The Washington Dispatch: "In the midst of our bloodiest war, the fratricide of the Civil War, Mr. Lincoln managed to get reelected. The "Greatest Generation" made it through WWII without having to alter the traditional, scheduled, legal election process. Throughout the Cold War we teetered on the brink of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union - yet we somehow maintained the regular, constitutionally mandated requirements of our republic. Nineteen hijackers, however, have turned the entire federal government inside-out (i.e. the creation of the Department of Homeland Security - the largest reorganization of the government since the Defense Department was created in 1948); suspended some of our civil liberties (i.e. the USA PATRIOT Act); and opened the door to the Trotskyite "creative destruction" embraced by the neocon chickenhawks who started whispering into President Bush's ear by midday on Sept. 11th."

Use this link: web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqreport2-textunder.pdf
to access a searchable version of the Senate's report on intelligence. It's a 14 megabyte file. Then search for "Feith" and read through the first item found to get this:
"The August 20th meeting is clear evidence of the Administration politicizing an
analytical process that should be protected from the meddlesome reach of policy officials."
And here I thought it was the CIA's fault. It's that durned liberal media!

Is Fabulous President George W. Bush a Fabulous Homosexual? Baptists Are Saving Homosexuals asks what conservative Christians demand to know

Telegraph | News | Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links: "Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration.
The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus quickly became the al-Qa'eda-Saddam link.
On occasion, without informing the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, the group gave counter-briefings in the White House."

Bay Area group in flap over anti-war billboard / Clear Channel kills nonprofit's ad for N.Y.'s Times Square: "I'm constantly shocked by how there is such an effort to really prevent people from contemplating the difficult issues of our time,'' Waters said. 'The message of the sign was trying to get people to think about this. And clearly, it's not what the powers-that-be want people to do."

HoustonChronicle.com - Reviewers of DeLay's ethics got his money: "Four of the five Republicans investigating an ethics complaint against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have received campaign contributions from DeLay's political action committee"

MSNBC - Exclusive: Election Day Worries: "Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election"

Kerry to Reach Out to 'People on the Right': "Kerry seemed unconcerned about antagonizing his liberal supporters"

Yahoo! News - Question of Pressure Splits Panel Democrats on the committee, while acknowledging that they had unanimously approved the report, said they disagreed with the conclusion that there had been no political pressure.

TNR Online | July Surprise? (print): "according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that 'it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any High Value Target] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July'--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source: "social psychologist Erich Fromm had written on 'socially patterned defects' that enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system that, humanly speaking, is 'fundamentally at odds with our basic existential and human needs'. Burston observed that this resulted in 'deficiencies, or traits, or attitudes which don't generate internal conflict when, in fact, they should"

MSNBC - As rationales for war erode, issue of blame looms large: "The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes."

Bush's War-Era Records Damaged (washingtonpost.com): "The payroll summaries destroyed were for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972." But none of the 13 intervening quarters?

WILLKOMMEN BEI REPORT MAINZ
Irak: US-Soldaten sollen inhaftierte Kinder misshandelt haben
Over 100 children at Abu Ghraib. German TV and "Der Spiegel" broke this story last Sunday, and it still hasn't made the English-language press. Video and transcript.

IPA News Release: 9-11 FBI Whistleblower: "Ashcroft Denying 9-11 FBI Whistleblower Day in Court"

Survey: Public Wants Press to Fully Describe Sources in Science Stories

Yahoo! News - Rights Groups Accuse Pentagon of Subverting Court Ruling on Guantanamo Detainees

The Smoking Gun: Archive Ken Lay informs George Bush about Enron's plans to pipe gas across Afghanistan.

Bush Again Turns Down Invitation to Address NAACP Convention (washingtonpost.com): "The president's decision means he will be the first sitting president since Warren G. Harding not to address the NAACP. A White House spokeswoman said Bush had a scheduling conflict, but would not specify the conflict with the six-day convention."

Foreign Policy: Imperial Amnesia

Yahoo! News - Times: Bush Military Service Files Were Destroyed

U.S. Cuts Number of Delegates to World AIDS Meeting (washingtonpost.com): "The decision to cut attendance [by three-fourths] was reached long after many government scientists had made plans to attend the conference, which is held every two years....

Almost nobody was willing to speak on the record because of fears of retaliation....The NIH released details of the cutbacks only in response to a Freedom of Information Act request....

HHS officials [also] tried to cancel a $250,000 CDC grant to the conference for scholarships for Third World AIDS researchers, said a person familiar with agency. When told the money could not be reclaimed, Thompson's office stipulated it go only to scientists in the countries getting aid under the [U.S.] program....

A CDC official [said,] 'This is clearly the result of the booing of Secretary Thompson in Barcelona, which he took quite personally.'"

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town Dr. Malakoff is no longer a member of the team that treats the Vice-President

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Liberal Media Compares the Candidates

Amanpour Says Saddam TV Was Distorted ...

The Spoof - Hells Angels to Take Over War on Terrorism Bikers for Bush

AlterNet: Election 2004: A Serious Threat to Democracy

Probe takes twist - newarkadvocate.com

Fund-raising memo: Steer 'wimps' toward county GOP parties - zanesvilletimesrecorder.com

Iraq Deal on Airline Is Probed

AP Wire | 06/22/2004 | Ohio Democrats call on agriculture official to resign over food bank comment: Eric Bost, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for the Food & Nutrition Service, "described people who eat at food banks as 'taking the easy way out.'"

Inmate populations skew representation

HoustonChronicle.com - 'A Pretext For War' by James Bamford: "the basic blueprint for the administration's Middle East policy had been drawn up in the mid-1990s by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, three neoconservatives who would be named to influential positions in the Bush administration.
Described as a kind of 'American privy council' to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the three proposed what they called a 'Clean Break' plan, which involved getting the United States to pull out of the peace negotiations in order to let 'Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit.' Under the 'Clean Break' plan, Israel would launch pre-emptive attacks against its major Arab enemies and replace Saddam Hussein with a puppet leader friendly to Israel.
Bamford records that Netanyahu wisely rejected the plan but that the Perle group found a more receptive audience for their recommendations inside the Bush administration. The fact that several of the key players most aggressively pushing the Iraqi war had originally outlined it for the benefit of another country raises 'the most troubling conflict of interest questions,' he writes."

Aspen Times News for Aspen Colorado - News: "How does this sound - Vice President Hunter Thompson"

baltimoresun.com - Powell gave U.N. 'ambiguous' data on Iraqi weapons, NSA chief says

KR Washington Bureau | 06/21/2004 | Intelligence experts cast doubt on ties between Iraq, al-Qaida: "officials said they were unsure why Lehman portrayed the documents as possible new intelligence on Iraq's links to al-Qaida"

Newsday.com - National News The CIA concluded "a long time ago" that an al-Qaida associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army

United Press International: Outside View: Have you any idea why they're lying to you?

One million black votes didn't count in the 2000 presidential election
It's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost

Index: "REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION SCHEDULE"

bmj.com Lenzer 328 (7454): 1458: "Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness "

Wired News: Pentagon Seeks U.S. Spy Powers: "The bill would allow Pentagon intelligence agents to work undercover and question American citizens and legal residents without having to reveal that they are government agents."

Observer | Cheney in firing line over Nigerian bribery claims

BBC NEWS | Middle East | War draws condemnation: "Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US-led military action was completely unjustified"

So Torture Is Legal? (washingtonpost.com)

Iraq on the Record Handy link to see who said what when about Saddam and al Quaeda.

Patriot Act Provision Invoked, Memo Says (washingtonpost.com): "The FBI asked the Justice Department last fall to seek permission from a secret federal court to use the most controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act, four weeks after Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that part of the law had never been used, according to government documents disclosed this week."

Infoshop News - New York Times calls for Bush regime apology: "There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world."

A Contractor Calls In the Big Guns (washingtonpost.com): "In the section of his report that is supposed to disclose gifts of more than $285, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) pointed readers to attached correspondence concerning his wedding gifts. Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Altria Corp., the parent company of Philip Morris, in October.

On Sept. 15, Blunt wrote to Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and noted his impending marriage. 'I anticipate receiving wedding gifts in connection with this event and I would like to request a waiver of the limitations of the gift rule to allow me to accept gifts in connection with my wedding,' he wrote."

The waiver, and a subsequent request to waive reporting of the gifts, was granted.

FT.com / US elections: "We are all career public servants,' explained William Harrop, former ambassador to Israel and several African countries who helped organize the initiative. 'Most of us are not comfortable about going partisan in a domestic arena. But we feel strongly that this must be stopped and the administration must be changed."

Iraq Letter As members of university faculties in law, international relations, diplomacy, and public policy, we write to register our objection to the systematic violation of human rights practiced or permitted by authorities of the United States within occupied Iraq during recent months: we request Congressional action to ensure accountability for such violations and to safeguard against such egregious abuses in the future. Current circumstances require that all transcend partisan politics or considerations. Action by Congress is necessary to promote a rule of law produced and enforced through a democratic process and to protect the physical and psychological integrity of all people consistent with the traditions of our nation.

Wired 12.06: VIEW: "The Bush administration has systematically manipulated scientific inquiry into climate change, forest management, lead and mercury contamination, and a host of other issues."

Subtle Messages at Clinton Lovefest (washingtonpost.com): "How many Bush administration officials it takes to change a light bulb? Seven.
One to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced.
One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the light bulb.
One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new light bulb.
One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs.
One to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton one million dollars for a light bulb.
One to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the light bulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag.
And finally, one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country. "

Welcome to DMCC web site - Diplomats & Military Commanders for Change Official web site An unprecedented bipartisan coalition of 27 career chiefs of mission and retired four-star military leaders will launch a nationwide campaign to press for the need for change in U.S. foreign and defense policy because they are deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests.

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history"

GOP Refusing to Allow Testimony on Halliburton Spending

The New York Times>The Public Editor :
"By reading every bylined A-section news story published in December 2003, Williams determined that 40 percent of the articles invoked at least one anonymous source, that the average day's paper brought 36 such sources into the reader's home and that more than half of these people were identified, at least in part, as 'officials.'
...The Times promulgated a revised policy on the use of anonymous sources in February...As it happens, the most important part of the new policy involves something that cannot be checked independently....[In April, the numbers] show a slightly greater rate of anonymous quotation than his December study."

Yahoo! News - Malpractice Debate Takes Ugly Turn
: "It all adds to 'an alarming trend in a kind of vigilante-style behavior for what appears to be an extremist group of doctors ... looking to punish innocent patients and their attorneys who help them exercise their constitutional rights.' "

Yahoo! News - Study: Sea Protection Costs Less Than Fish Subsidies: "Nearly 75 per cent of fisheries are categorized as overfished or fished to the limit. Some, like the once teeming cod fishery off the east coast of Canada, have completely collapsed and may never recover. WWF said marine habitat loss now equals or exceeds that of rain forests, with 60 per cent of coral reefs expected to be lost by 2030 if present rates of decline continue."

CounterPunch: America's Best Political Newsletter: "Never mind the moral obtuseness of opposing an armchair-psychopath like Bush with arguments in favor of a man who did his own killing, there's a weird market niche out there to be reached."

U.S. PIRG Consumers Pay at the Pump for Outdated Gas Mileage Policies: The Bush Administration Fails to Reduce America's Oil Dependence

Bush's USDA: Frozen Fries Are 'Fresh' Veggies

DeLay to Be Subject of Ethics Complaint (washingtonpost.com): "A DeLay ally, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), said Republicans 'are going to have to respond in kind' by filing ethics charges against key Democrats. From now on, he said in an interview, it's a matter of 'you kill my dog, I'll kill your cat.' Doolittle said he plans to file ethics charges against a prominent Democrat but would not name the target. "

The Daytona Beach News-JournalAnother Reagan legacy: all the '82 air traffic controllers are reaching retirement age, so we get a whole new round of ATCs with abbreviated training.

Committee on Government Reform Minority Office: "Many questions have been raised about the Iraq contracting process, including questions on the seemingly inflated prices charged by Halliburton"

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Weekend feature: American homeland security: "Deport? Me? 'Why?' I asked, incredulously.

'You came here as a journalist, and you don't have a journalist's visa.' I had never heard of it. He swiftly produced the visa waiver (I-94W) I had signed on the plane, and pointed to what it said in tiny print: in addition to not being a drug smuggler, a Nazi or any other sort of criminal, I had inadvertently declared that I was not entering the US as a representative of foreign media."

Yahoo! News - Fla. Voting Machines Have Recount Flaw

Group Seeks Change In Security Policy (washingtonpost.com): "Angered by President Bush's conduct of foreign policy and dismayed about America's diminished reputation abroad, more than two dozen former top diplomats and military leaders will release a statement this week calling for a change in U.S. national security policy. "

A few big farms in Ohio producing majority of sales - newarkadvocate.com: "Of [nearly 78,000] farms spread throughout Ohio, the largest 1,200 are producing 41 percent of the state's agricultural sales, according to the federal Census of Agriculture released last week....
Licking County agricultural extension agent Howard Siegrist said 12 to 15 farms generate about half the farming income in the county. And Ohio Fresh Eggs, the largest farm operation in the state, generates about 40 percent by itself, he said.
The county had about 1,482 farms in 2002...."

If the voting machine company is small enough, a leftist government can afford one too:"[The Venezuelan] government purchased a 28 percent stake in Bizta, through a venture capital fund, in June 2003 -- just a few months before the company bid for the elections contract....
The Herald also reported that a top official in Venezuela's science ministry, Omar Montilla, joined Bizta's board of directors in December to represent the government's three million shares. Two months later, the National Electoral Council awarded Bizta and partners Smartmatic and CANTV the $91 million."

OrlandoSentinel.com: State News: "The state has agreed to spend at least $125,000 on private attorneys to fight for a law that restricts the release of voter records, even though Attorney General Charlie Crist has said the statute is probably not worth defending....[O]fficials concede the costs could go higher."

According to the GAO, reports by the DoD, CIA and VA vastly underestimated the number of veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents during Gulf War I:
"It is likely that if models were more fully developed and more credible data for source term and meteorological conditions were included in them,...the hazard area would be much larger and most likely would cover most of the areas where U.S. troops and Coalition forces were deployed."
Link to .pdf of report

Yahoo! News - US to Correct Terror Report, Says Attacks Increased: "The State Department said on Thursday its report that the number of international 'terrorist' attacks fell last year was wrong and in fact had risen sharply. "

AlterNet: IVINS: The Day the Constitution Died

San Antonio Current: "Xenophobia and religion color GOP convention "

Commission to hear complaint on funds raised for local GOP - zanesvilletimesrecorder.com

nbc4columbus.com - News - Blackwell Subpoenas Householder Over Contracts

The Globe and Mail: "Truth be known, however, the Iron Curtain's collapse was hardly Ronald Reagan's doing."

washingtonpost.com: Fewer Republicans Trust the News, Survey Finds They're just following orders, since Cheney told them only to believe Fox news. So there's no surprise CNN loses credibility points, but Fox gains none.

Ronald Reagan: Still the Teflon President?: " the overwhelming praise for a president who plunged the nation into its worst deficit ever, ignored and cut public money for the poor, while also ignoring the AIDS crisis, is a bit tough to take"

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida: "Coincidentally, the state's elections supervisor, Ed Kast, announced Monday he was resigning that position to pursue other opportunities in the private sector."

Mail Pouch paintings: History or advertisments? - zanesvilletimesrecorder.com: "U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-St. Clairsville, said...[h]is advice to barn owners is civil disobedience. 'I would say don't do anything,' he said. 'Defy the state.' "

Democracy Now! | REMEMBERING THE DEAD-Ronald Reagan 1911-2004: Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott & Robert Parry on Iran-Contra, the Nuclear Race and Covert Wars from Central America to Africa

Consortiumnews.com "The unpleasant history was shunted aside or covered up. When declassified U.S. government documents led to a judgment by a Guatemalan truth commission that the Reagan administration had aided and abetted genocide, it was a one-day story. When a CIA inspector general confirmed that many contra units had engaged in drug trafficking and were protected by the Reagan administration, the mainstream press only grudgingly acknowledged the story."

Telegraph | News | Iraqi judge orders arrest of American aide to Chalabi: "computer files belonging to the British consultant investigating the oil-for-food scandal were destroyed by hackers and a back-up databank in his Baghdad office wiped out.
Claude Hankes Drielsma, a British businessman and long-time acquaintance of Mr Chalabi, accused America and Britain of mounting a 'dirty tricks' campaign to obstruct his inquiry."

AlterNet: Reagan Redux: " This would mean that Reagan's election was illegal, that the trading during the Iran-Contra scandal had a precedent, that Reagan and G.H.W. Bush's buildup of Saddam Hussein's military was motivated in part by a desire to counter weaponry and money that the United States had given Iran in exchange for Reagan's election, that our media has completely fallen down on the job, and that we're all a bunch of suckers."

Delays, Purge Hit Voter Rolls - from TBO.com: "For the second straight presidential election, Florida's law against former felons voting, a law grounded in Old South racism, may prevent thousands of people from voting. "

TheStar.com - Battling to understand our genocidal instinct: "'To get a war going you need the people on the top policy level to create the vision,' says Adelman. 'You need the people in the middle who administer the plan and give the orders. And you need the `little guys' who actually kill. They are usually not motivated at all. They need different kinds of inducements, like fear, peer pressure and drugs. It's a distasteful thing they are going to do, and it's hard work convincing them.'...

The line between those who commit crimes against neighbours and those who resist the urge to kill may be skepticism about authority."

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides: "President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind."

FindLaw's Writ - Dean: The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation "This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer."

John Chuckman: Insanity in America: "The world is being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have genuine mental problems."

Project:Denny's - Viewer Reviews - Oklahoma: "'We just went to Denny's in Stillwater, OK and the ASSistant manager was a total bitch.' - written prior to September, 1999
- James E. Sharp - sharpj@okstate.edu"

FindLaw for Legal Professionals: "Sharp had met with him and arranged for Pegg to pay a portion of Baxter's legal fees. Baxter then stated that Pegg had retained attorney Dick Hibey to represent Baxter in the case. Baxter further claimed that Sharp and Hibey helped him concoct a false story to help exculpate Pegg."

CBS News | Bush, Atty Powwow Over CIA Leak | June 2, 2004�19:50:41

Bikers for Bush

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Blame Game

BW Online | May 28, 2004 | Avoiding a Nasty Blast from the Past: "It all seems too familiar. An increasingly unpopular and expensive foreign military conflict, rising energy prices, and the threat of higher inflation. These factors, in Standard & Poor's opinion, may be causing investors to question whether the future investment climate may replicate the bad old days of the '70s. "

baltimoresun.com - Chalabi raid adds scrutiny to use of U.S. contractors

Cleveland.com: Search: "I have never lived in a state where money has such an influence on politics as in Ohio. It's the most heavy-handed state in terms of money in politics, and it's appalling. It's just an epidemic"

TIME.com: The Paper Trail -- Jun. 07, 2004: action on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was coordinated with Cheney's office