From American Progress:
Think Fast
"The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, KS, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state's governor. Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone."
"All of us believe that in the next 90 days, you'll probably see an increase in American casualties," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army's Task Force Marne, said yesterday. Eight American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb attacks Sunday, one of the highest single-day death tolls this year.
"Gasoline prices have surged to a record nationwide average of $3.07 per gallon, nearly 20 cents higher than two weeks earlier," analysts say. "The previous record was $3.03 per gallon on Aug. 11, 2006."
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), "a Bush loyalist and ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee," says he has lobbied the White House to stop using the term "war on terror." "Language is important...and I think the 'war on terror' is a terrible idea," Hoekstra said, arguing that it "elevates mass murderers to the status of a standing army."
"The weekend blitz of tornadoes in Kansas and the Plains puts 2007 on track to be one of the busiest and deadliest tornado years in a decade, severe-storms meteorologists said Sunday. 'Even if the year stopped right now, it would be the deadliest year we've had since 1999,' said Greg Forbes, severe-weather expert for The Weather Channel."
"The Army is fixing the doors of every armored Humvee in combat in Iraq because they can jam shut during an attack and trap soldiers inside, Pentagon records and interviews show."
"Abandoning the business lobby's traditional resistance to healthcare reform, a new coalition of 36 major companies plans to launch a political campaign today calling for medical insurance to be expanded to everyone along lines Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing for California."
"Some of the most celebrated levee repairs by the Army Corps of Engineers after Hurricane Katrina are already showing signs of serious flaws," one expert says, warning that heavy storms may cause "tear-on-the-dotted-line levees."
Over the past year, as the Afghan government "has sought to counter growing public dissatisfaction, it has tried to impose more controls over the news media. ... Parliament is now considering amendments that the critics warn could undo many of the gains made since the fall of the Taliban."
And finally: Last week, a "top secret memo" posted online from Paul Wolfowitz to World Bank staff warned employees not to visit TradeSports.com, where there is active betting on the likelihood of a Wolfowitz resignation. The respected French daily Le Monde put up a link to the memo -- with the headline "Paul Wolfowitz wants to prevent World Bank employees from betting on his resignation" -- and a translation of the memo. A few hours later, Le Monde posted an "Oops" note on its site after someone pointed out the "memo" was a spoof.
Wrap....
Monday, May 07, 2007
Steal Lincoln's body?!! Yep...new book...
From Happy News.com :
When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it.
As its title implies, ''Stealing Lincoln's Body'' by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, ''the last tremor of life'' left his body.
Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's remains from his tomb in Springfield, Ill., in 1876 — 11 years after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
The plan, hatched in a Chicago tavern, was to take the coffin from the tomb, put it in a wagon, haul it 200 miles north to the Indiana Dunes and hold it until the state of Illinois paid $200,000 ransom to get it back.
[click link below to continue reading]:
http://www.happynews.com/news/572007/book-shows-plot-steal-lincoln-body.htm
Wrap...
When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it.
As its title implies, ''Stealing Lincoln's Body'' by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, ''the last tremor of life'' left his body.
Craughwell details a little-known plot to steal the 16th president's remains from his tomb in Springfield, Ill., in 1876 — 11 years after he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
The plan, hatched in a Chicago tavern, was to take the coffin from the tomb, put it in a wagon, haul it 200 miles north to the Indiana Dunes and hold it until the state of Illinois paid $200,000 ransom to get it back.
[click link below to continue reading]:
http://www.happynews.com/news/572007/book-shows-plot-steal-lincoln-body.htm
Wrap...
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Newspapers, books, Bush/Co and the coral tree...
So...started reading the Sunday papers -- LA Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune -- this morning at breakfast on the patio at Marie's Restaurant. Finished them late this afternoon and then, after some time on this machine answering emails and reading favorite blog and website posts, sat down this eve to read some more of Brad Meltzer's thriller, "The Book of Fate".
Very strange book, that. Has to do with the Masons... Previously, when I thought of Masons, I always thought of those incredible craftsmen who built the wonderful cathedrals of Europe and Great Britan. Trust me...those men are not the ones Meltzer wrote about. This book is set in DC. Political all the way. These Masons are, for lack of a better description, completely off their rockers. But shrewd. Evil. Ugly. Powerful. I'm not liking these people at all. Murderers. Absolute nutters.
They're such bad guys, in fact, that I think I may have to go so far as to cleanse my mind by reading something like a Louie L'Amour western.
Which wouldn't have a prayer of getting my head clean of thoughts of what I've read online and in the newspapers where the Bush/Cheney cabal are running their monstrous ideas into reality.
For instance...I read that Bush is sending Cheney to the Mideast for conversations with the leaders of some of those countries. Given Cheney's thirst for power and blood and money, he might as well take his shotgun with him for all the good that trip will do this nation.
Back to writing. One of the groups in town put a notice online about their next meeting that just drove me up the wall. Special guest coming. OK. Some qualifications about that special guest. So be sure to come and enjoy, right? But they don't name the guest. Cutesy games like that just fry my rear end. Curiosity is supposed to lure me in? Not hardly. Sheesh!
And the worse thing? New neighbors going to move in next door. House has been vacant several months. Yard is badly overgrown. Like a jungle out there...both front and back. However, there in the front yard grew a magnificent coral tree. Could admire it across the back fence just by glancing out the window in my office here. Could track the seasons by watching its leaves and blooms. Looked out the window this morning and it was gone. Just kills my soul. I loved that tree. Ah, well. Such is life.
Wrap...
Very strange book, that. Has to do with the Masons... Previously, when I thought of Masons, I always thought of those incredible craftsmen who built the wonderful cathedrals of Europe and Great Britan. Trust me...those men are not the ones Meltzer wrote about. This book is set in DC. Political all the way. These Masons are, for lack of a better description, completely off their rockers. But shrewd. Evil. Ugly. Powerful. I'm not liking these people at all. Murderers. Absolute nutters.
They're such bad guys, in fact, that I think I may have to go so far as to cleanse my mind by reading something like a Louie L'Amour western.
Which wouldn't have a prayer of getting my head clean of thoughts of what I've read online and in the newspapers where the Bush/Cheney cabal are running their monstrous ideas into reality.
For instance...I read that Bush is sending Cheney to the Mideast for conversations with the leaders of some of those countries. Given Cheney's thirst for power and blood and money, he might as well take his shotgun with him for all the good that trip will do this nation.
Back to writing. One of the groups in town put a notice online about their next meeting that just drove me up the wall. Special guest coming. OK. Some qualifications about that special guest. So be sure to come and enjoy, right? But they don't name the guest. Cutesy games like that just fry my rear end. Curiosity is supposed to lure me in? Not hardly. Sheesh!
And the worse thing? New neighbors going to move in next door. House has been vacant several months. Yard is badly overgrown. Like a jungle out there...both front and back. However, there in the front yard grew a magnificent coral tree. Could admire it across the back fence just by glancing out the window in my office here. Could track the seasons by watching its leaves and blooms. Looked out the window this morning and it was gone. Just kills my soul. I loved that tree. Ah, well. Such is life.
Wrap...
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Google, McCain, Clinton..the pres candidate interviews..
Always surprises me, the things that Google gets involved with. This time they've decided to do videos of interviews, at Google, with presidential candidates. So here are their first two, and they certainly are unlike the normal interviews the media does. Very very worth watching. Enjoy!
McCain's Google appearance: http://tinyurl.com/2u6d54
Clinton's February Google appearance: http://tinyurl.com/355x2d
Wrap...
McCain's Google appearance: http://tinyurl.com/2u6d54
Clinton's February Google appearance: http://tinyurl.com/355x2d
Wrap...
Friday, May 04, 2007
From Rove to Granholm...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
“Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove participated in a hastily called meeting at the White House two months ago” to coach a top Justice Department official on what he should say to Congress about the prosecutorial purge. Investigators are suggesting that Rove’s attendance at the meeting shows that he may have been involved in an attempt to mislead Congress.
Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, made calls to the purged U.S. attorneys telling them to keep quiet about their dismissals. Elston recently told congressional investigators that those calls were placed at McNulty’s direction after he learned the prosecutors might testify before Congress about their dismissals.
Attacks in Iraq involving lethal armor-piercing weapons known as explosively formed projectiles hit a record high last month. “The number of attacks with the projectiles rose to 65 in April, said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.”
“World Bank directors put the finishing touches on their report into the pay raise for Paul Wolfowitz’s companion as the agency’s president blamed 'ambiguous rules' for his involvement in her promotion.”
Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) announced they will propose legislation that would set an expiration date for the original Iraq war authorization on Oct. 11, 2007, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq resolution vote.
President Bush told congressional leaders that he would veto any legislation that weakened federal policies or laws on abortion. “In a two-page letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Mr. Bush said his veto threat would apply to any measures that ‘allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.’”
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne heralds the Center for American Progress’s anti-poverty report issued last week. “The report deserves more attention than it has gotten,” he writes, “not because it breaks new ground but precisely because it brings together some of the most pragmatic ideas on poverty reduction.” Read highlights or the entire report.
Iran’s foreign minister walked out of a dinner of diplomats where he was seated directly across from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, complaining that the female violinist was dressed too revealingly. “I dont know which woman he was afraid of, the woman in the red dress or the secretary of state,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
And finally: “A high school student got a little taste of what it’s like to be Michigan’s governor — and didn’t find it too appealing.” After receiving a cell phone number that once belonged to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Katie Kamar started getting about six calls a day for Granholm. “This experience hasn’t given me any political aspirations,” she said. Granholm called Kamar to apologize for the calls she was receiving and “thanked her because she heard how courteous the young woman was on the phone.”
Wrap...
Think Fast
“Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove participated in a hastily called meeting at the White House two months ago” to coach a top Justice Department official on what he should say to Congress about the prosecutorial purge. Investigators are suggesting that Rove’s attendance at the meeting shows that he may have been involved in an attempt to mislead Congress.
Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, made calls to the purged U.S. attorneys telling them to keep quiet about their dismissals. Elston recently told congressional investigators that those calls were placed at McNulty’s direction after he learned the prosecutors might testify before Congress about their dismissals.
Attacks in Iraq involving lethal armor-piercing weapons known as explosively formed projectiles hit a record high last month. “The number of attacks with the projectiles rose to 65 in April, said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.”
“World Bank directors put the finishing touches on their report into the pay raise for Paul Wolfowitz’s companion as the agency’s president blamed 'ambiguous rules' for his involvement in her promotion.”
Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) announced they will propose legislation that would set an expiration date for the original Iraq war authorization on Oct. 11, 2007, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq resolution vote.
President Bush told congressional leaders that he would veto any legislation that weakened federal policies or laws on abortion. “In a two-page letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Mr. Bush said his veto threat would apply to any measures that ‘allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.’”
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne heralds the Center for American Progress’s anti-poverty report issued last week. “The report deserves more attention than it has gotten,” he writes, “not because it breaks new ground but precisely because it brings together some of the most pragmatic ideas on poverty reduction.” Read highlights or the entire report.
Iran’s foreign minister walked out of a dinner of diplomats where he was seated directly across from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, complaining that the female violinist was dressed too revealingly. “I dont know which woman he was afraid of, the woman in the red dress or the secretary of state,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
And finally: “A high school student got a little taste of what it’s like to be Michigan’s governor — and didn’t find it too appealing.” After receiving a cell phone number that once belonged to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Katie Kamar started getting about six calls a day for Granholm. “This experience hasn’t given me any political aspirations,” she said. Granholm called Kamar to apologize for the calls she was receiving and “thanked her because she heard how courteous the young woman was on the phone.”
Wrap...
Thursday, May 03, 2007
BushCo Aggravating the JPL Scientists...
From Secrecy News:
FEDERAL ID PLAN THREATENS PRIVACY, SAY JPL SCIENTISTS
A Bush Administration plan to require a standardized identification system for federal employees poses "severe threats to the privacy rights of scientists and others,"employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote to Congress last week.
In August 2004, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12, "Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors," which was intended to enhance security by establishing a mandatory, verifiable, and standardized identification system for government personnel.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/hspd-12.html
But the implementation of the Directive is doing more than that, the JPL scientists told Congress."We and our colleagues have found that this order, which is merely intended to establish a common standard of identification for access to federal facilities, is being used to gather extensive personal information about employees, including fingerprints, racial, ethnic, financial and medical information."
"Rigorous proof [of identification] does not require intrusion into the personal lives of federal employees," they wrote onApril 26.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2007/05/hspd12-letter.pdf
Aside from civil liberties concerns, they added, the collection of personal data under HSPD-12 has "a very negative impact on our ability to recruit the very best scientific and engineering talent to address our nation's complex technical needs."
"In the face of such intrusions talented researchers are inclined to take positions elsewhere, where the employers have a modicum of respect for the Constitution."
The four JPL scientists addressed their request for relief to Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.) since "the four of us, like the two of you, hold doctorates in the physical sciences."
Wrap...
FEDERAL ID PLAN THREATENS PRIVACY, SAY JPL SCIENTISTS
A Bush Administration plan to require a standardized identification system for federal employees poses "severe threats to the privacy rights of scientists and others,"employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote to Congress last week.
In August 2004, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12, "Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors," which was intended to enhance security by establishing a mandatory, verifiable, and standardized identification system for government personnel.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/hspd-12.html
But the implementation of the Directive is doing more than that, the JPL scientists told Congress."We and our colleagues have found that this order, which is merely intended to establish a common standard of identification for access to federal facilities, is being used to gather extensive personal information about employees, including fingerprints, racial, ethnic, financial and medical information."
"Rigorous proof [of identification] does not require intrusion into the personal lives of federal employees," they wrote onApril 26.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2007/05/hspd12-letter.pdf
Aside from civil liberties concerns, they added, the collection of personal data under HSPD-12 has "a very negative impact on our ability to recruit the very best scientific and engineering talent to address our nation's complex technical needs."
"In the face of such intrusions talented researchers are inclined to take positions elsewhere, where the employers have a modicum of respect for the Constitution."
The four JPL scientists addressed their request for relief to Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.) since "the four of us, like the two of you, hold doctorates in the physical sciences."
Wrap...
Thillers to films....books and films coming...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
THRILLER:
Christopher Reich's RULES OF DECEPTION, featuring an American doctor whose thrill-seeking personality has propelled him into war zones all over the world with Doctors Without Borders, who finds himself (and his late wife) at the center of a global terrorist conspiracy, for publication in summer 2008, and the sequel RULES OF VENGEANCE, to Stacy Creamer at Doubleday, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (NA).
GENERAL/OTHER:
Carrolly Erickson's untitled novels in the author's ongoing series based on the lives of prominent women in history, to Charles Spicer at St. Martin's, by Russell Galen at Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency (World EnglishTranslation: barorint@aol.comBestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance, Philippa Gregory's THE WHITE QUEEN, for publication in 2010, followed by THE WHITE PRINCESS, and THE RED QUEEN, covering the War of the Roses period, again to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside, and now moving to Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster UK, by Anthony Mason (world).
Founder of the Acumen Fund (a non-profit venture capital firm providing business consulting and seed money to people in developing countries) Jacqueline Novogratz's THE BLUE SWEATER, a coming of age story of a woman and a generation determined to tackle global poverty, offering her story and the stories of entrepreneurs, from unwed mothers in Africa starting a bakery to an ambulance service start-up in India, showing how charity often fails but modest investments in local businesses can make people self-sufficient and change millions of lives, to Carolyn Carlson of Viking, at auction, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world English.)
Ethicist and public health authority Dr. Gregg Bloche's DO NO HARM, bringing us to the front lines of the Iraqi war, to ICU's and prisons and courtrooms to sound the alarm about the growing disconnect between our expectations - to be given every shot at a long healthy life - and the devastating limitations being placed on doctors, to Airie Stuart at Palgrave, in a nice deal, by Eve Bridburg and Todd Shuster at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency (world).
Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent author Lyanda Lynn Haupt's CROW PLANET, at once an invitation to engage with wildlife in our midst and an eye-opening celebration of the most common of birds, crows, to Helen Atsma at Little, Brown, by Elizabeth Wales at Wales Literary Agency (World).
CHILDREN'S/PICTURE BOOK:
The Mistress of Spices author Chitra Divakaruni's GRANDMA AND THE GIANT GOURD: A Bengali Folk Tale, to Neal Porter at Roaring Brook, for publication in spring 2009, by Sandra Dijkstra at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT:
Kelly Link's YA collection, THE WRONG GRAVE AND OTHER STORIES, to Sharyn November at Firebird/Viking Children's, in a pre-empt, by Renee Zuckerbrot at Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency (NA).Two of the stories ("The Wizards of Perfil" and "The Faery Handbag") have been optioned for film. (French rights to Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, to Gilles Dumay of Denoel, by Jenny Meyer on behalf of Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency.)
BIOGRAPHY:
Guggenheim recipient Tracy Daugherty's HIDING MAN, a biography of Donald Barthelme, prominent New Yorker contributor and one of America's heroes of the short story, to Michael Homler at St. Martin's, in a nice deal, by Christina Ward at the Christina Ward Literary Agency (World).
Michelle-Irene Brudny's HANNAH ARENDT: An Intellectual Biography, based on the discovery that Hannah Arendt wrote her masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, years earlier than previously thought - well before WWII and anticipating the horrors of Nazism; also examining the importance of Arendt's American years, including details about her life and her influence on contemporary philosophy, to Valerie Merians at Melville House, in a nice deal, by Grasset (World English).vm@mhpbooks.com
MEMOIR:
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoir, covering the strengths and weaknesses and successes and shortcomings of the Bush presidency "with refreshing candor," providing insider's perspective into the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and more, to Lisa Kaufman at Public Affairs, for publication in spring 2008, by Craig Wiley of the Craig Wiley Agency (world).
Ivan Sanchez's NEXT STOP, about the author's search for identity and escape from chaos in the 80s Bronx where street wars and all-night symphonies of crime were as routine as the Number 4 train, to Sulay Hernandez at Touchstone Fireside, in a nice deal, by Jenoyne Adams at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).TV/film rights optioned to Lee Davis (co-creator/producer), Casper Martinez (executive producer/co-creator), Labid Aziz (executive producer), Luis Guzman (producer) and April Lee Hernandez (producer).
FILM:
Film rights to Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson's KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL, to Columbia Pictures and producer Erwin Stoff, reportedly for mid-six-figure option, against a seven figure pick-up, at auction, by CAA, on behalf of Marly Rusoff & Associates.
John N. Maclean's FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN, a book about wildfire by the son of Norman Maclean, to National Geographic Films, by Jennifer Lyons of Lyons & Pande, in conjunction with Mike Cendejas of the Pleshette Agency.
Wrap...
THRILLER:
Christopher Reich's RULES OF DECEPTION, featuring an American doctor whose thrill-seeking personality has propelled him into war zones all over the world with Doctors Without Borders, who finds himself (and his late wife) at the center of a global terrorist conspiracy, for publication in summer 2008, and the sequel RULES OF VENGEANCE, to Stacy Creamer at Doubleday, by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (NA).
GENERAL/OTHER:
Carrolly Erickson's untitled novels in the author's ongoing series based on the lives of prominent women in history, to Charles Spicer at St. Martin's, by Russell Galen at Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency (World EnglishTranslation: barorint@aol.comBestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance, Philippa Gregory's THE WHITE QUEEN, for publication in 2010, followed by THE WHITE PRINCESS, and THE RED QUEEN, covering the War of the Roses period, again to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside, and now moving to Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster UK, by Anthony Mason (world).
Founder of the Acumen Fund (a non-profit venture capital firm providing business consulting and seed money to people in developing countries) Jacqueline Novogratz's THE BLUE SWEATER, a coming of age story of a woman and a generation determined to tackle global poverty, offering her story and the stories of entrepreneurs, from unwed mothers in Africa starting a bakery to an ambulance service start-up in India, showing how charity often fails but modest investments in local businesses can make people self-sufficient and change millions of lives, to Carolyn Carlson of Viking, at auction, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world English.)
Ethicist and public health authority Dr. Gregg Bloche's DO NO HARM, bringing us to the front lines of the Iraqi war, to ICU's and prisons and courtrooms to sound the alarm about the growing disconnect between our expectations - to be given every shot at a long healthy life - and the devastating limitations being placed on doctors, to Airie Stuart at Palgrave, in a nice deal, by Eve Bridburg and Todd Shuster at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency (world).
Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent author Lyanda Lynn Haupt's CROW PLANET, at once an invitation to engage with wildlife in our midst and an eye-opening celebration of the most common of birds, crows, to Helen Atsma at Little, Brown, by Elizabeth Wales at Wales Literary Agency (World).
CHILDREN'S/PICTURE BOOK:
The Mistress of Spices author Chitra Divakaruni's GRANDMA AND THE GIANT GOURD: A Bengali Folk Tale, to Neal Porter at Roaring Brook, for publication in spring 2009, by Sandra Dijkstra at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT:
Kelly Link's YA collection, THE WRONG GRAVE AND OTHER STORIES, to Sharyn November at Firebird/Viking Children's, in a pre-empt, by Renee Zuckerbrot at Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency (NA).Two of the stories ("The Wizards of Perfil" and "The Faery Handbag") have been optioned for film. (French rights to Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, to Gilles Dumay of Denoel, by Jenny Meyer on behalf of Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency.)
BIOGRAPHY:
Guggenheim recipient Tracy Daugherty's HIDING MAN, a biography of Donald Barthelme, prominent New Yorker contributor and one of America's heroes of the short story, to Michael Homler at St. Martin's, in a nice deal, by Christina Ward at the Christina Ward Literary Agency (World).
Michelle-Irene Brudny's HANNAH ARENDT: An Intellectual Biography, based on the discovery that Hannah Arendt wrote her masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, years earlier than previously thought - well before WWII and anticipating the horrors of Nazism; also examining the importance of Arendt's American years, including details about her life and her influence on contemporary philosophy, to Valerie Merians at Melville House, in a nice deal, by Grasset (World English).vm@mhpbooks.com
MEMOIR:
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoir, covering the strengths and weaknesses and successes and shortcomings of the Bush presidency "with refreshing candor," providing insider's perspective into the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and more, to Lisa Kaufman at Public Affairs, for publication in spring 2008, by Craig Wiley of the Craig Wiley Agency (world).
Ivan Sanchez's NEXT STOP, about the author's search for identity and escape from chaos in the 80s Bronx where street wars and all-night symphonies of crime were as routine as the Number 4 train, to Sulay Hernandez at Touchstone Fireside, in a nice deal, by Jenoyne Adams at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).TV/film rights optioned to Lee Davis (co-creator/producer), Casper Martinez (executive producer/co-creator), Labid Aziz (executive producer), Luis Guzman (producer) and April Lee Hernandez (producer).
FILM:
Film rights to Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson's KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL, to Columbia Pictures and producer Erwin Stoff, reportedly for mid-six-figure option, against a seven figure pick-up, at auction, by CAA, on behalf of Marly Rusoff & Associates.
John N. Maclean's FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN, a book about wildfire by the son of Norman Maclean, to National Geographic Films, by Jennifer Lyons of Lyons & Pande, in conjunction with Mike Cendejas of the Pleshette Agency.
Wrap...
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
DOD: No blogs or emails from military without....
From Secrecy News:
ARMY CLAMPS DOWN WITH NEW OPSEC POLICY
A new U.S. Army regulation on Operations Security (OPSEC)would sharply restrict the ability of soldiers to participate in public life without supervision and authorization from superior officers.The regulation also encourages Army personnel to view attempts by unauthorized persons to gather restricted information as an act of subversion against the United States.
"All Department of the Army personnel and DoD contractors will... consider handling attempts by unauthorized personnel to solicit critical information or sensitive information as a Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the U.S. Army(SAEDA) incident," the regulation states (at section 2-1).
"Sensitive" information is defined here (at section 1-5(c)(3)(e)) to include not just vital details of military operations and technologies but also documents marked "For Official Use Only" (FOUO) that may be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
It follows that inquisitive members of the press or the public who actively pursue such FOUO records may be deemed enemies of the United States. In what seems to be a serious conceptual muddle, the new regulation conflates OPSEC, which is supposed to be a defense against adversaries of the United States, with FOIA restrictions, which regulate public access to government information. As a result, it appears that OPSEC procedures are now to be used to control access to predecisional documents, copyrighted or proprietary material, and other FOIA-exempt records.
A copy of the new regulation, dated April 19 and itself marked For Official Use Only, was obtained by Wired News and is posted here:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/army_reg_530_1_updated.pdf
Taken at face value, the regulation would spell the end of military blogging and would severely curtail military participation in public life. It imposes a non-discretionary pre-publication review requirement, stating that "all Department of the Army personnel... will... consult with their immediate supervisor... prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum." (sec. 2-1).
It was reported by Noah Shachtman in "New Army Rules CouldKill G.I. Blogs (Maybe E-mail, Too)," Danger Room, May 2:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/new_army_rules_.html
The terms of the Army regulation are so expansive as to create innumerable new opportunities for violations and infractions. Just this week, for example, the Army's own 1st Information Operations Command ironically posted a briefing on "OPSEC in the Blogosphere," marked For Official Use Only:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/opsec-blog.pdf
(Thanks, again, to Entropic Memes at www.slugsite.com.)
Wrap...
Wrap...
ARMY CLAMPS DOWN WITH NEW OPSEC POLICY
A new U.S. Army regulation on Operations Security (OPSEC)would sharply restrict the ability of soldiers to participate in public life without supervision and authorization from superior officers.The regulation also encourages Army personnel to view attempts by unauthorized persons to gather restricted information as an act of subversion against the United States.
"All Department of the Army personnel and DoD contractors will... consider handling attempts by unauthorized personnel to solicit critical information or sensitive information as a Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the U.S. Army(SAEDA) incident," the regulation states (at section 2-1).
"Sensitive" information is defined here (at section 1-5(c)(3)(e)) to include not just vital details of military operations and technologies but also documents marked "For Official Use Only" (FOUO) that may be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
It follows that inquisitive members of the press or the public who actively pursue such FOUO records may be deemed enemies of the United States. In what seems to be a serious conceptual muddle, the new regulation conflates OPSEC, which is supposed to be a defense against adversaries of the United States, with FOIA restrictions, which regulate public access to government information. As a result, it appears that OPSEC procedures are now to be used to control access to predecisional documents, copyrighted or proprietary material, and other FOIA-exempt records.
A copy of the new regulation, dated April 19 and itself marked For Official Use Only, was obtained by Wired News and is posted here:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/army_reg_530_1_updated.pdf
Taken at face value, the regulation would spell the end of military blogging and would severely curtail military participation in public life. It imposes a non-discretionary pre-publication review requirement, stating that "all Department of the Army personnel... will... consult with their immediate supervisor... prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum." (sec. 2-1).
It was reported by Noah Shachtman in "New Army Rules CouldKill G.I. Blogs (Maybe E-mail, Too)," Danger Room, May 2:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/new_army_rules_.html
The terms of the Army regulation are so expansive as to create innumerable new opportunities for violations and infractions. Just this week, for example, the Army's own 1st Information Operations Command ironically posted a briefing on "OPSEC in the Blogosphere," marked For Official Use Only:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/opsec-blog.pdf
(Thanks, again, to Entropic Memes at www.slugsite.com.)
Wrap...
Wrap...
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Boehner & Leiberman...bullshit artists..Whine on...
From American Progress:
CONGRESS -- LIEBERMAN: 'BLOGGERS HAVE ADDED ANOTHER DIMENSION OF VITUPERATION TOXICITY' TO POLITICS:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) led a panel discussion yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute discussing "options for restoring civility in American politics."
Lieberman and Boehner both decried the harsh incivility in politics today while portraying themselves as paragons of independence and cordiality. Lieberman described his own politics as "stand[ing] up for what I believe is right and...work[ing] across party lines to get things done."
As for the rest of politics, "The majority of people are sick of it. They think our political system is sick." Lieberman blamed "attack ads, the kind of divisiveness of the cable news coverage of politics, talk radio," and bloggers who "have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity to it."
Boehner agreed, saying he has worked to "find ways of disagreeing without being disagreeable." He asked, "Where does all the partisanship come from?" and answered it by lamenting how blogs and other outlets have put "more information out in the public realm than there ever was, and some of it is to drive one point of versus other, dividing people more and more." He called this the "breakdown of America" (See the video HERE).
Iraq, more than any other issue, has contributed to the divisiveness in politics today. And on that issue, Lieberman and Boehner have acquiesced to a failing, unpopular Bush policy while harshly demeaning those who seek to change it.
Just this month, Lieberman stated that critics of President Bush's Iraq policy were engaging in "a kind of harassment."
Boehner said that people who oppose escalation are taking the "bait" of "al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers" by using Iraq to "divide us here at home" and derided critics' war policies as simply "failure at any cost."
Wrap...
CONGRESS -- LIEBERMAN: 'BLOGGERS HAVE ADDED ANOTHER DIMENSION OF VITUPERATION TOXICITY' TO POLITICS:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) led a panel discussion yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute discussing "options for restoring civility in American politics."
Lieberman and Boehner both decried the harsh incivility in politics today while portraying themselves as paragons of independence and cordiality. Lieberman described his own politics as "stand[ing] up for what I believe is right and...work[ing] across party lines to get things done."
As for the rest of politics, "The majority of people are sick of it. They think our political system is sick." Lieberman blamed "attack ads, the kind of divisiveness of the cable news coverage of politics, talk radio," and bloggers who "have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity to it."
Boehner agreed, saying he has worked to "find ways of disagreeing without being disagreeable." He asked, "Where does all the partisanship come from?" and answered it by lamenting how blogs and other outlets have put "more information out in the public realm than there ever was, and some of it is to drive one point of versus other, dividing people more and more." He called this the "breakdown of America" (See the video HERE).
Iraq, more than any other issue, has contributed to the divisiveness in politics today. And on that issue, Lieberman and Boehner have acquiesced to a failing, unpopular Bush policy while harshly demeaning those who seek to change it.
Just this month, Lieberman stated that critics of President Bush's Iraq policy were engaging in "a kind of harassment."
Boehner said that people who oppose escalation are taking the "bait" of "al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers" by using Iraq to "divide us here at home" and derided critics' war policies as simply "failure at any cost."
Wrap...
Forget Electoral College...1 person...1 vote...Do it!
From TomPaine.com :
One Person, One Vote, Really
Jamie Raskin
May 01, 2007
Jamie Raskin is a Maryland state senator and a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law. He introduced the legislation that made Maryland the first state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Sometimes it is said that the president is the only official in America that the whole nation elects. But this is wrong. In picking the president, we act through the filter of 51 separate elections in which presidential electors are appointed on a winner-take-all basis in all states but two, Maine and Nebraska, which each award two electors statewide and the others by congressional district. In this fragmented system, the goal of presidential candidates is not to win a majority vote in the nation but to stitch together enough states and districts to accumulate 270 presidential electors regardless of the national popular will.
In practice, this patchwork regime quickly reduces the competitive election to a small minority of states. Most Americans live in the 34 states where our Electoral College votes are safely taken for granted by one major party or the other. I live in Maryland, which is safely blue. My brother and older sister live in Virginia, safely red. My younger sister is in Washington, D.C., which is blue. I have family and close friends in New York (blue), Texas (red), Connecticut (blue), Mississippi (red), Massachusetts (blue), Utah (red), California (blue), Alaska (red), Hawaii (blue) and South Dakota (red). The dominant party wastes no money on seeking votes in these states and the weaker party considers it a lost cause and won’t spend a dime either.
The presidential campaign planes fly over all of us in red and blue America in search of “swing voters” in the dwindling set of “swing states.” Fully 99 percent of presidential campaign funding in the last two cycles went to move voters in a mere 16 states, and two-thirds of the money was poured into five states. The majority of Americans have become long-distance spectators to the exciting action in the battleground states where issues are debated and campaign ads air. We watch as the candidates, the campaign staff and the media bear down on Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and a handful of others states blessed with closely divided electorates. Voter turn-out in the general election sometimes approaches 70 percent in the swing states but hovers in the mid-50s in demoralized spectator states, driving our national turn-out rates down to among the lowest on earth.
Through the lens of political democracy and majority rule, this system is an accident waiting to happen again and again. The 2000 presidential election, a dramatic turning point in American history, propelled the national popular vote loser to the White House for the fourth time in our history. Vice President Al Gore, the winner of the national popular vote by more than 540,000 ballots, was denied office because his opponent tortured out of Florida’s contaminated electoral process a 527-vote victory and all of the state’s 25 electors. Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, removed more than 17,000 voters from the rolls, falsely accusing them of being felons, and a 5-4 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that 175,000 “undercount” ballots not be counted at all. Partisan mischief and manipulation of the Electoral College—which one of my students called “the biggest party school in America”—made the South solid for George W. Bush and thwarted the national political will. The 537 votes in Florida’s dubious majority for Bush were worth far more than the 540,000-vote majority Gore assembled nationally.
Public opinion polls have long shown that upwards of 65 percent of Americans favor a direct national popular vote for president in which all of our votes count equally. The puzzle has been how to reconcile a national popular election with the antique mechanics of the Electoral College, which Thomas Jefferson called “the most dangerous blot on our Constitution.”
But now the state of Maryland has taken a bold and creative step to show how it can be done. On April 10, 2007, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a plan to have Maryland enter and launch an interstate compact in which all member states agree to cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of the national popular vote. The agreement takes effect when it is enacted by a number of states representing a majority of electoral votes (270).
The National Popular Vote plan rests on the powers that states have to create interstate compacts and to appoint electors. Article II, Section I provides: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” This power has been deployed by legislatures in different ways. When the nation began, the legislatures mostly named Electors directly and they operated as a deliberative body and voted their consciences. In 1800, for example, Maryland saw seven of its electors vote for Adams and four for Jefferson. When states began in the last century to award their electors in winner-take-all fashion based on a statewide popular vote, smaller states complained that this newfangled “unit” bloc voting diluted the power of small states (and they were right). They sued. In the aptly named Delaware v. New York in 1966, the Supreme Court rejected this challenge and emphasized that the states’ power to award electors may be exercised in any manner they see fit. The power is “plenary.”
Thus, from California to New York, from Texas to Utah, our legislatures—led by the spectator states--can now unite to give America something we have promoted for the rest of the world but never achieved ourselves: a truly national election for president based on principles of majority rule, one person-one vote and all votes counting equally. Such an election will revitalize our democracy by emancipating and energizing tens of millions of currently superfluous voters. It will also provide a fitting end to the long assault on America’s democratic values that began with the toxic election of 2000.
Revised 3:10 p.m. for minor corrections.
Wrap...
One Person, One Vote, Really
Jamie Raskin
May 01, 2007
Jamie Raskin is a Maryland state senator and a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law. He introduced the legislation that made Maryland the first state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Sometimes it is said that the president is the only official in America that the whole nation elects. But this is wrong. In picking the president, we act through the filter of 51 separate elections in which presidential electors are appointed on a winner-take-all basis in all states but two, Maine and Nebraska, which each award two electors statewide and the others by congressional district. In this fragmented system, the goal of presidential candidates is not to win a majority vote in the nation but to stitch together enough states and districts to accumulate 270 presidential electors regardless of the national popular will.
In practice, this patchwork regime quickly reduces the competitive election to a small minority of states. Most Americans live in the 34 states where our Electoral College votes are safely taken for granted by one major party or the other. I live in Maryland, which is safely blue. My brother and older sister live in Virginia, safely red. My younger sister is in Washington, D.C., which is blue. I have family and close friends in New York (blue), Texas (red), Connecticut (blue), Mississippi (red), Massachusetts (blue), Utah (red), California (blue), Alaska (red), Hawaii (blue) and South Dakota (red). The dominant party wastes no money on seeking votes in these states and the weaker party considers it a lost cause and won’t spend a dime either.
The presidential campaign planes fly over all of us in red and blue America in search of “swing voters” in the dwindling set of “swing states.” Fully 99 percent of presidential campaign funding in the last two cycles went to move voters in a mere 16 states, and two-thirds of the money was poured into five states. The majority of Americans have become long-distance spectators to the exciting action in the battleground states where issues are debated and campaign ads air. We watch as the candidates, the campaign staff and the media bear down on Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and a handful of others states blessed with closely divided electorates. Voter turn-out in the general election sometimes approaches 70 percent in the swing states but hovers in the mid-50s in demoralized spectator states, driving our national turn-out rates down to among the lowest on earth.
Through the lens of political democracy and majority rule, this system is an accident waiting to happen again and again. The 2000 presidential election, a dramatic turning point in American history, propelled the national popular vote loser to the White House for the fourth time in our history. Vice President Al Gore, the winner of the national popular vote by more than 540,000 ballots, was denied office because his opponent tortured out of Florida’s contaminated electoral process a 527-vote victory and all of the state’s 25 electors. Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, removed more than 17,000 voters from the rolls, falsely accusing them of being felons, and a 5-4 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that 175,000 “undercount” ballots not be counted at all. Partisan mischief and manipulation of the Electoral College—which one of my students called “the biggest party school in America”—made the South solid for George W. Bush and thwarted the national political will. The 537 votes in Florida’s dubious majority for Bush were worth far more than the 540,000-vote majority Gore assembled nationally.
Public opinion polls have long shown that upwards of 65 percent of Americans favor a direct national popular vote for president in which all of our votes count equally. The puzzle has been how to reconcile a national popular election with the antique mechanics of the Electoral College, which Thomas Jefferson called “the most dangerous blot on our Constitution.”
But now the state of Maryland has taken a bold and creative step to show how it can be done. On April 10, 2007, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a plan to have Maryland enter and launch an interstate compact in which all member states agree to cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of the national popular vote. The agreement takes effect when it is enacted by a number of states representing a majority of electoral votes (270).
The National Popular Vote plan rests on the powers that states have to create interstate compacts and to appoint electors. Article II, Section I provides: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” This power has been deployed by legislatures in different ways. When the nation began, the legislatures mostly named Electors directly and they operated as a deliberative body and voted their consciences. In 1800, for example, Maryland saw seven of its electors vote for Adams and four for Jefferson. When states began in the last century to award their electors in winner-take-all fashion based on a statewide popular vote, smaller states complained that this newfangled “unit” bloc voting diluted the power of small states (and they were right). They sued. In the aptly named Delaware v. New York in 1966, the Supreme Court rejected this challenge and emphasized that the states’ power to award electors may be exercised in any manner they see fit. The power is “plenary.”
Thus, from California to New York, from Texas to Utah, our legislatures—led by the spectator states--can now unite to give America something we have promoted for the rest of the world but never achieved ourselves: a truly national election for president based on principles of majority rule, one person-one vote and all votes counting equally. Such an election will revitalize our democracy by emancipating and energizing tens of millions of currently superfluous voters. It will also provide a fitting end to the long assault on America’s democratic values that began with the toxic election of 2000.
Revised 3:10 p.m. for minor corrections.
Wrap...
Monday, April 30, 2007
Dead in Iraq to Clinton sunglasses...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
"Five U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks in the capital this weekend, including three in a single roadside bombing, the military said Monday, pushing the death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year."
"President Bush will not sign any war spending bill that penalizes Iraq's government" for failing to meet the benchmarks that his own administration has set, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday, "a fresh warning to Congress about challenging him."
A department of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's office is "playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias."
A U.S.-led raid Sunday on a suspected insurgent cell in Afghanistan left as many as six Afghans dead, including a woman and a teenage girl, and sparked protests by hundreds of angry Afghans chanting, "Death to Bush!" One resident said, "We are not the enemy. We are not al-Qaeda. Why are they attacking us?"
The New York City Bar, one of the largest lawyers' organizations in the country, charges that the Bush administration is "trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers for the trouble." The association's criticism comes as the administration is proposing limiting attorneys' access to detainees.
House energy committee chairman John Dingell (D-MI) has written the Environmental Protection Agency demanding to know why Bill Roderick, the acting attorney general, "launched a plan back in June to cut 60 of his 360 employees -- especially auditors, criminal investigators and the like -- via buyouts or resignations." Around the same time, Roderick received a raise exceeding $15,000.
Women online are increasingly harrassed in "sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere. ... A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males."
"Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested," and police were "much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere," a federal study shows.
"Tucked inside Frank Rich's Sunday column in the New York Times is indication that the newspaper will no longer play ball with the annual White House Correspondents Association dinners in Washington, which he calls 'a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era.' He writes that the event 'illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows.'"
And finally: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) "turned some heads" last week at a briefing when she wore "dark, oversized shades, even though the classified meeting took place very much indoors." Clinton's spokesman said that she didn't have her regular prescription glasses with her, so she used the sunglasses. "Which is a lot better than the rose-colored glasses the Bush administration puts on whenever they look at their failed policy in Iraq," he added.
Wrap...
Think Fast
"Five U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks in the capital this weekend, including three in a single roadside bombing, the military said Monday, pushing the death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year."
"President Bush will not sign any war spending bill that penalizes Iraq's government" for failing to meet the benchmarks that his own administration has set, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday, "a fresh warning to Congress about challenging him."
A department of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's office is "playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias."
A U.S.-led raid Sunday on a suspected insurgent cell in Afghanistan left as many as six Afghans dead, including a woman and a teenage girl, and sparked protests by hundreds of angry Afghans chanting, "Death to Bush!" One resident said, "We are not the enemy. We are not al-Qaeda. Why are they attacking us?"
The New York City Bar, one of the largest lawyers' organizations in the country, charges that the Bush administration is "trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers for the trouble." The association's criticism comes as the administration is proposing limiting attorneys' access to detainees.
House energy committee chairman John Dingell (D-MI) has written the Environmental Protection Agency demanding to know why Bill Roderick, the acting attorney general, "launched a plan back in June to cut 60 of his 360 employees -- especially auditors, criminal investigators and the like -- via buyouts or resignations." Around the same time, Roderick received a raise exceeding $15,000.
Women online are increasingly harrassed in "sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere. ... A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males."
"Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested," and police were "much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere," a federal study shows.
"Tucked inside Frank Rich's Sunday column in the New York Times is indication that the newspaper will no longer play ball with the annual White House Correspondents Association dinners in Washington, which he calls 'a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era.' He writes that the event 'illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows.'"
And finally: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) "turned some heads" last week at a briefing when she wore "dark, oversized shades, even though the classified meeting took place very much indoors." Clinton's spokesman said that she didn't have her regular prescription glasses with her, so she used the sunglasses. "Which is a lot better than the rose-colored glasses the Bush administration puts on whenever they look at their failed policy in Iraq," he added.
Wrap...
SpecOps...out there somewhere....
From Secrecy News:
SPECIAL OPERATIONS: 2007 POSTURE STATEMENT
Across the globe from Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa to Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, U.S. Special OperationsForces are deployed to conduct unconventional warfare, psychological operations, and other activities in supportof U.S. military and foreign policy objectives.
In Fiscal Year 2007, U.S. Special Operations Command has total authorized manpower of 47,911 persons, according to a new SOCOM posture statement, which provides an overview of special operations capabilities and missions.
See "U.S. SOCOM: Posture Statement 2007," April 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/socom/posture2007.pdf
Wrap....
SPECIAL OPERATIONS: 2007 POSTURE STATEMENT
Across the globe from Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa to Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, U.S. Special OperationsForces are deployed to conduct unconventional warfare, psychological operations, and other activities in supportof U.S. military and foreign policy objectives.
In Fiscal Year 2007, U.S. Special Operations Command has total authorized manpower of 47,911 persons, according to a new SOCOM posture statement, which provides an overview of special operations capabilities and missions.
See "U.S. SOCOM: Posture Statement 2007," April 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/socom/posture2007.pdf
Wrap....
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Carl Bernstein overcomes years-long writers' block to do unauthorized Hillary book...
From TimesOnline.co.uk:
April 29, 2007
Watergate reporter Bernstein takes apart Hillary’s career story
Sarah Baxter
Washington
Drawing on a trove of private papers from Hillary Clinton’s best friend, the legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein is to publish a hard-hitting and intimate portrait of the 2008 presidential candidate, which will reveal a number of “discrepancies” in her official story.
Bernstein, who was played by Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men, has spent eight years researching the unauthorised 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Bernstein reaches conclusions that stand in opposition to what Senator Clinton has said in the past and has written in the past,” said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, which publishes the book on June 19.
With the thoroughness for which he is famous, Bernstein spoke to more than 200 of Clinton’s friends, colleagues and adversaries. He stops short of accusing the New York senator of blatantly lying about her past, but has unearthed examples of where she has played fast and loose with the facts about her “personal and political life”, according to Knopf.
The book could revive the explosive charge, made earlier this year by David Geffen, a former Clinton donor and Hollywood mogul, that “the Clintons lie with such ease, it’s troubling”.
Clinton remains the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, but Barack Obama, who is keeping pace with her fundraising juggernaut, is closing the gap in the polls.
The Sunday Times has learnt that Bernstein has been given unprecedented access to the private papers of Diane Blair, Clinton’s closest friend and confidante, who died of lung cancer aged 61 in 2000. The collection is still being sorted at the University of Arkansas library and is not yet available to the public.
Bernstein has been delving through Blair’s copious records of the 1992 presidential election campaign, which could offer tantalising insight into Bill Clinton’s war machine and Hillary’s reaction to news of her husband’s dalliance with the nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers in Arkansas.
Hillary denied all knowledge of the affair, but one writer who has followed her career closely said: “She always knew about her.” He added: “Anyone who has approached the subject of Hillary Clinton with a clear eye will run across many examples of stories that are not true.”
Blair, a professor of political science, crisscrossed the country with the Clintons in 1992, serving as a senior adviser and semiofficial historian of the campaign. She became friends with Hillary in the political backwater of Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1970s, when the two East Coast-educated power women sought each other out as soulmates.
Hillary went on to serve as “best person” at her friend’s marriage to Jim Blair, who had a walk-on part in the scandals of the Clinton White House when it emerged he had helped the former first lady make $100,000 in cattle futures.
Joe Klein, the bestselling author of Primary Colors, recounted how Blair once witnessed a blazing row between Bill and Hillary Clinton. “They were really, really angry with each other,” she told him. “And then suddenly, the president took her in his arms and began kissing her all over her face and he said, ‘God, what would I do without you?’ I felt kind of embarrassed being there.”
When Blair was diagnosed with lung cancer, Clinton was running for the Senate in New York. In her memoir, Living History, she writes about seeing her friend for the last time in an Arkansas hospice. “She pressed my hand tightly and whispered to me, ‘Don’t ever give up on yourself and what you believe in. Take care of Bill and Chelsea. They need you. And win this election for me’.”
Bernstein is known as a liberal Democrat who fiercely opposes the war in Iraq and is likely to be critical of Clinton’s Senate vote to authorise the war. His marriage to Nora Ephron, the screen-writer, broke up when he had an affair with Baroness Jay, the daughter of former prime minister James Callaghan.
For years Bernstein suffered from writer’s block, but Knopf is promoting his biography as a triumphant return to form. Publisher Sonny Mehta said his portrait would “show us, for the first time, the true trajectory of Hillary Clinton’s life and career”. It will be published simultaneously in Britain by Hutchinson.
According to the publishers, it will cover everything from Clinton’s “complex relationship with her disciplinarian father” to “her courtship with Bill Clinton and the amazing dynamic of their marriage, during the most trying of circumstances”.
[click link to continue reading]:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1719879.ece
Wrap...
April 29, 2007
Watergate reporter Bernstein takes apart Hillary’s career story
Sarah Baxter
Washington
Drawing on a trove of private papers from Hillary Clinton’s best friend, the legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein is to publish a hard-hitting and intimate portrait of the 2008 presidential candidate, which will reveal a number of “discrepancies” in her official story.
Bernstein, who was played by Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men, has spent eight years researching the unauthorised 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Bernstein reaches conclusions that stand in opposition to what Senator Clinton has said in the past and has written in the past,” said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, which publishes the book on June 19.
With the thoroughness for which he is famous, Bernstein spoke to more than 200 of Clinton’s friends, colleagues and adversaries. He stops short of accusing the New York senator of blatantly lying about her past, but has unearthed examples of where she has played fast and loose with the facts about her “personal and political life”, according to Knopf.
The book could revive the explosive charge, made earlier this year by David Geffen, a former Clinton donor and Hollywood mogul, that “the Clintons lie with such ease, it’s troubling”.
Clinton remains the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, but Barack Obama, who is keeping pace with her fundraising juggernaut, is closing the gap in the polls.
The Sunday Times has learnt that Bernstein has been given unprecedented access to the private papers of Diane Blair, Clinton’s closest friend and confidante, who died of lung cancer aged 61 in 2000. The collection is still being sorted at the University of Arkansas library and is not yet available to the public.
Bernstein has been delving through Blair’s copious records of the 1992 presidential election campaign, which could offer tantalising insight into Bill Clinton’s war machine and Hillary’s reaction to news of her husband’s dalliance with the nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers in Arkansas.
Hillary denied all knowledge of the affair, but one writer who has followed her career closely said: “She always knew about her.” He added: “Anyone who has approached the subject of Hillary Clinton with a clear eye will run across many examples of stories that are not true.”
Blair, a professor of political science, crisscrossed the country with the Clintons in 1992, serving as a senior adviser and semiofficial historian of the campaign. She became friends with Hillary in the political backwater of Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1970s, when the two East Coast-educated power women sought each other out as soulmates.
Hillary went on to serve as “best person” at her friend’s marriage to Jim Blair, who had a walk-on part in the scandals of the Clinton White House when it emerged he had helped the former first lady make $100,000 in cattle futures.
Joe Klein, the bestselling author of Primary Colors, recounted how Blair once witnessed a blazing row between Bill and Hillary Clinton. “They were really, really angry with each other,” she told him. “And then suddenly, the president took her in his arms and began kissing her all over her face and he said, ‘God, what would I do without you?’ I felt kind of embarrassed being there.”
When Blair was diagnosed with lung cancer, Clinton was running for the Senate in New York. In her memoir, Living History, she writes about seeing her friend for the last time in an Arkansas hospice. “She pressed my hand tightly and whispered to me, ‘Don’t ever give up on yourself and what you believe in. Take care of Bill and Chelsea. They need you. And win this election for me’.”
Bernstein is known as a liberal Democrat who fiercely opposes the war in Iraq and is likely to be critical of Clinton’s Senate vote to authorise the war. His marriage to Nora Ephron, the screen-writer, broke up when he had an affair with Baroness Jay, the daughter of former prime minister James Callaghan.
For years Bernstein suffered from writer’s block, but Knopf is promoting his biography as a triumphant return to form. Publisher Sonny Mehta said his portrait would “show us, for the first time, the true trajectory of Hillary Clinton’s life and career”. It will be published simultaneously in Britain by Hutchinson.
According to the publishers, it will cover everything from Clinton’s “complex relationship with her disciplinarian father” to “her courtship with Bill Clinton and the amazing dynamic of their marriage, during the most trying of circumstances”.
[click link to continue reading]:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1719879.ece
Wrap...
Former CIA author, T.J. Waters interviewed...
From USA Today:
PUBLISHING INTEREST
Current or former spies are submitting an increasingly large amount of material for approval by the CIA's Publications Review Board. Manuscripts submitted have ranged from three-paragraph letters to the editor to 500-page books. A look at the trend:
• 1980: Fewer than 100 manuscripts totaling about 10,000 pages.
• 2000: About 300 manuscripts totaling about 15,000 pages.
• 2004: More than 450 manuscripts totaling about 30,000 pages.
• 2007: About 100 manuscripts a month to date totaling thousands of pages each month.
Source: CIA
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
LANGLEY, Va. — The spies are coming in from the cold — and heading straight to Amazon.com.
A record number of former CIA officers and officials are stepping from the shadows to publish memoirs, novels, essays, training manuals, legal treatises and op-ed pieces, according the agency's Publications Review Board.
Former CIA director George Tenet, whose 576-page memoir At the Center of the Storm hits bookstores Monday, is only the most recent.
The Central Intelligence Agency says it hears from about 100 would-be authors each month seeking the permission — a requirement for all former spy agency workers. For the entire year 2000, the agency's Publications Review Board received only about 300 submissions from prospective authors, says spokesman Mark Mansfield.
The spike has strained the resources of the review board, an in-house body of CIA employees from the agency's operations, analysis, science and technology, security and global deployment sections. Board members, Mansfield says, now are obliged to sift through thousands of manuscript pages each month to edit out material that reveals, or is based on, classified information.
Even Tenet, who served as the agency's director from 1997 to 2004, was required to submit his book for review.
The board red-flagged some sensitive material and engaged in what agency spokesman Mansfield calls "back and forth" with Tenet over whether it should be considered classified. Tenet, who submitted portions of his manuscript last October, November and December, didn't get final approval for At the Center of the Storm until mid-March, after agreeing to cuts requested by the agency.
Increasingly, CIA alumni unhappy with the agency's editing are taking their complaints to court, saying some material has been censored because it embarrasses the CIA.
"Classified material is kind of a gray area," says Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who has represented about a dozen former CIA employees who have sued to undo changes made in their books.
"The CIA says they know it when they see it. But as a matter of fact and policy, they tend to see it in cases where (a book) is critical or embarrassing to them," Zaid says.
Mansfield says the agency's only goal is to "ensure that classified information (is) protected."
Employees at other intelligence agencies — the Defense and Energy departments, and the National Security Agency — have written accounts of their service. But it's CIA books that dominate the market. Based on pre-publication orders, Tenet's book ranked number 4 overall in sales Sunday on Amazon.com.
Memoirs, general histories and spy novels based on the exploits of fictional CIA officers form the most popular titles written by former agency workers. But increasingly, notes publishing executive Peter Osnos, ex-spies with highly specialized areas of expertise are finding market niches.
In the past four years, readers have been treated to two examinations of the CIA's lie detector program and a study of the agency's post-9/11 recruiting and training methods.
Osnos attributes the increase in CIA books to the war on terrorism, a perennial interest in spy stories and the willingness of modern espionage agents to spy-and-tell. "For the post-World War II generation (of spies), they thought they were entering a secret society," says Osnos. "That's not the culture of today's CIA people. It's a career and a job but it's not a priestly calling."
T.J. Waters, author of Class 11, a book on the agency's first post 9/11 recruit class, says intelligence work, which can involve extensive reading and writing, tends to attract budding authors. When he joined the CIA as a covert officer shortly after the 2001 attacks Waters found the agency even had its own in-house writer's support group.
It's called "Invisible Ink."
"There's an immense amount of pride that (CIA) people take in their work, which is often overlooked or misunderstood," says Waters, who has left the agency and now works as a consultant. "There's a feeling that to the extent possible, their stories ought to be told."
Sometimes, that's easier said than done.
[click link to continue reading:]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-29-spy-books_N.htm?csp=34
Wrap...
PUBLISHING INTEREST
Current or former spies are submitting an increasingly large amount of material for approval by the CIA's Publications Review Board. Manuscripts submitted have ranged from three-paragraph letters to the editor to 500-page books. A look at the trend:
• 1980: Fewer than 100 manuscripts totaling about 10,000 pages.
• 2000: About 300 manuscripts totaling about 15,000 pages.
• 2004: More than 450 manuscripts totaling about 30,000 pages.
• 2007: About 100 manuscripts a month to date totaling thousands of pages each month.
Source: CIA
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
LANGLEY, Va. — The spies are coming in from the cold — and heading straight to Amazon.com.
A record number of former CIA officers and officials are stepping from the shadows to publish memoirs, novels, essays, training manuals, legal treatises and op-ed pieces, according the agency's Publications Review Board.
Former CIA director George Tenet, whose 576-page memoir At the Center of the Storm hits bookstores Monday, is only the most recent.
The Central Intelligence Agency says it hears from about 100 would-be authors each month seeking the permission — a requirement for all former spy agency workers. For the entire year 2000, the agency's Publications Review Board received only about 300 submissions from prospective authors, says spokesman Mark Mansfield.
The spike has strained the resources of the review board, an in-house body of CIA employees from the agency's operations, analysis, science and technology, security and global deployment sections. Board members, Mansfield says, now are obliged to sift through thousands of manuscript pages each month to edit out material that reveals, or is based on, classified information.
Even Tenet, who served as the agency's director from 1997 to 2004, was required to submit his book for review.
The board red-flagged some sensitive material and engaged in what agency spokesman Mansfield calls "back and forth" with Tenet over whether it should be considered classified. Tenet, who submitted portions of his manuscript last October, November and December, didn't get final approval for At the Center of the Storm until mid-March, after agreeing to cuts requested by the agency.
Increasingly, CIA alumni unhappy with the agency's editing are taking their complaints to court, saying some material has been censored because it embarrasses the CIA.
"Classified material is kind of a gray area," says Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who has represented about a dozen former CIA employees who have sued to undo changes made in their books.
"The CIA says they know it when they see it. But as a matter of fact and policy, they tend to see it in cases where (a book) is critical or embarrassing to them," Zaid says.
Mansfield says the agency's only goal is to "ensure that classified information (is) protected."
Employees at other intelligence agencies — the Defense and Energy departments, and the National Security Agency — have written accounts of their service. But it's CIA books that dominate the market. Based on pre-publication orders, Tenet's book ranked number 4 overall in sales Sunday on Amazon.com.
Memoirs, general histories and spy novels based on the exploits of fictional CIA officers form the most popular titles written by former agency workers. But increasingly, notes publishing executive Peter Osnos, ex-spies with highly specialized areas of expertise are finding market niches.
In the past four years, readers have been treated to two examinations of the CIA's lie detector program and a study of the agency's post-9/11 recruiting and training methods.
Osnos attributes the increase in CIA books to the war on terrorism, a perennial interest in spy stories and the willingness of modern espionage agents to spy-and-tell. "For the post-World War II generation (of spies), they thought they were entering a secret society," says Osnos. "That's not the culture of today's CIA people. It's a career and a job but it's not a priestly calling."
T.J. Waters, author of Class 11, a book on the agency's first post 9/11 recruit class, says intelligence work, which can involve extensive reading and writing, tends to attract budding authors. When he joined the CIA as a covert officer shortly after the 2001 attacks Waters found the agency even had its own in-house writer's support group.
It's called "Invisible Ink."
"There's an immense amount of pride that (CIA) people take in their work, which is often overlooked or misunderstood," says Waters, who has left the agency and now works as a consultant. "There's a feeling that to the extent possible, their stories ought to be told."
Sometimes, that's easier said than done.
[click link to continue reading:]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-29-spy-books_N.htm?csp=34
Wrap...
Spinning stories about Dems...
From David Sirota:
Beware of High Broderism Outbreaks In Your State
I am just back from my weekend vacation in Montana's Paradise Valley. Unfortunately, my mental break ended before I actually got home. Over breakfast in pristine Pray, Montana (you Montana readers likely know exactly where I was lucky enough to be), I read the lead political story which is running statewide in Montana and was reminded how quick reporters writing on deadline are to blame Democrats for the downfall of the world anytime Democrats actually behave in a way that contradicts the media's false archetypes of the two parties. This may be an update to my Montana-specific story earlier this week, but there's no doubt anyone who reads anything about politics in their own state knows this kind of ramrodding of stories into a set, inaccurate frame happens all the time everywhere - and it must be exposed whenever it occurs.
To see the full post, go to:
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/04/beware_of_high_broderism_outbr.html
Wrap....
Beware of High Broderism Outbreaks In Your State
I am just back from my weekend vacation in Montana's Paradise Valley. Unfortunately, my mental break ended before I actually got home. Over breakfast in pristine Pray, Montana (you Montana readers likely know exactly where I was lucky enough to be), I read the lead political story which is running statewide in Montana and was reminded how quick reporters writing on deadline are to blame Democrats for the downfall of the world anytime Democrats actually behave in a way that contradicts the media's false archetypes of the two parties. This may be an update to my Montana-specific story earlier this week, but there's no doubt anyone who reads anything about politics in their own state knows this kind of ramrodding of stories into a set, inaccurate frame happens all the time everywhere - and it must be exposed whenever it occurs.
To see the full post, go to:
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/04/beware_of_high_broderism_outbr.html
Wrap....
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Why Hillary voted for the Resolution on Iraq war...
People keep asking Sen Clinton to say she regrets voting to give Bush the authority to bypass Congress and attack Iraq. Well here, in this entry from the Congressional Record are her reasons. If you don't read anything else today, read this:
From http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/
http://authforce.liberatedtext.org/021010/cr10oc02-70_01.html
Wrap....
From http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/
http://authforce.liberatedtext.org/021010/cr10oc02-70_01.html
Wrap....
CA Dem Conv in San Diego...began yesterday...
So I'm reading the LA Times and the SD Union-Trib at breakfast on Marie's patio this morning, looking for news about what occured at the Dem Conv yesterday...Friday...when it began.
NOTHING...not one word in the LA Times. Just a very small article on an inside page of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper...and for everyone with a computer, they'll be doing a blog. Right. Take a look at what they consider a running blog of events:
http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/ut_polblog/index.html
Went from there to KUSI-TV news online. At least they have a video report...from yesterday. Take a look at http://www.kusi.com/
Additionally, there are a reported 400 members of the news media there. So what are they doing? Lounging at the Marriott's pool? All the Dem candidates for President are here and speaking with the exception of Joe Biden, who is still in S Carolina. Nancy Pelosi is here as well. Does anyone care?
I cannot tell you how disgusted I am. Any blogger on the Indy-Weblogs at www.newsfare.com could and would do an awesomely better reporting job. And to think that this is the very first time the CA Dem Conv has ever been held in San Diego.
Add to that, San Diego is a major city in this nation that was previously a Republican stronghold but the city itself now has more Dems than Repubs. One would think that at least the local media would take note. Oh, I am torqued.
Wrap...
NOTHING...not one word in the LA Times. Just a very small article on an inside page of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper...and for everyone with a computer, they'll be doing a blog. Right. Take a look at what they consider a running blog of events:
http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/ut_polblog/index.html
Went from there to KUSI-TV news online. At least they have a video report...from yesterday. Take a look at http://www.kusi.com/
Additionally, there are a reported 400 members of the news media there. So what are they doing? Lounging at the Marriott's pool? All the Dem candidates for President are here and speaking with the exception of Joe Biden, who is still in S Carolina. Nancy Pelosi is here as well. Does anyone care?
I cannot tell you how disgusted I am. Any blogger on the Indy-Weblogs at www.newsfare.com could and would do an awesomely better reporting job. And to think that this is the very first time the CA Dem Conv has ever been held in San Diego.
Add to that, San Diego is a major city in this nation that was previously a Republican stronghold but the city itself now has more Dems than Repubs. One would think that at least the local media would take note. Oh, I am torqued.
Wrap...
Friday, April 27, 2007
Bush accepts....
This morning at breakfast on the patio, one of the writers said he could not believe what he'd heard.
A bit of conversation between Bush and the Prime Minister of Japan. The Prime Minister offered an apology to the "Comfort Women" who were forced into prostitution during WWII.
And Bush said, "I accept your apology."
The stupid ass DOES NOT LISTEN!!!
Wrap...
A bit of conversation between Bush and the Prime Minister of Japan. The Prime Minister offered an apology to the "Comfort Women" who were forced into prostitution during WWII.
And Bush said, "I accept your apology."
The stupid ass DOES NOT LISTEN!!!
Wrap...
If you missed Moyers....
From truthout.org :
Bill Moyers Journal "Buying the War"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707H.shtml
"Buying the War," a documentary film from Bill Moyers, examines the media's coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy. And four years after the invasion, Mr. Moyers wonders what has changed? Truthout provides the full documentary and a transcript of the program.
Wrap...
Bill Moyers Journal "Buying the War"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707H.shtml
"Buying the War," a documentary film from Bill Moyers, examines the media's coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy. And four years after the invasion, Mr. Moyers wonders what has changed? Truthout provides the full documentary and a transcript of the program.
Wrap...
From Waxman investigations to Boehner smoking...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates," substantially widening the scope of his investigation into potentially illegal partisan activities being conducted by federal officials.
Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz "will be allowed to argue for his job in front of a bank committee investigating him." But one senior bank official "suggested that members of the committee had already decided to recommend Wolfowitz's ouster, casting Monday's appearance as a last-ditch appeal."
World Bank "members of a team drafting a strategy to root out corruption in bank lending, an initiative pressed aggressively by Wolfowitz, sent a letter to the bank board on Thursday complaining that the scandal was jeopardizing their work." The letter was signed by 46 officials.
"NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin held an unusual meeting with the staff of the inspector general who oversees his agency and then ordered that video recordings of the meeting be destroyed, a House panel said yesterday." In a letter, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) accused Griffin of "improperly trying to influence the watchdog office's decisions on what it should investigate."
84 percent: Number of Americans who believe that human activity is contributing to global warming, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll. "The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental problems."
In a "startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions," Mayor Rudy Giuliani came out yesterday "in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate."
Media Matters documents how during the first presidential primary debate yesterday, several questions about Iraq, immigration, and national security were "based on false premises."
Federal prosecutors have decided not to file insider-trading charges against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) for his sales of stock in a family-owned chain of hospitals, a charge for which the "legal standards are high."
And finally: Looks like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) will have to find a new smoking spot. With smoking bans in the House Speaker's Lobby and the Republicans' Capitol Hill Club, Boehner has been lighting up at the National Democratic Club. But that venue will also now be going smoke-free. A spokeswoman for Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) said the congressman "won't miss the smoke, but I'm sure he'll miss the bipartisan company."
Wrap...
Think Fast
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates," substantially widening the scope of his investigation into potentially illegal partisan activities being conducted by federal officials.
Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz "will be allowed to argue for his job in front of a bank committee investigating him." But one senior bank official "suggested that members of the committee had already decided to recommend Wolfowitz's ouster, casting Monday's appearance as a last-ditch appeal."
World Bank "members of a team drafting a strategy to root out corruption in bank lending, an initiative pressed aggressively by Wolfowitz, sent a letter to the bank board on Thursday complaining that the scandal was jeopardizing their work." The letter was signed by 46 officials.
"NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin held an unusual meeting with the staff of the inspector general who oversees his agency and then ordered that video recordings of the meeting be destroyed, a House panel said yesterday." In a letter, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) accused Griffin of "improperly trying to influence the watchdog office's decisions on what it should investigate."
84 percent: Number of Americans who believe that human activity is contributing to global warming, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll. "The poll also found that Americans want the United States to support conservation and to be a global leader in addressing environmental problems."
In a "startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions," Mayor Rudy Giuliani came out yesterday "in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate."
Media Matters documents how during the first presidential primary debate yesterday, several questions about Iraq, immigration, and national security were "based on false premises."
Federal prosecutors have decided not to file insider-trading charges against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) for his sales of stock in a family-owned chain of hospitals, a charge for which the "legal standards are high."
And finally: Looks like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) will have to find a new smoking spot. With smoking bans in the House Speaker's Lobby and the Republicans' Capitol Hill Club, Boehner has been lighting up at the National Democratic Club. But that venue will also now be going smoke-free. A spokeswoman for Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) said the congressman "won't miss the smoke, but I'm sure he'll miss the bipartisan company."
Wrap...
Fear! Fear! Panic! Panic!.... They SELL....
From SF Gate:
The Key Chain Of Your Doom
Is something scary waiting in your car? Is your key fob beeping? Should you be screaming?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 27, 2007
I do so love the marketing of fear. It is so very ideologically perfect, so quietly dehumanizing, so brutally American.
Politicians are experts at it. Gun nuts swallow it whole. The Christian right sucks it down and spits it back up and they all wallow in the low, ugly energy of fear as though it were some sort of vile mantra, some sort of cheap heroin and they were both the dealer and the junkie.
But as good as these groups are, they can't hold a cocked, loaded, dread-soaked candle to the king of all fear purveyors, the marketers. Really, there is simply nothing like sinister consumer advertising to make you think -- in simple, strategic, carefully test-marketed ways -- that you are about to die.
Here, then, is this new commercial. It is for a car. It does not matter which car, but just know that it's an upscale well-appointed sedan and it's beige or maybe silver and not all that interesting or overtly sexy, which means it's perfect for mid-level corporate executives who, according to this commercial, tend to be female and stay late at the office and who, for some reason, often park their cars on the rooftop parking lot. At night. In the rain. Alone.
This car is nicely loaded. Leather, adaptive braking, beeping shiny things, all the luxury bells and whistles. But its main selling point, at least according to this commercial, is the key chain.
[cont reading at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2007/04/27/notes042707.DTL&type=printable ]
Wrap....
The Key Chain Of Your Doom
Is something scary waiting in your car? Is your key fob beeping? Should you be screaming?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 27, 2007
I do so love the marketing of fear. It is so very ideologically perfect, so quietly dehumanizing, so brutally American.
Politicians are experts at it. Gun nuts swallow it whole. The Christian right sucks it down and spits it back up and they all wallow in the low, ugly energy of fear as though it were some sort of vile mantra, some sort of cheap heroin and they were both the dealer and the junkie.
But as good as these groups are, they can't hold a cocked, loaded, dread-soaked candle to the king of all fear purveyors, the marketers. Really, there is simply nothing like sinister consumer advertising to make you think -- in simple, strategic, carefully test-marketed ways -- that you are about to die.
Here, then, is this new commercial. It is for a car. It does not matter which car, but just know that it's an upscale well-appointed sedan and it's beige or maybe silver and not all that interesting or overtly sexy, which means it's perfect for mid-level corporate executives who, according to this commercial, tend to be female and stay late at the office and who, for some reason, often park their cars on the rooftop parking lot. At night. In the rain. Alone.
This car is nicely loaded. Leather, adaptive braking, beeping shiny things, all the luxury bells and whistles. But its main selling point, at least according to this commercial, is the key chain.
[cont reading at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2007/04/27/notes042707.DTL&type=printable ]
Wrap....
Alcatraz..Bush/Cheney need a tour....
From San Francisco Chronicle:
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
Upgraded Alcatraz breaks out the excitement
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007
It is springtime on Alcatraz, and for the first time in years the flowers are blooming in a garden once tended by some of the most dangerous prisoners in the country.
The new garden is part of a general overhaul of facilities on the island, which has been part of the national park system longer than it was a federal prison housing inmates the government thought were "the worst of the worst.''
Alcatraz is a strangely fascinating place -- its site in the center of San Francisco Bay is unmatched. Yet it is the "Rock," an island of dark legends. Every year it draws 1.3 million visitors for a 12-minute boat ride, followed by a tour.
This spring the island has gotten new exhibits and a new bookstore, and the prison gardens have been replanted. There is also a new audio tour where ex-inmates and former guards and their families offer sometimes chilling descriptions of life and death on Alcatraz.
"We wanted to tell the human story of Alcatraz,'' said Ricardo Perez, supervising ranger at the island, a unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
He said the park service wanted to show visitors what prison was like, "so they could learn the difference between rights and privileges that could be taken away, between incarceration and freedom.''
To do this, the new path to the main cell house leads up a long concrete road to a shower room where new inmates were stripped, searched, issued numbers and given uniforms and a book of rules. There were 53 rules in all, and the only way out was to obey every one of them.
This exhibit is all new: Lockers hold the prison uniform jackets, caps and shirts, sheets and pillowcases issued to the inmates. Some of the material had been locked away in storage for years and is on public display for the first time.
The audio tour uses prison voices to tell of a revolt, put down by U.S. Marines in 1946. Visitors can stand in front of cells in D Block and hear how inmates shot guards in cold blood.
They are directed to another part of the cell block where scars made by Marine hand grenades are still visible.
At one point, an inmate describes hearing the sound of New Year's Eve parties at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco's Marina neighborhood drifting across the bay.
At another, visitors are asked to imagine how it felt to come out of the big, concrete cellblock and see San Francisco, glimmering in the sunlight.
"It's only a mile,'' the voice says, "only a mile and a quarter. There is everything you ever wanted over there.''
"These are not talking heads,'' said Katy Olds, assistant director for visitor programs for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which paid for the new audio tour.
"We used actual voices,'' she said. "You know, time has gone by since Alcatraz was shut down, and they are passing into history.''
The audio tour and the new exhibits are endorsed by a member of Alcatraz's original cast. He is Darwin Coon, who served four years, and was on the last boat out when the prison was closed in 1963.
Coon, a reformed bank robber and prison troublemaker, said the revised exhibits and audio tour are "really great.''
He is one of several ex-inmates or others with island connections who sell books on the island. His is called "Alcatraz: The True End of the Line.''
Back in the 1930s, when Alcatraz really was the end of the prison line, Freddie Reichel, who was Warden James Johnson's secretary, talked the warden into allowing inmates to grow flowers in rocky soil near a gun tower on the east side of the island. "I kept no records of failures, for I had many,'' he wrote.
The inmates grew cut flowers, which were given to the guards' wives; the wife of the warden always got the pick of the crop for her table.
"It was very surprising to see gardens,'' said Perez. "It would trigger a measure of freedom by a garden assignment. They could escape, in a way, through the flowers.''
The garden went to seed and weeds after the prison closed, but came back this year. The flower project is managed by Carola Ashford of the nonprofit Garden Conservancy and tended by volunteers. Just now, roses, iris, calla lilies, fuchsia and a white flower Ashford called "candytuft'' are in bloom, a strange contrast to the cell block behind and the ruins of the old prison officer's social hall.
The overhaul cost $3.5 million, privately raised by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that assists the Park Service.
The overall effect of a tour of Alcatraz was "unbelievable ... one of the best in national parks I've seen,'' said Bill Dawson, who was visiting from South Bend, Ind. "After years of hearing about Alcatraz, here it was."
Dawson's wife, Joan, was born and raised in the Bay Area and had never visited Alcatraz. "I had to move to South Bend to see it,'' she said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/27/ALCATRAZ.TMP
Wrap...
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
Upgraded Alcatraz breaks out the excitement
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007
It is springtime on Alcatraz, and for the first time in years the flowers are blooming in a garden once tended by some of the most dangerous prisoners in the country.
The new garden is part of a general overhaul of facilities on the island, which has been part of the national park system longer than it was a federal prison housing inmates the government thought were "the worst of the worst.''
Alcatraz is a strangely fascinating place -- its site in the center of San Francisco Bay is unmatched. Yet it is the "Rock," an island of dark legends. Every year it draws 1.3 million visitors for a 12-minute boat ride, followed by a tour.
This spring the island has gotten new exhibits and a new bookstore, and the prison gardens have been replanted. There is also a new audio tour where ex-inmates and former guards and their families offer sometimes chilling descriptions of life and death on Alcatraz.
"We wanted to tell the human story of Alcatraz,'' said Ricardo Perez, supervising ranger at the island, a unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
He said the park service wanted to show visitors what prison was like, "so they could learn the difference between rights and privileges that could be taken away, between incarceration and freedom.''
To do this, the new path to the main cell house leads up a long concrete road to a shower room where new inmates were stripped, searched, issued numbers and given uniforms and a book of rules. There were 53 rules in all, and the only way out was to obey every one of them.
This exhibit is all new: Lockers hold the prison uniform jackets, caps and shirts, sheets and pillowcases issued to the inmates. Some of the material had been locked away in storage for years and is on public display for the first time.
The audio tour uses prison voices to tell of a revolt, put down by U.S. Marines in 1946. Visitors can stand in front of cells in D Block and hear how inmates shot guards in cold blood.
They are directed to another part of the cell block where scars made by Marine hand grenades are still visible.
At one point, an inmate describes hearing the sound of New Year's Eve parties at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco's Marina neighborhood drifting across the bay.
At another, visitors are asked to imagine how it felt to come out of the big, concrete cellblock and see San Francisco, glimmering in the sunlight.
"It's only a mile,'' the voice says, "only a mile and a quarter. There is everything you ever wanted over there.''
"These are not talking heads,'' said Katy Olds, assistant director for visitor programs for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which paid for the new audio tour.
"We used actual voices,'' she said. "You know, time has gone by since Alcatraz was shut down, and they are passing into history.''
The audio tour and the new exhibits are endorsed by a member of Alcatraz's original cast. He is Darwin Coon, who served four years, and was on the last boat out when the prison was closed in 1963.
Coon, a reformed bank robber and prison troublemaker, said the revised exhibits and audio tour are "really great.''
He is one of several ex-inmates or others with island connections who sell books on the island. His is called "Alcatraz: The True End of the Line.''
Back in the 1930s, when Alcatraz really was the end of the prison line, Freddie Reichel, who was Warden James Johnson's secretary, talked the warden into allowing inmates to grow flowers in rocky soil near a gun tower on the east side of the island. "I kept no records of failures, for I had many,'' he wrote.
The inmates grew cut flowers, which were given to the guards' wives; the wife of the warden always got the pick of the crop for her table.
"It was very surprising to see gardens,'' said Perez. "It would trigger a measure of freedom by a garden assignment. They could escape, in a way, through the flowers.''
The garden went to seed and weeds after the prison closed, but came back this year. The flower project is managed by Carola Ashford of the nonprofit Garden Conservancy and tended by volunteers. Just now, roses, iris, calla lilies, fuchsia and a white flower Ashford called "candytuft'' are in bloom, a strange contrast to the cell block behind and the ruins of the old prison officer's social hall.
The overhaul cost $3.5 million, privately raised by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that assists the Park Service.
The overall effect of a tour of Alcatraz was "unbelievable ... one of the best in national parks I've seen,'' said Bill Dawson, who was visiting from South Bend, Ind. "After years of hearing about Alcatraz, here it was."
Dawson's wife, Joan, was born and raised in the Bay Area and had never visited Alcatraz. "I had to move to South Bend to see it,'' she said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/27/ALCATRAZ.TMP
Wrap...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Latest news on US Atty Carol Lam...
From truthout.org :
Fired US Attorney Lam Receives Outstanding Attorney of the Year Award
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042607S.shtml
Carol Lam has been named Outstanding Attorney of the Year by the San Diego County Bar Association, the organization announced Wednesday afternoon. Lam is one of eight former US attorneys across the country whose dismissals ignited a political firestorm and calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
:)) Wrap....
Fired US Attorney Lam Receives Outstanding Attorney of the Year Award
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042607S.shtml
Carol Lam has been named Outstanding Attorney of the Year by the San Diego County Bar Association, the organization announced Wednesday afternoon. Lam is one of eight former US attorneys across the country whose dismissals ignited a political firestorm and calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
:)) Wrap....
Wal-Mart hiring spies...
From Secrecy News:
WAL-MART RECRUITS INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS
Wal-Mart, the massive retail chain, has established its own"intelligence" unit to conduct threat assessments, and to perform intelligence collection and analysis. And it has been recruiting senior personnel from U.S. intelligence agencies to staff its operation.
"I've had a number of people contact me who have purely law enforcement / security investigative backgrounds," wrote oneWal-Mart recruiter in a January 2007 bulletin board posting."That is not what the company is looking for."
"The primary screening criteria for the positions is [sic] formal training and experience in intelligence analysis. If an individual does not possess that minimal criteria, then he will not be considered."
See "Wal-Mart Recruits Intelligence Officers" by Marcus Kabel, Associated Press, April 24: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8ON2P400.htm
See also "Wal-Mart Defends Itself with New Intel Unit" by Jason Goodwin, Government Security News, February 2006:
http://www.gsnmagazine.com/feb_06_02/wal_mart.html
Wrap...
WAL-MART RECRUITS INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS
Wal-Mart, the massive retail chain, has established its own"intelligence" unit to conduct threat assessments, and to perform intelligence collection and analysis. And it has been recruiting senior personnel from U.S. intelligence agencies to staff its operation.
"I've had a number of people contact me who have purely law enforcement / security investigative backgrounds," wrote oneWal-Mart recruiter in a January 2007 bulletin board posting."That is not what the company is looking for."
"The primary screening criteria for the positions is [sic] formal training and experience in intelligence analysis. If an individual does not possess that minimal criteria, then he will not be considered."
See "Wal-Mart Recruits Intelligence Officers" by Marcus Kabel, Associated Press, April 24: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8ON2P400.htm
See also "Wal-Mart Defends Itself with New Intel Unit" by Jason Goodwin, Government Security News, February 2006:
http://www.gsnmagazine.com/feb_06_02/wal_mart.html
Wrap...
Republican Gilmore in prez race....
From the Sacramento Bee :
Gilmore enters GOP presidential race
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)
Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore on Thursday entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination with an Internet-driven announcement he said ...(more)
http://dwb.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/story/3607992p-12894754c.html
Wrap...
Gilmore enters GOP presidential race
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)
Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore on Thursday entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination with an Internet-driven announcement he said ...(more)
http://dwb.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/story/3607992p-12894754c.html
Wrap...
From Bush's 28% to "Satan's plan" says Utah Rep...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
28 percent: President Bush's approval rating in a new Harris survey, the lowest of his presidency.
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee" and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order. "I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter," she told reporters.
"White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity," the White House acknowledged yesterday.
"The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay," proposing "new limits on the lawyers' contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases."
"The White House has turned over to a House committee about 200 pages of documents" related to a suspicious contract it had with a company owned by Brent Wilkes, who pleaded guilty to bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).
"In a somber and wide-ranging assessment," Britain's top counterterrorism officer Peter Clarke said that Al Qaeda and its supporters have established "an inexorable trend towards more ambitious and more destructive attack planning." "The only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again."
"Escalating his campaign to remain president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz accused the bank's board on Wednesday of treating him 'shabbily and unfairly,' and appealed for more time to defend himself against allegations of favoritism and other matters."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) said yesterday "that the Bush administration and Republicans are not doing enough politically in Iraq." Brownback said after meeting with Vice President Cheney and others last week, "They have a strategy, and it's dominated by military and Maliki."
And finally: A state lawmaker in Utah "has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to 'Satan's plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion' for debate." The resolution refers to a plan by the devil for a "New World Order...as predicted in the Scriptures." State Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble (R) said, "I don't think you'll find much support for that sentiment."
Wrap...
Think Fast
28 percent: President Bush's approval rating in a new Harris survey, the lowest of his presidency.
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee" and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order. "I am more than happy to answer them again in a letter," she told reporters.
"White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity," the White House acknowledged yesterday.
"The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay," proposing "new limits on the lawyers' contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases."
"The White House has turned over to a House committee about 200 pages of documents" related to a suspicious contract it had with a company owned by Brent Wilkes, who pleaded guilty to bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).
"In a somber and wide-ranging assessment," Britain's top counterterrorism officer Peter Clarke said that Al Qaeda and its supporters have established "an inexorable trend towards more ambitious and more destructive attack planning." "The only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again."
"Escalating his campaign to remain president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz accused the bank's board on Wednesday of treating him 'shabbily and unfairly,' and appealed for more time to defend himself against allegations of favoritism and other matters."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) said yesterday "that the Bush administration and Republicans are not doing enough politically in Iraq." Brownback said after meeting with Vice President Cheney and others last week, "They have a strategy, and it's dominated by military and Maliki."
And finally: A state lawmaker in Utah "has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to 'Satan's plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion' for debate." The resolution refers to a plan by the devil for a "New World Order...as predicted in the Scriptures." State Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble (R) said, "I don't think you'll find much support for that sentiment."
Wrap...
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Short list of books coming out....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
GENERAL/OTHER:
The Last Boleyn and the Elizabeth I mysteries author Karen Harper's WILL'S OTHER WIFE, the story of a Anne Whateley of Stratford, who married Shakespeare in secret less than a week before his shotgun wedding to Anne Hathaway, and who lived with him in London when his career was at its height, to Rachel Kahan at Putnam and Ellen Edwards at NAL, in a pre-empt, by Meg Ruley at Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).
Beneath a Marble Sky author John Shors's THE POET MAKERS, set in the South Pacific during WWII after a torpedo sinks a U.S. hospital ship and nine survivors manage to swim to a nearby island threatened by the traitor among them, by hurricanes and by the imminent arrival of the Japanese navy, again to Kara Cesare at NAL, in a two-book deal, by Laura Dail at Laura Dail Literary Agency (World English).
CHILDREN'S/MIDDLE GRADE:
Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry's SCIENCE FAIR, a humorous thriller that makes fun of science fairs, obsessive parents, obnoxious kids, countries with no vowels, and middle school in general, to Wendy Lefkon at Disney Children's, by Amy Berkower at Writers House (NA).
UK FICTION:
Costa (aka Whitbread) biography award winner Brian Thompson's mysteries series set in fin de siecle London, about a writer whose craft gets her involved in real-life mysteries, to Angus McKinnon at Atlantic Books, in a two-book deal, by David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders' look at the demographic shift in the world's cities and its ramifications, focused on the Great Migration in which a third of the globe's population is on the move, as the last of the rural societies abandon agriculture and move to urban areas, to Michael Schellenberg at Knopf Canada, for publication in 2010, by John Pearce at Westwood Creative Artists (world).
Knopf has sold rights in an "international partnership" including Andrew Miller, Sonny Mehta and Dan Frank at Knopf/Pantheon, Jason Arthur at William Heinemann in the UK, Tilo Eckardt at Karl Blessing in Germany, and Miguel Aguilar at Debate/Mondadori in Spain, with more deals on the way at the fair.
Paul Alexander's untitled book on Karl Rove, about the decline and inevitable fall of the influential senior advisor to the President, based on new research and interviews with insiders who have previously remained silent, to Leigh Haber at Modern Times/Rodale, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (NA).
Wrap...
GENERAL/OTHER:
The Last Boleyn and the Elizabeth I mysteries author Karen Harper's WILL'S OTHER WIFE, the story of a Anne Whateley of Stratford, who married Shakespeare in secret less than a week before his shotgun wedding to Anne Hathaway, and who lived with him in London when his career was at its height, to Rachel Kahan at Putnam and Ellen Edwards at NAL, in a pre-empt, by Meg Ruley at Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).
Beneath a Marble Sky author John Shors's THE POET MAKERS, set in the South Pacific during WWII after a torpedo sinks a U.S. hospital ship and nine survivors manage to swim to a nearby island threatened by the traitor among them, by hurricanes and by the imminent arrival of the Japanese navy, again to Kara Cesare at NAL, in a two-book deal, by Laura Dail at Laura Dail Literary Agency (World English).
CHILDREN'S/MIDDLE GRADE:
Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry's SCIENCE FAIR, a humorous thriller that makes fun of science fairs, obsessive parents, obnoxious kids, countries with no vowels, and middle school in general, to Wendy Lefkon at Disney Children's, by Amy Berkower at Writers House (NA).
UK FICTION:
Costa (aka Whitbread) biography award winner Brian Thompson's mysteries series set in fin de siecle London, about a writer whose craft gets her involved in real-life mysteries, to Angus McKinnon at Atlantic Books, in a two-book deal, by David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders' look at the demographic shift in the world's cities and its ramifications, focused on the Great Migration in which a third of the globe's population is on the move, as the last of the rural societies abandon agriculture and move to urban areas, to Michael Schellenberg at Knopf Canada, for publication in 2010, by John Pearce at Westwood Creative Artists (world).
Knopf has sold rights in an "international partnership" including Andrew Miller, Sonny Mehta and Dan Frank at Knopf/Pantheon, Jason Arthur at William Heinemann in the UK, Tilo Eckardt at Karl Blessing in Germany, and Miguel Aguilar at Debate/Mondadori in Spain, with more deals on the way at the fair.
Paul Alexander's untitled book on Karl Rove, about the decline and inevitable fall of the influential senior advisor to the President, based on new research and interviews with insiders who have previously remained silent, to Leigh Haber at Modern Times/Rodale, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (NA).
Wrap...
BushCo OSHA for industry...not for workers...
From Tom Paine.com :
OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: April 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
J. D. Pooley for The New York Times
Keith Campbell, 49, became ill after having worked for two years at a microwave popcorn factory in Marion, Ohio.
Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.
That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”
Agency officials defend their performance, saying that workplace deaths and injuries have declined during their tenure. They have been considering new standards and revising outdated ones that were unduly burdensome on businesses, they said, adding that they have moved cautiously on new rules because those require extensive scientific and economic analysis.
“By the time the Bush administration is done — we have a good record already — we will have a better record,” said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the agency’s head, in a recent interview.
On diacetyl, Mr. Foulke said “the science is murky” on whether the additive causes bronchiolitis obliterans, the disease that has been called “popcorn worker’s lung.” That claim is echoed by some industry officials, but a number of leading scientists and doctors agree with scientists at the national occupational safety institute that there is strong evidence linking the additive to the illness.
Without an OSHA standard, which would establish the permissible level of exposure for workers, companies can set any limit of exposure they want.
Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.
Administration officials say such programs are less costly, allowing companies to hire more workers and keep consumer prices down. The number of voluntary agreements has grown in recent years, but they cover a fraction of the seven million work sites that OSHA oversees, or less than 1 percent of the work force. Sixty-one food plants out of the tens of thousands across the country participate; industry representatives say other businesses are taking steps to protect workers on their own.
Critics say the voluntary programs tend to have little focus on specific hazards and no enforcement power. Because only companies with strong safety records are eligible, they argue, the programs do not force less-conscientious businesses to improve their workplaces. A 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office found some promising results from such programs, but recommended against expanding them until their effectiveness could be assessed.
“OSHA has been focusing on the best companies in their voluntary protection program while doing nothing in the area of standard setting,” said Peg Seminario, the director of occupational safety and health at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “They’ve simply gotten out of the standard-setting business in favor of industry partnerships that have no teeth.”
[click link to continue reading:
www.tompaine.com
Wrap...
OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: April 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
J. D. Pooley for The New York Times
Keith Campbell, 49, became ill after having worked for two years at a microwave popcorn factory in Marion, Ohio.
Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.
That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”
Agency officials defend their performance, saying that workplace deaths and injuries have declined during their tenure. They have been considering new standards and revising outdated ones that were unduly burdensome on businesses, they said, adding that they have moved cautiously on new rules because those require extensive scientific and economic analysis.
“By the time the Bush administration is done — we have a good record already — we will have a better record,” said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the agency’s head, in a recent interview.
On diacetyl, Mr. Foulke said “the science is murky” on whether the additive causes bronchiolitis obliterans, the disease that has been called “popcorn worker’s lung.” That claim is echoed by some industry officials, but a number of leading scientists and doctors agree with scientists at the national occupational safety institute that there is strong evidence linking the additive to the illness.
Without an OSHA standard, which would establish the permissible level of exposure for workers, companies can set any limit of exposure they want.
Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.
Administration officials say such programs are less costly, allowing companies to hire more workers and keep consumer prices down. The number of voluntary agreements has grown in recent years, but they cover a fraction of the seven million work sites that OSHA oversees, or less than 1 percent of the work force. Sixty-one food plants out of the tens of thousands across the country participate; industry representatives say other businesses are taking steps to protect workers on their own.
Critics say the voluntary programs tend to have little focus on specific hazards and no enforcement power. Because only companies with strong safety records are eligible, they argue, the programs do not force less-conscientious businesses to improve their workplaces. A 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office found some promising results from such programs, but recommended against expanding them until their effectiveness could be assessed.
“OSHA has been focusing on the best companies in their voluntary protection program while doing nothing in the area of standard setting,” said Peg Seminario, the director of occupational safety and health at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “They’ve simply gotten out of the standard-setting business in favor of industry partnerships that have no teeth.”
[click link to continue reading:
www.tompaine.com
Wrap...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
New book on Presidential secrecy...
From Secrecy News:
PRESIDENTIAL SECRECY AND THE LAW
Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of
executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity,
according to a provocative new book on the subject.
"When the president lacks diplomatic or interpersonal skill, he
is likely to compensate by shielding his activities -- even
shielding his very self -- from the public, relying on secrecy
rather than diplomacy," write political scientists Robert M.
Pallitto and William G. Weaver in "Presidential Secrecy and the
Law."
The authors explore how the growth of executive branch secrecy
has transformed the institution of the presidency and the
character of American government.
Secrecy, they say, "has depoliticized the president's role in
governmental action. Where a president may do what is desired
in secret, there is no reason to withstand the ordeal of a
political battle to achieve the same ends."
"Increasingly, our governmental institutions are unable to hold
the president accountable for actions undertaken in secret in
the name of national security. In a subtle but sweeping way,
this failure is working detrimental changes in our federal
government institutions."
The authors review the landscape of national security secrecy
and the accumulation of unchecked executive authority and they
proceed to critique the performance of the legislative and
judicial branches.
Legislative initiatives such as the War Powers Act and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were intended to
restrain the executive branch have consistently backfired, they
contend, serving instead to legitimize the presidential actions
that they were intended to restrict.
"As counterintuitive as it may seem, we conclude that
congressional efforts to control executive abuse in areas of
purported national security concerns are ill-advised. These
efforts insulate the president and establish a bureaucratic
machinery and process for engaging in precisely the kinds of
activity that were meant to be avoided."
"We argue that aggressive action to control executive branch
abuse of secrecy should not come from Congress but from the
courts, which are in a position to provide the scrutiny
necessary to discourage presidential abuse of secrecy powers."
For more information, see "Presidential Secrecy and the Law" by
Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007:
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/9324.html
Wrap...
PRESIDENTIAL SECRECY AND THE LAW
Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of
executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity,
according to a provocative new book on the subject.
"When the president lacks diplomatic or interpersonal skill, he
is likely to compensate by shielding his activities -- even
shielding his very self -- from the public, relying on secrecy
rather than diplomacy," write political scientists Robert M.
Pallitto and William G. Weaver in "Presidential Secrecy and the
Law."
The authors explore how the growth of executive branch secrecy
has transformed the institution of the presidency and the
character of American government.
Secrecy, they say, "has depoliticized the president's role in
governmental action. Where a president may do what is desired
in secret, there is no reason to withstand the ordeal of a
political battle to achieve the same ends."
"Increasingly, our governmental institutions are unable to hold
the president accountable for actions undertaken in secret in
the name of national security. In a subtle but sweeping way,
this failure is working detrimental changes in our federal
government institutions."
The authors review the landscape of national security secrecy
and the accumulation of unchecked executive authority and they
proceed to critique the performance of the legislative and
judicial branches.
Legislative initiatives such as the War Powers Act and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were intended to
restrain the executive branch have consistently backfired, they
contend, serving instead to legitimize the presidential actions
that they were intended to restrict.
"As counterintuitive as it may seem, we conclude that
congressional efforts to control executive abuse in areas of
purported national security concerns are ill-advised. These
efforts insulate the president and establish a bureaucratic
machinery and process for engaging in precisely the kinds of
activity that were meant to be avoided."
"We argue that aggressive action to control executive branch
abuse of secrecy should not come from Congress but from the
courts, which are in a position to provide the scrutiny
necessary to discourage presidential abuse of secrecy powers."
For more information, see "Presidential Secrecy and the Law" by
Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007:
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/9324.html
Wrap...
Blogger!!! Where the hell....
...have my hotlinks gone? And how do I get the URLs hotlinked again?
Does anyone out there have any idea? Having troubles with old blogger and new blogger, and it's frustrating me something fierce!
Wrap...
Does anyone out there have any idea? Having troubles with old blogger and new blogger, and it's frustrating me something fierce!
Wrap...
Wolfowitz. UGH!!!
From the NY Times:
Frustrations With Wolfowitz Boil Over at Meeting
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: April 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 24 — At a meeting between Paul D. Wolfowitz and his top managers at the World Bank last week, Mr. Wolfowitz made an unusual confession. “I understand that I’ve lost a lot of trust, and I want to build that trust back up,” he said, according to people present.
But the beleaguered bank president was immediately confronted by one of his top deputies, who asserted that Mr. Wolfowitz was wrong to think that the furor over his leadership sprang only from his handling of the pay and promotion for his companion or from unease over his support of the Iraq war while at the Pentagon.
Graeme Wheeler, the bank’s managing director, said at the meeting that the fight over whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank amounted to the “the biggest crisis in its history.”
He said it arose from a range of issues, including fears that Mr. Wolfowitz and his aides were trying to impose Bush administration ideas on family planning and climate change at the bank and worries over a possible conflict of interest in the bank’s hiring of a Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly, to investigate leaks. A partner at the firm had earlier negotiated Mr. Wolfowitz’s employment contract with the bank.
Mr. Wheeler also said Mr. Wolfowitz’s staying on would cause “fantastic damage” to the bank’s reputation and effectiveness.
The exchange, described in detail by people who attended the closed meeting, illustrated how far the turmoil surrounding Mr. Wolfowitz has spread since it erupted in public a few weeks ago. It also revealed his determination to remain on the job and the deep wellspring of antipathy toward him among the bank’s board and senior staff.
With the hiring of Robert S. Bennett, a prominent lawyer, to defend his record before the board, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively revealed that his hope is to play for time, overhaul his management team and plead that a hasty exit would be disruptive to the bank, especially since he was not planning to stay for more than three more years anyway.
According to the people at the meeting last week, the vice presidents were startled when Mr. Wolfowitz said he might not even be at the bank for another year, though this was not said to be a sign that he would resign, only that a fight over whether he should stay was not worth the trouble.
Mr. Wolfowitz has promised to mend his ways and has warned that a forced ouster would damage the bank. But it has become clear that there is a larger sense of unease, especially among Europeans, about American influence over the bank and its strategies toward ending poverty. There is also tension between the United States and Europe over who is to blame for the shortfall in commitments to raise $30 billion to reach that goal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25wolfowitz.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
[click above link to continue reading]
Wrap...
Frustrations With Wolfowitz Boil Over at Meeting
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: April 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 24 — At a meeting between Paul D. Wolfowitz and his top managers at the World Bank last week, Mr. Wolfowitz made an unusual confession. “I understand that I’ve lost a lot of trust, and I want to build that trust back up,” he said, according to people present.
But the beleaguered bank president was immediately confronted by one of his top deputies, who asserted that Mr. Wolfowitz was wrong to think that the furor over his leadership sprang only from his handling of the pay and promotion for his companion or from unease over his support of the Iraq war while at the Pentagon.
Graeme Wheeler, the bank’s managing director, said at the meeting that the fight over whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank amounted to the “the biggest crisis in its history.”
He said it arose from a range of issues, including fears that Mr. Wolfowitz and his aides were trying to impose Bush administration ideas on family planning and climate change at the bank and worries over a possible conflict of interest in the bank’s hiring of a Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly, to investigate leaks. A partner at the firm had earlier negotiated Mr. Wolfowitz’s employment contract with the bank.
Mr. Wheeler also said Mr. Wolfowitz’s staying on would cause “fantastic damage” to the bank’s reputation and effectiveness.
The exchange, described in detail by people who attended the closed meeting, illustrated how far the turmoil surrounding Mr. Wolfowitz has spread since it erupted in public a few weeks ago. It also revealed his determination to remain on the job and the deep wellspring of antipathy toward him among the bank’s board and senior staff.
With the hiring of Robert S. Bennett, a prominent lawyer, to defend his record before the board, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively revealed that his hope is to play for time, overhaul his management team and plead that a hasty exit would be disruptive to the bank, especially since he was not planning to stay for more than three more years anyway.
According to the people at the meeting last week, the vice presidents were startled when Mr. Wolfowitz said he might not even be at the bank for another year, though this was not said to be a sign that he would resign, only that a fight over whether he should stay was not worth the trouble.
Mr. Wolfowitz has promised to mend his ways and has warned that a forced ouster would damage the bank. But it has become clear that there is a larger sense of unease, especially among Europeans, about American influence over the bank and its strategies toward ending poverty. There is also tension between the United States and Europe over who is to blame for the shortfall in commitments to raise $30 billion to reach that goal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25wolfowitz.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
[click above link to continue reading]
Wrap...
BushCo intends to become Hitler....
From Information Clearing House:
Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps
By Naomi Wolf
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17591.htm
Wrap...
Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps
By Naomi Wolf
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17591.htm
Wrap...
Office of Spec Counsel contaminated by BushCo...
From truthout.org :
Rove Investigator Himself Under Investigation
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 24 April 2007
A federal investigation into the political activities of Karl Rove, announced late Monday, is being headed by a Bush appointee who is currently the target of an internal White House probe - calling into question the integrity of the administration's efforts to conduct an independent review of Rove's work as White House political adviser.
The news underscores how deeply the Bush administration is mired in scandal.
Scott J. Bloch, who heads the Office of Special Counsel, told the Los Angeles Times Monday that his office will launch a wide-ranging investigation into Rove's involvement in the firings of eight US attorneys, his behind-the-scenes work to influence elections, and his use of a Republican National Committee email account to conduct official White House business, in what appears to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
However, the Los Angeles Times failed to inform its readers that Bloch had been accused of retaliating against employees who disagreed with his policies, and intimidating them before they were questioned about a whistle-blower investigation inside the Office of the Special Counsel. The whistle-blower probe was launched by the White House's Office of Personnel Management inspector general nearly two years ago, according to a February 16, 2007 story in the Washington Post.
Bloch vehemently denied the allegations at the time. On Tuesday, a spokesman in his office reiterated Bloch's position and insisted that the special counsel would still be able to conduct an independent review of Rove's work for the past six years, regardless of the accusations against him.
Some Democratic Congressional leaders, such as Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the Government Oversight Committee, who is also looking into Rove's use of RNC email accounts, as well as his role in the firing of the US attorneys, would not immediately comment on the announcement that Bloch's office is spearheading the probe into Rove's work. However, there are concerns among Democratic officials on Capitol Hill that the investigation as headed by Bloch would amount to a whitewash.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Bloch's own questionable behavior as special counsel makes him the "wrong choice" to investigate Rove.
"Having transformed [the Office of the Special Counsel] into a virtual black hole for legitimate complaints of retaliation, Bloch is decidedly not the right person to tackle the issues of misconduct and illegality that surround top White House officials," Sloan said, "There is a serious question as to whether Bloch will just provide cover for an administration that has been covering for him."
In fact, some of the issues Bloch would be in charge of looking into related to Rove's activities in the US attorneys scandal, such as claims that some federal prosecutors were not in sync with White House policies on a variety of issues, mirror Bloch's alleged behavior involving his own employees.
"The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been investigating allegations by current and former OSC employees that Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch retaliated against underlings who disagreed with his policies - by, among other means, transferring them out of state - and tossed out legitimate whistle-blower cases to reduce the office backlog," the Washington Post reported. "The probe is the most serious of many problems at the agency since Bloch, a Kansas lawyer who served at the Justice Department's Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, was appointed by President Bush three years ago. Since he took the helm in 2004, staffers at the OSC, a small agency of about 100 lawyers and investigators, have accused him of a range of offenses, from having an anti-gay bias to criticizing employees for wearing short skirts and tight pants to work."
A January 13, 2005 story in The New Standard said employees in the Office of the Special Counsel retained a private attorney to protest Bloch's orders that at least 12 staffers in the department move to another city or lose their jobs so Bloch could hire individuals who agree with his policies. In a strange twist, these employees accused Bloch of selectively "purging" employees from his department, a word now associated with the US attorney firings, and an area that Bloch says he will investigate to determine if wrongdoing took place.
The New Standard report said a representative for some of the employees in the Office of the Special Counsel had reason to believe that their reassignments "amount to an attempted "purge."
"They further suggest that Special Counsel Scott Bloch is gradually doing away with his critics while making way for pliant, fresh-faced replacements, fitting a pattern of "cronyism" they allege he has engaged in throughout most of his thirteen-month tenure as head of OSC," the New Standard reported in a January 13, 2005 story.
In February, "the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project and Human Rights Campaign and a lawyer for the OSC employees protested in a letter to legislators and to Clay Johnson III, the Office of Management and Budget deputy who ordered the OSC probe," the Post reported
"The OSC's memo, the group said, "was only the latest in a series of actions by Bloch to obstruct the investigation. "Other actions have included suggestions that all witnesses interviewed ... provide Bloch with affidavits describing what they had been asked and how they responded," according to the Post.
Whether Bloch can truly be effective in the investigation into Rove's political work will likely be an issue of further debate.
Bloch believes he can be. He told the Los Angeles Times Monday that his office "will not leave any stone unturned."
"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Bloch told the Times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
Wrap...
Rove Investigator Himself Under Investigation
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 24 April 2007
A federal investigation into the political activities of Karl Rove, announced late Monday, is being headed by a Bush appointee who is currently the target of an internal White House probe - calling into question the integrity of the administration's efforts to conduct an independent review of Rove's work as White House political adviser.
The news underscores how deeply the Bush administration is mired in scandal.
Scott J. Bloch, who heads the Office of Special Counsel, told the Los Angeles Times Monday that his office will launch a wide-ranging investigation into Rove's involvement in the firings of eight US attorneys, his behind-the-scenes work to influence elections, and his use of a Republican National Committee email account to conduct official White House business, in what appears to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
However, the Los Angeles Times failed to inform its readers that Bloch had been accused of retaliating against employees who disagreed with his policies, and intimidating them before they were questioned about a whistle-blower investigation inside the Office of the Special Counsel. The whistle-blower probe was launched by the White House's Office of Personnel Management inspector general nearly two years ago, according to a February 16, 2007 story in the Washington Post.
Bloch vehemently denied the allegations at the time. On Tuesday, a spokesman in his office reiterated Bloch's position and insisted that the special counsel would still be able to conduct an independent review of Rove's work for the past six years, regardless of the accusations against him.
Some Democratic Congressional leaders, such as Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the Government Oversight Committee, who is also looking into Rove's use of RNC email accounts, as well as his role in the firing of the US attorneys, would not immediately comment on the announcement that Bloch's office is spearheading the probe into Rove's work. However, there are concerns among Democratic officials on Capitol Hill that the investigation as headed by Bloch would amount to a whitewash.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Bloch's own questionable behavior as special counsel makes him the "wrong choice" to investigate Rove.
"Having transformed [the Office of the Special Counsel] into a virtual black hole for legitimate complaints of retaliation, Bloch is decidedly not the right person to tackle the issues of misconduct and illegality that surround top White House officials," Sloan said, "There is a serious question as to whether Bloch will just provide cover for an administration that has been covering for him."
In fact, some of the issues Bloch would be in charge of looking into related to Rove's activities in the US attorneys scandal, such as claims that some federal prosecutors were not in sync with White House policies on a variety of issues, mirror Bloch's alleged behavior involving his own employees.
"The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been investigating allegations by current and former OSC employees that Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch retaliated against underlings who disagreed with his policies - by, among other means, transferring them out of state - and tossed out legitimate whistle-blower cases to reduce the office backlog," the Washington Post reported. "The probe is the most serious of many problems at the agency since Bloch, a Kansas lawyer who served at the Justice Department's Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, was appointed by President Bush three years ago. Since he took the helm in 2004, staffers at the OSC, a small agency of about 100 lawyers and investigators, have accused him of a range of offenses, from having an anti-gay bias to criticizing employees for wearing short skirts and tight pants to work."
A January 13, 2005 story in The New Standard said employees in the Office of the Special Counsel retained a private attorney to protest Bloch's orders that at least 12 staffers in the department move to another city or lose their jobs so Bloch could hire individuals who agree with his policies. In a strange twist, these employees accused Bloch of selectively "purging" employees from his department, a word now associated with the US attorney firings, and an area that Bloch says he will investigate to determine if wrongdoing took place.
The New Standard report said a representative for some of the employees in the Office of the Special Counsel had reason to believe that their reassignments "amount to an attempted "purge."
"They further suggest that Special Counsel Scott Bloch is gradually doing away with his critics while making way for pliant, fresh-faced replacements, fitting a pattern of "cronyism" they allege he has engaged in throughout most of his thirteen-month tenure as head of OSC," the New Standard reported in a January 13, 2005 story.
In February, "the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project and Human Rights Campaign and a lawyer for the OSC employees protested in a letter to legislators and to Clay Johnson III, the Office of Management and Budget deputy who ordered the OSC probe," the Post reported
"The OSC's memo, the group said, "was only the latest in a series of actions by Bloch to obstruct the investigation. "Other actions have included suggestions that all witnesses interviewed ... provide Bloch with affidavits describing what they had been asked and how they responded," according to the Post.
Whether Bloch can truly be effective in the investigation into Rove's political work will likely be an issue of further debate.
Bloch believes he can be. He told the Los Angeles Times Monday that his office "will not leave any stone unturned."
"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Bloch told the Times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
Wrap...
From Rove investigation to opt out of voting....
From American Progress:
Think Fast
An "obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel" is launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operation that "for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove." The administration-led inquiry will be a unified investigation covering many facets of Rove's operations. "We will take the evidence where it leads us," said Scott J. Bloch, a Bush appointee who heads the Office of Special Counsel. "We will not leave any stone unturned."
U.S. Central Command has retired the phrase "the long war" to describe the struggle against global extremists, after cultural advisers became concerned that the concept "alienated Middle East audiences by suggesting that the United States would keep a large number of forces in the region indefinitely."
"World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz met yesterday with senior managers to promise unspecified changes in his leadership and to appeal for their help." "He is not going to resign," his lawyer said. "His mood is just fine. ... He feels people are trying to interfere with his job to get at world poverty."
Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) "will soon introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage -- what he calls 'a simple moral imperative,'" becoming "the first governor in the nation to introduce a gay marriage bill."
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will conduct a hearing today into misleading information from the battlefield. The hearing will focus on the death of Army Ranger Specialist Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Army Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq, and question why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), who recently went on a congressional trip to Syria, confirmed that he never received any of the attacks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did. He noted that "none of his Republican colleagues broached the subject." "Nobody ever called me to say, 'Why are you going to Syria with those people?'"
"Despite President Bush's vow that all Americans would have access to high-speed Internet service by 2007," a new study suggests the United States is continuing to fall behind other developed countries in broadband subscriptions."
"The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming."
And finally: Voters in Florida may now be going to the polls...to not vote. State Sen. Mike Bennett (R) has introduced a bill to "require ballots to have the additional option of 'I choose not to vote.'" Bennett notes that some races are so nasty that voters don't want to choose any candidate, and his bill would "enable uninformed or disgusted voters to opt out."
Wrap...
Think Fast
An "obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel" is launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operation that "for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove." The administration-led inquiry will be a unified investigation covering many facets of Rove's operations. "We will take the evidence where it leads us," said Scott J. Bloch, a Bush appointee who heads the Office of Special Counsel. "We will not leave any stone unturned."
U.S. Central Command has retired the phrase "the long war" to describe the struggle against global extremists, after cultural advisers became concerned that the concept "alienated Middle East audiences by suggesting that the United States would keep a large number of forces in the region indefinitely."
"World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz met yesterday with senior managers to promise unspecified changes in his leadership and to appeal for their help." "He is not going to resign," his lawyer said. "His mood is just fine. ... He feels people are trying to interfere with his job to get at world poverty."
Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) "will soon introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage -- what he calls 'a simple moral imperative,'" becoming "the first governor in the nation to introduce a gay marriage bill."
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will conduct a hearing today into misleading information from the battlefield. The hearing will focus on the death of Army Ranger Specialist Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Army Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq, and question why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), who recently went on a congressional trip to Syria, confirmed that he never received any of the attacks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did. He noted that "none of his Republican colleagues broached the subject." "Nobody ever called me to say, 'Why are you going to Syria with those people?'"
"Despite President Bush's vow that all Americans would have access to high-speed Internet service by 2007," a new study suggests the United States is continuing to fall behind other developed countries in broadband subscriptions."
"The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming."
And finally: Voters in Florida may now be going to the polls...to not vote. State Sen. Mike Bennett (R) has introduced a bill to "require ballots to have the additional option of 'I choose not to vote.'" Bennett notes that some races are so nasty that voters don't want to choose any candidate, and his bill would "enable uninformed or disgusted voters to opt out."
Wrap...
White House security...zilch...
From truthout.org :
Security Breakdown at the White House?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042407M.shtml
Current and former employees of the White House Security Office have reported to Chairman Waxman that there was a systemic failure at the White House to follow procedures for protecting classified information. According to the security officers, the White House regularly ignored security breaches, prevented security inspections of the West Wing and condoned mismanagement of the White House Security Office.
Wrap...
Security Breakdown at the White House?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042407M.shtml
Current and former employees of the White House Security Office have reported to Chairman Waxman that there was a systemic failure at the White House to follow procedures for protecting classified information. According to the security officers, the White House regularly ignored security breaches, prevented security inspections of the West Wing and condoned mismanagement of the White House Security Office.
Wrap...
This Spec Counsel NOT under BushCo control...
From LA Times via truthout.org :
Special Counsel to Probe Karl Rove's Political Activities
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042407J.shtml
Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.
But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into White House political operations headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.
[click above link to continue reading]
Wrap...
Special Counsel to Probe Karl Rove's Political Activities
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042407J.shtml
Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.
But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into White House political operations headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.
[click above link to continue reading]
Wrap...
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