Microsoft Surface Video - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table

Microsoft Surface Video - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table - Behind the Scenes - Popular Mechanics: "Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look (with Video)"


More multi-touch display porn. Han and his latest creations are featured about 1/2 through.

Another Leopold shot for Rove's downfall

from an interview w/ one of the fired attorneys:

 

 Iglesias told me that, while we still do not know how he and his colleagues
were placed on the termination list, he does believe a "smoking gun"
exists that will lead directly to Karl Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

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The Summer of Iran

Cheney in the news in the last two days:

Cheney on a recent CBS Sunday Talkshow:

The fact is that the threat to the United States now of a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities, is the greatest threat we face. It's a very real threat. It's something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day.

And then today:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

So, what exactly is the truth value of Bush's prediction that he would be a uniter and not a divider?

There's a good reason we don't often post poll numbers a lot, but I want to make one exception. The new CBS poll on the Iraq war records that:

CBS Poll: 76% Say War's Going Badly, Record Number In Survey Say Getting Involved In Iraq Was Mistake - CBS News: "a CBS News/New York Times poll shows the number of Americans who say the war is going badly has reached a new high, rising 10 percent this month to 76 percent. "

But the really really interesting poll number is buried a bit in the article:

In addition, the poll finds Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the overall direction in which the United States is headed. Seventy-two percent, the highest number since the CBS/NYT poll started asking the question in 1983, say the country is on the wrong track, while 24 percent say it's headed in the right direction.

Ethanol....More later

I have been quiet about ethanol so far, but Jesus...this is most ridiculous idea ever. More later, but one reason which I'm sure you've seen. You're then driving poor people's food. But here it is reposited:

It's just a side comment from the FT:

"Retail food prices are heading for their biggest annual increase in as much as 30 years, raising fears that the world faces an unprecedented period of food price inflation.

Prices have soared as the expanding biofuels industry, climate change and the growing prosperity of nations such as India and China push up the costs of farm commodities including wheat, corn, milk and oils."

Remember Caesar, Thou Art Mortal

Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency | The Progressive: "Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.”

The White House released it on May 9.

Other than a discussion on Daily Kos led off by a posting by Leo Fender, and a pro-forma notice in a couple of mainstream newspapers, this document has gone unremarked upon.

The subject of the document is entitled “National Continuity Policy.”

It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”"

...

The document emphasizes the need to ensure “the continued function of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government,” it states.

But it says flat out: “The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.”

Our 544th Post: Back to the Future

I'm feeling nostalgic, so I thought I'd take a look at the first Repository post:

http://repositagain.blogspot.com/2005/12/firedoglake-jonathan-alter-newsweek-on.html

Turns out that our first post was also the first of a series we reposited in 2005 and much of 2006 on the NSA wiretapping revelations.

So, in honor of our 1st post I thought I'd reposit the most recent developments...

First, you must view scenes of James Comey's testimony in front of Schumer's senate committee from Tuesday. I mean it...even if you've read some highlights you've got to see it for yourself. Comey -- who is a mainstream loyal Bushie -- tells a story that both implicates Bush directly as a co-conspirator in the illegalities surrounding the program, and also shows Gonzales and Andy Card and Bush to resort to brute thuggishness against their own.

Now, a few choice quotes from the Washington Post editorial the morning after Comey's testimony. Not only is this a loyal Bushie Comey telling this tale, this is the loyal Bushie (or at least not openly disloyal) Washington Post editorial page.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

...

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Here are a few legal opinions just to whet your appetite for more detailed reading.

First, from two posts by Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

What more glaring and clear evidence do we need that the President of the United States deliberately committed felonies, knowing that his conduct lacked any legal authority? And what justifies simply walking away from these serial acts of deliberate criminality? At this point, how can anyone justify the lack of criminal investigations or the appointment of a Special Counsel? The President engaged in extremely serious conduct that the law expressly criminalizes and which his own DOJ made clear was illegal.

...

But more revealingly, just consider what it says about this administration. Not only did Comey think that he had to rush to the hospital room to protect Ashcroft from having a conniving Card and Gonzales manipulate his severe illness and confusion by coercing his signature on a document -- behavior that is seen only in the worst cases of deceitful, conniving relatives coercing a sick and confused person to sign a new will -- but the administration's own FBI Director thought it was necessary to instruct his FBI agents not to allow Comey to be removed from the room.

Comey and Mueller were clearly both operating on the premise that Card and Gonzales were basically thugs. Indeed, Comey said that when Card ordred him to the White House, Comey refused to meet with Card without a witness being present, and that Card refused to allow Comey's summoned witness (Solicitor General Ted Olson) even to enter Card's office. These are the most trusted intimates of the White House -- the ones who are politically sympathetic to them and know them best -- and they prepared for, defended themselves against, the most extreme acts of corruption and thuggery from the President's Chief of Staff and his then-legal counsel (and current Attorney General of the United States).

...

As former OLC official Marty Lederman noted last night, John Ashcroft and James Comey are both Republican ideologues who proved that they were willing to endorse and defend even the most radical (and illegal) behavior (including the lawless detention of Jose Padilla and the administration's "refashioned" -- though still illegal -- warrantless eavesdropping program). If they were insisting that the conduct of the Bush administration was not only illegal, but so illegal that they were ready to resign en masse over it, then, as Lederman asks: "can you even imagine how bad it must have been?"

...

James Comey's testimony amounts to a statement that -- even according to the administration's own loyal DOJ officials -- the President ordered still-unknown spying on Americans, and engaged in that spying for a full two-and-a-half-years, that was so blatantly and shockingly illegal that they were all ready to resign over it. And the President's Attorney General then lied to ensure that this episode remain concealed. Mere one-day calls for a Congressional investigation are woefully inadequate here.

And from a former lawyer in the OLC under Clinton, MartyLederman:

These are hardly officials who were unwilling to push the legal envelope, or who were disdainful of the objectives or need for the NSA program. Two or three weeks later, OLC did develop an alternative legal theory that permitted a narrower version of the surveillance program to go forward. By all accounts, that legal theory is some version of the argument that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Al Qaeda authorized this form of electronic surveillance, notwithstanding FISA. That is a theory that I and many others have harshly criticized (see, for example, the letters collected here). It is, to say the least, an extremely creative reading of the relevant statutes -- a reading that not a single member of Congress who voted for the AUMF could possibly have imagined, and one that (to my knowledge) not a single member of Congress has approved once reading of it in DOJ's "White Paper."

These DOJ officials were willing to sign off on that very tenuous legal theory. What does that tell us about the OLC theory that they inisted upon repudiating?

Important Unanswered Questions to Date:

1. Did Bush make the call to Mrs. Ashcroft to pressure her to allow Gonzales and Card in the hospital room?
2. Did Bush know that Ashcroft and then acting Attorney-General Comey said "no" to certifying the legality of the 2001-2003 program? -- Note: even now it is already looking like this is a silly question and is obviously "yes" and will never be denied by the white house.
3. What made Comey and Ashcroft change their minds on this program at this time in 2003? After all, the program was recertified once a year as being legal by the Office of Legal Council in the DOJ (which, by congressional law, has the last and only say in what counts as "legal" and "illegal" in the Executive Branch)?

Actually it is not exactly right to say that Comey "changed" his mind, since he was fairly new to his position coming in in 2003. Actually, the guy who changed his mind is --- Goldsmith, who had also come on board in 2003 as the new head of the OLC. Goldsmith had apparently undertaken a review of his predecessor's legal proclamations, and it seems found many of them wanting.

And you'll never guess who it was that was head of the OLC before Goldsmith....None other than John Woo. Yes, that John Woo.

Now, Goldsmith somehow convinced Comey and Ashcroft that the OLC and therefore the DOJ and the entire executive branch was going to have to completely reverse its stand on the NSA program in question. Now if you watch the Comey video, you get the sense that he probably was easy to convince. My guess is his briefing by Goldsmith was his first encounter with the program and it scarred the hell out of him. (I mean it -- watch his testimony!) What I don't get is Ashcroft. Is it really possible that Woo had convinced him of the program's legal validity only to have a more persuasive Goldsmith come along and so convincingly persuade him to effectively shut down this national security program? Come on...Pull the other one.

Here's my guess, either Ashcroft
1. didn't even read the original Yoo legal evaluations or
2. there weren't any original Yoo evaluations or
3. there were aspects to the program that didn't get mentioned (or were deliberately distorted) in the original Yoo evaluations.

And at this point, the consensus opinion seems to be a mixture of 1 and 3, but there may be other possibilities as well. One possibility seems to be that Yoo and the DoJ folks were not given access to all the details of the program in question, but went on developing legal justifications nonetheless, and that Goldsmith and Comey insisted on knowing the details before they would sign off.

But all this is window dressing: Bush directly intervened and took it upon himself to continue the operation of a program that the OLC -- the one and only voice that is always taken as dispositive in matters of law in the Executive Branch -- and that means that yet again Bush and several others are felons.

A Special Place in Hell?

Falwell dies.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. evangelist Jerry Falwell, a leader of the Christian right, died on Tuesday, his assistant said.

Falwell, 73, was found unconscious in his office and was taken to a nearby hospital in Virginia, CNN said. He had a history of congestive heart problems.

"That is true, it's over," the assistant, Duke Westover, told Reuters by telephone. He said an official statement would be issued soon.

Bush joke kicks off Korea talks

MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Bush joke kicks off Korea talks: "Rare talks between military leaders from North and South Korea have got off to an unusual start with one of the North Korean generals recalling an internet joke about the US president.

Tuesday's meeting at the border village of Panmunjom was intended to discuss the restoration of rail links after more than half a century.

Both sides had previously agreed to a test-run across the heavily-fortified border on May 17th, but the North's military must first give its consent.

Shortly after the meeting began however, Lieutenant-General Kim Yong-chol opened proceedings by telling a joke at George Bush's expense.

'I recently read a piece of political humour on the internet called 'saving the president',' he was quoted as saying in pool reports from the talks."

The Joke

Bush goes out jogging one morning and, preoccupied with international affairs, fails to notice that a car is heading straight at him.

A group of schoolchildren pull the president away just in time, saving his life, and a grateful Bush offers them anything they want in the world as a reward.

"We want a place reserved for us at Arlington Memorial Cemetery," say the children.

"Why is that?" asks Bush.

"Because our parents will kill us if they find out what we've done."

Two noteworthy Truthout pieces

From Alternet.org

On
Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members
of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their
country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on
the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to
Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist
Shia group that sponsored the petition.





Pelosi Threatens to Sue Bush Over Iraq Bill

By Jonathan E. Kaplan and Elana Schor
The Hill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush
to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully
crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, "We can take the president to court" if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, ablogger who covered Pelosi's remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.

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France joins

Yes, Michael, we love exploitation just as much as you.





Michael, 26, fishmonger: "I voted for Sarkozy. I like what he said about working more to earn more."



meanwhile:



"President-elect Sarkozy will take possession of the Elysees Palace on
May 16. He intends to go on a retreat for a week, in an unknown place,
to meditate on the difficult task lying ahead."

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Sarkozy seen winning French election: Belgian media

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Conservative favorite Nicolas Sarkozy is on course to win France's presidential election run-off on Sunday with between 53 and 54 percent of the vote, Belgian media reported.

The RTBF public broadcasting station and the newspapers Le Soir and La Libre Belgique reported on their Web sites that unofficial estimates showed Sarkozy beating Socialist Segolene Royal comfortably.

Bush/Cheney Impeachment

I'm seeing this on a number of sites today (digg, GNN, etc) and have found the lines tied up when I've tried. Can't verify if Pelosi actually is conducting this, but it doesn't matter at this point...



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is conducting a phone poll -- the number is
1-202-225-0100. Just call in and say something to the effect of "I'd
like to register my support for the impeachment of President George W.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney."

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Venezuela quits IMF and World Bank

Fitting May Day piece...



The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, today severed ties with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

In doing so he distanced Caracas further from what he described as Washington-dominated institutions.

The
populist leader, who took office pledging to pursue radical political
reform and an economic "third way," said yesterday that Venezuela no
longer needed institutions "dominated by US imperialism."

Speaking
at a May Day event, Mr Chavez said: "We don't need to be going up to
Washington... We are going to get out. I want to formalise our exit
from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund."

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