Biggest companies, executives among donors to DeLay Foundation

The 19-year-old charity, the DeLay Foundation for Kids, has consistently declined to identify its donors, citing their desire for privacy.
But a review of corporate and charitable records shows that recent donors have included AT&T, the Corrections Corporation of America, Exxon Mobil, Limited Brands and the Southern Company, as well as Bill and Melinda Gates -- the Microsoft founder and his wife -- and Michael Dell of Dell computers.
The Gates and Dell family foundations have donated at least $350,000 to DeLay's charity since 2001. Among the largest corporate gifts was a $100,000 check given to DeLay last year by the Corrections Corporation of Nashville, which manages federal prisons. AT&T and Exxon Mobil say they have each donated $50,000.
Like other charities, the DeLay Foundation, which operates from a post office box near the Republican's house in Sugar Land, is not required under federal laws to release a donors' list. Nor does it have to account in detail for how it spends millions of dollars in donations on behalf of abused and neglected children.
The charity's largest project, a $7 million 50-acre housing complex near Houston for foster children, is being built by Bob Perry, a Texas contractor and a top GOP donor. Perry drew attention last year after providing the seed money for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the conservative group that sought to undermine Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War record during his presidential campaign.

James Boyle on Copyright Law: Deconstructing stupidity

It is as if we had signed an international stupidity pact, one that required us to ignore the evidence, to hand out new rights without asking for the simplest assessment of need. If the stakes were trivial, no one would care. But intellectual property (IP) is important. These are the ground rules of the information society. Mistakes hurt us. They have costs to free speech, competition, innovation, and science. Why are we making them?
To some the answer is obvious: corporate capture of the decision making process. This is a nicely cynical conclusion. But wait. There are economic interests on both sides. The film and music industries are tiny compared the consumer electronics industry. Yet copyright law dances to the tune played by the former, not the latter. Open source software is big business. But the international IP bureaucracies seem to view it as godless communism.
If money talks, why can decision-makers only hear one side of the conversation? Corporate capture can only be part of the explanation. Something more is needed. We need to deconstruct the culture of IP stupidity, to understand it so we can change it. But this is a rich and complex stupidity, like a fine Margaux. I can only review a few flavours.

Excerpts from "The New American Militarism"

The Normalization of War and New Boys in Town - The Neocon Revolution and American Militarism are two excerpts from Andrew J. Bacevich's just released The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, concerning who and which there was a previous post here. [from MetaFilter.com]

At the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might. The ensuing affair had and continues to have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds with American principles. Indeed, one striking aspect of America's drift toward militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature...

Juan Cole: The New McCarthyism

A member of the U.S. Congress calls for an assistant professor at a major university to be summarily fired. The right-wing tabloid press runs a series of vicious attacks on him, often misquoting him and perpetuating previous misquotes. Opinion pieces attacking "tenured radicals" and questioning professors' patriotism use him as their centerpiece. All of these attacks are spurred by a propaganda film made by an advocacy group, in which anonymous accusations are made and the professor is not given an opportunity to respond to the allegations.
It is not 1953, the Congress member is not Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the professor is not being accused of being a communist. No, it is 2005, the Congress member is Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and the professor is being accused of being anti-Israel.
The lesson for academics, and American society as a whole: McCarthyism is unacceptable except when criticism of Israel is involved.
The targeted professor is Joseph Massad, of the Middle East Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University. Massad is the author of "Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan" (Columbia University Press, 2001), and of a forthcoming book treating the sexual depictions of Arabs in colonial literature, "Desiring Arabs." He is well-published, and his first book received rave reviews in journals such as Choice and the American Historical Review. His career would have been no more controversial than that of any academic historian working on Argentina or Uganda, had he not been a Palestinian-American teaching about Israel and Palestine in New York City. Nor, had he been critical of Argentinean or Ugandan policies, would any eyebrows have been raised in the United States.

Today Sponge returning to market

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved U.S. sales of the Today Sponge, which was the favorite nonprescription birth control product of women when it was withdrawn from the market in 1995.
"The product was found to be safe and effective," FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said.
The polyurethane sponges, which have been sold by manufacturer Allendale Pharmaceuticals in Canada and over the Internet since March 2003, will be available in the U.S. in two months through a company Web site and in four months at retail drug stores, followed by discount stores such as Wal-Mart, Allendale said.

Rice Ordered Release of German Sent to Afghan Prison in Error

A German citizen detained for five months in an Afghan prison was released in May 2004 on direct orders from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned the man had been mistakenly identified as a terror suspect, government officials said Friday.
The officials, who confirmed an account of Ms. Rice's decision that was first reported by NBC News, said that when Khaled el-Masri was taken from a bus on the Serbian-Macedonian border on Dec. 31, 2003, the Macedonian and the American authorities believed he was a member of Al Qaeda who had trained at one of Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
But within several months they concluded he was the victim of mistaken identity, the officials said. His name was similar to a Qaeda suspect on an international watch list of possible terrorist operatives, they said.

In Portland, Ore., a Bid to Pull Out of Terror Task Force

Citing irreconcilable differences with how the Federal Bureau of Investigation has operated in a post-Sept. 11 world, city officials in Portland, Ore., said yesterday that they planned to pull their police officers out of an F.B.I.-run antiterrorism task force.
Federal officials said no other city had taken such an action.
Mayor Tom Potter, a Democrat and former Portland police chief, along with several city commissioners, said they expected the City Council to approve the move next week.
Mr. Potter said that several sticking points in negotiations with the F.B.I. over how investigations are conducted and who has "top secret" security clearance had prompted his decision to remove the two officers, now detailed to the antiterrorism task force, from under the auspices of the F.B.I.

Human Rights Watch Calls for Investigation of Rumsfeld and Tenet

A year after the Abu Ghraib photos were widely circulated, and a few days after most of the low-ranking officers blamed were let off, Human Rights Watch releases a report clearly implicating the entire chain of command, and strongly urges the investigation of Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet. (Full report here) Just some bad eggs, eh? [from MetaFilter.com]

Medicare Change Will Limit Access to Claim Hearing

For years, hearings have been held at more than 140 Social Security offices around the country. In July, the Department of Health and Human Services will take over the responsibility, and department officials said all judges would then be located at just four sites - in Cleveland; Miami; Irvine, Calif.; and Arlington, Va.
Under the new policy, Medicare officials said, most hearings will be held with videoconference equipment or by telephone. A beneficiary who wants to appear in person before a judge must show that "special or extraordinary circumstances exist," the rules say.
But a beneficiary who insists on a face-to-face hearing will lose the right to receive a decision within 90 days, the deadline set by statute.
The policy change comes as Bush administration officials are predicting an increase in the volume of cases, with the creation of a Medicare drug benefit expected to generate large numbers of claims and appeals. But in a recent study, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, questioned the heavy reliance on videoconferences, saying that "beneficiaries are often uncomfortable using videoconference facilities and prefer to have their cases heard face to face."

Rather than Boycott, Kansas Scientists will Defend Evolution in Schools

At the end of the nearly two-hour meeting, it was decided that proponents of intelligent design -- an idea that the world was started by a supernatural power -- will provide testimony from May 5 through May 7.
And in a surprise move, it appears that supporters of evolution will present their side May 12 through May 14.
Scientists in Kansas and across the nation had previously said they would boycott the hearings on science standards because they felt that conservative State Board of Education members were using the hearings to criticize evolution and introduce religion in science classes.
But on Tuesday, the majority of scientists serving on a committee that composed the pro-evolution science standards for Kansas students indicated they were ready to challenge the conservatives.

America's Ten Worst Greenwashers

An automaker that produces dozens of models of gas-guzzling SUVs opts to market its lone hybrid as proof of far-reaching environmental responsibility. An energy company uses solar to symbolize its commitment to a post-carbon future, even as all but a sliver of its operations are stuck in oil. And a chemical company touts its donation to a conservation group, made only to silence grassroots gripes about toxic pollution.
Dealing in lies of omission, image ads belong to a business strategy known as greenwash, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.”
1. Ford Motor Company
2. BP
3. United States Forest Service
4. ChevronTexaco
5. General Motors
6. Nuclear Energy Institute
7. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
8. TruGreen ChemLawn
9. Xcel Energy
10. National Ski Areas Association

Theocracy 101: "Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost"

“Most people hear them talk about a ‘Christian nation’ and think, ‘Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing,’ says the Rev. Mel White, who ghostwrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography before breaking with the evangelical movement. “What they don’t know—what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know—is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”
The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you’ve never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham’s gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving. Kennedy built Coral Ridge Ministries into a $37-million-a-year empire, with a TV-and-radio audience of 3 million, by preaching that it was time to save America—not soul by soul but election by election. After helping found the Moral Majority in 1979, Kennedy became a five-star general in the Christian army. Bush sought his blessing before running for president—and continues to consult top Dominionists on matters of federal policy.
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost,” Kennedy says. “As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”

Book: James Dobson's War on America

From Publishers Weekly:
In this often strident expose of James Dobson, founder and president of Focus on the Family, an ultraconservative Christian organization, former Focus vice-president Alexander-Moegerle issues a call to all politically concerned Americans to beware of Dobson's political agenda. It's no secret that Dobson, as Alexander-Moegerle writes, advocates "smaller government, larger defense, the elimination of the Department of Education and the NEA, and the barring of women and homosexuals from military service." Alexander-Moegerle relies on his more than 15 years of close contact with Dobson to paint a portrait of Dobson as an autocratic manager hungry for political power and recognition. According to the author, Dobson's Nazarene belief that he is sinless and morally perfect results in Dobson's stance that he is morally superior to others, even his employees. Such a stance, combined with Dobson's apparent sexism, racism and homophobia, and his ability to lobby Capitol Hill with "500,000 to 1 million phone calls and letters within hours," according to Alexander-Moegerle, seem to make Dobson a tremendous political threat to the pluralism and diversity of political views in America. Unfortunately, the second half of the book, in which Alexander-Moegerle chronicles his own lawsuit against the Dobson organization, mars the force of the rest of the book, since the text turns more toward personal vendetta than levelheaded critique. Even so, Alexander-Moegerle brings into the open some serious questions about Dobson and Focus on the Family that merit response.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Religious Leaders To Senator Bill Frist: Drop Out Of “Justice Sunday” Or Risk Dividing The Country

This morning leading national religious figures held a teleconference calling on Senator Bill Frist, the Republican Majority Leader, to withdrawal from an event this weekend billed as “Justice Sunday.” Justice Sunday is sponsored by conservative religious organizations in concert with the republican leader with a stated intention of painting democrats and those who oppose the president’s judicial nominees – most of whom oppose basic civil rights protections for minorities – as “people against faith.” I was able to listen in this morning and hear these progressive religious leaders take issue with this cynical attempt to manipulate Christian faith for political ends.

Ministers urge cancellation of 'Justice Sunday'

A group of ministers representing about 17 Baptist churches in the Louisville area and a national Baptist committee that supports separation of church and state yesterday called on a Louisville church to cancel its planned "Justice Sunday" tomorrow.
"We see 'Justice Sunday' as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island," the Rev. Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church, said during a news conference yesterday.
But there are no plans to cancel the event, said the Rev. Kevin Ezell, senior pastor of Highview Baptist Church, where the national Christian telecast will be based.
"I don't know Joe Phelps," Ezell said in a telephone interview. "He's never called me. The biggest story here is that he wants to be on TV, he wants to be in the paper. He needs to spend more time reaching people than criticizing other churches."

“Follow the Money” Documenting the Right's Well-Heeled Assault on the United Methodist Church

Six months ago, we reviewed in these pages an unsettling book titled United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake Up Call by Leon Howell (see Zion’s Herald, July/August 2003). The book exposes an orchestrated attack by the American political and religious right on The United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline Protestant denominations that have been sufficiently vigorous, socially involved and politically effective to garner its wrath (Howell, 2003).
In response to the ensuing criticism of the book and our review, we organized a group of researchers to check the facts and found the volume to be well documented and reliable. In the process, we also reviewed hundreds of documents published by the key organization involved in the assault on the church, namely, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Our findings as outlined below are very disturbing.
...The IRD’s stated goals, which consistently are at odds with the historic social witness of the mainline churches, include increasing military spending, opposing environmental protection efforts and eliminating social welfare programs (Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2001a). In this respect, it can be said that the IRD and its wealthy patrons are intent on derailing if not outright controlling the UMC’s social witness. If that sounds implausible, one need only consider how right-wing groups during the last decade have done that and more in their take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention.
...The IRD has pressed the Bush administration to take a harder line on North Korea (Goodenough, 2003) and vigorously supported Republican tax cuts for the rich (Tooley, 2001b, c). Mr. Tooley’s direct board of directors supervisor, David Stanley, is the chairman of a radical anti-tax group (Clark, 1999) that advocates the slashing of government services for the poor and disabled and huge tax cuts for the wealthy (Neas, 2003). The IRD opposes even limited environmental protection efforts and has collaborated with other like-minded folks to try to roll back protections now in place (Interfaith Coalition for Environmental Stewardship, 2003; Public Eye, 2003; Sider & Ball, 2002; Tooley, 2002). The IRD, particularly Ms. Knippers, has been vocal in opposition to any form of hate crime legislation (Jones, 2000). It has expressed opposition to a land mines treaty (Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2001b) and to women even having knowledge about reproductive choices (Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2001c).

The Real Assault On The Church - How the IRD Attacks Ministers that Deviate from Political Message

What's interesting is that despite the attempts by the Fringe Fundamentalists to position themselves in the media as the spokespeople for all things Christian, there is an organization in their network that shows they know that's not true.
The Institute for Religion and Democracy .
IRD is a secularly funded group (including money from the right-wing Scaife foundations ) that attacks and smears clergy who voice interpretations of Christianity that it deems as insufficiently conservative.
(An Olin Foundation grant to IRD was once described as funding "Programs to counter the political influence of the Religious Left".)
One North Carolina pastor recently said, "It is my opinion (shared by many) that the institute's tacit agenda is to align mainline churches with the Republican Party."
The New Zion's Herald called IRD "the key organization involved in the assault on the church."
Blogger Chuck Currie called IRD "Just Another Right-Wing Group Working to Malign Christians Working For Peace and Justice"
And SF Weekly has reported on IRD's efforts to attack pastors who support marriage rights for gays.
IRD has created three "astroturf" front groups that focus on specific denominations: Episcopal Action, Presbyterian Action and UM Action (Methodist).

Reid Blasts Bush for "Not Being Honest"

“In the span of three minutes, the vice president managed to reinvent 200 years of Senate history and ignore the fact that Congress has already approved 205 of this administration’s nominees. Apparently, a 95 percent confirmation rate is not enough for this president. He wants it all, even if it means shattering the checks and balances in our government in order to put radical judges on the bench.
“Last week, I met with the president and was encouraged when he told me he would not become involved in Republican efforts to break the Senate rules. Now, it appears he was not being honest, and that the White House is encouraging this raw abuse of power."

Army clears top brass over Iraq abuse

Former commander of US troops in Iraq Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez has been cleared over abuses at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
A new inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing by Gen Sanchez and three of his top aides, US officials say.
The US army inspector general's report says only Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, commander at the jail, has been found guilty and reprimanded over the abuse.

Prescription Drugs, High of Choice Among Teens

About one in five teenagers have tried prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin to get high, with the pill-popping members of ''Generation Rx'' often raiding their parents' medicine cabinets, according to a study by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
The 17th annual study on teen drug abuse, released Thursday, found that more teens had abused prescription painkillers in 2004 than Ecstasy, cocaine, crack or LSD. One in 11 teens had abused over-the-counter products such as cough medicine, the study reported.

British Man Sells Moore's Law Mag to Intel

British engineer David Clark has claimed a $10,000 sum from electronic giant Intel for a copy of a 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine.
Intel posted the request earlier this month on E-bay spin-off 'Want it Now' for a copy of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine, offering $10,000 for a mint edition.
The reason for the large reward was that Intel co-founder Gordon Moore had his theory, which became known as Moore’s Law, published in that edition of the magazine.
The 'law' came about from the article where Moore observed an exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and predicted that this trend would continue. The 'law' has held true so far and Intel themselves predict it will do so until the end of the decade.
Clark, who admits to being a hoarder, found a copy under the floorboards of his house in a pile of old magazines. He told the press it was one of the strangest things that has ever happened to him; he intends to put some of the money to his daughter's wedding.

Ecuadoreans rebelled by radio, e-mail and text

Fed up with politicians, Ecuadoreans turned to local radio, text messages and the Internet to whip up a street rebellion this week that helped push their president Lucio Gutierrez out of office.
Gutierrez, a former army officer elected in late 2002, was waiting in Quito's Brazilian embassy residence on Saturday for safe conduct to asylum in Brazil, three days after intense protests played their part in forcing him from office.
Buoyant protesters, including businessmen, housewives and students, described the demonstrations as a popular rebellion that grew through word of mouth, cellular telephone text messages and broadcasts on La Luna, a local radio station.
Many said the week-long rallies were a spontaneous reaction to frustration with what they saw as the government's abuse of power and disappointment with leaders of all political colours.

Frist Draws Criticism From Some Church Leaders

As the Senate battle over judicial confirmations became increasingly entwined with religious themes, officials of several major Protestant denominations on Thursday accused the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, of violating the principles of his own Presbyterian church and urged him to drop out of a Sunday telecast that depicts Democrats as "against people of faith."
..."One of the hallmarks of our denomination is that we are an ecumenical church," Mr. Kirkpatrick said in an interview on Thursday. He also said, "Elected officials should not be portraying public policies as being for or against people of faith."

Saudis to Double Investment in Energy Production

Saudi Arabia, facing mounting pressure from the U.S. and others to step up output of oil and gas amid a surge in prices, plans to more than double its investment in energy development to $50 billion in the next five years from the previous five-year period, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.
Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, also said the kingdom had tossed aside its production cap set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and is willing to sell its customers every barrel of oil they want, up to its current capacity of 11 million barrels a day. The planned increase in investment, Mr. Naimi said, would boost the kingdom's oil-pumping capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009, a target Mr. Naimi had previously disclosed. Saudi Arabia also has said it was studying longer-term plans for capacity increases to about 15 million barrels a day.
Mr. Naimi's disclosures about increased investment appear to be part of a campaign by Saudi Arabia, the world's top exporter and OPEC's de facto leader, to blunt criticism that the cartel is behind the recent rise in energy prices. His remarks come just as Saudi Arabia's effective ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, is set to meet President Bush Monday in Texas.

Bloggers and Podcasters as Stringers

Stringer a freelance journalist, who is paid for each piece of published or broadcast work, rather than receiving a regular salary. (From the Wikipedia entry for stringer)
I’ve been thinking lately about the idea of bloggers and others as news sources. There was a time when newspapers and radio networks had stringers all over the world feeding them stories. This was how we knew what was going on and it worked well. Stringers were good reporters and they knew the areas that they were in. But that doesn’t work as well as it used to, because it’s expensive to fly people around the world and get them to where the stories are.
So I was thinking the other day, what if we used bloggers and podcasters from around the world as stringers. The benefit here is that there are already folks producing news worthy content just about everywhere in the world. People are reading blogs about the war in Iraq, written by people there everyday. Then the tsunami hit it was bloggers that got more news out faster than any of the major news sources. All that needs to happen is that we need to collect, organize and sort the incoming information so folks can find what they are looking for.

Sumo Tube

Ever dreamed of morphing yourself into a surfing Weeble Wobble? Dream no more. The Sumo Tube is an inflatable bodysuit that can be towed passively (a la waterski), or worn for bodysurfing. It would appear that you will be having so much fun, you'll forget all about the fact that you look ridiculous.
Link (Thanks, Sunfell)

Senate Adds $213M Extra for Humvees to Iraq Spending

The extra money will keep an armored Humvee productionline running at full capacity until July 31. Without the money, production would drop from 550 this month to 239 in June, zero in July, 40 in August and 71 in September.
Sponsored by Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the amendment passed 60-40, while the overall spending bill was approved 99-0. Since the House approved spending an extra $185 million on the factory-armored Humvees last month, the military is virtually assured of having more money for the vehicles when differences in the two versions of the bill are reconciled by the House and Senate. The White House originally sought $743 million for the Humvees.
Kennedy said a quarter of all U.S. combat deaths (roughly 400) in Iraq happened to troops in unarmored Humvees.
Earlier this month, the Army said it was 855 vehicles short of reaching its goal of having 8,105 factory-armored Humvees in the military theater that includes Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army argued that it met that goal but counted armored Humvees based in the United States and elsewhere.
Bayh said the Army has consistently underestimated its needs for Humvees in Iraq. "When will we do more instead of less?" he asked.

The leaders of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are openly calling for the destruction of US courts

Perkins is heard saying, "There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench." He went on to say that the power-mad, court-bashing Republicans in Congress are considering strategies for destroying courts they don't like by defunding them. He said, "What they're thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them....just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do."
James Dobson has even bigger ideas: simply legislate courts out of existence entirely. Congress does have the power to set up the Federal Judiciary according to Article 3 of the US Constitution, but it isn't clear whether a court can simply be legislated out of existence, considering that judges are appointed for life. Dobson apparently didn't read that footnote in findlaw that might throw a wrench in his scheme when he said, "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."
Why, exactly, isn't this front-page news? These two men are attacking the basis of our protection from tyranny; they're attacking the courts. They're saying that justice under the law doesn't matter; or rather, they're saying that the only justice under the law is that which they command. These men are trying to exterminate the independence of the judiciary, a principle that has generally served this country well since its inception. When they attack our courts, they attack democracy itself. They attack our system of government. They attack our nation. They attack us. Why isn't the media bringing this assault to the nation's attention?
Why do James Dobson and Tony Perkins hate America?

Pentagon Seeks New Information Warriors

Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub. req'd.), April 22, 2005

U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) is "fostering competition" for a "lucrative contract to analyze foreign media coverage and handle strategic communications for its operations and the so-called global war on terrorism," reports O'Dwyer's. The work involves tracking "media in broadcast, print and online in Arabic, Urdu Pashtu" and other languages, as well as "building databases of key communicators and media outlets, analyzing the perception of U.S. actions and communication, and identifying vulnerabilities." The contract requires the PR firm to provide staff "on a 24/7 schedule during critical periods." The secretive Rendon Group, "the Pentagon's go-to firm for military PR," currently holds the $8.2 million contract, which 56 of its employees work on. STRATCOM hopes to award the new contract this summer.

How to Fake Your Own Town Hall

Source: Comedy Central, April 19, 2005

Once again, a parody news segment on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is offering better journalism than much of what you'll find coming from "real" newsrooms. CC's Samantha Bee interviews Republican media strategist Frank Luntz for advice on how to create her own fake town hall meetings, like the ones that President Bush has been using to promote his Social security privatization scheme. "A real town hall can be very dangerous if it gets out of control," Luntz explains. "A town hall where the speaker cannot command the respect and the control of the audience can look very bad on television. ... To me the most important component of a successful town hall is the visual, is the backdrop." And the audience itself is part of the backdrop, Luntz explains as he reviews footage from an actual Bush town hall video: "There he's got an African-American, he's got an Asian, there's your female he's got. It's one of everybody. It's almost like the rainbow wedding line."
[This is outstanding! -- McLir]

Bush's Most Radical Plan Yet: New Budget Contains Presidential Power to Kill Legislation

If you've got something to hide in Washington, the best place to bury it is in the federal budget. The spending plan that President Bush submitted to Congress this year contains 2,000 pages that outline funding to safeguard the environment, protect workers from injury and death, crack down on securities fraud and ensure the safety of prescription drugs. But almost unnoticed in the budget, tucked away in a single paragraph, is a provision that could make every one of those protections a thing of the past.
The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the "Sunset Commission," which would systematically review federal programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. Any programs that are not "producing results," in the eyes of the commission, would "automatically terminate unless the Congress took action to continue them."
...In practice, however, the commission would enable the Bush administration to achieve what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it. With a simple vote of five commissioners -- many of them likely to be lobbyists and executives from major corporations currently subject to federal oversight -- the president could terminate any program or agency he dislikes. No more Environmental Protection Agency. No more Food and Drug Administration. No more Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Constitution: Article VI, Clause 3

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Bush's Test for Judges

"We need common-sense judges who understand our rights were derived from God," he says in a 2002 clip. "And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." -- George W. Bush

Defunding Judges

Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.
An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.
..."There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
DeLay has spoken generally about one of the ideas the leaders discussed in greater detail: using legislative tactics to withhold money from courts.
"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said at an April 13 question-and-answer session with reporters.

A Eulogy to Hubble

This week marks 15 years since the Hubble Space Telescope, hailed by some commentators as the most successful astronomy mission ever, was placed in orbit. Since 25 April 1990, it has snapped 750,000 images, sending 120 gigabytes of data back to Earth each week. But now the end may well be nigh for the ailing telescope. news@nature.com looks back over Hubble's career and forward to the next generation of space scopes.
Perhaps Hubble's most impressive achievement is to have peered into the farthest recesses of the Universe, allowing cosmologists the chance to witness the first stars in the act of formation. Images called the Hubble Ultra Deep Fields , taken using lengthy exposures of around a million seconds, capture light from so far away - which has travelled for so long to reach us - that the pictures show astronomers what was happening almost as far back as the Big Bang.
In recent years, Hubble has also taken ultraviolet images of Saturn's striking aurorae , captured high-speed galactic collisions , and provided hundreds of posters for physics students' bedroom walls.

Police in Ariz. Seek Monkey for SWAT Team

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."
Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.
[Wait a minute, we're primates! Is our smartness very far behind the chimps and capuchins? -- McLir]

ACLU Files Emergency Motion in Sibel Edmonds Case

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of the National Capital Area filed an emergency motion Wednesday to open the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to the public during oral arguments tomorrow in a hearing over the termination of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Several media outlets filed a separate emergency motion.
The move comes in response to an announcement from the court clerk this morning that the argument would be closed to everyone except attorneys involved in the case and Edmonds. Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU National Office, will argue on behalf of Edmonds tomorrow.
"There is no plausible reason why members of the public and the press cannot be present at this hearing, especially since the written arguments of the parties are entirely on the public record,"said Art Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU of the National Capital Area. "The rule of law does not evaporate because an appeal involves national security information."

AP Sues U.S. to Get Guantanamo Documents

Government documents related to military hearings for Guantanamo Bay detainees are of ``urgent concern'' to the public and should be released, according to a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press against the Defense Department.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, stated AP has been able to report only anecdotally on 558 tribunals conducted since August to let detainees challenge their incarceration at the Cuban base. The news agency said the proceedings were ``unquestionably of great interest to the public.''
It asked the court to order the government to turn over transcripts of all Guantanamo detainees' testimony, along with written statements by the detainees and any documents they have submitted.

Nuclear Reactor in Toledo Fined for Near-Breach after Lax Cleaning and Inspection

The leaking boric acid was found two years later during a routine inspection. The corrosion had eaten almost through a 6-inch-thick steel cap.
The damage at the plant along the Lake Erie shore, 30 miles east of Toledo, ranks among the nation's worst nuclear problems since Three Mile Island in 1979. It led to a review of 68 similar plants nationwide.
The plant was closed for two years but returned to full power last April.
The NRC said FirstEnergy restarted the plant in 2000 without completing a cleaning and inspection of the reactor vessel head.
The agency said the company then provided incomplete and inaccurate information about the cleaning and inspection.
"This substantial fine emphasizes the very high safety and regulatory significance of FirstEnergy's failure to comply with NRC requirements," said Luis Reyes, the NRC's executive director for operations.
Meanwhile: The House approves an $8-billion energy measure that would boost coal, natural gas, nuclear, and domestic crude oil production along with other energy sources.

Administration Reports on Global Warming Exclude Information on Global Warming

...none of the 21 studies of climate change that the administration plans to publish by September 2007 explicitly address the potential effects in eight areas specified by a 1990 law, the Global Change Research Act. The areas include agriculture, energy, water resources and biological diversity.
Without such an assessment, the accountability office said, "it may be difficult for the Congress and others to use this information effectively as the basis for making decisions on climate policy."
The investigators also said the program was behind schedule, with just one report on track out of nine that are to be published by next September. The 1990 law requires a report to Congress every four years on the consequences of climate change.
The report was given to The New York Times by Congressional staff members.

Greenspan: "Unsustainable Path" - Asks for Triggers that would Block New Tax Cuts.

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, urged lawmakers on Thursday to scale back promised benefits for both Social Security and Medicare "sooner rather than later."
Expressing particular alarm about health costs and Medicare, Mr. Greenspan warned that the federal budget was on an "unsustainable path" that would lead to a vicious circle of higher deficits, higher interest rates and even higher borrowing.
"Unless that trend is reversed, at some point these deficits could cause the economy to stagnate or worse," the Fed chairman told the Senate Budget Committee.
...Mr. Greenspan admitted that he and most other forecasters had been wrong to expect budget surpluses, which disappeared the next year.
But he said it was unfair to accuse him of complicity in the deficits, because he had also pleaded unsuccessfully for "triggers," or mechanisms that would require policy changes if expected tax revenues failed to materialize.

FAIR: Time's Coverage of Coulter

"Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words 'Ann Coulter lies,' you will drown in result," wrote Cloud. "But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."
That would depend on how one defines "many" or "outright." Websites like the Daily Howler, Tapped, Media Matters and Spinsanity have pointed out literally dozens of errors in Coulter's book Slander and other Coulter statements. Coulter directed Cloud to one error she now admits to making, about the New York Times supposedly ignoring the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt (an error she lied about making when she appeared on FAIR's CounterSpin--8/9/02). Coulter managed to make yet another error in her explanation to Cloud, but this didn't seem to lead Cloud to dig any deeper. As Salon's Eric Boehlert pointed out (4/19/05), Slander's publisher made five corrections after its initial printing-- and should have made at least six more.

Henry Hyde Implies Clinton Impeachment was Payback for Nixon

ABC News in Chicago has yanked and replaced a story in which retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) indicated that the attempt to impeach President Clinton came in retaliation for the move to impeach President Nixon because they felt the story was too opinionated, RAW STORY has learned.
...Andy Shaw asked Hyde if the Clinton proceedings were payback for Nixon's impeachment.
"I can't say it wasn't, but I also thought that the Republican party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty, our responsibility," said Hyde.
Hyde's comments reflect what Democrats have been saying for years about the Clinton impeachment. It will be interesting to see what happens when Hyde's comments hit the national media.
Hyde's style will be missed in Washington, as well as his sense of civility, even though a lot of people will not miss his rigid ideology.

FOX Offers Shiny New Justification for Iraq War

"If the Iraqis were behind the Oklahoma City bombing, and Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were in fact so called 'lilly whites' recruited to act as fronts for Muslim or Iraqi, or maybe even Iranian, terror against the U.S. heartland.
And what if it turns out that Tim McVeigh, as a matter of pride and profound embarrassment, would never admit, never let it be known that he was acting in concert with, or on behalf of an actual enemy of the United States — Iraq — an enemy that he personally fought against?" FOXNews's John Gibson offers the speculation and assurance of "actual evidence" which he did not included in the article.

Matt Cooper, Facing Jail, Awaits Appeal to Supreme Court

Matthew Cooper of Time magazine says he is worried over the search for words to explain to his six-year-old son the necessity of “obeying the law” if and when he is sentenced for contempt of court.
The White House reporter stresses that he is not a lawyer, and does not speak for counsel hired by Time and The New York Times for the joint appeal. Nor will he speculate about the prosecutor's designs in pursuing a verdict against the two journalists left standing -- the other being Judith Miller of The New York Times.
However, in contrast to the conventional wisdom now surrounding the legal showdown, following the April 19 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denial of en banc review, he thinks there is a fair chance that the Supreme Court will agree to grant “cert” in what has now been labeled “In re: Grand Jury Subpoena.” With confusion in the lower courts over the scope of a reporter's privilege to protect information from confidential sources, he hopes the Supreme Court will decide this potential landmark case.

Search Military

Military.com is the largest online military destination, offering free resources to serve, connect, and inform the 30 million Americans with military affinity, including active duty, reservists, guard members, retirees, veterans, family members, defense workers and those considering military careers.

FEC fines Frist's Volunteer PAC for reporting violations

The Federal Election Commission fined Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's political action committee $10,000 for misstating or failing to adequately report certain financial information.
The FEC said Thursday the fine stemmed from an audit of Volunteer PAC's financial activities in 2001 and 2002, a period in which the committee took in about $1.2 million and disbursed about $1 million.
According to the FEC audit, Volunteer PAC misstated certain financial activity, including understating disbursements, in both years.
The PAC also failed to adequately report $183,000 in contributions that were transferred directly to 12 Republican Senate candidates, the audit said. Some of that money was raised at events held for the candidates.

NASA Is Said to Loosen Risk Standards for Shuttle

NASA officials have loosened the standards for what constitutes an acceptable risk of damage from the kind of debris that led to the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia as it was returning from space two years ago, internal documents show.
The move has set off a debate within the agency about whether the changes are a reasonable reassessment of the hazards of flight or whether they jettison long-established rules to justify getting back to space quickly.
Experts who have seen the documents say they do not suggest that the shuttle Discovery - scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on May 22 - is unsafe, but a small but forceful minority say they worry that NASA is repeating a practice that contributed to the Columbia disaster: playing down risks to continue sending humans into space.
The documents were given to The New York Times by several NASA employees, who asked not to be named, saying they feared retribution.

ACLU: Homeland Security Violates Civil Rights of Muslim American Citizens

The New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in simultaneous news conferences in Buffalo and Brooklyn today announced a lawsuit charging that the Department of Homeland Security singled out and violated the rights of American citizens who were returning from a religious conference in Toronto. The lawsuit was filed to challenge the DHS’s policy of detaining, interrogating, fingerprinting and photographing American citizens who are Muslim, solely because they attended an Islamic conference.

Politicians Seen as Simpler than TV Stars

The results of the study: when people judged their own personalities or those of TV stars or sports heroes, they boiled things down to five factors. But when they judged a politician, it came down to just two: how energetic is he or she, and how trustworthy? Later, the scientists repeated their investigation in the United States, with similar results.
For helping us understand how we understand politicians, Caprara, Barbaranelli and Zimbardo were awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel prize in the field of psychology. Zimbardo later told a reporter from his home state of California (where Arnold Schwarzenegger is the elected governor): "Politicians like to think of themselves as so complex, but the electorate thinks of them as simple." [thanks, Sean]

Stop Global Warming

Over the next year, the March will travel across the U.S., gaining strength in numbers and raising awareness about global warming. On Earth Day 2006, the March will arrive in Washington D.C. to use the strength of our numbers to urge:
1. The president to initiate a real plan of action to address global warming.
2. Congress to enact new laws to reduce global warming pollution from U.S. power plants, factories and automobiles.
3. U.S. businesses to start a new industrial revolution of clean energy products that will reduce our oil dependence and global warming pollution.

New Book by Douglas Rushkoff

Get Back in the Box says Douglas Rushkoff in his upcoming book of the same name. Kris Krug interviewed Rushkoff last week just after he wrapped up writing. Apparently the author is going to explore how we're undergoing a renaissance of collaboration where identity is defined by connection to others. Douglas seems to be pulling together a lot of ideas that have been bubbling up in the blogosphere (a connected creative/technology class, social networks) but is business ready to hear his message? Sounds like he'll be well received by many webby people, but it remains to be seen how long the traditional definitions he challenges will remain - one generation, two maybe?
You may remember Rushkoff from the PBS Frontline series' Merchants of Cool and Persuaders. He's been discussed quite a bit before here on MeFi, 9 times in fact. [from MetaFilter.com]

Sydney Schanberg: A Time for Disobedience

The press is now looking squarely at a perversion of government. The administration of George W. Bush has raised secrecy and information control to a level never before seen in Washington.
The falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction that gave the White House the public support to wage war in Iraq may be the most vivid example of the perversion, but the practice permeates all corners of the Bush government.
The press has been grappling with how to cope with this extreme control and distortion of news, some reporters and editors more than others. One possibility they might consider is civil resistance, as in quiet, nonviolent, respectful rebellion.

ACLU: Latest Government Documents Show Army Command Approved and Encouraged Abuse of Detainees

New evidence disclosed in documents released by the Department of Defense confirms that soldiers who abused prisoners were acting with the "seeming approval" of senior command, the American Civil Liberties Union said today.
"These documents provide further evidence that the chain of command in Iraq approved and even encouraged the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. "Instead of holding that chain of command accountable for systemic detainee abuse, the U.S. government continues to thwart efforts to bring the full truth about who was ultimately responsible to light."
A CD-ROM of 2,200 documents was released yesterday in response to a federal court order that directed the Defense Department and other government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.
These latest documents include autopsy reports that provide new, often gruesome details about detainee deaths ruled to be homicides, including death by strangulation and "blunt force injuries." Other investigative reports describe a mock execution of a teenage Iraqi boy in front of his father, who begged soldiers not to shoot his son, as well as an Army Medic’s description of two Iraqis who were "brutally beaten" by U.S. soldiers, in contrast to a captain’s contention that they "just got roughed up a bit."
Significantly, the ACLU said, several documents link the abuses to a "command climate" that encouraged brutality.

FBI bin Laden file edited to protect his privacy.

Japanese PM Apologises Over War

Addressing delegates, Mr Koizumi said: "In the past Japan through its colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering for the people of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations.
"Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility."
The wording repeats previous Japanese apologies - but analysts say the international setting gives the statement added weight.
Asked by reporters if he would hold talks with President Hu, Mr Koizumi said he was hoping for a meeting on Saturday.
The BBC's Tim Johnston in Jakarta says the apology should go some way to placating Chinese anger, which was recently reignited by a history textbook that the Chinese felt paid insufficient attention to atrocities.
In response to the apology, China's ambassador to Britain, Zha Peixin, said Japan's actions would be more important than words.
Among the issues causing outrage is the description of the Japanese army's massacre in Nanjing, referred to in the study books as "an incident".

From BBC: Between 50,000 and 300,000 Chinese people were killed between December 1937 and March 1938 in one of the worst massacres of modern times.

House Approves Energy Bill

The House approved an energy bill Thursday that will provide billions of dollars in tax breaks to boost domestic energy production, over the objections of lawmakers who called the measure a costly giveaway to the energy industry.
The Republican-controlled House easily passed the bill on a 249-183 vote, despite fights over drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and whether to protect the oil industry from lawsuits over the fuel additive MTBE, which has contaminated drinking water in states from California to Maine.
The bill increases the chances that oil companies will be allowed to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The Senate, which had previously blocked Arctic drilling, voted narrowly last month for a budget resolution that would allow the Bush administration to begin selling oil and gas leases in the refuge.
But the MTBE liability provision and the cost of the subsidies could become major sticking points when the Senate takes up the energy bill next month. The House has passed an energy bill for four straight years, only to see the measure fail in the Senate.

Senate confirms Negroponte as first US intelligence chief 98-2

John D. Negroponte won easy approval by the Senate yesterday to become the nation's first national intelligence director, a job created last year to better coordinate the nation's spy agencies following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Within 45 minutes of his approval, Negroponte was sworn in at the White House by the chief of staff, Andrew Card, as President Bush witnessed the ceremony. Negroponte will take over the task of giving Bush a daily briefing on intelligence matters, probably beginning next week, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Antimalarial drug combo cures 99% of children

Using a combination of two malaria drugs could stave off an “impending malaria treatment crisis” in Africa, a new study indicates.
Giving young children in Tanzania a six-dose course of artemether plus lumefantrine cleared the malarial parasite from the blood of 99% of patients after 14 days, showed the trial by led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. This was far more effective than more conventional drugs or other combinations used in the study of about 1800 children, aged four months to 59 months.

'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana

The relentless influx of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages received by modern workers can reduce their IQ by more than smoking marijuana, suggests UK research.
Far from boosting productivity, the constant flow of messages and information can seriously reduce a person's ability to focus on tasks, the study of office workers found.
Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed.
Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women.

Senate GOP Sets Up Filibuster Showdown

Moving the Senate closer to a historic confrontation, the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee yesterday endorsed two of President Bush's most controversial nominees to federal appellate court, and Democrats vowed once again to use the filibuster to block their confirmation.
The committee, voting 10 to 8 along party lines, endorsed Janice Rogers Brown of California for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and Priscilla Richman Owen of Texas for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Both were nominated, endorsed by the Judiciary Committee and ultimately blocked by the Democrats in Bush's first term, along with eight other appeals court nominees.
Yesterday's action therefore sets up a replay of past battles but with potentially far greater consequences. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has threatened to change Senate rules to ban filibusters for judicial nominations, clearing the way for them to be confirmed by a simple majority vote. But Democrats have threatened to bring the Senate to a virtual halt if Frist invokes what has been called the "nuclear option" on such nominations.
Republicans carefully chose their nominees for a Senate confrontation that could occur sometime in the next month, assuming that they can put Democrats, who pride themselves on appealing to female and black voters, on the defensive if they attempt again to deny two women, one of them an African American, an up-or-down vote.

The Sixth Extinction

So what is the Sixth Extinction? When is it coming? And what is its cause? "It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause," explains Dr. Richard Leakey, the world's most famous paleoanthropologist. Every year, between 17,000 and 100,000 species vanish from our planet, he says. "For the sake of argument, let's assume the number is 50,000 a year. Whatever way you look at it, we're destroying the Earth at a rate comparable with the impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet, or even a shower of vast heavenly bodies." The statistics he has assembled are staggering. Fifty per cent of the Earth's species will have vanished inside the next 100 years; mankind is using almost half the energy available to sustain life on the planet, and this figure will only grow as our population leaps from 5.7 billion to ten billion inside the next half-century. Such a dramatic and overwhelming mass extinction threatens the entire complex fabric of life on Earth, including the species responsible for it: Homo sapiens.
by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (Doubleday, 1995)

All the Music from the Simpsons

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"

f you are looking for a good dose of outrage at a theater near you, you won't find a better bargain than "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a new documentary directed by Alex Gibney. Documentaries have recently been making up for a shortfall in genuine movie heroes - those plucky child orthographers in "Spellbound" and the gritty wheelchair jocks of "Murderball" come to mind - and Mr. Gibney's film is the latest evidence that nonfiction cinema can supply worthy, hissable villains as well.
Anyone who might be in the jury pool for the coming trials of Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the top Enron executives who have yet to face justice, should probably stay away, since the movie makes the case against them with prosecutorial vigor. Based on the best-selling book by the Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, "Enron" is a tight, fascinating chronicle of arrogance and greed. Interweaving Peter Coyote's sober, ever-so-slightly sarcastic voice-over narration with interviews and video clips (as well as one ill-advised and unnecessary re-enactment) and accompanied by an anthology of well-chosen pop songs, it manages to be both informative and entertaining. [thanks, Sharon]

FBI Protecting bin Laden's Privacy Rights?

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of al Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden. In a September 24, 2003 declassified “Secret” FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in “personnel and medical files and similar files” when the disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6) (2000))

Before invoking privacy protections for Osama bin Laden under Exemption 6, the FBI should have conducted a balancing “test” of the public's right to disclosure against the individual's right to privacy. Many of the references in the redacted documents cite publicly available news articles from sources such as The Washington Post and Associated Press. Based on its analysis of the news stories cited in the FBI report, Judicial Watch was able to determine that bin Laden’s name was redacted from the document, including newspaper headlines in the footnoted citations.
“It is dumbfounding that the United States government has placed a higher priority on the supposed privacy rights of Osama bin Laden than the public’s right to know what happened in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is difficult for me to imagine a greater insult to the American people, especially those whose loved ones were murdered by bin Laden on that day.”
The redacted documents were obtained by Judicial Watch under the provisions of the FOIA and through ongoing litigation (Judicial Watch v. Department of Homeland Security & Federal Bureau of Investigation, No. 04-1643 (RWR)). Among the documents was a declassified “Secret” FBI report, dated September 24, 2003, entitled: “Response to October 2003 Vanity Fair Article (Re: [Redacted] Family Departures After 9/11/2001).” Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request on October 7, 2003. The full text of the report and related documents are available on the Internet by clicking here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

GOP Poll on "Nuclear Option" Leaked

GOP polling shows 37 percent support for the GOP plan to deny Democrats the ability to filibuster judicial nominees, while 51 percent oppose, officials said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Several officials who attended the polling briefing said the survey also contained encouraging news for Republicans. The poll found more than 80 percent of those surveyed believed all judicial nominees deserve a yes-or-no vote.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, noting the survey data has not been made public.
Republicans say negative polling numbers wouldn't deter them. "Polling on this issue is not going to make a difference. We are going to try to do what's right," Hutchison said.

Transcripts of Lectures at the London School of Economics

Antarctic glaciers in mass retreat

Almost all the glaciers that flow into the sea off the Antarctic Peninsula are retreating. The discovery comes from an analysis spanning more than half a century of aerial photographs and satellite images.
"Fifty years ago most glaciers were slowly growing in length, but the pattern is now reversed and they're shrinking," the British Antarctic Survey's Alison Cook told a press conference in London. Of 244 glaciers studied, 87% have shown a net retreat since photographic evidence was first collected in the 1940s, says Cook, who led the project.
The trend is probably linked to local climate changes on the peninsula, she explains, where temperatures have risen by around 2ºC over the past 50 years. This is much more than the average temperature increase seen in the rest of Antarctica.

ExxonMobil's Financing of Global Warming Denial

This concerted effort reflects the shared convictions of free-market, and thus antiregulatory, conservatives. But there’s another factor at play. In addition to being supported by like-minded individuals and ideologically sympathetic foundations, these groups are funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company. Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of “skeptic” scientists who continue to do so. Beyond think tanks, the count also includes quasi-journalistic outlets like Tech CentralStation.com (a website providing “news, analysis, research, and commentary” that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups. In total, these organizations received more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003...

Google Maps and public transit

This and this are both really cool examples of folks hacking google maps and firefox to do some really neat stuff.
Some very bright folks have taken the maps from the Chicago and Boston public transit systems and made them available via Google Maps so that you can look up an address and find it on a map that shows the nearest bus or train stop.
Now, if we can just get the folks at Google Maps to include public transit information by default as a transparent overlay of their existing maps that would be even cooler.

Public Money into Social Security Polls

While politicians debated saving Social Security, its federal overseer spent $2 million to poll the public. The Clinton administration wanted to know if people thought the program saved older Americans from poverty. The Bush administration refocused questions on its private investment plan. Taxpayers covered the cost of the polling, according to government documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Social Security Administration first hired the Gallup Organization in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in office. The survey changed markedly in 2003, when George W. Bush began his re-election campaign.
The Bush administration removed from the Clinton-era survey two statements that at least three-quarters of those polled had agreed with: "Social Security benefits play a major role in keeping many senior citizens out of poverty" and "Social Security is the largest single source of income for most elderly Americans."
New questions sought to determine when the public thought the federal retirement program would go broke and whether people knew anything about Bush's plan to let workers invest part of their Social Security payments in private accounts.
The poll did not mention either president. The Social Security agency, now run by Bush appointee Jo Anne Barnhart, says it changed the questions in 2003 on its own, without input from the White House.

White House Falsey Advertises Pot as More Dangerous than Tobacco

A new White House ad campaign encourages teen cigarette use by falsely telling parents that tobacco is far less dangerous to kids than marijuana, officials of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) charged today. "By inaccurately portraying cigarettes as relatively harmless, the White House is condemning thousands of young people to a life of addiction and early death from cancer and emphysema," said MPP Director of Government Relations Steve Fox.
The new ad, which started running this week in papers such as USA Today and The New York Times, claims, "Quite a few people think that smoking pot is less likely to cause cancer than a regular cigarette. You may even have heard some parents say they'd rather their kid smoked a little pot than get hooked on cigarettes. Wrong, and wrong again. ... One joint can deliver four times as much cancer-causing tar as one cigarette."

Using Play to Relieve Poverty

A company in South Africa has found a way to harness youthful energy in solving the perennial problem of water supply in rural villages.
It uses a playground roundabout to power a borehole pump.
Roundabout Outdoors is now hoping to take the concept to other African countries where water infrastructure languishes behind South Africa.
The play-pump benefits women and girls in particular who can spend hours each day fetching water.
"African and Asian women spend up to six hours a day walking to collect water," Roundabout Outdoor's Trevor Field told the BBC's World Today.
"If we put a play-pump in, if you look at the saving on time alone it's phenomenal, and it does have a massive impact on the health of children and people in general."

Theologian calls for response to 9/11

David Ray Griffin asks the tough questions about Sept. 11, contending U.S. officials had some knowledge of what was coming and possibly orchestrated the attacks.
Griffin, whose book, "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11," came out a year ago, drew an enthusiastic standing ovation from the majority of the 400 or so people who packed his lecture Monday night at Bascom Hall.
A retired Christian theologian, Griffin, 65, taught for more than 30 years at the Claremont School of Theology in California.
His comments Monday night were directed at religious people, who he said need to respond to Sept. 11 - and the American empire that has ensued - based on the moral principles of their religious traditions.
Drawing laughter from the crowd, Griffin said he had in mind principles like: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors' oil" and "Thou shalt not murder thy neighbors in order to steal their oil."

The Infinite Library

The digitization of the world’s enormous store of library books—an effort dating to the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere—has been a slow, expensive, and underfunded process. But last December librarians received a pleasant shock. Search-engine giant Google announced ambitious plans to expand its “Google Print” service by converting the full text of millions of library books into searchable Web pages. At the time of the announcement, Google had already signed up five partners, including the libraries at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Michigan, along with the New York Public Library. More are sure to follow.
Most librarians and archivists are ecstatic about the announcement, saying it will likely be remembered as the moment in history when society finally got serious about making knowledge ubiquitous. Brewster Kahle, founder of a nonprofit digital library known as the Internet Archive, calls Google’s move “huge....It legitimizes the whole idea of doing large-volume digitization.”
But some of the same people, including Kahle, believe Google’s efforts and others like it will force libraries and librarians to reëxamine their core principles—including their commitment to spreading knowledge freely. Letting a for-profit organization like Google mediate access to library books, after all, could either open up long-hidden reserves of human wisdom or constitute the first step toward the privatization of the world’s literary heritage. “You’d think that if libraries are serious about providing access to high-quality material, the idea of somebody digitizing that stuff very quickly—well, what’s not to like?” says Abby Smith, director of programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that helps libraries manage digital transformation. “But some librarians are very concerned about the terms of access and are very concerned that a commercial entity will have control over materials that libraries have collected.”

The Nation: John Bolton vs. Democracy

"Im with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."
Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Bolton was one of the pack of lawyers for the Republican presidential ticket who repeatedly sought to shut down recounts of the ballots from Florida counties before those counts revealed that Gore had actually won the state's electoral votes and the presidency.
The December 9 intervention was Bolton's last and most significant blow against the democratic process.
The Florida Supreme Court had ordered a broad recount of ballots in order to finally resolve the question of who won the state. But Bolton and the Bush-Cheney team got their Republican allies on the U.S. Supreme Court to block the review. Fearing that each minute of additional counting would reveal the reality of voter sentiments in Florida, Bolton personally rushed into the library to stop the count.
Bolton was in South Korea when it became clear that the Nov. 7, 2000, election would be decided in Florida. At the behest of former Secretary of State James Baker, who fronted the Bush-Cheney team during the Florida fight, Bolton winged his way to Palm Beach, where he took the lead in challenging ballots during that county's recount. Then, when the ballots from around the state were transported to Tallahassee for the recount ordered by the state Supreme Court, Bolton followed them.

DASTARDLY LAPTOP THEFT

From BoingBoing.net:
Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor
The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop. Hell, I'm 500 miles away from Berkeley and I'm scared after watching this. (Forward to 48:50. It's a RealPlayer file, unfortunately, so be prepared for it to stop playing at least three times while you're watching it). Link (Thanks Kevin!)

UPDATE: Here's a torrent of the pertinent part of the video (In QuickTime, not Real!) Link (Thanks, Matt Yohe!)
UPDATE:Sean Graham says: "For those people who don't want to deal with RealPlayer I made a very lo-fi mp3 of the audio from the "Stolen Laptop" lecture posted earlier today...
"I trimmed out the actual educational part of the lecture and just left the 'good part.'" Link
UPDATE: Tim says: I've transcribed Professor Rine's speech to the thief who stole his laptop. It's available here.

Microsoft Caves on Gay Rights

In a move that angered many of the company's gay employees, the Microsoft Corporation, publicly perceived as the vanguard institution of the new economy, has taken a major political stand in favor of age-old discrimination.
The Stranger has learned that last month the $37-billion Redmond-based software behemoth quietly withdrew its support for House bill 1515, the anti-gay-discrimination bill currently under consideration by the Washington State legislature, after being pressured by the Evangelical Christian pastor of a suburban megachurch. The pastor, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, met with a senior Microsoft executive in February and threatened to organize a national boycott of the company's products if it did not change its stance on the legislation, according to gay rights activists and a Microsoft employee who attended a subsequent April 4 meeting where Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told a group of gay staffers about Hutcherson's threat. Hutcherson also unsuccessfully demanded that the company fire two employees who had testified in favor of the bill.

Intellectual Property Hysteria Hits New High

Making a movie available electronically prior to its release can now result in a three year sentence, thanks to the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act approved Tuesday by the House. The Senate has already passed its own version, and the final bill is expected to be signed by the President.
The bill also calls for three years in cases where a person is caught recording a movie in a theater with a camcorder - and six years for a second offence. It also indemnifies theater operators against all criminal and civil liabilities arising from detaining suspects "in a reasonable manner." (Welcome to movie jail.)
Since involuntary manslaughter brings, on average, anywhere from 0 to 36 months' incarceration, one might well question the morality of going harder on those who trade files than on those who negligently cut short the lives of fellow citizens. But the 109th Congress is about nothing if not morality, and it understands well the essential sacredness of the nation's ruling cartels.

Christian Evangelical Researches the Founding Fathers and Discovers the Truth

As an evangelical Christian and a member of the Christian Coalition, I felt obliged to expose a misquote of John Adams' I found in an article entitled "America's Unchristian Beginnings"1 by the self-avowed atheist Dr. Steven Morris. However, what happened next changed my focus to the use of misquotes, unconfirmed quotes, and misleading attributions by the religious right.
In the process of attempting to correct Morris, I was guilty of using several misquotes myself. Professor John George of the University of Central Oklahoma political science department and coauthor (with Paul Boller Jr.) of the book They Never Said It!2 set me straight. George pointed out that George Washington never said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."3 I had cited page 18 of the 1927 edition of Halley's Bible Handbook. This quote was probably generated by a similar statement that appears in A Life of Washington4 by James Paulding. Sadly, no one has been able to verify any of the quotes in Paulding's book since no footnotes were offered.
After reading They Never Said It! I had a better understanding of how widespread the problem of misquotes is. Furthermore, I discovered that many of these had been used by the leaders of the religious right. I decided to confront some individuals concerning their misquotes. WallBuilders, the publisher of David Barton's The Myth of Separation, responded by providing me with their "questionable quote" list which contained dozens of quotes widely used by the religious right.

Some Actual Quotes from the Founding Fathers on Christianity

What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy. -- James Madison Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, June 12, 1785

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. --Thomas Jefferson

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. -- James Madison Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, June 12, 1785

Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days? -- John Adams

The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. -- Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli signed by President John Adams

“...the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.” -- Thomas Paine “Age of Reason” pp8-9

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society. -- George Washington in a letter to Sir Edward Newenham, 22 June 1792

Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion. -- John Adams letter to Benjamin Rush June 12, 1812

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven. . . . Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery . . . are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind. -- John Adams, 1786

How has it happened that millions of myths, fables, legends and tales have been blended with Jewish and Christian fables and myths and have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed? Filled with the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud? -- John Adams in letters to F.A. Van Der Kamp 1809-1816

The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous. -- Thomas Jefferson, Works, Vol. iv., p. 322

There are in this country, as in all others, a certain proportion of restless and turbulent spirits - poor, unoccupied, ambitious - who must always have something to quarrel about with their neighbors. These people are the authors of religious revivals. -- John Quincy Adams, diary January 21, 1844

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most destructive to the peace of man since man began to exist. Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses, who gave an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and then rape the daughters. One of the most horrible atrocities found in the literature of any nation. I would not dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book. -- Thomas Paine, “Age of Reason” pp 183-188

As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? -- John Adams in a letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose. -- Thomas Jefferson

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. -- Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

David Barton - Master of myth and misinformation

The constitutional principle of separation of church and state has given Americans more religious freedom than any people in world history. Around the globe, those suffering under the heavy heel of government-sponsored religious oppression look to America's church-state model with longing. The "wall of separation between church and state" is America's bulwark of true religious liberty.
Despite its proven track record of success, separation of church and state is increasingly becoming just another target for the Religious Right's smear campaign strategists. In the past few years, an entire cottage industry has sprung up in Religious Right circles that seeks to "prove" that mainstream history is all wrong. The United States was really founded to be a fundamentalist Christian nation. Separation of church and state was never intended; it was, these far-right activists allege, foisted on the country by the Supreme Court in recent times.
The Religious Right's leading practitioner of this type of historical revisionism is David Barton, who runs an outfit called WallBuilders out of Aledo, Texas.1 Barton makes a lucrative living traveling the right wing's lecture circuit where he offers up a cut-and-paste version of U.S. history liberally sprinkled with gross distortions and, in some cases, outright factual errors. Crowds of fundamentalist Christians from coast to coast can't get enough of it.

David Barton is not a historian

Barton, a rabid partisan, has no academic credentials as a historian, and his “scholarly” work has routinely been discredited by real academicians. In Bush’s America, where Republican activists pretend to be reporters, it’s only fitting that Republican activists also get to pretend to be historians.
Though Barton would prefer that his patrons remain unaware of it, he published a book several years ago called “The Myth of Separation,” which relied on alleged quotes from key figures from early American history to prove that this is a “Christian nation.” Unfortunately for Barton, a closer look at his book’s content showed repeated instances of bogus quotes, never uttered by any Founding Father.
Similarly, Barton produced a documentary called “America’s Godly Heritage.” In 1996, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs reviewed the documentary’s claims carefully and concluded that it is “laced with exaggerations, half-truths and misstatements of fact.”
Barton ultimately had to withdraw some of his materials and issue an alert to his supporters not to use some of the spurious quotes he’d been touting for nearly a decade. This more or less should have ended his fledgling career as an amateur historian and “expert” on the role of religion in America’s founding.
Alas, it didn’t. As has become far too common, conservatives were less concerned with Barton’s shoddy scholarship and more concerned with his conclusions, which merely served to reinforce what they wanted to believe anyway. The right continues to treat Barton as a legitimate scholar.
Indeed, conservatives are so enthralled by Barton’s revisionist historical tales that the Republican National Committee literally put him on the payroll — a $20,000 stipend during the 2004 campaign to travel and preach the historical gospel, as he sees it, so long as it helps produce GOP votes.

Barton traveled the country for about a year prior to the election, showing pastors a slideshow designed to prove that the United States was meant to be Christian. He told Beliefnet that his efforts were meant to be “below the radar…. We work our tails off to stay out of the news.”

The Bush campaign has hired a controversial activist who calls the U.S. a 'Christian nation' [10/04]

[David] Barton, who is also the vice-chairman of the Texas GOP, told Beliefnet this week that the pastors' meetings have been kept “below the radar.... We work our tails off to stay out of the news.” But at this point, he says, with voter registration ended in most states and early voting already under way, staying quiet about the activity “doesn’t matter.”
Barton’s main contention is that the separation of church and state was never intended by the nation’s founders; he says it was created by the Supreme Court in the 20th Century. The back cover of his 1989 book, “The Myth of Separation,” proclaims: “This book proves that separation of church and state is a myth.” Barton is also on the board of advisers of the Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist group that advocates America as a Christian nation. (Click here for an explanation of Reconstructionism.)
In an appearance on D. James Kennedy’s radio show, "Truths That Transform," Barton says: "Was America ever a Christian nation? Well, according to the eyewitnesses--yes." And he adds: "I would say if 88% call themselves Christians, I would say, yeah, you probably have a fairly good basis to call it a Christian nation."

Dominionism, the Texas GOP Platform and Bush Policies - How They Overlap

This page compares the teachings of an influential Christian textbook, America's Providential History by Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell, with the Texas 2004 Republican Party Platform and Bush Administration policies. It suggests a relationship between the "dominion mandate" as described in the textbook, and Bush's economic, social, and environmental programs.
David Barton is Vice Chair of the Texas Republican Party and is on the Advisory Board of the Providence Foundation which was set up and is run by the authors of America's Providential History. He was also on the payroll of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Dominionism, the Texas GOP Platform and Bush Policies - How They Overlap

This page compares the teachings of an influential Christian textbook, America's Providential History by Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell, with the Texas 2004 Republican Party Platform and Bush Administration policies. It suggests a relationship between the "dominion mandate" as described in the textbook, and Bush's economic, social, and environmental programs.
David Barton is Vice Chair of the Texas Republican Party and is on the Advisory Board of the Providence Foundation which was set up and is run by the authors of America's Providential History. He was also on the payroll of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Pryor sees rash use of religion by groups

Sen. Mark Pryor lashed out Wednesday at the Christian evangelicals who have joined the attack on Democratic filibusters of President Bushs judicial nominees.
Their tactics threaten "to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group," Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. "It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians," added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.
The term generally refers to members of conservative Christian denominations who believe that proselytizing is an essential part of the religious experience.
Pryor said he was "very disappointed" that some of the movements leaders "have entered into this fray."

Colorado Democrat Speaks out on Focus on the Family

Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., lashed out at Focus on the Family on Thursday, saying the group is using "un-Christian" political tactics in the fight over White House judicial appointments.
Salazar defended Democrats' right to filibuster what they consider objectionable nominees and blasted the Colorado Springs-based evangelical Christian group for recent ads urging him to "STOP the nonsense."
"I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country," Salazar said at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.
He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads that the ministry's political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.
"I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party," Salazar said in an interview. "I think it's using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way."
A Focus on the Family spokesman fired back, saying Salazar was siding with liberal Democrats who have questioned some judicial nominees about their strong religious views and stalled nominations.
"I'm flabbergasted the senator would call our Christianity into question," said Tom Minnery, the group's vice president of public policy.

Conference: Toward the Business Ecosystem?

Organisations face a rapidly changing environment: the emergence of China as the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, the progressive transfer of knowledge-based services to India, the diffusion of the network society, and of its nervous system, the internet, are the coordinate axes of a new environment. Radical changes in the geography of costs, production, human and social capital, are affecting the space-time of business and altering the traditional business fronteers, either geographic, sectorial, or specialisation-wise. Many organisation have reacted to the climate of uncertainty by decentralising production and innovation, shifting actvities to the electronic dimension, and, curiously, adopting certain aspects of the model of the Internet, with its distributed, modular, parallel, robust, and self-organising architecture. The trend toward organisational distributedness generates organisations better able to cope with a regime of rapid technological change, modify strategies to global and local environments and thrive into uncertain and ambiguous markets. [via Complexual.org.uk]

Should U.S. Troops Withdraw Now From Iraq? A Debate Between Naomi Klein & Erik Gustafson

To debate this issue, we are joined by Naomi Klein. She is award-winning journalist and author of Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate - and - No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She has the cover story in this week"s Nation magazine called, "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." In our Washington DC studio we are joined by Erik Gustafson, a Gulf War veteran and founder and director of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center.

Has Johnny Gosch Been Found?

In 1982, a paperboy named Johnny Gosch was kidnapped in West Des Moines . For years, his disappearance made national headlines. And now, 23 years later investigators are investigating new developments in Johnny’s case.
If you lived in Iowa during the 1980’s, you've heard about Johnny’s disappearance and his mother’s agonizing search. You may not have heard conspiracy theories involving satanic pedophiles connected to the U.S. government, kidnapping and selling kids into prostitution and forcing them into pornography, but Johnny's mother, Noreen, says she believes that's what happened to Johnny. Even more unusual, Noreen believes Johnny is still very much alive, and once again, in the limelight.
In January, a journalist named Jeff Gannon asked softball questions to President Bush at his weekly press briefing. The questions were so factually inaccurate, people started asking questions. Soon, media colleagues learned Jeff Gannon was really Jim Guckert, a former homosexual prostitute calling himself "Bulldog." But, private investigators say Guckert’s story is full of holes. Investigator James Rothstein says, "Going back to his high school, the Guckert picture doesn't look anything like he does now a days.” That was the first clue former New York City Police Detective found. KWWL talked him in his hometown of Saint Martin, Minnesota . Rothstein told us, "This is no accident that a guy like Gannon ends up in front of the press corps in the White House.”
...And, while the idea may seem far fetched, investigator Rothstein says everything fits, “When you look into the whole abduction of Johnny, what happened, the cover-up that took place, the way the kidnapping was done. This was a professional job and it fits the profile that I have seen over the years as a professional investigator." Rothstein says his investigators asked Gannon about Johnny Gosch, "We had somebody down there already that knocked on his door and the minute he said do you know this woman in Iowa? And, he slammed the door in his face." And, during another attempt, he asked him if he was Johnny Gosch. And, Gannon’s reply was, "I really feel Noreen’s pain." He didn't deny he was Johnny Gosch, but he didn't admit it either.

Europe, Islam and Human Rights

"European governments are allowing Islamic fundamentalists to trample on the rights of Muslim women under the guise of respecting different cultures, campaigners said Monday, citing instances of forced marriage, domestic violence and genital mutilation. The activists, including outspoken Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, called on European countries to do more to combat human-rights abuses in Muslim immigrant communities, particularly those directed against women." [from MetaFilter.com]

Feds' weather information could go dark

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?
That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.
But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.
The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.
Supporters say the bill wouldn't hamper the weather service or the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards — in fact, it exempts forecasts meant to protect "life and property."
But critics say the bill's wording is so vague they can't tell exactly what it would ban.
"I believe I've paid for that data once. ... I don't want to have to pay for it again," said Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University.
He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline.

Ratzinger's Letter to Deny Kerry Communion

Did the new Pope swing the Presidential election last year? After brown-nosing the Vatican on the grounds of being pro-life President Bush convinced then-Cardinal Ratzinger to work on the American Catholic Church on his behalf. Ratzinger's response? This memo where Ratzi claimed that anyone (especially a Catholic politician - like Kerry) who campaigned and voted pro-choice was not only on the side of evil but was unworthy of receiving Communion and Americans probably shouldn't vote for him. According to Salon, this was perhaps what was behind Bush's 6 point increase in Catholic support from 2000, and the difference in the 2004 election. [from MetaFilter.com]

DC Court of Appeals Closes Hearing in Case of FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this afternoon ordered the courtroom closed to the public during oral arguments tomorrow in Sibel Edmonds’ hearing. The American Civil Liberties Union is filing an emergency motion to open the hearing on the grounds that the move violates the First Amendment.
Although the court has not issued a written order, it did orally instruct the clerk that the hearing would be open only to the attorneys involved in the case and Edmonds. The hearing is listed as closed on the court’s calendar.
The ACLU said the decision does not appear to be based on state secrets concerns as it allows those without security clearance to be present for the arguments. Furthermore, the briefs being argued have been public since they were first filed in early 2005.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 after repeatedly reporting serious security breaches and misconduct. Edmonds challenged her retaliatory dismissal by filing a lawsuit in federal court, but her case was dismissed last July after Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege," and retroactively classified briefings to Congress related to her case.

Mystery of Unpopped Popcorn Is Discovered

It's long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center — about 15 percent — to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel's explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.
It turns out there is an optimal hull structure that allows kernels to explode, and leaky hulls prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for kernels to pop.

Artificial intelligence with common sense

In the next few months, an artificial brain called Cyc will be put online for the world to interact with.
Cyc features a human trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common sense. It should be able to recognise that in the phrase "the pen is in the box", the pen is a small writing implement, while in the sentence "the box is in the pen", the pen is a much larger corral.
Cyc relates each fact to others within the database. It knows for example, that in the sentence "each American has a president" there is only one president, whereas in the sentence "each American has a mother" there are many millions of mothers.
Cyc can also make deductions about things it has never learned about directly. It can tell whether two animals are related without having been programmed with the explicit relationship between each animal we know of.
When it will be released on the web, people will be able to contribute to its knowledge by submitting questions and correcting it if Cyc gets the answers wrong. Doug Lenat of Cycorp, the system's creator, envisages Cyc eventually being connected to webcams and other sensors monitoring environments around the globe, building its knowledge of the world more or less by itself.
At first, users will get answers to their questions only some of the time because it won't yet have the common sense to understand every question or have the knowledge to answer it. But with the critical mass looming, in three to five years users should expect to get an answer most of the time. Lenat has pledged to make access to Cyc freely available, allowing developers of other AI systems to tap into its fund of common sense to improve the performance of their own systems.
Via New Scientist.

Energy Bill Won't Ease Fuel Prices Quickly, Bush Says

House Democrats on Wednesday criticized an $8 billion energy bill they said favored big oil companies and President Bush acknowledged the legislation would do nothing to immediately ease record gasoline prices.
The White House faces public opinion polls showing voters are increasingly worried about high fuel prices. Last week, the average retail gasoline price hit a record $2.28 per gallon.
"An energy bill wouldn't change the price at the pump today. I know that and you know that," Bush said in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Strapped for cash, some GOP governors rethink their stand on taxes

Depending on whom you talk to, the trend is either a sign of ideology giving way to pragmatism, or of Republican governors refusing to stand up to their ideals when they're put to the test.
"The fiscal straitjackets a lot of states have been in have the tendency to show the true colors of governors," says Stephen Slivinski, a budget analyst for the conservative Cato Institute.
But taxes, even from ardent conservatives, are sometimes necessary, others say. The idea that all taxes are bad at all times, or that any governor should take such a pre-inauguration pledge, "isn't public policy, it's demagoguery," says Iris Lav, deputy director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank.

SC: Cockfighting Bill Passes, Domestic Abuse Bill Doesn't

This week, the South Carolina State House took up two bills, one to make cockfighting a felony and another to protect the victims of domestic violence. Both bills arrived at the Judiciary Committee, and both landed on the desk of State Rep. John Graham Altman III (R-119-Charleston). Well, one bill made it out of the ring alive - the cockfighting bill.
See, I guess there were a few too many legislators that agreed with Rep. Altman's assessment of the bill, as quoted in an interview by WISTV correspondent Kara Gormley:
"I think this bill is probably drafted out of an abundance of ignorance." Altman has this to say about the cockfighting bill, also in the same interview:
"I was all for that. Cockfighting reminds me of the Roman circus, coliseum."
So, two bills concerning abuse are on the table - one that concerns the abuse of a real, live, thinking, breathing person - and another that concerns the abuse of an animal. Obviously any kind of abuse is wrong, but critics of the committee's action say that this makes women out to be less important than, well, cocks.

Santorum Backs Off from New Filibuster Gambit

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a leading advocate of the “nuclear option” to end the Democrats’ filibuster of judicial nominees, is privately arguing for a delay in the face of adverse internal party polls.
Details of the polling numbers remain under wraps, but Santorum and other Senate sources concede that, while a majority of Americans oppose the filibuster, the figures show that most also accept the Democratic message that Republicans are trying to destroy the tradition of debate in the Senate.

Under fire, Time's John Cloud Makes ad hominem Attacks

Defending his 5,800-word cover story on right-wing pundit Ann Coulter in an online interview, Time writer John Cloud used all manner of ad hominem attacks -- including against Coulter, the original subject of his whitewash profile -- but few facts. Apparently stung by widespread criticism over Time's decision to feature Coulter on the cover, Cloud invoked the ultimate distancing technique, comparing Coulter to Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
In the interview, posted on the Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily weblog, Cloud also went after journalist Eric Alterman over Alterman's scathing commentary on the Coulter profile: "I think maybe Eric and Ann are in the same bunch. They also, by the way, use the same language." That's a bizarre accusation; as far as we know, Alterman, who has written a number of critically acclaimed books, has never lamented that the New York Times building wasn't blown up or suggested that a sitting president should be assassinated. He has never slurred Muslims or women or disabled Vietnam veterans.

Al-Qaeda Says it Attempted to Kill Outgoing Iraq PM

Militants loyal to Iraq's Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said they attempted to assassinate outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, in a statement posted on the internet.
"Yesterday (Wednesday), a lion from the martyrs' brigade of the Al-Qaeda Organisation (in the Land of Two Rivers) attacked the headquarters of the apostate and ally of the Jews and Christians after we received information from the intelligence service inside the enemy," said the statement posted on an Islamist website Thursday.

Ecuadoran Congress Ousts President After Protests

Lawmakers voted to oust President Lucio Gutierrez Wednesday morning after a week of protests and appointed the vice president to replace him. But enraged mobs continued to take to the streets, burning government buildings and beating employees and politicians who tried to flee.
Majority opposition members of the 100-seat Congress stormed out of the legislative chamber and regrouped in an auditorium several miles away. They quickly voted 62 to 0 to overthrow the embattled president on grounds of abandoning his office. He had been widely accused of trying to control the judiciary.

Democrats Blocking Changes to Ethics Rules

With rank-and-file Republicans showing increasing unease about an impasse paralyzing the House ethics committee, the panel's chairman pledged on Wednesday to begin an immediate investigation into the conduct of Representative Tom DeLay if Democrats dropped their opposition to new ethics rules.
"We are all prepared to vote at the earliest opportunity to impanel an investigation subcommittee to review various allegations concerning travel and other actions by Mr. DeLay," said the chairman, Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, who was accompanied by three of the four other Republicans on the panel.
Democrats quickly rejected the overture, saying Mr. Hastings's personal guarantee of the inquiry and other adjustments to the disputed rules were insufficient. Democratic leaders said the proposed compromise would still leave in place new rules that they say undermine ethics enforcement and allow party-line dismissal of complaints.

More Than 3,000 Political Prisoners Arrested in Nepal, Amnesty Says

Security forces have detained more than 3,000 political prisoners since Nepal's king seized power in February and many allegedly have been tortured, Amnesty International said Thursday in a report that cites local human rights groups.
The accusations came as King Gyanendra was in Indonesia where he hopes to use a meeting of world leaders at the Asia-Africa Summit to explain why he sacked his country's government and declared a state of emergency. Several nations have strongly condemned the monarch's takeover.
"The last two months have been characterized by widespread arrests of political activists, as well as human rights defenders, trade unionists and journalists, with the apparent aim of preventing protest against the king's takeover," London-based Amnesty said in a report on its Web site.

Berlusconi Resigns Under Pressure

Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy yesterday but pledged to form a government with a new programme in an attempt to resolve the political crisis that has engulfed him.
The 69-year-old leader was forced into the move as a way of holding together his faltering four-way conservative coalition, which was threatening to collapse and pitch the country into snap elections.
Mr Berlusconi had been under intense pressure from two allies, the Union of Christian Democrats and the National Alliance, to make sweeping changes to his administration after suffering a heavy defeat in regional elections.

US accused of trying to block abortion pills

The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.
The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.
Last month, an expert committee met to consider a number of new drugs for inclusion on the list. They approved for the first time two pills, to be used in combination for the termination of early pregnancy, called mifepristone and misoprostol. In poor countries where abortion is legal, doctors currently have no alternative to surgery.
The Guardian understands that the US department of health and human services has been lobbying the director general's office at the WHO to block approval of the pills, in line with President George Bush's neoconservative stance on abortion.

On Eve of Earth Day, House Passes Energy Bill that Allows ANWR Drilling

he House voted late yesterday to allow oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge as part of a broad energy bill that Democrats said would funnel billions of dollars to highly profitable energy companies while doing little to promote conservation or ease gasoline prices.
The bill's sponsors said oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as much as a million barrels a day, will be needed to help curtail the country's growing dependence on oil imports. Opponents argued the oil wouldn't be available for a decade and even then at levels that would not significantly affect oil prices or imports.
The bill also calls for $8.1 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, most of it going to promote the coal, nuclear, oil and natural-gas industries.

Pope's Previous Role in Sexual Abuse Scandal [08/17/03]

'We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.'
Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962 it rides roughshod over the Catholic Church's claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon.
...A spokesman for the Catholic Church denied that the secret Vatican orders were part of any organised cover-up and claims lawyers are taking the document 'out of context' and 'distorting it'.
He said: 'This document is about the Church's internal disciplinary procedures should a priest be accused of using confession to solicit sex. It does not forbid victims to report civil crimes. The confidentiality talked about is aimed to protect the accused as applies in court procedures today. It also takes into consideration the special nature of the secrecy involved in the act of confession.' He also said that in 1983 the Catholic Church in England and Wales introduced its own code dealing with sexual abuse, which would have superseded the 1962 instructions. Asked whether Murphy-O'Connor was aware of the Vatican edict, he replied: 'He's never mentioned it to me.'
Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office which ran the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. [thanks, Donna]

Utah Vote Rejects Parts of Education Law

In a stinging rebuke of President Bush's signature education law, the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature on Tuesday passed a bill that orders state officials to ignore provisions of the federal law that conflict with Utah's education goals or that require state financing.
The bill is the most explicit legislative challenge to the federal law by a state, and its passage marked the collapse of a 15-month lobbying effort against it by the Bush administration.
Federal officials fear Utah's action could embolden other states to resist what many states consider intrusive or unfunded provisions of the federal law, known as No Child Left Behind.

Secretary Spellings Replies:
The Legislature's swipe at No Child Left Behind could end up hurting Utah kids, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said Wednesday.
"Turning back the clock and returning to the pre-NCLB days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing to help the students who are currently enrolled in Utah's schools," Spellings said in a prepared statement issued Wednesday in response to passage of HB1001.
"States across the nation who have embraced No Child Left Behind have shown progress; student achievement is rising and the achievement gap is closing," she said. "The same could be true in Utah, whose achievement gap between Hispanics and their peers is the third-largest in the nation and has not improved significantly in over a decade."
But Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem and sponsor of HB1001, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington believe Utah children will be better served under the bill.
"I wish they'd quit defending a flawed law and have a dialogue with the state (school) chiefs," said Harrington, adding she never heard back on a January request to chat with Spellings. "NCLB is not about helping kids; it's about labeling schools, and sanctions and consequences, not . . . about improvement."

Utah Vote Rejects Parts of Education Law

In a stinging rebuke of President Bush's signature education law, the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature on Tuesday passed a bill that orders state officials to ignore provisions of the federal law that conflict with Utah's education goals or that require state financing.
The bill is the most explicit legislative challenge to the federal law by a state, and its passage marked the collapse of a 15-month lobbying effort against it by the Bush administration.
Federal officials fear Utah's action could embolden other states to resist what many states consider intrusive or unfunded provisions of the federal law, known as No Child Left Behind.

Secretary Spellings Replies:
The Legislature's swipe at No Child Left Behind could end up hurting Utah kids, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said Wednesday.
"Turning back the clock and returning to the pre-NCLB days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing to help the students who are currently enrolled in Utah's schools," Spellings said in a prepared statement issued Wednesday in response to passage of HB1001.
"States across the nation who have embraced No Child Left Behind have shown progress; student achievement is rising and the achievement gap is closing," she said. "The same could be true in Utah, whose achievement gap between Hispanics and their peers is the third-largest in the nation and has not improved significantly in over a decade."
But Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem and sponsor of HB1001, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington believe Utah children will be better served under the bill.
"I wish they'd quit defending a flawed law and have a dialogue with the state (school) chiefs," said Harrington, adding she never heard back on a January request to chat with Spellings. "NCLB is not about helping kids; it's about labeling schools, and sanctions and consequences, not . . . about improvement."

Utah Vote Rejects Parts of Education Law

In a stinging rebuke of President Bush's signature education law, the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature on Tuesday passed a bill that orders state officials to ignore provisions of the federal law that conflict with Utah's education goals or that require state financing.
The bill is the most explicit legislative challenge to the federal law by a state, and its passage marked the collapse of a 15-month lobbying effort against it by the Bush administration.
Federal officials fear Utah's action could embolden other states to resist what many states consider intrusive or unfunded provisions of the federal law, known as No Child Left Behind.

Secretary Spellings Replies:
The Legislature's swipe at No Child Left Behind could end up hurting Utah kids, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said Wednesday.
"Turning back the clock and returning to the pre-NCLB days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing to help the students who are currently enrolled in Utah's schools," Spellings said in a prepared statement issued Wednesday in response to passage of HB1001.
"States across the nation who have embraced No Child Left Behind have shown progress; student achievement is rising and the achievement gap is closing," she said. "The same could be true in Utah, whose achievement gap between Hispanics and their peers is the third-largest in the nation and has not improved significantly in over a decade."
But Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem and sponsor of HB1001, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington believe Utah children will be better served under the bill.
"I wish they'd quit defending a flawed law and have a dialogue with the state (school) chiefs," said Harrington, adding she never heard back on a January request to chat with Spellings. "NCLB is not about helping kids; it's about labeling schools, and sanctions and consequences, not . . . about improvement."

Districts and Teachers' Union Sue Over No Child Left Behind

Opening a new front in the growing rebellion against President Bush's signature education law, the nation's largest teachers' union and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont sued the Department of Education yesterday, accusing it of violating a passage in the law that says states cannot be forced to spend their own money to meet federal requirements.
Some legal scholars said that the union, the National Education Association, had assembled a compelling cause of action. Still, they added, since the case has few close precedents, it was difficult to judge the suit's prospects.
But it was clearly another headache for Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, who is trying to resolve a federal-state conflict over the law, known as No Child Left Behind, that has taken on new forms in recent days. A day before the suit was filed, Utah's Republican-dominated Legislature approved the most far-reaching legislative challenge to the law.

Where have all the wild rivers gone?

The untamed rivers of the world are rapidly becoming extinct. Most big river systems, including the 20 largest and the eight most biologically diverse, now have dams on them - and it could be only a matter of time before the last untamed flows are tapped for hydroelectricity or irrigation.
The first systematic study of almost 300 of the planet's largest river systems finds that most of the remaining wild rivers are in the empty Arctic tundra and northern boreal forests. The largest surviving wild river system is the Yukon in remote northern Canada, the world's 22nd largest river by volume. Europe's last three undammed river systems are all in northern Russia, the Onega, Mezen and Pechora.

Google enabling opt-in search histories

Google Inc. is experimenting with a feature that enables the users of its online search engine to see all of their past search requests and results, creating a computer peephole that could prove as embarrassing as it is helpful.
Activating Google's ``My Search History'' service, unveiled yesterday afternoon at http://labs.google.com, requires users to create a personal login with a password. Users of Google's e-mail, discussion groups and answer services can simply use their existing log-ins.
Whenever a user is logged in, Google will provide a detailed look at their past search activity.
Users will be able to pinpoint a search conducted on a particular day, using a calendar displayed on the history page.
``We think there is some value in providing people with visibility into their past activity on Google,'' said Marissa Mayer, the company's director of consumer Web products.
But privacy-rights expert Pam Dixon is worried the service will make it easier for mischief makers, snoops and perhaps even the government to get their hands on a user's entire search history.
``It's really a bad idea,'' said Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum.

NBC Chief Mulls Blogs for Top News Anchors

NBC could create Internet blogs for its top news anchors and celebrity interviewers as it seeks to maintain the appeal of U.S. network news, its top executive said on Tuesday.
"Over the next two years, network news is going to go through a lot more changes," Zucker said at a Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) conference on high-speed Internet use. "This is one of the biggest issues facing traditional network news divisions."
"I don't know why Brian Williams isn't blogging right now," Zucker said of the anchor of NBC's top-rated evening news program who took the helm after veteran journalist Tom Brokaw stepped down in December. "We should be looking for a more interactive component ... and be experimenting more."

How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?

At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?
It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation.
But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America.
In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."

Violence is 'off the chart' in area on Iraq border

"We're facing a well-developed, mature insurgency with the support of the local population" of about 100,000 townspeople, Reed says. "There is no Iraqi security force here. They are not effective. There are no police. They are dead or doing something else."
In stark contrast to the inroads multinational forces have made in such hot spots as Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, Marines in Husaybah have been forced to hunker down in defensive positions. Their base, Camp Gannon, is named for Capt. Rick Gannon who died April 17, 2004, while leading an effort to rescue two sniper squads trapped on a rooftop in the city. Five Marines died that day in a fight against about 100 insurgents.
...Marine Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, commander of the Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, who oversees Husaybah from his base in Al-Qaim, about 10 miles away, says he believes many insurgents recently pushed out of Fallujah and Ramadi by coalition forces regrouped here even as foreign fighters continued to flow in from Syria.
Mundy, 40, says, "This is about as complex a situation as I can imagine any battalion facing."
The insurgents face not only the Marines but also resistance from two Sunni Muslim tribes. The Mahalowis and Salmanis historically controlled the town's cross-border trade. Reed says those tribes dominate the local criminal gangs, police and politicians. They feud with each other but unite to oppose the U.S. presence. "There was always violence here, and now it's much higher. It's off the chart. They're killing each other every day, and we're killing them," Reed says.

Dozens of bodies reportedly found in Iraq; Allawi escapes attack

Iraq's president said Wednesday that the bodies of more than 50 people had been pulled from the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad, and other officials said 19 or 20 Iraqi soldiers had been abducted and executed in a sports stadium.
In Baghdad, attackers tried to assassinate former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi with a car bombing of a convoy he was riding in. Allawi wasn't injured, but three other suicide car bombers killed at least three people in other attacks.
The latest violence suggested that after a brief lull, Iraqi insurgents and Sunni Muslim extremists are stepping up their attacks against Iraqi security forces, Shiite Muslims and U.S. troops in an effort to cripple Iraq's new government and provoke violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

Sam Donaldson: Network News Dead

Former ABC News reporter/anchor Sam Donaldson is ready to say the last rites for network news because it will soon lose its dominant position as Americans' primary source of news. "I think it's dead. Sorry," he said during a breakfast panel Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas. "The monster anchors are through."
Even though 30 million viewers still turn to networks news each night and garner ratings well above CNN and Fox News, networks news operations long ago lost their role as the sources Americans rely on during time of major breaking news, said Donaldson
"God forbid, if someone shot the President, which network would you turn to? It will be cable, the Internet--something other than General Hospital being interrupted."
Increasingly, viewers will continue turning to alternative sources for everyday news as well, he said.
Donaldson was joined on the panel by CNN political analyst Jeff Greenfield and CBS Sunday Morning's Charles Osgood., both of whom were less pessimistic about network news' future.
"If it's dying, it's dying a very slow death," Greenfield said. Although the network news monopoly was "smashed" by cable, broadcast news will redefine itself, thought he didn't yet know how.

Conn. Lawmakers Back Gay Civil Unions

Lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to a bill that would make Connecticut the second state to offer civil unions to gay couples.
Last week, the state House passed the measure, but amended it to define marriage under Connecticut law as between one man and one woman.
The Senate approved the amended bill Wednesday 26-8 and sent it to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has said she will sign it.
The measure would give gay couples many of the rights and privileges available to married couples.
Vermont is the only state to allow civil unions. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry.

IRS Flaws Expose Taxpayers to Snooping, Study Finds

Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released on Monday.
The Internal Revenue Service also is unlikely to know if outsiders are browsing through citizens' tax returns, because it doesn't effectively police its computer systems for unauthorized use, the Government Accountability Office found.
The report was released three days after the deadline for filing personal income-tax returns, and at a time when concerns about identity theft and computer security are running high.
"This lack of systems security at the IRS is completely unacceptable and needs to be corrected immediately," said House of Representatives Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.

Bush gets low marks for sex appeal

In a recent online poll conducted by Esquire magazine, 11,000 women in 15 countries were asked to rate Bush's sex appeal on a scale of one to 10, and America's commander-in-chief failed to register much more than a two.
Women in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands were the harshest judges of George W.'s sexual allure, giving him an average rating of 1.4 each, Esquire said in its survey released earlier this week.
By contrast, Indonesian women were the most generous, giving Bush an average score of 2.2; American women found their president slightly less appealing, rating him a 2.1

Molly Ivins Collects the Best of Tom DeLay

"We are ideologues. We have an agenda. We have a philosophy. I want to repeal the Clean Air Act," he said in 1995.
..."This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS. Not only do you kick him -- you kick him until he passes out, then beat him over the head with a baseball bat, then roll him up in an old rug and throw him off a cliff into the pound(ing) surf below!!!!!" That gem was in a DeLay staff email about Clinton's impeachment.
"I can't afford you as a brother anymore," DeLay to his brother and lawyer Randy after Randy's lobbying had embarrassed him.
...And this truly spectacular outburst just a few weeks ago:
"God has brought to us Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. ... This is exactly the issue that's going on in America of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges and link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros -- and then get the national media on their side. The whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to destroy the conservative movement. It's to destroy the conservative leaders. ... This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in." Whew.
[I though animosity toward "do-gooders" was limited to Scooby-Do villains -- McLir]

DeLay Has a Beef with Justice Kennedy and the Internet

The other day, for reasons which may only be discernible to DeLay, his ire was focused on Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Among the usual cries of "judicial activsm" and decrying Kennedy's "incredibly outrageous" behavior in ruling the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional, DeLay offered a rather strange nugget of wisdom in a Fox News Radio interview:

"Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous. And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

Well, I have to take offense to that. 100% of my research on this article came from the Internet. I'd consider it a fairly well researched, and accurate article on DeLay's actions. Is this a reflection of DeLay's complete lack of knowledge about the Internet(s)? I know it's mostly porn and spam, but I imagine a Supreme Court justice could quickly and easily find a lot of useful legal information, news, and past rulings here, here, and here, and that's just after a quick Googling.

How Companies Pay TV Experts For On-Air Product Mentions

The use of TV consumer experts is the latest way marketers have tried to disguise their promotions as real news, often with the aid of media outlets. Magazines accept "advertorials" designed to look like editorial features, not ads. TV stations often use "video news releases" produced by companies, which are designed to look like news segments. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission told broadcasters they must inform viewers about the origins of these video releases.
For advertisers, these techniques help keep their messages from getting lost in an increasingly crowded sea of ads. An example is the camera maker Olympus Optical Corp. Along with Canon Inc. and Nikon Inc., it paid last year to be on a satellite tour operated by DWJ Television that featured John Owens, the editor in chief of Popular Photography & Imaging magazine, according to Michael Friedman, DWJ's executive vice president. The DWJ tour was timed to coincide with a 2004 photography trade show.
Chris Sluka, an Olympus spokesman, says the tour "secured me some broadcast coverage that's hard to get in a cluttered atmosphere." He says local stations probably wouldn't air the segments if they knew manufacturers paid to be mentioned. "I know when these are pitched, they're pitched as news," he says.

Lawmakers rally against Cafta

Add a few more Republicans to the growing congressional opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
More than two dozen lawmakers from both parties issued populist warnings about Cafta's brutal effect on U.S. manufacturers at an anti-Cafta rally Wednesday. They pledged to defeat the treaty, which was negotiated by the Bush administration and needs only Congress' approval to take effect.
Cafta would eliminate tariffs on a number of manufactured goods imported to and exported from Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, to encourage trade with those nations.
But Cafta foes contend that multinational corporations will be encouraged by the agreement to take advantage of cheap foreign labor and will lay off U.S. workers. These opponents predict Cafta will compound U.S. trade deficits with the other signatory nations, and point to growing trade gaps in the aftermath of Cafta's North American sister, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

They Want You for the New Recruit

Source: PR Week (sub. req'd.), April 20, 2005

In an "uncharacteristically aggressive recruitment effort," the U.S. Army National Guard is launching a new campaign, called "The American Soldier." The campaign includes "sending eight mobile information and recruitment centers (with another 12 in production) to sporting events and shopping malls across the country, increasing direct mailings to three times annually, and signing a sponsorship deal with NASCAR driver Greg Biffle," reports PR Week. "The days when someone would see an ad and then go to a recruitment office may be gone," said Lt. Col. Mike Jones. The Guard is also widening its target audience beyond high school students, to "college, junior college and vocational-technical school students." The Guard's 2005 marketing budget is $38 million, though "an additional $26 million will be asked for through supplemental requests," according to Jones.

Media repeat anti-Soros propaganda by DeLay defenders

As ethics concerns surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) have mounted over the previous month, Republicans are pursuing an aggressive strategy to neutralize DeLay's critics by linking them to financier, philanthropist and political activist George Soros. Initiated by DeLay and other House Republicans and rapidly repeated by conservative commentators, references to Soros have become a common tactic for dismissing critics of DeLay and have now found their way into daily media coverage of the controversy, often with no indication of their GOP origins. This tactic creates the false perception that only liberal organizations are raising ethical questions about DeLay and that Soros' funding impugns the motives of watchdog groups or indicates a "liberal conspiracy" to get DeLay.

Research hits fast forward in genome analysis

A Nobel laureate has devised a method to obtain information from thousands of genomes at once in an advance that could speed up the search for the causes of diseases and new treatments.
South African-born doctor Sydney Brenner said on Wednesday his new method will allow researchers to discover information about genetic differences of whole populations very quickly.

The Family Research Council says anticlerical judges pose a greater danger than al-Qaeda.

In a speech laced with claims that the federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, have “systematically attacked Christianity,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins announced the launch of a new campaign by the right to turn the confirmation battle into a religious war against the “anti-Christian left.”
Perkins’s organization will spend the next 10 days in a planning and preparation phase that will culminate on April 24, which he has declared to be “Justice Sunday.”
In a live simulcast sent out to more than 1,000 churches across the country and broadcast on the Christian Television Network, Perkins and Dr. James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) will make the case that Senate Democrats have opposed a handful of the president’s judicial nominees not out of honest concern about their extreme political views but, simply, because the nominees are Christians.

Voice Recognition in Credit Cards

A number of companies, including IBM (IBM ), Microsoft (MSFT ), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), have recently developed new biometric software and devices designed specifically with the phone in mind. Their solutions to the phone-security conundrum range from embedding detectors such as fingerprint scanners right into mobile phones and personal digital assistants to using a promising new biometric technique called voice verification.
En-masse deployment of voice-verification technology could happen within a year, with sales of related software and devices expected to rise from $45.9 million last year, to $224.6 million in 2008, according to researchers at International Biometrics Group, an independent industry researcher. That could turn out to be a conservative estimate. "Today, the market for voice verification is smaller than [the $3.5 billion market] for voice recognition, but that could be changing," says Alex Acero, a senior researcher with Microsoft's speech technology group in Redmond, Wash. "There's a lot more emphasis on security."

Confessions of a drug rep

Think big. Think money. Think drugs. And then think of all the sly, silly, ethically impaired things that people will do to sell drugs, and you'll have a taste of Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau's film, Side Effects.
Slattery-Moschkau (pronounced Moscow, "like the city") sold drugs for a living for Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, until she found it increasingly difficult to "look myself in the mirror," and left her job after 10 years in the industry.
An aspiring screenwriter since her college years, Slattery-Moschkau, wrote, directed, and produced Side Effects, a satirical film about the dilemma of Karly Hert (Katherine Heigl), a drug representative torn between her conscience and some really good perks. Hert's company plans to roll out "the biggest drug launch of the 21st century" for its new antidepressant, Vivexx, which they enthusiastically promote as "absolutely the most efficacious drug your patients can use!" while cheerfully predicting that "Vivexx will make Prozac look like penny candy."

Aid worker uncovered America's secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths

A week before she was killed by a suicide bomber, humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military commanders to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by US forces.
Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command, famously said the US army "don't do body counts", despite a requirement to do so by the Geneva Conventions.
But in an essay Ms Ruzicka wrote a week before her death on Saturday and published yesterday, the 28-year-old revealed that a Brigadier General told her it was "standard operating procedure" for US troops to file a report when they shoot a non-combatant.
She obtained figures for the number of civilians killed in Baghdad between 28 February and 5 April, and discovered that 29 had been killed in firefights involving US forces and insurgents. This was four times the number of Iraqi police killed.
"These statistics demonstrate that the US military can and does track civilian casualties," she wrote. "Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognise they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimise mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy."
Sam Zia-Zarifi, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, the group for which Ms Ruzicka wrote the report, said her discovery "was very important because it allows the victims to start demanding compensation". He added: "At a policy level they have never admitted they keep these figures."
Exactly how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last two years is unclear. Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors casualty reports, says at least 17,384 have died. But the group bases its totals only on deaths reported by the media, and says it can therefore only "be a sample" of the total actually killed. Its website says: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war."
A peer-reviewed report published last year in The Lancet and based on an extrapolation of data suggested that 100,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion and its aftermath. One of the report's author, Dr Richard Garfield, professor of nursing at Columbia University, said: "Of course they keep records and of course they pretend they don't. Why is it important to keep the numbers of those killed? Well, why was it important to record the names of those people killed in the World Trade Centre? It would have been inconceivable not to. These people have lives of value.

Bugs Bunny in the public domain

Well it’s about damn time!
This is, as far as I am concerned, fantastic news. Thanks to the folks over at Film Chest and at the Internet Archive two Bugs Bunny cartoons are now available in the public domain.
This is how it’s supposed to work. Someone creates something really cool, and for a while they have every right to benefit from that creation. But after a reasonable amount of time, and here I define that as something less than one persons lifetime, that creation enters the public domain.What’s really cool is the the folks over at Film Chest have donated an amazing number of cartoons to the Internet Archive, not just Bugs Bunny. You’ll find Woody Woodpecker and Felix the Cat there, as well as Popeye the Sailor.
But guess what you won’t find there. Give up? The answer is you won’t find a thing from the folks at Disney (no link on purpose). Nope, the folks at Disney think it’s ok to not share. Even though many of the Disney cartoons predate the cartoons you’ll find on the Internet Archive Disney keeps them locked down. Nope, nothing going to the public domain from Disney.
And just for the record, here are some of the things that the folks at Disney have created which they got from the public domain:

• Snow White
• Sleeping Beauty
• Alice in Wonderland
• Aladdin

Boy but this kind of thing just gets right up my left nostril.

Sermon: Living Under Fascism

March 7, 2005: This sermon by Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr, originally delivered on November 7, 2004, has recently been the subject of discussion on Air America's "Morning Sedition" as well as in other media outlets.

The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.
Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.
... In an essay coyly titled “Fascism Anyone?,” Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 “identifying characteristics of fascism.” (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) See how familiar they sound.
... This list will be familiar to students of political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again. [from DigitalDetritus.org]

Saudis Seek New Agreement on Nuclear Capability - No Outside Probes

Saudi Arabia has quietly begun talks on a U.N.-sanctioned agreement that could curtail any outside probe of its atomic intentions -- a move that heightens concerns in a region already edgy about rival Iran's nuclear program.
The Saudis deny any plans to develop nuclear weapons, and diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency told The Associated Press that the U.N. nuclear monitor has no firm evidence that would cast doubt on the Saudi assertions. Phone calls to the Saudi representative to the IAEA or the government in Riyadh for comment were not returned.
But the diplomats say that past Saudi nuclear interest is heightening worries, as is the timing of the efforts to sign on to the IAEA's small quantities protocol that would exempt the country from most of the agency's control authority.
Born of more trusting days, the agreement has been joined by dozens of countries, most of which have never experimented with nuclear weapons. But the protocol is now viewed with suspicion within the agency, after revelations of other loopholes that have allowed prewar Iraq, Iran, Libya and other countries to work secretly on known or suspected nuclear weapons programs.

Texas Bill Would Ban Gay Foster Parents

The state House tentatively approved legislation that would prohibit homosexuals and bisexuals from becoming foster parents.
Legislators voted 81-58 Tuesday to approve the ban in an amendment tacked on to a bill that would revamp the state's Child Protective Services agency. The full bill was tentatively approved 126-16. Final approval was expected Wednesday.
"It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual," said Rep. Robert Talton, a Republican, who introduced the amendment.
The state Senate has passed its own version of Child Protective Services reform that does not include the ban on gay foster parents.

Happy 420 Day!

Although many have (wrongly) believed that 420 had something to do with police code relating to marijuana offenses or 4/20 being the dates that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson, and John Belushi died; this infamous number really was simply the time that several San Rafael high school students would meet after school to get baked. [from MetaFilter.com]

MKULTRA LSD Suit Rejected

A federal judge has tentatively ordered dismissal of a $12 million lawsuit against the U.S. government, filed by a former deputy marshal who said he was unknowingly drugged with LSD as part of a CIA mind-control program before trying to hold up a San Francisco bar nearly a half century ago.
In earlier rulings, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel rejected the government's attempts to dismiss Wayne Ritchie's suit and said he had shown that a CIA mind-control experiment code-named MKULTRA was operating in San Francisco in December 1957, when Ritchie says he was drugged.
During the program, which lasted at least a decade at the height of the Cold War, hundreds of unwitting Americans were given LSD and other drugs to study their possible use in behavioral control.
But after hearing Ritchie and other witnesses testify on his behalf at a nonjury trial last week, Patel ruled that Ritchie had failed to prove that LSD led to his criminal and psychological problems.
"It is not clear by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Ritchie was administered LSD,'' the judge said at Friday's hearing, according to a transcript obtained Tuesday. "It may be what happened. But this is a court of law. We don't operate on hunches. We have to operate on the facts.''