Kos Member goes after Falafel Bill
After O’Reilly provided an “accountability moment” to the JetBlue CEO at his home, I decided to provide O’Reilly with his own accountability moment at his home.
An Immoral Philosophy
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 30, 2007
When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.
Hurricane boost ‘due to warm sea’
By Matt McGrath
BBC environmental reporter
A new analysis of Atlantic hurricanes says their numbers have doubled over the last century.
The study says that warmer sea surface temperatures and changes in wind patterns caused by climate change are fuelling much of the increase.
U.S.-tribal alliances draw Iraqi ire
The strategy is ‘a seed for civil war,’ says a prime minister’s aide.
By Alexandra Zavis
Times Staff Writer
AJI, IRAQ — When U.S. soldiers moved into an abandoned wool factory near here two months ago, they were pounded with bombs, mortar rounds and bullets.
Misunderstanding Moqtada al-Sadr
Far from being an Iranian instrument, among Iraqi Shi’ite leaders, Moqtada al-Sadr is probably the least susceptible to Iranian influence. Journalist Bartle Breese Bull, who has spent several years in Iraq observing the Sadr movement, wrote in the New York Times on June 3 that “The Sadrist movement has always been about Iraq for the Iraqis. They might accept help from Iran – and I saw Iranian supplies in their compounds in Najaf in 2004 – but the movement is not for sale. Mr. Sadr gets his strength from the street. And the Arabs of the Iraqi street have no time for Persian bosses.”
Stage-managed nuclear tour reveals why Iran won’t be the first to blink
Western governments continue to insist that Iran must suspend enrichment as a precondition for negotiations, because of the deep mistrust stemming from the country’s 18-year concealment of the most sensitive aspects of its nuclear programme.
By Anne Penketh in Esfahan, Iran
Bhutto ready to share power if Musharraf drops military role
- Joint rule seen as best way to beat extremists
- Deal could rescue beleaguered general
NGOs Report Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq
Monday July 30, 2007 By THOMAS WAGNER
LONDON (AP) -About 8 million Iraqis - nearly a third of the population - need immediate emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, relief agencies said Monday.
Who’s ahead
It’s not too soon to declare the winners of the war in Iraq. In rough order, they are Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Hugo Chavez and Vladimir V. Putin.
When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, a barrel of crude oil sold for $27. On Friday, it was at $77. It makes all the difference.
Rapture Ready
Max Blumenthal
On July 16, I attended Christians United for Israel’s annual Washington-Israel Summit. Founded by San Antonio-based megachurch pastor John Hagee, CUFI has added the grassroots muscle of the Christian right to the already potent Israel lobby.
Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, master of modern cinema, is dead at age 89
But the Swedish director — one of the greatest artists in cinema history — had overcome his intense fear of death by the time it finally found him
Goodbye Tom Snyder
Late-night talk show pioneer Tom Snyder dies of leukemia The late-night talk show host whose free-form program and intimate interviewing style influenced a generation of broadcasters, died in his Tiburon home nearly two years after he announced he had chronic lymphatic leukemia.
Murdoch’s Crackpot Minion
By Joe Conason
“In truth, the ["netroots" progressive]bloggers share the values of most Americans, who also want to end the war in Iraq, establish universal health insurance, reduce global warming, increase the minimum wage and preserve Social Security. It is the ideologues such as Messrs. O’Reilly and Kristol whose opposition to those values locates them on the fringe, despite their loud megaphones and corporate backing. And what Murdoch bullies prove whenever they try to stigmatize the citizen bloggers is how much they fear a fair (and balanced) fight.
Troops Are Not So Different Than You
“In a poll detailed today of those who served in Iraq or have a close friend or relative who served in Iraq, just 38 percent approve of the president’s handling of the war. That’s just slightly higher than the public at large.
[. . .]
“There’s a real paradigm shift that’s happening within the military, because of the president’s irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous policy.”
Acting on Impeachment
Most readers of The Washington Post probably missed it. But probably not Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Fifty-six of his law school classmates (Harvard Law School, class of 1982) bought space for an open letter in mid-May that excoriated his “cavalier handling of our freedoms time and again.”
It read like an indictment
by Ralph Nader
Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales
“Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so….
What Works - Miami’s Role Model program
“I sure hope Timothy doesn’t come to school today.”
The thought shocked her. If she dreaded Timothy, she says, how must her Hispanic and white teachers have felt about him? And why was it every time she held a disciplinary conference, it was for a black boy? Why were they the ones who always seemed to be in trouble?
So she started meeting with them, “trying to find out why they were so angry and why they were so disruptive and why they wanted to fight all the time.” Then she started calling men in to help her.
Dangers of a Cornered George Bush
Recent events have put a great deal more pressure on President George W. Bush, who has shown little regard for the constitutional system bequeathed to us by the Founders. Having bragged about being commander in chief of the “first war of the 21st century,” one he began under false pretenses, success in Iraq is now a pipedream.
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity & Dr. Justin Frank
Conservatives Refuse To Appear On Fox News To Publicly Defend Gonzales
On Fox News Sunday this morning, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) refused to defend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against accusations that he may have perjured himself before Congress. “It’s very damaging…we badly need an attorney general who is above any question,” said Gingrich.
Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers
By Chris Hedges
“All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces,as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.”
Who Really Took Over During That Colonoscopy
By FRANK RICH
THERE was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!
John Conyers is No Martin Luther King
By Ray McGovern
“What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.”
What were the pre-2005 “other intelligence activities”?
We know the administration was spying on us for years in ways even more illegal than in the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Why don’t we know what it was doing?
Glenn Greenwald (more…)
Al Qaeda’s Best Publicist
Could al-Qaeda possibly have found a better publicist than President Bush?
By Dan Froomkin
At a South Carolina Air Force base[], Bush mentioned al-Qaeda and bin Laden 118 times in 29 minutes, arguing that the violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion in Iraq would somehow come to America’s shores if U.S. troops were to withdraw.
CIA discounted British concerns, say MPs
MI5 contributed to the seizure of two British residents by the CIA, which secretly flew them to Guantánamo Bay in a move with “serious implications for the intelligence relationship” between Britain and the US, a cross-party committee of senior MPs said.
Richard Norton-Taylor
Suing the KKK
A Nonprofit Law Center Sues Second-Largest Klan Group Over Assault
For Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins, two members of the nation’s second-largest Ku Klux Klan group, the mistaken belief that Jordan Gruver was Hispanic was apparently reason enough for them to beat the 16-year-old to the ground after showering him with racial slurs, spit and whiskey at a Kentucky county fair in July, according to court papers.
DoD ‘Black’ Spending Doubled in a Decade
The Pentagon’s 2008 spending blueprint seeks $31.9 billion for classified programs, nearly double the $19.1 billion the U.S. military was devoting to “black” initiatives in 2001, according to a new analysis. That’s 18 percent of the 2008 acquisition total of $176.8 billion, according to the July 25 analysis, compiled by Steven Kosiak of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
By JOHN T. BENNETT
U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports
The daily length of time that residents have power has dropped. The figure is considered a key indicator of quality of life.
By Noam N. Levey and Alexandra Zavis
Iraqi leader tells Bush: Get General Petraeus Out
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
“Relations between the top United States general in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, the country’s prime minister, are so bad that the Iraqi leader made a direct appeal for his removal to President George W Bush.”
Baghdad, top U.S. commander downplay reported tensions
Officials acknowledge differences but deny that Prime Minister Maliki has sought Gen. Petraeus’ ouster.
The Cleavage Conundrum
By JUDITH WARNER
Published: July 28, 2007
The Washington Post’s penetrating exposé of Hillary Clinton’s “surreptitious” show of cleavage on the Senate floor last week (“To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation”) sent me trawling on the Internet, digging through sites like eBay and Hijabs-R-Us, desperate to buy a burqa.
Outsourcing Intelligence
Author R.J. Hillhouse on How Key National Security Projects Are Contracted to Private Firms
Author R.J. Hillhouse caused a stir in Washington last month when she revealed more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms.
The Education of Eliot
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: July 28, 2007
The star of the Democratic Party of New York, whose sway is currently only slightly less sweeping than the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, has been totally rolled by the 78-year-old leader of the State Senate Republicans.
Office Arrests: The Shame of John Conyers
Rep. John Conyers had several dozen impeachment activists arrested for conducting a sit-in in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building.
Lawsuit accuses Chiquita of funding terrorism groups
NEWARK, New Jersey: Relatives of people alleged to have been be murdered by paramilitary groups in Colombia sued Chiquita Brands International Inc., accusing the banana company of funding terrorists.
The lawsuit comes four months after Cincinnati, Ohio-based Chiquita admitted it paid such groups $1.7 million (€1.23 million) in protection money over six years to protect its most profitable banana-growing operation.
Impeachment?
by Josh Marshall
But in recent days, for the first time I think, I’ve seen new facts that make me wonder whether the calculus has changed. Or to put it another way, to question whether my position is still justifiable in the face of what’s happening in front of our eyes.
See the Movie, Start the Revolution
Friends,
I am overwhelmed by the response to “Sicko.” And I’m not just talking about all the wonderful, heart-felt letters you’ve sent me and the stories you’ve shared with me about the abuse you’ve suffered from our health care system.
No, I’m talking about how thousands of you are taking matters into your own hands and using the movie to do something.
As Bad As Bush
The Iraq fiasco provides few opportunities for mirth. But one is watching Fred Hiatt, czar of the Washington Post editorial page, try to kick up enough dust to wriggle out of his own position on the war.
By Josh Marshall
The Senate on Iraq: No ‘Phony Debate’
On reading the July 21 editorial “The Phony Debate,” it became clear why The Post’s editorial writers have been such eager cheerleaders for the Bush administration’s flawed Iraq policies — the two share the same disregard for the facts en route to drawing dubious conclusions.
by Harry Reid
Leahy issues subpoena for Rove
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Thursday issued a subpoena for top White House adviser Karl Rove to compel him to testify about the firing of several U.S. attorneys.
By Klaus Marre
War Crimes and the White House
The Dishonor in a Tortured New ‘Interpretation’ of the Geneva Conventions
By P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner
Lawmakers Grill EPA Chief on Calif. Law
By ERICA WERNER
“I defer to the Transportation Department,” EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson repeated three times in a row in response to questions from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Leader Reid confesses Levin-Reed Amendment leaves troops in Iraq
I attended the MoveOn.org rally on Tuesday night where Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid discussed how they were going to “end the war” and “bring our troops home” with the Levin-Reed Amendment. When I asked if they meant all the troops, I was quickly told to, “shut up” and muscled aside by security. A fellow Marine Mom was treated in much the same manner and we couldn’t get over how much like the Republicans the “Anti-Escalation” folks were acting.
Tina Richards
