it down on Mr. Robertson, who pushed it up one rep and let it go back down again." The Web site said several people witnessed the event, and shows video of Robertson leg-pressing what appears to be 1,000 pounds. Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less. "Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time?" Travis asked. Andy Zucker, a strength-training coach at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said leg presses of more than 1,000 pounds represent "a Herculean effort, and 2,000 pounds is a whole other story."
If it reaches his desk, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto legislation to require public school instructional materials to contain discussions about the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, a spokesman said Thursday. The statement from the governor, who rarely takes positions on bills until they pass the Legislature, dooms the measure which also prohibits teaching or textbooks that reflect adversely on people because of their sexual orientation or identity. "The issue for the governor is he is not supportive of the Legislature micromanaging curriculum," said Adam Mendelsohn, the GOP governor's communications director. "California has an 18-member standards board that is a national model for looking at curriculum," Mendelsohn said. "The governor just believes it's not the Legislature's job to determine curriculum." Backers of the bill vowed to continue pushing it through the Legislature. The measure cleared the 40-member Senate two weeks ago on a 22-15 vote after a sometimes emotional debate.
"What happened to the Texas swagger?" asks Elisabeth Bumiller in a White House Memo article slated for the front page of Saturday's edition of The New York Times. "Maybe it went the way of his poll numbers," Bumiller writes. "Maybe this is a newly reflective President Bush. Or maybe the first lady had her say." "Whatever the case, when Bush said at a news conference on Thursday night that he regretted some personal mistakes, like declaring "bring 'em on" in 2003, he seemed a little like the chastened husband who finally admitted he had done something wrong," writes Bumiller. "Whether it worked or not depends on whom you ask." Laura Bush has had to "rein" in her husband in the past, Bumiller notes. "Bush has defended his Texas talk as the kind of plain-spoken language that Americans like to hear, but Laura Bush, for one, has at times tried to rein him in," writes Bumiller. "In a widely reported comment at the time, Laura Bush sidled up to her husband after he said he wanted bin Laden 'dead or alive' and asked, 'Bushie, are you gonna git 'im?'"
House leaders conceded Friday that FBI agents with a court-issued warrant can legally search a congressman's office, but they said they want procedures established after agents with a court warrant took over a lawmaker's office last week. "I want to know exactly what would happen if there is a similar sort of thing" in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Friday, shortly after summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to his office. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., concurred: "I am confident that in the next 45 days, the lawyers will figure out how to do it right." Gonzales was similarly optimistic. "We've been working hard already and we'll continue to do so pursuant to the president's order," he told The Associated Press. In an editorial page article in USA Today on Friday, Hastert said he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have directed House lawyers "to develop reasonable protocols and procedures that will make it possible for the FBI to go into congressional offices to constitutionally execute a search warrant." Until last Saturday night, no such warrant had ever been used to search a lawmaker's office in the 219-year history of the Congress. Without advance notice, FBI agents then arrived at a House building to conduct an overnight search at the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., an eight-term lawmaker accused of bribery.
House Minority Leader (D-CA) is facing a minor insurrection from members of the Black Caucus after asking Representative William Jefferson (D-LA) to step down from his post on the Ways and Means Committee, according to today's Roll Call. But hours after Pelosi sent her letter to Jefferson on Wednesday, a members-only CBC lunch meeting produced an emotional consensus that Pelosi had overreached, since Jefferson has not been charged with any crimes. One after another, CBC members rallied behind their colleague, arguing that he was being singled out. Some noted that another Democrat recently entangled in an ethics controversy, Rep. Alan Mollohan (W.Va.), was forced to step aside as the ranking member of the ethics committee but permitted to keep his coveted Appropriations Committee perch. "There’s no precedent for doing this to someone who has not been indicted," Rep. Al Wynn (Md.) said afterward. Said Clyburn, also a CBC member: "I would say that the people who spoke were very vehement in their opposition."
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who at times seemed out of sync with President Bush, has informed the White House that he will resign in the coming days after three years as the nation's chief economic officer, a source close to Snow said yesterday. Snow asked the White House to announce his resignation in early June and said he plans to stay in the job no later than July 3 while a replacement is sought, the source said. The secretary's decision was intended to bring finality to a process that has played out awkwardly in public over months as Snow's job security has been a regular source of Washington speculation.
As the Pentagon faces an ever-growing manpower shortage, both officers and grunts, it continues to discharge some of its best and brightest simply for being who they are: A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, said 726 service members were discharged under the policy during the 2005 budget year that ended last Sept. 30. That compares with 653 discharges the year before. She released the figures after a gay rights advocacy group said it had obtained the statistics on its own. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which has represented military members who were forced out for being openly gay, says the Pentagon's policy deprives the military of qualified and experienced personnel in at a time when the Army and Marine Corps have struggled to meet their recruiting goals. As you see above, SLDN already had the figures, so the Pentagon's hand was forced on this one. It really is a position the government cannot defend with any logic at this point. (SLDN): "The rate of discharge has remained relatively consistent each year since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and represents a 40% decrease compared with years prior to the attacks. A total of 742 military personnel were discharged under the 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' ban on openly gay service members, up from 668 discharges among the services in FY2004." The San Antonio Express-News recently reported that the armed forces are facing a "major" officer shortage, including falling short by 2,500 captains and majors in the Army this year, with that number increasing to 3,300 in 2007. In an attempt to attract new recruits and fill the gap, Pentagon leaders have recently relaxed enlistment standards regarding age, physical fitness, education and criminal records. The discharge of lesbian and gay Americans, however, continues.
Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a career military intelligence officer who has overseen some of the government's most secret and controversial surveillance programs, was confirmed by the Senate yesterday to head the CIA as it tries to regain some of its lost luster. Senators voted 78 to 15 to confirm Hayden to succeed Porter J. Goss, who steps down today after 18 stormy months.
Why I Am Embarrassed To Present My Passport: Venezuelan politicians have complained about a forthcoming "shoot-em-up" computer game that simulates an invasion of the South American nation. In production by Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios, Mercenaries 2: World In Flames is based around the overthrow of an imaginary Venezuelan "tyrant". Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has long accused the US of planning to invade, something Washington denies. His supporters say the game aims to drum up support for a real invasion. Pandemic has insisted that the title - due to be released next year - is solely about entertainment. "Pandemic has no ties to the US government," Greg Richardson, the firm's vice president of commercial operations, told the Associated Press. "Pandemic Studios is a private company, focusing solely on the development of interactive entertainment." Yet Pandemic's publicist Chris Norris said its designers "always want to have a rip from the headlines." He added: "Although a conflict doesn't necessarily have to be happening, it's realistic enough to believe that it could eventually happen." However, on its website Pandemic lists a game called "Full Spectrum Warrior / Army Training", which it describes as a "squad-level, dismounted, light infantry training simulator created for use by the US Army".
As the United States prepares a team of 30 to defend its record on torture before a U.N. committee, Amnesty International has made public a report blasting the United States for failing to take appropriate steps to eradicate use of torture at U.S. detention sites around the world. U.S. compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment will be the topic of May 5 and 8 U.N. hearings in Geneva. The United States last appeared before the Committee Against Torture in May, 2000. Amnesty claims that practices criticized by the Committee six years ago -- such as the use of electro-shock weapons and excessively harsh conditions in "super-maximum" security prisons -- have been used and exported by U.S. forces abroad. The Amnesty report (Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq) reviews several cases where U.S. detainees held in Afghanistan and Iraq have died as a result of torture. The group also lambasts U.S. use of electro-shock weapons, inhuman and degrading conditions of isolation in "super-max" security prisons and abuses against women in the prison system -- including sexual abuse by male guards, shackling while pregnant and even in labor.
Many illegal immigrants no longer hike. They bike. The 110-degree heat and rough terrain of the Arizona desert would exhaust the fittest of cyclists, but these migrants are often middle-aged housewives or farmers, riding battered second-hand bikes for 30 or 40 miles. The bikes also carry their supplies and belongings, so if rocks or cactus spines shred the tires, they get off and push. The prize? A chance at a low-wage job. "We've seen them going by on bicycles right by our offices ... in whole groups," said Mario Lopez, an agent for Mexico's Grupo Beta migrant aid agency, whose offices sit just a few hundred yards from the border. "They're usually old bikes because they're going to abandon them anyway." "They tie their water and their possessions on top of the bikes, and just push them till the rims are square," said Organ Pipe Cactus National Park ranger Viv Sartori.
Liberal-Biased Media Watch: On the May 24 edition of his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck appeared to question studies showing that global temperatures increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius during the 20th century by falsely claiming that annual temperatures in the United States have remained "pretty much flat." Beck claimed on the May 24 program that "if you look, the Earth has gotten warmer now by 0.6 degrees Celsius," but the rise in surface temperatures "is much higher in other parts of the world" than it has been in the United States, which is "one of the more accurate record keepers in the world." But several studies show comparable temperature changes in the United States and the world as a whole. A report released by the United States Global Change Program in 2000 documented a temperature change of 0.6 degrees Celsius in the United States in the 20th century, the same increase Beck cited as the global temperature change. The study added that "the coastal Northeast, the upper Midwest, the Southwest, and parts of Alaska have experienced increases in the annual average temperature approaching 4°F (2°C) in the 20th Century" and that "average warming in the US is projected to be somewhat greater than for the world as a whole over the 21st century."
In their reporting on the May 25 conviction of former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay and former president Jeffrey Skilling on fraud and conspiracy charges, the network news programs - ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC's Nightly News, and PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - all failed to mention the ties between the fallen corporation and President Bush. Further, the Los Angeles Times ran six separate articles on the Enron verdicts on May 26, but not a single one noted Bush's connection to Enron and, in particular, his close personal and political ties to Lay. Bush's efforts in recent years to distance himself from Lay -- whom he nicknamed "Kenny Boy" -- have been widely reported. However, the release in 2002 of numerous letters exchanged between the two during Bush's tenure as Texas governor provided concrete evidence of their "chummy" relationship.
Your Tax Dollars At Work: As rising energy costs squeeze communities from coast to coast, in rural America, high fuel prices top off a host of burdens weighing down family farms. But a Senate proposal to funnel about $1.5 billion in "energy assistance" to farms encapsulates what some say is a broken system of federal handouts, which wastes cash on agricultural behemoths while ignoring deeper problems looming over the country's farmlands. The energy assistance included in the Senate Appropriations Committee's proposed emergency funding legislation would boost by 30 percent the "fixed" direct subsidies that certain farms are already due to receive under existing federal policies. The measure is part of a $3.9 billion spending package to help farmers recover from natural disasters. The government projects that farmers' fuel and oil costs will rise by more than 12 percent this year, subsequently driving up the overall price of production, transportation, and fuel-based fertilizers. A typical farmer might spend about $20 per planted acre just on fuel, oil and electricity. "When diesel fuel and fertilizer costs skyrocket like they have in the last few months, people like the idea of supporting those farmers," said John Crabtree, with the agriculture-policy think tank Center for Rural Affairs. "But by doing it this way, ultimately, you just sort of undermine them - short-term help that ends up costing them in the long term."
There's a war being waged out West with poison, aerial guns and traps. The enemy: America's wildlife. Although the conflict has raged since ranchers first staked out land, constructed fences and declared native wildlife a nuisance, the campaign to exterminate native predators from ranching areas has increased both in scale and cost, with taxpayers footing part of the bill. Of the nearly $100 million the federal government spent on all "predator control" in 2005, $40 million was earmarked for safeguarding agriculture; $15 million of that went to specifically protect livestock from predators by hunting them from aircraft, poisoning them or slaying them in other ways. Farmers and ranchers have spent almost $200 million more on non-lethal predator controls. But while taxpayers shell out money for predator control, US Department of Agriculture records show that in 2005, coyotes, wolves, bears and other non-human predators accounted for the deaths of only 190,000, or about one-fifth of one percent of cattle, out of a total population of 104.5 million. Conversely, non-predator causes - aside from slaughter by humans - accounted for 3.86 million cattle lost during 2005. Respiratory problems were the leading cause of death, claiming over 1 million cattle, followed by digestive problems, which killed almost 650,000. Other causes of pre-slaughter losses include disease, illness, weather, theft and calving complications.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: The tropics - the globe's most torrid climate belt - have widened during the past 27 years, expanding toward the poles by an average of about 140 miles, according to new research. If the trend continues through the end of the century, it would drive rain-bearing storms toward higher latitudes, deprive heavily populated southern Europe of much-needed winter rain and snow, and expand the world's subtropical deserts, atmospheric scientists say. "It's a big deal," notes Thomas Reichler, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist and a member of the research team, which reported its results in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Some aspects of the results are consistent with global-warming projections, team members note. If the cause does prove to be global warming, these results would represent the first direct satellite evidence of its impact on worldwide atmospheric circulation, says team leader Qiang Fu, a researcher at the University of Washington.
Republicans Believe In The Rule Of Law: For the third year in a row, the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to disclose data on its classification and declassification activity, in an apparent violation of an executive order issued by President Bush. "The Office of the Vice President (OVP), the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), and the Homeland Security Council (HSC) failed to report their data to ISOO this year," the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) noted in its new 2005 Annual Report to the President. The Office of the Vice President has declined to report such data since 2002. Yet it is clear that disclosure is not optional. "Each agency that creates or handles classified information shall report annually to the Director of ISOO statistics related to its security classification program," according to ISOO Directive 1 (at section 2001.80). This and other ISOO directives "shall be binding upon the agencies," President Bush wrote in Executive Order 13292 (section 5.1). And an "agency" is not only a statutorily defined executive branch agency, but also includes "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." Despite this straightforward language, a spokeswoman for Vice President Cheney told the Chicago Tribune in April that his Office is "not under any duty" to provide the required information.
Civil liberties lawyers yesterday questioned the legal basis that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales used Tuesday to justify the constitutionality of collecting domestic telephone records as part of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program. While not confirming a USA Today report May 11 saying the National Security Agency has been collecting phone-call records of millions of Americans, Gonzales said such an activity would not require a court warrant under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling because it involved obtaining "business records." Under the 27-year-old court ruling in Smith v. Maryland, "those kinds of records do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection," Gonzales said. "There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those kinds of records," he added. Noting that Congress in 1986 passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in reaction to the Smith v. Maryland ruling to require court orders before turning over call records to the government, G. Jack King Jr. of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said Gonzales is correct in saying "the administration isn't violating the Fourth Amendment" but "he's failing to acknowledge that it is breaking" the 1986 law, which requires a court order "with a few very narrow exceptions."
Republicans Believe In Protecting The Environment: Citing the public outcry over $3-a-gallon gasoline and America's heavy reliance on foreign oil, the House on Thursday voted to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, knowing the prospects for Senate approval were slim. Drilling proponents argued that the refuge on Alaska's North Slope would provide 1 million barrels a day of additional domestic oil at peak production and reduce the need for imports. But opponents to developing what environmentalists argue is a pristine area where drilling will harm caribou, polar bears and migratory birds, said Congress should pursue conservation and alternative energy sources that would save more oil than would be tapped from the refuge. The House voted 225-201 to direct the Interior Department to open oil leases on the coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- an area of 1.5 million acres that is thought likely to hold about 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But the action may be little more than symbolic. Arctic refuge development, while approved by the House five times, repeatedly has been blocked in the Senate where drilling proponents have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Republican Policies Build A Strong America: Is a basic decline in the value of the dollar behind the recent runup in commodity prices? It is a dubious notion that global economic growth has suddenly reached a point where worldwide demand has overwhelmingly and simultaneously outstripped worldwide supply of all these commodities. In 2005, real global economic growth slowed to about 3.2 percent from nearly four percent in 2004. Slower global economic growth was led by slower real economic growth in the United States, which decelerated to 3.5 percent in 2005 from 4.2 percent in 2004. Global demand for commodities was actually declining, as prices for these commodities began to gallop higher in 2005. The devaluation of the dollar against the world's major commodities is being driven by the exceptional growth in the world's supply of dollars during the past two years. Growth in the world's supply of dollars has come from two primary sources: rising international oil prices and the very large and growing U.S. trade deficit. Interestingly, the powerful surge in commodity prices in 2006 has been accompanied by an equally powerful decline in the prices for all dollar-denominated bonds, pushing bond yields steeply higher. As U.S. bond yields have risen, the value of the dollar against both the yen and the euro has declined, signaling that foreign capital flight from the U.S. may have already begun. The dollar has depreciated by about eight percent against the euro and about five percent against the yen between January 1 and May 22, 2006. The sale of dollar-denominated bonds by foreigners is shifting the global dollar bubble back into the U.S. money supply. This added liquidity undoubtedly helped to propel U.S. economic growth higher in the first quarter of 2006. It has also added to already growing inflationary pressures in the United States.
News From Smirkey's Wars: The bulk of the fighting in Afghanistan in the past week, which has claimed more than 300 lives among the Taliban, US-led forces, the Afghan National Army (ANA) and civilians, has taken place in the southern Pashtun heartland of the country. However, the Taliban's spring offensive is fast turning into a massive resistance against the foreign presence all over Afghanistan, and already some influential characters are jockeying for a post-spring role. And the indications are that the resistance could transcend a simple Taliban-led insurgency to evolve into a powerful Islamic movement. Thousands of Taliban have emerged in the provinces of Helmand, Ghazni, Urgzan, Kandahar, Kunar and Zabul, and in all of them the story is the same: where allied forces have taken on the Taliban, the ANA holds the "fort". In places beyond the access of allied forces, the Taliban are in control. In the less-populated Farah and Nimroze provinces, where the Taliban have a nominal presence, violent incidents against the ANA have begun. The same is true in western Herat province on the border with Iran.
Scandals Du Jour: A new liberal Senate advocacy group has filed a Federal Elections Commission criminal complaint against the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, who they allege may have illegally concealed the receipt and amount of a contribution from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians - a native American client of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The Senate Majority Project says the Choctaw's contribution helped finance the Republicans’ efforts to stymie get out the vote phone lines by illegally "jamming" calls. A lawyer for the Republican National Committee, who is representing those accused in the phone jamming case, recently revealed that the White House's role in the phone jamming was investigated by the Justice Department after it emerged that calls were placed by those involved to the White House on the day of the crime. Republicans say calls to the White House weren't regarding phone-jamming. Bloomberg News reported that the RNC "said they only paid the legal bills of James Tobin, 45, who was convicted in December of conspiracy to commit telephone harassment because the Republican National Committee's previous leadership had agreed to do that."
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men. Suspicious that Rove and Novak might have devised a cover story during that conversation to protect Rove, federal investigators briefed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the matter in the early stages of the investigation in fall 2003, according to officials with direct knowledge of those briefings. Rove testified to the grand jury that during his telephone call with Novak, the columnist said words to the effect: "You are not going to get burned" and "I don't give up my sources," according to people familiar with his testimony. Rove had been one of the "two senior administration" officials who had been sources for the July 14, 2003, column in which Novak outed Plame as an "agency operative." Rove and Novak had talked about Plame on July 9, five days before Novak's column was published. In Hardball's daily dish on the CIA leak trial Thursday, MSNBC's David Shuster said the latest filings raise new questions about Vice President Cheney's potential role in the outing of a CIA agent, and that sources close to Karl Rove confirm that Rove did have a followup conversation about his calling conservative columnist Robert Novak. A report in the National Journal today suggests Novak considered 'covering' for Rove in the case.
Weather today was a dry season day - but with rainy season overtones. It was cool and cloudy when I got up, but quickly cleared off to a bright and sunny day - and remained that way nearly all day. Just before sunset, however, the clouds came back, and as soon as the sun went down, a light rain began. The overcast night kept the temperature overnight to 73, and the sun brought it up to an afternoon high of 85.
My health seems to be improving noticeably. The occasional twinges of angina are almost entirely gone, and when the do occur, they are barely noticable. And I am less prone to get winded than I was. So I was out today enjoying the fine weather, and had little problem with my heart when getting things done.
The municipality cleaned out the desaguas (roadside drainage ditches) alongside the street today. They do that here in town at the beginning and end of the rainy season, and the desaguas usually need it rather badly by the time it gets done. The road grader operator did a fine job and got all the tree saplings, growing clumbs of sod, and small boulders that had accumulated in the ditches cleaned out. I also had him cut a new runout down by the end of the pond, where the water empties into the pond, and he was happy to accomodate me. It is about thirty feet short of the old runout, and that means a larger area of unmaintained streetside area, but at least the sediment carried by the runoff won't accumulate and cause flooding of the street as it had been doing. The landform won't be as nicely shaped, but it will be better for the people who have to walk past there on rainy days - the road should drain much better there now.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye. Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to allow ISPs to charge for different levels of online access web based on content were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period". Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web. "What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said. "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from senior U.S. law enforcement officials. Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government. Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.
But that isn't the half of the allegations against Hastert. Vanity Fair's September edition, now out in New York but yet to hit national newsstands, packs a punch with an article about Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who has been gagged by the Bush Administration from revealing information about conversations she translated surrounding a seemingly major corruption scandal involving Turkish nationals and U.S. lawmakers. From Vanity Fair: "Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the OIG, and to staff from the 9/11 commission," Rose continues. "Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior Republican indeed - Dennis Hastert, Rep