Magpie

Saturday, May 13, 2006

No comment needed.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the most recent round of Dubya's tax cuts:

I?d appreciate it if someone could explain to me why we need another tax cut for high-income Americans especially when the gap between the rich and poor, and between every rung on the income ladder, is wider than it's been in almost a century. Some administration apologists, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, claim repeatedly that the rich are paying a larger-than-ever share of income taxes, so it's entirely fitting that they get the lion's share of any tax cut.

This logic conveniently leaves out two facts. First, the rich are now paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than at any time in the last seventy-five years. That they pay a lot of taxes nonetheless is a by-product of the mind-boggling increase in their income and wealth relative to most other Americans. Second, if you consider not just income and capital-gains taxes but all the taxes people pay — including payroll taxes and sales taxes — you find that middle-income workers are now paying a larger share of their incomes than people at or near the top. We have turned the principle of a graduated, progressive tax on its head.

You can read the rest here at Reich's blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:59 AM | Get permalink

Just in case you thought things might finally be okay in New Orleans.

Here's a picture of the Ninth Ward taken within the last week or so.

Not all better now

New Orleans, Ninth Ward, almost 9 months after Katrina.

It's pretty damn obvious what the priorities of Dubya's administration aren't, isn't it?

Daily Kos diarist Delaware Dem has many more pictures here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:43 AM | Get permalink

This could be too good to be true ...

But sources have told Jason Leopold at Truthout that Dubya political advisor Karl Rove has already told the White House that he's expecting to be indicted by the Plamegate grand jury.

Details here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Friday, May 12, 2006

What we know about NSA abuses may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Former NSA employee Russell Tice says that other illegal activity was going on at the agency when Gen. Michael Hayden was in charge. Tice, not incidentally, is the guy who blew the whistle on the NSA's illegal wiretapping program back in January.

Think Progress has the details.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:46 PM | Get permalink

So would the court grant her asylum if she were dead?

A US federal court has denied political asylum to Luz Marina Silva, a Colombian woman fled her country after her political activities got her targeted for death by leftist paramilitaries. The main reason for the denial: The woman couldn't identify by name the people who threatened her and shot at her. I am not making that up.

You really have to read all of this post over at Full Court Press — especially the quotes from Justice Ed Carnes' dissenting opinion — to fully appreciate the awfulness of some of the judges sitting on the federal bench (and not just the ones appointed by Dubya).

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:43 AM | Get permalink

The Kinkster goes over the top.

Musician, writer, and iconoclast Kinky Friedman looks to be on the November ballot as an independent candidate for governor of Texas. To get on the ballot, Friedman needs 45,540 certified signatures. On Thursday, his grassroots campaign turned in 11 boses of petitions containing 169,000 signatures — more than enough to ensure that Friedman will be certified for the ballot.

Kinky Friedman poster by Guy Juke

From Friedman's statement as he delivered petitions to the state capitol:

"Today, the people of Texas are sending a message to the politicians who have run our beloved state into the ground. The people have spoken loud and clear. It's time to take our state back from the Republicans and Democrats who've caused this train wreck. We're going to make Texas great again. We cannot be stopped," Friedman said....

"In these boxes are the signatures of Texans representing every single county in the state," Friedman said. "And they're all saying the same thing. 'We're angry, and it's time for change. The politicians who got us into this mess are not the same politicians who are going fix Texas. We want a chance to vote for someone who loves Texas, has no personal agenda and is going to listen to the people. They know I'm that person.'"

Friedman's candidacy was not taken seriously when he announced for governor last year. Many observers thought he'd be unable to collect enough signatures to meet Texas' requirements for an independent candidacy, which are some of the toughest in the country. Once Friedman's signatures are certified by the secretary of state's office, he'll be joining three other candidates — a Libertarian, a Democrat, and an independent right-wing candidate — who are trying to replace the current governor, Republican Rick Perry. It should be a very interesting election.

Friedman's campaign website is here. I highly recommend the campaign videos which, as I said the last time I posted about Friedman, are the damndest campaign ads I've ever seen.

Thanks to Doug Krile for the tip about the signatures.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 AM | Get permalink

Wanted: A catchy name for the reorganized US intelligence community.

Political cartoonist Mike Keefe of the Denver Post thinks he's got just the one.

KGB is such a catchy name

[Cartoon © 2006 Mike Keefe]
Not only is KGB a catchy name, but nobody else has been using it since the Soviet Union went belly-up.

The full-sized cartoon is here. You can see more of Keefe's cartoons over here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink

Seeing the big picture.

Matt Yglesisas puts it all together:

One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.

Once you start in with this business, it's a widening cycle of lawlessness with almost endless possibilities for abuse.

And things are even worse than Ygelesias suggests, if you think about all the stuff that the feds have been doing to deal with the 'immigration crisis.' Everyone in the country has to provide more documentation to get and hold a job. The borders are more tightly controlled. Local police are being enlisted to ferret out 'illegals.' I could go on.

All of those procedures and technologies can be turned against everyone in the US, not just undocumented immigrants.

We have been selling off our civil liberties, piecemeal, since long before 9/11. Now Dubya's administration is getting ready to take our human rights, too.
Via TAPPED.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Dubya drops into the twenties.

A new Harris poll puts public approval of Dubya's presidency at 29 percent, the lowest of his presidency and the lowest this magpie has seen in any poll so far. The poll was conducted before USA Today published its revelations about the NSA's domestic spying operation, so I expect that the prez will be garnering some more low numbers in other polls, rather than the 'bounce' that the White House had hoped would result from the personnel shuffle at the CIA.

Via Editor & Publisher.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

'We have this big wall that's made out of the shredded First Amendment.'

Ask a Ninja tells you everything you need to know about internet neutrality.

The ninja knows!

For a more serious look at the issue, see this earlier Magpie post.

Via Boing Boing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, May 11, 2006

The NSA's spying on everyone. Big shocker on American Idol.

One newscast. Two stories. How do you decide which one is more important?

Liz Cox Barrett looks how the major US morning news shows covered revelations that the NSA is collecting billions of phone records and Chris Daughtry got bounced off American Idol.

The picture ain't pretty.

Via CJR Daily.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:16 PM | Get permalink

Just in time for the November vote-stealing season.

It turns out that Diebold's touch-screen voting machines are even less secure than previously believed.

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

"This one is worse than any of the others I've seen. It's more fundamental," said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and veteran voting-system examiner for the state of Iowa.

"In the other ones, we've been arguing about the security of the locks on the front door," Jones said. "Now we find that there's no back door. This is the kind of thing where if the states don't get out in front of the hackers, there's a real threat."

Would you put up with a system that was this insecure if it was handling your money, and not 'merely' your vote?

Via InsideBayArea.com.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:02 PM | Get permalink

Tap-dancing galore as Dubya tries to squelch the latest NSA revelations.

Any time Dubya makes on of his rare appearances before the press, you know that his administration is in big political trouble. And the quicker one of his press statement happens after bad news emerges, the bigger the trouble is. With those rules in mind, you can be certain that USA Today's story about the true extent of the NSA's phone surveillance program is a gigantic political problem, since Dubya was hustled in front of the press only a few hours after the story hit the internet.

In his statement, Dubya nowhere denied the accuracy of the USA Today story. I defy you to find any comment as to whether the nations's three largest phone companies really are giving the NSA records of billions of phone calls, or whether those records can be used to identify the people who made or received any particular phone call. Instead, Dubya tried to give the appearance of refuting the latest charges against the NSA, but failed to say anything that had a direct connection to the question of whether those charges are accurate.

To prove this, I could just point to how Dubya scurried away from the presidential podium before reporters began questioning him about his statement. That, however, would be a cheap shot. And since we all know that cheap shots are never allowed at Magpie (cough, cough), let's deconstruct Dubya's statement and see whether it refutes the latest accusations regarding the NSA.

After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying.
The existing FISA statute already gave the government the tools it needed to intercept phone calls related to terrorism. Under that law, calls can be intercepted first, and a warrant obtained later. The prez's authorization of the NSA's wiretapping program was not only illegal, but nnecessary.

Today there are new claims about other ways we are tracking down al Qaeda to prevent attacks on America. I want to make some important points about what the government is doing and what the government is not doing.

First, our international activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy, and we want to know their plans.
This is irrelevant. The USA Today story is talking about NSA activities within the US — not what it's doing internationally.

Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval.
The USA Today story didn't say that the feds are listening to phone calls — just that the NSA has been obtaining the records of who placed and received phone calls. Dubya is trying to protect himself by responding to a charge that (at least in this case) hasn't been made.

Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.
Dubya is repeating his 'it's legal because the president did it' defense. The legality of both his authorization and the NSA's activities are a matter of hot contention.

Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.
This statement would carry more weight if Dubya addressed the question of whether the NSA really is getting its hands on billions of phone records. Since his press statement evades this question, how can anyone trust his assertion that the 'privacy of ordinary Americans' is being protected?

We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.
Since Dubya doesn't define what he means by 'mining' or 'trolling,' there's no way to know whether he's lying or telling the truth. A reasonable person could conclude that the prez is playing semantic games about the meaning of 'trolling' and 'mining' so that he can make his denial with a straight face.

Dubya's reference to the lack of terrorist attacks on the US since 9/11 is another attempt to change the subject. The lack of attacks has nothing to do with whether the NSA is compiling a database of phone records or whether such action is legal. In addition, there could be any number of reasons why there haven't been any attacks, many of them having nothing to do actions taken by the Dubya or his administration.

As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy. Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we will do so within the laws of our country.
The first sentence is the most important part of Dubya's statement and, in my opinion, the real reason why he went in front of the press today. Not only does the prez continue to evade the question of whether USA Today told the truth about what the NSA is doing, but he attempts to change the subject by accusing the press and leakers of being in league with terrorists. This accusation works on two levels:
First, it's an attempt to prevent future leaks by intimidating the leakers, the reporters to whom information is leaked, and the media that print or broadcast that information — none of whom want to face a federal prosecution.
Second, Dubya's reference to how leaks of 'sensitive intelligence' affect his administration's ability to protect the country is a direct appeal to his hard-core supporters and, very likely, a talking point that's going to appear with a vengeance in the right-wing echo chamber. The prez is facing huge political problems right now, even without the latest revelations about the NSA's illegal domestic surveillance. Whipping up the base against the traitors in the press is a desperate move to recoup at least some of Dubya's flagging political support.

After Dubya's press statement today, we know absolutely nothing new about the NSA's domestic wiretapping and surveillance. What we got instead of facts were lies, evasions, and more lies. He and his handlers are gambling that the public will be satisfied with these lies, just as they were with similar lies the administration tells about Iraq, the economy, and pretty much anything else it touches. But maybe Dubya's plummeting poll numbers means that the game can't be played as usual, and that the administration's calculations are wrong this time.

Let's hope that's true.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:18 AM | Get permalink

NSA has 'the largest database ever assembled.'

Right after posting about how the Justice Department is blocking its own ethics office from investigating the decision to approve the NSA's wiretapping program, I ran into a USA Today story on how the NSA has been building a database of all domestic phone calls in the US.

According to reporter Leslie Cauley, the NSA is using phone call records provided voluntarily by the three biggest US phone companies — AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth — to trace calling patterns in the country. These call records are for 'tens of millions of Americans,' almost none of who are suspected of committing any crime. Billions of records have been collected and handed over to the NSA.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others....

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information. [Emphasis mine]

You really need to read the rest of the USA Today article on the latest revelations about the NSA's domestic spying. It's here.

After you've read it all, I dare you to argue that we're not this close to living under a police state in the US.

For more information about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, you might want to check out this earlier Magpie post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:55 AM | Get permalink

Probe into NSA spying stopped dead in its tracks.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last few months, you've heard about the National Security Agency's program of wiretapping against people in the US. Although that wiretapping is clearly illegal, Justice Department lawyers under former attorney general (likely including current AG Antonio Gonzales) put their stamp of approval on the program shortly after 9/11.

Since the NSA's wiretapping became public earlier this year, the a team from the Justice Department's ethics office has been investigating the conduct of the lawyers who decided that the wiretapping was legal. As of Wednesday, however, that investigation came to an abrupt halt:

The head of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in the letter to Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, that "we have been unable to make meaningful progress in our investigation because O.P.R. has been denied security clearances for access to information about the N.S.A. program."

Mr. Jarrett said his office had requested clearances since January, when it began an investigation, and was told on Tuesday that they had been denied. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," the letter said.

Mr. Hinchey said the denial of clearances was "hard to believe" and compounded what he called a violation of the law by the program itself, which eavesdrops without court warrants on people in the United States suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

That's right: The investigation into the illegal wiretapping has been stopped because the people who did the illegal wiretapping won't give security clearances to the investigators. That's better than having a permanent 'Get out of jail free' card when you're playing Monopoly.

Representative Hinchey says that House Democrats intend to find out who was resposible for denying the security clearances.

"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them," Hinchey said.

While Dubya has not acted publicly to obstruct the OPR's investigation into how Justice Department lawyers approved the NSA's wiretapping, I have no doubt that the decision to deny security clearances to investigators is aimed at protecting the White House &$151; and that the denials would not have happened without approval from very high in Dubya's administations. Likewise, I have no doubt that, if this obstruction of the investigation is allowed to stand, that the constitutional stakes are just as high as they were when Richard Nixon tried to block Watergate investigators three decades ago.

Via NY Times and AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 AM | Get permalink

Now we know why Dubya wouldn't spend $US 300 billion to comply with the Kyoto protocol.

He needed the money to pay for the Iraq War.

Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: If the US could afford the cost of the war, why it couldn't afford the price tag for eliminating greenhouse gases?

Law/political science professor Cass Sunstein offers some thoughts on the question.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Let the cover-up begin!

This time, Dubya administration flaks are spinning lies in an attempt to cover the big broad ass of HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson. And there's more here at Daily Kos.

Jackson's fingers are crossed behind his back

Jackson's fingers are crossed behind his back

Jackson taking his oath of office. He obviously wasn't paying attention when he promised to 'well and faithfully discharge the duties' of HUD secretary. [Photo: HUD]

If you don't know why Jackson's ass needs covering, see our post from yesterday.

Via Think Progress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:08 PM | Get permalink

Another foreign policy triumph for Dubya's administration.

VP Dick Cheney's harsh words for Russia the other day worked real good.

As proof, check out what Russian President Vladimir Putin had to say in his 'state of the nation' speech:

But amid increasingly vocal American criticism of his domestic and foreign policies, Putin also issued a veiled but clear response to Vice President Dick Cheney's accusations that Moscow is rolling back on democracy and strong-arming its ex-Soviet neighbors.

"Where is all this pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests?" said Putin, who also used a fairy-tale reference to criticize the aggressive U.S. course in global affairs.

"We are aware what is going on in the world," he said. "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, it eats without listening and it's clearly not going to listen to anyone."

Devoting much of the hour-long speech to defense, Putin stressed that Russia needs a strong military not only to guard against terrorism and attacks but also to resist political pressure from abroad. He noted that Russia's military budget was 25 times lower than that of the United States.

"Their house is their fortress — good for them," he said. "But that means that we also must make our house strong and reliable."

"We must always be ready to counter any attempts to pressure Russia in order to strengthen positions at our expense," Putin said. "The stronger our military is, the less temptation there will be to exert such pressure on us." [Emphasis mine]

It looks like the right-wing's delusions about how the US is the 'only remaining superpower' are sending 15 years of good US-Russian relations right down the drain. All I can figure out is that Dubya isn't satisfied with his current abyssmal poll numbers, and wants to shoot for the all-time low mark.

Via UK Guardian.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:42 PM | Get permalink

More tax breaks for the US rich.

And bigger deficits for the whole country, as the GOP-controlled Congress settles on the final version of a five-year tax package. That package continues Dubya's tax breaks on capital gains and dividend income — tax breaks useless to most people — and tosses a sop to 'middle-income' taxpayers currently having to deal with the alternative minimum tax.

Guess who gets most of the benefits?

Your gigantic tax savings.
[Data: Tax Policy Center; Table: Washington Post]

You'll note that the table doesn't show the savings for taxpayers with really big incomes. You might also be interested to know that the Bureau of the Census says that current median income for a family of four in the US is US$ 65,093. [In other words, half of US households have incomes above that point and the other half has incomes below it.]

Even some Republicans are unhappy with the priorities of this tax package:

"The point is the preponderance of these revenues will go to upper-income people, people who make a million dollars or more," Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) said yesterday. "It's a question of priorities."

Personally, we'd call it another example of the class war against most of the country that Dubya and the GOP are waging on behalf of their wealthy corporate friends. But then this magpie isn't known for her politeness.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:08 AM | Get permalink

Keeping accidents from happening.

Given the FDA's continuing failure to make emergency contraception available to US women without a prescription, I was happy to read about the 'Ask me' public awareness campaign from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which aims at reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies by encouraging women to ask their doctor for advance prescriptions for emergency contraception. The campaign includes the poster below, designed to be put up in examination rooms and waiting rooms.

'Accidents Happen' poster

[Poster: ACOG]

From ACOG's press release:

"With the 'Ask me' campaign, ACOG is stepping up our efforts to address this country's high rate of unintended pregnancy. Nearly half (49%) of the more than 6 million pregnancies that occur each year are unplanned," [ACOG President Dr. Michael] Mennuti said. "Family planning is an important issue for our specialty, and EC is an excellent contraceptive option for millions of women who want to prevent an unintended pregnancy...."

According to ACOG, over half (53%) of the women who have unplanned pregnancies are using some method of contraception. "Accidents happen. No form of contraception offers women 100% protection," noted Dr. Mennuti. "By getting women to ask about emergency contraception and by ob-gyns giving them an advance prescription for it, we hope to make EC a forethought, not an afterthought. We want women to be prepared-well before a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex occurs. Afterward may be too late."

Of course, if Dubya's FDA wasn't under the thumb of anti-abortion fundamentalists, emergency contraception wouldn't require a prescription and the 'Ask me' campaign wouldn't be necessary.

Via Broadsheet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:51 AM | Get permalink

Dubya's strategy in Iraq.

Over at the Booman Tribune, Steven D measures its success using Dubya's own yardstick.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:32 AM | Get permalink

Tampontification.

You really should click this link.

It won't take you long, and you'll be happy you went. Trust me.

Via Feministing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:22 AM | Get permalink

Dubya's approval ratings are really in free fall.

I'd noticed a new set of numbers for Dubya's approval ratings yesterday, but didn't take time to look at them closely given that they just continued the prez's downward trend. But tonight I got a look at the details from the latest New York Times/CBS News poll and I have to say that the breadth and depth of Dubya's unpopularity are staggering. [See graphic on left.]

The big number is 31, which is the percentage of poll respondents who think Dubya is doing a good job as president. This equals the low point of reached by Dubya's daddy a few months before Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, and only two presidents in the last 50 years have been disliked more than the current White House resident: Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. (And we know what happened to both of them.) Dubya's dismal approval rating is matched by the public's sour view of how the country has fared under his presidency, with two-thirds of those polled saying that the country is worse off than it was when the prez moved into the White House in 2001.

There's bad news for the GOP's hopes to keep hold of its majorities in the Congress, too. Public approval of Congress has dropped to 23 percent. Those of you with long memories will recall that this is about the same approval rating that the Democratic-controlled Congress had in 1994, right before the Republicans swept into control of both houses. While the smaller number of congressional districts that are truly competitive will make it hard for the Democrats to pull off a similar feat this November, the public's disapproval of the current Congress is certainly causing nail-biting among GOP political strategists.

If it the Democrats of almost any decade except the current one were contesting the November election, I'd be predicting that Dubya would be facing a hostile Congress after the new members are sworn in next January. But given that the current Democratic party has shown an amazing capacity for bungling oppotunities and snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, I'm not holding my breath waiting for the GOP to get creamed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:53 AM | Get permalink

Helen Thomas nails Negroponte to the wall.

This magpie's favorite member of the Washington press corps let Directory of National Intelligence John Negroponte have it with both barrels at his Tuesday press conference:

Q Why did you want Mr. Goss fired? And also, does the CIA send detainees to secret prisons, prisons abroad?

AMBASSADOR NEGROPONTE: I wouldn't characterize Mr. Goss?s departure in that way, Helen. Porter had talked for some time about the possibility of leaving public service. I think that the President felt this was an opportune time. He saw Porter, and I think Porter also had talked about himself being a transitional leader, transitioning from the old setup prior to intelligence reform to the new one. And the President just felt that this was a good time to appoint new leadership to carry the agenda forward and consolidate the reforms that Mr. Goss had initiated.

Q How about the second part of my question? Do we send detainees to secret prisons abroad?

AMBASSADOR NEGROPONTE: I'm just not going to comment on that question.

It's no surprise that the the guy who helped make right-wing death squads a way of life in El Salvador and Honduras during the 1980s would have a bit of trouble answering that second question. But I sure hope Helen Thomas keeps asking it.

Thanks to Doug Krile for the pointer to the press conference.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:21 AM | Get permalink

Can just handling a gun raise testosterone levels?

Could be, according to a new study.

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:17 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Oppose the prez, lose your government contract.

That's what happened to one winning bidder when he told Housing and Urban Development secretary Alphonso Jackson that he had 'a problem with your president.'

And what's worse, reports the Dallas Business Journal, is that Jackson bragged about rescinding the contract during a speech in late April.

Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

So why aren't Democrats demanding that this guy be fired?

Via Atrios.

More: Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg is demanding that Duyba fire Jackson.

In addition, US representatives Barney Frank and Henry Waxman are demanding that Dubya's administration provide them with all documents relating to the contract decision reported by the Dallas Business Journal:

"The Bush Administration has a track record of rewarding its friends and ignoring the rules," said Rep. Waxman, Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Committee. "The government has no right to blatantly withhold contracts simply because an American citizen dislikes the President. This raises new questions about the integrity and judgment of the Bush Administration."

"Politics has no place in the awarding of federal contracts. If the report in the Dallas Business Journal is accurate — and it is a highly respected publication — then President Bush must repudiate these comments, reverse HUD's course and assure the American people that politics plays no role in the government contracting process," said Rep. Frank, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee.

Frank and Waxman are also calling for an investigation of all contracting decisions that Alphonso has been involved with during his tenure at HUD.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 PM | Get permalink

Tipping the scales of justice to the right.

Dubya might be really unpopular now, but that fact certainly isn't slowing down his administration's determination to put a right-wing stamp on US federal courts. The Hill reports that the administration is getting ready to send 20 more conservative judicial nominees to the Senate for approval.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:53 AM | Get permalink

You're never alone when you have a cell phone.

That's because your cell phone company — and the government — are always looking over your shoulder. Any time your phone is turned on, they can track your movements and location.

Most people know that when they make a mobile call—during a 911 emergency, for example—authorities can access phone company technology to pin down their location, sometimes to within a few feet.

A lesser-known fact: Cell phone companies can locate you any time you are in range of a tower and your phone is on. Cell phones are designed to work either with global positioning satellites or through "pings" that allow towers to triangulate and pinpoint signals. Any time your phone "sees" a tower, it pings it....

Telecom companies and government are not eager to advertise that tracking capability. Nor will companies admit whether they are archiving the breadcrumb trail of pings from a cell phone so that they?or authorities?can trace back, after the fact, where the customer had been at a particular time. "Of course, there is that capability," says Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer with Counterpane Internet Security. "Verizon and the other companies have access to that information and the odds are zero that they wouldn?t sell it if it is legal and profitable. This is capitalism after all."

Via In These Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:03 AM | Get permalink

No comment needed.

From Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau:

The U.S. Army will prohibit "water-boarding" — the controversial practice of submerging a prisoner's head in water in an effort to make him talk — when it issues its new interrogation manual, the State Department's legal adviser told the U.N. Committee Against Torture on Monday.

John B. Bellinger III said banning water-boarding wasn't an admission that American interrogators had used the technique on detainees during the war on terrorism.

But the Army's decision to outlaw the technique raised concerns about how widely it has been used and why the Army felt it needed to mention it in the manual. Previous versions of the manual hadn't listed it, either as an approved technique or a banned one. [Emphasis mine]

The full story is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink

Monday, May 8, 2006

Economics was never like this when we studied it.

Yesterday, we meant to blog about this rather unusual LA Times op-ed by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, but we forgot. Luckily, a post at CJR Daily just jogged our memory.

I was working late in my D.C. office. I'd been running some new simulations on my macro-model, but nothing was converging, so I figured I'd close up my spreadsheet and find a corner in some dark speak-easy to lick my wounds.

That's when she walked in. She had a neckline as low as the Nasdaq in '01, curves like sine waves and a dress tighter than the global oil supply. She had my attention even before she pulled out two reports I'd seen that very morning.

"I'm sorry to barge in on you like this," she said in a voice that gave my calculator a power surge. "I didn't know where else to turn."

"You came to the right place, doll," I said. "I see you've got the first-quarter GDP report, along with the new compensation results." I'd been puzzling over these numbers all day, but what, I wondered, could this tall glass of ice water want with them?

Bernstein's obviously read a bit too much Mickey Spillane, but he can dish out hard-boiled economics like that any old day, in this magpies' book. You can read the rest of the op-ed here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:54 PM | Get permalink

How unpopular is Dubya's handling of Iraq?

So unpopular that officials in the Agriculture Department are being ordered to talk up Dubya's successes in Iraq.

According to Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, Dubya has ordered all members of his cabinet and their assistants to include talking points on the 'war on terrorism' in their public speeches, paying particular attention to what their particular department is doing in Iraq. That policy was communicated to officials in the Ag Department in a May 2 email from department speechwriter Heather Vaughn.

As you'd imagine, the links to agriculture are pretty strained. Take a look:

Dubya's Iraq talking points

From Kamen's column:

The e-mail, sent to about 60 undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and other political appointees, was also sent to "a few people to whom it should not have gone," said the department's communications director, Terri Teuber. The career people, we are assured, are not being asked to spread the great news on Iraq in their talks to food stamp recipients, disadvantaged farmers, enviros or other folks.

The e-mail provided language "being used by Secretary [Michael O.] Johanns and deputy secretary [Charles F.] Conner in all of their remarks and is being sent to you for inclusion in your speeches."

Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips, USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

So not only are agriculture officials having to talk up Iraq, but the White House is going to keep a list of which official has been nice and which one has been naughty.

Besides the talking points, the May 2 memo includes examples of how to work Iraq into various types of speeches. You really should go look at them here [PDF file] to get a sense how Dubya's administration is all spin and no substance.

Via The Gadflyer.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:47 PM | Get permalink

Those damn immigrants.

They're violent. They depress the wages of US workers. They don't learn English. They're 'economic refugees' who'll just turn around and go back home after they make their pile.

No, those aren't the latest talking points over at Fox News. Those are the charges made against the people who immigrated to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A very good article in by reporter Michael Powell in Sunday's Washington Post looks at the immigration debate of 100 years ago., and finds that very little has changed in the century since then.

Immigrants landing at Ellis Island, 1902. [Photographer unknown]

As the article points out, all of the charges hurled at immigrants in 1906 are being used now by immigration opponents in 2006. And, usually, those opponents have no clue about the history of immigration or the contributions of earlier immigrants to the US of today.

Advocates of stricter enforcement argue that those who came a century ago were different because they arrived legally....

Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, wrote about her Irish forebears in a Wall Street Journal column: "They waited in line. They passed the tests. They had to get permission to come. . . . They had to get through Ellis Island . . . get questioned and eyeballed by a bureaucrat with a badge."

But these accounts are flawed, historians say. Until 1918, the United States did not require passports; the term "illegal immigrant" had no meaning. New arrivals were required only to prove their identity and find a relative or friend who could vouch for them.

Customs agents kept an eye out for lunatics and the infirm (and after 1905, for anarchists). Ninety-eight percent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were admitted to the United States, and 78 percent spent less than eight hours on the island. (The Mexico-United States border then was unguarded and freely crossed in either direction.) "Shipping companies did the health inspections in Europe because they didn't want to be stuck taking someone back," said Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College and author of From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration. "Eventually they introduced a literacy test," she added, "but it was in the immigrant's own language, not English."

This is the kind of report that should be all over the place during our current immigration 'crisis', but isn't. Our compliments to the Post and reporter Michael Powell for getting the story out.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:13 PM | Get permalink

Pop quiz!

Quick! What left-wing Dubya-hater has this to say about the latest US economic numbers?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll jobs report released May 5 says the economy created 131,000 private sector jobs in April. Construction added 10,000 jobs, natural resources, mining and logging added 8,000 jobs, and manufacturing added 19,000. Despite this unusual gain, the economy has 10,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than a year ago.

Most of the April job gain — 72% — is in domestic services, with education and health services (primarily health care and social assistance) and waitresses and bartenders accounting for 55,000 jobs or 42% of the total job gain. Financial activities added 26,000 jobs and professional and business services added 28,000. Retail trade lost 36,000 jobs.

During 2001 and 2002 the US economy lost 2,298,000 jobs. These lost jobs were not regained until early in February 2005. From February 2005 through April 2006, the economy has gained 2,584 jobs (mainly in domestic services).

The total job gain for the 64 month period from January 2001 through April 2006 is 7,000,000 jobs less than the 9,600,000 jobs necessary to stay even with population growth during that period. The unemployment rate is low because millions of discouraged workers have dropped out of the work force and are not counted as unemployed.

Does the name Paul Craig Roberts mean anything to you? No?

Well, Roberts is a former associate editorial page editor for the that lefist mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal, and a contributing editor for the National Review, which we all know has long been a tool of al-Qaeda. He was also assistant secretary of the treasury in the communist administration of Ronald Reagan. All of that certainly explains why he refuses to see the surging US economy that our Dear Leader is so rightfully proud of.

You can read Roberts' whole article here, at CounterPunch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:59 AM | Get permalink

Those crazies with their conspiracy theories.

And no, not those left-wing conspiracy-mongers. Instead, Paul Krugman is talking about the conspiracy-mongers in Dubya's administration and among his supporters — the ones who claim that global warming is a fraud perpetrated by politically motivated scientists, and that the sittuation in Iraq only looks so bad because the US press refuses to report the good news. As Krugman points out, these beliefs definitely fit the definition of a conspiracy theory, which 'attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance.'

For the last few years, the term "conspiracy theory" has been used primarily to belittle critics of the Bush administration — in particular, anyone suggesting that the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to fight an unrelated war in Iraq....

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing....

It's little surprise that Dubya and his supporters continue charging the prez's critics with conspiracy-mongering. After all, there'd be a political price to pay if they admitted to their own mistakes and misdeeds.

[It] it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

If you're a NY Times subscriber, you can read the rest of the column here. If not, you might find this link worth checking out.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:35 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Sex is bad unless you're doing it to have children.

It's little secret that's the real message behind efforts in the US to end abortion, keep emergency contraception out of the hands of women, and foist abstinence-only 'sex education' onto young people — unless of of course you get your news exclusively from the 'mainstream' press. Major US news media tend to look at each of those efforts in isolation from one another, and to cover them mainly in terms of tactics. Reporting on the ideology and long-term goals of anti-abortion and anti-sex ed activists is rare, so 'anti-sex' groups are largely free to pursue their real agenda below the radar.

The New York Times Magazine, however, is breaking the pattern. The current issue features a major article by Russell Shorto in which he shows how a movement that wants to bar contraception is finally starting to lay its cards out on the table.

I can't possibly do justice to the article with excerpts — you really need to read the whole thing. But I will give you some tidbits to get your curiousity up. (All of the emphasis is mine.)

For the past 33 years — since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960's culminated in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. "We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion," says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission. "The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception." [...]

Edward R. Martin Jr., a lawyer for the public-interest law firm Americans United for Life, whose work includes seeking to restrict abortion at the state level and representing pharmacists who have refused to prescribe emergency contraception, told me: "We see contraception and abortion as part of a mind-set that's worrisome in terms of respecting life. If you're trying to build a culture of life, then you have to start from the very beginning of life, from conception, and you have to include how we think and act with regard to sexuality and contraception." [...]

It may be news to many people that contraception as a matter of right and public health is no longer a given, but politicians and those in the public health profession know it well. "The linking of abortion and contraception is indicative of a larger agenda, which is putting sex back into the box, as something that happens only within marriage," says William Smith, vice president for public policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Siecus has been around since 1964, and as a group that supports abortion rights, it is natural enemies with many organizations on the right, but its mission has changed in recent years, from doing things like promoting condoms as a way to combat AIDS to, now, fighting to maintain the very idea of birth control as a social good. "Whether it's emergency contraception, sex education or abortion, anything that might be seen as facilitating sex outside a marital context is what they'd like to see obliterated," Smith says. [...]

While Americans as a whole don't hold such a dark view of comprehensive sex education, many do feel there's something wrong with a strictly clinical approach. This ambivalence, according to Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, gets to the root of the problem and may explain the numbers. "One of the things I'm most often asked is why the abortion and unintended pregnancy rates are so much lower in Europe," she says. "People talk about the easy access to contraception there, but I think it's really a matter of the underlying social norms. In Europe, these things are in the open, and the only issue is to be careful. Here in the U.S., people are still arguing about whether it's O.K. to have sex."

Short's article is definitely worth your time. You can read the whole thing here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:15 AM | Get permalink