Just in case you were wondering, prayer doesn't help and might actually hurt.


In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for ? 59 percent ? suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers' prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety.

"It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?" Dr. Bethea said.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group ? 18 percent ? suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.

Congressman Conyers Calls on the President to Publish the Hadley Memo:

Dear Mr. President:

I write to ask that you release publicly an October 2002 memorandum that informed you that the Energy Department and State Department disagreed with assessments that Iraq was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons materials. The memorandum was submitted to you by then - Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.

[snip]

"According to National Journal, you were aware prior to the 2003 State of the Union that Iraq did not possess such materials. In summarizing a National Intelligence Estimate for you in October 2002, Mr. Hadley noted that, while many agencies believed the aluminum tubes were 'related to a uranium enrichment effort,' the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch 'believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.' In short, these two intelligence agencies disagreed with your State of the Union assertion.

I am certain you would agree that, as we enter the fourth year of the invasion, it is important for the American people to understand exactly what set of circumstances led to your authorization of military action. For that reason, I ask that you release Mr. Hadley's memorandum.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr."

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Insulating Bush (03/30/2006):

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

[snip]

"'Presidential knowledge was the ball game,' says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. 'The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes.' A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: 'This was about getting past the election.'"

Update: An article in the recent American Prospect that connects some of the dots from Waas's important article.

Iraq War Coalition Fatalities

Check out this animated map of Iraq and casualty reports by date.

http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html

Can't resist...A few snips from Bush's latest MC work/Ersatz Town Hall Meeting

President Discusses Democracy in Iraq with Freedom House:

THE PRESIDENT: So issues around Iraq are complicated and necessary, and that's why my administration spends a lot of time on them.

Yes, sir. You're going to ask me if I read the book. (Laughter.)

Q Mr. President, as you noted at the beginning -- I'm with Freedom House, and I gave the President a copy of our annual report, Freedom in the World, before he took the stage. And as you noted, our reports have --

THE PRESIDENT: Little print, no pictures. Go ahead. (Laughter.)

Q It's the bible of freedom, yes. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: I'm the funny guy. Go ahead. (Laughter.)

...

Q ...[H]ow do you reconcile a guest worker for undocumented residents who are here, versus those who are on line and in the system waiting five and 10 years to get here?

THE PRESIDENT: No, that's a great question. Thanks. It's obviously topic du jour. (Laughter.) Pretty fancy, huh? Topic du jour? (Laughter.) I don't want to ruin the image. (Laughter.)

Thanks folks. You've been a great audience. I'll be here all week. Try the Veal!

Another burried lead in a Yahoo/AP story...The lousy reporter neglects to include this quote from a sitting FISA judge for several paragraphs.

And then (nerve of all nerves) entirely neglects to mention Fungua's precience 6 long years ago with his aptly worded protest sign at Bush's first inauguration.

Judges Back Bill Examining Domestic Spying - Yahoo! News: "The judges stressed that they were not offering their views on the NSA operation, which they said they knew nothing about.

But they said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has operated capably for 28 years and is fully able to protect civil liberties and give the administration all the speed and flexibility it needs to execute the war on terror.

The administration contends the president has inherent war powers under the Constitution to order eavesdropping without warrants.

'I am very wary of inherent authority' claimed by presidents, testified U.S. Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum. 'It sounds very much like King George.'"

Live Free or Die, bitches...

Democrats in Vermont to Weigh Impeachment - Yahoo! News:

"MONTPELIER, Vt. - Leading Democrats in Vermont plan to decide in April whether to urge state lawmakers to petition for
President Bush's impeachment using a little-known provision in the rules of the U.S. House.

Democratic committees in at least half of the state's 14 counties have passed resolutions calling for impeachment, citing a rule in 'Jefferson's Manual,' a book of parliamentary guidelines written by Thomas Jefferson that supplements U.S. House rules.

The anti-Bush movement is 'genuinely bubbling up from the grass roots,' said Jon Copans, the state party's executive director.

The state Democratic committee is scheduled to decide the issue in a special meeting April 8."

Another big break in the Fitzgerald investigation by Jason Leopold (formerly of Raw Story, but now apparently working exclusively for TruthOut)...

Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments:

"It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.

These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.

In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation."

Oh, and if you've some free time and really really interested in the proceedings of the Plame investigation, check out the complete court transcript of the latest pre-trial hearing Feb. 24, 2006. Amazingly easy to follow, even for lay folks. One notable thing: The Judge is clearly skeptical about allowing the "my memory sucks because my job is so important because some academics can tell you that people with important jobs forget stuff" defense that was floated in the press some time back. Even Libby's lawyer had to admit that he wasn't even sure he was going to go down that road...

Argentina & Uruguay abandon SOA!
Critical victory for human rights organizations across the Americas

We are thrilled to tell you that, after meeting with representatives of human rights organizations and the three SOA Watch activists Carlos Mauricio, Lisa Sullivan and Fr. Roy Bourgeois, the governments of Argentina and Uruguay have agreed to stop sending soldiers to train at the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC)!

This is some of the most ridiculous coverage ever in the Times. Again, the article is merely an apology for neo-liberalism mixed in with some anti-French sentiment. The one time it tries to give 'the other side,' it claims that the French are just stupid and confuse American adventurism abroad with the American economic system. As if they didn't go hand in hand...

French Youth at the Barricades, But a Revolution? It Can Wait
Similarly, when the French polling institute Ipsos last fall asked 500 people between the ages of 20 and 25 the question "What does globalization mean to you?" 48 percent answered, "Fear." Only 27 percent said, "Hope."

Disdain for what is called the "Anglo-Saxon model" sometimes becomes confused with residual criticism of America's projection of power around the world.

"I respect the world of Shakespeare and of Hemingway," said Bernard Reynes, the 52-year-old mayor of the once-flourishing farming town of Châteaurenard, outside Avignon. "I respect less the culture of Coca-Cola.

"Three years after the war in Iraq, the Americans are now admitting their mistakes there," he said. "The American way of life that judges the rest of the world severely is not the only way of life."

Oh baby, this is getting interesting...

The Raw Story | Rove said cooperating in CIA leak inquiry:

"Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and special adviser to President George W. Bush, has recently been providing information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the ongoing CIA leak investigation, sources close to the investigation say.

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent 'discovery' of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney."

Putin 'copied PhD thesis' - The World - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au: "A new study of an economics thesis written by Mr Putin in the mid-1990s has revealed that large chunks of it were copied from an American text."

Isn't this the church directly across the street from you, Fungua?
There's a Rochester searchable photo archive.

The Observer | Business | US-China trade war looms: "American senators could vote this week to slap tariffs of 27.5 per cent on all Chinese goods, amid a rising clamour of protectionist anger on Capitol Hill."

500,000 March in L.A. Against Immigration Bill: "LOS ANGELES, March 25 -- They surprised the police, and maybe themselves, their T-shirts turning block after block of downtown Los Angeles streets white in a demonstration so massive that few causes in recent U.S. history could have matched it.

Police said more than 500,000 people marched Saturday to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration. Wearing white as a sign of peace -- and waving flags from the United States, Mexico, Guatemala and other countries -- they came to show that illegal immigrants are already part of the American fabric, and want the chance to be legal, law-abiding citizens."

Found this while day-dreaming about spring (or something just about like it)...

Well, if that academic career track doesn't work out there's always turning pro in the newly formed USA Rock Paper Scissors League. "In April, more than 500 finalists and their guests will be flown to The House of Blues at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to play for a grand prize of $50,000."

Douglas Kellner is the "radical of the week" at the UCLA Alumni Association's "dirty thirty" list. Apparently, his political views are "a witch?s brew of worldwide conspiracy, Marxoid theory, ?critical pedagogy,? and an overwhelming dose of anti-Bush hatred." What the heck is 'Marxoid theory'? Some sort of geometric configuration of Marx?

Man, I hate Nazis.

Neo-Nazis threaten to massacre Muslims at World Cup

ROME (AFP) - The World Cup in Germany is set to become a battleground between facists and Muslims, an Italian member of a new European neo-Nazi movement warned.

In a statement published by Italian daily Repubblica, the memeber of AS Roma's notorious ultras hooligan group claims neo-Nazis across Europe met in Braunau in Austria to plan attacks against supporters from Islamic countries during the World Cup in Germany from June 9 to July 9.

"We are united. For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre," said the Italian ultra.

"We will all be in Germany and there will be Turks, Algerians and Tunisians. The Turks, we can't stand them. In our country (Italy) there are not many, but in Germany, there are many of those guys there. They are Islamic terrorists.

"We will attack them. They are all enemies that need to be eliminated, just like the police. If we make the Roman greeting (the fascist salute) they put us in prison. We will be tens of thousands. Nothing but the English are feared."

SOA Watch: "Ten days ago, Carlos Mauricio, Lisa Sullivan and Fr. Roy Bourgeois set off on a three week journey to Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay to build relationships with social movements and to convince popular governments in South America to stop sending their soldiers to train at the School of the Americas, a school synonymous with torture and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

We are happy to share the good news with you that yesterday morning, SOA Watch activists Carlos Mauricio, Lisa Sullivan-Rodriguez and Fr. Roy Bourgeois met with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales!"

Dick Cheney's Suite Demands - March 23, 2006:

"The document is provided to hotels where Cheney will be bunking and lists how the Republican pol's 'Downtime Suite' needs to be outfitted."

*The suite preset at 68 degrees.

*All the televisions need to be preset to the Fox News Channel

*Decaf coffee should be ready upon his arrival along with four cans of caffeine-free Diet Sprite.

*When Cheney is traveling with his wife, the suite needs an additional two bottles of sparkling water. (Mrs. Cheney's H2O should be either Calistoga or Perrier).

Smoking Gun has a scanned version of the entire letter. These are just a few. It's good to be the king...

USNews.com: Nation & World: Newspaper sues for documents in NSA wiretap case:

"The company that publishes the Oregonian newspaper in Portland has filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Oregon to unseal documents in a pending case that alleges the Bush administration illegally intercepted international phone conversations between the codirector of an Islamic charity and his two lawyers in the United States.

In a motion filed Friday, lawyers for the Oregonian Publishing Co. argued that it is in the public interest to know the contents of documents that could prove the existence of a potentially illegal domestic spying program.

'This appears to be the first case in which documents have been filed with the court demonstrating the National Security Agency's practice of wiretapping private conversations,' said Charles F. Hinkle, a lawyer for the publishing company. 'We are not interested in the content of the attorney-client communications. We are interested in what the government did.'"

Radical Cleric Pat Robertson shares his views about the color of the kettle:

"Rev. Robertson launched an attack on "radical" liberal professors saying; "They are racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda ? and they could be teaching your kids!" Later in the program he told his viewers, "These guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, they are, you know, some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order?you don?t want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don?t want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission."

North Korea Touts End to US Pre-emptive War Monopoly - Yahoo! News:

"SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North's official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.

'As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike,' the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. 'Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.'"

hup, two, three, four marchin' down the streets..
the rolling of the drums and the trampin' of the feet...
Generals salute and mothers wave and weep
Here comes the big parade, Don't be afraid
Price is paid, One more parade...

An Iraq Success Story's Sad New Chapter: "Bush acknowledged that the credibility issue -- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that the administration said were in Iraq -- affected his ability now to confront Iran, which he has accused of secretly building nuclear weapons. But he offered tough language for Tehran, characterizing it as bent on destroying Israel. 'It's a threat to world peace, it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance,' Bush said. 'I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.'"

I had a political science professor many many years ago (circa 1993) who concluded our semester telling us all to watch out for the "coming second invasion of Iraq". The principle reason he cited for such certainty: The attractiveness of permanent bases in the region draws US national security hawks there like Odysseus to the Sirens.

Extended U.S. presence in Iraq? - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com:

"BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that?s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a ?heli-park? as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq?s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads."

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

?I think we?ll be here forever,? the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?

Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk:

"A study of 289 older women without dementia found that those who rated talk shows and soaps as their favorite programs performed more poorly on tests of memory, attention and mental quickness than their peers who cited other types of shows.

What's more, they were at greater risk of showing signs of clinical impairment. For example, compared with women who preferred to watch news programs, those who favored soaps were more than seven times more likely to show signs of impairment on one of the tests, while talk show fans were more than 13 times more likely to demonstrate impairment.

'Those findings are quite robust,' Fogel told Reuters Health.

He said it's not possible to tell whether the programs somehow contribute to cognitive decline or whether women in the early stages of decline gravitate toward those shows. Preferences for daytime TV could also be a marker of a sedentary, homebound lifestyle, and research suggests that staying physically and socially active can help stave off mental decline.

But regardless of the reasons, a preference for talk shows and soaps 'is a marker of something suspicious,' Fogel said."

If Leopold's source on this is right, then it appears the a lynchpin in Fitzgerald's case against Libby is none other than Ari Fleischer, who appears to be singing like a bird.

Jason Leopold | Fitzgerald Previews Government's Case Against Libby:

" Libby told FBI investigators and testified before a grand jury that he found out about Plame Wilson's CIA employment from reporters on July 9 or 10, 2003. But Fitzgerald said Libby discussed Plame Wilson with former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on July 7, 2003, and Fleischer testified that Libby said the information was 'hush, hush' on the 'QT' and was not widely known ..."

Making the world unsafe for capitalism...



NPR : Box Set Features Political Stockpile of Billy Bragg: "All Things Considered, March 20, 2006 · British songwriter Billy Bragg is best known in the United States for setting Woody Guthrie lyrics to music on the Mermaid Avenue CDs. Like Guthrie, Bragg is a populist, and often political, songwriter. His music from the 1980s is featured in a new boxed set."

Bush gave another say-nothing speech in Cleveland today...Tough crowd when the morning's paper carries the following blurb:

Cleveland Plaindealer: "When a president's popularity plummets as Bush's has, other politicians often avoid public appearances with them. Prominent Ohio Republicans including Sen. Mike DeWine, Sen. George Voinovich and Rep. Steve LaTourette say they're skipping Bush's speech because of prior commitments. "

Update: Looks like Cheney is in the exact same position.

NEWARK, March 20 ? In the biggest campaign fund-raiser yet on behalf of State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to New Jersey on Monday and praised Mr. Kean as someone with "the experience, the values and the vision to be a superb United States senator."

But there was one problem: Mr. Kean was a no-show.

Actually, Mr. Kean did show up at the event, which was held at the offices of the IDT Corporation in downtown Newark. But he did not make it until 6:15, roughly 15 minutes after Mr. Cheney's motorcade had left.

The Toronto Star.com - How to spot a baby conservative:

"In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings ? the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective."

Trading the Hummer for a Honda - New York Times:

"DETROIT, March 17 ? For Janna Jensen, it was the dirty looks and nasty gestures from other drivers that finally persuaded her to give up the family's $55,000 Hummer H2. Her husband, Michael, meanwhile, was tired of the $300 monthly gasoline cost and the quality problems that began soon after they bought it."

(Photo from FUH2...A great site of thousands of pics from around the world)

You can never have enough death squads...

KR Washington Bureau | 03/19/2006 | Iraqi police report details civilians' deaths at hands of U.S. troops:

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police have accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad."

[snip]

Accusations that U.S. troops have killed civilians are commonplace in Iraq, though most are judged later to be unfounded or exaggerated. Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians - four of them women and five of them children - during fighting last November.

But the report of the killings in the Abu Sifa area of Ishaqi, eight miles north of the city of Balad, is unusual because it originated with Iraqi police and because Iraqi police were willing to attach their names to it.

[snip]

The case involves a U.S. raid conducted, according to the official U.S. account, in response to a tip that a member of al-Qaida in Iraq was at the house.

Neighbors, interviewed by a special correspondent for Knight Ridder, agreed that the al-Qaida member was at the house. They said he was visiting the home's owner, a relative. The neighbors said the homeowner was a schoolteacher.

So why is it that 'civil war' is not obvious to all. You would think it would sound awkard to most to hear phrases like 'sectarian violence' in such a case like this (those are two necessary, though insufficient, conditions for civil war anyhow)....? Then again, it is 1968...

[snip]
In London, Mr Allawi told BBC 2's Sunday AM programme: "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

According to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution, in Washington, there were 75 attacks a day last month, compared with 54 on average a year earlier. The number of Iraqi civilians being killed in the conflict rose to 1,000 in February, from 750 in February 2005. There are now 232,000 Iraqi security personnel, up 90,000 over the past 12 months, but their ability to control the situation is a matter of dispute. Oil production, the mainstay of the economy, is in decline.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Rumsfeld singled out as crisis deepens in Iraq: "A former US army general yesterday called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign on grounds of incompetence in Iraq, hours after Ayad Allawi, the former US-backed Iraqi prime minister, declared the country to be in the thick of a civil war that could soon 'reach the point of no return'."
[snip]

Reuters.com:

"CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday lobbed a litany of insults at U.S. President George W. Bush ranging from 'donkey' to 'drunkard' in response to a White House report branding the left-wing leader a demagogue.

Chavez is one of Bush's fiercest critics and has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of seeking to oust him from the presidency of Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter and a supplier of around 15 percent of U.S. crude imports.

'You are a donkey, Mr. Bush,' said Chavez, speaking in English on his weekly Sunday broadcast.

'You're an alcoholic Mr. Danger, or rather, you're a drunkard,' Chavez said, referring to Bush by a nickname he frequently uses to describe the U.S. president."

Ever heard of the Huston Plan?

Leaving the world of the concrete for a moment, I'm not sure there is anything else that I detest the Bush administration more for than increasingly making me long for the days of the hegemony of liberal pluralism.

I offer two links in support --

The Federalist #47:

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system."

And second, a developing story in our democratic Afghanistan...Like father, like son.

An Afghan man who recently admitted he converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the country's strict Islamic legal system.

Bush is using straw-man arguments. Rumsfeld pulls a false-analogy. (With a little slippery-slope on the side).

"Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries."

US News and World Report insists (contra the Times) that THIS IS 1968. THIS IS 1968. THIS IS 1968.

USNews.com: The White House says spying on terrorism suspects without court approval is OK. What about physical searches?:

"Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News."

FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it.

[snip]

On February 6, Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, asked Gonzales whether the NSA spying program includes authority to tap E-mail or postal mail without warrants. "Can you do black-bag jobs?" Leahy asked. Gonzales replied that he was trying to outline for the committee "what the president has authorized, and that is all that he has authorized"--electronic surveillance. Three weeks later, Gonzales amended his answer to Leahy's question, stating that he was addressing only the legal underpinnings for the NSA surveillance program but adding: "I did not and could not address operational aspects of the program, or any other classified intelligence activities." In the past, when Congress has taken up explosive issues that affect the bureau, Mueller has made it a point, officials have said, to leave Washington--and sometimes the country--so as not to get pulled into the political crossfire. When Gonzales testified February 6, Mueller was on his way to Morocco.

[snip]

At least one defense attorney representing a subject of a terrorism investigation believes he was the target of warrantless clandestine searches. On Sept. 23, 2005--nearly three months before the Times broke the NSA story--Thomas Nelson wrote to U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut in Oregon that in the previous nine months, "I and others have seen strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches."

[snip]

In October, Immergut wrote to Nelson reassuring him that the FBI would not target terrorism suspects' lawyers without warrants and, even then, only "under the most exceptional circumstances," because the government takes attorney-client relationships "extremely seriously." Nelson nevertheless filed requests, under the Freedom of Information Act, with the NSA. The agency's director of policy, Louis Giles, wrote back, saying, "The fact of the existence or nonexistence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter."

[snip]

White House lawyers, in particular, Vice President Cheney's counsel David Addington (who is now Cheney's chief of staff), pressed Mueller to use information from the NSA program in court cases, without disclosing the origin of the information, and told Mueller to be prepared to drop prosecutions if judges demanded to know the sourcing, according to several government officials.

Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches - Yahoo! News:

"When the president starts a sentence with 'some say' or offers up what 'some in Washington' believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

He typically then says he 'strongly disagrees' ? conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed 'critics,' is just as problematic."

Poynter Online - Romenesko: "Romenesko
Your daily fix of media industry news, commentary, and memos."

Here's a new twist: instead of the usual Fox News reporters pretending not to be employees of the Bush administration, here we have official Bush administration employees pretending to be Fox News reporters.

Washington Post -- Advance Workers for Bush Impersonated Reporters:

"The White House said yesterday that it will discipline two government employees who masqueraded as journalists this month while scouting locations for a presidential visit to the Gulf Coast.

A Mississippi couple whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina said two men who later identified themselves as Secret Service agents pretended to be Fox News journalists when surveying their neighborhood in advance of a March 8 visit from President Bush."

Update: Apparently a similar thing happened in the Rochester area last week when Bush et. al. came to town. This time they applied a little force to prevent old folks from chatting with the Pres and the White House press corps that was in tow. (Thanks to Bat for pointing this out).

Olean resident Brenda Snyder went to Canandaigua on Tuesday to talk to President Bush about health care. What she got was a lesson in message control.

Mrs. Snyder said no one at the meeting was given an opportunity to speak to the president and many, including herself, were prevented by security at the event from talking to the press after the president?s town meeting.

Mrs. Snyder said after the meeting a group of television reporters at the back of the room asked her a question. When she tried to reply, she says she was herded out of the room.

[snip]

Mrs. Snyder said she felt threatened by the security officer.

?He kept saying ?move along? and kept blocking my way and I kept saying, ?I?m a U.S. citizen I have a right to answer some questions,?? she said. ?It felt like if you were out of order at all, someone was going to take you away. It was very threatening.?

Mrs. Snyder went to the president?s town meeting in Canandaigua with a contingent from the Cattaraugus County Department of the Aging. Last year she helped an elderly friend who was having health difficulties remain in his home despite a determination from Social Services that the man needed to move to a group home.

[snip]

She said her experience in Canandaigua has changed her life.

?I think America is going in a very scary direction. I felt like I was in a police state and that as a citizen I don?t have many rights,? she said.

[snip]

?I was just interested in the process and how I would be treated. I wanted to ask a few questions and answer a few questions. I wasn?t allowed to do that and I was outraged,? she said. ?The president was out of the room. Why couldn?t I talk to the press??

Just in case the White House legal team responsible for writing up pardons doesn't do subtlety, Libby's lawyers just bought a big neon sign across the street from the White House that reads: "What the fuck are you waiting for?"

AP: Libby Defense May Highlight Infighting:

"WASHINGTON - Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide are suggesting they may delve deeply at his criminal trial into infighting among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.

New legal documents raise the potential that I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby's trial could turn into a political embarrassment for the Bush administration by focusing on whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In a court filing late Friday night, Libby's legal team said that in June and July 2003, the status of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame was at most a peripheral issue to 'the finger-pointing that went on within the executive branch about who was to blame' for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

'If the jury learns this background information' about finger-pointing, 'and also understands Mr. Libby's additional focus on urgent national security matters, the jury will more easily appreciate how Mr. Libby may have forgotten or misremembered ... snippets of conversation' about Plame's status, the defense lawyers said."

Police Memos Say Arrest Tactics Calmed Protest - New York Times: "In five internal reports made public yesterday as part of a lawsuit, New York City police commanders candidly discuss how they had successfully used 'proactive arrests,' covert surveillance and psychological tactics at political demonstrations in 2002, and recommend that those approaches be employed at future gatherings."

This is not 1968. This is not 1968. This is not 1968. This is not 1968. LALALALALA [fingers in ears] I'm not listening. My favorite line in the Times article:

"The current problem stems from a flawed educational system that churns out young people who lack the necessary skills to get jobs, combined with labor laws that discourage job formation because they require hugely expensive benefits and job-security packages that make it nearly impossible for employers to fire anyone."

This is a paper with a liberal slant?! Ahh, and the objective problem (this is not editorializing, this is not editorializing, this is not editorializing) is that France's economy isn't laissez faire enough. Well, if only they adopted more tax cuts for the rich and eliminated worker protections, everything would be fine.

Anyone else having trouble with Blogger tonight? I'm getting scary "error" messages when I try to republish.

Think Progress » Animated Version of ?Animal Farm? With Altered Ending Among Films Produced by the CIA: "Animated Version of ?Animal Farm? With Altered Ending Among Films Produced by the CIA

The Memory Hole has acquired a list of films that were produced or used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Among the films on the list is a 1955 animated version of George Orwell?s ?Animal Farm,? with its ?chilling finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it ?impossible to say which was which.??

[The original] ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. ? The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell?s pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to ?Animal Farm? from his widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.

Some other notable films in the CIA?s library:

Brainwashing
Spying for Uncle Sam, Part I
Why Man Creates
How Free Should the Press Be?
CBS Reports: UFO: Friend, Foe or Fancy?
Mickey Mouse Cartoon-Squatter?s Rights
I Am a Soldier
Holograms ? The First True 3-D Picture
Man and the Sea
Unidentified Flying Objects
Eye in the Sky
It Works, and That?s the Key
Operation Underground Network
He is a Mad Man
Rise of Labor Unions/Employee/Management
Hovercraft
Our Election Day Illusion/The Best Majority
Kidnap Executive Style"

What does one do with this? It is one explanation as to why the folks at Insight are 'worried' about impeachment. But is it also the NY Times policing the left? OK that's far enough?

Call for Censure Is Rallying Cry to Bush's Base

The proposal this week by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure Mr. Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program cheered the left. But it also dovetailed with conservatives' plans to harness such attacks to their own ends.

With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.

FBI Took Photos of Antiwar Activists in 2002:

"An FBI agent in Pittsburgh photographed members of an antiwar activist group in 2002, according to documents released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the disclosure marks the latest incident in which the FBI has monitored left-leaning groups.

An FBI report from November 2002 indicates that an agent photographed members of the Thomas Merton Center as they handed out leaflets opposing the impending war in Iraq. The report called the group a 'left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.'"

Hey, Post Tot...Remember blocking the Ambassador bridge about this time? Wanna file a FOIA request? I'll split the postage with you.

Abu Ghraib Files - Salon.com News:

All known photos and videos (279 photos and 19 videos) posted here for posterity.

I don't have the heart to look, but I thought this link was important to preserve.

Maybe I'm gonna have to rethink my general skepticism regarding Habermas's vision of the rationality-inducing "sluices" of the channels of public opinion production. After all the bullshit and manipulative rhetoric of the last three years

only 3% of US citizens believe that Bush was thinking about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people when deciding to invade.

Hell, nearly 10x that believe that the moon landings were faked.

Pew Research Poll, or What a difference a year [and 30,000-100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and 2,313 dead US troops, and blatant and willful violation of the Fourth Amendment and FISA law, and incompotent domestic emergency management] makes...:

"Bush's overall approval measure stands at 33%, the lowest rating of his presidency."

[snip]

The president's ratings for handling of several specific issues, particularly terrorism, have also declined sharply. Just 42% now approve of Bush's job in handling terrorist threats, an 11-point drop since February. In January 2005, as Bush was starting his second term, 62% approved of his handling of terrorist threats.

[snip]

In January 2005, Bush earned a lofty 89% approval from members of his own party, but that has declined to 73% in the current survey. Among independents, the number approving of Bush's job performance has fallen from 47% in January 2005 to 26% today; and Bush's support among Democrats, already quite low, has fallen by about half since the start of his second term (from 17% to 9%).

[snip]

Bush's personal image also has weakened noticeably, which is reflected in people's one-word descriptions of the president. Honesty had been the single trait most closely associated with Bush, but in the current survey "incompetent" is the descriptor used most frequently."

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Latin America and Asia are at last breaking free of Washington's grip: "Latin America and Asia are at last breaking free of Washington's grip

The US-dominated world order is being challenged by a new spirit of independence in the global south

Noam Chomsky
Wednesday March 15, 2006
The Guardian

The prospect that Europe and Asia might move towards greater independence has troubled US planners since the second world war. The concerns have only risen as the 'tripolar order' - Europe, North America and Asia - has continued to evolve.

Every day Latin America, too, is becoming more independent. Now Asia and the Americas are strengthening their ties while the reigning superpower, the odd man out, consumes itself in misadventures in the Middle East.

Regional integration in Asia and Latin America is a crucial and increasingly important issue that, from Washington's perspective, betokens a defiant world gone out of control. Energy, of course, remains a defining factor - the object of contention - everywhere."

Hopefully one of the last remaining vestiges of Washington's deep tentacles w/in South America, but a sad case that is just getting worse....

Elections, Reflecting Rightward Course, Buoy Colombian Leader
By JUAN FORERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, March 13 ? While much of South America has veered to the
political left, Colombia has taken a sharp turn to the right as voting
results Monday showed a right-of-center coalition sweeping congressional
elections.

The elections on Sunday, which gave allies of President Álvaro Uribe
overwhelming control of the 268-member Congress, virtually assure him the
political leverage to win re-election in May and to push forward important
items on his agenda, from continuing the fight against Marxist guerrillas to
approving a trade deal with Washington and enacting tough fiscal reforms.

"The big winner was President Uribe," said Juan Manuel Santos, whose
pro-Uribe party, the U Party, did better than any other, winning 20 seats in
the Senate.

With 94 percent of the votes counted on Monday, 61 percent of the Senate's
102 seats and 57 percent of the 166 seats in the lower house had gone to
supporters of Mr. Uribe. Political analysts saw the results as a sign of
Colombia's widespread support for Mr. Uribe's two-pronged strategy to pacify
the country: aggressively fight the rebels while providing benefits to
rightist paramilitary militias to prod them to disarm.

"This was support for his security policies," León Valencia, a political
analyst in Bogotá, said of the vote. "People feel they're better off
economically. They also see the president's ties to Washington and see them
as a secure support."

Bush visited the Rochester area today for the second time in a year. Here are a few choice things he had to say.

On the real importance of the teaching profession -- it instills in the populace the requisite discipline to tolerate pseudo-folksy aristocratic bullies such as himself as their leaders.

"For all the teachers who are here and are paying attention to this, thanks for being a teacher. It's a noble profession. It's an important -- (applause.) It's really important. And speaking about teachers, I married one. (Laughter.) She sends her love. Laura W. Bush is a unique woman who is obviously a patient woman. (Laughter.) "

Second, a basic lesson in BOTH arithmetic and US civics

"I want to thank Antonia Novello. Dr. Novello, where are you? She's here -- oh, there you are. Good to see you. Appreciate you coming. (Applause.) She's the Commissioner of Health for the state of New York. I'm honored you're here. (Applause.) I'll tell old 41 I saw you. That's the number for my dad -- see, he's the 41st President, I'm the 43rd President, so -- I'll tell him I saw you."

Third, on how bullies with wealth and giant chips on their intellectual shoulders can best put underlings in their place -- do it in public and do it several times.

"I called upon a fellow named Dr. Mark McClellan to join me in this effort. He's here. That's him right there. He is a -- (applause.) He's a PhD, see -- I'm a C student. (Laughter.) Look who's the President and who's the advisor. (Laughter and applause.)"

[snip]

DR. McCLELLAN: That's right. In fact, I was just talking with Diane about this beforehand. Diane is a pharmacist. You're going to hear from her in a minute.

THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm the emcee. (Laughter.) You're the explainer. (Laughter.) You know how these PhDs are, you know, they kind of -- (laughter.)

And finally, I thought I read somewhere something about Bush suggesting that seniors eat some cake or something, but I guess the White House has scrubbed all record of it.

Alright, for an off-beat post...this is too funny and weird not to post

YouTube - How to fold a tee-shirt perfectly

Berlusconi storms out of election TV interview:

"ROME (Reuters) - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, facing parliamentary elections next month, stormed out of a television studio on Sunday when pressed in an interview about his relations with George W. Bush and conflicts of interest.

'This channel is a war machine set against the prime minister,' Italy's media tycoon shouted, before gathering up his papers and marching out of the studio."

Another 'insider' slam of the Bush administration that offers Bush the "Don't blame me, don't you know I'm basically incompotent" defense from our good friends at Insight Magazine.

Insight:

"President Bush has decided to stay out of the lion's share of decisions made by his administration.

Sources close to the administration said that over the last year, Mr. Bush has chosen to focus on two issues, leaving the rest to be decided by Cabinet members and senior aides. They said the issues are Iraq and the Republican congressional campaign in the 2006 elections.

'Lots of important issues that deal with national security are never brought to the president because he doesn't want to deal with them,' a source familiar with the White House said. 'In some cases, this has resulted in chaos.'"

Days of DeWine and Ruses? Reporters May Be Exempt from Eavesdropping Bill: "Days of DeWine and Ruses? Reporters May Be Exempt from Eavesdropping Bill
Published: March 10, 2006 8:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law.

But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation.

'It in no way applies to reporters ? in any way, shape or form,' said Mike Dawson, a senior policy adviser to DeWine, responding to an inquiry Friday afternoon. 'If a technical fix is necessary, it will be made.'

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft of the legislation, which could be introduced as soon as next week.

The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who 'intentionally discloses information identifying or describing' the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law.

Under the boosted penalties, those found guilty could face fines of up to $1 million, 15 years in jail or both."

Michelle Bachelet is the new socialist president (well, social democrat to be exact) of Chile. This is a thoughtful interview in Der Spiegel...Let's hope it is another leader in the Latin American mix of new presidents who are going to get things done w/o covert and overt forms of violence (i.e. WHISC/SOA):

Chile's Bachelet: 'Only Cleaned Wounds Can Heal'
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,404859,00.html

Considering the recent "visitor" we've had to our private little site, I found this story a bit chilling...

John Seery: Pomona College Professor Gets a Visit from the U.S. Gestapo | The Huffington Post:

"Two days ago, March 7, my Pomona College colleague, Miguel Tinker Salas, was holding his regular office hours for his students. Three students were indeed waiting outside his door to speak with him. Two grown men came up and started speaking (without identifying themselves) to the students, asking them pointed questions about what Professor Tinker Salas has been teaching in his classes.

Background info: Professor Miguel Tinker Salas is Arango Professor in Latin American History and Professor of History and Chicano/a Studies. He teaches classes in Latin America history and has special research expertise in the history and politics of Venezuela. Pomona College is a small liberal arts college (about 1500 students) and is one of the five Claremont Colleges, all located in Claremont, California, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles.

Back to the story: The two men asked to speak with Professor Tinker Salas in his office. They identified themselves as Los Angeles County Sheriffs Mike M. Abdeen and Don Lord, operating out of a West Covina office, but they did not show any badges. They explained that they were members of the 'L.A. County Sheriff's Department/F.B.I. Joint Task Force on Terrorism.' Professor Tinker Salas asked whether they were actual F.B.I. agents, and they said no. They explained that they had 'come by to have a conversation' with Professor Tinker Salas because they were 'interested in his work,' and noted that there is a growing Venezuelan population in the Los Angeles area and thought he might be able to tell them more about it.

Professor Miguel Tinker Salas didn't buy that line and asked them point blank why they were really there.

At that point, they opened a folder, revealing that it was a file on Professor Tinker Salas, along with his picture. And, they said, they had some questions for him. Those questions: What is his immigration status? Is he a U.S. citizen? What is the nature of his contact with the Venezuelan embassy or consulate?"

Update: The FBI has already released a statement that "explains" their interrogation of Professor Tinker Salas.

FBI STATEMENT
LOS ANGELES FIELD OFFICE

FBI - 11000 Wilshire Blvd. - Los Angeles, Ca 90024 - 310-996-3804,3343 - Fax: 310-996-3345

For Immediate Release

DATE: March 10, 2006

FBI STATEMENT REGARDING INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW OF
POMONA COLLEGE PROFESSOR

Agents of the FBI and its state, local and federal task force partners routinely conduct interviews in the course of daily activity. Being interviewed by FBI Agents or Task Force Officers should not suggest wrongdoing on the part of the interviewee. The FBI takes great pains to avoid publicity when interviews are conducted.

The FBI and its task force partners in state, local and federal agencies are mindful of the need to respect the circumstances that might surround the timing and location of an informational interview. When requested to participate in interviews, individuals are free to indicate a preference regarding these issues.

With regard to the interview of the professor, the purpose of the interview was to seek information. There was no intent on the part of the FBI, regarding the timing or location, to place the professor, his students or Pomona College in an uncomfortable situation.

Telegraph | News | British SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at 'illegal' American tactics in Iraq:

"An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the 'illegal' tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.

After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces."

He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

Look who's talking...to the Washington Post. Dick is so toast after November.

Look Who's Running the World Now:

"The Dick Cheney era of foreign policy is over.

From 2001 to 2005, the vice president's influence over U.S. foreign policy may have been greater than that of any individual other than the president since Henry A. Kissinger held the positions of national security adviser and secretary of state during the Nixon years. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld served as Cheney's partner in steamrolling bureaucratic rivals; Colin L. Powell toiled loyally at the largely ignored and mistrusted State Department; and Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser and ostensibly the coordinator of policy, played the role of tutor to a neophyte president and seldom challenged Cheney. As a result, policies were largely shaped by the vice president and his circle."

But Cheney's influence has waned. He's lost his top aide, his public approval ratings are dismal, and his network of supporters inside the administration has dissolved.

[snip]

Then there is the matter of Cheney's personality. One former top Bush administration official says, "I have always felt that his relentless pessimism was unsustainable. After a while people want more than fear, they want a positive vision and that was not his strong suit."

The Raw Story | Democratic senator will introduce censure motion of Bush:

"Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), speaking on ABC's 'This Week,' declared that he will introduce a censure motion against President George W. Bush over the President's warrantless wiretapping program.

'He's going to introduce a censure motion tomorrow,' Feingold spokesman Trevor Miller told RAW STORY Sunday."

Update: If you have any interest in adding your support to only the second censure of a President in US history, Sen. Feingold has an online form where you can drop a note to folks in his office.

Update 2: Well, it took all of 3 minutes, but Feingold and any who dare suggest that Bush shit on the Constitution are traitors and terrorist supporters. Immediately following Feingold's appearance on This Week, George S. interviews Frist and asks for a reply.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're against it. Are you going to allow it to come up for a vote?

FRIST: Well, George, this is the first I've heard about it. I really am surprised about it, because Russ is just wrong. He is flat wrong. He is dead wrong.

And as I was listening to it, I was hoping deep inside that the leadership in Iran and other people who really have the U.S. not in their best interests are not listening because of the terrible -- the terrible -- signal it sends.

How about posting links in the comments to this message of your Favorite Song pages from Pandora...

I'd love to see if Pandora has taken you all in the kind of strange directions that it has taken me, as well as get some new ideas as well.

Joseph DuRocher, US Navy Office (Retired) and Professor of Law at Central Florida University: Letter to President Bush:

"Today I conclude that you have dishonored our service and the Constitution and principles of our oath. My dad was buried with full military honors so I cannot act for him. But for myself, I return enclosed the symbols of my years of service: the shoulder boards of my rank and my Naval Aviator's wings.

Until your administration, I believed it was inconceivable that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive and preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to us. Until your administration, I thought it was impossible for our nation to take hundreds of persons into custody without provable charges of any kind, and to "disappear" them into holes like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Until your administration, in my wildest legal fantasy I could not imagine a U.S. Attorney General seeking to justify torture or a President first stating his intent to veto an anti-torture law, and then adding a "signing statement" that he intends to ignore such law as he sees fit. I do not want these things done in my name.

As a citizen, a patriot, a parent and grandparent, a lawyer and law teacher I am left with such a feeling of loss and helplessness. I think of myself as a good American and I ask myself what can I do when I see the face of evil, Illegal and immoral war, torture and confinement for life without trial have never been part of our Constitutional tradition. But my vote has become meaningless because I live in a safe district drawn by your political party. My congressman is unresponsive to my concerns because his time is filled with lobbyists' largess. Protests are limited to your "free speech zones", out of sight of the parade. Even speaking openly is to risk being labeled un-American, pro-terrorist or anti-troops. And I am a disciplined pacifist, so any violent act is out of the question.

Nevertheless, to remain silent is to let you think I approve or support your actions. I do not. So, I am saddened to give up my wings and bars. They were hard won and my parents and wife were as proud as I was when I earned them over forty years ago. But I hate the torture and death you have caused more than I value their symbolism. Giving them up makes me cry for my beloved country."

We're reading Antigone in my ethics course this week, and the student theater is performing it next month. I think I have a perfect candidate for Creon.

Advisers Say Discontent Hasn't Discouraged Bush - New York Times:

"WASHINGTON, March 11 ? Inside the White House, the staff is exhausted and the mood is defiant. Republicans are clamoring for a new chief of staff, the West Wing just cut its losses on a deal that would have given a Dubai company control of some terminal operations at six American ports and President Bush's approval rating is at record lows.

But senior staff members insist that Mr. Bush is in good spirits, that calls from his party to inject new blood to the White House make him ever more stubborn to keep the old and that he has become so inured to outside criticism that he increasingly tunes it out. There is no sense of crisis, they say, even over rebellious Republicans in Congress, because the White House has been in almost constant crisis since Sept. 11, 2001, and Mr. Bush has never had much regard for Congress anyway."

Beware the Ides of March...

So are they all, all honorable men.


Bush's Troubles Weigh Heavily as Republicans Meet to Showcase Candidates - New York Times: "Some senior Republicans with ties to the White House, who asked for anonymity because they did not want to be identified describing internal White House deliberations, said there was a widespread feeling here that Mr. Bush would be well served to bring in new advisers, either replacing Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, or Karl Rove, his senior political adviser."

CNN.com - Milosevic: Architect of Balkans carnage - Mar 11, 2006:

"Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian strongman regarded as the chief architect of the carnage unleashed during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the last decade, died Saturday in custody at The Hague, where he was on trial for war crimes in the killing fields of the Balkan states of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo."

Shameless Personal Post #2: A complete virtual tour made by Mrs. post festum during our home inspection yesterday.

283 Roslyn St

Oh, and we're designating the upper-stairs balcony the "Post Tot Smoking Lounge"...

Well Mlango, it looks like google agrees with you and not me.

NYT
March 10, 2006
Google Acquisition Signals New Rivalry
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Google Inc. said yesterday that it had bought the Silicon Valley start-up Upstartle, gaining its Writely Internet word processing software. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Writely lets users compose documents on the Web and share them with others, according to notes on Google's Web site yesterday.

Upstartle released a test version of Writely software last August.

The acquisition puts Google in direct competition with Word software from Microsoft and signals the intention of Google to expand its reach into Microsoft products.

While Microsoft is already testing small-business software that is delivered over the Internet, the company is not offering word processing software that is delivered using the Web.

Upstartle has four employees, according to the company's Web site.

G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants

The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

[snip]

The Republican proposal would give Congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Mr. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of Congressional leaders. The N.S.A. would be permitted to intercept the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States if there was "probable cause to believe that one party to the communication is a member, affiliate, or working in support of a terrorist group or organization," according to a written summary of the proposal issued by its Republican sponsors. The finding of probable cause would not be reviewed by any court.

But after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new Congressional oversight subcommittees why he could not seek a warrant.

Here's a first, the 'privatize everything' administrator is a socialist:

At Conservative Forum on Bush, Everybody's a Critic: "conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Author of the forthcoming 'The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back,' Sullivan called Bush 'reckless' and 'a socialist,' and accused him of betraying 'almost every principle conservatism has ever stood for.'"

couldn't resist posting this ad I saw

A decent piece and one I'm posted here mainly for historical purposes. It is helpful in how it summarizes some of the evidence we've all seen thus far in a concise, albeit rough, way.

Grounds for Impeachment | The Progressive: "Grounds for Impeachment
By Matthew Rothschild
March 7, 2006

George W. Bush and his Administration have been so brazen in violating the law and asserting monarchical powers that we, as American citizens, must use the tool that the Constitution provides to reassert our rights, to reset the system of checks and balances, and to reestablish our democracy. That tool is impeachment."

Media Matters - Horowitz: "There are 50,000 professors ... [who] identify with the terrorists":

"On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, right-wing activist David Horowitz claimed that '[t]here are 50,000 professors' who are 'anti-American' and 'identify with the terrorists.' There are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer."

Senate Intelligence Committee Rejects Rockefeller Proposal to Investigate NSA domestic spying:

"March 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee rejected a proposal to investigate the Bush administration's program of conducting electronic eavesdropping without warrants, while agreeing to create new congressional panels to increase oversight."

...

"This committee is basically under control of the White House,'' Sen. Rockefeller told reporters after the two-hour meeting today in Washington.

Check out what's available and what's not on the Internets for U.S. soliders in Iraq:

* Bill O?Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) ? OK
* Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) ? ?Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.?
* Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) ? OK
* ABC News ?The Note? ? OK
* Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) ? ?Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.?
* G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) ? OK
* Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) ? ?Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.?"

For those of you who caught the release of the taped briefing in which Bush was warned that the New Orleans' levee system might not survive Katrina, here is an excerpt from the first White House Press conference since the video was leaked to the press last week.

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan:

Q I just wanted to ask in advance of the trip to New Orleans, something that broke last week that I don't think in the middle of the trip everybody sort of got their arms around -- I'm hoping you can clarify for me. That Associated Press report last week, it seemed to suggest that on the Thursday after Katrina, the President gave this interview on 'Good Morning America' where he said there was no way to anticipate the severity of the storms or the levees breaking; and then from the briefing on Sunday, it appears as though Max Mayfield and others are telling him that's exactly what could happen. Is there a contradiction [i.e., lie. editor] here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think the transcript actually talks about levees being over-topped. But we've already made clear what the President was referring to in that interview, and unfortunately some have taken it out of context and continue to take it out of context. The President made it very clear what he was referring to. If you will recall on August 29th when the hurricane hit and then it passed the New Orleans area, there were a number of reports -- including media reports -- saying that New Orleans had dodged the bullet, and there was some sense that the worst-case scenario did not happen."

...

Q When he says on Thursday, "no one could have anticipated," he's talking about this period of time after the storm had hit?

MR. McCLELLAN: After the hurricane had passed. That's right. And there was -- remember, there were a number of media reports -- I can go back and cite those for you -- that evening, Monday evening, and even some later, saying that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet," that the worst-case scenario did not happen.

...

Q There's been a lot of attention on that particular quote in all the months since Katrina. Is this a case where the President just wasn't as clear as he should have been? Because when people ask him about that, they're not really asking him to --

MR. McCLELLAN: Asking about?

Q Asking him about the situation that day -- they weren't asking him to replay what he'd read in the media, they're asking him to draw on his knowledge from his briefings and so forth. And by saying that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees, it suggested that he had a much more broad interpretation of that.

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree. In fact, right at that time the made it clear what he was referring to and I made it clear what he was referring to. Yet, some reports continue to ignore what we had previously said about it and what he was referring to. So I think you have to look at what he was referring to. And he was very clear, when asked what he was referring to, when he made those comments, as was I.

Warning: Paparazzi photo of 283 Rosalind

Ok, I understand planning ahead for growing room for your family, but how many books do you need???

Warning: Shameless personal post

Mrs. & Mr. Post Festum have entered into double-secret negotiations to buy their first house. Send all house warming gifts to the following address after May 06, 2006.

Home Search Results: "283 Roslyn Street, Rochester NY, 14619"

Voices Baffled, Brash and Irate in Guantánamo - New York Times: "'I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan,' he protested to American military officers at Guantánamo. 'My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban.'

Mr. Rahman's pleadings are among more than 5,000 pages of documents released by the Defense Department on Friday night in response to a lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act by The Associated Press.

After more than four years in which the Pentagon refused to make public even the names of those held at Guantánamo, the documents provide the most detailed information to date about who the detainees say they are and the evidence against them."

Khaleej Times Online:

"IN A letter to a friend in Europe, Abdul Razaq al-Naas, a Baghdad university professor in his 50s, grieved for his killed friends and colleagues. His letter concluded: 'I wonder who is next!' He was. On January 28 al-Naas drove from his office at Baghdad University. Two cars blocked his, and gunmen opened fire, killing him instantly.

Al-Naas is not the first academic to be killed in the mayhem of the 'new Iraq'. Hundreds of academics and scientists have met this fate since the March 2003 invasion. Baghdad universities alone have mourned the killing of over 80 members of staff. The minister of education stated recently that during 2005, 296 members of education staff were killed and 133 wounded.

Not one of these crimes has been investigated by the occupation forces or the interim governments. They leave that to international humanitarian groups and anti-war organisations. Among them is the Brussels Tribunal on Iraq, which has compiled a list to persuade the UN special rapporteur on summary executions to investigate the issue; they do so with the help of Iraqi academics, who risk their lives in the process. Their research shows that the victims have been men and women from all over Iraq, from different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds. Most were vocally opposed to the occupation. For the most part, they were killed in a fashion that suggests cold-blooded assassination. No one has claimed responsibility."

Jason Leopold | Details Emerge in Latest Plame Emails:

"The emails from Cheney's office that were turned over to Fitzgerald earlier this month were written by senior aides and sent to various officials at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the President. The emails were written as early as March 2003 - four months before Plame Wilson's cover was blown in a report written by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The contents of the emails are said to be damning, according to sources close to the investigation who are familiar with their substance. The emails are said to implicate Cheney in a months-long effort to discredit Wilson - a fact that Cheney did not disclose when he was interviewed by federal investigators in early 2004, these sources said."

Even with a raging cold I can still smell Al G.'s stink...

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying:

"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago."

...

But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.

At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.

DefenseLINK News: CENTCOM Team Engages 'Bloggers':

"Public affairs officials here said thousands of blogs are created each day, and they estimate that more than 21 million blogs are posted on the World Wide Web today.

Blogs sometimes include information -- accurate and otherwise -- about the U.S. military's global war on terror. U.S. Central Command officials here took notice and created a team to engage these writers and their electronic information forums.

'The main interest is to drive their readers to our site,' Army Reserve Maj. Richard J. McNorton said. McNorton is CENTCOM's chief of engagement operations.

Anyone who wants a virtual voice can create a blog and share information with the online world. The ease with which bloggers spread information is what public affairs officials at CENTCOM saw when they created the blog team.

McNorton said the team contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. This outreach effort enables the team to offer complete information to bloggers by inviting them to visit CENTCOM's Web site for news releases, data or imagery.

The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information. They extend a friendly invitation to all bloggers to visit the command's Web site."

Just in case anyone doesn't know what the Liffey is (I didn't). It's a river in Ireland. Info from Wikipedia. Also referenced by Joyce in Ulysses: "A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline Bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Custom House old dock and George?s quay." And in Finnegan's Wake: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

another test....if anything, it is interesting to see how these tests are designed and what assumptions are made to classify people politically and economically

OkCupid! Politics Test: "
OkCupid's Politics Test is short and, as always, highly accurate. "

abc7news.com: Did The National Guard Spy On 'Raging Grannies'?:

"Did the California National Guard engage in domestic spying? The legislature is investigating, but one lawmaker has already decided what happened and is offering legislation to prevent such spying.

They call themselves the Peninsula chapter of the Raging Grannies, an anti-war group the California National Guard, at one time, seemed interested in.

Gail Sredanovic, Raging Grannies: 'It seems that they're using our intelligence energy and funds to spy on peaceful Americans, rather than do things that would really protect us from the threat of terrorism.'"