NEW YORK (AP) -- Last year was the warmest in a century, nosing out 1998, a federal analysis concludes.
Researchers calculated that 2005 produced the highest annual average surface temperature worldwide since instrument recordings began in the late 1800s, said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The result confirms a prediction the institute made in December.
In a telephone interview, Hansen said the analysis estimated temperatures in the Arctic from nearby weather stations because no direct data were available. Because of that, "we couldn't say with 100 percent certainty that it's the warmest year, but I'm reasonably confident that it was," Hansen said.
More important, he said, is that 2005 reached the warmth of 1998 without help of the "El Nino of the century" that pushed temperatures up in 1998.
(More ... CNN.com - 2005 was the hottest year in a century - Jan 24, 2006) ¶ 22:13 0 comments
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 24, 2006; Page A01
House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings, according to CBO and other health policy experts.
That change was made in mid-December during private negotiations involving House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and the staffs of those committees as well as the House Energy and Commerce Committee. House and Senate Democrats were excluded from the meeting. The Senate gave final approval to the budget-cutting measure on Dec. 21, but the House must give it final consideration early next month.
The change in the Medicare provision underscores a practice that growing numbers of lawmakers from both parties want addressed. More than ever, Republican congressional lawmakers and leaders are making vital decisions, involving far-reaching policies and billions of dollars, without the public -- or even congressional Democrats -- present.
(More ... Closed-Door Deal Makes $22 Billion Difference) ¶ 22:14 0 comments
· Report stirs controversy among environmentalists
John Vidal, environment editor
Tuesday January 24, 2006
The Guardian
The UK has been ranked fifth best in the world at tackling domestic and global environmental problems, according to the first performance league tables, which will be launched this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The tables, produced by international scientists and researchers from Yale and Columbia universities in the US, ranked 133 countries according to how they tried to tackle 16 global and domestic problems and met domestic and world targets.
New Zealand came top, followed by Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic. The report said the world's poorest countries, mainly in Africa, came bottom largely because their governments had no resources to address the mounting problems of drinking water, indoor air pollution, sanitation and loss of forests.
The pilot list, which is based on environmental health and habitat quality indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions, park protection, and air and water quality, found major differences between countries with similar legacies of pollution, resource degradation and wealth.
"Good governance emerges as as a critical driver of environmental performance," the report said.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK ranked fifth best in world green list) ¶ 19:35 0 comments
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Democrats accused Republicans Saturday of using "doublespeak" and abusing their power in order to help special interest groups.
With Republicans burdened by the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in the weekly Democratic radio address that years of controlling both the White House and Congress had corrupted the Republican Party.
"There is a price to pay for this Republican abuse of power, and it can be seen in the present state of our union," Reid said. "Special interests and the well-connected have been rewarded by Republicans, while everyone else has been left behind."
The scandal theme is likely to play a role in the run-up to the November congressional elections. Abramoff entered guilty pleas in a wide-ranging bribery investigation that has prompted calls by both parties for reform.
(More ... CNN.com - Democrats assail Republicans on ethics - Jan 21, 2006) ¶ 08:17 0 comments
Published: January 19, 2006
In an indication of how Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. may fare when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on his confirmation next Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont today became the first Democrat on the committee to declare his intention to vote against him.
Mr. Leahy told an audience at the Georgetown Law School that he did not believe Judge Alito would act independently of an executive branch that would exceed its powers.
"I cannot vote for this nomination," Mr. Leahy said. "I will not vote for this nomination."
Mr. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he voted for the nomination of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. last year. But he said he was concerned by Judge Alito's responses during the committee hearings last week on the issues of privacy and conflicts between government and individuals. But mostly, he said he was troubled that Judge Alito, who has spent his entire legal career working for the government, would be too deferential to what the senator called his "patrons."
"At a time when the president is seizing unprecedented power, the Supreme Court needs to be a check and balance," he said. "Based on the hearing and his record, I have no confidence that Judge Alito will provide that check and balance."
(More ... Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito - New York Times) ¶ 08:01 0 comments
Published: January 20, 2006
The new prescription drug benefit is off to a catastrophic start. Tens of thousands of older Americans have arrived at pharmacies to discover that their old drug benefits have been canceled, but that they aren't on the list for the new program. More than two dozen states have taken emergency action.
At first, federal officials were oblivious. "This is going very well," a Medicare spokesman declared a few days into the disaster. Then officials started making excuses. Some conservatives even insist that the debacle vindicates their ideology: see, government can't do anything right.
But government works when it's run by people who take public policy seriously. As Jonathan Cohn points out in The New Republic, when Medicare began 40 years ago, things went remarkably smoothly from the start. But this time the people putting together a new federal program had one foot out the revolving door: this was a drug bill written by and for lobbyists.
Consider the career trajectories of the two men who played the most important role in putting together the Medicare legislation.
(More ... The K Street Prescription - New York Times) ¶ 19:55 0 comments
CTV.ca News Staff
Google Inc. says it will "vigorously" fight the Bush administration's demand that it turn over information about what searches users have been asking it to perform.
The government wants a list of all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified week. With an average of 70 million searches per day, that could mean tens of millions of search requests.
The White House also wants one million randomly selected Web addresses from various databases of the world's leading search engine.
The request was first made last summer. Google refused to comply, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a judge for a court order to force a handover of the requested records.
In an official statement, Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, said: "Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches.
"We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
The Bush administration says it needs the information in order to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on grounds it violated the First Amendment.
What Google is most opposed to is the breadth of the government's request. The California-based company also says the information could reveal trade secrets.
The subpoena has also raised serious privacy concerns.
(More ... CTV.ca | Google rebuffs U.S. gov't demand for search data) ¶ 19:33 0 comments
January 20, 2006
AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.
If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.
(More ... The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Molly Ivins) ¶ 15:18 0 comments
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; 8:50 AM
NEW YORK -- Sen. Hillary Clinton on Monday blasted the Bush administration as "one of the worst" in U.S. history and compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissenting voices are squelched.
Speaking during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, Clinton also offered an apology to a group of Hurricane Katrina survivors "on behalf of a government that left you behind, that turned its back on you." Her remarks were met with thunderous applause by a mostly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem.
The House "has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about," said Clinton, D-N.Y. "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."
"We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence," she said. "I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."
A spokeswoman for the White House declined to comment and referred questions to the Republican National Committee.
(More ... Clinton Says House Run Like 'Plantation') ¶ 08:25 1 comments
Published: January 18, 2006
In times of extreme fear, American leaders have sometimes scrapped civil liberties in the name of civil protection. It's only later that the country can see that the choice was a false one and that citizens' rights were sacrificed to carry out extreme measures that were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. There are enough examples of this in American history - the Alien and Sedition Acts and the World War II internment camps both come to mind - that the lesson should be woven into the nation's fabric. But it's hard to think of a more graphic example than President Bush's secret program of spying on Americans.
The White House has offered steadily weaker arguments to defend the decision to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail without getting warrants. One argument is that the spying produced unique and highly valuable information. Vice President Dick Cheney, who never shrinks from trying to prey on Americans' deepest fears, said that the spying had saved "thousands of lives" and could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks had it existed then.
Given the lack of good, hard examples, that argument sounded dubious from the start. A chilling article in yesterday's Times confirmed our fears.
(More ... Spying on Ordinary Americans - New York Times) ¶ 08:21 0 comments
Published: January 17, 2006
AMERICAN history is short on 300th birthdays. Which is only one reason to salute Ben Franklin, who had the foresight to have been born three centuries ago today. It was one of many generous acts for his country. He makes us feel we have a history.
As a man of science, Franklin lamented that he had been born too soon. (A beautiful woman 40 years his junior generally elicited the same regret.) But he could not truly quibble with chronology. In America's seminal story, birth order was on his side. He was already a father - and a thriving publisher - when Adams and Washington were in swaddling clothes. He retired from the printing business when Jefferson was 4. He had flown his kite when Madison was an infant; by the time Hamilton was born he had turned to politics, and proposed a first plan for colonial union. He could have been either man's grandfather.
Franklin was, too, the founder who came the furthest. He alone spent six decades as a British subject before embracing the revolutionary cause, to which he applied the zeal of a convert. He neither hailed from an elite nor subscribed to one. The youngest son of a youngest son, he chafed as much against entitled elder siblings as against enthroned upper classes. Until Tom Sawyer displaced him, he ranked as our foremost juvenile delinquent. Franklin's autobiography begins with defying his family and running away from home. "Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking," he reflected afterward, with ample reason. He thought he was writing his own story but was of course writing America's as well.
Neither birth order nor longevity - he signed every document central to America's founding - would alone have established Franklin as the ur-American, however. He was a true egalitarian, which could not be said of Adams. For all his ingenuity he was less a manufacturer of ideas than a purveyor of them; he was no dreamy Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton may well have known everything, but Franklin questioned everything.
(More ... Poor Richard's Redemption - New York Times) ¶ 08:28 0 comments
Published: January 17, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.
(More ... Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends - New York Times) ¶ 08:21 0 comments
Monday, January 16, 2006; 10:56 PM
WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Al Gore called Monday for an independent investigation of President Bush's domestic spying program, contending the president "repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.
Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr.'s national holiday, the man who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush was interrupted repeatedly by applause as he called the anti-terrorism program "a threat to the very structure of our government."
Gore charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a special federal court that authorizes requests to eavesdrop on Americans. One judge on the court resigned last month, voicing concerns about the National Security Agency's surveillance of e-mails and phone calls.A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Tracey Schmitt, attacked Gore's comments shortly after address.
(More ... Gore Assails Domestic Wiretapping Program)
It's widely expected that President Bush will talk a lot about health care in his State of the Union address. He probably won't boast about his prescription drug plan, whose debut has been a Katrina-like saga of confusion and incompetence. But he probably will tout proposals for so-called "consumer driven" health care.
So it's important to realize that the administration's idea of health care reform is to take what's wrong with our system and make it worse. Consider the harrowing series of articles The New York Times printed last week about the rising tide of diabetes.
Diabetes is a horrifying disease. It's also an important factor in soaring medical costs. The likely future impact of the disease on those costs terrifies health economists. And the problem of dealing with diabetes is a clear illustration of the real issues in health care.
Here's what we should be doing: since the rise in diabetes is closely linked to the rise in obesity, we should be getting Americans to lose weight and exercise more. We should also support disease management: people with diabetes have a much better quality of life and place much less burden on society if they can be induced to monitor their blood sugar carefully and control their diet.
But it turns out that the U.S. system of paying for health care doesn't let medical professionals do the right thing. There's hardly any money for prevention, partly because of the influence of food-industry lobbyists. And even disease management gets severely shortchanged. As the Times series pointed out, insurance companies "will often refuse to pay $150 for a diabetic to see a podiatrist, who can help prevent foot ailments associated with the disease. Nearly all of them, though, cover amputations, which typically cost more than $30,000."
(More ...First, Do More Harm - New York Times)
¶ 13:01 0 comments
Januarfy 15, 2006
Mark Helprin is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. His novels include "A Soldier of the Great War" and "Winter's Tale."
THE PRESIDENT believes and often states, as if it were a self-evident truth, that "democracies are peaceful countries." This claim, which has been advanced in the past in regard to Christianity, socialism, Islam and ethical culture, is the postulate on which the foreign policy of the United States now rests. Balance of power, deterrence and punitive action have been abandoned in favor of a scheme to recast the political cultures of broad regions, something that would be difficult enough even with a flawless rationale because the power of even the most powerful country in the world is not adequate to transform the world at will.
Nor is the rationale flawless. It is possible to discover various statistical correlations among democracy and war and peace, depending on how they are defined and in what time frames. The chief pitfall in such social-science exercises is in weighing something such as, for example, the Mughal Campaign in Transoxiana, 1646-47, against something like, for example, World War II. Generally, a straightforward historical approach is better. And what does it show?
Even without reference to the case of a democracy that, finding self-defense insufficient justification and retaliation an insufficient end, makes war on a non-democracy so as to make the non-democracy a democracy, the postulate on which the president has in all good faith chosen to rely is contradicted by inconvenient fact.
(More ... The myth that shapes Bush's world - Los Angeles Times) ¶ 08:14 0 comments
A senior United States senator, John McCain, says New Zealand's nuclear free policy should not affect the country's chances of securing a free trade deal with the US.
Senator McCain, who lost out to George Bush in the 2000 Republican presidential race, flew into Christchurch from Antarctica on Tuesday night and was meeting on Wednesday with Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Phil Goff.
McCain says New Zealand and the US have had their differences over the nuclear issue, but the Cold War is over.
The Senator says the disagreement should not affect issues of mutual interest such as free trade, and he would like very much to see a deal between the two countries.
The government has previously identified a free trade agreement with the US as a key goal but no talks have been held.
McCain was accompanied on the visit by Republican Congressman Sherwood Boehlert who chairs the US House of Representatives science committee.
Fresh from their visit to Antarctica, the two senior American politicians say climate change should be a higher priority for the United States government.
While the US rejects the Kyoto Protocol, it is meeting on Wednesday and Thursday in Sydney with other large, polluting nations and industries in a bid to agree on a common global warming strategy.
The Guardian
American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.
Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.
Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.
The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.
The director of the film, Callum Macrae, said yesterday: "The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.
(More ... Guardian Unlimited The Guardian US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist) ¶ 13:08 0 comments
Monday, January 9, 2006; Page A18
FIFTEEN YEARS ago it was fashionable to pronounce the eclipse of the nation-state. In a globalized world, power would flow to supranational bodies: to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and the European Commission, and even to a United Nations freed from the paralyzing divisions of the Cold War. Today this trend appears exhausted. Supranational institutions are not exactly retreating, but they have run out of forward momentum.
Start with economic institutions. The latest round of tariff-cutting talks under the auspices of the WTO is stalling, not because countries oppose trade but because they do not want to make concessions in this multilateral forum. Ambitions to deepen the WTO's power to settle disputes beyond trade into labor and environmental issues have (fortunately) fizzled, while WTO rulings against protectionist European food regulation or American cotton subsidies don't (unfortunately) cause those policies to be reformed quickly. The same story holds for NAFTA. In the 1990s there was talk of building NAFTA tribunals on labor and the environment into influential voices. It hasn't happened.
The International Monetary Fund is even more diminished. In the 1980s and 1990s, it had a place at the top table, leading the charge for economic reform in developing countries during the years of the debt crisis, then struggling to manage financial crises from East Asia to Russia to Latin America from 1997 to 2001. But now the East Asians have built up financial reserves, partly to withstand future financial shocks without the IMF's assistance. Russia is high on petrodollars. And Brazil and Argentina recently paid off the IMF early in a gesture of independence. The world still faces big international financial issues, from the vast U.S. trade deficit to China's currency manipulation, but the IMF has chosen to duck them. Meanwhile, the World Bank is struggling to define its role in a world awash with private lenders. Its new leader, Paul D. Wolfowitz, wielded power confidently when he was part of the Bush administration, but he is feeling his way along in his new job.(More ... Globalization's Deficit)
Jamie Wilson in Washington
Saturday January 7, 2006
The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.
The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.
The report came during one of the most deadly periods in Iraq since the invasion, with the US military yesterday revising upwards to 11 the number of its troops killed during a wave of insurgent attacks on Thursday. More than 130 civilians were also killed when suicide bombers struck Shia pilgrims in Karbala and a police recruiting station in Ramadi.
The paper on the real cost of the war, written by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard budget expert, is likely to add to the pressure on the White House on the war. It also followed the revelation this week that the White House had scaled back ambitions to rebuild Iraq and did not intend to seek funds for reconstruction.
Mr Stiglitz told the Guardian that despite the staggering costs laid out in their paper the economists had erred on the side of caution. "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK." In 2003, as US and British troops were massing on the Iraq border, Larry Lindsey, George Bush's economic adviser, suggested the costs might reach $200bn. The White House said the figure was far too high, and the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said Iraq could finance its own reconstruction.
Three years later, with more than 140,000 US soldiers on the ground in Iraq, even the $200bn figure was very low, according to the two economists.
(More ... Guardian Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist) ¶ 15:16 0 comments
International women's rights organisation Equality Now is lobbying for a woman to replace out-going UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- and two prominent New Zealand women, Helen Clark and Silvia Cartwright, are high on their list of proposed candidates.
Speculation has swirled for more than a year that Helen Clark hopes for a top UN post when she exits her role as Prime Minister, although few would have thought she had the props for the top UN job.
But Equality Now names her -- and Governor-General Silvia Cartwright -- among 18 women it says are all qualified to take over the helm at the UN.
The 18 women named are a representative sample of the talent pool available, the group says, and none of them have indicated they are in the running for the job.
The group says it is time for a woman to lead the organisation after sixty years of institutional life and notes that women generally do not fare well in the upper reaches of the UN career tree.
"As of 30 June 2005, women occupied only 37.1 per cent of professional and higher positions and only 16.2 per cent of the Under-Secretaries General were women. Women’s unequal access to positions of decision-making power around the world hinders progress toward all the United Nations’ goals, including equality, development and peace," the group says.
Mr Annan is scheduled to step down toward the end of the year but some speculation is building that he may choose an early exit.
According to Times Online, much of the talk of an early departure stems from John Bolton having told fellow diplomats that he wants to settle on a successor by July.
(More ... National Business Review (NBR) - Business, News, Arts, Media, Share Market) ¶ 16:40 0 comments
Web Exclusive: 12.14.05
There is an excellent coffee shop in the basement of the United Nations building in New York. The espresso is served bitter and strong, Italian style. Sandwiches can be bought on hard French baguettes, and the pastries are always fresh. Whenever a meeting lets out in one of the conference rooms adjacent to the shop, diplomats make a beeline to the cash registers. Others light cigarettes: Though the United Nations is in Manhattan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-smoking crusade has not yet penetrated the complex, which sits on international land; so, beneath conspicuous no-smoking signs, diplomats routinely light up, creating a hazy plume that gives the Vienna Café a decidedly European feel.
The European way of doing things, in the weeks preceding the mid-September 2005 United Nations World Summit, could not be stretched to include the 35-hour workweek. For days, frantic negotiations on the substance of far-ranging UN reforms dragged on from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. But the one UN ambassador who generally arrived earliest and stayed latest always looked more upbeat than his bleary-eyed counterparts. “All night -- all right!” quipped John Bolton to a press stakeout.
There was a reason for Bolton’s cheer: He was the man most responsible for the complexity of these negotiations. A month earlier, the newly minted, recess-appointed U.S. ambassador had sent negotiations into a tailspin when he submitted some 750 alterations to a 39-page text known as the “summit outcomes” document. Bolton’s most eye-popping suggestion at this summit, billed as a renewal of the UN’s 5-year-old pledge to help poor countries, was that all 14 references in the document to the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) be deleted.
(More ... American Prospect Online - The Arsonist)
¶ 16:34 0 comments
A US terror suspect who was held as an enemy combatant for more than three years before being moved to civilian custody has had his case delayed.
Jose Padilla had been expected to enter a plea on Friday on charges of plotting to "murder, kidnap and maim" abroad, but now must wait until 12 January.
He appeared in court in Miami after being transferred to civilian custody.
His case has huge legal and political significance, as it focuses on presidential power at a time of war.
Mr Padilla's detention, heavily criticised by civil rights groups, is seen as a test of the limits of the US government's anti-terrorism powers.
(More ...BBC NEWS | Americas | US terror suspect's plea delayed)
¶ 12:43 0 comments
EDITORIAL
The Padilla Case and Enemy Combatants
While the nation has been transfixed in the last two weeks by news of President Bush's secret domestic spying program, there remains other serious, unfinished business on the civil-liberties front in the fight against terrorism.
The Bush administration continues to claim a virtually unchecked power to detain citizens without charge whenever the President designates them as "enemy combatants."
It's troubling enough to have overseas calls and e-mail to family and friends tapped, but imagine the outrage of being an American citizen tossed in jail and held for years incommunicado without charge.
That's an awesome power for any president to claim - one that must be given a thorough review by the Supreme Court, and soon.
As of yet, the Bush administration has avoided a full-blown legal showdown on this issue. Now Justice Department lawyers are seeking to put off once again a high court ruling in the most notorious case - that of alleged "dirty bomber" and al-Qaeda foot soldier Jose Padilla.
Since his 2002 arrest, Padilla has been held in a U.S. Navy brig on allegations that morphed three times. First, he was alleged to have plotted with al-Qaeda to set off a radioactive bomb. Then he was credited with planning to blow up apartment buildings. Finally, in late November, a federal grand jury in Miami charged Padilla with planning overseas killings and aiding terrorists abroad.
The criminal charges were timed curiously: just as Padilla's lawyers sought a full Supreme Court review.
Whether or not the Bush administration hoped to scuttle a definitive ruling on the President's "enemy combatant" powers, a federal appeals court did the right thing two weeks ago.
The three-judge panel in Richmond refused to transfer Padilla to the criminal justice system. Instead, the Fourth U.S. Court of Appeals urged the highest court to take the case.
Amen to that.
The government's changing rationale for holding Padilla cast serious doubt on the case for the former gang member's detention. But the wider concern is the need for clear legal direction on behalf of all Americans, whose protection from unwarranted detention supposedly is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
(More ...Philadelphia Inquirer | 01/04/2006 | Editorial | Set limits on wartime powers)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - The Supreme Court late Wednesday granted the Bush administration's request to transfer the terrorism suspect Jose Padilla from military to civilian custody, ending an odd two-week standoff over where he should be held while the justices decide whether to hear his case.
The court's order means that Mr. Padilla will be held in a federal prison in Miami rather than a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., while he waits to learn whether the justices will take up his appeal of a decision that upheld, in sweeping terms, the government's authority to keep citizens it designates enemy combatants in open-ended military confinement.
While the immediate practical effect was minimal, and the court did not suggest how it might ultimately act in Mr. Padilla's case, the action was something of a victory for the administration after an embarrassing rebuff by a usually friendly federal appeals court that had refused to permit Mr. Padilla's transfer.
The Supreme Court's unsigned one-page order reviewed the recent convoluted history of the case and concluded by noting only that the court would consider Mr. Padilla's pending petition "in due course."
That petition, seeking review of a federal appeals court decision that upheld the government's authority to keep Mr. Padilla in open-ended military detention as an enemy combatant, is scheduled to go before the justices at their closed-door conference on Jan. 13.
The administration is arguing that his appeal has been rendered moot by the government's decision to try him on terrorism charges in the Federal District Court in Miami, where he was indicted by a grand jury on Nov. 17.
(More ...Justices Let U.S. Transfer Padilla to Civilian Custody - New York Times
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Under Republican control, America has been "put up for sale to the highest bidder" and its government has been transformed into an "engine of patronage, not one of responsible policy," a Democratic congresswoman said Saturday in the party's weekly radio address.
"As Americans, we have a right to expect that our government will be defined by the integrity of its office holders," said Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York. "And yet today, we are suffering the consequences of what may be the worst corruption in the history of our Congress."
Slaughter cited the case of Rep. Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who has been indicted on criminal charges of money laundering, and that of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who resigned after pleading guilty to bribery.
She also noted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty this week to charges of bribing public officials, tax evasion and fraud.
But the problem, she said, is larger than those people -- it's "a problem rooted in the Republican establishment which has held power in our nation's capital for more than a decade."
(More ... CNN.com - Democrats: GOP selling U.S. to 'highest bidder' - Jan 7, 2006)
¶ 12:17 0 comments
Published: January 2, 2006
Despite Congressional refusal for almost a decade to raise the federal minimum wage, nearly half of the civilian labor force lives in states where the pay is higher than the rate set by the federal government.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have acted on their own to set minimum wages that exceed the $5.15 an hour rate set by the federal government, and this year lawmakers in dozens of the remaining states will debate raising the minimum wage. Some states that already have a higher minimum wage than the federal rate will be debating further increases and adjustments for inflation.
The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in 1997 - when it was increased from $4.75 an hour. Since then, efforts in Congress to increase the amount have been stymied largely by Republican lawmakers and business groups who argued that a higher minimum wage would drive away jobs.
Thwarted by Congress, labor unions and community groups have increasingly focused their efforts at raising the minimum wage on the states, where the issue has received more attention than in Republican-dominated Washington, said Bill Samuel, the legislative director of the national A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Opinion polls show wide public support for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which falls far short of the income needed to place a family at the federal poverty level. Even the chairman of Wal-Mart has endorsed an increase, saying that a worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford to shop at his stores.
"The public is way ahead of Washington," Mr. Samuel said. "They see this as a matter of basic fairness, the underpinning of basic labor law in this country, a floor under wages so we're not competing with Bangladesh."
(More ... States Take Lead in Push to Raise Minimum Wages - New York Times) ¶ 17:35 0 comments
Published: January 2, 2006
There is no shortage of numbers and studies detailing the widening gap between what American companies pay workers and the millions of dollars those same companies pay top executives. But just in case anyone hasn't been paying attention, here enters David Brooks, chief executive of the bulletproof vest manufacturer DHB Industries Inc., to provide a fuller picture.
Mr. Brooks has made hundreds of millions of dollars through the company, principally from federal and municipal contracts for bulletproof vests. But while 18,000 of those vests were being recalled by the United States military, some from Iraq, Mr. Brooks was in the midst of throwing a private party for his daughter and her friends at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center.
The bash was headlined by a list of performers that could easily have carried the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza. The superstar rapper 50 Cent and the front men from the rock group Aerosmith were among the night's many performers. According to The Daily News in New York, the party's estimated $10 million price tag - a figure Mr. Brooks albeit called greatly exaggerated - culminated with guests reportedly walking out carrying gift bags valued at $1,000 each, stocked with digital cameras and video iPods.
Mr. Brooks is free to spend his money as he pleases, but he might have thought better than to draw added attention to his company right now. The November recall of the vests was the second by the military in 2005. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company and Mr. Brooks. And the company is also the target of several shareholder lawsuits after a material in some of its body armor failed a federal safety test.
(More ... Another Marie Antoinette Moment - New York Times) ¶ 17:32 0 comments
