From WayneMadsenReport :
June 21, 2006 -- Nevada Democratic gubernatorial candidate Leola McConnell, who revealed that she witnessed George W. Bush perform a homosexual act in Tennessee in 1984, reports that she has received a number of death threats from right-wing extremists. These are obviously the same deranged elements who shopped around a story insinuating this editor is a suspect in the FBI anthrax investigation and provided a link to the FBI's "Amerithrax" tip web site.
We have learned that the source for this "story," PHXNews, is located within a high-rent gated community/yacht club at 13952 Bora Bora Way in Marina del Rey, California. Perhaps the FBI would want to pay a visit to the address to investigate a false claim. Perhaps not.
In the case of threats against Ms. McConnell, Federal law prohibits the use of the Internet to convey threats and solicit violent acts. Violations carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine.
Anybody home at the FBI these days? Millions of files of personal data being stolen on a daily basis, death threats against a gubernatorial candidate, a journalist tortured in Florida, and false claims circulated on the web against another journalist by a right-wing loon site, and the FBI sits on their collective asses as America continues to drift into banana republic status.
Wrap...
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
All horrors...Thanks a lot, BushCo....
From American Progress Report:
*The two missing U.S. soldiers found yesterday were beheaded and showed signs of being "brutally tortured before their death." Their remains are being sent to the U.S. for DNA testing, suggesting they "had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition."
*The recently appointed head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection spoke out against a wall being built along the Mexican border. “I don’t support, I don’t believe the administration supports a wall,” Commissioner W. Ralph Basham said yesterday. "It's not practical."
*The House will vote this week on an estate tax “compromise” bill from Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA). “To lure Democratic senators from Washington state and Arkansas, Thomas included a lucrative tax break for the timber industry, pushing the total cost of the bill to nearly $280 billion.”
*Not exactly a free press in Afghanistan: “In a coordinated action this week," Afghan intelligence operatives delivered an "unsigned letter" to TV stations and newspapers "ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government."
*After revelations that AT&T set up a secret room in San Francisco that provided the National Security Agency with "full access to its customers' phone calls," Salon now reveals that AT&T has a "more integral" secret room in its Bridgeton, MO facility. "Although they work for AT&T, they're actually doing a job for the government," said a former AT&T employee.
*Jack Abramoff's lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, is calling for stricter ethics reform "that goes beyond what Congress is willing to even debate." The AP has obtained the FBI files on playwright Arthur Miller, a “longtime liberal who opposed the Vietnam War” and “supported civil rights.” (In 1956, Miller famously refused to name names before Eugene McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.) One FBI report said Miller's "religious" wedding ceremony was a "cover up" since he was a "cultural front man" for the secular Communist Party.
*The conviction of Abramoff-linked former Bush official David Safavian yesterday "could embolden federal prosecutors to seek additional indictments against cronies of Abramoff." Said one analyst, "This is the type of conviction that tends to loosen tongues."
*More media consolidation on the horizon? The FCC today "will embark on a new attempt to revamp media ownership restrictions," with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin joining large media conglomerates in pushing for increased consolidation. (Just in time, The Nation has updated their graph of the National Entertainment State.)
*Conservative alumni at colleges such as Dartmouth, Hamilton, and Colgate University, are attempting to take over alumni association boards and are pulling in right-wing bloggers to help them out.
*And finally: Doctors are investigating the deadly effects of World Cup fever. “An exciting match can cause fans’ hearts to skip not one beat, but several, leading to a rather worrying incidence of cardiac arrest among soccer die-hards.” In an ongoing study on the phenomenon, German heart attack victims “are asked precisely what they were doing at the time of the attack, whether they were following football on the radio or television, or even watching the pundits after the game.”
Wrap...
*The two missing U.S. soldiers found yesterday were beheaded and showed signs of being "brutally tortured before their death." Their remains are being sent to the U.S. for DNA testing, suggesting they "had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition."
*The recently appointed head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection spoke out against a wall being built along the Mexican border. “I don’t support, I don’t believe the administration supports a wall,” Commissioner W. Ralph Basham said yesterday. "It's not practical."
*The House will vote this week on an estate tax “compromise” bill from Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA). “To lure Democratic senators from Washington state and Arkansas, Thomas included a lucrative tax break for the timber industry, pushing the total cost of the bill to nearly $280 billion.”
*Not exactly a free press in Afghanistan: “In a coordinated action this week," Afghan intelligence operatives delivered an "unsigned letter" to TV stations and newspapers "ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government."
*After revelations that AT&T set up a secret room in San Francisco that provided the National Security Agency with "full access to its customers' phone calls," Salon now reveals that AT&T has a "more integral" secret room in its Bridgeton, MO facility. "Although they work for AT&T, they're actually doing a job for the government," said a former AT&T employee.
*Jack Abramoff's lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, is calling for stricter ethics reform "that goes beyond what Congress is willing to even debate." The AP has obtained the FBI files on playwright Arthur Miller, a “longtime liberal who opposed the Vietnam War” and “supported civil rights.” (In 1956, Miller famously refused to name names before Eugene McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.) One FBI report said Miller's "religious" wedding ceremony was a "cover up" since he was a "cultural front man" for the secular Communist Party.
*The conviction of Abramoff-linked former Bush official David Safavian yesterday "could embolden federal prosecutors to seek additional indictments against cronies of Abramoff." Said one analyst, "This is the type of conviction that tends to loosen tongues."
*More media consolidation on the horizon? The FCC today "will embark on a new attempt to revamp media ownership restrictions," with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin joining large media conglomerates in pushing for increased consolidation. (Just in time, The Nation has updated their graph of the National Entertainment State.)
*Conservative alumni at colleges such as Dartmouth, Hamilton, and Colgate University, are attempting to take over alumni association boards and are pulling in right-wing bloggers to help them out.
*And finally: Doctors are investigating the deadly effects of World Cup fever. “An exciting match can cause fans’ hearts to skip not one beat, but several, leading to a rather worrying incidence of cardiac arrest among soccer die-hards.” In an ongoing study on the phenomenon, German heart attack victims “are asked precisely what they were doing at the time of the attack, whether they were following football on the radio or television, or even watching the pundits after the game.”
Wrap...
Dictators ALWAYS control the media...
From Center For American Progress:
MEDIA -- BUSH NOMINATES NATIONAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTOR TO PUBLIC BROADCASTING BOARD:
Yesterday, President Bush announced his intent to nominate television producer and National Review Online (NRO) contributor Warren Bell to the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
The CPB is intended to provide a buffer between independent public broadcast networks and vested or partisan interests in government. But instead of being a nonpartisan advocate of public broadcasting, Bell will likely be another advocate of Bush's agenda. Under Bush, the CPB has steadily pushed right-wing priorities, such as trying to put a conservative slant on programming.
In his writings for National Review, Bell has been clear about his right-wing views: "I am thoroughly conservative in ways that strike horror into the hearts of my Hollywood colleagues. I support a woman’s right to choose what movie we should see, but not that other one."
He has also made it clear that he is unlikely to work in a bipartisan manner, stating in a 2005 column, "I could reach across the aisle and hug [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, and I would, except this is a new shirt, and that sort of thing leaves a stain.”
Congress and the White House need to protect independent and public broadcasting. Write your representatives and demand they save PBS from partisan operatives.
Wrap...
MEDIA -- BUSH NOMINATES NATIONAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTOR TO PUBLIC BROADCASTING BOARD:
Yesterday, President Bush announced his intent to nominate television producer and National Review Online (NRO) contributor Warren Bell to the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
The CPB is intended to provide a buffer between independent public broadcast networks and vested or partisan interests in government. But instead of being a nonpartisan advocate of public broadcasting, Bell will likely be another advocate of Bush's agenda. Under Bush, the CPB has steadily pushed right-wing priorities, such as trying to put a conservative slant on programming.
In his writings for National Review, Bell has been clear about his right-wing views: "I am thoroughly conservative in ways that strike horror into the hearts of my Hollywood colleagues. I support a woman’s right to choose what movie we should see, but not that other one."
He has also made it clear that he is unlikely to work in a bipartisan manner, stating in a 2005 column, "I could reach across the aisle and hug [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, and I would, except this is a new shirt, and that sort of thing leaves a stain.”
Congress and the White House need to protect independent and public broadcasting. Write your representatives and demand they save PBS from partisan operatives.
Wrap...
Takes talent to lie..BushCo is leading expert on it...
From TomPaine.com :
The Perfect Stonewall
David Corn
June 21, 2006
(After a brief hiatus to work on a book about the selling of the Iraq war and the CIA leak case, David Corn is back writing his twice-monthly column, "The Loyal Opposition" for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com. )
Future presidents and press secretaries will owe much to George W. Bush and Scott McClellan—that is, if they ever want to mount a cover up. A week after Karl Rove's lawyer announced he was no longer under investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, it's rather clear that Rove and the White House pulled perfected the art of stonewalling. They—and this caper—will be an inspiration to spinners everywhere.
In July 2003, when columnist Bob Novak (first) and Time magazine (second) published stories disclosing that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer—and cited administration officials as their sources—the White House responded with a simple denial. McClellan, who had just inherited the White House press secretary position from Ari Fleischer, said of this leak, "That is not the way this president or this White House operates." There was no wiggle room in that statement.
Months later, once the news broke that the Justice Department—acting in response to a CIA request—would be investigating the leak, the White House got more specific. Scott McClellan stated that any White House aide who leaked information on Valerie Wilson would be dismissed, and he asserted that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby had been involved in the leak. Months after that, Bush reaffirmed that the leaker—if discovered—would be booted from his White House.
This was all unambiguous. It ain't us. It ain't Rove. It ain't Libby. And if we knew who had done this, he'd be run out of town. This straight talk got the White House all the way through the 2004 elections.
Eventually the strategy shifted—because it had to. In July 2005, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff revealed an e-mail written by Time correspondent Matt Cooper that showed (with no doubt) that Rove—on "double super secret background"—had told Cooper that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA and had "authorized" the 2002 trip her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had taken to Niger to check out the allegation that Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there. The e-mail was incontrovertible proof that Rove had leaked—that he had passed to a reporter classified information (for Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was indeed classified, as special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would later confirm), while the White House was trying to discredit a White House critic.
This e-mail was out of sync with the White House's clear-cut denials. And the disclosure of this e-mail raised a question: would Bush stick to his promise to fire the leaker? The answer was not long in coming: no. But there was more. Now that Rove was clearly pegged as a leaker, the White House came up with a new response: it could not say anything while the investigation was under way. Forget that it had done so repeatedly—that was before it had been caught fibbing about the president's chief strategist.
Those disciplined folks at the White House then clung to its we-cannot-comment lifeline for months. Whenever Bush or McClellan were asked about the leak, the reply was the same: while the investigation is going on, we can't say. And that stance came in handy when Scooter Libby was indicted last fall.
McClellan claimed that Fitzgerald had asked the White House to refrain from commenting on the case, but the press secretary refused to explain anything about that request (even the date that it had been made). At one White House press briefing, I asked McClellan if he would acknowledge that—despite whatever Fitzgerald had requested of the White House—the president was free to take action on his own to deal with the leak. After all, evidence in the public record now indicated a leaker (Rove) was in the highest circles in the White House. Still, McClellan stuck to the script: We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.
Then last week—after Rove was cut loose by Fitzgerald—Bush said, "I've made the comments I'm going to make about this incident, and I'm going to put this part of the situation behind us and move forward." Wait a minute. Before the investigation was over, Bush and the White House had said they couldn't say anything until the investigation was over. Now that the Rove investigation was over, Bush was saying he had already addressed the matter and it was time to move on.
That was a pretty transparent dodge—duck the issue, duck the issue, duck the issue, then say the issue has already been dealt with and now is old news. But it worked. The media mash did move on to other stories. This was quite an accomplishment for the Bush White House. It had been faced with a smoking-gun piece of evidence proving that the president's most important aide had leaked and that the White House had misled the public about this, and the political price it had to pay was essentially nothing.
Compare this with Bill Clinton's travails. When he was first confronted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he went into automatic denial mode. ("I did not have sex with that woman.") But when he came face to face with a stained dress bearing his DNA, he admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with the intern. He had tried to hold out as long as he could, but he couldn't deny reality. The Bush White House just did exactly that. The evidence about Rove? Sorry, we can't talk about it.
Theses two scandals are hardly parallel case studies. It just may be—for some reason—harder for a politician to get away with a lie about sex than a lie about a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the point is that the Bush gang stonewalled exquisitely. Democrats have reason to be frustrated that Rove—the fellow they despise as the evil genius responsible for many of their woes—escaped the clutches of Patrick Fitzgerald.
Worse, though, is that Rove and the Bush White House have set an example for others to follow.
Wrap...
The Perfect Stonewall
David Corn
June 21, 2006
(After a brief hiatus to work on a book about the selling of the Iraq war and the CIA leak case, David Corn is back writing his twice-monthly column, "The Loyal Opposition" for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com. )
Future presidents and press secretaries will owe much to George W. Bush and Scott McClellan—that is, if they ever want to mount a cover up. A week after Karl Rove's lawyer announced he was no longer under investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, it's rather clear that Rove and the White House pulled perfected the art of stonewalling. They—and this caper—will be an inspiration to spinners everywhere.
In July 2003, when columnist Bob Novak (first) and Time magazine (second) published stories disclosing that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer—and cited administration officials as their sources—the White House responded with a simple denial. McClellan, who had just inherited the White House press secretary position from Ari Fleischer, said of this leak, "That is not the way this president or this White House operates." There was no wiggle room in that statement.
Months later, once the news broke that the Justice Department—acting in response to a CIA request—would be investigating the leak, the White House got more specific. Scott McClellan stated that any White House aide who leaked information on Valerie Wilson would be dismissed, and he asserted that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby had been involved in the leak. Months after that, Bush reaffirmed that the leaker—if discovered—would be booted from his White House.
This was all unambiguous. It ain't us. It ain't Rove. It ain't Libby. And if we knew who had done this, he'd be run out of town. This straight talk got the White House all the way through the 2004 elections.
Eventually the strategy shifted—because it had to. In July 2005, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff revealed an e-mail written by Time correspondent Matt Cooper that showed (with no doubt) that Rove—on "double super secret background"—had told Cooper that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA and had "authorized" the 2002 trip her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had taken to Niger to check out the allegation that Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there. The e-mail was incontrovertible proof that Rove had leaked—that he had passed to a reporter classified information (for Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was indeed classified, as special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would later confirm), while the White House was trying to discredit a White House critic.
This e-mail was out of sync with the White House's clear-cut denials. And the disclosure of this e-mail raised a question: would Bush stick to his promise to fire the leaker? The answer was not long in coming: no. But there was more. Now that Rove was clearly pegged as a leaker, the White House came up with a new response: it could not say anything while the investigation was under way. Forget that it had done so repeatedly—that was before it had been caught fibbing about the president's chief strategist.
Those disciplined folks at the White House then clung to its we-cannot-comment lifeline for months. Whenever Bush or McClellan were asked about the leak, the reply was the same: while the investigation is going on, we can't say. And that stance came in handy when Scooter Libby was indicted last fall.
McClellan claimed that Fitzgerald had asked the White House to refrain from commenting on the case, but the press secretary refused to explain anything about that request (even the date that it had been made). At one White House press briefing, I asked McClellan if he would acknowledge that—despite whatever Fitzgerald had requested of the White House—the president was free to take action on his own to deal with the leak. After all, evidence in the public record now indicated a leaker (Rove) was in the highest circles in the White House. Still, McClellan stuck to the script: We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.
Then last week—after Rove was cut loose by Fitzgerald—Bush said, "I've made the comments I'm going to make about this incident, and I'm going to put this part of the situation behind us and move forward." Wait a minute. Before the investigation was over, Bush and the White House had said they couldn't say anything until the investigation was over. Now that the Rove investigation was over, Bush was saying he had already addressed the matter and it was time to move on.
That was a pretty transparent dodge—duck the issue, duck the issue, duck the issue, then say the issue has already been dealt with and now is old news. But it worked. The media mash did move on to other stories. This was quite an accomplishment for the Bush White House. It had been faced with a smoking-gun piece of evidence proving that the president's most important aide had leaked and that the White House had misled the public about this, and the political price it had to pay was essentially nothing.
Compare this with Bill Clinton's travails. When he was first confronted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he went into automatic denial mode. ("I did not have sex with that woman.") But when he came face to face with a stained dress bearing his DNA, he admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with the intern. He had tried to hold out as long as he could, but he couldn't deny reality. The Bush White House just did exactly that. The evidence about Rove? Sorry, we can't talk about it.
Theses two scandals are hardly parallel case studies. It just may be—for some reason—harder for a politician to get away with a lie about sex than a lie about a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the point is that the Bush gang stonewalled exquisitely. Democrats have reason to be frustrated that Rove—the fellow they despise as the evil genius responsible for many of their woes—escaped the clutches of Patrick Fitzgerald.
Worse, though, is that Rove and the Bush White House have set an example for others to follow.
Wrap...
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
The Globe on Bush/Condi/Laura: Sex & Fury...
From www.waynemadsenreport.com :
June 19, 2006 -- American Media, which owns the tabloids National Enquirer, The Star, and The Globe, and which scooped the mainstream media on Gary Hart's affair with Donna Rice on "Monkey Business II"; Bill Clinton's affair with Gennifer Flowers and salacious details about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; and Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child has published details of the George W. Bush-Condoleezza Rice relationship and his problems with First Lady Laura Bush in the current, June 26, 2006 issue of The Globe. WMR is quoted in the story.
They got it right about extra-marital affairs of Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Jackson. Now, they have the goods on George W. Bush. There goes Dubya's "5 percent poll bounce." Word from the South: This story ain't playing well among Dubya's white, fundamentalist base, his last bastion of support.
NOTE: Ain't that a shame... :))
Wrap...
June 19, 2006 -- American Media, which owns the tabloids National Enquirer, The Star, and The Globe, and which scooped the mainstream media on Gary Hart's affair with Donna Rice on "Monkey Business II"; Bill Clinton's affair with Gennifer Flowers and salacious details about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky; and Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child has published details of the George W. Bush-Condoleezza Rice relationship and his problems with First Lady Laura Bush in the current, June 26, 2006 issue of The Globe. WMR is quoted in the story.
They got it right about extra-marital affairs of Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Jackson. Now, they have the goods on George W. Bush. There goes Dubya's "5 percent poll bounce." Word from the South: This story ain't playing well among Dubya's white, fundamentalist base, his last bastion of support.
NOTE: Ain't that a shame... :))
Wrap...
Supreme Court of US sits on abortion...
From SCOTUS blog: an excerpt:
Monday, June 19, 2006
Orders: Court expands abortion review
Posted by Lyle Denniston at 10:58 AM
UPDATE 1:22 p.m.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a second case on the constitutionality of the federal ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortions. The Court added a case from the Ninth Circuit Court to one previously granted from the Eighth Circuit. The new case raises a remedy issue that did not appear to be present in the earlier grant, and also poses variations on the constitutional issues at stake in the earlier grant.. It is Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood (05-1382). The Solicitor General had argued against adding the new case to the decision docket, but the city of San Francisco and abortion rights groups contended that the remedy and other substantive issues would be better explored in this case.
The earlier case is Gonzales v. Carhart (05-380), granted review on Feb. 21. It is a government appeal arguing that the 2003 federal law is not invalid just because it lacks an exception to allow the abortion procedure when a woman's health is at risk. The new case raises issues about the alleged vagueness of the federal ban, and about whether it sweeps so widely that it imposes an undue burden on the rights of pregnant women.
The cases will be argued and decided in the new Term starting in October. The Court has not yet scheduled the cases for argument. Presumably, they will be heard back-to-back, but that has not yet been determined.
Wrap...
Monday, June 19, 2006
Orders: Court expands abortion review
Posted by Lyle Denniston at 10:58 AM
UPDATE 1:22 p.m.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a second case on the constitutionality of the federal ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortions. The Court added a case from the Ninth Circuit Court to one previously granted from the Eighth Circuit. The new case raises a remedy issue that did not appear to be present in the earlier grant, and also poses variations on the constitutional issues at stake in the earlier grant.. It is Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood (05-1382). The Solicitor General had argued against adding the new case to the decision docket, but the city of San Francisco and abortion rights groups contended that the remedy and other substantive issues would be better explored in this case.
The earlier case is Gonzales v. Carhart (05-380), granted review on Feb. 21. It is a government appeal arguing that the 2003 federal law is not invalid just because it lacks an exception to allow the abortion procedure when a woman's health is at risk. The new case raises issues about the alleged vagueness of the federal ban, and about whether it sweeps so widely that it imposes an undue burden on the rights of pregnant women.
The cases will be argued and decided in the new Term starting in October. The Court has not yet scheduled the cases for argument. Presumably, they will be heard back-to-back, but that has not yet been determined.
Wrap...
Some books worth waiting for....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
HORROR:
David Wellington's 13 BULLETS, 99 COFFINS, and ONE LAST VAMPIRE, a mixture of "Blade" and "NYPD Blue" featuring a police officer's violent struggle against the deadliest vampire in history, to Jason Pinter at Three Rivers Press, by Byrd Leavell at Waxman Literary Agency (World). jpinter@randomhouse.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
NYT bestselling author of THE SAVING GRACES Patricia Gaffney's MAD DASH, a humorous and moving story of a long-married couple who have never been able to live without each other, and are suddenly forced to try, to Sally Kim at Shaye Areheart Books, by Amy Berkower at Writers House (NA). aberkower@writershouse.com
THRILLER:
PJ Tracy's next untitled thriller in the award-winning MONKEEWRENCH series, again to Christine Pepe and Ivan Held at Putnam, by Ellen Geiger at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency (NA).eg@goldinlit.com
UK:
Anthony and Gumshoe Award-winning mother/daughter writing team P.J. Tracy's next two untitled thrillers, which again explore the fine line between justice and vengeance, featuring the investigative team of Minneapolis-based detectives, and the MONKEEWRENCH gang of computer geniuses who assist their investigations by unorthodox and quasi-legal means, again to Tom Weldon and Rowland White at Michael Joseph, by David Grossman, on behalf of Ellen Geiger at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.eg@goldinlit.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Author of THE PERFECT MILE and the forthcoming RED MUTINY Neal Bascomb's ANGELS OF JUSTICE: The Hunt for Adolph Eichmann, Death's Architect, the fifteen year manhunt for the engineer of The Final Solution, who lived alone in the forests of Germany for five years before finding safe passage to Argentina via the Nazi "rat lines" in 1950, and was eventually seized by Mossad agents in one of their very first missions in 1960, featuring newly declassified documents and first-person accounts, again to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin, by Scott Waxman at Waxman Literary Agency.
Susan Lehman and Judith Newman's LOSERS: A Mortifying History of High School Geeks, Dorks, Nerds and Spazzes -- and what makes them the winners they are today, in which the authors explore why some of us peak in high school, and why, thankfully, most of us don't, to David Hirshey at Harper, by Mark Reiter at PFD New York.
ILLUSTRATED/ART:
David Copperfield's AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF MAGIC, drawn from the author's personal collection of magic memorabilia and artifacts, to Michael Sand at Little, Brown, for publication in 2008, by Celeste Fine at Vigliano Associates (world).
MEMOIR:
Screenwriter Mindy Schneider's NOT A HAPPY CAMPER, about the author's eye-opening eight weeks at a ratty, morally suspect -- kosher! -- sleepaway camp in 1974, to Lauren Wein at Grove/Atlantic, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (NA).
NARRATIVE:
Like Normal People author Karen Bender and Of Cats and Men author Nina de Gramont's CHOICE, an anthology in which women tell the personal stories behind their reproductive decisions in an effort to humanize the current debate about reproductive rights, including contributions from Jacquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, and Ann Hood, to Kate Nitze at MacAdam/Cage, in a nice deal, by Peter Steinberg at Regal Literary (World).
SCIENCE:
Stanislas Dehaene's READING IN THE BRAIN, a look at how and why we read from one of Europe's leading cognitive scientists, to Hilary Redmon at Viking, by Max Brockman at Brockman (NA). hilary.redmon@us.penguingroup.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
British journalist Rose George's untitled reported look at human waste-from the first perfumed attempts to ignore it to the developing world's struggle to keep it from infecting food and water sources with deadly disease, to Vanessa Mobley at Holt, at auction, by Erin Malone of the William Morris Agency (NA).claire.mckinney@hholt.com
Robert Spector's THE MOM & POP STORE, about the history and contemporary story of mom & pop stores, and the author's family experience with a mom & pop store, to Jackie Johnson and George Gibson at Walker, by Elizabeth Wales of Wales Literary Agency.
UK:
Travis Elborough's THE LONG-PLAYER GOODBYE: The Album from Microgroove to iPod and Back Again, a history of the LP at a time when its existence is under threat from the iPod and downloading, to Helen Coyle at Sceptre, in a two-book deal, by Nicola Barr at The Susijn Agency. nicola@thesusijnagency.com
Wrap...
HORROR:
David Wellington's 13 BULLETS, 99 COFFINS, and ONE LAST VAMPIRE, a mixture of "Blade" and "NYPD Blue" featuring a police officer's violent struggle against the deadliest vampire in history, to Jason Pinter at Three Rivers Press, by Byrd Leavell at Waxman Literary Agency (World). jpinter@randomhouse.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
NYT bestselling author of THE SAVING GRACES Patricia Gaffney's MAD DASH, a humorous and moving story of a long-married couple who have never been able to live without each other, and are suddenly forced to try, to Sally Kim at Shaye Areheart Books, by Amy Berkower at Writers House (NA). aberkower@writershouse.com
THRILLER:
PJ Tracy's next untitled thriller in the award-winning MONKEEWRENCH series, again to Christine Pepe and Ivan Held at Putnam, by Ellen Geiger at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency (NA).eg@goldinlit.com
UK:
Anthony and Gumshoe Award-winning mother/daughter writing team P.J. Tracy's next two untitled thrillers, which again explore the fine line between justice and vengeance, featuring the investigative team of Minneapolis-based detectives, and the MONKEEWRENCH gang of computer geniuses who assist their investigations by unorthodox and quasi-legal means, again to Tom Weldon and Rowland White at Michael Joseph, by David Grossman, on behalf of Ellen Geiger at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.eg@goldinlit.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Author of THE PERFECT MILE and the forthcoming RED MUTINY Neal Bascomb's ANGELS OF JUSTICE: The Hunt for Adolph Eichmann, Death's Architect, the fifteen year manhunt for the engineer of The Final Solution, who lived alone in the forests of Germany for five years before finding safe passage to Argentina via the Nazi "rat lines" in 1950, and was eventually seized by Mossad agents in one of their very first missions in 1960, featuring newly declassified documents and first-person accounts, again to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin, by Scott Waxman at Waxman Literary Agency.
Susan Lehman and Judith Newman's LOSERS: A Mortifying History of High School Geeks, Dorks, Nerds and Spazzes -- and what makes them the winners they are today, in which the authors explore why some of us peak in high school, and why, thankfully, most of us don't, to David Hirshey at Harper, by Mark Reiter at PFD New York.
ILLUSTRATED/ART:
David Copperfield's AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF MAGIC, drawn from the author's personal collection of magic memorabilia and artifacts, to Michael Sand at Little, Brown, for publication in 2008, by Celeste Fine at Vigliano Associates (world).
MEMOIR:
Screenwriter Mindy Schneider's NOT A HAPPY CAMPER, about the author's eye-opening eight weeks at a ratty, morally suspect -- kosher! -- sleepaway camp in 1974, to Lauren Wein at Grove/Atlantic, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (NA).
NARRATIVE:
Like Normal People author Karen Bender and Of Cats and Men author Nina de Gramont's CHOICE, an anthology in which women tell the personal stories behind their reproductive decisions in an effort to humanize the current debate about reproductive rights, including contributions from Jacquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, and Ann Hood, to Kate Nitze at MacAdam/Cage, in a nice deal, by Peter Steinberg at Regal Literary (World).
SCIENCE:
Stanislas Dehaene's READING IN THE BRAIN, a look at how and why we read from one of Europe's leading cognitive scientists, to Hilary Redmon at Viking, by Max Brockman at Brockman (NA). hilary.redmon@us.penguingroup.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
British journalist Rose George's untitled reported look at human waste-from the first perfumed attempts to ignore it to the developing world's struggle to keep it from infecting food and water sources with deadly disease, to Vanessa Mobley at Holt, at auction, by Erin Malone of the William Morris Agency (NA).claire.mckinney@hholt.com
Robert Spector's THE MOM & POP STORE, about the history and contemporary story of mom & pop stores, and the author's family experience with a mom & pop store, to Jackie Johnson and George Gibson at Walker, by Elizabeth Wales of Wales Literary Agency.
UK:
Travis Elborough's THE LONG-PLAYER GOODBYE: The Album from Microgroove to iPod and Back Again, a history of the LP at a time when its existence is under threat from the iPod and downloading, to Helen Coyle at Sceptre, in a two-book deal, by Nicola Barr at The Susijn Agency. nicola@thesusijnagency.com
Wrap...
This is truly ugly!!!
From Information Clearing House:
Israeli Officials Call to "Decapitate" Hamas Leaders!:
The array of barbaric statements made by Israeli officials and military generals against the Palestinian people continued today, by demanding to decapitate the heads of the Hamas movement
http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/print.asp?name=16580
Wrap...
Israeli Officials Call to "Decapitate" Hamas Leaders!:
The array of barbaric statements made by Israeli officials and military generals against the Palestinian people continued today, by demanding to decapitate the heads of the Hamas movement
http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/print.asp?name=16580
Wrap...
Want a living wage? Vote out the Republicans...
From TomPaine:
Pay Raise Politics
Jared Bernstein
June 20, 2006
(Jared Bernstein is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the new book, All Together Now: Common Sense for a New Economy (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.).
An increase in the minimum wage is once again on the congressional agenda, as Democrats try to wedge it into various bills while Republicans try to sink it.
And once again, as reliable as clockwork, defenders and opponents are snapping into action, dusting off briefs and arguments, updating the analysis for inflation and generally doing the same dance we always do (I’m a defender: see http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwage).
There’s got to be a better way.
Facts matter, so I’m not for a second saying that progressives should ignore the superior research, summarized below, that supports an increase. But I think we should also fight this one on basic fairness. It’s simply shameful, in an era of sharply increasing economic inequality, for Congress to incessantly cut rich people’s taxes yet refuse to help low-wage workers.
First, a bit of context regarding the minimum wage. As Isaac Shapiro and I report in a study coming out today (go to www.epi.org), the buying power of today’s minimum wage is at its lowest since 1955. Remember, unlike most other government programs, the wage floor is not adjusted for inflation. Since the last increase in 1997 alone, inflation has eroded 25 percent of the minimum wage’s value.
Second, the federal minimum wage has often been set with the level of other workers in mind, reflecting the principle that minimum-wage workers should share in economic gains and not fall far behind other workers. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the minimum wage was typically about half the average wage of workers in nonsupervisory positions. Today, the minimum wage has fallen to 31 percent of the average wage earned by other workers—its lowest share since economists began tracking it in 1947.
So what about the usual pushback against the increase: that it will hurt low-wage workers, whose employers would have to fire them when the wage mandate priced them out of the labor market? Not to be snarky, but this concern doesn’t seem to come up when Congress mandates their own pay hikes; since the last minimum wage increase in 1997, to $5.15, they’ve raise their pay by about $32,000. Just last week, the House gave itself a $3,300 raise.
That “disemployment” argument would be plausible, were it not for the fact that tons of careful research has disproved it. The federal minimum wage has been raised 19 times by Congress since its introduction in 1938. Twenty-one states, covering about half of the national workforce, have minimum wages above that of the Federal level. In other words, more than any economic policy, we’ve had hundreds of “pseudo-experiments”—rare in economics—that allow us to test the impact of wage mandates on various outcomes. These experiments allow us to compare before and after, or, even better, compare nearby places that face similar economic conditions but have different minimum wage laws.
So what have these studies found? Here’s the way economics Nobelist Robert Solow summarized the findings:
The main thing about this research is that the evidence of job loss is weak. And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests that the impact on jobs is small.
A great example comes from the last federal minimum wage increase, back in 1996-97. The usual suspects predicted massive job losses among those affected by the increase from $4.25 to the current level of $5.15. Instead, low-wage workers experienced the strongest job market in 30 years. Poverty fell to historic lows, particularly for the most disadvantaged workers, such as less-skilled minorities and single-mothers. What’s more, small businesses—that traditional poster child for the opposition—actually did better in areas with higher minimum wages.
I know the opposition forces have their own studies and arguments and even Nobel Laureates. But the point is that any policymaker not in the pocket of those moneyed interests opposed to an increase could absolutely support it with confidence that the policy would have its intended purpose of providing a small boost to the living standards of the least advantaged workers among us.
So what gives?
Well, they’ve been busy passing $70 billion worth of new tax cuts, mostly by extending earlier Bush cuts on dividends and capital gains. These cuts reduce millionaire's tax payments by $43,000, middle-income payment by $20, and low-income payments by $0. Oh, and they got awfully close to repealing the estate tax, a gift to the Paris Hiltons of the world that would have cost $1 trillion over 10 years.
So, here’s my question: I know inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage. What’s responsible for the erosion of Congress’s values?
Is it an electorate that is too busy or too distracted to notice? Is the Republican spin machine really so effective that a majority is convinced that trillions of dollars in regressive tax cuts are fine yet a moderate minimum wage increase will cripple the economy?
These are probably part of the answer, but here’s another part: Too few of our leaders are hammering home the shame of these actions. With notable exceptions (Ted Kennedy, George Miller and precious few others), the dog is neither barking, howling or growling.
We are in desperate need of a Howard Beale “I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-this-anymore” moment.So, here’s my plan. If the Congress refuses to act, I say we all pick a time—say, noon on December 2, 2006, the day Congress ties Reagan’s nine-year record for ignoring the minimum wage. At that moment, we all lean out our windows and yell at the top of our lungs, “Raise the minimum wage!”
On second thought, why wait until then? Let’s vote for change on November 7.
© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )
Pay Raise Politics
Jared Bernstein
June 20, 2006
(Jared Bernstein is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the new book, All Together Now: Common Sense for a New Economy (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.).
An increase in the minimum wage is once again on the congressional agenda, as Democrats try to wedge it into various bills while Republicans try to sink it.
And once again, as reliable as clockwork, defenders and opponents are snapping into action, dusting off briefs and arguments, updating the analysis for inflation and generally doing the same dance we always do (I’m a defender: see http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwage).
There’s got to be a better way.
Facts matter, so I’m not for a second saying that progressives should ignore the superior research, summarized below, that supports an increase. But I think we should also fight this one on basic fairness. It’s simply shameful, in an era of sharply increasing economic inequality, for Congress to incessantly cut rich people’s taxes yet refuse to help low-wage workers.
First, a bit of context regarding the minimum wage. As Isaac Shapiro and I report in a study coming out today (go to www.epi.org), the buying power of today’s minimum wage is at its lowest since 1955. Remember, unlike most other government programs, the wage floor is not adjusted for inflation. Since the last increase in 1997 alone, inflation has eroded 25 percent of the minimum wage’s value.
Second, the federal minimum wage has often been set with the level of other workers in mind, reflecting the principle that minimum-wage workers should share in economic gains and not fall far behind other workers. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the minimum wage was typically about half the average wage of workers in nonsupervisory positions. Today, the minimum wage has fallen to 31 percent of the average wage earned by other workers—its lowest share since economists began tracking it in 1947.
So what about the usual pushback against the increase: that it will hurt low-wage workers, whose employers would have to fire them when the wage mandate priced them out of the labor market? Not to be snarky, but this concern doesn’t seem to come up when Congress mandates their own pay hikes; since the last minimum wage increase in 1997, to $5.15, they’ve raise their pay by about $32,000. Just last week, the House gave itself a $3,300 raise.
That “disemployment” argument would be plausible, were it not for the fact that tons of careful research has disproved it. The federal minimum wage has been raised 19 times by Congress since its introduction in 1938. Twenty-one states, covering about half of the national workforce, have minimum wages above that of the Federal level. In other words, more than any economic policy, we’ve had hundreds of “pseudo-experiments”—rare in economics—that allow us to test the impact of wage mandates on various outcomes. These experiments allow us to compare before and after, or, even better, compare nearby places that face similar economic conditions but have different minimum wage laws.
So what have these studies found? Here’s the way economics Nobelist Robert Solow summarized the findings:
The main thing about this research is that the evidence of job loss is weak. And the fact that the evidence is weak suggests that the impact on jobs is small.
A great example comes from the last federal minimum wage increase, back in 1996-97. The usual suspects predicted massive job losses among those affected by the increase from $4.25 to the current level of $5.15. Instead, low-wage workers experienced the strongest job market in 30 years. Poverty fell to historic lows, particularly for the most disadvantaged workers, such as less-skilled minorities and single-mothers. What’s more, small businesses—that traditional poster child for the opposition—actually did better in areas with higher minimum wages.
I know the opposition forces have their own studies and arguments and even Nobel Laureates. But the point is that any policymaker not in the pocket of those moneyed interests opposed to an increase could absolutely support it with confidence that the policy would have its intended purpose of providing a small boost to the living standards of the least advantaged workers among us.
So what gives?
Well, they’ve been busy passing $70 billion worth of new tax cuts, mostly by extending earlier Bush cuts on dividends and capital gains. These cuts reduce millionaire's tax payments by $43,000, middle-income payment by $20, and low-income payments by $0. Oh, and they got awfully close to repealing the estate tax, a gift to the Paris Hiltons of the world that would have cost $1 trillion over 10 years.
So, here’s my question: I know inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage. What’s responsible for the erosion of Congress’s values?
Is it an electorate that is too busy or too distracted to notice? Is the Republican spin machine really so effective that a majority is convinced that trillions of dollars in regressive tax cuts are fine yet a moderate minimum wage increase will cripple the economy?
These are probably part of the answer, but here’s another part: Too few of our leaders are hammering home the shame of these actions. With notable exceptions (Ted Kennedy, George Miller and precious few others), the dog is neither barking, howling or growling.
We are in desperate need of a Howard Beale “I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-this-anymore” moment.So, here’s my plan. If the Congress refuses to act, I say we all pick a time—say, noon on December 2, 2006, the day Congress ties Reagan’s nine-year record for ignoring the minimum wage. At that moment, we all lean out our windows and yell at the top of our lungs, “Raise the minimum wage!”
On second thought, why wait until then? Let’s vote for change on November 7.
© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )
It's either honest elections or kiss freedom goodbye.
From Brad Blog:
I don't know how else to put it, but every voting machine used in the June 6th special election run-off for the U.S. House seat vacated by the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th congressional district has now been shown to have been effectively illegal -- by federal standards, rules and provisions and by California state rules, laws and provisions. And now, by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters own admission.
If you haven't been following the story, the election was run on highly hackable Diebold voting machines that were sent home overnight and unsecurely with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election. That outrageous disregard for security requirements issued just prior to the election rendered the machines both illegal and uncertified for use under both federal and state laws, requirements and statutes. In light of these revelations, the GOP has since rushed to swear-in Bilbray, before the votes were even finished counting or the election even certified by the state of California.
See any of the links above for corroborated, sourced and detailed information.
It has recently been revealed that Diebold voting machines can have their entire election software, operating system, and even computer firmware ("BIOS") overwritten in less than two minutes with no password necessary, should anybody gain unsupervised physical access to the machines. Moreover, it's possible that one machine contaminated can then infect all other machines in the race.
Last week, on the PBS News Hour, David Jefferson, a Livermore Labs computer scientist, and a member of the CA Sec. of State's own team of independent analysts who looked at the recently discovered massive security flaws in Diebold's systems was quoted as saying:
"[This] is the most serious vulnerability that we've ever seen in a voting system. This particular vulnerability is serious enough that you can affect multiple machines from a single attack. That's what makes it so dangerous.
Given that every common-sense (and legal) security mitigation procedure was tossed out the window when these same Diebold voting machines were sent home with poll workers, given that the machines were therefore uncertified for use in the race, given that one tampered machine could affect every other machine used in the election, given that American democracy is based on confidence in our electoral system, and given that there is therefore, no way to know that the reported results of the race are the actual results of the race...Velvet Revolution demands that a manual hand-count of all paper ballots and "paper trails" must be done immediately.
PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION DECLARING "NO CONFIDENCE"AND DEMAND A MANUAL HAND-COUNT OF ALL BALLOTS!
In case you hadn't heard, on the very same day as California's election last week, at least two elections in Iowa, in Republican Primaries, the reported results showed that the popular incumbents had lost their race after the ballots were optically scanned. Due to an election director who was clever enough to realize something was amiss, the ballots were then hand-counted,revealing in both cases that the incumbents had actually won the election!
Only a manual hand-count had revealed it. In one case, the incumbent had come in tenth in the race until the hand-count revealed the true results of the contest.
As to the Busby/Bilbray election...In addition to VR's declaration of "NO CONFIDENCE", similar declarations of "NO CONFIDENCE" have also been issued so far by:
California Election Protection Network (CEPN)
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
Election Defense Alliance (EDA)
Tribune Media columnist Robert Koehler
U.S. House Nominee Jeeni Criscenzo (CA-49)
U.S. House Candidate & Vote-Rigging Whistleblower Clint Curtis (FL-24)
MD U.S. Senate Candidate Kevin Zeese
MA Sec. of State Candidate & Constitutional Attorney John Bonifaz
So who actually won the race? At this time, there is no way to know. Not until the ballots are counted.
In the meantime, if Americans roll over and allow our electoral system to be treated with such callous disregard for the law, specific security procedures and common-sense while there is just one national election of note in play -- the signal has been sent to do whatever the hell you want come this November when 435 U.S. House races and 30 something U.S. Senate races will be up for grabs.
Is that the message we should be sending to those entrusted with running our elections?
This is our last chance prior to the November general elections to insist on real election reform and accountability in our electoral system!
It's time for Americans to take their democracy back from the private companies who have usurped our election system. San Diegans, it's time for you to "go Ukraine" on that Registrar of Voters office! For the rest of America -- who paid for this election with $3.8 billion in federal tax dollars, even though it was carried out in defiance of the very law that allocated those funds -- please sign the VelvetRevolution.us petition demanding a 100% hand-count NOW!
Then please spread the word. It's your democracy. Use it or lose it!
Wrap...
I don't know how else to put it, but every voting machine used in the June 6th special election run-off for the U.S. House seat vacated by the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th congressional district has now been shown to have been effectively illegal -- by federal standards, rules and provisions and by California state rules, laws and provisions. And now, by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters own admission.
If you haven't been following the story, the election was run on highly hackable Diebold voting machines that were sent home overnight and unsecurely with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election. That outrageous disregard for security requirements issued just prior to the election rendered the machines both illegal and uncertified for use under both federal and state laws, requirements and statutes. In light of these revelations, the GOP has since rushed to swear-in Bilbray, before the votes were even finished counting or the election even certified by the state of California.
See any of the links above for corroborated, sourced and detailed information.
It has recently been revealed that Diebold voting machines can have their entire election software, operating system, and even computer firmware ("BIOS") overwritten in less than two minutes with no password necessary, should anybody gain unsupervised physical access to the machines. Moreover, it's possible that one machine contaminated can then infect all other machines in the race.
Last week, on the PBS News Hour, David Jefferson, a Livermore Labs computer scientist, and a member of the CA Sec. of State's own team of independent analysts who looked at the recently discovered massive security flaws in Diebold's systems was quoted as saying:
"[This] is the most serious vulnerability that we've ever seen in a voting system. This particular vulnerability is serious enough that you can affect multiple machines from a single attack. That's what makes it so dangerous.
Given that every common-sense (and legal) security mitigation procedure was tossed out the window when these same Diebold voting machines were sent home with poll workers, given that the machines were therefore uncertified for use in the race, given that one tampered machine could affect every other machine used in the election, given that American democracy is based on confidence in our electoral system, and given that there is therefore, no way to know that the reported results of the race are the actual results of the race...Velvet Revolution demands that a manual hand-count of all paper ballots and "paper trails" must be done immediately.
PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION DECLARING "NO CONFIDENCE"AND DEMAND A MANUAL HAND-COUNT OF ALL BALLOTS!
In case you hadn't heard, on the very same day as California's election last week, at least two elections in Iowa, in Republican Primaries, the reported results showed that the popular incumbents had lost their race after the ballots were optically scanned. Due to an election director who was clever enough to realize something was amiss, the ballots were then hand-counted,revealing in both cases that the incumbents had actually won the election!
Only a manual hand-count had revealed it. In one case, the incumbent had come in tenth in the race until the hand-count revealed the true results of the contest.
As to the Busby/Bilbray election...In addition to VR's declaration of "NO CONFIDENCE", similar declarations of "NO CONFIDENCE" have also been issued so far by:
California Election Protection Network (CEPN)
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
Election Defense Alliance (EDA)
Tribune Media columnist Robert Koehler
U.S. House Nominee Jeeni Criscenzo (CA-49)
U.S. House Candidate & Vote-Rigging Whistleblower Clint Curtis (FL-24)
MD U.S. Senate Candidate Kevin Zeese
MA Sec. of State Candidate & Constitutional Attorney John Bonifaz
So who actually won the race? At this time, there is no way to know. Not until the ballots are counted.
In the meantime, if Americans roll over and allow our electoral system to be treated with such callous disregard for the law, specific security procedures and common-sense while there is just one national election of note in play -- the signal has been sent to do whatever the hell you want come this November when 435 U.S. House races and 30 something U.S. Senate races will be up for grabs.
Is that the message we should be sending to those entrusted with running our elections?
This is our last chance prior to the November general elections to insist on real election reform and accountability in our electoral system!
It's time for Americans to take their democracy back from the private companies who have usurped our election system. San Diegans, it's time for you to "go Ukraine" on that Registrar of Voters office! For the rest of America -- who paid for this election with $3.8 billion in federal tax dollars, even though it was carried out in defiance of the very law that allocated those funds -- please sign the VelvetRevolution.us petition demanding a 100% hand-count NOW!
Then please spread the word. It's your democracy. Use it or lose it!
Wrap...
Monday, June 19, 2006
L. Paul Bremer on Bush's 5 1/2 hr trip to Baghdad...
From San Diego Union-Tribune
Sunday, June 18, 2006
NOTE: I cannot believe this individual who so screwed up Iraq would not have sense enough to keep his big mouth shut. But no. And of course the BushCo loving U-T would publish anything he wants to say. Enough to gag a maggot.
Here we go:
Grounds for Hope
A weaker al-Qaeda, a new Iraqi government, Bush's upbeat visit and a security offensive in Baghdad may signal a turning point in Iraq The objective in Iraq should be victory
By L. Paul Bremer
George Bush made his trip to Baghdad, he told the new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, “to look you in the eye.” Yet his surprise visit established more than a first-hand connection. It signposted the dramatic events of the past week, which bode well both for Iraq's future and for the broader war on terrorism.
*Iraq's new government must deliver
*The security offensive in Baghdad
Wrap...
Sunday, June 18, 2006
NOTE: I cannot believe this individual who so screwed up Iraq would not have sense enough to keep his big mouth shut. But no. And of course the BushCo loving U-T would publish anything he wants to say. Enough to gag a maggot.
Here we go:
Grounds for Hope
A weaker al-Qaeda, a new Iraqi government, Bush's upbeat visit and a security offensive in Baghdad may signal a turning point in Iraq The objective in Iraq should be victory
By L. Paul Bremer
George Bush made his trip to Baghdad, he told the new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, “to look you in the eye.” Yet his surprise visit established more than a first-hand connection. It signposted the dramatic events of the past week, which bode well both for Iraq's future and for the broader war on terrorism.
*Iraq's new government must deliver
*The security offensive in Baghdad
Wrap...
A tad more on Leopold/Rove ....
From Washington Monthly:
6/19/06
MORE ROVE WEIRDNESS....
As if the Jason Leopold/Karl Rove story weren't already bizarre enough, today it gets even weirder. Rove obviously hasn't been indicted, as Leopold reported several weeks ago, but it turns out that Leopold and Truthout are standing behind their story anyway.
Long story short, Truthout says that (a) Rove was secretly indicted, (b) Rove and his lawyer then went back to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and made "concessions that Fitzgerald considered to be of high value," and (c) Fitzgerald subsequently agreed to hold off on the indictment.
And what were these concessions?
Our sources provided us with additional detail, saying that Fitzgerald is apparently examining closely Dick Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame matter, and apparently sought information and evidence from Karl Rove that would provide documentation of Cheney's involvement. Rove apparently was reluctant to cooperate and Fitzgerald, it appears, was pressuring him to do so, our sources told us.
Truthout claims that their sources for this information are "career federal law enforcement and federal government officials." Truthout also claims that their senior editors have confirmed all this with their sources. They're not just relying on Jason Leopold.
Is this true? I don't have a clue, but I figure I should pass along the latest scuttlebutt regardless. And for what it's worth, there is one thing that makes me wonder if Rove is really in the clear: the fact that he refuses to make public the letter from Fitzgerald saying that he "does not anticipate seeking charges" against Rove at this time. Rove's spokesman says they won't release the letter because they have an agreement with Fitzgerald that they "wouldn't disclose direct communications or any documents between his office and ours." This is a pretty laughable excuse, and it's hard not to wonder just what's in that letter that they don't want anyone to see.
Wrap...
6/19/06
MORE ROVE WEIRDNESS....
As if the Jason Leopold/Karl Rove story weren't already bizarre enough, today it gets even weirder. Rove obviously hasn't been indicted, as Leopold reported several weeks ago, but it turns out that Leopold and Truthout are standing behind their story anyway.
Long story short, Truthout says that (a) Rove was secretly indicted, (b) Rove and his lawyer then went back to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and made "concessions that Fitzgerald considered to be of high value," and (c) Fitzgerald subsequently agreed to hold off on the indictment.
And what were these concessions?
Our sources provided us with additional detail, saying that Fitzgerald is apparently examining closely Dick Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame matter, and apparently sought information and evidence from Karl Rove that would provide documentation of Cheney's involvement. Rove apparently was reluctant to cooperate and Fitzgerald, it appears, was pressuring him to do so, our sources told us.
Truthout claims that their sources for this information are "career federal law enforcement and federal government officials." Truthout also claims that their senior editors have confirmed all this with their sources. They're not just relying on Jason Leopold.
Is this true? I don't have a clue, but I figure I should pass along the latest scuttlebutt regardless. And for what it's worth, there is one thing that makes me wonder if Rove is really in the clear: the fact that he refuses to make public the letter from Fitzgerald saying that he "does not anticipate seeking charges" against Rove at this time. Rove's spokesman says they won't release the letter because they have an agreement with Fitzgerald that they "wouldn't disclose direct communications or any documents between his office and ours." This is a pretty laughable excuse, and it's hard not to wonder just what's in that letter that they don't want anyone to see.
Wrap...
RFK Jr filing suit re. fraud in Ohio Election...
From Rolling Stone via PR Week:
Interview: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Journalist Q&A
PR Week USA
Jun 19 2006 11:00
This month, Rolling Stone ran an investigative feature claiming that Republicans used a systematic combination of voter disenfranchisement and fraud, centered in Ohio, to rob John Kerry of a win in the 2004 presidential election.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and son of liberal icon Bobby Kennedy, wrote the article, available, along with supporting research, at rollingstone.com. Kennedy spoke to PRWeek about the story.
PRWeek: How did you come to write this piece?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: I had not paid much attention to this issue. And then a number of books came out, and I read them because I [wanted to use them] to interview people on my radio show. And then I read the [Rep. John] Conyers report, [a 2005 Congressional inquiry into the election], and started talking with people in Ohio. And at one point, I said, "Holy cow, this is real." And then I talked to [RS editor] Jann Wenner about it. I encouraged him to do a piece, and he said "We'll print one if you write it."
PRWeek: Tell me about the process of putting the story together - it obviously took a while.
Kennedy: I read the literature out there, and read the articles. Then I interviewed voters in Ohio, and public officials, and people who were involved in the election from all over the country.
PRWeek: Why do you think this wasn't covered heavily by major media directly after the election?
Kennedy: I think the mainstream media took up the Republican echo chamber, and just echoed the right-wing talking points.
PRWeek: Why didn't the Democrats themselves pursue this?
Kennedy: Well, there was a lot of complaining; there were a lot of lawsuits. But it got very little traction in the media. But you know, the Democrats on this issue have been abysmal as well.
PRWeek: Your story wasn't based on any secret information, correct?
Kennedy: No, that's the whole thing. This was not a secret conspiracy. This was done openly and shamelessly. Across Ohio, there were people who did everything they could to stop this.
PRWeek: Have you had any indication that the national media will take another look at this issue?
Kennedy: I had a good indication [June 7]. The New York Times, as its lead editorial, did a piece on [Ohio secretary of state] Kenneth Blackwell's current efforts to suppress registration drives in Ohio. And the Republicans are doing the same thing in Florida, and the Times talked about that, as well.
PRWeek: What reaction have you seen from the general public?
Kennedy: There's a huge reaction. Rolling Stone told me that it's gotten two and a half times as many e-mails [about this article] as it's ever gotten for any other story in its history. So there's a huge appetite for this story.
PRWeek: This story didn't have a 'smoking gun'; was there one person coordinating this entire operation?
Kennedy: There's never going to be 100% certitude that the election was stolen, because the only way you could get that is by recounting the ballots, and the recount was illegally derailed by Republican operatives. The mastermind behind the efforts in Ohio was Kenneth Blackwell, along with…[Toledo elections official] Bernadette Noe. But on a national level, it's [Republican National Committee chairman] Kenneth Mehlman and Karl Rove.
PRWeek: Have you gotten any reaction from the Republican Party on this?
Kennedy: I've gotten, certainly, reaction in the blogosphere. But most of the reaction has been supportive.
PRWeek: Is there a next step?
Kennedy: I've been meeting with attorneys... to devise a litigation strategy. And I would say that very soon we'll be announcing lawsuits against some of the individuals and companies involved.
PRWeek: Who exactly would that litigation be targeting?
Kennedy: I wouldn't say, right now.
PRWeek: The election is over. Is it too late now?
Kennedy: There's another election soon. And as the Times [just] reported, the same people are up to the same shenanigans.
Name: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Outlet: Rolling StoneTitle: AuthorPreferred contact method: nora.haynes@wennermedia.com (Rolling Stone publicist)Web site: www.rollingstone.com
Wrap...
Interview: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Journalist Q&A
PR Week USA
Jun 19 2006 11:00
This month, Rolling Stone ran an investigative feature claiming that Republicans used a systematic combination of voter disenfranchisement and fraud, centered in Ohio, to rob John Kerry of a win in the 2004 presidential election.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and son of liberal icon Bobby Kennedy, wrote the article, available, along with supporting research, at rollingstone.com. Kennedy spoke to PRWeek about the story.
PRWeek: How did you come to write this piece?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: I had not paid much attention to this issue. And then a number of books came out, and I read them because I [wanted to use them] to interview people on my radio show. And then I read the [Rep. John] Conyers report, [a 2005 Congressional inquiry into the election], and started talking with people in Ohio. And at one point, I said, "Holy cow, this is real." And then I talked to [RS editor] Jann Wenner about it. I encouraged him to do a piece, and he said "We'll print one if you write it."
PRWeek: Tell me about the process of putting the story together - it obviously took a while.
Kennedy: I read the literature out there, and read the articles. Then I interviewed voters in Ohio, and public officials, and people who were involved in the election from all over the country.
PRWeek: Why do you think this wasn't covered heavily by major media directly after the election?
Kennedy: I think the mainstream media took up the Republican echo chamber, and just echoed the right-wing talking points.
PRWeek: Why didn't the Democrats themselves pursue this?
Kennedy: Well, there was a lot of complaining; there were a lot of lawsuits. But it got very little traction in the media. But you know, the Democrats on this issue have been abysmal as well.
PRWeek: Your story wasn't based on any secret information, correct?
Kennedy: No, that's the whole thing. This was not a secret conspiracy. This was done openly and shamelessly. Across Ohio, there were people who did everything they could to stop this.
PRWeek: Have you had any indication that the national media will take another look at this issue?
Kennedy: I had a good indication [June 7]. The New York Times, as its lead editorial, did a piece on [Ohio secretary of state] Kenneth Blackwell's current efforts to suppress registration drives in Ohio. And the Republicans are doing the same thing in Florida, and the Times talked about that, as well.
PRWeek: What reaction have you seen from the general public?
Kennedy: There's a huge reaction. Rolling Stone told me that it's gotten two and a half times as many e-mails [about this article] as it's ever gotten for any other story in its history. So there's a huge appetite for this story.
PRWeek: This story didn't have a 'smoking gun'; was there one person coordinating this entire operation?
Kennedy: There's never going to be 100% certitude that the election was stolen, because the only way you could get that is by recounting the ballots, and the recount was illegally derailed by Republican operatives. The mastermind behind the efforts in Ohio was Kenneth Blackwell, along with…[Toledo elections official] Bernadette Noe. But on a national level, it's [Republican National Committee chairman] Kenneth Mehlman and Karl Rove.
PRWeek: Have you gotten any reaction from the Republican Party on this?
Kennedy: I've gotten, certainly, reaction in the blogosphere. But most of the reaction has been supportive.
PRWeek: Is there a next step?
Kennedy: I've been meeting with attorneys... to devise a litigation strategy. And I would say that very soon we'll be announcing lawsuits against some of the individuals and companies involved.
PRWeek: Who exactly would that litigation be targeting?
Kennedy: I wouldn't say, right now.
PRWeek: The election is over. Is it too late now?
Kennedy: There's another election soon. And as the Times [just] reported, the same people are up to the same shenanigans.
Name: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Outlet: Rolling StoneTitle: AuthorPreferred contact method: nora.haynes@wennermedia.com (Rolling Stone publicist)Web site: www.rollingstone.com
Wrap...
Rove/Fitz/truthout: On we go...
From truthout.org :
FOCUS Leopold and Lauria http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906Y.shtmlAs the dust settles on The Washington Post's latest in a series of attacks on Jason Leopold, CBS decides to ask a few questions before Leopold's execution.
Truthout will post another update on the Rove matter this evening at 5:00 Pacific on our blog: http://forum.truthout.org/blog/
Wrap...
FOCUS Leopold and Lauria http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906Y.shtmlAs the dust settles on The Washington Post's latest in a series of attacks on Jason Leopold, CBS decides to ask a few questions before Leopold's execution.
Truthout will post another update on the Rove matter this evening at 5:00 Pacific on our blog: http://forum.truthout.org/blog/
Wrap...
Sunday, June 18, 2006
GOP House threatens police tracking gun dealers...
From NY Times:
Editorial
The Call of the Gun Lobby
Published: June 19, 2006
It is a ghastly fact of public safety that for the past three years the most basic information about illegal gun trafficking in America has been hermetically classified as a state secret — kept off limits to the public and the news media. The nation used to be told, for example, that 57 percent of crime guns came from just 1 percent of gun dealers, and something should be done about that. But — shhh — not any more: not since a malleable Congress and administration buttoned up reams of vital information by putting the privacy of unscrupulous gun dealers over the safety of the public.
And now the Republican-led House is preparing to make the secrecy restrictions even more lunatic by actually leaving police officers subject to felony conviction if they dare to share interesting data on illicit dealers with colleagues in other departments.
The criminalizing of peace officers for swapping federal data beyond their narrow jurisdictions is only one of the provisions in a pair of treacherous bills quietly on the move, in another sweeping triumph for the gun lobby. The bills would gut what is left of initiative in the hamstrung bureau that's supposed to control firearms. They would roll back laws for stopping illicit gun traffickers, water down criminal definitions and penalties, and snuff out the current notification to concerned police officials about the virtual fire sales of multiple guns to single buyers by dealers arming the underworld.
These two bills would give crooked dealers more — not less — leeway in interstate trafficking. The Justice Department has warned that the worst provisions would have a "chilling effect" on gun control and law enforcement. If they had been in effect during the deadly spree of the Washington, D.C., snipers, the dealer who peddled the murder rifle and scores of other crime guns could never have been shut down under federal law.
The gun lobby will do almost anything to deny basic information about the gun mayhem that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and 60 other mayors are properly pursuing through the courts. The bills answer the question of how craven Congress can get in catering to its demands.
Wrap...
Editorial
The Call of the Gun Lobby
Published: June 19, 2006
It is a ghastly fact of public safety that for the past three years the most basic information about illegal gun trafficking in America has been hermetically classified as a state secret — kept off limits to the public and the news media. The nation used to be told, for example, that 57 percent of crime guns came from just 1 percent of gun dealers, and something should be done about that. But — shhh — not any more: not since a malleable Congress and administration buttoned up reams of vital information by putting the privacy of unscrupulous gun dealers over the safety of the public.
And now the Republican-led House is preparing to make the secrecy restrictions even more lunatic by actually leaving police officers subject to felony conviction if they dare to share interesting data on illicit dealers with colleagues in other departments.
The criminalizing of peace officers for swapping federal data beyond their narrow jurisdictions is only one of the provisions in a pair of treacherous bills quietly on the move, in another sweeping triumph for the gun lobby. The bills would gut what is left of initiative in the hamstrung bureau that's supposed to control firearms. They would roll back laws for stopping illicit gun traffickers, water down criminal definitions and penalties, and snuff out the current notification to concerned police officials about the virtual fire sales of multiple guns to single buyers by dealers arming the underworld.
These two bills would give crooked dealers more — not less — leeway in interstate trafficking. The Justice Department has warned that the worst provisions would have a "chilling effect" on gun control and law enforcement. If they had been in effect during the deadly spree of the Washington, D.C., snipers, the dealer who peddled the murder rifle and scores of other crime guns could never have been shut down under federal law.
The gun lobby will do almost anything to deny basic information about the gun mayhem that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and 60 other mayors are properly pursuing through the courts. The bills answer the question of how craven Congress can get in catering to its demands.
Wrap...
US Rep to UN Bolton runs from Oxford U students....
From Spinwatch.org via Information Clearing House:
Taunted and jeered, Bolton bolted
Michael Carmichael
14 June 2006
"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."
Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina, retired)
Facing an increasingly hostile group of law students in an Oxford seminar that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to pop out on John Bolton’s furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of taunts, jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly surrounded by his entourage of three American security agents and whisked out the door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday, the 9th of June.
Pursued by vocal recriminations from angry and frustrated American students who led the incisive questioning and the equally incisive jeering -- with taunts like, “You should be doing a better job!” Bolton bolted. He turned sharply on his heel and took flight out the door and then fled down the mediaeval passageway and into the relative safety and calm of his bullet-proof diplomatic limousine. Bolton swiftly headed out of Oxford, rudely foregoing the well-established tradition of lingering to talk with interested members of the audience....
(Continue reading at:
http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=502
Wrap...
Taunted and jeered, Bolton bolted
Michael Carmichael
14 June 2006
"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."
Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina, retired)
Facing an increasingly hostile group of law students in an Oxford seminar that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to pop out on John Bolton’s furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of taunts, jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly surrounded by his entourage of three American security agents and whisked out the door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday, the 9th of June.
Pursued by vocal recriminations from angry and frustrated American students who led the incisive questioning and the equally incisive jeering -- with taunts like, “You should be doing a better job!” Bolton bolted. He turned sharply on his heel and took flight out the door and then fled down the mediaeval passageway and into the relative safety and calm of his bullet-proof diplomatic limousine. Bolton swiftly headed out of Oxford, rudely foregoing the well-established tradition of lingering to talk with interested members of the audience....
(Continue reading at:
http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=502
Wrap...
Secretive BushCo has journalists thrown out of Gitmo...
From LA Times via Raw Story:
Kicked out of Gitmo
A Times reporter's struggle to get the truth about America's island prison just got tougher.
By Carol J. Williams, Carol J. Williams is the Caribbean bureau chief for The Times.
June 18, 2006
IN THE BEST of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting reality that you're sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror suspects.In the worst of times — this past week, for example — those quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available.
In this case, that seat was the toilet.
I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, in which the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base Wednesday. Rumsfeld's office said the decision was made "to be fair and impartial" to the rest of the media, which the government had refused to let in.Rumsfeld's gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush administration's secretive and often criticized campaign to indefinitely detain "enemy combatants."
But this time, their actions seemed counterproductive because booting out the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald and Charlotte (N.C.) Observer only provoked fresh demands to learn what the government is hiding.
Those of us cleared to cover the prison and war-crimes tribunal learned long ago that there will be a hard-fought battle for every factlet. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing realities intruded.
"You ask a lot of questions!" said Emily Witt, a 25-year-old first-timer from Miami's alternative weekly New Times, when she observed my scattershot strategy for interrogating officials during a rare "inside the wire" tour of the prison camps last month.
What little we learn often comes to light by accident, through casual slips-of-the-lips by military doctors, lawyers and jailers innocently oblivious of their superiors' preference for spin. A battery of questions to the prison hospital commander — who for security reasons can't be identified — elicited that prisoners are force-fed through a nasal-gastric tube if they refuse to eat for three days and that 1,000 pills a day are dispensed to treat detainee ailments, anxiety and depression.
Those details became relevant when two prisoners attempted suicide May 18 by consuming hoarded prescription medications. Likewise, we understood why a hunger strike early this month began with 89 prisoners but swiftly fell off to a few defiant handfuls with the onset of painful and undignified force-feeding.
During an interview last month with the new detention center commander, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., we queried him on plans for handling detainee deaths — a theoretical exercise until two Saudis and a Yemeni hung themselves June 10.
I've been to Guantanamo six times. It was during my first visit in January 2005 that I learned how expressions of polite interest in minute details can elicit some of the most startling revelations. As Naval Hospital commander Capt. John Edmundson showed off the 48-bed prison annex, for instance, I asked, apropos of nothing, if the facility had ever been at or near capacity."Only during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied, provoking audible gasps and horrified expressions among the public affairs minders and op-sec — operational security — watchdogs in the entourage, none of whom were particularly pleased with the disclosure that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang themselves with torn bed sheets in late 2003.
But such revelations are infrequent, and the investment of time to obtain them is grossly disproportionate. On a typical day at Guantanamo, reporters rise at dawn, head for breakfast in a mess hall at 6 a.m., then at 7 a.m. cross the often storm-tossed bay to the main naval base in small boats, clutching our laptop bags and life preservers as waves crash over the bow and drench us. We make the return crossing at around 9 p.m., after hours in the bowls of military alphabet soup, writing our stories in JIBs — joint information bureaus that are simple rooms with folding chairs, tables and telephones — while we cover OMC or JTF (the Office of Military Commissions that runs the tribunals and the Joint Task Force that oversees the prison).
Back at the CBQ — the combined bachelors' quarters — we sleep in a dorm-like complex on the virtually abandoned leeward side of Guantanamo Bay that this month suffered an invasion of crabs the size of your head, coupled and clattering across the floors, halls and sidewalks. Their leggy orange spawn slithered under doors and divebombed us from the ceiling.
Despite the shroud of secrecy and the at-times surrealistic backdrop, it is the rare glimpse into the war-on-terror workings that make assignments at Guantanamo a source of professional satisfaction.
Under ground rules we must agree to if we want access to the base, journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed from sight at all but one camp during media tours. Only at the compound for the most compliant prisoners can we even make eye contact.
That's why coverage of the tribunal sessions have been so important in putting a human face on the prisoners, whose names and nationalities were only disclosed in March under a court order following an Associated Press legal challenge. Court appearances by the 10 men charged with war crimes have offered us our first meaningful independent view of detainees in the prison's 4 1/2 years. Some seem to be committed holy warriors whose detention has only fueled their hatred of Americans. Others contend that they are innocent of any attack on U.S. forces, just unfortunates swept up in the post-9/11 fervor.
Meanwhile, 450 others have been held for years without charges or legal recourse. Their indefinite detention to keep them off the global terrorism battlefields feels like a Muslim version of the World War II Japanese American internment. It is the opportunity to shed light into the dark corners of the antiterrorism campaign that inspires us to surmount the obstacles and obfuscations. And it is the thwarting of that mission with moves like our expulsion that make us all the more determined to question, probe and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in the country's name.
Wrap...
Kicked out of Gitmo
A Times reporter's struggle to get the truth about America's island prison just got tougher.
By Carol J. Williams, Carol J. Williams is the Caribbean bureau chief for The Times.
June 18, 2006
IN THE BEST of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting reality that you're sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror suspects.In the worst of times — this past week, for example — those quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available.
In this case, that seat was the toilet.
I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, in which the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base Wednesday. Rumsfeld's office said the decision was made "to be fair and impartial" to the rest of the media, which the government had refused to let in.Rumsfeld's gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush administration's secretive and often criticized campaign to indefinitely detain "enemy combatants."
But this time, their actions seemed counterproductive because booting out the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald and Charlotte (N.C.) Observer only provoked fresh demands to learn what the government is hiding.
Those of us cleared to cover the prison and war-crimes tribunal learned long ago that there will be a hard-fought battle for every factlet. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing realities intruded.
"You ask a lot of questions!" said Emily Witt, a 25-year-old first-timer from Miami's alternative weekly New Times, when she observed my scattershot strategy for interrogating officials during a rare "inside the wire" tour of the prison camps last month.
What little we learn often comes to light by accident, through casual slips-of-the-lips by military doctors, lawyers and jailers innocently oblivious of their superiors' preference for spin. A battery of questions to the prison hospital commander — who for security reasons can't be identified — elicited that prisoners are force-fed through a nasal-gastric tube if they refuse to eat for three days and that 1,000 pills a day are dispensed to treat detainee ailments, anxiety and depression.
Those details became relevant when two prisoners attempted suicide May 18 by consuming hoarded prescription medications. Likewise, we understood why a hunger strike early this month began with 89 prisoners but swiftly fell off to a few defiant handfuls with the onset of painful and undignified force-feeding.
During an interview last month with the new detention center commander, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., we queried him on plans for handling detainee deaths — a theoretical exercise until two Saudis and a Yemeni hung themselves June 10.
I've been to Guantanamo six times. It was during my first visit in January 2005 that I learned how expressions of polite interest in minute details can elicit some of the most startling revelations. As Naval Hospital commander Capt. John Edmundson showed off the 48-bed prison annex, for instance, I asked, apropos of nothing, if the facility had ever been at or near capacity."Only during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied, provoking audible gasps and horrified expressions among the public affairs minders and op-sec — operational security — watchdogs in the entourage, none of whom were particularly pleased with the disclosure that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang themselves with torn bed sheets in late 2003.
But such revelations are infrequent, and the investment of time to obtain them is grossly disproportionate. On a typical day at Guantanamo, reporters rise at dawn, head for breakfast in a mess hall at 6 a.m., then at 7 a.m. cross the often storm-tossed bay to the main naval base in small boats, clutching our laptop bags and life preservers as waves crash over the bow and drench us. We make the return crossing at around 9 p.m., after hours in the bowls of military alphabet soup, writing our stories in JIBs — joint information bureaus that are simple rooms with folding chairs, tables and telephones — while we cover OMC or JTF (the Office of Military Commissions that runs the tribunals and the Joint Task Force that oversees the prison).
Back at the CBQ — the combined bachelors' quarters — we sleep in a dorm-like complex on the virtually abandoned leeward side of Guantanamo Bay that this month suffered an invasion of crabs the size of your head, coupled and clattering across the floors, halls and sidewalks. Their leggy orange spawn slithered under doors and divebombed us from the ceiling.
Despite the shroud of secrecy and the at-times surrealistic backdrop, it is the rare glimpse into the war-on-terror workings that make assignments at Guantanamo a source of professional satisfaction.
Under ground rules we must agree to if we want access to the base, journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed from sight at all but one camp during media tours. Only at the compound for the most compliant prisoners can we even make eye contact.
That's why coverage of the tribunal sessions have been so important in putting a human face on the prisoners, whose names and nationalities were only disclosed in March under a court order following an Associated Press legal challenge. Court appearances by the 10 men charged with war crimes have offered us our first meaningful independent view of detainees in the prison's 4 1/2 years. Some seem to be committed holy warriors whose detention has only fueled their hatred of Americans. Others contend that they are innocent of any attack on U.S. forces, just unfortunates swept up in the post-9/11 fervor.
Meanwhile, 450 others have been held for years without charges or legal recourse. Their indefinite detention to keep them off the global terrorism battlefields feels like a Muslim version of the World War II Japanese American internment. It is the opportunity to shed light into the dark corners of the antiterrorism campaign that inspires us to surmount the obstacles and obfuscations. And it is the thwarting of that mission with moves like our expulsion that make us all the more determined to question, probe and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in the country's name.
Wrap...
Use paper ballots only, dammit!!!
From The New Standard via truthout.org :
More E-Voting Concerns Surface With State Primaries Underway
By Catherine Komp
The NewStandard
Saturday 17 June 2006
With another election season around the corner, activists are concerned that electronic voting machines supplied by a handful of American corporations are bug-ridden and easily tampered with, but the road to redress is rough and windy.
From serious security flaws that could allow hackers easy access to electronic voting systems, to routine computer malfunctions and undelivered software, state and local officials are one-by-one joining voter-access groups and computer scientists in questioning the reliability of the three major suppliers of electronic voting machines.
The latest security flaw to be uncovered affects thousands of Diebold touch-screen voting machines across the country. Computer scientist Michael Shamos, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the examiners that tested several companies' machines in Pennsylvania, described the defect as a "misfeature" originally designed by Diebold to let field technicians update machine software quickly.
But, he said, it also would permit someone to upload their own software onto a voting machine with the aim of tampering with election results. Shamos said the problem is the "biggest we've ever seen."
Pennsylvania's primary was Tuesday and Shamos said he would be at the polls monitoring the electronic tabulations.
Last week, voter-access group Black Box Voting (BBV) released the report of Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, who discovered the "back door" into Diebold touch-screen systems earlier this spring when examining machines in Emery County, Utah. Bruce Funk, an Emery County clerk of 23 years, had sought independent analysis of his county's machines after he discovered numerous problems and was unsatisfied with Diebold's response.
While this newly exposed security flaw is serious, Shamos said he is not at all surprised because Diebold has "a history of not paying attention to security."
"They just don't get it," Shamos told The NewStandard. "We've had many, many, many discussions. In fact, if you look at their public statements they've made in light of this revelation, it shows that they still don't get it."
While Diebold admits the system is faulty, the company is emphasizing that a human element is needed to compromise an election. Though TNS could not reach Diebold for an interview, spokesperson David Bear told the New York Times: "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software. I don't believe these evil elections people exist."
Shamos said the long-term fix is to force Diebold to overhaul its machines to make them more secure.
Upon the urgings of Shamos and other machine examiners, the Pennsylvania elections officials directed precincts to minimize security breaches by locking up machines until Election Day. Though these machines are used in numerous states, only California and Iowa, in addition to Pennsylvania, have addressed the problem. Some officials are implementing new administrative rules to compensate for the flaw, for example increasing security where machines are stored and reinstalling software immediately before the election.
John Hedgecoth, deputy secretary of state in Iowa, told TNS his office instructed elections officials in the state's 99 counties to upload a final version of the software into their machines just before Election Day and then seal the machine with the memory card in it. "So we are controlling both the software in the field with a final version that is decided upon by our elections division, and then we're securing the memory card against tampering on Election Day," he said.
Hedgecoth says the industry could be making better machines that are less vulnerable, but he does not believe governments are letting companies off the hook. "Asking a vendor to provide a system that is not susceptible to any conceivable technological attack is unrealistic and we have to recognize that, and I think those of us who work on the government side of this understand that," Hedgecoth said.
Some government officials have concerns other than just the poor construction of electronic voting machines. In preparation for West Virginia's primary earlier this month, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) failed to meet its deadline for delivering "programmable ballots" needed to administer the election in all 55 counties. According to Ben Beakes, chief of staff for Secretary of State Betty Ireland, six counties were not able to use the electronic machines they purchased because they could not test their machines before the May 9 election.
"It created an undue stress and anxiety on the clerks and county election officials throughout the state," Beakes said. "We venture to say that this was the toughest election to prepare for in many years… due to the fact that most counties were not able to adequately prepare and familiarize themselves with the new equipment used in the primary election."
In a complaint filed with the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Secretary Ireland accuses ES&S of "vast delays" and "broken promises." She also said the problems are not restricted to West Virginia. Acknowledging that the EAC "probably has no authority to investigate and penalize" the company, Ireland wrote that she has also contacted the state attorney general and the US Justice Department.
Sources interviewed by TNS for this story could not say who exactly is responsible for investigating e-voting companies when there are problems. Because each state has individualized contracts with the manufacturers, officials would likely need to address breaches of that contract with the state attorney general.
Some voters in Arizona, where primaries are not scheduled until September, are hoping a lawsuit will prevent the problems they are seeing in other states. Four plaintiffs have filed suit against Secretary of State Jan Brewer and numerous county officials to stop the implementation of touch-screen machines produced by Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems, saying the state is wasting millions of dollars on machines that "are not trustworthy or transparent."
The lawsuit claims that both Diebold and Sequoia machines fail to meet state and federal regulations, including disability access standards and state certification. It also argues that despite federal Voluntary Voting System Standards which prohibit the use of "interpretable code" - a type of code that lead to the successful hacking tests conducted by Hursti - and despite knowing about the vulnerabilities of this code, Diebold has failed to change its voting systems.
The lawsuit was filed with the help of Voter Action, a nonprofit voting-access advocacy group, on the heels of similar suits in California, New York and New Mexico brought by the organization on behalf of voters. It cites problems with unusually high numbers of "undervotes" - cases in which a ballot does not record a vote - in the 2004 New Mexico elections on ballots supposedly cast on DRE machines. It also lists lost votes, switched votes and "phantom votes" as serious concerns documented during the same election in New Mexico.
Plaintiffs in Arizona want the state to drop the use of all touch-screen machines in favor of paper ballots that can be scanned and tabulated electronically, as was mandated by neighboring New Mexico's legislature. On the other side of the country, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., along with the entire Maryland House of Delegates, wants to suspend using the Diebold machines on which the state spent $90 million. Maryland's senate, however, failed to vote on the measure.
Holly Jacobson, co-director of Voter Action, believes paper balloting is the only verifiable way to ensure elections are accurate. In a press statement she said, "Our elections are too important to turn over to private corporations operating with no accountability and to electronic voting systems with a history of errors and security problems."
Wrap...
More E-Voting Concerns Surface With State Primaries Underway
By Catherine Komp
The NewStandard
Saturday 17 June 2006
With another election season around the corner, activists are concerned that electronic voting machines supplied by a handful of American corporations are bug-ridden and easily tampered with, but the road to redress is rough and windy.
From serious security flaws that could allow hackers easy access to electronic voting systems, to routine computer malfunctions and undelivered software, state and local officials are one-by-one joining voter-access groups and computer scientists in questioning the reliability of the three major suppliers of electronic voting machines.
The latest security flaw to be uncovered affects thousands of Diebold touch-screen voting machines across the country. Computer scientist Michael Shamos, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the examiners that tested several companies' machines in Pennsylvania, described the defect as a "misfeature" originally designed by Diebold to let field technicians update machine software quickly.
But, he said, it also would permit someone to upload their own software onto a voting machine with the aim of tampering with election results. Shamos said the problem is the "biggest we've ever seen."
Pennsylvania's primary was Tuesday and Shamos said he would be at the polls monitoring the electronic tabulations.
Last week, voter-access group Black Box Voting (BBV) released the report of Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, who discovered the "back door" into Diebold touch-screen systems earlier this spring when examining machines in Emery County, Utah. Bruce Funk, an Emery County clerk of 23 years, had sought independent analysis of his county's machines after he discovered numerous problems and was unsatisfied with Diebold's response.
While this newly exposed security flaw is serious, Shamos said he is not at all surprised because Diebold has "a history of not paying attention to security."
"They just don't get it," Shamos told The NewStandard. "We've had many, many, many discussions. In fact, if you look at their public statements they've made in light of this revelation, it shows that they still don't get it."
While Diebold admits the system is faulty, the company is emphasizing that a human element is needed to compromise an election. Though TNS could not reach Diebold for an interview, spokesperson David Bear told the New York Times: "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software. I don't believe these evil elections people exist."
Shamos said the long-term fix is to force Diebold to overhaul its machines to make them more secure.
Upon the urgings of Shamos and other machine examiners, the Pennsylvania elections officials directed precincts to minimize security breaches by locking up machines until Election Day. Though these machines are used in numerous states, only California and Iowa, in addition to Pennsylvania, have addressed the problem. Some officials are implementing new administrative rules to compensate for the flaw, for example increasing security where machines are stored and reinstalling software immediately before the election.
John Hedgecoth, deputy secretary of state in Iowa, told TNS his office instructed elections officials in the state's 99 counties to upload a final version of the software into their machines just before Election Day and then seal the machine with the memory card in it. "So we are controlling both the software in the field with a final version that is decided upon by our elections division, and then we're securing the memory card against tampering on Election Day," he said.
Hedgecoth says the industry could be making better machines that are less vulnerable, but he does not believe governments are letting companies off the hook. "Asking a vendor to provide a system that is not susceptible to any conceivable technological attack is unrealistic and we have to recognize that, and I think those of us who work on the government side of this understand that," Hedgecoth said.
Some government officials have concerns other than just the poor construction of electronic voting machines. In preparation for West Virginia's primary earlier this month, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) failed to meet its deadline for delivering "programmable ballots" needed to administer the election in all 55 counties. According to Ben Beakes, chief of staff for Secretary of State Betty Ireland, six counties were not able to use the electronic machines they purchased because they could not test their machines before the May 9 election.
"It created an undue stress and anxiety on the clerks and county election officials throughout the state," Beakes said. "We venture to say that this was the toughest election to prepare for in many years… due to the fact that most counties were not able to adequately prepare and familiarize themselves with the new equipment used in the primary election."
In a complaint filed with the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Secretary Ireland accuses ES&S of "vast delays" and "broken promises." She also said the problems are not restricted to West Virginia. Acknowledging that the EAC "probably has no authority to investigate and penalize" the company, Ireland wrote that she has also contacted the state attorney general and the US Justice Department.
Sources interviewed by TNS for this story could not say who exactly is responsible for investigating e-voting companies when there are problems. Because each state has individualized contracts with the manufacturers, officials would likely need to address breaches of that contract with the state attorney general.
Some voters in Arizona, where primaries are not scheduled until September, are hoping a lawsuit will prevent the problems they are seeing in other states. Four plaintiffs have filed suit against Secretary of State Jan Brewer and numerous county officials to stop the implementation of touch-screen machines produced by Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems, saying the state is wasting millions of dollars on machines that "are not trustworthy or transparent."
The lawsuit claims that both Diebold and Sequoia machines fail to meet state and federal regulations, including disability access standards and state certification. It also argues that despite federal Voluntary Voting System Standards which prohibit the use of "interpretable code" - a type of code that lead to the successful hacking tests conducted by Hursti - and despite knowing about the vulnerabilities of this code, Diebold has failed to change its voting systems.
The lawsuit was filed with the help of Voter Action, a nonprofit voting-access advocacy group, on the heels of similar suits in California, New York and New Mexico brought by the organization on behalf of voters. It cites problems with unusually high numbers of "undervotes" - cases in which a ballot does not record a vote - in the 2004 New Mexico elections on ballots supposedly cast on DRE machines. It also lists lost votes, switched votes and "phantom votes" as serious concerns documented during the same election in New Mexico.
Plaintiffs in Arizona want the state to drop the use of all touch-screen machines in favor of paper ballots that can be scanned and tabulated electronically, as was mandated by neighboring New Mexico's legislature. On the other side of the country, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., along with the entire Maryland House of Delegates, wants to suspend using the Diebold machines on which the state spent $90 million. Maryland's senate, however, failed to vote on the measure.
Holly Jacobson, co-director of Voter Action, believes paper balloting is the only verifiable way to ensure elections are accurate. In a press statement she said, "Our elections are too important to turn over to private corporations operating with no accountability and to electronic voting systems with a history of errors and security problems."
Wrap...
Saturday, June 17, 2006
On this day especially for dads...
May all you irreplaceable fathers out there have a superbly Happy Father's Day! Heaven knows you earn it in more ways than I can count.
Wrap...
Wrap...
Molly considers Bush's eyeball to eyeball check...
From Creator's Syndicate:
EYE TO EYE IN IRAQ
AUSTIN, Texas -- I think we need to stop President Bush from looking people in the eye.
On Tuesday, he told the new prime minister of Iraq that he had come to Iraq to "look you in the eye." Do we even know if the cultural significance of "looking someone in the eye" is known or accepted in the Middle East? Even if Middle Easterners are kindly disposed toward looking one another in the eye -- say it's not considered rude or worse -- would they know what to make of Bush's declaration to U.S. troops that he came to look at "Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes and determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are."
Who knows if Iraqis think this is determinable by the deep-eye look. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it is. People interpret things differently.
Not long ago, I was in the beautiful home of an exceptionally rich person, even by Texas standards. And I saw what I took to be a lovely sort of "treatment" on the spiral staircase -- a swathe of cloth draped artistically about the twisting spiral. Commentator/author Bud Trillin was with me, and he thought the painters had been there and just left a drop cloth on the stair rail, which is the reason you can't take Bud anywhere. Maybe it's like that in the Middle East with the deep-eye look -- people just can't tell.
Now here's the media all in a tizzy because the president went to Iraq without telling hardly anyone -- a big shock. I don't want to ruin anyone's surprise, but I trust you have considered that the president couldn't let anyone know he was coming in advance because the bad guys would try to kill him. Sorry to take any of the fizz out of the celebration of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but let's not get overexcited.
Bush said his message to the Iraqi people is, "Seize the moment." Do we think they knew what he meant? Is carpe diem part of Iraqis' general knowledge? Then, the president urged the Iraqis to end sectarian strife. I, too, think this would be a good idea. Thought so for at least three years. Basically, what I'm getting at here is, do you suppose the rest if the world just assumes George W. Bush is a moron when he goes overseas? I realize the trip was arranged to try to take advantage of the killing of Zarqawi, for Bush to "get a bounce out of it," as they say back in Washington politics. But I'm just not sure there's much bounce left in Iraq.
It's not good enough anymore to turn a corner or see a light at the end of the tunnel -- too many corners, too many lights later. I guess we can still seize the moment, although the confusion over how Zarqawi died kind of undercuts that. The trouble with Iraq is what keeps happening there. We haven't rebuilt the place -- in fact, it keeps getting worse in terms of basic services. You have to admit, leaving a place worse off than Saddam Hussein kept it is not a bragging point. Number of people killed keeps going up, signs of militias out of control, sectarian violence, spreading anarchy ... not good.
Years ago, Mrs. T. Cullen Davis, of tacky Texas murder trial fame, said as her husband tried to grab a fabulous necklace he gave her, "This ain't no takesie-backsie." (You may now take a deep breath while considering the depth of that comment.)
I feel that Iraq is also a "no takesie-backsie." It is a putrid human, social and political disaster, and getting worse, not better. The people who got us into this should not be forgiven -- they should not even get a "bounce" from it. There is only one thing I want from them -- to get us and our Army out of there, instead of cavalierly announcing that will be left to "future presidents."
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
EYE TO EYE IN IRAQ
AUSTIN, Texas -- I think we need to stop President Bush from looking people in the eye.
On Tuesday, he told the new prime minister of Iraq that he had come to Iraq to "look you in the eye." Do we even know if the cultural significance of "looking someone in the eye" is known or accepted in the Middle East? Even if Middle Easterners are kindly disposed toward looking one another in the eye -- say it's not considered rude or worse -- would they know what to make of Bush's declaration to U.S. troops that he came to look at "Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes and determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are."
Who knows if Iraqis think this is determinable by the deep-eye look. Come to think of it, I'm not sure it is. People interpret things differently.
Not long ago, I was in the beautiful home of an exceptionally rich person, even by Texas standards. And I saw what I took to be a lovely sort of "treatment" on the spiral staircase -- a swathe of cloth draped artistically about the twisting spiral. Commentator/author Bud Trillin was with me, and he thought the painters had been there and just left a drop cloth on the stair rail, which is the reason you can't take Bud anywhere. Maybe it's like that in the Middle East with the deep-eye look -- people just can't tell.
Now here's the media all in a tizzy because the president went to Iraq without telling hardly anyone -- a big shock. I don't want to ruin anyone's surprise, but I trust you have considered that the president couldn't let anyone know he was coming in advance because the bad guys would try to kill him. Sorry to take any of the fizz out of the celebration of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but let's not get overexcited.
Bush said his message to the Iraqi people is, "Seize the moment." Do we think they knew what he meant? Is carpe diem part of Iraqis' general knowledge? Then, the president urged the Iraqis to end sectarian strife. I, too, think this would be a good idea. Thought so for at least three years. Basically, what I'm getting at here is, do you suppose the rest if the world just assumes George W. Bush is a moron when he goes overseas? I realize the trip was arranged to try to take advantage of the killing of Zarqawi, for Bush to "get a bounce out of it," as they say back in Washington politics. But I'm just not sure there's much bounce left in Iraq.
It's not good enough anymore to turn a corner or see a light at the end of the tunnel -- too many corners, too many lights later. I guess we can still seize the moment, although the confusion over how Zarqawi died kind of undercuts that. The trouble with Iraq is what keeps happening there. We haven't rebuilt the place -- in fact, it keeps getting worse in terms of basic services. You have to admit, leaving a place worse off than Saddam Hussein kept it is not a bragging point. Number of people killed keeps going up, signs of militias out of control, sectarian violence, spreading anarchy ... not good.
Years ago, Mrs. T. Cullen Davis, of tacky Texas murder trial fame, said as her husband tried to grab a fabulous necklace he gave her, "This ain't no takesie-backsie." (You may now take a deep breath while considering the depth of that comment.)
I feel that Iraq is also a "no takesie-backsie." It is a putrid human, social and political disaster, and getting worse, not better. The people who got us into this should not be forgiven -- they should not even get a "bounce" from it. There is only one thing I want from them -- to get us and our Army out of there, instead of cavalierly announcing that will be left to "future presidents."
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
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