and yet another pissing contest:

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Putin: Hamas must change: "Putin boasts of defence-piercing missiles

Associated Press
Tuesday January 31, 2006

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, boasted today that his country had weapons capable of penetrating any missile defence system.

In language reminiscent of the cold war arms race, Mr Putin said: 'Last year Russia tested missiles systems that no one in the world has and won't have for a long time.'

He added: 'These missile systems don't represent a response to a missile defence system, but they are immune to that. They are hypersonic and capable of changing their flight path.'"

Check out this recently released Live CD based on OpenBSD 3.8 that claims one can do everything anonymously.

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him - New York Times:

"[S]cientist James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists."

...

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

...

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

...

"In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority."

Democracy Now! | How Middle East Media Cover Hamas Victory: Mosaic Compiles Arab T.V. News for U.S. Audience: "award-wining MOSAIC, a daily show on our partner network LinkTV that compiles television news reports from more than 30 television outlets throughout the Middle East."

see http://www.worldlinktv.org/mosaic/streamsArchive/ for the direct website of MOSAIC (a 2004 Peabody award winner)

Documents Show Army Seized Wives As Tactic:

"The U.S. Army in
Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of 'leveraging' their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him 'to come get his wife.'"

Irony not yet dead.

MPAA finds itself Accused of Piracy

PARK CITY, Utah ? The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the leader in the global fight against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA's film ratings system.

The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" without the filmmaker's permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated "publicity stunt" to boost the film's profile.

Scheduled to debut at the Sundance Film Festival on Wednesday night, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" examines what Dick believes are the MPAA's stricter standards for rating explicit depictions of sex than for gruesome violence. Dick also explores whether independent films are rated more harshly than studio films, whether scenes of gay sex are restricted more than scenes of straight sex, and why the 10 members of the MPAA's ratings board operate without any public accountability.

White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard."

How's this for a new email signature?:

"** Warning ** This e-mail message, without warrant or warning, and despite US law as set forth in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, may be subject to monitoring by the United States National Security Agency and/or the Department of Defense. Information contained in this message may be used against any senders or recipients, now or in the future, in a public trial or secret tribunal."

This is streamed on the web and freely downloadable:

The Power of Nightmares: "The Power of Nightmares - Part I

Baby It?s Cold Outside?

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares."

This is streamed on the web and freely downloadable:

The Power of Nightmares: "The Power of Nightmares - Part I

Baby It?s Cold Outside?

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares."

Interesting. I don't know the specifics of what is required for the UN to send in peace keepers to stop a genocide. I would like to know more.

Also interesting, Adorno in 1949 when 'genocide' is given a meaning for the purposes of international law. Of course, one needs such a concept, even Adorno would admit, but why has this played out exactly as he anticipated?

"...but by being codified... the unspeakable was made, for the sake of protest, commensurable. By its elevation to a concept, its possibility is virtually recognised: an institution to be forbidden, rejected, discussed. One day negotiations will take place in the forum of the United Nations on whether some new atrocity comes under the heading of genocide, whether nations have a right to intervene that they do not want to exercise in any case, and whether in view of the unforeseen difficulty of applying it in practice the whole concept of genocide should be removed from the statutes. Soon afterwards there are inside-page headlines in journalese: East Turkestan genocide programme nears completion." (1949)
(New Left Review Issue 200, p6).

Darfur Descending: "Darfur Descending
No Time for Apathy on Sudan

By Kofi A. Annan

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; Page A19

When I visited Darfur last May, I felt hopeful. Today I am pessimistic, unless a major new international effort is mustered in the coming weeks.

"

As Annan argues at the bottom of this piece, the use of force, if necessary to deter or end threats or acts of violence, should be part of any mandate arrived at by the Security Council. Is he serious or is this a way to cover tracks for Rwanda where Ch7 wasn't granted by his office (if I am not mistaken, he was the head of the office overseeing UN activities in Africa) and put the onus on the council? If I am not mistaken, in Rwanda it would not have taken a Security Council mandate to authorize the blue helmets to use force to stop the genocide.

Impeachment Hearings: The White House Prepares for the Worst:

"The Bush administration is bracing for impeachment hearings in Congress.

'A coalition in Congress is being formed to support impeachment,' an administration source said."

...

"Administration sources said the charges are expected to include false reports to Congress as well as Mr. Bush's authorization of the National Security Agency to engage in electronic surveillance inside the United States without a court warrant. This included the monitoring of overseas telephone calls and e-mail traffic to and from people living in the United States without requisite permission from a secret court."

...

"Our arithmetic shows that a majority of the committee could vote against the president," the source said. "If we work hard, there could be a tie."

Now, Insight is a Washington Times subsidary...So what might this mean?

MyDD suggests 3 alternatives

"One of my first thoughts -- stemming from the idea that Republicans who want to investigate Bush's warrantless domestic spying program "may not be aware they could be helping to lay the groundwork for a Democratic impeachment campaign" -- is that this is a thinly veiled threat against Congressional Republicans. It's true that if the White House successfully shuts down an investigation, impeachment becomes less likely.

It's also possible that this is just an exercise in expectations management. If there is no investigation, or if there is and it's a Republican whitewash, impeachment likely won't happen. And if that's the case, Bush could come out looking like a winner, without ever having to actually fight.

The third possibility is my favorite. The Bush White House knows they broke the law. They know they've been caught red-handed. They realize impeachment is a likely outcome. I don't know which comes closer to the truth, but it's significant that the Republicans at Insight are taking the possibility of impeachment very seriously."

FUCK THIS

(Library of Congress):

"House Report 109-333 - USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005"

Sec. 3056A. Powers, authorities, and duties of United States Secret Service Uniformed Division

(a) There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the `United States Secret Service Uniformed Division'. Subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall perform such duties as the Director, United States Secret Service, may prescribe in connection with the protection of the following:

(1) The White House in the District of Columbia.

(2) Any building in which Presidential offices are located.

(3) The Treasury Building and grounds.

(4) The President, the Vice President (or other officer next in the order of succession to the Office of President), the President-elect, the Vice President-elect, and their immediate families.

(5) Foreign diplomatic missions located in the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia.

(6) The temporary official residence of the Vice President and grounds in the District of Columbia.

(7) Foreign diplomatic missions located in metropolitan areas (other than the District of Columbia) in the United States where there are located twenty or more such missions headed by full-time officers, except that such protection shall be provided only--

(b)(1) Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to--

(A) carry firearms;

(B) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony; and

(C) perform such other functions and duties as are authorized by law.

(2) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall possess privileges and powers similar to those of the members of the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia.

(c) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall be furnished with uniforms and other necessary equipment.

Do you think they at least have the decency not to order brown shirts with these uniforms?

Email Message sent by Texas Govenor Rick Perry's Staff:

"Question between you and I," Perry's communications director, Eric Bearse, wrote Sept. 1, "at what point do we go from being compassionate to being taken advantage of (meaning, are they sending us folks they don't want?). Please erase when done reading."

"Excelent point," Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw responded. "We will soon hit that mark and will (be) able to push off to other states without appearing dispassionate. We just need to make sure the Feds fund all of the short term and long term costs consider it erased."

BBC NEWS | Business | Ford's 'Way Forward' is rocky and long: "Ford is preparing to cut 25-30,000 jobs, up to a quarter of its workforce, and close 14 factories as part of a six-year restructuring programme that sets out to rescue the troubled car maker."

The National Economy: "George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has returned to its lowest point in Bush's presidency as Americans again turn less optimistic about the national economy according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 34% approve and 60% disapprove."

Why America Has to Be Fat: "Did you know, according to consumer-research firm Mintel Group, that we guzzled $37 billion in carbonated beverages in 2004? The same year, we spent $3.9 billion on cookies -- $244 million of which were Oreo cookies sold by Kraft Foods for about $3.69 a package. In 2003, we splurged $57.2 billion on meals at restaurants such as Denny's, Chili's and Outback Steakhouse (a personal favorite). Potato chip sales hit $6.2 billion in 2004."

Network Neutrality at Risk

Mother of five fighting record companies' lawsuit on her own

CNN.com - Dutch open 'Big Brother' prison - Jan 19, 2006:

"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- At a high-tech prison opening this week inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software.

Authorities are convinced the jail in Lelystad -- quickly dubbed 'the Big Brother Prison' by the local press -- represents the future of correctional facilities: cheap and efficient, without coddling criminals or violating their fundamental rights.

Detainees will be kept in six-man dormitory cells. They will do their own cooking, washing and organize their own daytime schedules via a touch-screen monitor at the foot of their beds."

Labor Federation Calls for Universal Health Coverage - New York Times:

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president, called on Congress today to enact universal health insurance and to bar American companies from selling goods produced overseas under sweatshop conditions."

t r u t h o u t - Democrats Hold Hearing on Illegal Spying: " Perhaps what is most troubling of all is that if we let this domestic spying program continue, if we let this president convince us that we are at war, so he can do what he wants, we will allow to stand the principle that the president alone can decide what laws apply to him. I submit that is not only inconsistent with the principles upon which our Republic was founded, it denigrates the very freedom we have been fighting for since the tragic events of September 11. That is why we are holding today's hearing."

The New York Review of Books:

ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS:

"In conclusion, the DOJ letter fails to offer a plausible legal defense of the NSA domestic spying program. If the administration felt that FISA was insufficient, the proper course was to seek legislative amendment, as it did with other aspects of FISA in the Patriot Act, and as Congress expressly contemplated when it enacted the wartime wiretap provision in FISA. One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President?or anyone else?to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable."

Signed

Ronald Dworkin, NYU Law School

David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center

Walter Dellinger, Duke Law School, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel and Acting Solicitor General

Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Philip B. Heymann, Harvard Law School, former Deputy Attorney General

Harold Hongju Koh, Dean, Yale Law School, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, former Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ

Martin Lederman, Georgetown University Law Center, former Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ

Beth Nolan, former Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel

William S. Sessions, former Director, FBI, former Chief United States District Judge

Geoffrey Stone, Professor of Law and former Provost, University of Chicago

Kathleen Sullivan, Professor and former Dean, Stanford Law School

Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard Law School

William Van Alstyne, William & Mary Law School, former Justice Department attorney

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com: "Yesterday, Attorney General Gonzales sent Congress a 42-page legal defense of warrantless surveillance, expanding on arguments made in December that the President, under his Constitutional authority as commander-in-chief and as authorized by post 9/11 Congressional resolution granting him the use of force, has the authority to circumvent the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to conduct eavesdropping."

Meanwhile, the Pentagon also released a 2-page January 13 memorandum (pdf) directing "all DOD intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) personnel" to receive "refresher training on the policies for collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to U.S. persons."

Early warning on December 14 reported the Pentagon program of domestic spying, in cooperation with NBC News. A Defense Department database covering the time period of 2004-2005 and leaked to this reporter gave a rare look at accelerated U.S. military intelligence collection since 9/11, including reporting on anti-war and anti-military recruiting protests throughout the United States.

Now Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordan England is not only order sensitivity training at the Pentagon, but also directing CIFA to purge its "TALON" database of "any reports that should not be in the database.

TALON was a program initiated in May 2003 by former Deputy Secretary Pail Wolfowitz to provide the military services with a common reporting scheme for "non-validated" threat warnings with a possible link to terrorism. At least between 2003 and December of last year, that reporting was used to characterize the "threat" to the U.S. military domestically, and included reporting on incidents that had nothing to do with terrorism or had any conceivable terrorist connection.

It's somewhat funny that the Pentagon is now directing a review and purging of the TALON program, even though I reported on December 22 that the database in question is actually one that is larger and broader than TALON called the Joint Protection Enterprise Network (JPEN) database, an intelligence and law enforcement sharing system managed by CIFA.

JPEN incorporates not just TALON reporting from the military services, but also intelligence reporting and law enforcement information. Though it must comply with the same requirements to purge information about U.S. "persons" after 90 day if there is shown to be no foreign government, terrorist, or law enforcement connection, the Pentagon has so far managed not to discuss this expanded program of domestic information collection, nor the overall work of the super-secret CIFA.

The Pentagon's willingness to make changes does stand in stark contrast to the administration's insistence not only as to the legality of the NSA program but also to its continuation."

Internet News Article | Reuters.com: "In court papers filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, the Justice Department stated that Google had refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for one million random Web addresses from Google's databases as well as records of all searches entered on Google during any one-week period.

The government said it needed the information to prepare its case to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the Supreme Court blocked from taking effect two years ago.

The law prohibited Internet companies from knowingly making available obscene or pornographic material to minors. The Supreme Court said there were potential constitutional problems with the law and sent the case back to a lower court for consideration. It is expected to be heard later this year."

The Justice Department said on Friday that America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft had all complied with similar requests."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US university spying scandal prompts resignations: "A former US Republican congressman has resigned from the advisory board of a university alumni group after it emerged the latter was offering students money to police 'liberal' professors at the University of California, Los Angeles.

James Rogan, who served two terms in office, sent an email on Wednesday to Andrew Jones, the head of the Bruin Alumni Association, saying he did not want his name connected to the group. Mr Rogan's resignation follows those of the Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom and the UCLA professor emeritus Jascha Kessler, who both resigned from the board once they learned of the group's activities."

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: Guest Editorial:

"We are on the brink of a constitutional crisis. President Bush is in trouble over his authorization of domestic spying by the National Security Agency. Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is acting as if the president needs to be protected from the law while his critics should not be protected by the law.

Sounds like 1973, when Richard Nixon was president and John Mitchell attorney general. However, there is a big difference between the 1973 constitutional crisis and the one looming today ? a special prosecutor like Archibald Cox has yet to be appointed.

By authorizing the NSA spying, the president has very likely committed a felony that carries a penalty of five years in a federal prison. However, instead of an independent investigation of the president, Attorney General Gonzales is investigating government whistle blowers who have brought the president's transgressions to light."

"Even though it is entirely possible to prove to judge and jury that President Bush knowingly broke the FISA laws, the record clearly indicates that neither Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld nor Condoleezza Rice could ever conceive that a man like President Bush could be wrong. The scales of justice are stacked in favor of the president and we need a special prosecutor to bring them back into balance. We need an impartial investigator who believes more in a government of laws than a government of men."

By Anthony Macula, is an associate professor of mathematics at the State University College at Geneseo. He has been a visiting research scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Institute in Rome, Oneida County.

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com: "the Army has hired PR firm Hass MS&L of Detroit to offer 'exclusive editorial content' to blogs willing to run government propaganda."

"The Army believes that military blogs are a valuable medium for reaching out," account executive Charlie Kondek has written to a number of pro-military blogs in a January 6 Email.

"To that end, the Army plans to offer you and selected bloggers exclusive editorial content on a few issues you?re likely to be interested in," Kondek says.

"Hass MS&L's claim to fame in the blogging world as far as I can tell is that they maintain the General Motors' corporate blog. Did the Army have to hire the PR firm for a dying corporation as its new agent?"

Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Six former heads of the
Environmental Protection Agency ? five Republicans and one Democrat ? accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems."

"Radical" UCLA professors targeted by alumni group:

"An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing University of California, Los Angeles professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Association on its Web site says it is concerned about professors who use lecture time to press positions against President Bush, the military and multinational corporations, among other things."

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support
Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to
consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped
American citizens without a judge's approval, according
to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a
grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional
investigation of President Bush's decision to invade
Iraq in 2003.

Lowell Bergman!

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

New York Times, Jan. 17th
Christopher Hitchens!

The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program.

[snip]

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group.

A Columnist Backed by Monsanto:

"Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book."

Editorial: The Imperial Presidency at Work - New York Times:

"Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous 'signing statement' on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.

Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade."

The Next Hurrah:

"Summary: In this post, I review Jason Leopold's claim that Bush authorized domestic surveillance before 9/11. Leopold relies heavily on a December 2000 document to make his claim and cites it out of context. He includes three other sources to support his claim, but these sources are talking about different programs, not the domestic surveillance program James Risen first exposed. While Leopold collects several incidences of disconcerting surveillance, he doesn't prove his central claim, purportedly disproving that Bush started the Risen program in response to 9/11."

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold | Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11:

"James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

'The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions,' Risen wrote in the book. 'Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders' and 'the most ambitious got the message.'

The NSA's domestic surveillance activities that began in early 2001 reached a boiling point shortly after 9/11, when senior administration officials and top intelligence officials asked the NSA to share that data with other intelligence officials who worked for the FBI and the CIA to hunt down terrorists that might be in the United States. However the NSA, on advice from its lawyers, destroyed the records, fearing the agency could be subjected to lawsuits by American citizens identified in the agency's raw intelligence reports."

"In 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese entered into an arrangement with the West Publishing Company to have Presidential signing statements published for the first time in the U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News, the standard collection of legislative history. Mr. Meese explained the purpose of the project as follows:

To make sure that the President's own understanding of what's in a bill is the same ... or is given consideration at the time of statutory construction later on by a court, we have now arranged with the West Publishing Company that the presidential statement on the signing of a bill will accompany the legislative history from Congress so that all can be available to the court for future construction of what that statute really means. (emphasis added)"

First Draft: "Dick Cheney was taken to George Washington Hospital early Monday experiencing shortness of breath, a spokeswoman said."

I still have until 1/15, right mlango?

AP - Journalist death toll in Iraq exceeds that of Vietnam, Reporters Without Borders says: "More journalists and media staffers have been killed during the Iraq war than during 22 years of conflict in Vietnam, Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.

Worldwide, at least 63 journalists were killed last year, the press freedom group said in its annual report. That was up from at least 53 killed in 2004, the group said."

I missed this Onion headline from some time ago...

Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

The Austin Chronicle: Columns: Letters at 3AM

The Observer | World | Scandal of force-fed prisoners

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

Pentagon Study Links Fatalities to Body Armor - New York Times: "A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials."

firedoglake:

MSNBC Reports:

"Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words ?by Border Protection? and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

?I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,? Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. ?That?s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,? he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.

?I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning,? Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. ?I think I must be under some kind of surveillance.?

(snip)

The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor; Goodman declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on the U.S. government?s radar screen as a potential spawning ground for Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a devout Catholic and not given to supporting such causes.

A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn?t speak directly to Goodman?s case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it?s deemed necessary.

?All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,? says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. ?All mail means ?all mail,?? said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point.

?This process isn?t something we?re trying to hide,? Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency?s Web site. ?We?ve had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created."

'DeLay Inc.' Lobbying Firm Has Links to Three Capital Scandals

Representative Tom DeLay's campaign to get Republicans to dominate Washington lobbying may have worked too well for Alexander Strategy Group.

The firm has links to no fewer than three of the scandals convulsing the US capital. One partner, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy, is now a focus of a federal investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The group's founder, former DeLay chief of staff Ed Buckham, set up a South Korea junket for his old boss that violated ethics rules. And the firm represents a company whose owner, prosecutors allege, bribed former Representative Randy Cunningham.

Reuters.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday."

Barbie website changed to appease conservatives: "Under pressure initiated by a variety of conservative groups, the Barbie website has been amended to no longer include 'I Don't Know' as a choice in addition to "Girl" and "Boy".

"Acknowledging that children are given a neutral or non-response option on all questions on their websites, Mattel spokeswoman Lauren Bruksh called such an option under gender, "just an innocent oversight."

Murtha Denies Causing Recruitment Woes - Yahoo! News: "Speaking before a town hall meeting on Iraq in Arlington, Va., hosted by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., Murtha said Pace called him to discuss the war.

'Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me this last night: They know militarily they can't win this,' Murtha said."

Bush at a speech (or something like one) today:

"In other words, what's interesting about the community college experience is that if you're living in an area where there's a need for health care workers, and you got a chancellor of the community college system that is any good, that person will devise a program with the local health care providers that will help train nurses, or whatever is needed. I mean the health care -- the community college system is a fabulous job training opportunity for the American people. It's a place to find -- to match people's desire to work with the jobs that actually exist."

Ah, perfect reconciliation between what we want and need and have and get.

The Raw Story | Nonpartisan arm of Congress says wiretaps may be illegal: "A 44-page nonpartisan Congressional Research Service report on whether President Bush had the legal authority to impose surveillance on international calls without consulting Congress found that Bush's claim of executive power was not 'well grounded' in law, RAW STORY has learned."

...

"It noted that Congress has had an active role in regulating surveillance, and was unlikely to inherently defer to the executive branch.

"The history of Congress? active involvement in regulating electronic surveillance within the United States leaves little room for arguing that Congress has accepted by acquiescence the NSA operations here at issue," the report said.

?It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here under discussion," it added.

The attorneys said the spying's legality is specifically tied to whether the authorization for war inherently validated the President's order.

?Whether such electronic surveillances are contemplated by the term ?all necessary and appropriate force?...turns on whether they are... an essential element of waging war,? the report said.

"It did, however, suggest that some courts might have allowed the move."

Raw Story has a link to the full .pdf of the CRS report.

"Delivering the FOIA Requests"

TIME.com: Disgraced Congressman 'Wore a Wire' -- :

"Sources familiar with the situation say Cunningham, a California Republican who pleaded guilty Nov. 28 to taking $2.4 million in bribes ? including a yacht, a Rolls Royce and a 19th Century Louis-Philippe commode ? from a defense contractor, wore a wire at some point during the short interval between the moment he began cooperating with the feds and the announcement of his guilty plea on Nov. 28.

The identity of those with whom the San Diego congressman met while wearing the wire remains unclear, and is the source of furious ? and nervous ? speculation by congressional Republicans."

oh, and you gotta love this

"An FBI spokesman declined comment. Asked whether Cunningham...had worn a wire, the spokesman said the response from a higher-up was, "Like I'd tell you."

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan:

Just one question from yesterday's Press Gaggle...Times are getting tough for Scotty M. in the WH press room when questions draw on comparisons like this...

Q Scott, a few days ago, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts had a column where he compared the administration's use of September 11th with Hitler and the Reichstag fire as a blanket cover for extraordinary measures. Now, this is coming from a conservative columnist; this is not Nancy Pelosi. Doesn't this concern you that these kind of reactions have come up especially with all the revelations about the NSA and spying?

MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't seen his column -- I haven't seen his column. But what -- your characterization I would reject wholeheartedly."

IRS tracked taxpayers political affiliation

"As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states."

...

"The bottom line is that we have never used this information,? said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. ?There are strict laws in place that forbid it.?

"...the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin."

From the FT, once again the only paper that tells the truth...

US Plans Afghan Jail for Terror Suspects: "The US government has plans to build a high-security prison in Afghanistan to hold terror suspects, including some who would be transferred from the controversial US naval base at Guantánamo Bay.

The site selected for the jail is Pol-e-Charki, a rundown prison near Kabul dating from the Soviet era. Some of the base?s prison facilities have recently been refurbished as part of a European Union-financed criminal justice reform programme backed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The transfer of prisoners of Afghan origin from Guantánamo to Afghanistan is intended to take pressure off the US administration, which continues to face strong international criticism for holding detainees without trial or other legal recourse."

Washington Post

DNA Testing Ordered on Executed Man

By Maria Glod and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 5, 2006; 6:48 PM

Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) has ordered DNA testing that could prove the guilt or innocence of a man executed in 1992, marking the first time a governor has asked for genetic testing of someone already put to death.

The testing, begun last month, comes in the case of Roger Keith Coleman, a convicted killer whose proclamations of innocence -- including on the night of his execution -- sparked concern nationwide over whether the wrong man died in Virginia's electric chair.

"We have found that the latest DNA technology -- in certain instances where the other facts of a case support it -- has provided a definitive result not available at the time of trial or post-conviction testing," Warner said in a statement.

"This is an extraordinarily unique circumstance, where technology has advanced significantly and can be applied in the case of someone who consistently maintained his innocence until execution. I believe we must always follow the available facts to a more complete picture of guilt or innocence. My prayers are with the family of Wanda McCoy as we take this extraordinary step."

Coleman was convicted of killing McCoy.

The tests, on vials of evidence that have been preserved for years at a California laboratory, are being conducted at Ontario's Centre of Forensic Sciences (CFS) lab in Toronto, according to the governor's office. Results could be announced before Warner leaves office next week.

If Coleman is exonerated, it would mark the first time in the United States that the innocence of an executed person has been proven through genetic tests.

Ira Robbins, an American University criminal law professor, said if Coleman is proven innocent it would push many Americans who are unsure about capital punishment to oppose it. But even if the tests prove Coleman was a killer, he said, it could spark testing of more old cases nationwide.

"Lets assume it comes back that he was proved innocent. Here is the case that the death penalty opponents have been looking for for a long time -- that we have executed an innocent person," Robbins said. "It could be the biggest turning point in death penalty abolition."

Coleman, a coal miner from Grundy a small mountain town in southwest Virginia, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 brutal rape and stabbing of his sister-in-law, 19-year-old Wanda McCoy. But questions about his guilt have lingered for decades.

In recent years, state officials and judges, including the Virginia Supreme Court, have refused requests by a charity that investigates wrongful convictions and several media organizations to allow modern testing of evidence gathered at the crime scene.

In 2001, a lawyer with the Virginia attorney general's office told a circuit judge that "Continual reexamination of concluded cases brings about perpetual uncertainty . . . and disparages the entire criminal justice system."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Op-Ed in Washington Post from a Father of a dead US soldier.

A Life, Wasted: "Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in 'the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices.'"

...

I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.

...

Though it hurts, I believe that his death -- and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq -- was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator -- a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation -- a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush.