Kucinich Campaign A decision yesterday by the eight-member California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel that 15,000 electronic voting machines in four counties be banned in the November election because of “glitches” in the March primary election “is more than enough evidence that these systems could undermine the integrity and affect the results of November’s general election,” Kucinich said.

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Actionable Intelligence ...and the rest is history.

Paychecks Spur Workers to Take Iraqi Jobs (washingtonpost.com): "Iraq, with its six-figure, tax-free salaries, was too good to pass up. Each of the dead men, court records show, had previously filed for bankruptcy." And some of them were just truck drivers.

From the White House, With Silence (washingtonpost.com): "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy."

Yahoo! News - Report: Thousands Dead or Injured in N.Korea Rail Blast: "There were rumors the fuel was a gift from China to Kim and his energy-starved country, Yonhap said.
Ryongchon is transliterated as Yongchon in South Korea and appears that way on most maps in the West.
Yonhap also quoted a senior Defense Ministry official as saying the South's military -- which eavesdrops on North Korea -- had heard about the blast through 'intelligence channels directed against the North.'
There was no immediate suggestion the blast was anything other than an accident.
But the explosion came after Kim met China's new leadership during a rare foreign visit to discuss the North's nuclear weapons plans, tentative economic reforms and aid that has in the past included fuel. "
Smells like Cheney spirit.

President Owes America Answers on Iraq: "If the President ... made the decision to wage war against Iraq and secretly spent appropriated funds to prepare for that war without prior consultation with Congress, then the letter of the law, the intent of the law, and the Constitutional power of the purse, have been subverted."

IDIOT SON OF AN A**HOLE-AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!!

Take Back The Media! Flash Animation "Condoliesa"

Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment (washingtonpost.com)

With God on His Side...By Invoking a Higher Power, Bush Sidesteps Pesky Constitutional Issues No wonder George W. Bush could lie to Congress and the American public with such impunity while keeping the key members of his Cabinet in the dark.

Guardian Unlimited Travel | News | Chek-in times to US may hit five hours: "Information being obtained includes details about which passengers have requested kosher or halal meals."

News Release, Bush-Cheney 2000 To Pay $90,000 Civil Penalty for Failing To Disclose Recount Activity What will their fine be this time?

Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11 (washingtonpost.com): "Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to a separate government."

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: "A 2001 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that, statewide, blacks were 10 times as likely to have their votes rejected at the polls and that black voters' ballots were disproportionately rejected in Florida's 2000 presidential elections. Some of those rejections, they suggested, violated the Voting Rights Act."

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Military -- General assails U.S. policy on Iraq: "Known as the 'Warrior Diplomat,' Zinni is not a peace activist by nature "

Newsday.com - Opinion: "Many Palestinians saw Sheik Yassin's murder as a deliberate attempt by the Israeli government to stimulate terrorist attacks that would distract international attention from Sharon's land grab in the West Bank."

HoustonChronicle.com - Europe wary of U.S. policy shift

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States From pdf file "Staff Statement No. 10": In April and May 2001 the drumbeat of reporting increased. Articles presented to top officials contained headlines such as: "Bin Ladin planning multiple operations." "Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack." "Bin Ladin network's plans advancing."
...
The threat reports surged again in June and July, reaching an even higher peak of urgency. A Terrorist Threat Advisory in late June indicated that there was a high probability of near-term "spectacular" terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties. Headlines from intelligence reports were stark: "Bin Ladin threats are real." "Bin Ladin planning high profile attacks." The intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple--but not necessarily simultaneous--attacks. A late June report stated that Bin Ladin operatives expect near-term attacks to have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportion.

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Talking Points

Newsday.com - National News: "Revelations and contradictions"

Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission - Center for American Progress

Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand

Wayne Madsen: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act: the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB), which the White House had steadfastly refused to release to either the Commission of the public, was titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war: "President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001[, a]ccording to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner"

Uranium Medical Research Centre[repost] UMRC reported in February that their own staff was contaminated with DU, and that the Coalition's so-called "clean-up" efforts were seeding the desert winds with radiation.

New York Daily News - Home - Daily News Special Investigation: Poisoned? The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of depleted uranium shells in Iraq last year. Now US soldiers are coming home poisoned.

DON'T BE FOOLED: "Greenwash: (n) Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image "

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: "Race & Punishment
Black students suspended from school twice as often as white students "

Observer | Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'

Framework of Clarke's Book Is Bolstered (washingtonpost.com): "The joint committee's declassified report, released last July, contains dozens of quotations and references to Clarke's testimony, and none appears to contradict the former White House counterterrorism chief's testimony last month."

Take Back The Media!

Yahoo! News - Panel Presses for Rice's Public Testimony: Commissioner John Lehman, another Republican, said Rice 'has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide.'
'And if they do, we sure haven't found it. There are no smoking guns. That's what makes this so absurd. It's a political blunder of the first order,' Lehman told ABC's 'This Week.'

-AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!!

White House Whitewash - [Sunday Herald]

join the party party

Neither Silent Nor a Public Witness (washingtonpost.com): "Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban; the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats; and Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that 'Iraq is to the side' appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.
Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Cheney's assertion that Clarke was 'out of the loop' and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies. "

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Christ, you know it ain't easy: "the director has concocted a film so festive in its lurid, graphic, semi-pornographic, homoerotic violence that not even the most bloodthirsty film-goer could complain about failing to get his money's worth"

Salon.com News | "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001": "Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, 'We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available.' Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. 'Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie.' "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Zawahiri tape taunts Pakistanis: "'We have plunged into a war which has no end,' said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of an Islamist coalition that backs Mr Musharraf."

Whether or not the tape is authentic, can there be any doubt that when Colin Powell, two days ago, described Musharraf as a partner in a US "crusade," his purpose was to provoke terrorism or revolt within Pakistan, allowing an expanded US military presence there? 'Crusade' re-enters US lexicon on war Whatever might be said about Bush's use of the word two years ago, Powell is not known for spectacularly ill-considered use of language.

Arms-Control Group Says U.S. Inflated Libya's Nuclear Bid "The administration has distorted what was found in Libya"
You remember this story, we blogged it in January: Libya never got nuclear programme off the ground, say diplomats

Asteroid Scare Prompts NASA to Formalize Response: "For now, there is no established chain of command to the White House in relation to possible asteroid impacts, nor is there any plan for what government agencies should do regarding possible evacuations or emergency preparations."

City Pages: Karl Rove's Moment: "What no one expected was that the worst damage would be inflicted by the White House's own hand."

Government Executive Magazine - 3/24/04 Sept. 11 commission cites intelligence agency failures: "A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had 'real, specific' information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.
Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities."

The Ratings Mirage: "neither cable news stations nor Nielsen Media Research are primarily in the business of serving the public interest--both are in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers."

Kerry Gets Boost From Surprising Sources (washingtonpost.com): "Kerry's presidential campaign is getting an unexpected boost from an unlikely bunch: former Bush administration officials and congressional Republicans."

Kucinich for President 2004 - Press Release: "Disclosure That Administration Manufactured Crisis to Invade Iraq No Surprise"

Statement -- March 21, 2004

Democracy Now! | The Peace Candidate: Kucinich Vows to Stay in Race

Priorities! -- Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities

News "a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington"

State voting worries persist: "[A]ccording to a position paper prepared by the association [of Supervisors of Elections,] 'The issue of creating a paper trail for each voter is unnecessary except to eliminate the paranoia of the critics of these systems.'"

OrlandoSentinel.com: Elections: " 'We showed them our tickets and said we have the right of any other citizen to hear what our president has to say. And they said, 'If you don't leave, we're going to have to arrest you.' "

Mercury News | 03/20/2004 | Iraq invasion protested: "I bought into the whole rationale for the war, that there were weapons of mass destruction,'' Lyons said. "Now the whole thing disgusts me. I've come to believe that President Bush is the most dangerous man on the planet."

The Salt Lake Tribune -- Department memo told park heads to spin cuts

Op-Ed Columnist: Taken for a Ride: "So if the Bush administration were really concerned about maintaining a united front against terrorism, all it would have to do is drop its my-way-or-the-highway approach. But it won't."

TAP: Web Feature: Allies Axed. by Tara McKelvey. March 17, 2004.: "The message is: If you want to get re-elected, don't go to Crawford. Bush is a political liability -- in Europe, in particular. His foreign policy has trampled on the European views and it's now resulting in the election of governments that do not support his approach."

The Spokesman-Review.com - Bush's partial history The White House documents do show that Bush's military job description, called an Air Force Specialty Code, or AFSC, was listed as ‘‘1125D, pilot, fighter interceptor.”
Bush's pilot code was among those covered by Air Force Regulation 35-99, a previously undisclosed document recently obtained by The Spokesman-Review. Regulation 35-99 contains an extensive explanation of the Human Reliability Program.
Human reliability regulations were used to screen military personnel for their mental, physical and emotional fitness before granting them access to nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Under the rules, pilots could be removed immediately from the cockpit for HRP issues, which happened in the 1974 Washington Air National Guard case. The two Washington airmen were suspended on suspicion of drug use, but eventually received honorable discharges.

"Unknown Soldier" Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home: "Q: Are the men and women in the U.S. military in Iraq sufficiently trained before going over there?
A: No. I am extremely concerned about the major shift that is taking place right now, between now and June, where there's going to be a much higher percentage of the troops being Reserves rather than full-time, active duty military. The difference is that the active duty go through far more training than Reserves."

St. Patrick, Rid Us Of These Snakes!: "No Republican gathering, from a fund-raiser to a Bush cabinet meeting to duck hunting with a Supreme Court justice, can be held without the blessing and imprimatur of the Almighty. "

Al-Ahram Weekly | OPINION | Clerical credentials: "When sects abound in a country lacking plural democracy, men of religion become communal spokesman, supplanting political plurality....Theirs become the final word for a factional identity that has nothing to do with the profound understanding of religious law....The stature is born of circumstance, stimulated by the collapse of civil society groups."

Iraq on the Record

Ballot mistake clouds election outcome - newarkadvocate.com

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: East Volusia: "So last week's election was the second Florida election this year that developed a kink despite low turnout."

Greenspan Shifts View on Deficits: "On Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published new calculations showing that the budget deficit now stems almost entirely from tax cuts and spending increases rather than from lingering effects of the economic slowdown. "

Op-Ed Columnist: Weak on Terror: "Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists."

KRT Wire | 03/15/2004 | Iraqi exile group fed news media false information: "Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.
In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.
Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability."

The Miami Herald | 03/16/2004 | Miami soldier resists: 'This war is evil': 'I am not against the military. The military has been my family,'' said Mejia, 28. ``My commanders are not evil but this war is evil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression.''

Memo highlights Speaker's many new enemies - newarkadvocate.com: "We just kept looking around at each other like cows looking at a new gate."

Federal Times Online: Unpaid Halliburton subcontractor threatens to end hot meals for troops. "I just want to get paid," says this patriot.

MSNBC - Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind: "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists."

OrlandoSentinel.com: Entertainment: "$1.4 billion flowed from the House of Saud to the Bush family and their interests.
So how much influence does this $1.4 billion buy?"

KR Washington Bureau | 03/14/2004 | Families of slain troops join antiwar protest outside Dover air base: "You will not end terrorism by invading a country"

Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters (washingtonpost.com): "Clearly, the machinery's not working very well"

News: "Washington has been channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - including those who briefly overthrew the democratically elected leader in a coup two years ago."

AP Wire | 03/12/2004 | PERSPECTIVE: Kucinich still could be factor in presidential race

GRAND THEFT AMERICA

KR Washington Bureau: "The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told the truth."

Yahoo! News - Rob Rogers

AlterNet: Culture War May Find WMDs

Study Faults Media Coverage of WMD: "Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats and policy options."

TAP: Web Feature: Plugging Leaks. by Murray S. Waas. March 8, 2004.: "Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson. "

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: " What you see in this chart is the signature of a corrupted policy process, in which political propaganda takes the place of professional analysis"

Bruce Yurgil's Political Velocity

HoustonChronicle.com - Hines: GOP learns Bush, gasp, is the problem: when the tremor struck Monday (on the evening news) and the strong aftershocks continued Tuesday (in the morning newspapers), the party seemed astonished at the real cause of their prescient unease: President Bush

KR Washington Bureau: "In building the case for war, Bush, Cheney and other top officials relied in part on assessments by the CIA and other agencies. But they concealed disputes and dissents over Iraq's weapons programs and links to terrorists that were raging among analysts, U.S. diplomats and military officials.
They also used exaggerated and fabricated information from defectors and former Iraqi exile groups that was fed directly into Cheney's office and the Pentagon. Those groups included the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close to hawks around Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House, but who was distrusted by the CIA and the State Department"

Racial profiling will be eased, Ridge promises - www.smh.com.auBut only for non-citizens.

7,000 Orange County Voters Were Given Bad Ballots : "In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more ballots cast than registered voters....an exact account of miscast ballots is impossible."

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials: "It was never a question of whether, but of how President Bush would use the graveyards of Sept. 11 to season his re-election campaign."

The Pentagon's Secret Scream

Scalia Addressed Advocacy Group Before Key Decision :"After Scalia accepted the invitation [to speak at the religious group's fund-raising dinner], Supreme Court staff contacted [the group's founder] to make the justice's appearance conditional on the understanding that the dinner could not make a profit. To satisfy the court staff, Devlin said he assured them that any money from the dinner...would be refunded to guests. But, Devlin said, that turned out to be unnecessary. According to Devlin, the event made no money... 'It was a wash,' he said, adding that the bill for the open bar was higher than expected."

The New Yorker
March 5, 2004
Studio Script Notes on "The Passion"
Steve Martin

Dear Mel,

We love, love the script! The ending works great. You'll be
getting a call from us to start negotiations for the book rights.

Love the Jesus character. So likable. He can't seem to catch a break!
We identify with him because of it. One thing: I think we need to
clearly state "the rules." Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save
himself? Our creative people suggest that you could simply cut away to
two spectators:

SPECTATOR ONE
Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself?

SPECTATOR TWO
He can only use his powers to help others, never himself.

Does it matter which garden? Gethsemane is hard to say, and Eden is a
much more recognizable garden. Just thinking out loud.

Our creative people suggest a clock visual fading in and out in certain
scenes, like the Last Supper bit: "Thursday, 7:43 P.M.," or "Good
Friday, 5:14 P.M."

Love the repetition of "Is it I?" Could be very funny. On the eighth
inquiry, could Jesus just give a little look of exasperation into the
camera? Breaks frame, but could be a riot.

Also, could he change water into wine in Last Supper scene? Would be a
great moment, and it's legit. History compression is a movie tradition
and could really brighten up the scene. Great trailer moment, too.

Love the flaying.

Could the rabbis be Hispanic? There's lots of hot Latino actors now,
could give us a little zing at the box office. Research says there's
some historical justification for it.

Possible title change: "Lethal Passion." Kinda works. The more I say it
out loud, the more I like it.

Is there someplace where Jesus could be using an iBook? You know, now
that I say it, it sounds ridiculous. Strike that. But think about it.
Maybe we start a shot in Heaven with Jesus thoughtfully closing the top?

Love the idea of Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene (yow!). Our creative
people suggest a name change to Heather. Could skew our audience a
little younger.

Love Judas. Such a great villain. Our creative people suggest that he's
a little complicated. Couldn't he be one thing? Just bad? Gives the
movie much more of a motor. Also, thirty pieces of silver is not going
to get anyone excited. I think it'd be very simple to make him a "new
millionaire." Bring in the cash on a tray. Great dilemma that the
audience can identify with.

Minor spelling error: on page 18, in the
description of the bystanders, there should be a space between the words
"Jew" and "boy."

Merchandising issue: it seems the Cross image Has been done to death
and is public domain?we can't own it. Could the Crucifixion scene
involve something else? A Toyota would be wrong, but maybe there's a
shape we can copyright, like a wagon wheel?

I'm assuming "The dialogue is in Aramaic" is a typo for "American." If
not, call me on my cell, or I'm at home all weekend.

By the way, I'm sending a group of staffers on a cruise to the North
Pole, coincidentally around the time of your picture's release. Would
love to invite your dad!

See you at the movies!

Yours,
Stan

Ashcroft Funds Under Scrutiny (washingtonpost.com) Ashcroft is like a busted drug dealer paying his debt to society by dealing drugs.

'Enduring Freedom:' Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan (Human Rights Watch Report, March 2004)

The Detainees: As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News: "Iraq has a new generation of missing men. But instead of ending up in mass graves or at the bottom of the Tigris River, as they often did during the rule of Saddam Hussein, they are detained somewhere in American jails....American forces are still conducting daily raids, bursting into homes and sweeping up families. More than 10,000 men and boys are in custody."

FMQB: Radio Industry News, Music Industry Updates, Arbitron Ratings, Music News: "Stern Feels Bush-Whacked End Is Near "

Newsday.com: Air Force One phone records subpoenaed

Blix: 'I learnt I had been vilified, crucified and made to look like an imbecile': "I understood his formulations to say: the witches exist; you are appointed to deal with these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witch hunt."

Rall: NYTimes.com Pulled Comic Because of Conservatives: "If newspapers don't have the personnel to handle hate mail, said Rall, 'just delete it.'"

Greenspan: Maestro of Chutzpah

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Editorials / Gun bill's gaping holes: "Firearms and tobacco are already the only two consumer industries that are not subject to federal consumer safety regulations. Tobacco, at least, has been held accountable in suits brought by states and individuals on behalf of smoking's millions of victims and the budget-busting medical bills that government health programs have to pick up because of tobacco use. That legal recourse also would be denied to victims of guns under the bill."