Religious Right Discovers Investment Activism

whatever already!

FindLaw's Writ - Klarevas: Will the Precedent Set by the Indictment in a Pentagon Leak Case Spell Trouble for Those Who Leaked Valerie Plame's Identity to the Press?

Rove's indictment: Perjury or Espionage?

Standing on the Shoulders of Perjury Law - Los Angeles Times: "Fitzgerald's 20-month-long investigation initially focused on whether administration officials had broken a federal law that made it a felony to knowingly disclose the identity of covert agents. But more recently, the inquiry is believed to have shifted to the question of whether officials -- including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove -- who discussed Plame with journalists may have misled Fitzgerald and his investigators."

Talk show hosts accuse Ney of intimidation: "A trio of West Virginia radio talk show hosts claim St. Clairsville GOP Rep. Bob Ney tried to intimidate them after they read newspaper stories on the air that raised ethical questions about Ney's relationship with a controversial Washington lobbyist. "

'Wash Post' Hit For Sponsorship Of 'Freedom' March: "'It is dismaying, to say the least, that I can be fired for participating in a peace march while my employer feels free to co-sponsor an event that so blatantly beats the drum of war,' [science reporter Rick] Weiss stated."

No comment from the political reporters or war correspondents, apparently.

U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: "What we expected to achieve was never realistic "

But we did it anyway.

- toledoblade.com -: "Mrs. Noe was one of several coin-fund wives who benefited financially from their husbands' jobs."

THE NEWSROOM: Cheney + Pakistan = Iran: VP Helped Cover-Up Pakistani Nuclear Proliferation So US Could Sell Country Fighter Jets

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - International Issues: "Scandal-plagued Halliburton -- the oil services company once headed by Vice President Cheney -- sold an Iranian oil development company key components for a nuclear reactor, say Halliburton sources with intimate knowledge into both companies' business dealings"

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "Culture of Corruption Grows: Sixth Bush Fundraiser..." UNDER INVESTIGATION: MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR A BASKETBALL TEAM

Bloomberg.com: U.S.: "U.S. House Republicans, Beset by Scandal, Want Higher Donations"

:: Jack in the House :: How Jack Abramoff bought Congress ::

KR Washington Bureau | 08/11/2005 | Audit: Fraud drained $1 billion from Iraq's defense efforts: "a pattern of deception and sloppiness that squandered more than half the Defense Ministry's annual budget.....with about 20 American civilian advisers working alongside Iraqi defense chiefs..... [Defense minister] al-Dulaimi said, 'I blame those who posted them (the officials under investigation). And, by the way, the CPA posted them.'"

Iraqis thirst for water and power | csmonitor.com: "This summer, the third since the fall of Baghdad, has been the worst yet when it comes to basic services. Interruptions to electricity and water supplies - caused by both decay and sabotage - are driving up the frustrations of millions of Iraqis. "

LaTourette attributes flip-flop on CAFTA to tariff no one pays: "He's either been duped or is not being honest"

- toledoblade.com -: "Tom Noe used his American Express credit card from Thomas Noe, Inc.--the same entity he's accused of using as a vehicle to steal millions of dollars from Ohio's rare-coin funds--to contribute $10,000 to California's governor."

Criminal No. 1:05CR225: USA V.a Lawrence Anthony Franklin, Steven J. Rose, Keith Weissman

ZNet |Foreign Policy | Bigger Than AIPAC

Sirotablog: The D.C. Democratic Establishment's disconnect on Iraq: "in a memo sent to all Democratic House Members about what Democrats should learn from the Hackett race, the DCCC makes not one mention of the Iraq War and its effect on the election. Not one. It is as if the party is going out of its way to deny the importance of Democrats taking a strong position against the war"

CounterPunch: America's Best Political Newsletter: "In the 21st century job growth in the US economy has consistently reflected that of a Third World country--low productivity domestic services jobs. This goes on month after month and no one catches on--least of all the economists and the policymakers"

DIRELAND: THE REAL AIPAC SPY RING STORY--IT WAS ALL ABOUT IRAN

Country Joe McDonald, My First Protest Song And here, for comparison, is my latest protest song: Support the Troops

American Prospect Online - ViewWeb: "The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald's grand-jury probe."

Banksy - News

Los Angeles Times: The myths of Hiroshima
Hiroshima Film Cover-up Exposed

U.S. Military Presence in Paraguay Stirs Speculation - Yahoo! News Paraguay reverses itself on exempting US troops from local and international law; speculation that the troop buildup is intended to establish control over a major aquifer in anticipation of a global water shortage.

Writers Group Won't Give Judith Miller 'Conscience in Media' Award After All: "The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment."

Top military QC condemns Guantanamo trials. 02/08/2005. ABC News Online: "There has been condemnation from one of Australia's top military lawyers of the process set up by the United States to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including South Australian David Hicks.
Yesterday, the ABC obtained emails from two prosecutors with the US military commissions, saying the procedures are rigged and describing the cases being pursued as marginal."

- toledoblade.com -: "Currently being investigated for possibly laundering campaign donations to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and under civil and criminal investigation for his role with a failed rare-coin investment with state money, Mr. Noe's friendship has become a liability for many people."

- toledoblade.com -: "Special counsel sought in Noe case"

What Went Wrong in Ohio? (Harpers.org)

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election 2004: "New charges filed against Ohio Governor Bob Taft's former top aide have blazed a new trail between 'Coingate' and the GOP theft of the 2004 presidential election."

E.P.A. Holds Back Report on Car Fuel Efficiency - New York Times: "loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980's"

- toledoblade.com -: "Tom Noe used state money to try to pump up an online gambling company in which he and other prominent Republicans were investors, records show."

State: Is a loud concert a state service?: "The Texas-based company says its lease with the Florida State Fair Authority means Clear Channel, a private company, and the Fair Authority, a state agency, have the same rights.
Because of that link to the state, Clear Channel says it should have immunity from local noise laws.
And more. Clear Channel also says it should not be required to pay county property taxes."

t r u t h o u t - Roberts Listed in Federalist Society Leadership Directory: "The questions about Roberts's involvement with the society may come down to the meaning of the word 'membership.'"

Shots to the Heart of Iraq: "Innocent civilians, including people who are considered vital to building democracy, are increasingly being killed by U.S. troops."

- toledoblade.com -: "That particular passage, I think, was not well written"

Independent Online Edition > Middle East : app4 Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict

Justices won't sit out case against Taft: "Authorities are trying to determine whether Noe illegally disguised donations to President Bush."

- toledoblade.com -: "The documents also show Mr. Noe authorized millions of dollars in loans from the state's Capital Coin funds - including $285,000 to himself - while using state money to foot the bill for legal work to fight public records requests to release coin-fund documents."

nbc4i.com - News - Consultant: BWC Investments Showed 'Inadequate Oversight'

nbc4i.com - News - AG: Noe Took Nearly $4 Million Improperly

Memo Gets Attention in Probe of CIA Leak - Yahoo! News: "the memo focused on Wilson's trip and the State Department intelligence bureau's disagreement with the White House's claim about Iraq trying to get nuclear material. He said the fact that the CIA officer and Wilson were husband and wife was largely an incidental reference."

Report Shows Karl Rove May Have Lied to Federal Agents, a Federal Crime, During Oct 2003 Testimony Into CIA Agent Leak: "During questioning by the FBI about his role in the Plame affair, Rove told federal agents that he only started sharing information about Plame with reporters and White House officials for the first time after conservative columnist Robert Novak identified her covert CIA status in his column on July 14, 2003."

New York's Premier Alternative Newspaper. Arts, Music, Food, Movies and Opinion: "The crime is that hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists and politicians in this country have over the years cheerily honored this vile, scum-sucking pig of a human being by calling him names like 'genius' and 'boy wonder' and 'wizard'--as though the business of Rove's life was somehow cute, quirky and lovably mischievous."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Two-thirds believe London bombings are linked to Iraq war: "Two-thirds of Britons believe there is a link between Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq and the London bombings"

The New Yorker: Fact: "Did we have eleven hundred Americans die--the number of U.S. combat deaths as of last September--so they could have a rigged election?"

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Middle East - News: "New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself."

CASUALTY OF WAR: THE U.S. ECONOMY: "It's not worth the price of what we're paying."

nbc4i.com - News - Taft Asks Supreme Court To Block Depositions

nbc4i.com - News - Probe Targets Republican's Donation To Election Official

In Plame Leaks, Long Shadows: "It is now clear: There has been an element of pretense to the White House strategy of dealing with the Plame case since the earliest days of the saga."

You don't say.

ColdType - Writing Worth Reading From Around The World "… THIS WAR WILL NOT END IN ANY OF OUR LIFETIMES … "
Norman Solomon talks to Adrian Zupp . . .
JOHN PILGER … LONDON BOMBS BELONG TO BLAIR AND BUSH
TOM ENGELHARDT… MAKING THE WORLD UNSAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

TPMCafe || Politics, Ideas & Lots Of Caffeine: "The Big Lie About Valerie Plame"

Paul Craig Roberts: The No-Think Nation Not only has our government demonstrated an inability to think before rushing to war, it cannot think about the economy either.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | CIA Leak Quotes

Bush Adviser Helped Law Firm Land Job Lobbying for CNOOC: "Members of the intelligence board, known as PFIAB, are granted the highest security clearance and develop top-secret advisories and reports for the president, most of which are not even available to members of Congress....The House Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on the national security implications of the CNOOC bid."

The Impeachment Question

TheStar.com - Pliant American press behaving like Pravda in coverage of the U.S. president: "The Senate committee promised last summer to probe what role the White House may have played in concocting the faulty intelligence -- but only after the presidential election.
Once the president was re-elected last fall, the Senate committee chairman, Republican Pat Roberts, simply cancelled the promised investigation of the White House's role, insisting it would be 'a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further.'
Replow it further? How about plowing it once?"

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A fiction as powerful as WMD: "The occupation's sectarian discourse has acquired a hold as powerful as the WMD fiction that prepared the public for war. Iraqis are portrayed as a people who can't wait to kill each other once left to their own devices. In fact, the occupation is the main architect of institutionalised sectarian and ethnic divisions; its removal would act as a catalyst for Iraqis to resolve some of their differences politically."

The Observer | International | UK aid funds Iraqi torture units

Baghdad Chief Pays Tribute to Slain Knight Ridder Reporter

Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/28/2005 | Campaign of executions feared in Iraq

The Village Voice: The Bush Beat

In Iraq, giving birth is complicated by war - Yahoo! News: "After the 2003 war that toppled
Saddam Hussein, the number of women who gave birth at home shot up to about two-thirds. Of those, 80 percent had nobody with any formal training present at the birth....Violence has prevented medical experts from measuring the maternal mortality rate since late 2003, when the number of Iraqi women who died from childbirth climbed to 370 per 100,000 - triple its 1990 rates and 31 times the US rate of 12."

Many Kids Still Don't Think Tobacco Is Addictive - Yahoo! News: "'Over the 20-month [child smoking prevention] program, about half the children increased their positive attitudes about smoking.'"

Neither of the news stories, nor the study abstract, identifies the source of the smoking "prevention" materials used by the two large HMOs.

baltimoresun.com - Firm of EPA nominee linked to Grace: "President Bush has nominated as chief of enforcement for the Environmental Protection Agency a partner in a law firm defending W.R. Grace & Co. against criminal charges in a major environmental case."

Democracy Now! | Pentagon Developing Massive Database on Millions of U.S. Students

Guardian | Iraq creating new breed of jihadists, says CIA

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | G8 countries defying arms embargoes, says report: "Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US - account for 84% of all worldwide arms supplies"

Kevin Zeese: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner: "The terrorism argument was what propaganda literature would refer to as the big lie. The Administration's objective was to make enough arguments connecting Iraq to terrorism and Bin Laden that the American people would believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. They used a technique called the excluded middle. Iraq supports terrorists. The attacks were by terrorists. Iraq must been behind the 9/11 attacks.
We know the WMD story fairly well. We know the story of the uranium from Niger. We know about the aluminum tubes that were not for uranium enrichment. We know the biological labs Powell showed to the UN did not exist.
Beyond these there are many exaggerations that have gotten very little notice. Let me mention just a few.
A New York Times reporter was told by the Administration that Iraq was buying excess quantities of atropine to get ready for chemical warfare. It turns out the quantities were consistent with the Iraq use of the substance for routine medical purposes.
The President told us in a speech in Ohio that Iraq had drone aircraft that could possible deliver chemical weapons into the United States. When that facility was found, the officers reported that it looked more like a school project than a serious military program.
The Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the Council on Foreign Relations that Iraq had the capability to attack US computers. They did not.
We were lead to believe a Navy pilot shot down during the first Gulf War was alive and being held in Baghdad. He was not.
We were told on the State Department web sit that Iraq was forming units of children to fight the United States. Iraq did not do that.
We were told the French were supplying air defense missiles to Iraq. That was not ture
There were many more."

Los Angeles Times: Worries Raised on Handling of Funds in Iraq: From $12 billion shipped to Iraq "more than $8.8 billion in such funds could not be properly accounted for."

Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Comment: Iraq's sectarian myth

- toledoblade.com -: "Noe case concealed to assist Bush"

British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office - Sunday Times - Times Online

Bush's WMD 'Joke': Is the Media Still Laughing?

Hit by friendly fire - Yahoo! News: "The White House is completely disconnected from reality"

British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office - Sunday Times - Times Online

Bush wounded by anger over war - Sunday Times - Times Online: "He's out in the sticks talking about a social security problem that might occur in 2047, and meanwhile the boys in Iraq are getting killed and injured every day," said one officer. "Don't you find that a little odd?"

The New York Review of Books: Selling Washington

Yacht owned by defense contractor docked at Cunningham's slip North County Times - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County News: "A defense contractor whose real estate dealings with Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham have raised ethical questions has another connection to Cunningham: He owns a boat docked at a Washington yacht club ---- a boat on which Cunningham stays while working in the Capitol."

Project for an Accountable Congress: Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)

TimesDispatch.com | Psychological warfare effort to be outsourced: "Federal law prohibits sending propaganda to Americans, and some experts worry that psychological warfare messages, especially disinformation efforts, might blow back to American audiences via the Internet and satellite news channels.
'In this age of the Internet and instant access, it's of great concern,' said Nancy Snow, a propaganda expert at California State University-Fullerton. 'If you plant false stories, how can you control where that story goes? You can't.'
Others question whether the money could be better spent.
So far, said defense analyst William Arkin, American propaganda efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have 'produced nothing positive and nothing negative.' He suggested the $100 million might be better spent on guns and bullets."

Ex-White House Official to Join Fuel Co. - Yahoo! News: "A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday. "

Beacon Journal | 06/13/2005 | Officers say arms can't end Iraq war: "Lt. Col. Frederick P. Wellman, who works with the task force overseeing the training of Iraqi security troops, said the insurgency doesn't seem to be running out of new recruits, a dynamic fueled by tribal members seeking revenge for relatives killed in fighting.
``We can't kill them all,'' Wellman said. ``When I kill one I create three.''"

U.S. Campaign Produces Few Convictions on Terrorism Charges: "Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best."

Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan: "A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a 'protracted and costly' postwar occupation of that country."

Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action - Sunday Times - Times Online

More babies, young kids going hungry in US - Yahoo! News: "In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent official figures"

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war �excuse� - Sunday Times - Times Online: "The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal."

2005.06.09: Impeach Bush Now!: "Downing St. Memo is Evidence for Bush Impeachment"

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming - New York Times: "A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming"

Drug Safety Panel Is Criticized: "The new drug safety board established by the Food and Drug Administration to restore confidence in the nation's drug supply will actually set back efforts to improve the safety of the medications Americans take and will not make it any easier to take dangerous drugs off the market"

toledoblade.com: "Workers' comp bureau concealed $215M loss; Taft, Petro knew about fund's woes many months ago"

Consortiumnews.com: "To some extent, the news media's reluctance to solve the Mystery of Bush's Iraq War Lies may be explained by a well-founded fear of retaliation from Bush's powerful defense apparatus - from the Wall Street Journal's editorial page to the screamers on Fox News and right-wing talk radio.
But there may be another motive, a fear of the logical consequence that would follow a conclusion that Bush willfully deceived the American people into a disastrous war that has killed almost 1,700 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
If that conclusion were to be accepted as true, it would force mainstream editors into a tough decision about whether they should join the supposedly fringe position advocating Bush's impeachment.
Certainly, the ignominy of impeachment would stand out as a logical remedy for a leader who so grievously violated the public trust and sent so many American soldiers to unnecessary deaths."

Costs of Marijuana Prohibition: Economic Analysis

DownLeft: You might be a corporate media news editor if...

Abuse, Dismission Provoke Shame in Nation | theledger.com