Democrats Abroad Call for Iraq Withdrawal

The worldwide leadership of Democrats Abroad has joined many others in calling for an “orderly, early and rapid withdrawal” of all United States military personnel from Iraq.

Meeting in Barcelona, the overseas Democrats also renounced the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare and called for the censure of the President and Vice President by Congress for their disastrous failure of leadership both at home and abroad.

“As Americans living overseas, we personally witness the damaging effects of the Bush Administration’s foreign policies every day,” said Michael Ceurvorst of Hong Kong, International Chair of Democrats Abroad. “Our voices are united in calling for a return to traditional American values and responsible engagement in the world.”

Addressing the delegates by telephone and in person were party chair Gov. Howard Dean, Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) chair Gov. Tom Vilsack and several candidates running for the U.S. Senate in 2006, including Barbara Radnofsky of Texas, Robert Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, and Iraq veteran Paul Hackett of Ohio.

With the President’s approval rating plummeting, the 2006 mid-term election is shaping up as an opportunity for Democrats to regain control of one or both houses of Congress. To assist the millions of Americans living outside the U.S., Democrats Abroad will launch a worldwide voter outreach drive in 2006. The election coincides with the 30^th anniversary of legislation granting voting rights to overseas civilians.

  ¶ 19:27 0 comments

  Leak Led to Threats Against CIA Agent, Husband Reveals (Independent.co.uk) By David Usborne in New York
Published: 31 October 2005

After her role as an undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency was leaked to journalists in 2003, Valerie Plame not only had to scramble to protect her colleagues and her operations, she was also faced with threats to her own safety, Joe Wilson, her husband, has disclosed.

In his first interview since charges in the CIA leak scandal were filed on Friday against Lewis Libby, 55, who has quit as chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr Wilson told the CBS current affairs programme60 Minutes that his wife felt like she had been "hit in the stomach" when her cover was blown.

The indictment sets the stage for either a trial next spring or a plea bargain that almost certainly would mean jail time for Mr Libby. A source close to the investigation told Time magazine that the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Mr Libby's lawyer discussed possible plea options before the indictment was issued last week. But the deal was scotched because the prosecutor insisted that Mr Libby do some "serious" jail time.

Several intelligence specialists spoke out at the weekend about the gravity of what had been done to Ms Plame, who joined the CIA as a case officer two decades ago, when she was 22 years old. It's the "moral equivalent to exposing forward-deployed military units," said Arthur Brown, who retired in February as the CIA's Asian Division chief.

(More ... Independent Online Edition > Americas)  ¶ 19:12 0 comments

  Rosa Lee Parks - The Power of Many (Scoop.co.nz) Stateside with Rosalea Barker

Monday, 31 October 2005, 1:30 pm
Column: Rosalea Barker

As I was trawling the Net looking for non-gaga information about the 92-year-old woman who will lie in honor in the US Capitol Rotunda today, I came across--then lost--a quote attributed to the lady herself regarding the state of affairs in Alabama at the time she refused to give up her seat on the bus.

In it, she talks about how black folks were required to pay their fare to the driver at the front door, then get back off the bus and go to the back door to board it. Sometimes the driver, having taken their fare, would drive off leaving passengers to wait for the next bus--or walk, if that fare was the last money they had.

If you think of the bus as a symbol of the nation's economy, is anything different in the U.S. today? The numbers of people--of all races--who are left standing at the kerb despite having paid their 40-hour, 50-hour, 60-hour way to the prosperity promised at every flick of the dial and on every roadside billboard grows by the minute.

(More ... Scoop: Stateside: Rosa Lee Parks - The Power of Many)  ¶ 17:32 0 comments

  Rosa Parks to Lie in Honor at Capitol (USATODAY.com) Posted 10/28/2005 1:43 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rosa Parks, the seamstress whose act of defiance on a public bus a half-century ago helped spark the civil rights movement, will join presidents and war heroes who have been honored in death with a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda.
Rosa Parks will lie in repose in the Capitol Rotunda this Sunday. Rosa Parks will lie in repose in the Capitol Rotunda this Sunday.
Susan Tusa, The Detroit News

Parks, who died Monday in Detroit at age 92, also will be the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda, the vast circular room under the Capitol dome.

The House on Friday passed by voice vote a resolution allowing Parks to be honored in the Capitol on Sunday and Monday "so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American." The Senate approved the resolution Thursday night.

It will be only the fifth time in the past two decades that a person has either lain in honor or in state in the Rotunda. The last to lie in state was President Reagan after his death in June last year.

(More ... USATODAY.com - Rosa Parks to lie in honor at Capitol)  ¶ 12:12 0 comments

  With Career Derailed, Plame Likely to Leave CIA (WasingtonPost.com) By Richard Leiby
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; 2:39 PM

What's next for Valerie Plame?

Lost in the din of the leak scandal that has consumed Washington is the very personal impact on the gracious, willowy CIA operative at its center. Plame, the wife of former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and arguably the most famous spy in the world, is not likely to stay at the CIA, some acquaintances say.

With her career derailed, Plame, 42, the mother of 5-year-old twins, hasn't publicly signaled her plans. But privately she has said that she feels she has no future at the spy agency where she has worked for 20 years.

"She really wants to be with her kids . . . to be that mom," her friend Jane Honikman said last night.

Although Plame has been under "tremendous stress" as the subject of global publicity and political spin, Honikman added, "she has a good sense of humor still and a wonderful, charming ability to look on the bright side."

(More ... With Career Derailed, Plame Likely to Leave CIA)  ¶ 12:07 0 comments

  A Weakened President Faces New Risks (WashingtonPost.com) NEWS ANALYSIS

By Dan Balz and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A01

President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers on Oct. 3 was made from a position of weakness by a White House beset by political problems and eager to avoid a fight over the Supreme Court. Twenty-four excruciating days later, the supposed safe choice crashed, exposing the president as even weaker than before.

Bush now has an opportunity to recover from one of the biggest political miscalculations of his term, the failure to anticipate the backlash Miers would cause with his own conservative base. But in repairing that breach, he risks a new confrontation with Democrats and further estrangement from the political center -- precisely the situation he hoped to avoid when he tapped his loyal and unassuming personal lawyer in the first place.

Few Republicans in Washington saw the timing of Miers's withdrawal as coincidental. With potential indictments of senior White House officials looming in the CIA leak case, the president could ill afford a sustained and increasingly raw rupture within the GOP coalition.

The Miers nomination was more than a humiliation for Bush, however. It was an episode that seemed wholly out of character with the president's style. No Republican president -- not even Ronald Reagan -- has catered to the right more methodically than Bush. But on a matter of first-order significance to many conservatives, the president let personal loyalty override what had been a central tenet of his political strategy.

(More ... A Weakened President Faces New Risks)  ¶ 11:58 0 comments

  Democrats Say Problems at White House Go Beyond Libby (NYTimes.com) By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - Democrats wasted no time today in asserting that the indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, reflected a recklessness by the Bush administration - perhaps from the very highest level, they suggested - that had endangered the national security.

"These are very serious charges," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader. "They suggest that a senior White House aide put politics ahead of our national security and the rule of law."

Republicans were generally cautious in their remarks, and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah offered a mixed verdict. He said the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, appeared to have apparently been "reading something into the statute that I didn't read into the statute." But the senator added: "Knowing Fitzgerald as I do, he's a competent, very, very good professional, and you have to doubt that he would bring charges that he didn't have backup for."

Mr. Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised Mr. Libby as a serious and competent professional, saying on CNN, "We'll just have to see what happens."

Meantime, more than one Democrat spoke of "corruption."

(More ... Democrats Say Problems at White House Go Beyond Libby - New York Times)  ¶ 11:53 0 comments

  Libby Faces 5 Charges, but Not for Disclosing Classified Data (NYTimes.com) By DAVID STOUT
Published: October 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and one of the most powerful figures in the Bush administration, was formally accused today of lying and obstruction of justice in an inquiry into the unmasking of a covert A federal grand jury indicted Mr. Libby on one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and two of making false statements in the course of an investigation that raised questions about the administration's rationale for going to war against Iraq, how it treats critics and political opponents and whether high White House officials shaded the truth. The charges are felonies.

Mr. Libby was not charged directly with revealing the identity of a C.I.A. undercover operative, the accusation that brought about the investigation in the first place.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, was not charged today, but will remain under investigation, Mr. Rove's lawyer and people briefed officially about the case said. In a news conference this afternoon, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, declined to talk about Mr. Rove but said that his investigation showed that Mr. Libby had told reporters about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, and that "he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly."

Mr. Libby resigned just before the indictment was handed up. The charges lodged today could spell professional ruin for the 55-year-old lawyer, unless he is acquitted or the charges are dismissed. In a statement issued by his lawyer, Joseph A. Tate, Mr. Libby said: "I am confident that at the end of this process I will be completely and totally exonerated," according to the Reuters news agency.

(More ... Libby Faces 5 Charges, but Not for Disclosing Classified Data - New York Times)  ¶ 11:52 0 comments

  No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum (NYTimes.com) By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: October 25, 2005

In 1969 Roy Koerner, a Canadian government glaciologist, was one of four men (and 36 dogs) who completed the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from Alaska through the North Pole to Norway.

Now, he said, such a trek would be impossible: there is just not enough ice. In September, the area covered by sea ice reached a record low. "I look on it as a different world," Dr. Koerner said. "I recently reviewed a proposal by one guy to go across by kayak."

At age 73, Dr. Koerner, known as Fritz, still regularly hikes high on the ancient glaciers abutting the warming ocean to extract cores showing past climate trends. And every one, he said, indicates that the Arctic warming under way over the last century is different from that seen in past warm eras.

Many scientists say it has taken a long time for them to accept that global warming, partly the result of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, could shrink the Arctic's summer cloak of ice.

But many of those same scientists have concluded that the momentum behind human-caused warming, combined with the region's tendency to amplify change, has put the familiar Arctic past the point of no return.

(More ... No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum - New York Times)  ¶ 08:11 0 comments

  Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report (NYTimes.com) By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

(More ... Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report - New York Times)  ¶ 08:08 0 comments

  FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations (WashingtonPost.com) Secret Surveillance Lacked Oversight
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A01

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.



David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Center sued FBI for documents. (Andrea Bruce Woodall - Staff Photographer)

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In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

(More ... FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations)  ¶ 10:58 0 comments

  'Raging Granny' Gets Marine Recruitment Letter (CommonDreams.org) Published on Friday, October 21, 2005 by the Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico - Sally-Alice Thompson had to laugh when she got a letter from the Marine Corps' commanding general, telling her the military "is in need of your service" and inviting her to find out more by sending in an enclosed card.

"What else could I do? I mean, I'm 82 years old," Thompson said.

Not only that, Thompson is a well-known local peace activist who is a charter member of the Center for Peace & Justice in Albuquerque and belongs to Veterans for Peace and Raging Grannies.

So instead of sending in the card, she plans to visit the Marine recruiting center with other Raging Grannies, which Thompson describes as "a group of women unhappy about wars of aggression and about nuclear armaments."

"I don't know what kind of reception we'll get," said Thompson, who served in the Navy in World War II.

(More ... 'Raging Granny' Gets Marine Recruitment Letter)  ¶ 21:13 0 comments

  A Palpable Silence at the White House (WashingtonPost.com) Few Ready to Face Effects of Leak Case

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 21, 2005; Page A01

At 7:30 each morning, President Bush's senior staff gathers to discuss the important issues of the day -- Middle East peace, the Harriet Miers nomination, the latest hurricane bearing down on the coast. Everything, that is, except the issue on everyone's mind.

With special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald driving his CIA leak investigation toward an apparent conclusion, the White House now confronts the looming prospect that no one in the building is eager to address: a Bush presidency without Karl Rove. In a capital consumed by scandal speculation, most White House senior officials are no more privy than outsiders to the prosecutor's intentions. But the surreal silence in the Roosevelt Room each morning belies the nervous discussions racing elsewhere around the West Wing.

Out of the hushed hallway encounters and one-on-one conversations, several scenarios have begun to emerge if Rove or vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby is indicted and forced out. Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans. And to help steady a shaken White House, they say, the president might bring in trusted advisers such as budget director Joshua B. Bolten, lobbyist Ed Gillespie or party chairman Ken Mehlman.

These tentative discussions come at a time when White House senior officials are exploring staff changes to address broader structural problems that have bedeviled Bush's second term, according to Republicans who said they could speak candidly about internal deliberations only if they are not named. But it remains unclear whether Bush agrees that changes are needed and the uncertainty has unsettled his team.

(More ... A Palpable Silence at the White House)  ¶ 19:39 0 comments

  Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run by 'Cabal' (NYTimes.com) By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: October 21, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal," and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.

The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Mr. Powell at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005. Speaking to the New America Foundation, an independent public-policy institute in Washington, Mr. Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, skewing its policies and undercutting its ability to handle crises.

"I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back," he said. "We haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time."

Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

(More ... Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run by 'Cabal' - New York Times)  ¶ 19:28 0 comments

  National Guard Readiness Eroded by Iraq: Report (Reuters.com) Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:58 PM ET15

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. National Guard units are under-equipped and increasingly unready to help in domestic disaster relief because essential gear is left behind after service in Iraq and Afghanistan, a congressional report said on Thursday.

Heavy demands on the Guard since September 11, 2001, have caused "declining readiness, weakening the Army National Guard's preparedness for future missions," the Government Accountability Office said.

It said the Pentagon's strategy for the Guard was "unsustainable and needs to be reassessed,"

The report said Guard officials believed the response by its units to Hurricane Katrina last month "was more complicated because significant quantities of critical equipment, such as satellite communications equipment, radios, trucks, helicopters and night vision goggles, were deployed to Iraq."

Guard troops and other relief workers complained that they did not have the equipment to communicate properly for days after Katrina swept ashore, destroying phone and radio links.

(More ... Top News Article | Reuters.com)  ¶ 08:33 0 comments

  House Passes Gun Shield Legislation (Reuters.com) Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:18 PM ET

By Joanne Kenen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed and sent to President George W. Bush for his signature legislation giving the U.S. gun industry sweeping protection from civil lawsuits.

The legislation is another huge victory for the National Rifle Association, which with its many allies in Congress has been able to outvote and outflank the dwindling number of vocal gun control advocates in Congress.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms bill passed on a bipartisan 283-144 vote, with several dozen Democrats from gun-friendly Southern states or rural areas joining the Republican majority. The Senate already has passed the legislation and the White House strongly backs it.

The legislation would provide gun makers, dealers and distributors with broad immunity from civil lawsuits filed by dozens of cities and municipalities, as well as make it harder for individuals harmed by gun violence to sue.

Backers of the legislation say many of the suits are politically motivated and designed to undermine U.S. citizens' rights to own guns.

(More ... Politics News Article | Reuters.com)  ¶ 08:31 0 comments

  Rove Told Jury Libby May Have Been His Source In Leak Case (WashingtonPost.com) Top Aides Talked Before Plame's Name Was Public

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 20, 2005; Page A01

White House adviser Karl Rove told the grand jury in the CIA leak case that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, may have told him that CIA operative Valerie Plame worked for the intelligence agency before her identity was revealed, a source familiar with Rove's account said yesterday.

In a talk that took place in the days before Plame's CIA employment was revealed in 2003, Rove and Libby discussed conversations they had had with reporters in which Plame and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV were raised, the source said. Rove told the grand jury the talk was confined to information the two men heard from reporters, the source said.

Rove has also testified that he also heard about Plame from someone else outside the White House, but could not recall who.

The account is the first time a person familiar with Rove's testimony has provided clues about where the deputy chief of staff learned about Plame, and confirmed that Rove and Libby were involved in a conversation about her before her identity became public. The disclosure seemed to further undermine the White House's contention early in the case that neither man was in any way involved in unmasking Plame.

But it leaves unanswered the central question of the more than two-year-old case: Did anyone commit a crime in leaking information about Plame to the media?

(More ... Rove Told Jury Libby May Have Been His Source In Leak Case)  ¶ 08:28 0 comments

  Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers (WashingtonPost.com) By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; Page D01

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.

Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals.

The content of the coded information was supposed to be a secret, available only to agencies looking for counterfeiters who use color printers.

Now, the secret is out.

(More ... Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers)  ¶ 08:02 0 comments

  Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case (WashingtonPost.com) Sources Cite Role Of Feud With CIA

By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; Page A01

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife's position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney's top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lawyers involved in the case said.

One former CIA official told prosecutors early in the probe about efforts by Cheney's office and his allies at the National Security Council to obtain information about Wilson's trip as long as two months before Plame was unmasked in July 2003, according to a person familiar with the account.

It is not clear whether Fitzgerald plans to charge anyone inside the Bush administration with a crime. But with the case reaching a climax -- administration officials are braced for possible indictments as early as this week-- it is increasingly clear that Cheney and his aides have been deeply enmeshed in events surrounding the Plame affair from the outset.

(More ... Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case)  ¶ 08:30 0 comments

  Analysis: CIA Leak Case Spotlights Bush Tactics (USATODAY.com) Posted 10/18/2005 2:10 PM

Tom Raum

WASHINGTON — Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's CIA-leak inquiry is focusing attention on what long has been a Bush White House tactic: slash-and-burn assaults on its critics, particularly those opposed to the president's Iraq war policies.

If top officials are indicted, it could seriously erode the administration's credibility and prove yet another embarrassment to President Bush on the larger issue of how he and his national security team marshaled information — much of it later shown to be inaccurate — to support their case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The grand jury is concluding a 22-month investigation of whether administration officials illegally leaked information disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, in an effort to discredit her husband, former diplomat and war critic Joseph Wilson.

Anxiety at the White House increased after Bush adviser Karl Rove's fourth appearance last week before Fitzgerald's grand jury, and with a New York Times reporter's firsthand account of her dealings with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide.

(More ... USATODAY.com - Analysis: CIA leak case spotlights Bush tactics)  ¶ 08:26 0 comments

  China's Secret Uranium Bid (TheAge.com.au) By Richard Baker
October 17, 2005

CHINA has asked the Federal Government if it can conduct its own uranium exploration and mining operations in Australia.

Confidential diplomatic cables obtained by The Age show the Chinese told Australian officials of their interest in "uranium mining and exploration in Australia" at a February meeting in Beijing.

At the meeting, the deputy director-general of China's National Development and Reform Commission, Wang Jun, asked Australian officials, "Would Australia permit Chinese involvement?'

The director-general of the Australian Nuclear Safeguards Office, John Carlson, told Mr Wang there would be no restrictions at a federal level.

But Mr Carlson warned that Australia's state and territory governments — responsible for licensing mining and exploration — opposed further uranium mining and exploration.

(More ... China's secret uranium bid - National - theage.com.au)  ¶ 20:14 0 comments

  Get It Together, Democrats (NYTimes.com) By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 17, 2005

A word of caution: Democrats should think twice before getting all giddy about the problems caving in on the Republicans and the prospects of regaining control of Congress in next year's elections.

For one thing, the Democrats' own house is hardly in order. While recent polls have shown growing disenchantment with President Bush and the G.O.P., there's no evidence that voters have suddenly become thrilled with the Democrats.

A survey taken by the Pew Research Center showed an abysmal 32 percent approval rating for Democratic leaders in Congress.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Congressional redistricting (anti-democratic in every sense of the word) has made it more difficult to oust incumbents. It would take a landslide of shocking proportions for the Democrats to win control of both houses of Congress next fall.

This is not to minimize the troubles facing the G.O.P. The party is in free fall. The war in Iraq has been a disaster and despite the vote on the constitution over the weekend there is no end in sight. The cronyism and incompetence of the Bush administration ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job") have become a national joke, a given.

(More .... Get It Together, Democrats - New York Times)  ¶ 20:04 0 comments

  The Big Squeeze (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 17, 2005

In 1999 Delphi, the parts division of General Motors, was spun off as an independent company. Now Delphi has filed for bankruptcy. Its chief executive, Robert S. Miller, wants the company's workers to accept drastic wage cuts, from an average hourly wage rate of about $27 to as little as $10 an hour.

There are a lot of questions about how Delphi and the auto industry in general reached this point. Why were large severance packages given to Delphi executives even as the company demanded wage cuts? Why, when General Motors was profitable, did it pay big dividends but fail to put in enough money to secure its workers' pensions?

But Delphi's bankruptcy is a much bigger deal than your ordinary case of corporate failure and bad, self-dealing management. If Delphi slashes wages and defaults on its pension obligations, the rest of the auto industry may well be tempted - or forced - to do the same. And that will mark the end of the era in which ordinary working Americans could be part of the middle class.

There was a time when the American economy offered lots of good jobs - jobs that didn't make workers rich but did give them middle-class incomes. The best of these good jobs were at America's great manufacturing companies, especially in the auto industry.

But it has been a generation since most American workers could count on sharing in the nation's economic growth. America is a much richer country than it was 30 years ago, but since the early 1970's the hourly wage of the typical worker has barely kept up with inflation.

The contrast between rising national wealth and stagnant wages has become even more extreme lately. In 2004, which was touted both by the Bush administration and by Wall Street as a year in which the economy boomed, the median real income of full-time, year-round male workers fell more than 2 percent.

(More ... The Big Squeeze - New York Times)  ¶ 20:02 0 comments

  Bush Told Blair of 'Going Beyond Iraq' (Guardian.co.uk) Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday October 15, 2005
The Guardian

George Bush told Tony Blair shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he intended to target other countries, including Saudi Arabia, which, he implied, planned to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," according to a note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.

The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.

It is not surprising that Mr Bush referred to Iran and North Korea, or even Pakistan - at the time suspected of spreading nuclear know-how, but now one of America's closest allies in the "war on terror". What is significant is the mention of Saudi Arabia.

In Washington, the neo-cons in particular were hostile to the Saudi royal family and did not think they were doing enough to quell Islamist extremists - 15 of the 19 September 11 attackers were Saudis. But the Bush administration did not in public express concern about any Saudi nuclear ambitions.

(More ... Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq')  ¶ 20:11 0 comments

  The Decline of Manners in the U.S. (CNN.com) Friday, October 14, 2005; Posted: 5:01 p.m. EDT (21:01 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans' fast-paced, high-tech existence has taken a toll on civility.

From road rage in the morning commute to high decibel cell-phone conversations that ruin dinner out, men and women behaving badly have become the hallmark of a hurry-up world. An increasing informality -- flip-flops at the White House, even -- combined with self-absorbed communication gadgets and a demand for instant gratification have strained common courtesies to the breaking point.

"All of these things lead to a world with more stress, more chances for people to be rude to each other," said Peter Post, a descendent of etiquette expert Emily Post and an instructor on business manners through the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vermont.

In some cases, the harried single parent has replaced the traditional nuclear family, and there's little time to teach the basics of polite living, let alone how to hold a knife and fork, according to Post.

A slippage in manners is obvious to many Americans. Nearly 70 percent questioned in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The trend is noticed in large and small places alike, although more urban people -- 74 percent -- report bad manners, then do people in rural areas, 67 percent.

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  Keeping Us in the Race (NYTimes.com) By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 14, 2005

What if we were really having a national discussion about what is most important to the country today and on the minds of most parents?

I have no doubt that it would be a loud, noisy dinner-table conversation about why so many U.S. manufacturers are moving abroad - not just to find lower wages, but to find smarter workers, better infrastructure and cheaper health care. It would be about why in Germany, 36 percent of undergrads receive degrees in science and engineering; in China, 59 percent; in Japan, 66 percent; and in America, only 32 percent. It would be about why Japanese on bullet trains can get access to the Internet with cellphones, and Americans get their cellphone service interrupted five minutes from home.

It would be about why U.S. 12th graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries in math and science, and it would be about why, in recent years, U.S. industry appears to have spent more on lawsuits than on R.&D. Yes, we'd be talking about why the world is racing us to the top, not the bottom, and why we are quietly falling behind.

And late in the evening, as the wine bottles emptied, someone at the national dinner table might finally say: "Hey, what if we were really thinking ahead? What if we asked some of the country's best minds to make a list of the steps we could take right now to enhance America's technology base?"

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  Warming Trend Continues
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  Questions of Character (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 14, 2005

George W. Bush, I once wrote, "values loyalty above expertise" and may have "a preference for advisers whose personal fortunes are almost entirely bound up with his own." And he likes to surround himself with "obsequious courtiers."

Lots of people are saying things like that these days. But those quotes are from a column published on Nov. 19, 2000.

I don't believe that I'm any better than the average person at judging other people's character. I got it right because I said those things in the context of a discussion of Mr. Bush's choice of economic advisers, a subject in which I do have some expertise.

But many people in the news media do claim, at least implicitly, to be experts at discerning character - and their judgments play a large, sometimes decisive role in our political life. The 2000 election would have ended in a chad-proof victory for Al Gore if many reporters hadn't taken a dislike to Mr. Gore, while portraying Mr. Bush as an honest, likable guy. The 2004 election was largely decided by the image of Mr. Bush as a strong, effective leader.

So it's important to ask why those judgments are often so wrong.

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  Democrats See Dream of '06 Victory Taking Form (NYTimes.com) By ROBIN TONER
Published: October 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Suddenly, Democrats see a possibility in 2006 they have long dreamed of: a sweeping midterm election framed around what they describe as the simple choice of change with the Democrats or more of an unpopular status quo with the Republican majority.

That sense of political opportunity has Democratic operatives scrambling to recruit more candidates in Congressional districts that look newly favorable for Democratic gains, to overcome internal divisions and produce an agenda they can carry into 2006, and to raise the money to compete across a broader field. In short, the Democrats are trying to be ready if, in fact, an anti-incumbent, 1994-style political wave hits.

Already, the response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and soaring gasoline prices have taken a toll on the popularity of President Bush and Congressional Republicans; new polling by the Pew Research Center shows the approval rating for Congressional Republican leaders at 32 percent, with 52 percent disapproving, a sharp deterioration since March. (The ratings of Democratic leaders stood at 32 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval.)

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday night, showed that 13 months before the midterm election, 48 percent said they wanted a Democratic-led Congress, compared to 39 percent who preferred Republican control.

But for Democrats to step into the void, many strategists and elected officials say, they must offer more than a blistering critique of the Republicans in power, the regular attacks on what Democrats now describe as a "culture of cronyism and corruption."

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  From US Marines to Al-Jazeera (Guardian.co.uk) Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday October 13, 2005
The Guardian

'Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," President George Bush told the world after September 11 2001, and he has made it clear ever since that he means it. But in that black and white universe, where do you put Josh Rushing?

Rushing is a blue-eyed son of Texas, a marine for all his adult life whose clean-cut friendly charm made him the ideal public face for the US military during the Iraq invasion. But he has now joined the Arab television channel al-Jazeera as an "on-screen personality", a move which, in the eyes of many Americans, is one step short of signing up with al-Qaida.

Article continues
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has accused the Qatar-based satellite channel of lying to the world and spouting terrorist propaganda. Its journalists have been boycotted by American officials and thrown out of Iraq. One of its reporters has recently been jailed for seven years by a Spanish court for collaborating with al-Qaida.

In joining al-Jazeera's forthcoming English-language service, Rushing points out that he is in good journalistic company. He will be surrounded by former BBC employees, including Sir David Frost. But they are Europeans and journalists, two species generally associated with perfidy in the minds of the American right. Rushing is an American and a marine. For many conservatives here, he has joined a pantheon of turncoats alongside Benedict Arnold (who switched to the British side halfway through the war of independence) and "Tokyo Rose" (who broadcast for the Japanese in the second world war).

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  Too Much of a Good Thing?   ¶ 22:52 0 comments

  For Democrats, a Path Back to Power (WashingtonPost.com) By David S. Broder
Thursday, October 13, 2005; Page A23

In the welter of dissonant voices raised this year during the unending debates about the future of the Democratic Party, few have been as clear as those of Elaine Kamarck and Bill Galston.

The two political scientists -- she is at Harvard and he is at the University of Maryland -- were colleagues in the Clinton White House and collaborators on an earlier analysis, published in 1989, that helped set the direction for Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign.

Last week, under the auspices of the Third Way organization, they released their new compendium of polling data and political advice, "The Politics of Polarization." In 64 pages, notably devoid of academic jargon, and 24 easy-to-understand tables, they attempt to steer their party directly back toward the path to power.

Because that path aims down the political center, it will not be easily accepted by many of the activists in the organizations that control the Democratic Party at the grass roots and dominate its fundraising, whether they be Hollywood millionaires or Internet Deaniacs.

These men and women -- who provide most of the energy in Democratic campaigns -- ardently oppose both the domestic and international policies of the Bush administration and yearn for candidates who would reverse President Bush's direction on Iraq, taxes, gay rights, abortion and other issues.

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  Bush's Veil Over History (NYTimes.com) By KITTY KELLEY
Published: October 10, 2005

Washington

SECRECY has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.

But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.

Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.

Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)

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  Who Isn't Against Torture? (NYTimes.com) By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 10, 2005

Some people get it. Some don't.

Senator John McCain, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq, has sponsored a legislative amendment that would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. military. Last week the Senate approved the amendment by the overwhelming vote of 90 to 9.

This was not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans, or left against right. Joining Senator McCain in his push for clear and unequivocal language banning the abusive treatment of prisoners were Senator John Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer who is also a Republican and an influential member of the committee. Both are hawks on the war.

Also lining up in support were more than two dozen retired senior military officers, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili.

So who would you expect to remain out of step with this important march toward sanity, the rule of law and the continuation of a longstanding American commitment to humane values?

Did you say President Bush? Well, that would be correct.

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  Don't Bother Looking for Intelligence in Washington ...
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  Bush's Fraying Presidency (WashingtonPost.com) By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 9, 2005; Page B07

Three front-page stories on a single day last week testified to the unraveling of the Bush presidency.

The lead story in The Post on Thursday reported that "the Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere," with 46 Republicans joining the Democrats to pass restrictions on prisoner abuse so unacceptable to President Bush that he has threatened his first veto.

A second story on the same page recounted that "the conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings."

Participants described it as the biggest split with the GOP base in his five years in office.

And elsewhere on the page was the news that the Central Intelligence Agency's director had rejected a recommendation from its inspector general that he convene a formal "accountability board" to judge the possible culpability of senior officials in the failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The action triggered a statement of concern from the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and criticism from families of Sept. 11 victims.

These developments came against a background of rising conservative criticism in Congress of runaway spending, of continuing investigations of the administration's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina and of criminal indictments and grand jury probes that have forced out the chief White House procurement officer and the House Republican majority leader and that may implicate other top officials of both branches.

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  For GOP, Election Anxiety Mounts (WashingtonPost.com) Candidates Need Convincing for '06

By Charles Babington and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 10, 2005; Page A01

Republican politicians in multiple states have recently decided not to run for Senate next year, stirring anxiety among Washington operatives about the effectiveness of the party's recruiting efforts and whether this signals a broader decline in GOP congressional prospects.

Prominent Republicans have passed up races in North Dakota and West Virginia, both GOP-leaning states with potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Earlier, Republican recruiters on Capitol Hill and at the White House failed to lure their first choices to run in Florida, Michigan and Vermont.

These setbacks have prompted grumbling. Some Republican operatives, including some who work closely with the White House, privately point to what they regard as a lackluster performance by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the group that heads fundraising and candidate recruitment for GOP senators.

But some strategists more sympathetic to Dole point the finger right back. With an unpopular war in Iraq, ethical controversies shadowing top Republicans in the House and Senate, and President Bush suffering the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, the waters look less inviting to politicians deciding whether to plunge into an election bid. Additionally, some Capitol Hill operatives complain that preoccupied senior White House officials have been less engaged in candidate recruitment than they were for the 2002 and 2004 elections. These sources would speak only on background because of the sensitivity of partisan strategies.

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  Analysis: Dean Borrows Ideas to Rebuild Party (USATODAY.com) Posted 10/8/2005 6:46 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Howard Dean is no longer screaming. He's scheming.

The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party.

Borrowing ideas from President Bush's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

"What I'm trying to do is impose a system and run this place like a business," Dean said during an expansive interview in his office overlooking the Capitol.

That vision would be welcome news to party strategists who have complained that the DNC and its chairman of nine months lag behind Republicans in the political arts of messaging, targeting and organizing.

Some Democrats look back at Dean's rise-and-fall presidential campaign and wonder whether he has the management skills to carry out his plans or the ability to raise the money needed to pay for them.

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  The Hear-No-Evil Congress (NYTimes.com) EDITORIAL

Published: October 10, 2005

One of Washington's more amusingly titled institutions - the House ethics committee - is at it again, which is to say not at it again. The panel is a stunning still-life study in Capitol casuistry and partisan standoff. It is dedicatedly not shining a light on complaints pending against a half-dozen members, resolutely holding just one meeting for this entire year, and wallowing in the stagnation that Tom DeLay, the indicted, deposed majority leader, engineered when he purged the committee's chairman and watered down its rules.

Mr. DeLay now faces criminal charges in Texas for allegedly violating campaign laws, but taxpayers should still not expect much of a stir by the House's moral arbiters. The new committee chairman, Doc Hastings, a Republican from Washington State, made that clear last week when he stoutly defended the innocence of Mr. DeLay, his political mentor, while insisting that the House ethics committee would continue to shy from its own inquiry. "We don't have the resources," Mr. Hastings told The Yakima Herald-Republic, even though the committee received a 40 percent budget increase this year.

The Republican majority is in dire need of a sense of shame. Speaker Dennis Hastert should prod something better from Mr. Hastings. The committee also needs a nonpartisan staff with credible bipartisan rules and an agenda that dares to come to life.

What are the people's lawmakers afraid of finding out about themselves?

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  Endorsement of Nominee Draws Committee's Interest (NYTimes.com) By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 10, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and several Democrats on the committee said Sunday that they were considering calling the evangelical conservative James C. Dobson to testify on what he has been told about Harriet E. Miers, the president's Supreme Court nominee.

"If Dr. Dobson knows something that he shouldn't know or something that I ought to know, I'm going to find out," Mr. Specter said Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program "This Week."

In response to a later question, Mr. Specter added, "If there are back-room assurances and if there are back-room deals and if there is something which bears upon a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that's a matter that ought to be known by the Judiciary Committee and the American people."

Mr. Dobson, the influential founder of the conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family, has said he is supporting Ms. Miers's nomination in part because of something he has been told but cannot divulge. He has not disclosed the source of the information, but he has acknowledged speaking with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about the president's pick before it was announced.

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  Will Bush Deliver? (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 10, 2005

Ever since President Bush promised to rebuild the Gulf Coast in "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen," many people have asked how he plans to pay for that effort. But looking at what has (and hasn't) happened since he gave that speech, I'm starting to wonder whether they're asking the right question. How sure are we that large-scale federal aid for post-Katrina reconstruction will really materialize?

Bear with me while I make the case for doubting whether Mr. Bush will make good on his promise.

First, Mr. Bush already has a record of trying to renege on pledges to a stricken city. After 9/11 he made big promises to New York. But as soon as his bullhorn moment was past, officials began trying to wriggle out of his pledge. By early 2002 his budget director was accusing New York's elected representatives, who wanted to know what had happened to the promised aid, of engaging in a "money-grubbing game." It's not clear how much federal help the city has actually received.

With that precedent in mind, consider this: Congress has just gone on recess. By the time it returns, seven weeks will have passed since the levees broke. And the administration has spent much of that time blocking efforts to aid Katrina's victims.

I'm not sure why the news media haven't made more of the White House role in stalling a bipartisan bill that would have extended Medicaid coverage to all low-income hurricane victims - some of whom, according to surveys, can't afford needed medicine. The White House has also insisted that disaster loans to local governments, many of which no longer have a tax base, be made with the cruel and unusual provision that these loans cannot be forgiven.

Since the administration is already nickel-and-diming Katrina's victims, it's a good bet that it will do the same with reconstruction - that is, if reconstruction ever gets started.

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  Deputy Attorney General Choice Withdraws Nomination (WashingtonPost.com) Ties to Indicted GOP Lobbyist Delayed Candidate's Consideration

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005; 3:39 PM

The Bush administration's choice to be deputy attorney general has withdrawn his nomination, which had been delayed amid questions over his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, officials said today.

Timothy E. Flanigan wrote in a letter to President Bush yesterday that he was withdrawing as a candidate because of "uncertainty concerning the timing of my confirmation."

"You and the attorney general deserve to have a full leadership team in place at the Department of Justice to assist the dedicated men and women of the Department in their critical work," Flanigan wrote.

The withdrawal marks the latest in a series of setbacks for the White House on nomination issues, as several high-profile nominees have come under criticism for an alleged lack of experience or other problems.

Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel who has served as general counsel at Tyco International Ltd. since 2002, was first nominated in May but his appointment has been held up because of a variety of objections. The Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a vote on his nomination last month after Democrats demanded answers to questions about Flanigan's supervision of Abramoff as an outside lobbyist for Tyco.

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  Bush God Comments 'Not Literal' (news.BBC.co.uk) Last Updated: Friday, 7 October 2005, 18:09 GMT 19:09 UK

A Palestinian official who said the US president had claimed God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan says he did not take George Bush's words literally.

Nabil Shaath said he and other world leaders at a Jordan summit two years ago did not believe Mr Bush thought God had given him a personal message.

Mr Bush's spokesman said the original allegation, which will appear in a BBC documentary next week, was absurd.

Scott McClellan said the comments had never been made.

The comments were attributed to Mr Bush by Mr Shaath, a Palestinian negotiator, in the upcoming TV series Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs.

Mr Shaath said that in a 2003 meeting with Mr Bush, the US president said he was "driven with a mission from God".

"God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it."

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the meeting in June 2003 too, also appears on the documentary series to recount how Mr Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

(More ... BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush God comments 'not literal')  ¶ 11:03 0 comments

  A Pig in a Jacket (NYTimes.com) By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 7, 2005

During the California electricity crisis, Dick Cheney sneered at energy conservation, calling it a mere "sign of personal virtue." But this week Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary - who is widely regarded as Mr. Cheney's proxy - declared that "the main thing that U.S. citizens can do is conserve." Is the Bush administration going green?

No, not really. This administration's idea of encouraging conservation is an ad campaign centered on a cartoon pig. When it comes to substantive energy policy, the administration is still thinking drill-and-burn.

The background to Mr. Bodman's remarks is growing public anger over high energy prices. Most of the focus right now is on the price of gasoline, but the worst is yet to come: just wait until people see their winter heating bills, especially for natural gas, which has roughly doubled in price since last year.

And the political danger to the administration is obvious: polls suggest that many people blame energy companies for high energy prices, and blame the administration for failing to control price gouging.

Funny, isn't it? During the California crisis, some of us deduced from economic evidence that electricity shortages were artificial, the result of market manipulation by energy producers and traders. This deduction was later confirmed by the Enron tapes, but at the time we were voices crying in the wilderness.

Now, much of the public believes that corporate evildoers with close ties to the administration are conspiring to drive prices up. But this time they aren't, at least so far.

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  Senate Supports Interrogation Limits (WashingtonPost.com) 90-9 Vote on the Treatment of Detainees Is a Bipartisan $Rebuff of the White House

By Charles Babington and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 6, 2005; Page A01

The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.

Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure.

Senate GOP leaders had managed to fend off the detainee language this summer, saying Congress should not constrain the executive branch's options. But last night, 89 senators sided with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who led the fight for the interrogation restrictions. McCain said military officers have implored Congress for guidelines, adding that he mourns "what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies."

The vote came hours after Senate Democratic leaders blasted Republicans for canceling a classified briefing on anti-terrorism matters by the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte. Senate Democrats also sent Bush a letter demanding more information about how he intends to succeed in Iraq.

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  Ex-administration Official Indicted in Lobbyist Probe (USATODAY.com) Posted 10/5/2005 7:50 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The five felony counts in the indictment charge David Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.

Both probes looked into an August 2002 golf outing that Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and others.

Safavian, a former lobbying associate of Abramoff, is the first person beyond Abramoff himself to face charges arising out of the probe of the lobbyist, who is a major Republican fundraiser with close ties to GOP leaders in Congress.

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  Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant (NYTimes) By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 6, 2005

A lot of people are upset over comments made on the radio by the former education secretary and guardian of all things virtuous, Bill Bennett.

A Republican who served in the Reagan cabinet, Mr. Bennett told his listeners: "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

After making the point that exterminating blacks would be a most effective crime-fighting tool, he quickly added, "That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

When I first heard about Mr. Bennett's comments, I wondered why anyone was surprised. I've come to expect racial effrontery from big shots in the Republican Party. The G.O.P. has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies and outright anti-black policies. That someone who's been a stalwart of that outfit might muse publicly about the potential benefits of exterminating blacks is not surprising to me at all.

Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' "

(More ... Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant - New York Times)  ¶ 08:19 0 comments

  Storm Contracts to Be Rebid, FEMA Chief Says (NYTimes.com) By DAVID STOUT
Published: October 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said today that millions of dollars worth of federal hurricane-relief contracts that were awarded with little or no competition will be rebid to minimize waste and abuse.

"I've never been a fan of no-bid contracts," R. David Paulison, FEMA's acting director, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, one of a half-dozen Senate and House panels holding hearings today on hurricane-recovery issues.

An underlying theme that emerged from the sessions was a sense of alarm over the overall cost of the recovery, acknowledged to be in the many billions of dollars, and how much of that the federal government must pay.

"We can't dilly-dally on Capitol Hill as people in the region face real-world decisions on whether to relocate or not," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said at another session, that of the Senate Finance Committee, which he heads. "American taxpayers are compassionate, but rightly expect their hard-earned tax dollars to be spent wisely."

As for no-bid contracts, Mr. Paulison, according to The Associated Press, told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, "Sometimes you have to do them because of the expediency of getting things done. And I can assure you that we are going to look at all of these contracts very carefully."

"All of those no-bid contracts, we are going to go back and rebid," said Mr. Paulison, who succeeded Michael D. Brown after Mr. Brown stepped down amid heavy criticism of FEMA's response to the destruction wrought by winds and floods along the Gulf Coast.

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  When a President Is Not Spoiling for a Fight (NYTimes.com) By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: October 4, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - There is still much to learn about Harriet E. Miers, but in naming her to the Supreme Court, President Bush revealed something about himself: that he has no appetite, at a time when he and his party are besieged by problems, for an all-out ideological fight.

Many of his most passionate supporters on the right had hoped and expected that he would make an unambiguously conservative choice to fulfill their goal of clearly altering the court's balance, even at the cost of a bitter confirmation battle. By instead settling on a loyalist with no experience as a judge and little substantive record on abortion, affirmative action, religion and other socially divisive issues, Mr. Bush shied away from a direct confrontation with liberals and in effect asked his base on the right to trust him on this one.

The question is why.

On one level, his reasons for trying to sidestep a partisan showdown are obvious, and come down to his reluctance to invest his diminished supply of political capital in a battle over the court.

The White House is still struggling to recover from its faltering response to Hurricane Katrina. The Republican Party is busily trying to wave away a scent of second-term scandal. The relentlessly bloody insurgency in Iraq continues to weigh heavily on his presidency. And no president can retain his political authority for long if he loses his claim to the center.

"The swagger is gone from this White House," said Charles E. Cook Jr., editor of The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, citing a litany of other difficulties afflicting the administration, including high gasoline prices and the failure of Mr. Bush's push to overhaul Social Security. "They know they have horrible problems and they came up with the least risky move they could make."

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  Iraq War Delayed Katrina Relief Effort, Inquiry Finds (Independent.co.uk) By Kim Sengupta
Published: 03 October 2005

Relief efforts to combat Hurricane Katrina suffered near catastrophic failures due to endemic corruption, divisions within the military and troop shortages caused by the Iraq war, an official American inquiry into the disaster has revealed.

The confidential report, which has been seen by The Independent, details how funds for flood control were diverted to other projects, desperately needed National Guards were stuck in Iraq and how military personnel had to "sneak off post" to help with relief efforts because their commander had refused permission.

The shortcomings in dealing with Katrina have rocked George Bush's administration. Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has resigned from his post and polls show that a majority of Americans feel the President showed inadequate leadership.

The report was commissioned by the Office of Secretary of Defence as an "independent and critical review" of what went so wrong. In a hard-hitting analysis, it says: "The US military has long planned for war on two fronts. This is as close as we have come to [that] reality since the Second World War; the results have been disastrous."

The document was compiled by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of the US Army's War College and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts.

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  Bush Pick for High Court Outrages Conservatives (Reuters.com) By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday nominated White House insider Harriet Miers for a Supreme Court vacancy, triggering outrage from conservatives who questioned whether she would uphold their political views.

Bush chose Miers, a lawyer but not a judge whose opinions on key issues likely to come before the high court are largely unknown, to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor.

Conservatives who formed the bedrock foundation of Bush's re-election last November immediately protested the nomination as a betrayal of his campaign promise to pick conservative judges, pointing to her past campaign donations to Democrats.

Miers, 60, a longtime ally of Bush's going back to his days as Texas governor and currently White House counsel, would be the third woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court if confirmed by the U.S. Senate. O'Connor was the first and Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been there since 1993.

"I believe that senators of both parties will find that Harriet Miers' talent, experience and judicial philosophy make her a superb choice to safeguard the constitutional liberties and equality of all Americans," Bush said in a hastily arranged Oval Office ceremony with Miers.

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  Land of the Free, Home of the Well-Armed   ¶ 21:13 0 comments

  Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal (NYTimes.com) By ROBERT PEAR
Published: October 1, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education."

The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds."

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  Mrs. Triangulation (NYTimes.com) HILLARY REFRACTED The senator's ideology is perhaps best understood through the prism of her upbringing as a Republican and a Methodist.

By MATT BAI
Published: October 2, 2005

If Hillary Clinton is re-elected to the Senate next fall and runs for president in 2008, she will be the first New York Democrat to make a serious bid for the White House since Robert F. Kennedy, who used the same Senate seat as his springboard 40 years earlier. The parallels and contrasts between the two candidates are considerable. Like Clinton, Kennedy was accused of trading on his famous name when he moved to New York and ran for the Senate, his first elective office, in 1964. And like Clinton, Kennedy enjoyed rock-star status in his brief Senate career, which from its first day was shadowed by speculation that he would seek the White House. Kennedy, too, was perceived, by critics, as strident and sanctimonious, inspiring frenzied vitriol from his detractors and unswerving loyalty from his followers. And Kennedy's moment, like Clinton's, was dominated by a war that was becoming increasingly unpopular - a war he had more than tacitly supported as his brother's confidant during those first years of American involvement in Vietnam.

The similarities end there, and somewhat abruptly. Kennedy, pushed to abandon his ambivalent stance toward Vietnam by the party's younger, antiwar leaders, underwent in the Senate a very public evolution in his convictions about the war abroad and poverty at home. His rise as a national figure coincided with, and to some extent made possible, the rise of social liberalism as the dominant force in Democratic politics. Ultimately, Kennedy's campaign to cleanse the Democratic soul, and his own, took on almost religious overtones, even before his assassination at the Ambassador Hotel.

Clinton, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with ideological crusades, and she has thus far resisted the pull of rising antiestablishment forces - bloggers, donors and activists - who are fast becoming today's equivalent of the 60's left. Instead, Hillary (as she is universally known) has navigated with extreme caution through the party's fast-changing landscape, and if she has evolved as a public figure, it is in a way that has distanced her from the party's more liberal base. She has never renounced her initial support for the invasion of Iraq, and has in fact lobbied for recruiting an additional 80,000 Army troops. She has recently taken the opportunity, in much publicized speeches, to denounce unwanted pregnancies and violent video games. And at a time when the new activists brand any bipartisan cooperation as treachery, Clinton seems to pop up every week next to some conservative who has joined her on an issue like health-care modernization or soldiers' benefits.

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  Greenspan to French Finance Minister: US Has Lost Control of Budget Deficit (Reuters.com) Sunday 25 September 2005, 8:59pm EST

By Paul Carrel

WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told France's Finance Minister Thierry Breton the United States has "lost control" of its budget deficit, the French minister said on Saturday.

"'We have lost control,' that was his expression," Breton told reporters after a bilateral meeting with Greenspan.

"The United States has lost control of their budget at a time when racking up deficits has been authorized without any control (from Congress)," Breton said.

"We were both disappointed that the management of debt is not a political priority today," he added.

Ministers from the Group of Seven rich nations on Friday called for vigorous action around the world to curb rising imbalances in international trade and investment accounts.

A decrease in the U.S. budget deficit were cited by the G7 as one way to ease those imbalances. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said the U.S. administration was still committed to halving its budget deficit by 2009.

Breton spoke as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said U.S. plans to cut its government expenditures now looked ambitious in the light of huge reconstruction costs to be borne in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Breton said: "The situation that is creating tension today on the currency market ... is clearly the American deficit."

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  Study Finds Many Children Don't Benefit From Credits (NYTimes.com) By JASON DePARLE
Published: October 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - More than a quarter of American children - and half of black children - belong to families too poor to fully qualify for the $1,000-a-year child tax credit, which President Bush signed four years ago and has cited in arguing that his program of sweeping tax cuts helps low-income families, a new study has found.

The numbers come from an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group in Washington, and cast light on an important benefit for working families at a time when the hurricane damage in the Gulf Coast has Mr. Bush and others vowing to address poverty and racial division.

With an annual value of $47 billion, the credit is the government's largest children's subsidy and one that has provoked sharp partisan fights. Many conservatives, viewing it solely as a tax cut, want to reserve the credit for families that owe federal income tax. Many liberals, viewing it as a broader children's allowance, want to extend it to poorer workers, who they say need it most.

In 2001, Mr. Bush signed a compromise that extends the credit, in the form of an annual government check, to some working families that earn too little to owe income tax. Still, the study found that the families of 19.5 million children were too poor to receive the full $1,000 benefit. About half get a partial benefit, and half get nothing. More than three-quarters have parents who work.

While 18 percent of white children are in families too poor to claim the full credit, the figure is 50 percent among black children and 47 percent among Hispanics. The credit pays an average of $721 a year to white children, $564 a year to black children and $638 a year to Hispanic children.

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  Abort All Black Babies and Cut Crime, Says Republican (Guardian.co.uk) Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday October 1, 2005
The Guardian

George Bush has distanced himself from comments made by a leading Republican crusader on moral values who declared that one way to reduce the crime rate in the US would be to "abort black babies".

Speaking on his daily radio show, William Bennett, education secretary under Ronald Reagan and drugs czar under the first George Bush, said: "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

He went on to qualify his comments, which were made in response to a hypothesis that linked the falling crime rate to a rising abortion rate. Aborting black babies, he continued, would be "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down".

The comments brought condemnation from all sides. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said: "The president believes the comments were not appropriate."

Democrats called for Mr Bennett to withdraw his comments, and for his radio show to be dropped. "Republicans, Democrats and all Americans of goodwill should denounce this statement, should distance themselves from Mr Bennett," said Jesse Jackson. "And the private sector should not support Mr Bennett's radio show or his comments on the air."

(More ... Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Abort all black babies and cut crime, says Republican)  ¶ 13:44 0 comments