Documents point to e-voting
bug in stolen Florida race| |
Excerpt: Symptoms consistent with a known software flaw in a popular electronic voting machine surfaced widely in a controversial election in Sarasota County, Florida, last November, despite county officials' claims that a bug played no role in the election results, according to documents obtained by Wired News.
Activists say the flaw might have contributed to the high number of lost or uncast votes in a now-contested congressional race.
House to begin probe into
stolen Florida election
Excerpt: A House task force will take the first steps Tuesday in an investigation of a Florida congressional election decided by 369 votes amid complaints that voting machines failed to count thousands of electronic ballots.
Republican Vern Buchanan was declared the winner of the election, a result Democrat Christine Jennings is challenging in Florida court.
The House, which has final authority over its membership, typically waits until legal challenges are completed before taking action. But Florida Democrats last month asked the House Administration Committee to begin reviewing the election after reports of an anomaly in the touch-screen voting machines that recorded about 18,000 skipped votes in Sarasota County. |
Republicans play politics with
American justice
Gonzales says "I don't recall"
71 times during Senate testimony| |
Excerpt: In several hours before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Gonzales said he had done nothing improper in firing the eight prosecutors, but conceded the case had been badly handled. At the same time, he said 71 times that he either could not recall or did not remember conversations or events surrounding the dismissals.
Alone among the nine Republicans on the committee, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma called for Gonzales to resign. Several other Republicans made plain their unhappiness. [Republican Arlen] Specter told Gonzales his description of events was "significantly if not totally at variance with the facts."
"Why is your story changing?"
[Republican] Charles Grassley of Iowa asked at one point, citing differences between an earlier explanation and the hearing testimony.
[Republican] Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, after hearing the attorney general's account of the case, said, "Most of this is a stretch." |
Gonzales contradicts his own testimony| |
Excerpt: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned. |
Democratic Party sues
Justice Dept over Republican emails| |
Excerpt: The Democratic National Committee sued the Justice Department on Thursday, demanding it turn over any e-mail traffic with the Republican Party on the U.S. attorneys controversy and criminal investigations.
Problems involving missing e-mail surfaced in recent weeks at the Republican National Committee and the White House as congressional investigators looked into the department's firing of federal prosecutors.
The Democratic Party's suit in federal court followed the RNC's refusal for now to turn over e-mails to Congress. White House lawyers first will have an opportunity to review them to determine whether some should be kept secret. |
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Bush-Cheney administration used DoJ to curb election turnout in key states| |
Excerpt: For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.
Comment: There's virtually nothing in this article that's news, to people who've been following the Bush-Cheney administration's profoundly anti-democracy policies on so many fronts.
It's also not news that this reprehensible attempt to suppress voter turnout has, by and large, been successful.
What's news here, is only that it's made the news. |
DoJ also purged Civil Rights Division| |
Excerpt: Over the past six years, the Bush administration has aggressively reshaped the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Many career analysts and attorneys have either been transferred or driven out; their replacements are long on conservative credentials and short on civil rights experience.
Comment: We've covered this story more than once already, but it deserves more attention in the mainstream press. |
Supreme Court bans rarely-used
but life-saving abortion procedure| |
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that bans a particular abortion procedure will encourage anti-abortion forces to push for an array of other restrictions in legislatures across the country, activists on both sides of the issue agree.
"The court has given anti-choice state lawmakers the green light to open the flood gates and launch additional attacks on safe, legal abortion, without any regard for women's health," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Anti-abortion leaders hailed the ruling, upholding the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, and said it would embolden their statehouse allies nationwide. "The time is now right to launch aggressive legal challenges across America to abortion on demand," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. "The court has now said it's OK to ban procedures. We can do more than just put hurdles in front of women seeking abortions _ we can put roadblocks in front of them."
Comment: Doctors are now prohibited from performing this uncommon but life-saving procedure, because it's more important to placate arch-right anti-woman radicals who have lied about this operation for years.
New England Journal of Medicine
blasts Supreme Court decision
Excerpt: The decision may revive local and nationwide efforts to restrict access to abortion services, wrote R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Michael Greene, professor of reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, questioned if the law passed by Congress was just a "carefully calculated first step.''
"Both health care providers and patients should be alarmed by the current degree of intrusion by our government into the practice of medicine and even more so by the apparent trajectory that it seems poised to follow in the near future,'' Greene wrote in an article that was released by the journal |
Survivor of Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres asks media to back off| |
Excerpt: Regina Rohde said she understood that the media have to tell the story, but, she said, "We can't have the media always there every single moment."
Every time 20 or 30 students gathered, cameras were there recording it, she said. "We didn't feel we had the time and space we needed to be a community."
That's what she and her fellow Hokies will need, she said -- "our space." |
Gonzales creates under-the-
radar 'Official Secrets Act'| |
Excerpt: Rather than approach Congress with a proposal to enact the British Official Secrets Act -- a proposal which would certainly be defeated even in the prior Republican-led Congress -- Gonzales decided to spin it from whole cloth. He would reconstrue the Espionage Act of 1917 to include the essence of the Official Secrets Act, and he would try to get this interpretation ratified in the Bush Administration's "vest pocket" judicial districts -- the Eastern District of Virginia and the Fourth Circuit. The key man for this project was to be Paul J. McNulty, the man he soon picked as his deputy. |
FDA knew of dangers to spinach, peanut butter| |
Excerpt: The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.
Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. |
Anti-Castro terrorist is
released from American jail| |
Excerpt: Luis Posada Carriles has been released from jail. Posada is the anti-Castro Cuban militant connected to the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. He is a former CIA operative who has worked for years to bring down the Cuban government. But he is considered a terrorist by many because of his role in the 1976 airline bombing. He has been detained in the U.S. on immigration charges since he snuck into the country in 2005. On Thursday Venezuela accused Washington of being an "accomplice" of terrorism by allowing Posada to be released from jail. Posada will go on trial in May on immigration fraud charges. The U.S. is rejecting calls for him to be extradited to Cuba or Venezuela.
Comment: It's almost as if the U.S. supports terrorists, when they're CIA terrorists, like this killer was. |
Life in liberated Afghanistan & Iraq
Training of Iraqi troops
no longer matters in U.S. policy| |
Excerpt: Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.
No change has been announced... but evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq.
Comment: In the never-ending fountain of lies from the Bush-Cheney administration, let's not forget that "training Iraqi troops" was one of the key lies of the Bush-Cheney re-election ... |
Sadr faction leaves gov't to
protest U.S. troop presence| |
Excerpt: In the biggest cabinet shakeup since Maliki took office a year ago, the six Sadrist ministers pulled out of the government in protest at his refusal to set a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal, a demand of the anti-American cleric. The Sadrists, who form the single biggest parliamentary bloc in the ruling Shi'ite Alliance, called on Maliki to appoint non-partisan independents, a move the prime minister welcomed. The Sadrists have accused Maliki of "ignoring the will of the people" over the timetable issue and also of failing to improve basic services and security. |
American 'justice' in Iraq| |
Excerpt: An Associated Press photographer who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 now sits in a U.S. Army jail in Baghdad. He's been there a year with no formal charges filed against him.
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen born and raised in Fallujah, Iraq, was hired by AP in 2004 as a translator and driver. A graduate of the Baghdad Institute of Technology, he quickly made the transition to photographer.
His photos were remarkable for catching close-up action, including fighting and poses by insurgents. After his arrest on April 12, 2006, the U.S. military claimed that he was collaborating with insurgents. |
UN holds conference on Iraq refugees| |
Excerpt: The United Nations is urging the international community to keep their borders open for refugees fleeing Iraq. The UN is holding a two-day conference to discuss how to help the four million Iraqis who have fled their homes. Meanwhile Iraqi officials are now estimating the war has produced 900,000 orphans.
Comment: That's nearly 300 orphans for every American killed on 9/11. Are we avenged yet? |
US continues to stonewall Brits
in troop death investigations| |
Excerpt: According to the report, the U.S. has not allowed witnesses to provide evidence in the inquiry and has refused to release a U.S. engineer's report. This comes after a similar incident in which a British solider, Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, was killed when a U.S. pilot fired at his vehicle. The U.S. military refused to allow the coroner to see the cockpit video until it was published by The Sun newspaper.
"Here we are again," coroner Andrew Walker is quoted as saying. "It seems to me inexcusable that where witnesses could assist this inquest, that they're not allowed to do so." |
Iraqi doctor who reported high civilian casualties not allowed into U.S.| |
Excerpt: An Iraqi doctor who found that more civilians had died in the war than has been officially reported cannot attend a Seattle medical conference because the U.S. State Department did not approve his visa, according to a news report. A state department official told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the situation was a misunderstanding, but critics called it a political decision.
Riyadh Lafta, an epidemiologist who teaches at Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine in Baghdad, had been scheduled to give a lecture Friday at the University of Washington. He co-wrote an October 2006 article for the British medical journal, the Lancet, that concluded nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died since the war began in March 2003. |
Wolfowitz's girlfriend helped
plan the Iraqi government| |
Excerpt: As if the tangled web of Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, weren't already sordid enough, now comes word that while he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon ordered Science Applications International Corp., a Pentagon contractor, to enter into a subcontract with Ms. Riza under which she spent approximately a month in the spring of 2003 "studying ways to form a government in Iraq." |
Sunnis say U.S. wall makes
their neighborhood a prison| |
Excerpt: A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it ''collective punishment'' and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council's approval.
The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which ''has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.'' The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.
But some residents of the neighborhood, which is surrounded by Shiite areas, complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.
''This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,'' said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area.
Maliki halts construction of
barrier amidst wave of violence
Excerpt: Gunmen shot and killed 23 members of an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq on Sunday after stopping their bus and separating out followers of other faiths, while at least 20 people were killed in car bombings in the capital.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Egypt's leader, meanwhile, to ignore widespread reports that the country is suffering "a civil or sectarian war." He also said he would halt the construction of a barrier that would separate a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad that had drawn sharp criticism from Sunni leaders and residents. |
General Petraeus: Iraqis will have to
'learn to live' with 'sensational attacks'| |
Excerpt: "I don't think you're ever going to get rid of all the car bombs," conceded Petraeus to the Washington Post. "Iraq is going to have to learn -- as did, say, Northern Ireland -- to live with some degree of sensational attacks."
"A more realistic goal, he said, but one that has eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces, is to prevent the bombers from causing 'horrific damage,'" continues the article. |
Marine Corps drops all charges
in 24 Haditha killings, as seven more Marines are granted immunity| |
Excerpt: Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, 24, had been charged with unpremeditated murder and could have received up to life in prison for the deaths of five Iraqi civilians in the November 19, 2005, killings. He has been granted immunity from prosecution and must testify at upcoming hearings for other marines charged in the Haditha case. |
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Al-Qaeda seeks to expand its operations| |
Excerpt: Al-Qaeda is reaching out from its base in Pakistan to turn militant Islamist groups in the Middle East and Africa into franchises charged with intensifying attacks on western targets, according to European officials and terrorism specialists.
The development could see radical groups use al-Qaeda expertise to switch their attention from local targets to western interests in their countries and abroad. "For al-Qaeda, this is a force multiplier," said a British official who follows terrorism. |
Bush-Cheney database
tracks your drug prescriptions| |
Excerpt: Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.
Comment: We don't even have a list of gun owners, and we have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants? And in fact, the article suggests that this isn't just a database of patients who use anti-depressants, it's a federal database of every prescription drug you've ever bought.
Bush administration is prying
into your medical records
Excerpt: The database was created pursuant to a 2005 law that was intended to prevent the abuse of prescription drugs. Funny that this massive new database of your private medical information is now being (ab)used for a purpose that wasn't intended in or approved by the law.
The federal database of your private medical information is now being used by federal law enforcement to investigate crimes that have nothing to do with prescription drug abuse. We know this because yesterday ABC News disclosed that the feds checked the database to see what prescription meds the Virginia Tech shooter might have been on. How does the mass murder of students and faculty at Virginia Tech have anything to do with prescription drug abuse? It doesn't. |
France infiltrated terror network, told CIA
about plans to hijack planes prior to 9/11| |
Excerpt: Le Monde said the French report of January 2001 had been handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it had ever been made in the official U.S. Sept. 11 Commission, which produced its findings in July 2004.
Comment: Does anyone remember the first weeks and months after 9/11, when anyone who suggested that high-level government officials might have had advance knowledge was branded a kook?
Do you remember when the news and the nation's leaders told us 9/11 had been a complete sneak attack, like a new Pearl Harbor?
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Montana Governor defies national ID law| |
Excerpt: Gov. Brian Schweitzer said "no, nope, no way, hell no" Tuesday to national driver's licenses, signing into law a bill supporters say is one of the strongest rejections to the federal plan.
The move means the state won't comply with the Real ID Act, a federal law that sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases. |
Bush operatives pressure Republicans to kill interrogation oversight bill| |
Excerpt: If you read it all, you will see why Bush opposes this bill and has threatened to VETO IT. It throws the "unitary executive" theory right out the window and REQUIRES active consultation with the Congress on intelligence policy. Not only that, but it strips the Secretary of Defense of the CURRENT authority he has over an entire spy agency, installs inspector generals in several spy agencies that currently do not have one (including the CIA!), requires the DNI to consult with the Attorney General on issues that are constitutionally questionable, and prevents the CIA from assuming command over DoD personnel. |
$3.6-billion in Katrina contracts went to
questionable companies, Republican cronies| |
Excerpt: FEMA exposed taxpayers to significant waste -- and possibly violated federal law -- by awarding $3.6 billion worth of Hurricane Katrina contracts to companies with poor credit histories and bad paperwork, investigators say. |
FBI searches Republican lawmaker's home| |
Excerpt: The FBI searched the Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) last Friday in its investigation into ties between the congressman and his wife, Julie, and disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to law enforcement and other Congressional and K Street sources. |
Congressman Rick Renzi's family
business is raided by feds| |
Excerpt: Rep. Rick Renzi stepped down temporarily from the House Intelligence Committee Thursday, after the FBI raided his family's business in connection with an ongoing federal investigation. Agents took documents, the Arizona Republican said in a statement issued late Thursday night. |
Key initiative of 'No Child'
under federal investigation| |
Excerpt: The Justice Department is conducting a probe of a $6 billion reading initiative at the center of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, another blow to a program besieged by allegations of financial conflicts of interest and cronyism, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.
The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.
"That sounds like a criminal enterprise to me," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House education committee, which held a five-hour investigative hearing. "You don't get to override the law," he angrily told a panel of Reading First officials. "But the fact of the matter is that you did." |
Corrupt Bush officials marry,
can' t testify against each other| |
Excerpt: Two Bush administration officials who have been linked in scandal are now linked in wedlock.
The union of former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and Sue Ellen Wooldridge could have implications for the investigation into Griles's ties to ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. They were married March 26, three days after Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with Abramoff and a previous romantic partner. Wooldridge was the top environmental prosecutor at the Department of Justice (DoJ) before she resigned in January.
Legal experts note that people can refuse to testify against their spouses, and that in some cases, people can prevent their spouse from testifying against them. |
White House effectively bought
the boat for Duke Cunningham| |
Excerpt: The White House awarded the one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual -- MZM contractor Mitchell Wade -- who never previously held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, Wade used a cashier's check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for now-imprisoned Rep. Duke Cunningham at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated. |
Bush's 'war on terror' phrase helps terrorists| |
Excerpt: President George Bush's "war on terror" rhetoric has strengthened terrorist groups by helping them to create a shared identity, the British Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, warned on Monday.
Comment: There is no war on terror.
There are endless occupations of foreign nations, endless explosions, gunfights, and war, endless death of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and of course plenty of death for innocent civilians in these occupied nations, but in all the reasons offered for this, the so-called "war on terror," there's nothing that isn't just plain propaganda. |
Soldier dies gruesomely; "depleted uraanium" blamed| |
Excerpt: News stories claiming negative signs of depleted uranium's impact, including death and birth defects, are surfacing from Australia to England to the Far East. The controversy rages within government bodies and underlies the theme of TV shows like a recent episode of the medical series House.
While the military continues to deny the connection of depleted uranium to sicknesses plaguing returning servicemen and women, a newly mandated study stemming from legislation signed by President Bush in October is just getting under way. |
New postage rules threaten
small, independent magazines| |
Excerpt: After almost a year of hearings, last month the Bush-appointed US Postal Service Board of Governors tossed out their own staff recommendations and at the last minute approved a 758-page plan submitted by Time Warner that will increase mailing costs between 18 and 30 percent a year for small-circulation magazines like Mother Jones, while postal costs for the big guys -- Time, Newsweek, People -- will actually go down. The Board of Guvs opened up their decision to public comment for a grand total of 8 days, and then scheduled it to go into effect this coming July.
Consider this the print-side version of the fight over net neutrality. |
Internet radio dealt severe blow
as Copyright Board rejects appeal| |
Excerpt: The ruling is a huge blow to online broadcasters, and the new royalty structure could knock a large number of them off the 'Net entirely. Under the previous setup, radio stations would have to pay an annual fee plus 12 percent of their profits to the music industry's royalty collection organization, SoundExchange. It was a good setup for the webcasters, most of whom are either nonprofits or very small organizations.
National Public Radio spearheaded the appeal, arguing that the CRB's decision was an "abuse of discretion" and saying that the judges did not consider the ramifications of a new royalty structure. Under the new royalty schedule, NPR will see its costs skyrocket.
Comment: This is pretty much the death knell for internet radio that played corporate-created music, and it certainly has the potential to strike hard at low-budget broadcast outlets, including NPR. If you ask me, this is music piracy, much more than anything someone at home does with a CD burner. Most of the songs I know well enough to sing along are owned by giant corporations, so the frustration isn't hard to understand, and for whatever it's worth, here's a group of people working to stop this.
But on the bright side, this ruling could be a boon to amateurs and professionals whose music isn't owned by corporations -- anyone who's got a demo disc of decent music they've written and own, anyone who's not looking for massive royalties, just an occasional mention of their name and web address, send it to a mom 'n' pop internet station. |
Kucinich to introduce articles of impeachment against Cheney| |
Excerpt: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the former mayor of Cleveland who is seeking the 2008 Democratic nomination for president for the second time, has selected a date to introduce articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. A source who asked to remain anonymous told RAW STORY that the articles of impeachment would be introduced next week.
Comment: The plan to impeach Cheney before Bush neutralizes two of the saner arguments against impeachment: that Bush wasn't really in charge of the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the White House, and that impeaching Bush would merely replace him with someone even more dangerous and corrupt. |
Vermont Senate votes to
impeach Bush and Cheney| |
Excerpt: Vermont senators voted Friday to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, saying their actions have raised "serious questions of constitutionality."
Bush and Cheney's actions in the U.S. and abroad, including in Iraq, "raise serious questions of constitutionality, statutory legality, and abuse of the public trust," the resolution reads. |
Is George W. Bush insane? (episode 37)
Bush holds an especially incoherent press conference| |
Comment: How remarkably "out of it" he must have been yesterday, compared to his ordinary "out of it" demeanor, for the media to finally mention it... He must've been bumping the ceiling. |
Bush tells Pelosi he didn't
criticize her trip to Syria| |
Excerpt: Bush and other senior administration officials and top Republicans had slammed the speaker publicly for meeting in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But in a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers yesterday, Pelosi said Bush told her in an unsolicited comment that it was actually the State Department that criticized her. |
Wal-Mart skips out on
$2.3 billion in state taxes| |
Excerpt: Wal-Mart appears to be skipping out on its fair share of taxes that most Americans have to pay to help support state governments. New research conducted in part by a leading non-partisan, non-profit tax organization reveals that Wal-Mart avoided $2.3 billion in state income taxes, cutting its payment to state governments almost in half between 1999 and 2005:
Over those seven years, Wal-Mart reported $77.4 billion in pretax U.S. profits to its shareholders. But it reported a total state income tax bill of only $2.4 billion, just 3.16% of those profits.
Had Wal-Mart paid taxes at the statutory state corporate tax rates for the same period, it would have paid $4.7 billion in state income taxes. |
After Tillman's death, Army
went to "information-lockdown"| |
Excerpt: Within hours of Pat Tillman's death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman's uniform.
New Army investigative documents reviewed by The Associated Press describe how the military sealed off information about Tillman's death from all but a small ring of soldiers. Officers quietly passed their suspicion of friendly fire up the chain to the highest ranks of the military, but the truth did not reach Tillman's family for five weeks.
The clampdown, and the misinformation issued by the military, lie at the heart of a burgeoning congressional investigation.
Comment: The is the U.S. military's first response, when a good man gives his life in the line of duty -- the first and only question is, how can we milk some good publicity out of this?
No doubt Jessica Lynch understands how this scam works.. |
House votes for DC voting rights| |
Excerpt: The people of the District of Columbia moved a step closer Thursday to gaining voting rights denied to them for more than 200 years. But the legislation passed by the House on a 241-177 vote faced a veto threat from the White House, which said the bill was unconstitutional. The bill would increase full House membership from 435 to 437, giving the largely Democratic half-million residents of the district a seat and adding a temporary at-large seat for Republican-leaning Utah.
Comment: What's rarely spoken aloud, of course, is that the population of Washington DC is mostly African-American. Republicans hate black people on principal, and blacks tend to vote for Democratic candidates, so expect Republicans to do just about anything they can to fight this legislation, and make sure DC's half-million black folks remain disenfranchised. |
FDA says pet food poisoning
may have been intentional| |
Excerpt: For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.
Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.
Another pet food ingredient is contaminated by chemical
Excerpt: The industrial chemical that led to a nationwide recall of cat and dog food has been found in another pet food ingredient imported from China, and in corn gluten sent to South Africa.
Melamine-tainted rice protein was used by five pet food makers, including Natural Balance Pet Foods, which recalled some lines Monday, and Blue Buffalo Co., which yesterday recalled its Spa Select Kitten dry food. Royal Canin South Africa recalled some of its dog food that used Chinese-made corn gluten.
Pet food kills 30 dogs in South Africa
Excerpt: Petri Vogel from the South African Veterinary Association said ... it was likely that there was a link between the contaminated products in the U.S. and South Africa.
Comment: We've got a dog in this fight, so to speak, and that dog is our cat. It's just hard to believe how this whole frickin' mess is getting so little coverage in the media ...
Again, if you give a dang about your pet, the best source for we've found for updated information is our local mom 'n' pop pet supply shop, MadCat a/k/a Feline Underground. |
Contamination makes its
way to people's dinners| |
Excerpt: The Food and Drug Administration has opened a criminal investigation in the widening pet food contamination scandal, officials said yesterday, as it was confirmed that tainted pork might have made its way onto human dinner plates in California.
More than 100 hogs that ate contaminated food at a custom slaughterhouse in California's Central Valley were sold to private individuals and to an unnamed licensed facility in Northern California during the past 2 1/2 weeks. The hogs consumed feed that contained rice protein tainted with melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened and killed dogs and cats around the world. |
UN accuses Sudan over weapons| |
Excerpt: The Sudanese government has been accused of violating a UN arms embargo by flying weapons into Darfur in breach of UN Security Council resolutions. A UN report says Sudan painted aircraft white to make them look like UN planes. |
Masked Senator strikes again| |
Excerpt: Apparently the Senate is an irony-free zone, because once again, a senator has placed a secret hold on legislation that increases government transparency. In this case, the bill that's been blocked would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically. Right now, they only file paper versions, which are much more difficult to search through. House candidates file electronically. |
The rightwing war on women
Freedom of Choice Act would
make Roe v Wade federal law| |
Excerpt: Two US lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to prohibit the government from interfering with a woman's right to have an abortion following the Wednesday's US Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on "partial-birth" abortions. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced the reintroduction of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would codify the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. The bill would prohibit government interference with a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability or after viability when necessary to protect the woman's health. Originally introduced in 2004, the bill sat idle in the Judiciary Committee until the end of the 108th Congress. In a statement on Thursday, Nadler asserted, "We can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to protect a woman's constitutional right to choose." |
Missouri legislation aims to
restrict abortion clinics| |
Excerpt: While abortion rights supporters rallied at the Capitol yesterday, state lawmakers considered bills placing greater restrictions on abortion clinics and banning abortion providers from teaching sex education classes. |
Oklahoma Governor vetoes anti-abortion bill| |
Excerpt: Governor Brad Henry Wednesday vetoed an anti-abortion measure that had easily passed both the state House and state Senate. Henry says the veto was a difficult decision because he supports reasonable restrictions on abortion. But the governor says the bill "ultimately does more harm than good."
Opponents of the bill called for the veto and said it would interfere with a doctor's relationship with pregnant patients. The opponents also say the bill would cut off treatment for women with difficult pregnancies if they have no insurance or are on Medicaid. |
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Reporters go on trial for revealing
Bush-Cheney plan to bomb Al-Jazeera| |
Excerpt: A British government official and a former political researcher went on trial Wednesday for allegedly leaking a classified memo in which President Bush reportedly referred to bombing the Arab television station Al-Jazeera. The Daily Mirror newspaper previously reported that the memo noted Blair had argued against Bush's suggestion of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror said its sources disagreed on whether Bush's suggestion was serious. |
International poll: U.S. can't
be trusted to act responsibly| |
Excerpt: The most stark results were those showing a lack of trust that the United States would act responsibly and a sense that it had overreached on the global stage.
A majority of respondents in Argentina (84 per cent), Peru (80 per cent), Russia (73 per cent) France (72 per cent), Armenia (58 per cent), Indonesia (64 per cent), China (59 per cent), Thailand (56 per cent), South Korea (53 per cent) and India (52 per cent) and more than a third of those in Australia (40 per cent) and Ukraine (37 per cent) answered "not at all'' or "not very much'' when asked how much they trusted the US "to act responsibly in the world,'' the poll found.
The Philippines and Israel proved the staunchest supporters with 85 per cent and 81 per cent of respondents, respectively, saying they trusted the US either a "great deal'' or "somewhat,'' followed by Australia at 59 per cent and Poland at 51 per cent.
More than three out of four Americans thought their country tended to take on the role of international enforcer more than it should. |
McCain sings "Bomb, bomb Iran"| |
Excerpt: At a town hall meeting in South Carolina Wednesday, Arizona Sen. John McCain was asked if there is a plan to attack Iran. McCain began his answer by changing the words to a classic Beach Boys' song.
"You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?" the Republican presidential candidate said. Then, he sang. "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." |
Tommy Thompson "compliments"
Jews on their money-grubbing ways| |
Excerpt: Speaking to an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington D.C., Thompson said that, "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."
Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment. "What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that." |
"Christian" University deletes boast of
150 grads in Bush-Cheney administration| |
Excerpt: According to Google cache, as recently as April 12, Regent's "facts" page included seven bullets noting graduates in various political positions, with the seventh noting, in all bold letters, "150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration." As of yesterday, the same page is identical, except the seventh bullet has been deleted. Regent stopped bragging about staffing the administration almost immediately after someone from the media noticed. |
USDA exposes farmers'
Social Security numbers| |
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday that it had inadvertently exposed online sensitive information, such as names and Social Security numbers, in a publicly available database. The database has existed since 1981 and the information has been exposed ever since it was put online, according to Terri Teuber, director of communications for the USDA. |
First details of New Jersey Governor's
motorcade crash were all bogus| |
Excerpt: It was an ominous tale -- an erratic driver in a red pickup racing wildly along the nation's busiest toll road sends the governor's sport utility vehicle careening into a guard rail.
But that story, relayed hours after Gov. Jon S. Corzine was critically injured, has been debunked by a new state police report detailing how his driver was dashing with emergency lights flashing at 91 mph in a 65 mph zone. The alleged erratic driver wasn't a villain but a young man trying to get out of the way of the governor's onrushing SUV. |
What you weren't told
about recent Russian protests| |
Excerpt: The other fact missing from nearly every Western media account of the protests is that last weekend's marches weren't banned. People do have a right to hold anti-government rallies here. But they are restricted, sometimes severely. For example, the opposition wasn't allowed to hold their rally on Pushkin Square as requested; they were given nearby Turgenevskaya Square instead. Albeit just for an hour. |
Cell phones to blame for bee colony collapse?| |
Excerpt: The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Comment: I don't want to sound alarmist, but once the bees are gone, the crops they pollinate, and we, are right behind 'em. |
Madison mayor, city council refuse to uphold anti-gay state constitution| |
Excerpt: The mayor of Madison, Wis., and half the city council denounced Wisconsin's new ban on same-sex marriage by adding a strongly worded statement Tuesday to their oath of office.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and 20 city council members elected April 3 raised their right hands and vowed to uphold the state and federal constitutions and the city charter during a midday ceremony at City Hall.
But then Cieslewicz and 10 council members signed a statement saying they took the oath under protest because the ban approved by 59 percent of voters in November "besmirches our constitution." |
Ontario bans old-fashioned light bulbs| |
Excerpt: Ontario will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012, a move that follows in the footsteps of Australia, the province said Wednesday.
The government estimates that replacing the 87 million incandescent bulbs in use across Ontario with more efficient bulbs would save six million megawatt hours every year -- enough to power 600,000 homes. |
Difference between liberals and conservatives starts early| |
Excerpt: "All people are born alike-except Republicans and Democrats," quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
|
Man barred from flight for book| |
Excerpt: As he passed through the metal detector, an airport security guard furrowed his brow at Godfrey's reading selections as they disappeared through the conveyor belt.
On the cover of the book, Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, is an illustration of a man's hand holding several sticks of dynamite. The 1991 novel is about a radical environmentalist, George Washington Hayduke III, who blows up bridges, burns tractors and sabotages other projects he believes are destroying the beautiful Southwest landscape.
"For the first time, it occurred to me the book may be a problem," Godfrey recalls. |
Bush administration under a cloud| |
Excerpt: A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations ...
Comment: This is a useful but rather abbreviated list. Where's Richard Perle? Where's Dick Cheney? |
|
Lightning round news
|
Study: Gender and ethnicity affect
court rulings and prison terms
NASA kept settlement in
shuttle disaster secret
Secret Service officer
shoots two fellow agents
Colorado student arrested for
sympathizing with Virginia killer
Who's really to blame for
Virginia Tech killings? Here' s a list.
Is The CIA Trying to Kill Hugo Chávez?
Miss Mexico's pageant dress raises eyebrows
Soldier: I was deployed to Iraq
with traumatic brain injury
China builds new wall, to hide poverty
Boing Boing banned in Boston
RIAA gives student 24 hours
Why does a pot-smoking guy in
a wheelchair deserve to go to prison?
North Korea's counterfeiting
operation probably didn't exist
Edwards' haircuts cost a pretty penny
Followers await self-styled 'Antichrist'
Nutball sues over lesbian book in library
Sony DVDs not working in
some players -- by design
Customer service at AOL
Delta Airlines offers green option
Free repairs to flammable toilets
Not the killer, but five-for-five
Chimps spotted using caves,
like early humans
Ted Haggard moves to Phoenix
to join Jim Bakker's church
Denmark is world's happiest place
Oklahoma declares watermelon
its new "state vegetable"
Drowned body with hands, legs
bound with duct tape ... ruled suicide
Boy is eaten after taunting crocodile in pen
N.C. clerk wins $200,000 by mistake
Catholic Church ditches limbo
Phony fax gives prisoner freedom
|
|
A single act of violent crime
is not news. Ever. Period.
by Madeline Zane, Unknown News
| |
Excerpt: I can see giving the Virginia Tech story about 60 seconds, because it was the deadliest something-something in American history. And I'll give you another two minutes to mention that our nations' policies on gun control and mental health lead to a more dysfunctional and violent society. Anything more than that is exploitation, pure and simple. |
INFOBABBLE! works in mysterious ways
by Kevin Good, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The phrase in question was 16-words long: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (and if anybody says they ain't I got friends who can wreck your career) |
Stocks show surprising strength -- but why?
by Mr. Chuckles, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Stocks are climbing as the dollar is falling, partly because prices are relative to value, partly because people may be seeing stocks as having more long-term value than Ameribucks, and partly because foreign earnings of mega-cap corporados are increasingly valuable. |
How would it make you feel?
by JS Magruder, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: It is fascinating to read comments where the first cry is always "It's the law! They broke the law!" Then, almost invariably, the subsequent cry is for some sort of violent, vigilante justice such as castration, or some equally appalling reaction to the crime. Should anyone (and it happens) leave a comment that burying people up to their necks in excrement in the public common is perhaps not the best way to reform offenders, the comment will be met with a chorus of posts crying; "Think about how you would feel if it were your ___________ (fill in the blank)." |
Condolences and questions
by The Canadian, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: You know, part of me wishes that if the average American can feel so much empathy for the murdered students, why can't they feel the same thing for the countless murdered Iraqi civilians? Even if it is just for the 10s of 1000s of dead Iraqi children who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder what societal monsters this war is creating for their future today? Do you remember that young man who went on a shooting rampage in the US mall not too long ago? Did you know he was a child survivor of the massacre of Srebrenica?
... tick tick tick tick goes the clock in their brain, then... the alarm just goes off. |
These things do not happen without
complicity and within a vacuum
by Robert j., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: When my father was 15 years old he could walk into K-Mart and buy a shotgun and as much ammo as he could carry, walk right out of the door with it. The difference between then and now is not the quantity of guns available or the ease of purchasing them. It is the mentality of the humans in possession of the guns, knifes, bats, pipes, and whatever else you can kill with, that has changed.
We do not want to talk about that, though. If we opened up that can of worms we would all have to take a good long look at ourselves, and the choices we have made as a society. |
Why is it easier for many to find
things to die for than to live for?
by JR Mooneyham, Walk Like a Kryptonian
| |
Excerpt: Suicide, murder, terrorism, war, and violence of many other sorts, both physical and mental, done to oneself and/or to others. It's remarkably easy for the average human being today to find something they consider to be 'worth dying for'. Usually, perhaps normally, such justifications for death are related to one's family, and sometimes friends and lovers. But governments often ask (or demand) that we (or typically men, anyway) see more distant or abstract ideas as sufficient to die for, such as nationalism/patriotism, etc. The most extreme of cult or religious leaders sometimes desire something similar from both sexes.
If you look around, you find almost everyone is constantly trying to persuade you that their particular agenda or idol or idea is worth dying for -- even if it only means a drawn out death, reached via one pinprick at a time. For as your free time is the most valuable asset of anyone alive, and most of us must give up great gobs of that time to earn money, then every time we pay money for something we're trading a bit of our life for it -- and so dying a little. |
The revolution will not be televised
by pittershawn palmer, a state of consciousness
| |
Excerpt: So we go on, swimming in disillusion, imagining that we have control of the outcome, never realizing that to stop the birth would mean our death and the death of that to come. The moments of ease are the moments in history that only briefly prepare us for the next wave of pain, wave of intellectual and physical madness. We are so entrenched in the smallness of our moment that we cannot see the big picture. So we fight against it, rage against the inevitable. Rage against change because it is too frightening to not be able to see what is around the bend, good or bad ... we want to know. And, that not knowing thrusts us into inconsequential actions, beliefs and ideas that in the end will become our past shame and ignorance. |
129 civilian Iraqis perished on Monday but
no-one cared 'cause 31 Americans died
by Poor Black, Stuffed| |
Excerpt: The media knows that most people are shallow f*cks and will lap up whatever they telecast. I bet a lot of you will have turned up at work and said to a colleague, 'Oh my god, have you heard about the horrible shootings at that University in the states?' and so the conversation will continue on how tragic and sad this is. It is tragic and sad, don't get me wrong. Think about it this way though, have you walked into work every day this week to tell your colleague, 'sh*t, did you hear about those 3,000 African children that die each day from malaria?', maybe you have, but more than likely you haven't. Why haven't you? You probably aren't even aware of the fact. Why don't you know? The media don't tell you. |
The inexplicable enrichment of Bush cronies
by Evelyn Pringle, CounterCurrents
| |
Excerpt: The only people who are benefiting from Bush's war on terror are members of the Military Industrial Complex. Since 9/11, the pay for the CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors in the US has doubled, according to the August 2006 report, "Executive Excess 2006," by the Institute for Policy Studies, and the United for a Fair Economy.
The bill is rising so fast because the level of war profiteering is unprecedented. The Excess Report lists George David, CEO of United Technologies, as the top earner, making more than $200 million since 9/11, despite investigations into the poor quality of the firm's Black Hawk helicopters.
Halliburton CEO David Lesar made $26.6 million in 2005, and nearly $50 million since 9/11, an amount that even beats the $24 million that Dick Cheney received in exchange for the guarantee that Halliburton would be the number one military contractor during the Bush administration. |
This is how I protest the war
by Henry Rollins, VIDEO
| |
Excerpt: Your children will inherit the war you did not stop. And when they become soldiers, and they go into combat, and they come home with some awful story, they're going to say, "Why are we doing this?"
And the only honest answer is, "Because I didn't stop this on my watch. ..."
Your parents gave you this war. Don't give it to your kids." |
In a media shitstorm, everyone ducks
for the cover of easy moral outrage
by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
| |
Excerpt: They're all full of sh*t, all of them. With very few exceptions almost everyone who jumped onto the Don Imus pigpile was a shameless opportunist whose mind was made up years before this incident even happened, and used the occasion of a radio jock stepping in shit to robotically jerk off his constituency for a cheap buck. First of all, let's just get this out of the way: the idea that anyone in the media world gives a sh*t about the dignity of women, black or white, is a ridiculous joke.
America's TV networks have spent the last forty years falling over each other trying to find better and more efficient ways to sell tits to the 18-to-35 demographic. They make hour-long prime-time reality dramas these days about shopping-obsessed sluts hitting each other with pocketbooks, for Christ's sake. Paris Hilton, a dumb, rich slut with a c*ck in her mouth, gets her own primetime show. MTV, the teenie mags, the pop music industry, they're basically all an endless parade of skinny, half-naked brainless whores selling makeup and jeans to neurotic, self-hating, weight-obsessed little girls.
The idea that NBC -- the company that proudly produced 241 episodes of Baywatch, a show whose two main characters for nearly a decade were Pamela Anderson's tits -- the idea that that network was "offended" by the use of the word "ho" is beyond preposterous.
Comment: If I remember it right (and it's not like I was paying close attention) NBC cancelled Baywatch after one or two seasons, and the show spent the remainder of its inexplicably long life in non-network syndication. But that's nitpicking, and this is the best overview of the-week-before-last's media circus I've seen. |
Outrageous words, outrageous deeds
by Ralph Nader, Common Dreams
| |
Excerpt: Where have been the cries of outrage, the demands for removal of these conditions and prosecution of these crooks and defrauders? The abysmal conditions are daily, weekly, monthly. They have been occasionally reported in gripping human interest terms and statistics and maps.
If only the offenders used words, instead of committing these awful deeds. Maybe there would have been action, front page headlines and prime time television and radio coverage. If only they used words!
Comment: This, sadly, echoes my sentiments.
It is at the source of my personal concerns about recent events. It is almost as though people are seeking something to "talk" about, rather than something to "do." So they pick out the issues that are easy, and safe to battle -- all from the comfort of their homes, emails, blogs and telephones.
But what about these issues which take true strength to battle? As the author of this piece says, where is the outcry for these issues that happen far more often than the one the media and the community has chosen to focus on? |
First, they came for the spinach
by Rick Perlstein, TomPaine.com
| |
Excerpt: The Associated Press studied the records and found that between 2003 and 2006 the Food and Drug Administration conducted 47 percent fewer safety inspections. FDA field offices have 12 percent fewer employees. Safety tests for food produced in the United States have gone down by three quarters -- have almost ground to a halt -- in the previous year alone. What does that mean, in practical terms? Consider the peanut butter.
Factories producing the foods most susceptible to contamination, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are supposed to be inspected every year. (That's cold comfort to those who ate this year's bad batches of spinach, lettuce, cantaloupes and tomatoes.) Since the last known outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter was in Australia in the 1990s, that puts it in the "low-risk" category; peanut butter factories are inspected only every two to three years.
People started getting sick in February. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control traced the illnesses back to a single plant in Sylvester, Ga. The next day, the FDA arrived for a post hoc inspection (by then 425 people in 44 states had been sickened). Then they covered their own back : "What you saw with the spinach and certainly what you saw with the peanut butter, is when we see those signals, we're going to act to protect the public health," a spokesman promised. |
Slaughtered college kids, but not
U.S. soldiers, get the flag at half mast
by Sgt. Jim Wilt, U.S. Army
| |
Excerpt: I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. servicemember.
Is the life of Sgt. Alexander Van Aalten, a member of our very own task force, killed April 20 in Helmand province not valued the same as these 32 students? Surely his death was as violent as the students. |
This is our future, like it or not
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Thanks to your silence, your willingness to sit back and do nothing, this is our future. Not even the slightest bit of dissent or public display of dissatisfaction, or any form of protest about anything will be tolerated. |
18 megabyte gap in e-mail tape backup
by Kevin Good, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: White House officials are scrambling to explain
the disappearance of email documents related to the controversy surrounding the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. An undeleted Justice Department e-mail message shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for U.S. attorneys nearly a year before they were fired. You got alotta esplainen to do, Alberto. |
The Katrinians
by Cassandra, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The people from Louisiana and Mississippi are refugees of both a natural and a political disaster, and like most refugees before them, they're not welcome by the communities where they've washed up. |
No good deed left unpunished
by J.S. Magruder, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: We love to casually assign the word "hero" to those that kill, yet we punish a man for doing a truly heroic deed that should have been celebrated rather than resulting in his termination from State employment. What a world we live in. Blech. |
War? What war?
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Although millions of Americans seemed to have been thoroughly brainwashed and desensitized, they manage to drive like lunatics, get mad because gas goes up 12 cents, and bitch that Don Imus said this or that. They take sides like their favorite team got dissed, but when it comes to anything relating to Iraq or the coming war with Iran, it might as well be Mars, because it's a non-issue to these people. |
Arsenic, Bush-Cheney, and hatred
by JR Mooneyham, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Please be careful about feeling hatred too much or too often. It's not good for your health. In general it seems best to try to somehow have fun while working against such awful entities and events. For me, it's sometimes looking at my actions as merry mischief upsetting the king's apple cart. Or looking at things as trying to shield the innocent and helpless from evil or accident, rather than hating the evil itself. |
Coyote comics #3 and #4
by Don Nash, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Men, women, and children will be nuclear toast. |
Blogger interviews Helen Thomas
by chicago dyke's blog| |
Excerpt: Ms. Thomas doesn't think there is any good reason for the war. "People are killing, and dying, for what?" Asked why she thinks the American people have accepted this war for so long, she said that 9/11, and the fear and uncertainty it engendered, kept people behind the war effort far longer than would've been possible otherwise. "Fear is a powerful weapon," she relates, and she notes how strong the urge is to support the president after an attack. She said that such fear caused people to accept not only the war, but also government intrusions on privacy, and the shifting rationale for the war. |
Why should the rich want to help the less fortunate?
by JR Mooneyham, WebFLUX Newz&Viewz
| |
Excerpt: You talk about the less fortunate trying to take by force from the rich what they could not get otherwise. But the truth is most of today's fortunes themselves were taken by force or deception from the lower class masses. Whether by the royal families of the Old World, or the Ken Lays (Enron, et al) of the New, the poorer folks typically had little choice in the thievery. |
Who's next to get screwed?
by Leon Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: First it was the steel industry, then it was textiles, then it was manufacturing, then the auto industry, then the high-tech sector, and now the housing bust. The North American Union is just another manifestation of "Free Trade," politically correct jargon for corporate fascism, with the ultimate goal of putting an end to the United States as a sovereign nation, instead leaving the U.S. an entity whose importance would be little more than that of a glorified trading post in a global economy controlled by multi national corporations. |
A man of extraordinary courage
Major Michael D. Mori, U.S.M.C.
by Robyn Shelly, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The United States can be very proud of Major Michael Mori. He stands for those "American" values that George Bush and his cronies trumpet long and loud, but rarely seem to uphold. He is proof that there are still people of integrity in the United States. |
The Decider's new clothes
by Kevin Good, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: This is the US Justice Department you're questioning. Would they lie to you? |
Just another day in my life
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: I find myself constantly shaking my head. One minute you read that 80% of Americans say they think the Government had something to do with 9/11, and you think to your self, good, they're waking up, it's a start ... And then something happens to diminish that little spark of hope, and you two steps back to where you were before. |
When the dark curtain finally closes
by Robert J., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The uncomfortable reality is that we are screwed. There are no good options available to us at this point. The only thing I can think to do is to help minimize the suffering of those that care enough to find a safe place to ride out the storm. I don't believe it will do any good to struggle against this. The snowball has picked up too much speed to be stopped now, even if you could reform our broken government into a compassionate and functional democracy. The economic, geopolitical damage has been done. |
Coyote comix #1 & #2
by Don Nash, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: When in the course of human events, it becomes clear that governments have failed all the people ... |
Neither pinkos nor libertarians
by jodi d. and Albert C., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: We received these two emails within about fifteen minutes of each other, and we've received dozens like these over the last eight years. Obviously, neither email has anything to do with the other, but it seems to me they belong together like a matched set of bookends ... |
What is the death toll now?
by Mr. Chuckles, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Future historians will hold George Bush as one of the greatest mass murderers in history. He will be ranked alongside Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini. Corporate, church, and political leaders who backed him -- and continue to back him now -- should be prosecuted with him at the Hague, as accessories in his crimes against humanity. |
They learn it from us
by J.S. Magruder, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Children, like it or not, model their behavior on adult authority figures, and the authority figures haven't exactly been the picture of Christian kindness in respect to the Works of Mercy. |
Face the fear, people
by Sherri B., Unknown News |
