22 Purported CIA Operatives Accused of Kidnapping Imam - Los Angeles Times: "including the Milan station chief"

Alito Defended Wiretap Protections in 1984 Memo - New York Times The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits over illegal wiretaps

PEER: "Cronyism has run amok in the agency designated to combat cronyism"

Officials Fault Case Bush Cited - Los Angeles Times

LYRICS - The Pause of Mr. Claus

Herald.com | 12/19/2005 | Health problems plague a polluted region: "Why this area of Orange County ranked the worst in the Sunshine State puzzled local health and environmental officials, given that there are no major industrial factories in the area....'I think the explanation may be that there are a number of small facilities in that area that are not large enough to require an air permit but use potentially toxic or hazardous substances -- some kind of manufacturing or repair operations,' said John Kasper, an engineer for the Orange County Environmental Protection Division."

Remember that pending changes to EPA rules would allow many more businesses to be defined as "small" polluters exempt from reporting to the Toxics Release Inventory.

- toledoblade.com -: "political financiers made an investment in the Bush family, an investment that paid off."

- toledoblade.com - Bush Administration policies, grand and obscure, have financially benefited companies or lobbying clients tied to at least 200 of the President's largest campaign fund-raisers, a Blade investigation has found. Dozens more stand to gain from Bush-backed initiatives that recently passed or await congressional approval.

LiP | Interview | Conveying Correctness | print version: "If people accuse me of being PC, I say, 'If, by 'PC,' you mean I seek to be courteous and not offend people intentionally, then of course I'm PC.' The only way to really deal with that kind of charge is to say: 'If you mean by that, I'm concerned about unfairness in American society based on race and gender and other factors, absolutely true. Guilty as charged. If you mean by that, I wring my hands and whine a lot, no, I don't think that's a fair criticism.' So you basically hand it back to them and say, 'You know, I'm not accepting that frame. Let's debate the definition, and in the course of that I'm going to reveal that really what you're saying is that you're tired of hearing about race and gender, and you don't want to have a conversation about what's fair.' Then they usually complain, 'That's not what I'm saying at all!' and then you tease it out and say, 'Well, what are you saying?' And they don't have an answer, because 99% of the people who use the term don't understand how they're using it."

Bush's Fumbles Spur New Talk of Oversight on Hill: "the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration"

Chicago Tribune | Philip Morris law firms, supporters backed judge: "Lawyers for Philip Morris USA contributed $16,800 to help elect a judge who cast a deciding vote in Thursday's Illinois Supreme Court decision favoring the tobacco giant.

The judge also received $1.2 million in campaign money from a group that filed an amicus brief supporting the cigarette-maker."

Los Angeles Times: 1 in 20 Americans Is Not Literate, a National Survey Suggests: "When adults with higher-education degrees were asked to compare the viewpoints in two newspaper editorials, for example, or interpret a table about blood pressure, less than half could do it successfully. "

Dingell's HOLIDAY Jingle for O'Reilly and House GOP (12-14-05)

The Daytona Beach News-Journal Tests show some Diebold voting machines used in Florida and elsewhere around the nation can be hacked by election office insiders to change results

How safe is tuna? - OrlandoSentinel.com: Nation/World: "When the Food and Drug Administration updated its mercury warning last year, it arbitrarily classified canned light tuna as low in mercury to 'keep market share at a reasonable level,' one agency official told an FDA advisory panel, according to transcripts of the meeting."

Cigarette Maker Pours It On Strong in Promo - Los Angeles Times: "the coasters are part of a grass-roots marketing campaign to associate Camel cigarettes with trendy cocktails — and encourage young people to drink.....'I think if you ask anybody my age, most of those who don't smoke will still smoke a cigarette if they are drinking. I think it's pretty common.'"

Staff Opinions Banned In Voting Rights Cases: "Political appointees overruled staff findings in both cases."

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Columns: Every composer of conservative fund-raising letters, every virtuecrat, professional moralist, Fox News gas bag, cable-TV finger-wagger and AM-radio common scold has discovered something they call 'the war on Christmas."

Reuters AlertNet - Clinton steals show at U.N. climate talks: "In America, there's no telling how many jobs we could create if we just made the decision that in the rebuilding of New Orleans it would become America's first green city"

Plea Deal Near With 2nd Abramoff Associate: "Prosecutors have told Ney they are preparing a possible bribery indictment against him"

RollingStone.com: John Lennon : Lennon Lives Forever : News: "The story of our times since then has been the product of a determination to make sure that nothing like that could happen again."

Has 'War' become a leading brand for United States? / How Bush's imperial policies are being linked to economic woes and CEO angst in America: "the administration's bellicosity has been a major business blunder"

Blanco Releases Katrina Records: "Bush's entire effort on behalf of the federal government has been reflected in his and his people's nonchalant attitude to the people of LA"

On Their Own in New Orleans - Los Angeles Times

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal: "the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power"

Independent Online Edition > Environment: "The findings, published in the journal Nature, fit computer predictions of what would happen when Greenland glaciers begin to melt because of global warming."

The Bush Beat: December 2005 Archives: "The word 'clear' popped up so many times in Bush's speech that I thought I was listening to the keynote speaker at a Scientology convention. "

Drugmakers Win Exemption in House Budget-Cutting Bill: "As part of a House budget bill that reduces spending on Medicaid prescription drugs, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and other businesses secured a provision ensuring that their mental health drugs continue to fetch top price at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the states."

Zeroing Out the Messenger: "'legislator of the year' by the National Hydropower Association"

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press - Los Angeles Times: Making Iraq more like the US in every way.

White House Briefing  News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration: "the question of whether taxpayers should be funding presidential events to which the public is never welcome."

Beacon Journal | 11/28/2005 | Ohio charter schools will go on trial: "And while justices are required to weigh issues of legality, questions have been raised about their own stake in the case.
The majority has benefited from the political fund-raising efforts of Akron businessman David Brennan, who founded the state's biggest charter-school management company.
His firm, White Hat Learning Systems, will receive more than $100 million of the state dollars flowing to charters this year.
Since 1990, Brennan has acted as a key Ohio Republican Party fund-raiser and helped establish and fund political action committees aimed at electing Republicans to the courts.
State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, a critic of charter schools, last week called on the six Republican justices to withdraw from the case because of Brennan's campaign influence -- nearly $130,000 in contributions since 1992."

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Politics > Randy 'Duke' Cunningham -- Cunningham pleads guilty to conspiring to take bribes, income tax evasion There's plenty good money to be made supplying the army with tools of the trade.

World Opinion Roundup -- Jefferson Morley's Review of Opinions and Commentary on News Around the World - washingtonpost.com Bush's Brother and the Fugitive Russian Tycoon
It sounds like the pitch for a Hollywood comedy.

A Journey That Ended in Anguish - Los Angeles Times: "Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, [the psychologist] said, was a flaw. 'Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited,' wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach."

'Corruption Scheme': "Corruption Scheme"

Lawmakers Under Scrutiny in Probe of Lobbyist: "Prosecutors have already told one lawmaker, Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), and his former chief of staff that they are preparing a possible bribery case against them"

Public TV Outlet Battling Christian Network - Yahoo! News

LA Weekly: News: On: How I Lost the War in Iraq

CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter": "These people are not terrorists or insurgents; they are not uniformed military or intelligence personnel. They are simply people trying to tell it like it is in an environment plagued by censorship"

School Radio Stations Face Competition Over Licenses - New York Times: "A loophole in commission regulations makes educational stations unusually vulnerable to takeover attempts."

The Village Voice: The Bush Beat: "Dick Cheney is so smug that he thinks he can set the agenda for America's news media. Unfortunately, he's right."

Buy Nothing Day : Adbusters

McKinney: Republicans seek to silence dissent on Iraq war: "The US invasion and occupation has destabilized Iraq and Iraq will only return to stability once this occupation ends"

Abramoff Partner Pleads Guilty

Under U.S. Design, Iraq's New Army Looks a Good Deal Like the Old One We won't get fooled again

EWG Issues || PFCs: Teflon Pollution from perfluoronated chemicals PFOA PFOS: "Former DuPont Top Expert: Company Knew, Covered Up Pollution of Americans' Blood for 18 Years"

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball' - Los Angeles Times: "U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed.

The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion. "

What I Knew Before the Invasion: by Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2001 and 2002

ArmsControlWonk | an arms control weblog: ISIS Against The Gray Lady: "This made it sound like the US had proof Iran was designing a nuclear weapon, which it does not. Look at it this way: Just because Ford puts seat-belts in its automobiles, doesn't mean they know how to build people."

Research Dispels Bush Claims That Tax Cuts Create Jobs - Yahoo! News: "Changes in tax policy suggest no evidence of their impact on job creation or destruction...Since 1950, significant tax increases and decreases have both been followed by job losses and job gains, say the researchers.

Based on statistical analysis of changes in tax polices and rates of job growth in the past 60 years, the report points out that tax reduction does, however, disproportionately lead to economic disparity between the rich and poor....

Last year, one million people fell below the poverty line, a disproportionate number of them children, while the number of billionaires rose to 374, the study says, adding that the number of people living in poverty rose from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.7 percent in 2004."

Stock Market News and Investment Information | Reuters.com: "they've targeted the most vulnerable in our communities -- children, the aged, the blind and disabled -- for spending cuts that pave the way for tax cuts for the rich"

RollingStone.com: The Man Who Sold the War : Politics

Bill Christison: Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars: "The new wars would be the start of a world war initiated by Bush and radical Christianity against what he calls radical Islam, but in truth the wars would be waged against all Islam."

eSchool News online - School radio station fights for survival See: Theocracy

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force: "In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force."

Review of 'Plan B' Pill Is Faulted: "the agency had allowed politics to trump science"

CJR Daily: Archives: "Telegraphing the beginning of a communications effort is a tactic the Bush team has used in the past, especially when it comes to Iraq,' Bash wrote. Or, put another way, I, along with my colleagues in the press, have been used in the past to preview assorted White House public relations plans and talking points.
And I'm told -- and I'm telling you -- that I and my colleagues in the press will be similarly used in the near future. Or, in Bash's own words: 'it is unclear which administration officials will participate in this 'aggressive' response, which senior officials indicate will be unveiled in interviews and other public events.' (Emphasis ours)."

Scotsman.com News - International - Rice insists Palestinian state would make Israel safer place ...not to mention the US.

96 bishops decry 'unjust and immoral' situation in Iraq - UMC.org

Herald.com | 11/13/2005 | Senate measure would undercut court's authority: "For almost eight centuries the ''great writ'' of habeas corpus has been a bedrock principle of English and American law, from the Magna Carta to today's jails and courts. It's the means for a prisoner to contest his imprisonment before a judge.
That's one reason legal experts were stunned when the Senate, after an hour of debate and no hearings, voted Thursday to adopt a measure that, if it becomes law, would overturn the Supreme Court's extension of habeas corpus protection to 500-plus detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba."

Libby May Have Tried to Mask Cheney's Role: "White House aides privately wonder whether Libby was seeking to protect Cheney from political embarrassment"

Media Tangled in Lobbyist Case: "The case sheds light on how AIPAC, one of Washington's most influential lobbies, devotes considerable energy to working the press."

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election 2004 Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?

Group Trains Air Force Cadets to Proselytize Religious extremists training to use nuclear weapons.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Why the US will lose: "The United States...was oblivious to the simple truth that society is not just a political movement that can be conquered, or a number of individuals who may be apprehended, bribed or even killed. It is all the living people in a given country. Like other live societies, Iraqi society possesses huge capabilities -- a sophisticated legacy, ancient civilisations and an experienced patriotic movement. American strategists, while building their model for Iraq, missed or disregarded the fact that social movements are based on solid realities and lived experience, and cannot just be created on the whim of a political decision or through insidious forms of pressure. The Iraqis' experience of US policies explains the failure of the occupation forces in controlling Iraqi society through ethnic intrigue and repressive measures. "

Zogby International: "Despite the lack of realism, however, West Wing viewers would prefer watching Sunday night?s debate to the real thing by a 67% to 28% margin. In fact, 77% of respondents say that real presidential debates are too predictable, while just 19% consider them a critical factor in their voting decision."

IRS Warning to Pasadena Church Part of Wider Effort - Los Angeles Times: "The agency has looked into other nonprofits for allegedly promoting political candidates."
Just coincidence that none of them were Republican.

Antiwar Sermon Brings IRS Warning - Los Angeles Times Separation of church and state

US intel on Iraq-Qaeda ties 'intentionally misleading': document - Yahoo! News

Press Gaggle by National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Senior Administration Official Will tonight's Mystery Guest sign in please?
I have to give a photo ID to fly Delta, but apparently nobody knows who's on Air Force One.
Is this the first time an unnamed source spoke at a White House briefing?

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Mark Engler on the War Woes of Business: "Making the World Unsafe for Microsoft and Mickey Mouse"

FindLaw's Writ - Dean: A Cheney-Libby Conspiracy, Or Worse? Reading Between the Lines of the Libby Indictment

Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn To Military No Child Left Behind

Senate approves billions in spending cuts - Yahoo! News: "more aptly called the 'Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion Reconciliation Act"

Democracy Now! | Al Sharpton: "Jim Crow Had Sons...He's a Little More Polished But the Results Are the Same"

Democracy Now! | Joseph Lowery Calls on Condoleezza Rice to Extend Voting Rights Act

Democrats: It's the War -- In These Times

Internet Archive: Details: Despotism

KR Washington Bureau | 10/31/2005 | Cheney's new security adviser linked to bogus information on Iraq

What the 'Shield' Covered Up: "the coverup worked"

FT.com / Middle East & Africa / Iraq - US "had no policy" in place to rebuild Iraq

The Progress Report - American Progress Action Fund: "Samuel Alito's America"

A patriot crashes the party: Instead, he says, the speech was the same old "fear-based mentality."

"And if we're operating out of fear," Palumbo says, "all we're going to do is shoot into the dark."

Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma - Los Angeles Times: "According to the proposal, PhRMA would pay Phoenix a six-figure sum for the marketing and production of a written-to-order fictional thriller. The plotline was what Hollywood would term high-concept - a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. "

Forex News Update - FX Analytics - Oct. 26 2005: "At the end of the day confidence in how the US is governed is reflected in part in the premium in the yield curve. If it turns out, through this investigation, that the justification for the war in Iraq was deliberately enhanced as in facts twisted, exaggerated or misconstrued, it would be a serious setback for global confidence, investor and otherwise, in the world's single superpower."

- toledoblade.com -: "A federal grand jury has indicted Tom Noe, the former Toledo-area coin dealer at the center of a state investment scandal, of illegally laundering money into President Bush's re-election campaign."

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel (10/27/05): "Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction"

Gary Leupp: Dialectics of the Plame Affair: "Around May 2002 Rumsfeld, Cheney and their underlings created an alternative intelligence body, the secret of Office of Special Plans, staffed with neocon agents including Douglas Feith, William Luti, Abram Shulsky, David Wurmser, and Michael Ledeen, supplementing it with the White House Iraq Group (formed in August 2002), including Libby, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and Karen Hughes. The ... 'lie factory,' relying on Ahmed Chalabi and other Iraqi informants despised by the CIA as known liars to stovepipe cherry-picked 'intelligence' to the president, American people and the world in justification of a war on Iraq."

Herald.com | 10/23/2005 | Publix wary of tomatoes More background in the story than the particular incident at issue: evidence of the importance of buying organic.

List of Foiled Plots Puzzling to Some: "the White House overstated the gravity of the plots "

Miers' Answer Raises Questions - Los Angeles Times: "Are they trying to set her up?"

FT.com / World / US - Bush backs away from timetable for setting up Palestinian state Surprised?

Democracy Now! | Robert Fisk: War is the "Total Failure of the Human Spirit"

FT.com / World / US - Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy Financial Times now officially part of the radical left.

Rice Declines to Give Senators Timeline for Iraq Withdrawal "Permanent instability or civil war in Iraq could set back American interests in the Middle East for a generation -- increasing anti-Americanism, multiplying the threats from tyrants and terrorists and reducing our credibility."

Gosh, Dick, what could make you say such things? Here, better drink this kool-aid from the RNC...

Niger Uranium Forgery Mystery Solved?- by Justin Raimondo: "Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi"

Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lawmaker's Abramoff Ties Investigated Bob Ney makes the Washington Post front page. Will media in Ohio again ignore it?

Let those dopers be - Los Angeles Times: "our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery"