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20090205

Pete Sessions -

Terrorism -

Politics -

Legislator -

"Rep. Pete Sessions: Taliban is ‘a model’ for how GOP [Republican] can become an ‘insurgency.’." ... "In an interview with Hotline, [Texas Republican Representative] Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX [Republican-Texas]) said the Republican party will have to be come an “insurgency” to counter Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and added that the Taliban can serve as “a model”:"

"[Pete Sessions:] “Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.” […]"
"When pressed to clarify, Sessions said he was not comparing the House Republican caucus to the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist group. “I simply said one can see that there’s a model out there for insurgency,” Sessions said before being interrupted by an aide."

"Sessions made a similar analogy last week at the House Republicans’ retreat, saying that Republicans “need to get over the idea that they’re participating in legislation and ought to start thinking of themselves as ‘an insurgency’ instead.”" -By Ali Frick

-ThinkProgress.org

Barack Obama -

Financial -

Crisis -

Government -

Legislation

"Obama puts the heat on Republicans: He says the 'half steps' now urged by the GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] for the stimulus bill are the same ideas that led to the financial crisis." ... "[Democratic] President Obama abruptly changed tactics Wednesday in his bid to revive the economy, setting aside his bipartisan stance and pointedly blaming Republicans for demanding what he cast as discredited "piecemeal measures."" ... "Obama's comments were a marked departure from the conciliatory tone he has maintained as he courted Republican votes for his stimulus package through compromise. Against the wishes of his own party, Obama crafted a plan that relied heavily on tax cuts rooted in Republican economic doctrine." ... ""Now, let me say this," Obama said. "In the past few days, I've heard criticisms of this plan that frankly echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis in the first place -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can address this enormous crisis with half steps and piecemeal measures and tinkering around the edges, that we can ignore fundamental challenges, like the high cost of healthcare, and still expect our economy and our country to thrive." ... ""I reject these theories," he continued. "And, by the way, so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."" ... ""A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery and a more uncertain future," he warned at another White House appearance." -By Peter Nicholas

-LAtimes

Barack Obama

Noteworthy

Economic

Crisis

History

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Families

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"The Action Americans Need." [By Democratic President Barack Obama] ... "By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring." ... "What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis." ... "Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse." ... "That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come." ... "This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent." ... "In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive." ... "I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail." ... "Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now." ... "Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process." ... "Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years." ... "Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans." ... "And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway." ... "These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They're patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide." ... "So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time." -By Barack Obama

-WashingtonPost

20090204

Judd Gregg -

Jack Abramoff -

Corporate -

Government -

Legislative -

Politics -

Investigation -

New Hampshire

"Former Gregg Aide Tied To Abramoff Scandal, Court Documents Report He Took Gifts In Exchange For Favors." ... "Earlier today, the AP reported that Kevin Koonce, who worked as Commerce Secretary-nominee [New Hampshire Republican Senator] Judd Gregg’s legislative director from 2002-04, “has been caught up in a long-running investigation into a Capitol Hill lobbying scandal.” Koonce “was cited in a guilty plea last week by Todd Boulanger, a former deputy to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” as having taken gifts exceeding $10,000 in exchange for favors in spending legislation." ... "According to Boulanger’s plea documents, Koonce “tried to help insert spending measures and add other amendments to legislation for Boulanger’s clients.” At one point, Boulanger sent an e-mail to Abramoff saying that he was confident Koonce’s boss would help them out:"

"Later, Boulanger sent an e-mail to Abramoff expressing confidence that the senator [Republican Judd Gregg] for whom the staffer worked would give them a favor. “Easy money,” Boulanger wrote, adding that the aide “practically lives in our various suites. We are shady.”"

"As Raw Story notes, Gregg’s spokesman Joel Maiola said in 2006 that Gregg had “never had any contact” with Abramoff, despite his acceptance of donations from “two Indian tribes represented by Abramoff’s firm in 2002 and 2004.” Gregg reportedly donated the $12,000 to a New Hampshire-based charity." -By Matt Corley

-ThinkProgress.org

Noteworthy

Corporate

Government

Lawmakers

Politics

"TARP Recipients Paid Out $114 Million for Politicking Last Year." ... "The companies that have been awarded taxpayers' money from Congress's bailout bill spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions, Center finds. The return on investment: 258,449 percent." ... "The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country's economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The companies' political activities have, in part, yielded them $295.2 billion from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 258,449 percent." ... ""Even in the best economic times, you won't find an investment with a greater payoff than what these companies have been getting," said Sheila Krumholz, the Center's executive director. "Some of the companies and industries that have received payments may now consider their contributions and lobbying to be the smartest investments they've made in years."" ... "While the Treasury Department, not Congress, doles out TARP funds to specific institutions, congressional lawmakers had to authorize that money in the first place, and lawmakers will determine in the future whether to release more funds to prop up the U.S. economy. During the bill-writing process, members of Congress were able to specify to some extent where the money should go, and they have lobbied regulators to urge them to inject funds into specific banks and financial institutions, including those in lawmakers' own districts." ... ""Taxpayers hope their money is being allocated entirely on the merits, but with Congress controlling how much money the Treasury gets to hand out, it will be impossible to completely exclude politics from this process," Krumholz said."

-OpenSecrets.org

20090203

Transportation -

Infrastructure -

Water -

Government -

Money -

Wash -

Calif

"Senate GOP blocks extra $25B in stimulus package." ... "Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked Democrats from adding $25 billion for highways, mass transit, and water projects to [Democratic] President Barack Obama's economic recovery program." ... "Already unhappy over the size of the measure, Republicans insisted additional infrastructure projects be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the bill." ... "But the Democratic amendment garnered 58 votes, just shy of the supermajority needed under Senate budget rules, and many more efforts to increase the measure's size are sure to follow." ... "At issue was a plan by [Washington Democratic Senator] Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash. [Democratic-Washington], and [California Democratic Senator] Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. [California-Democratic], to increase the highway funding in the bill to $40 billion, which reflected complaints from lawmakers in both parties that Obama's plan doesn't do enough to relieve a backlog of unfinished projects. The duo also wanted to increase mass transit programs by $5 billion boost and water projects by $7 billion." ... ""Our highways are jammed. People go to work in gridlock," Feinstein said Tuesday." -By Andrew Taylor

-AP via -Yahoo

20090202

Barack Obama -

Judd Gregg -

Corporate -

Government -

Seniors -

Health -

People -

Accounting -

History -

"Gregg Voted to Kill Commerce Before He Agreed to Lead It." ... "[Democratic] President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995." ... "[New Hampshire Republican Senator] Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H. [Republican-New Hampshire], whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee." ... "The Senate version of the controversial measure envisioned spending cuts of more than $960 billion, almost half of it from Medicare and Medicaid. Democratic efforts to amend it were uniformly rebuked by a united GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] majority on the Budget Committee." ... "Gregg also fought [Democratic] President Bill Clinton’s efforts to increase funding for the Commerce Department to administer the 2000 census. Indeed, Gregg’s commitment to basic functions of the department has been questioned at times." ... "“I guess if you can’t destroy it, go be in charge of it,” said a Senate Republican aide." -By Jonathan Allen

-CQPolitics.com

Barack Obama -

Judd Gregg -

Female -

Employees -

Pay -

Legislation -

Politics -

History -

Race -

New Hampshire

"Kudos to Congress for equal pay vote." ... "The Lilly Ledbetter case is pretty straightforward. Ledbetter, an employee of Goodyear Tire and Rubber for nearly 20 years, was paid significantly less than her male co-workers for doing the same job." ... "Ledbetter filed a lawsuit against Goodyear after someone left an anonymous note in her mailbox telling her about the disparity." ... "The case wended its way to the United States Supreme Court, which found that employers are protected from lawsuits over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more." ... "Seeing the inherent injustice in the letter of the law, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act last week. The act, which represented [Democratic] President Barack Obama's first bill signing, changes the law to begin a new 180-day statute of limitations with every paycheck." ... "New Hampshire [Republican Senator] Sen. Judd Gregg, however, voted against it, saying that while all Americans deserve "equal and fair treatment at the workplace," the bill "is really a boon for trial lawyers which dramatically broadens their ability to file lawsuits, regardless of how frivolous or whether their clients even personally experienced discrimination."" ... "That's disappointing." ... "Anytime politicians want to stand up for corporate America by opposing legislation that protects workers, they play the frivolous lawsuit card." ... "Sure, there are egregious cases where wayward juries give people ridiculous amounts of money for doing something they should have known better not to do (although those cases are often later settled for less or overturned on appeal)." ... "However, this isn't such a case, and Sen. Gregg should be able to come up with a better rationale for voting to deny thousands of Americans the opportunity to pursue equal pay for equal work."

-NashuaTelegraph.com

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_September 11, 2001_
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Analysis "Short-Term "Surge" May Be Long-Term: Pentagon Said To Prepare Extended U.S. Troop Buildup, Unless Iraqi Leaders Fail To Meet Security Targets." (1, 2) -By Robert Burns -AP via -CBSNews

Noteworthy -

Language

"Pentagon: Iraq in some ways in civil war." -By Lolita C. Baldor -AP via -HoustonChronicle.com

Religious -

"Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight." -WashingtonPost

Osama bin Laden

"Influx of Al Qaeda, money into Pakistan is seen: U.S. officials say the terrorist network's command base is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq." -By Greg Miller -LAtimes

Free Speech -

E-Mail "Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death." ... "The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned." -Noah Shachtman -Wired

Disaster "Wartime Shortages Hamper National Guard: Iraq Deployments Are Leading To A Lack Of Equipment At The State Level." -CBSNews

Noteworthy

"Al Qaeda Chiefs Are Seen to Regain Power." ... "Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials." -By Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde with contributions by David Johnston and Carlotta Gall -NYTimes

"[Republican] Members Were Aware of Lapses at Walter Reed." ... "Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them." -By Seth Stern-CQ.com

Secret

Cheney -

Feith

"Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted." ... "Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich. [Michigan Democratic Senator]), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed." ... "The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics." ... "Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials, and said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the one Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Dafna Linzer and Julie Tate-WashingtonPost

Cheney

"Halliburton Will Move HQ to Dubai." ... "Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston [Texas] to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai [United Arab Emirates], chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday." ... "Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the conglomerate with lucrative no-bid contracts in Iraq." ... "Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq." -By Jim Krane -AP via -HoustonChronicle.com

"Ties to GOP [Republican Party] Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq." -WashingtonPost

Safety

"GAO Faults U.S. Military Over Munitions in Iraq: Report Says Insurgents Took Unsecured Explosives." -By Ann Scott Tyson -WashingtonPost

Torture

"Evangelicals slam torture in war on terrorism." -By Ed Stoddard -AP via -Yahoo

Opinion

"Soldier: Honor troops like Va. Tech dead." ... "An Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech [Virginia State] but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq." -By Alisa Tang -AP via -Yahoo

"Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility." -By Dana Priest and Anne Hull with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

"Veterans face consecutive budget cuts." ... "The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system." -By Andrew Taylor -AP via -Yahoo

"Auditors: Billions squandered in Iraq." ... "About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk." -By Hope Yen -AP via -Yahoo

"What does $456 billion buy?" -BostonGlobe

"Records Show Tenet Briefed Rice on Al Qaeda Threat." ... "A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday." -NYTimes

"General: Appeals for More Troops Were Denied: Three retired soldiers slam Rumsfeld's policies at a Democratic hearing in which the -party tries to take the offensive on the war in Iraq."-LAtimes

Osama bin Laden -

Religion

"Afghanistan, 5 years later: U.S. confront Taliban's return." -McClatchy -RealCities

In 2002 John McCain disputed the concern that there would be house to house fighting in Iraq: McCain: "We’re not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we’re not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies.” [CNN, 9/29/02] reported via -ThinkProgress.org

"In Baghdad, a Christmas patrol." ... "Christmas [2006] was another working day for many in the [American] battalion, heading out to cordon off a dangerous section of eastern Baghdad and go house to house searching for insurgents, weapons and bomb-making materials." -By Will Weissert -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

Abramoff -

Karl Rove

"House Report Details 485 Contacts Between Abramoff Team and White House Officials." -RollCall.com

Mark Foley -

Secret -

2006 Election "G.O.P. Aides Knew in Late ’05 of [Republican Foley] E-Mail." -NYTimes

Telecom

Media ownership study ordered destroyed: FCC draft suggested fewer owners would hurt local TV coverage." -AP via -MSNBC

Noteworthy -

Osama bin Laden -

Dick Cheney "Intelligence Didn't Back Bush Iraq Claims, Senate Reports Say." -Bloomberg

"[US Army Fort] Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled." -DailyPress.com

"Soldiers die, CEOs prosper." -Boston/Globe

Secret -

Prisons -

Human Rights -

War Crimes Act -

"Bush Admits the CIA Runs Secret Prisons: Bush admits CIA runs secret prisons overseas, says interrogations made terrorists reveal plots." -AP via -CBSNews

Noteworthy -

Religious

"Dobbs: Why is the president ignoring our laws? Bush, feds flout the Constitution by finding ways around laws."-CNN

Prisons-

Human Rights -

War Crimes Act

"War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution." ... "The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments." -WashingtonPost

War Crimes Act -

Gitmo -

Detainee -

Human Rights

"Criminal, Immunize Thyself: The Bush administration's get out of jail card for torturers." -Slate

Noteworthy

"Legal Group Faults Bush for Ignoring Parts of Bills." ... "The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed." -NYTimes

"Bush Staff Wanted Bomb-Detect Cash Moved: Bush Administration Sought Permission to Divert $6 Million for Explosives Detection Technology." -AP via -ABCNEWS.com

"GOP donor hit with terror charges." ... "The resume says that in 2003 [New Yorker] Alishtari was named a National Republican Senatorial Committee "Inner Circle Member for Life" and was appointed to the [National Republican Congressional Committee] NRCC's "White House Business Advisory Committee." -APvia -Yahoo

19980821

US -

Sudan -

Afghanistan -

Military -

Terrorism -

Intelligence -

Osama bin Laden -

Politics - "U.S. Cruise Missiles Strike Sudan and Afghan Targets Tied to Terrorist Network." ... "Dozens of U.S. cruise missiles struck targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan on Thursday in what President Clinton described as an act of self-defense against imminent terrorist plots and of retribution for the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa two weeks ago." ... "The strikes were launched from ships in the Arabian and Red Seas at dusk. It was not immediately clear whether the raids were a military success. Pentagon officials said that no Americans died but that they had no immediate estimate of other casualties or damage. Early Friday, an Islamic press agency reported 15 deaths from the bombings in Afghanistan." ... "With about 75 missiles timed to explode simultaneously in unsuspecting countries on two continents, the operation was the most formidable U.S. military assault ever against a private sponsor of terrorism." ... "The targets were identified by Pentagon officials as an extensive terrorism training complex in Afghanistan, 94 miles south of Kabul, and a factory for the building blocks of chemical weapons near Khartoum, the Sudan." ... "Clinton and his national security team linked both sites to Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire tied by U.S. intelligence to the twin bombings on Aug. 7 in Kenya and Tanzania. The bombings killed 12 Americans and nearly 300 Africans." -By James Bennet -NYTimes

19960730

Noteworthy -

Terrorism -

Law -

Military -

Technology -

Politics -

Utah -

South Dakota -

Listen - "President [Clinton] wants Senate to hurry with new anti-terrorism laws." ... "[Democrat] President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess. (1.6 MB AIFF or WAV sound)" ... "But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures." ... "Clinton said he knew there was Republican opposition to his proposal on explosive taggants, but it should not be allowed to block the provisions on which both parties agree." ... "The president stressed it's important to get the legislation out before the weekend's recess, especially following the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park and the crash of TWA Flight 800." ... "Republican leaders earlier met with White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta for about an hour in response to the president's call for "the very best ideas" for fighting terrorism." ... "Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, "These are very controversial provisions that the White House wants. Some they're not going to get."" ... "Hatch called Clinton's proposed study of taggants -- chemical markers in explosives that could help track terrorists -- "a phony issue."." ... "Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said it is a mistake if Congress leaves town without addressing anti-terrorism legislation." -AP -CNN

20090201

Barack Obama

Corporate

Government

Crisis

Politics

"Bailouts for Bunglers." ... "“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” says Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary [appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama] — as he prepares to put taxpayers on the hook for that system’s immense losses." ... "Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Mr. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to lose more than a trillion dollars in the space of a few years." ... "And this prejudice in favor of private control, even when the government is putting up all the money, seems to be warping the administration’s response to the financial crisis." ... "In normal times, banks raise capital by selling stock to private investors, who receive a share in the bank’s ownership in return. You might think, then, that if banks currently can’t or won’t raise enough capital from private investors, the government should do what a private investor would: provide capital in return for partial ownership." ... "But bank stocks are worth so little these days — Citigroup and Bank of America have a combined market value of only $52 billion — that the ownership wouldn’t be partial: pumping in enough taxpayer money to make the banks sound would, in effect, turn them into publicly owned enterprises." ... "My response to this prospect is: so? If taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing the banks, why shouldn’t they get ownership, at least until private buyers can be found? But the Obama administration appears to be tying itself in knots to avoid this outcome." ... "If news reports are right, the bank rescue plan will contain two main elements: government purchases of some troubled bank assets and guarantees against losses on other assets. The guarantees would represent a big gift to bank stockholders; the purchases might not, if the price was fair — but prices would, The Financial Times reports, probably be based on “valuation models” rather than market prices, suggesting that the government would be making a big gift here, too." ... "And in return for what is likely to be a huge subsidy to stockholders, taxpayers will get, well, nothing." -By Paul Krugman

-NYTimes

20090128

Sweden -

Military -

Switzerland -

Politics -

US -

Media -

Entertainment -

"Alba schools Fox’s O’Reilly in WW II history." ... "Jessica Alba is setting the record straight: Sweden was neutral during World War II." ... "Alba and Fox TV show host Bill O’Reilly traded punches last week after the presidential inauguration. After Alba told a Fox reporter that O’Reilly was “kind of an a-hole;” he retaliated by calling her a “pinhead” for telling a reporter to “be Sweden about it,” assuming she meant Switzerland." ... "“I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately,” Alba blogged on MySpace Celebrity. “Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people... it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland.”" ... "Although Switzerland is more frequently cited as an example of neutrality, Sweden did indeed follow a policy of neutrality during World War II. History point to Alba." -By Courtney Hazlett

-MSNBC

Accounting -

Politics -

Government -

Law -

New York -

Jobs

"What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses." ... "By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived." ... "Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year." ... "That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller." ... "It excludes stock option awards that could push the figures even higher." ... "The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous." ... "“The issue of transparency is a significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview." ... "According to Mr. DiNapoli, the brokerage units of New York financial companies lost more than $35 billion in 2008, triple their losses in 2007." ... "Outside the financial industry, many corporate executives received fatter bonuses in 2008, even as the economy lost 2.6 million jobs." -By Ben White with contributions by Paul J. Sullivan

-NYTimes

Criminal -

Home -

Financing -

Accounting -

Law -

Intelligence -

History -

Terrorism -

Politics

"FBI saw mortgage fraud early." ... "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] was aware for years of "pervasive and growing" fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America's financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it." ... ""It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002." ... "The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities." ... ""We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt," the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. "Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."" ... "Both retired FBI officials asserted that the [Republican President] Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties." ... "This mass reassignment was first chronicled by the Seattle P-I in the Terrorism Tradeoff, a series of investigative reports beginning in 2007 and stretching into 2008. That administration policy, the P-I reported, resulted in a dramatic plunge in FBI criminal investigations and referrals for prosecution. And recent data from Syracuse University researchers shows the problem has worsened." ... "Public statements by one high FBI executive shows that the bureau was well aware of the potentially devastating impact of rampant mortgage fraud at least five years ago. The executive ominously foretold the crisis in testimony before Congress." ... ""Based on various industry reports and FBI analysis, mortgage fraud is pervasive and growing," Chris Swecker, then assistant director of the criminal investigation division, said in October 2004 before the House subcommittee on housing and community opportunity." ... "Then Swecker made a chillingly accurate prediction of the coming mortgage meltdown and financial collapse:" ... ""The potential impact of mortgage fraud on financial institutions in the stock market is clear. If fraudulent practices become systemic within the mortgage industry and mortgage fraud is allowed to become unrestrained, it will ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse effects on the stock market."" ... "Swecker went on to describe the scenario that ultimately wrecked financial havoc around the world: "Often mortgage loans sold in secondary markets are used by financial institutions as collateral for other investments. ... When loans sold in the secondary market default and have fraudulent or material misrepresentation ... these loans become a nonperforming asset, and in extreme fraud cases, the mortgage-backed security is worthless. Mortgage fraud losses adversely affect loan-loss reserves, profits, liquidity levels and capitalization ratios, ultimately affecting the soundness of the financial institution itself."" -By Paul Shukovsky with contributions by Daniel Lathrop

-SeattlePI.NWsource

Food -

Safety -

Manufacturing -

Company -

Government -

Law -

Georgia

"FDA Alleges Company Knowingly Sold Peanut Products Containing Salmonella." ... "There is new information available about the recent salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter from a plant in Georgia." ... "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said at least 12 times over the past two years the Peanut Corporation of America has knowingly sold products that had tested positive for salmonella." ... "The FDA also claimed the company did nothing to improve its manufacturing and sanitation practices after salmonella was found in its plant, and that is a clear violation of the law." ... "More than 500 people have gotten sick and the outbreak may have contributed to at least eight deaths. " -ByLee Sausley

-KRISTV.com via -MSNBC

Digital -

Television -

Technology -

Law -

Wireless -

Companies -

Obama -

Consumer

"Plan to delay U.S. switch to digital TV thwarted by Republicans." ... "An attempt to delay the U.S. [United States] switch to digital-only television transmission by four months has been scuttled by the House of Representatives." ... "House Republicans voted down a bill on Wednesday that would have postponed the latest date for the transition to digital broadcasting from analog until June 12. The changeover is set for [February] Feb. 17." ... "The majority of House members voted 258-168 in favour of the bill, but it required two-thirds support to pass." ... "Republicans oppose the delay because they say it would confuse consumers, burden wireless companies and would create added costs for broadcasters. [Democratic] President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats, and consumer advocates have said the delay is necessary to accommodate people who are unprepared."

-AP via -CBC.ca

Financial -

Accounting -

Federal -

Enforcement -

Florida -

NY -

Pennsylvania -

Idaho

"In Echoes Of Madoff, Ponzi Cases Proliferate." ... "Federal and state authorities are reporting a growing number of financial scams that echo the alleged Madoff fraud, as strapped investors seek access to their cash amid increasingly hard times." ... "At least six suspected multimillion-dollar fraud cases have emerged this month alone, many of them alleged Ponzi schemes, in which investors are lured by promises of lofty returns but are actually paid off from new victims' funds." ... "On Tuesday, authorities arrested Arthur Nadel, the missing Florida hedge-fund adviser, who was accused by federal authorities of defrauding clients of millions of dollars." ... "In the latest case to emerge, Nicholas Cosmo, a Long Island, N.Y. [New York], investment-firm owner, surrendered to federal authorities Monday." ... "The [Securities and Exchange Commission] agency, which doesn't keep an official count, brought at least 23 Ponzi cases last year, up from 15 in 2007. It has already filed four in 2009. That tally doesn't include actions on the state level, where allegations of securities fraud are routinely pursued." ... "Three weeks ago, the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] accused a Philadelphia[ Pennsylvania]-area investment fund manager, Joseph S. Forte, with running a Ponzi scheme since at least 1995 that claimed returns as high as 38% and raised $50 million." ... "Meanwhile, Idaho's securities regulators are investigating allegations by investors in Idaho Falls [Idaho] that they lost up to $100 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme by Daren Palmer, a local money manager." -By Steve Stecklow with contributions by Philip Shishkin and William M. Bulkeley

-WSJ.com

Cable

Media

Politics

Lawmakers

Federal

Economics

John Boehner

John McCain

"REPORT: GOP Lawmakers Outnumber Democratic Lawmakers 2 To 1 In Stimulus Debate On Cable News." ... "As Media Matters has documented, during the [Republican President] Bush administration, the media consistently allowed conservatives to dominate their shows, booking them as guests far more often than progressives. The rationale was that Republicans were “in power.”" ... "It appears that old habits die hard. Even though [Democratic] President Obama and his team are in control of the executive branch and Democrats are in the majority in Congress, the cable networks are still turning more often to Republicans and allowing them to set the agenda on major issues, most recently on the debate over the economic recovery package." ... "On Sunday, conservatives began an all-out assault on President Obama’s economic recovery plan, with [Ohio Republican Representative and Republican] House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH [Republican-Ohio]) and [Arizona Republican Senator] Sen. John McCain (R-AZ [Republican-Arizona]) both announcing that they would vote against the plan as it stood. Despite Obama’s efforts at good faith outreach, congressional conservatives have continued to attack the stimulus plan with a series of false and disingenuous arguments." ... "The media have been aiding their efforts. In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that the five cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC — have hosted more Republican lawmakers to discuss the plan than Democrats by a 2 to 1 ratio this week:"

"Cable News Appearances By Members of Congress"
"(By Party - January 26-28, 2009)"

Cable TV Politics: Media Bias More Republican Than Democratic. Bar graph graphic from ThinkProgress.org.

[Red=Republican / Blue=Democratic]

... "The drastically imbalanced coverage isn’t the first time that the news networks have effectively supported attacks on the recovery plans. As ThinkProgress reported on Monday, the cable networks, the Sunday shows and the network newscasts promoted a controversial CBO non-report 81 times before the actual CBO analysis of the stimulus plan was released."

-ThinkProgress -ThinkProgress.org

Economic

Legislation

Politics

Government

Infrastructure

Energy

People's

Health

Jobs

Education

Food

Obama

"Republicans Vote Against the American People." ... "The House of Representatives passed an $819-million economic stimulus package this evening. The vote was 244-188. Only Democrats voted for it. 177 Republicans voted against it." ... "The package includes both spending measures and tax cuts. The American people would get some tax relief, money to save or to spend, perhaps to pay the bills and put food on the table, and money would go to infrastructure projects, for energy and education and health care, to support those who need it, those who have lost their jobs at a time when the economy is bleeding jobs, and down to states and municipalities, to levels of government on the front lines of service provision." ... "You know what? It’s not just about stimulating the economy, it’s about helping people. It’s responsive, responsible government action at a time when government action is desperately needed." ... "And, in the House, every single Republican voted against it." ... "Read that again: EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED AGAINST IT." ... "So much for bipartisan outreach. So much for [Democratic President] Obama’s efforts to be inclusive and to seek compromise with the other side. All the Republicans could offer was the same old tired formula of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts, and, when it came right down to it, when it came time to pick a side, the Republicans sided, in unison, against the American people and the American economy." -By Michael Stickings

-TheModerateVoice.com

20090127

Barack Obama -

Government -

Economics -

Legislation -

Poor -

Unemployed -

Consumer -

Construction -

Politics

"GOP [Republicans] may vote no, but economists back Obama stimulus." ... "Economists think the stimulus plan that the House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday, while far from perfect, will help stimulate the moribund U.S. [United States] economy." ... "There's no panacea for what ails the economy. A stimulus plan will work only in combination with other actions, such as more aid to the banking system to spark lending and boost consumer confidence, and the implementation of any plan will be as important as what's in it." ... "However, most leading economists who are experienced in public policy generally favor the stimulus plan that the House is considering because through it the government will step up spending at a time when private-sector spending has fallen off sharply." ... "The House legislation would erect four pillars of economic stimulus. It would provide income support to the poor and recently unemployed, distribute aid to state governments, seek relatively quick employment gains through public works spending and aim to spark consumer and business spending through targeted tax cuts." ... "Private-sector economists who support the stimulus plan say that it could be made better, and, yes, bigger." ... ""I would make the package bigger . . . increase the package to over $1 trillion," [Moody's chief economist Mark] Zandi said." -By Kevin G. Hall

-McClatchyDC.com

Economics -

History -

Federal -

Legislation -

Politics

"Congressional Budget Office compares downturn to Great Depression." ... "The nation's current recession is likely to be the longest since World War II, and by some measures could be the worst since the Great Depression, a new Congressional Budget Office forecast said Tuesday." ... "Without a major economic stimulus plan, "the shortfall in the nation's output relative to its potential would be the largest – in terms of both length and depth – since the Depression of the 1930s," said new CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf in testimony prepared for the House Budget Committee." ... "The nonpartisan CBO is highly regarded by both parties." ... ""It could also be the deepest recession during the postwar period in terms of the difference between actual and potential output," Elmendorf said. By his estimates, output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below normal." -By David Lightman

-McClatchyDC.com

20090126

Dick Cheney -

Secret -

Satellite -

Map -

Image -

Government -

Home -

Political -

History

"Cheney's Veil Lifted on Vice President's Residence." ... "Hope and change has come to Google Maps. The official residence of the vice president, obscured until [Republican President] Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight." ... "A reader tipped us off that Google Maps now showed a clear overhead image of One Observatory Circle ... , the address which has served as the home of the vice president since 1974. It's the first glimpse Google users have gotten of the place." ... "Could there be a better visual metaphor for the change of administration? The old one hid behind blurry pixels. The new one welcomes a close look." -By Owen Thomas

-Gawker.com

Karl Rove -

Don Siegelman -

US Attorney -

Politics -

Alabama

"House Judiciary chair subpoenas Karl Rove." ... "The House Judiciary Committee chairman subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove on Monday to testify about the Bush administration's firing of U.S. attorneys and prosecution of a former Democratic governor [Don Siegelman of Alabama]."

-AP via -MSNBC

Seniors -

Health -

Power -

Company -

Weather -

Michigan

"Man freezes to death after city limits electricity." ... "A 93-year-old man froze to death inside his home [in Bay City, Michigan] just days after the municipal power company restricted his use of electricity because of unpaid bills, officials said." ... "Marvin E. Schur died "a slow, painful death," said Kanu Virani, [Michigan's] Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy."

-AP via -MSNBC

John Boehner -

Government -

Economic -

Legislation -

Politics -

History -

Poor -

Family -

Women's -

Medical -

Abortion -

AL. -

FL -

MS -

SC -

CA -

LA -

MN -

RI -

MO -

Ohio -

Wisconsin

"Republicans Irate Over Expansion of Republican-Approved Program." ... "[T]he family-planning program that [California Democratic Representative and House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi supports expanding in the stimulus bill was created in 1972 under the leadership of Republican president Richard Nixon." ... "What's being proposed is an expansion in the number of states that can use Medicaid money, with a federal match, to help low-income women prevent unwanted pregnancies. Of the 26 states that already have Medicaid waivers for family planning, eight are led by Republican governors (AL [Alabama], FL [Florida], MS [Mississippi], SC [South Carolina], CA [California], LA [Louisiana], MN [Minnesota] and RI [Rhode Island] -- a ninth, MO [Missouri], had a GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] governor until this past November). If this policy is truly a taxpayer gift to "the abortion industry," as [Ohio Republican Representative] John Boehner and House Republicans claim, where are the GOP governors promising to end the program in their states?" ... "Additionally, the process of obtaining a waiver for Medicaid family-planning coverage is extremely cumbersome. A letter written by Wisconsin health regulators in 2007 noted that some states have had to wait for as long as two years before their request was approved. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that eliminating the waiver requirement would save states $400 million over 10 years." -By Elana Schor

-TPMDC .TalkingPointsMemo

Digital -

Technology -

Law -

Politics

"Senate OKs 4-Month Delay to Digital TV Changeover: Senate votes to delay digital transition by 4 months to June 12." ... "The Senate on Monday voted unanimously to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting by four months to June 12 — setting the stage for Congress to pass the proposal as early as Tuesday." ... "The Nielsen Co. estimates that more than 6.5 million U.S. [United States] households that rely on analog television sets to pick up over-the-air broadcast signals could see their TV sets go dark next month if the transition is not postponed." (1, 2) -By Joelle Tessler with contributions by David Bauder

-AP via -ABCNEWS.com

War Crimes

Criminal

Military

Law

Politics

"1 in 4 Americans believe the Bush administration committed war crimes." ... "In a new telephone survey, Rasmussen Reports has found that 25 percent of voters “believe [Republican] President Bush and senior members of his administration are guilty of war crimes.” Forty-four percent of Democrats and 21 percent of unaffiliated voters believe that war crimes were committed while just 4 percent of Republicans believe the same." -By Matt Corley

-ThinkProgress.org

20090122

Secret -

Intelligence -

Databases -

Federal -

Military -

Spy -

Computer -

Search Engine -

Technology -

EMail -

Communications -

Terrorism -

Politics

"Intelligence Agencies' Databases Set to Be Linked: After Years of Bureaucratic Snags, System Aims to Ease Communications, Give Spies Access to More Data." ... "[United States] U.S. spy agencies' sensitive data should soon be linked by Google-like search systems, nearly five years after the intelligence community was rebuked by the 9/11 Commission for failing to "connect the dots" and detect the attack." ... "Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has launched a sweeping technology program to knit together the thousands of databases across all 16 spy agencies. After years of bureaucratic snafus, intelligence analysts will be able to search through secret intelligence files the same way they can search public data on the Internet." ... "Mr. McConnell's new technology program is also addressing a more basic problem: Spies often have trouble emailing colleagues in other U.S. intelligence agencies, because email addresses aren't readily accessible, and messages sometimes get eaten by security filters. Mr. McConnell aims to solve that by uniting the agencies' email systems into a single system with a full directory that links names, expertise and addresses." ... "Mr. McConnell's team says this effort, called the Information Integration Program, has experienced officials working on it full-time and is designed to deliver tangible products every few months." ... "The first stage of the initiative is to merge the email systems of the six largest intelligence agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA [National Security Agency]." -By Siobhan Gorman

-WSJ.com

20090121

Auto -

Manufacturing -

Business -

History -

Michigan -

US -

Japan -

Global

"GM loses global sales crown after 77 years." ... "[United States] General Motors Corp reported an 11 percent drop in global sales in 2008, allowing rival [Japan] Toyota Motor Corp to surpass it as the world's largest automaker for the first time." ... "GM [General Motors], now struggling to restructure under a $13.4 billion U.S. [United States] government bailout, had held the title as the global auto industry leader for 77 years and used the line in marketing." ... "But for 2008, Detroit[ Michigan]-based GM said sales tumbled to 8.35 million vehicles, pressured by tightening credit and a slowdown that began in the United States and spread to emerging markets where GM has been stronger." ... "GM, which faces an end-March deadline to demonstrate to U.S. officials that it can be made viable, has a market capitalization of just under $2 billion." ... "Toyota has a market value of about $117 billion." (1, 2) -By Kevin Krolicki with contributions by Poornima Gupta, Soyoung Kim, Maureen Bavdek and Matthew Lewis

-Reuters

Barack Obama -

US -

China -

Language -

Politics -

History

"China censors parts of inaugural speech." ... "The offending line [to Chinese censors listening to United States Democratic President Barack Obama's inauguration speech] was this: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."" ... "Later, the president said: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."" ... "Chinese translations of the speech published Wednesday omitted that line and the earlier one on communism. The government, however, has allowed the full English text to be published." -By Edward Wong

-IHT.com

Barack Obama -

Federal -

Military -

Prison -

Terrorism -

Law -

Politics -

US -

Guantanamo -

Cuba -

Canada

"Obama Seeks Halt to Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo." ... "In one of its first actions, the [Democratic President] Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday [January 20, 2009] to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing [Republican President] Bush administration." ... "The instruction came in a motion filed with a military court in the case of five defendants accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The motion called for "a continuance of the proceedings" until May 20 so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."" ... "The same motion was filed in another case scheduled to resume Wednesday, involving a Canadian detainee, and will be filed in all other pending matters." ... "Such a request may not be automatically granted by military judges, and not all defense attorneys may agree to such a suspension. But the move is a first step toward closing a detention facility and system of military trials that became a worldwide symbol of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and its unyielding attitude toward foreign and domestic critics." ... "The Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to [Republican President Bush] administration claims, detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to challenge their detentions and that the naval base was not beyond the reach of federal law." ... "Eventually more than 550 detainees were released; only three were ever put on trial and convicted." -By Peter Finn -WashingtonPost

Barack Obama -

John Roberts -

Law -

Politics

"Obama retakes oath of office after Roberts' mistake." ... "[Democratic] President Obama retook his oath of office Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed while delivering it at Tuesday's inauguration." ... "The do-over was aimed at dispelling any confusion that might arise from Tuesday's take -- in which "faithfully" was said out of sequence -- and erase any question that Obama is legally the president." ... "However, per the Constitution, Obama became president at noon Tuesday without taking the oath." ... "The Constitution sets out the language that should be used in the oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.""

-CNN

20090120

Barack Obama -

John Roberts -

Politics -

Religion -

Race -

Civil Rights -

Justice

"Barack Hussein Obama: 44th president of the United States: Inauguration 2009." ... "A BIBLE WITH SIGNIFICANCE." ... "[Democratic President Elect] Barack Obama laid his hand on a Bible used in [Republican President Elect] Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inauguration. The chief justice in 1861 was Roger Brooke Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision barring blacks from citizenship." ... "In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama said, “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.” There have been only 43 different men serve as president; [Democratic President] Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms." ... "At 47, Barack Obama is the nation’s fifth-youngest president. The youngest was [Republican President] Theodore Roosevelt (42), followed by [Democratic President] John F. Kennedy (43), [Democratic President] Bill Clinton (46) and [Republican President] Ulysses S. Grant (46)." ... "Barack Obama was one of 22 Senate Democrats to vote against Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation in 2005, so this was the first time a justice has sworn in a president who voted against him."

-AJC

Hillary Clinton -

Texas -

New York -

Foreign -

Donations

"Texas senator [Republican Cornyn] blocks [Democratic Senator] Clinton's state confirmation." ... "The confirmation of [New York Democratic Senator] Hillary Rodham Clinton to be secretary of state will be held up for at least a day due to the objection of a single senator. [Texas Republican Senator] Sen. John Cornyn, R[ Republican]-Texas, said he wanted "a full and open debate and an up-or-down vote on [Senator] Sen. Clinton's nomination."" ... "He said important questions remain unanswered concerning the foundation headed by former [Democratic] President Bill Clinton "and its acceptance of donations from foreign entities. Transparency transcends partisan politics and the American people deserve to know more."" ... "In her testimony, Clinton said the foundation would provide a clearer picture of its annual donations." -By Jim Abrams

-AP via -Yahoo

20090114

Torture -

War Crimes -

Government -

Military -

Terrorism -

Intelligence -

Detainees -

Medical -

Human -

Rights -

Law -

Inpector -

US -

Guantanamo Bay -

Cuba -

Saudi

"Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official: Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive' Methods Against 9/11 Suspect." ... "The top [Republican President] Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] detainees to trial has concluded that the [United States] U.S. military tortured a Saudi [Arabia] national who allegedly planned to participate in the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."" ... ""We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution." ... "Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the [Republican President] Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured." ... "Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said." ... ""I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."" ... "Crawford said she believes that coerced testimony should not be allowed. "You don't allow it in a regular court," said Crawford, who served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces from 1991 to 2006." ... "In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."" ... "The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by [Republican President Bush's] then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld." (1, 2, 3) -By Bob Woodward with contributions by Julie Tate and Evelyn Duffy

-WashingtonPost

Bradley Schlozman -

Political -

Government -

Employees -

Election -

Civil Rights -

Enforcement

"Bush appointee saw Justice lawyers as 'commies,' 'crazy libs,' report says: [Republican President Bush appointee] Bradley Schlozman, who supervised civil rights and voting rights lawyers, broke the law by considering political affiliations in deciding who can serve, an inspector general's report says." ... "To Bradley Schlozman, they were "mold spores," "commies" and "crazy libs."" ... "He was referring to the career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights and voting rights divisions. From 2003 to 2006, Schlozman was a Bush appointee who supervised them." ... ""My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section," he said in an e-mail in 2003. "I too get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section attorneys," he confided to another friend." ... "He hoped to get rid of the "Democrats" and "liberals" because they were "disloyal" and replace them with "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans."" ... "He appears to have succeeded by his standards, according to an inspector general's report released Tuesday. Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said." ... "The inspector general concluded Schlozman violated the civil services laws while at the Justice Department. While the president's appointees are entitled to run the department and set policy, they are prohibited from considering "political affiliations" in deciding on who serves in career positions in the federal government." -By David G. Savage

-LAtimes

20090110

Corporate

Government

Accounting

Politics

History

Military

Reconstruction

Gas

Alberto Gonzales

Torture

Law

Intelligence

Pat Tillman

Afghanistan

Guantánamo

Iraq

"Eight Years of Madoffs." ... "Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of [2008 December] Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized [Republican President] Bush management at home and abroad." ... "The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq." ... "The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math." ... "What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace." ... "After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparentdisposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials." ... "Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." ... "Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn [Republican President] Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bush’s Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom (monogrammed towels included)." ... "It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” That accounting is conservative. There are still too many unanswered questions. " ... "Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. [Public Relations] efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan? " -By Frank Rich

-NYTimes

20090109

Judd Gregg

Corporate

Accounting

Politics

Federal

History

New Hampshire

"Republican Judd Gregg (R-NH) Is a Liar." ... "So Justin Fox says:"

"The Curious Capitalist: Judd Gregg’s dubious tax math: Republican New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (or one of his staffers) writes:"
"The growth in tax revenues from 2002 through 2007 were some of the largest in history. The tax system became much more progressive, with the top 20% of income earners paying 85% of the taxes -- a rate much higher than during the Clinton years -- all while keeping capital-gains rates low."
"I'll blame the WSJ [Wall Street Journal] opinion editors for the verb-subject disagreement in the first sentence. But I'm assuming the facts came from Gregg. Except they're not quite facts—and since this sort of tax disinformation is pretty common, I couldn't resist wasting an hour digging up the data to refute them."
"Non-fact No. 1: The tax revenue gains from 2002 through 2007 weren't "some of the largest in history," unless you define "some" extremely broadly. Adjusted for inflation, [United States] U.S. government revenue rose 20% from 2002 to 2007. That ranks 24th among the 58 rolling five-year periods between the end of World War II and 2007. Just barely above average.... Over the full eight years of the [Republican President] Bush administration, it appears likely that federal revenue growth will be just about zero. Over the eight [Democratic President] Clinton years it was 58%."
"Non-fact No. 2: The percentage of federal taxes paid by the top 20% of the income distribution in 2005 (the most recent year covered by the Congressional Budget Office's annual examination of tax rates and the income distribution) was 69%. The percentage of federal income taxes was 86%...."
"The cuts in tax rates on capital gains and dividends during the Bush years accentuated this kink, so on the whole a fair-minded observer would have to say the tax system became somewhat less progressive. Which isn't what Judd Gregg said."
[-By Justin Fox -TIME.com]

-By Brad DeLong

Abramoff -

Cheney -

Secret -

Illegal -

Politics -

Computer -

Archives -

Federal -

Investigation -

Censorship

"Judge rules against White House on visitors logs." ... "A federal judge on Friday rejected the [Republican President] Bush administration's latest attempt to keep secret the identities of White House visitors and declared that the government illegally deleted Secret Service computer records." ... "[United States] U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that the deletions took place before October 2004 when the Secret Service transferred large numbers of entry and exit logs to the White House and then deleted copies of them." ... "The deletions ceased after the archivist to the United States instructed the Secret Service to stop the practice and after various private organizations went to court in an effort to gain access to the logs, according to papers filed in the case. The deletions go back at least as far as 2001, the government's papers added, the year President George W. Bush took office." ... "Secret Service logs have been used in investigations by Congress and federal prosecutors." ... "In the spring of 2006, in the midst of an influence peddling scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement declaring the Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public." ... "Four months later, [Republican Vice President] Cheney's office told the Secret Service in a letter that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP [Office of the Vice President]."" -By Pete Yost

-AP via -Yahoo

Jobless -

Employers -

People

"Jobless Rate Hits 7.2%, a 16-Year High." ... "The nation lost 524,000 jobs in December, reflecting a pervasive fear among employers that if they fail to shed workers quickly their companies may go under in a recession poised to become the worst since the 1930s." ... "The unemployment rate, meanwhile, jumped to a 16-year-high of 7.2 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The growing army of the unemployed, at 11.1 million, is nearly 50 percent bigger than at the start of the recession a year ago." ... "The December decline in jobs came on top of similar losses in October and November. Not since 1980 has the work force shrunk so much in just three months. Companies across all industries are grappling with sales that are deteriorating rapidly just as they lose easy access to loans." ... "The total number of jobs lost in the recession now totals 2.59 million, counting upward revisions for October and November, with many more job losses expected in coming months." ... "Nearly as troubling, hundreds of thousands more people sought full-time work in December but could not get more than part-time jobs." ... "If those workers are included, the so-called total unemployment rate swelled to 13.5 percent, from 12.6 percent in November and just 8.7 percent at the start of the recession. Total unemployment includes the officially unemployed, the part-timers who seek more hours and the nearly 300,000 who would like a job but tell pollsters from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that they are too discouraged to look." -By Louis Uchitelle with contributions by Jeff Zeleny

-NYTimes

New York -

Police -

Terrorism -

Electronic-

Communications -

Reporting-

Photos -

Internet -

Censorship -

Politics -

US -

India

"NYPD Wants To Interrupt Mobile Communications During Attacks." ... "The New York Police Department wants the ability to interrupt mobile phone service and other electronic communications during terrorist attacks." ... "Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the U.S. [United States] Senate Committee on Homeland Security that the November attacks in Mumbai [India] illustrated the dangers of instant reporting from the field while an attack is unfolding." ... "The terrorists used cell phones and other devices to communicate while the attacks were in progress, Kelly said Thursday. Witnesses in India also provided instant updates on the situation using cell phones, digital photos on the Internet, and Twitter -- communicating what they saw as it unfolded." ... "It's unclear if authorities in New York could cut off attackers' cell service and other electronic communications without causing wider disruptions." ... "Millions of New Yorkers used phones -- landlines and cell phones -- to let out-of-town relatives and friends, as well as each other, know that they were OK after the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In many cases, those in the middle of the chaos relied on those watching the news outside of New York City [New York] for information to help them decide whether to flee the island of Manhattan [New York City burrough] by ferry, to head uptown, or to stay put." ... "As a New Yorker, I can't imagine an attack without the ability to let my family know I'm OK or the ability to exchange information and offers of assistance with friends scattered throughout Manhattan." -By K.C. Jones

-InformationWeek

20090108

Israel -

Palestine -

People -

UN -

Military -

Politics

"Red Cross criticises Israel for blocking access to Gaza injured." ... "Israel today came under fierce criticism from humanitarian groups for delaying access to the injured during its offensive in Gaza [Palestine area] as fresh fighting killed at least 11 people, taking the death toll over 700." ... "The unusually strong condemnation coincided with a UN [United Nations] announcement that it was suspending its operations in the territory in response to what it said were Israeli attacks." ... "The International Committee of the Red Cross accused Israel of "unacceptable" delays in letting rescue workers reach three homes in Gaza City that had been hit by shelling." ... "The group said the Israeli army refused rescuers permission to reach the site in the Zaytun neighbourhood for four days. Once Red Cross teams reached the area yesterday, they found four small children next to their dead mothers at one home. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all, there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses." ... "In another house, a rescue team found 15 survivors, including several wounded. In yet another home, rescuers found three bodies. Israeli soldiers posted at a military position nearby ordered the rescue team to leave the area, which it refused to do." ... ""This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, the Red Cross's head for the region. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."" ... "Other groups such as Médecins Sans Frontières have also criticised Israel for blocking access to people injured during the crisis." ... "Israel has also come under strong criticism from the UN, which said it was halting all aid shipments into Gaza, citing attacks on UN staff and buildings." ... "The announcement came shortly after the driver of a UN truck was shot and killed by tank fire near an Israeli border as he was about to pick up an aid shipment. The UN said the delivery had been coordinated with Israel and that the vehicle carried a UN flag and insignia. Earlier this week, at least 40 people were killed when two UN schools were hit by Israeli gunfire." -By Mark Tran

-Guardian.co.uk

Corporate -

Government -

Military -

Virginia -

US -

Iraq -

Afghanistan

"Army Sends 'Dear John Doe' Letters to Families of Fallen Troops." ... "The Army mistakenly sent letters addressed "Dear John Doe" to 7,000 family members of soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, unleashing calls from troubled relatives and prompting a formal apology yesterday from the Army's top general." ... "The letters, mailed late last month by the Army's Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operation Center in Alexandria [Virginia], contained information about private organizations that assist families of the fallen. But in what the Army called a printing error by a contractor, the letters did not contain specific names and addresses; instead, they had the placeholder greeting "Dear John Doe."" -By Ann Scott Tyson

-WashingtonPost

US -

Israel -

Palestine -

Iraq -

Afghanistan -

Military -

Terrorism -

Political -

History

"The lessons of Gaza." ... "The Israeli military action in Gaza [Palestine area] raises both moral questions and strategic ones. The moral issues are more complex than partisans on either side are prepared to admit. Not so the strategic issues: here the verdict is clear. Israel's return to Gaza constitutes a tacit admission of strategic failure now stretching back four decades." ... "Indeed, the punishment inflicted on the residents of Gaza all but ensures its perpetuation." ... "For the United States, engaged in a struggle against radical Islamists that mirrors Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, the implications of this story are several. Israeli troubles in the West Bank [Palestine area] and Gaza over the past 40 years suggest the following:" ... "First, getting in may be easy; getting out is the hard part. Once embraced, a tar baby becomes impossible to release. For this reason, the notion that intervention offers a handy problem solver is an illusion." ... "Second, occupation by outsiders produces alienation, resistance, and radicalization, nowhere more so than in the Islamic world. The longer the stay, the more severe the reaction." ... "Third, as instruments of pacification, conventional armies possess modest utility. Rather than facilitating political solutions, coercion only exacerbates the underlying problem." ... "This approach hasn't worked for Israel and won't work for the United States. Yet this approach describes US policy in the global war on terror, which has been based on expectations of intervention, occupation, and superior military power enabling the United States to dictate the conditions in which Muslims in places as remote as Iraq and Afghanistan should live." ... "Even if Israel seemingly has no choice, the United States does. To exercise that choice by replicating the errors Israel has made in its relations with the Palestinians would be the height of folly." -By Andrew J. Bacevich

via -BostonGlobe

Corporate -

Government -

Regulations -

Workers -

Safety -

Medical -

Science -

Environment -

History -

Earth -

Oil -

Auto -

St. Paul -

Minnesota -

Wyoming -

Utah -

Obama -

US -

Netherlands -

World

"Bush Pushes ‘Midnight Rules’ to Support Companies as Term Ends." ... "[Republican President] George W. Bush is using the waning days of his presidency to implement a raft of pro-business regulations, triggering vows by the incoming [Democratic President Elect] Obama administration and congressional Democrats to gut the measures." ... "Bush is proposing changes to federal rules that critics say make it more difficult to protect U.S. [United States] workers from exposure to toxic chemicals, reduce the use of employee medical leave and open more land to oil and gas exploration. The effort is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade groups representing companies including [Netherlands-based] Royal Dutch Shell Plc [Public limited company] and Dow Chemical Co. [Company.]" ... "The Interior Department today is publishing a rule that would lift a 79-year-old executive order prohibiting oil shale development in Wyoming and Utah. Yesterday, the Bush administration postponed regulations requiring cars and light trucks to be more fuel efficient by 2011." ... "Bush’s regulation on toxins, which isn’t final yet, would change the way workplace exposure to poisonous substances is measured, and is supported by associations representing companies such as Dow, the biggest U.S. chemical company, Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, and 3M Co., the St. Paul [Minnesota's capital], Minnesota-based maker of 55,000 products." ... "The change is opposed by the United Mineworkers and other unions. They argue it would delay new health protections for workers by requiring a lengthy regulatory process before new standards could be issued. " -By Holly Rosenkrantz and Mark Drajem

-Bloomberg

Karl Rove -

Federal -

Housing -

Economy -

Historical -

Politics

"Karl Rove’s Factually Challenged Housing Revisionism." ... "As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. The instant historical revisionism by [Republican] Karl Rove in today’s WSJ [Wall Street Journal] — mythmaking writ large — contains an egregious combination of false statements, crucial omissions and misleading assertions." ... "A few thoughts are required to correct Rove’s attempt to create a false and deceptive narrative. Consider these few corrections:" ... "1. “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the principal culprits of the housing crisis” Wrong. Fannie and Freddie were cogs in the giant mortgage machine, but they had nothing to do with the abdication of lending standards from 2002-07. That was a function of the Lend-to-Securitize business model of the sub-prime mortgage originators. THAT was the primary cause of the housing boom and bust, along with Ultra-low rates and a lack of Fed regulation of these sub-prime lenders." ... "2. “Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged” True. This had been pointed out by many people, before [Republican President] Bush and afterwards, that Fannie was a problem. Chief amongst the Fannie critics was Fed Governor William Poole. He deserves credit for his many early warnings about Fannie Mae and the GSEs [Government Sponsored Enterprises]. He was ignored by Alan Greenspan. Also ignored was Fed Governor Edward Gramlich, whose early warnings about subprime and predatory lending and were both timely and prescient." ... "3. Democrats controlled the Congressional Debate on GSEs: Rove somehow fails to note the GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] controlled Congress from 1994-2006, including the first 6 years of the Bush Presidency. If the President wanted to rein in the GSEs, he needed only make it a major priority, and not a footnote in the 2001 budget." -By Barry Ritholtz.com

Women -

Jobs -

Money -

Civil Rights -

Law -

Politics -

California

"Courts using Ledbetter decision to ‘undermine civil rights principles across the board.’." ... "Tomorrow, the House is set to take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a Supreme Court decision that restricted a woman’s right to bring pay discrimination lawsuits. The House handily passed the bill last year, but Senate conservatives blocked it after [Republican] President Bush threatened to veto it. On a conference call organized by [California Democratic Representative] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, explained that the faulty Supreme Court decision has been stretched to cripple all kinds of anti-discrimination laws:"

"GREENBERGER: So now we’ve got these judges taking the Ledbetter decision to absurd lengths and saying that the most entrenched and invidious discrimination — now that those who have the courage and the knowledge and the ability, for the first time to combat are out of time. It is an outrageous approach, an undermining of civil rights principles across the board. It’s now causing real misery, as was described not only for women and their families in pay…but for all victims of discrimination."

"Check out the Center for American Progress’s Fair Pay Calculator, and learn more about the fight for fair pay, here. Firedoglake has more." -By Ali Frick

-ThinkProgress.org

Barack Obama -

Financial -

Jobs -

Government -

Lawmakers -

Mass

"Lawmakers and Financial Experts Question Obama's Tax Cuts." ... "At least two tax cuts that are part of [Democratic President Elect] Barack Obama's stimulus package have been criticized by lawmakers, tax experts and economists for being potentially too expensive and ineffective, signaling that they are likely to face resistance on Capitol Hill as congressional leaders begin direct negotiations with the president-elect's team." ... "Both Democrats and Republicans have questioned a provision that would provide a $3,000 tax credit to companies for every job created and, possibly, for every job spared. They contend that the idea would be ripe for abuse and difficult to administer." ... ""It is tough to see how a company that is seeing its sales slaughtered in today's recession is going to hire just because it gets a few thousand dollars per new worker from the government," Howard Gleckman wrote on the TaxVox blog for the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. "Profitable firms would merely take the credit for bringing on workers they were already planning on hiring."" ... "[Massachusetts Democratic Representative] Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass. [Democratic-Massachusetts]), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on select revenue measures, said the scenario that worries him is that of the employer who lays off thousands of people and then is subsidized for hiring back a few hundred." (1, 2) -By Shailagh Murray

-WashingtonPost

Consumer -

Home -

Law -

Government -

Politics

"Citigroup Backs Bankruptcy Courts Cutting Loan Rates (Update1)." ... "Citigroup Inc. [Incorporated], one of nine U.S. [United States] banks to get government aid, agreed to support legislation that would let bankruptcy judges cut mortgage rates for at-risk borrowers, three U.S. senators said today as financial industry lobbyists said the compromise was flawed." ... "Citigroup in November got $306 billion of U.S. government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets to stabilize the bank. The deal, brokered by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [Corporation] required the bank to modify terms for guaranteed troubled loans based on a model created by the FDIC." ... "Congress has passed several measures in the past year to stem home foreclosures, including a $300 billion bill passed in July aimed at helping 400,000 borrowers keep their homes. Senate Democrats were unable in April to adopt the bankruptcy proposal. Republicans, and the banking industry, said the plan would raise costs because lenders would try to recoup losses in court with higher rates on other loans." ... "The revised bill Citigroup endorsed would give judges the ability to adjust principle payments or interest rates on existing loans, and could extend the term on the loan, according to the language of the bill, which would force lenders to take losses without a say in bankruptcy court proceedings." ... "Citigroup accounted for 7 percent of the U.S. market for servicing home loans as of Sept. 30, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance newsletter in October. " -By Margaret Chadbourn

-Bloomberg

Money -

History

"Consumer Borrowing in U.S. Falls Record $7.9 Billion (Update1)." ... "Consumer borrowing dropped by a record $7.9 billion in November as Americans scrambled to boost savings in face of the deepening recession and amid an investor exodus from securities backed by credit-card and other loans." ... "The slump brought consumer credit down to $2.57 trillion, and capped the first back-to-back monthly decline since 1992, the Federal Reserve said today in Washington. The biggest decrease came in securitized assets, an area where Fed policy makers are creating a new $200 billion lending program to shore up credit." ... "Today’s figures foreshadow a prolonged drop in consumer spending as households try to reduce debt with their net worth declining and job losses accelerating, analysts said." ... "The Fed’s figures don’t cover borrowing secured by real estate. In October, credit fell by $2.8 billion, previously reported as a drop of $3.5 billion. " -By Shobhana Chandra

-Bloomberg

Larry Craig -

Politician -

Idaho -

Minnesota -

Police

"Ex-Senator Craig accepts sex sting guilty plea." ... "Former [Idaho Republican Senator] Sen. Larry Craig has ended his effort to void the guilty plea he made following his 2007 arrest in a men's toilet sex-sting operation, his lawyer said on Thursday." ... "Craig was arrested at [Minnesota's] Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007, by an undercover police officer who said the lawmaker peeked at him repeatedly through a crack in a stall door, sat down in the stall next to him and used hand and foot signals to indicate he was soliciting sex." -By Andrew Stern with contributions by Michael Conlon

-Reuters

US -

Israel -

Palestine -

Syria -

Egypt -

Military -

Intelligence -

Terrorism -

Politics -

Poor -

Families -

Food -

Health -

Human Rights

"An Unnecessary War." [by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter] ... "I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza [Palestine area] by Israel could easily have been avoided." ... "After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action." ... "Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus [Syria's capital], we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank [Palestine area] and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza." ... "We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. [United Nations] special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day." ... "Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens." ... "After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government. " -By Jimmy Carter

-WashingtonPost

Dick Cheney -

Douglas J Feith -

"Scooter" Libby -

Noteworthy -

Military -

Politics -

History -

Book -

Petroleum -

Money -

US -

Israel -

Palestine -

"Neoconservatism dies in Gaza: he recent Israeli offensive has put the final nail in the coffin of the [Republican President] Bush administration's Middle East fantasy." ... "The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad [Iraq's capital], the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas." ... "The neoconservatives first laid out their manifesto in a 1996 paper, "A Clean Break," written for an obscure think tank in Jerusalem [Israel's capital] and intended for the eyes of far right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, who had just been elected prime minister. They advised Israel to renounce the Oslo [Norway's capital] peace process and reject the principle of trading land for peace, instead dealing with the Palestinians with an iron fist. They urged Israel to uphold the right of hot pursuit of Palestinian guerrillas and to find alternatives to Yasser Arafat's Fatah for the Palestinian leadership. They called forth Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria and rejection of negotiations with Damascus [Syria's capital]. They foresaw strengthened ties between Israel and its two regional friends, Turkey and Jordan." ... "They advocated "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," in part as a way of "rolling back" Syria. In place of the secular, republican tyrant, they fantasized about the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, and thought that a Sunni king might help moderate the Shiite Hezbollah in south Lebanon. (Yes.) They barely mentioned Iran, though it appears that their program of expelling Syria from Lebanon and weakening its regime was in part aimed at depriving Iran of its main Arab ally. In a 1999 book called "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," David Wurmser argued that it was false to fear that installing the Iraqi Shiites in power in Baghdad would strengthen Iran regionally." ... "The signatories to this fantasy of using brute military power to reshape all of West Asia included some figures who would go on to fill key positions in the Bush administration. Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, became chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon. Douglas J. Feith became the undersecretary of defense for planning. David Wurmser first served in Feith's propaganda shop, the Office of Special Plans, which manufactured the case for an American war on Iraq, and then went on to serve with "Scooter" Libby in the office of [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney." ... "The neoconservatives used their well-funded think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, an organ of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute, among others, to promote this agenda of the conquest of Iraq as a solution of all ills." ... "The biggest danger facing the United States is that there will be no true "Clean Break" -- that the neoconservatives will somehow find a way to survive the Bush administration, and continue to influence American foreign policy." (1, 2) -By Juan Cole

-Salon

Barack Obama

Economic

Jobs

Politics

Government

History

Iowa

"Harkin Fears "Trickle-Down" Stimulus." ... "Democratic senators are still emerging from their closed-door briefing with [Democratic President Elect] Obama economic adviser Larry Summers ... but a senior Democratic senator, Iowa progressive Tom Harkin, just gave me a dire buzzword: trickle-down." ... ""There's only one thing we've got to do in this stimulus, and that's create jobs," Harkin told me. "I'm a little concerned by the way Mr. Summers and others are going on this ... it still looks a little more to me like trickle-down."" ... "Likening Barack Obama's economic recovery plan to the failed supply-side excesses of the [Republican Presidents] Reagan and Bush years is a bit of a Cassandra moment. But Harkin didn't back down. "What I'm hearing from Mr. Summers is that they've got a different approach -- tax breaks, and this and that," he said. Harkin warned that, much like the outcome of George Bush's $600 stimulus package last year, recipients of quick tax cuts "are going to be salting it away, not spending it."" ... "When I asked if he felt his concerns were heard during the meeting, he looked to the floor and slowly shook his head. It was almost forlorn." -By Elana Schor

-TPMElectionCentral .TalkingPointsMemo

20081224

Karl Rove -

Federal -

Christmas -

Trade -

Texas

"Top Bush Aides to Linger on High-Profile Boards." ... "The Christmas Eve appointments will allow them to serve far beyond [2009, January] Jan. 20, the end of [Republican President] Mr. Bush’s term in office." ... "Ms. [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice got a spot on the John F. Kennedy Center’s board of trustees until September 2014." ... "Mr. Bush’s gift to Mr. [Commerce Secretary Carlos M.] Gutierrez: membership on the board of trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a research institute in Washington. Joining Mr. Gutierrez as a trustee is Barry Jackson, a former deputy to Karl Rove, who serves as assistant to the president for strategic initiatives and external affairs." ... "Maria Cino, a longtime ally of the president who was deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation and helped run the 2008 Republican National Convention, received a four-year term on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. President Bush also extended the same courtesy to Israel Hernandez, who was once a personal aide to Mr. Bush in Texas and now serves as an assistant secretary of commerce and director general of the United States Commercial Service." ... "And the first lady, Laura Bush, appears to be taking care of her own, too. The president appointed her chief of staff, Anita B. McBride, to a three-year term on the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board." -By Michael Falcone with contributions by Sheryl Stolberg

-NYTimes

Barack Obama -

Federal -

Stem Cell -

Health -

Money -

Legislation -

Politics -

Colo

"Scientists eager for stem cell policy change." ... "Although [Democratic] President-elect Obama’s pledge to change federal policy on stem cell research is not likely to lead to new cures by the end of his first year — or even first term — the scientific community is eager to get moving." ... "Embryonic stem cell research is one area in which the change that Obama has promised on the campaign trail will provoke an immediate effect." ... "Once he has acted to ease the restriction on federal funding, researchers across the United States will be free to request funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and to collaborate with colleagues conducting experiments with private or state-government money and those working abroad." ... "“Just with the stroke of a pen, the new president could open up new avenues of research,” said [Colorado Democratic Representative] Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.), the lead Democratic sponsor of legislation that would broaden funding for embryonic stem cell research." ... "Researchers believe embryonic stem cells can be made to replicate practically any human cell or tissue, thus leading to treatments for countless ailments." -By Jeffrey Young

-TheHill.com

Christopher Cox -

Corporate -

Government -

Accounting -

Law -

Investigation -

Politics

"SEC Chair Asked If He Deserves Blame For Wall Street Crisis: ‘Absolutely Not,’ It ‘Wasn’t The SEC’s Job’." ... "In a new interview with the Washington Post, embattled [Republican President Bush's] Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox stridently “defend[ed] his restrained approach to the financial crisis.” He refused to accept any blame for the Wall Street crisis or the Madoff Ponzi scheme, saying that regulating Wall Street and protecting investors “wasn’t the SEC’s job“:"

"Cox argued that the agency has carefully defined responsibilities and that it was unfair to blame it for every problem on Wall Street." ... "“The public might not understand that that wasn’t the SEC’s job,” he said, adding that the agency was not responsible for preventing investment banks from collapsing but rather for sheltering their securities trading units from problems in the broader corporation. “The SEC is not a safety and soundness regulator,” he said. [..]"

"In fact, the SEC’s mission statement clearly suggests that “safety” is — or should be — a primary concern of the commission:"

"The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation."

"A review by the SEC inspector general “determined the agency’s monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking.” (Just a few days before Bear Stearns collapsed, Cox said he had “a good deal of comfort” in the bank’s capital levels.) Another analysis showed that the SEC dramatically cut its oversight of financial trades. “In one of its core areas — regulation of Wall Street firms — its case load was down significantly,” said Ben A. Indek, a securities lawyer at the law firm that performed the analysis." ... "Cox also denied any culpability in the Madoff scandal: “When Cox was asked whether he should be blamed for a culture of lax enforcement that allowed multiple warnings about the fraud to go undetected, he said: ‘Absolutely not.’” However, a former SEC official slammed Cox for failing to prevent the Ponzi scheme: “I can’t comprehend how a well-run investigation would have missed a fraud of this magnitude,” said Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant." -By Ali Frick

-ThinkProgress.org

20081223

Health -

Military -

Lawsuit -

KBR -

Corporate -

Politics -

Unsafe -

Ice -

IN -

US -

Iraq

"Soldiers Accuse KBR Of Knowingly Exposing Troops To Deadly Toxin In Iraq." ... "Controversial military contractor KBR has racked up quite a record of endangering the lives of U.S. [United States] soldiers serving in Iraq. Over the years, the former Halliburton subsidiary has been accused of everything from giving troops ice tainted with “traces of body fluids and putrefied remains” to ignoring warnings of unsafe wiring that led to troop deaths." ... "Earlier this month, attorneys for 16 members of the Indiana National Guard filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that they “knowingly exposed the soldiers to a cancer-causing toxic chemical.” In a special report last night, CBS News revealed that KBR knew of the toxic exposure to hexavalent chromium long before it informed the guardsmen:"

"Now CBS News has obtained information that indicates KBR knew about the danger months before the soldiers were ever informed." ... "Depositions from KBR employees detailed concerns about the toxin in one part of the plant as early as May of 2003. And KBR minutes, from a later meeting state “that 60 percent of the people … exhibit symptoms of exposure,” including bloody noses and rashes." ... "Gentry says it wasn’t until the last day of August in 2003 - after four long months at the facility - that he was told the plant was contaminated."
WATCH: "KBR Accused In Toxic Scandal" via -CBSNews

"After receiving a briefing on the case on Monday, [Indiana Democratic Senator] Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN [Democratic-Indiana]) told CBS that “KBR has a lot to answer for“:"

"“Look, I think the burden of proof at this point is on the company,” Bayh said. “To come forward and very forthrightly explain what happened, why we should trust them, and why the health and well-being of our soldiers should continue to be in their hands.”"

"In a statement to CBS, the company denied all charges, saying, “We deny the assertion that KBR harmed troops and was responsible for an unsafe condition.” According to CNN, “an estimated 275 American soldiers may have been exposed to the chemical” at the KBR water plant, “over a period of months through mid- to late-2003.”" -By Matt Corley

-ThinkProgress.org

20081222

Military -

KBR -

Corporate -

Politics -

Indiana -

US -

Iraq

"Did Contractor Expose Troops To Toxin? CBS Evening News Exclusive: American Soldiers Are Dying Of Lung Cancer - And May Have Been Knowingly Exposed." ... "The military contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, known as KBR, has won more than $28 billion in U.S. military contracts since the beginning of the Iraq war. KBR may be facing a new scandal. First, accusations its then-parent company Halliburton was given the lucrative contract. And later, allegations of shoddy construction oversight that resulted in Americans getting electrocuted. Now, some other American soldiers say the company knowingly put their lives at risk, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and investigative producer Laura Strickler exclusively report." ... "In April of 2003, James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard arrived in Southern Iraq to take command of more than 600 other guardsmen. Their job: protect KBR contractors working at a local water plant." ... ""We didn't question what we were doing, we just knew we had to provide a security service for the KBR," said Battalion Cmdr. [Commander] Gentry." ... "Today James Gentry is dying from rare form of lung cancer. The result, he believes, of months of inhaling hexavalent chromium - an orange dust that's part of a toxic chemical found all over the plant." ... "At least one other Indiana guardsman has already died from lung cancer, and others are said to be suffering from tumors and rashes consistent with exposure to the deadly toxin." ... "Now CBS News has obtained information that indicates KBR knew about the danger months before the soldiers were ever informed." -By Armen Keteyian

-CBSNews

WATCH: "KBR Accused In Toxic Scandal"

-CBSNews

Water

Technology

Company

Environment

Minnesota

Texas

"Nation's First 'Underwater Wind Turbine' Installed in Old Man River." ... "The nation's first commercial hydrokinetic turbine, which harnesses the power from moving water without the construction of a dam, has splashed into the waters of the Mississippi River near Hastings, Minnesota." ... "The 35-kilowatt turbine is positioned downstream from an existing hydroelectric-plant dam and — together with another turbine to be installed soon — will increase the capacity of the plant by more than 5 percent. The numbers aren't big, but the rig's installation could be the start of an important trend in green energy." ... "And that could mean more of these "wind turbines for the water" will be generating clean energy soon." ... ""We don't require that massive dam construction, we're just using the natural flow of the stream," said Mark Stover, a vice president at Hydro Green Energy, the Houston[ Texas]-based company leading the project. "It's underwater windpower if you will, but we have 840 or 850 times the energy density of wind."" ... "Hydrokinetic turbines like those produced by Hydro Green and Verdant capture the mechanical energy of the water's flow and turn it into energy, without need for a dam." ... "Hydro Green's Stover hopes that his company's new unit will help shorten that regulatory process by generating environmental impact data that could ease concerns the turbines will disrupt river ecosystems and habitats." -By Alexis Madrigal

-Wired

20081221

Corporate -

Government -

Accounting -

Politics -

New York

"AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs." ... "Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals." ... "The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages." ... "Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found." ... "_The average paid to each of the banks' top executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits." ... "_Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of $242 million." ... "The New York-based company on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28." ... "_John A. Thain, chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year." ... "Like Goldman, Merrill got $10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28." -By Frank Bass and Rita Beamish

-AP via -Yahoo

Working -

People -

Economics -

Education -

Safety -

Enforcement -

Politics -

Maryland

"Squeezed on All Sides, Parents Forgo Day Care: Education, Safety Sacrificed in Fiscal Crunch." ... "In the [Maryland's] Prince George's County community of Riverdale Park, town officials have noted a distressing sign of the national economic downturn: more children left home alone to fend for themselves by working parents too strapped to afford child care." ... "The problem was discovered by code enforcement officers who inspect apartments in the town of 7,000. They used to come across such cases once every couple of years. Then, six months ago, they found one child left alone, followed by another and another." ... "In one instance, a kindergarten-age girl was found hiding in a closet, apparently because she was scared, code enforcement officers said. In another, children aged 10 or 12 were missing school to watch their younger siblings." ... "Riverdale's experience comes amid an increasing economic strain in child care across the Washington [Washington DC, United States capital] region. In an area known for day-care waiting lists, many operators report a rise in vacancies as parents withdraw their children or cut back on hours because they can no longer afford the cost." ... "The phenomenon is not universal, but it has struck in many middle- and working-class areas as lost jobs, reduced work schedules and foreclosed homes affect families with few reserves." (1, 2, 3) -By Donna St. George

-WashingtonPost

20081220

Fashion -

Politics -

Journalist -

Investigators -

US -

Iraq-

Turkey

"‘Bush Shoe’ Gives Firm a Footing in the Market." ... "When a pair of black leather oxfords hurled at [Republican] President Bush in Baghdad [Iraq's capital] produced a gasp heard around the world, a Turkish cobbler had a different reaction: They were his shoes." ... "“We have been producing that specific style, which I personally designed, for 10 years, so I couldn’t have missed it, no way,” said Ramazan Baydan, a shoemaker in Istanbul [Turkey]. “As a shoemaker, you understand.”" ... "Although his assertion has been impossible to verify — cobblers from Lebanon, China and Iraq have also staked claims to what is quickly becoming some of the most famous footwear in the world — orders for Mr. Baydan’s shoes, formerly known as Ducati Model 271 and since renamed “The Bush Shoe,” have poured in from around the world." ... "For now, Mr. Baydan’s customers will have to take his word for it. The journalist who launched the shoes at a news conference a week ago, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, was wrestled to the ground by guards and has not been seen in public since. Explosives tests by investigators destroyed the offending footwear." -By Sebnem Arsu

-NYTimes

20081219

Christopher Cox -

Corporate -

Government -

Accounting -

Law -

Enforcement -

Politics

"Who's Mess Is the S.E.C.? News Analysis: In his extraordinary mea culpa over the Madoff scandal, [Republican President Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission] S.E.C. chairman Christopher Cox accepted full blame...on behalf of his staff. But isn't he in charge?" ... "When Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox made an extraordinary apology for the agency having failed to follow up on clear evidence of wrongdoing by suspected financial fraudster Bernard Madoff, he excluded one key player from blame: himself." ... "In the public statement on Tuesday, Cox laid out a blistering attack on his staff, while appearing to exonerate himself from any responsibility." ... "He said the agency's most senior officials learned only a week ago that "credible and specific allegations regarding Mr. Madoff's financial wrongdoing, going back to at least 1999, were repeatedly brought to the attention of S.E.C. staff, but were never recommended to the Commission for action."" ... ""I am gravely concerned," Cox added, "by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations or at any point to seek formal authority [from the commission] to pursue them."" ... "Cox's decision to distance himself from the staffs' performance has rankled former senior S.E.C. officials who had nothing to do with the Madoff inquiries." ... "The S.E.C. is structured so that the chairman personally is in charge of the staff, these former agency officials said; he is in effect the agency's C.E.O. [Chief Executive Officer], with division heads reporting directly to him, and he makes decisions about staff appointments and allocation of resources." ... "As Condé Nast Portfolio magazine reported in its October issue, Cox took steps to weaken and hamstring the enforcement division." ... "He slowed down and delayed approval when staff members did ask for formal authority to investigate, and pressed the agency to focus more on penny-stock scams, boiler-room operations, and other relatively petty crimes. S.E.C. veterans said this detracted from efforts to pursue major Wall Street frauds." -By Scot Paltrow

-Portfolio.com

Chris Cox -

Corporate -

Government -

Accounting -

Law -

Enforcement -

Politics -

California -

New York

"Cox "Worked to Dismantle The SEC," Says Commission Vet." ... "In recent years, particularly under [Republican President Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris] Cox, a former California GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush years -- helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible." ... ""[Cox] in many ways worked to dismantle the SEC," Ed Nordlinger, a former longtime enforcement director in the commission's New York office, told TPMmuckraker. "He slowed everything down. I don't think he believed in heavy regulation."" ... "That view has been echoed by several others in a position to know. Ross Albert told TPMmuckraker for a post published yesterday: "Under Cox, SEC had de-emphasized the enforcement program. Cox worshipped at the same altar of de-regulation that the rest of the Bush administration worshipped at."" ... "And a former enforcement division supervisor told Portfolio for a lengthy October story about the SEC under Cox: "It was like someone poured molasses on the enforcement division."" ... "The commission also appears to have passed over for promotion staff members who were too aggressive in their approach to enforcement. Veteran S.E.C. lawyer James Coffman told Portfolio that he was told he didn't get a promotion because he was "too tough." He left the SEC soon after." -By Zachary Roth

-TPMMuckracker .TalkingPointsMemo

US -

Iraq -

Torture -

Investigation -

Reporter -

Fashion -

Politics

"Iraqi shoe-thrower 'was beaten': The investigating judge in the case of the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at US [Republican] President George W Bush says the man shows signs of having been beaten." ... "The judge, who saw Muntader al-Zaidi this week, said the journalist had bruises on his face and about his eyes." ... "He said Mr Zaidi was beaten while still at the news conference, in the immediate aftermath of the incident." ... "The court is investigating the beating and officials will watch recordings of the incident, he added." ... "It is still not clear, though, whether Muntader al-Zaidi's injuries were sustained only when security forces wrestled him to the ground, or in custody as well." ... "One of his brothers said the journalist had broken ribs and injuries to his arm too." ... "Muntader al-Zaidi has been in detention since throwing his shoes at President Bush on Sunday during a news conference with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki. " -By Caroline Wyatt

-BBC/News

Chris Cox -

Money -

Accounting -

Politics -

New York

"Paul Krugman: The Madoff economy." ... "The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion." ... "Consider the hypothetical example of a money manager who leverages up his clients' money with lots of debt, then invests the bulked-up total in high-yielding but risky assets, such as dubious mortgage-backed securities. For a while - say, as long as a housing bubble continues to inflate - he (it's almost always a he) will make big profits and receive big bonuses. Then, when the bubble bursts and his investments turn into toxic waste, his investors will lose big - but he'll keep those bonuses." ... "We're talking about a lot of money. In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America's GDP [Gross Domestic Product], up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier. If that extra 3 percent was money for nothing - and it probably was - we're talking about $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse. But the costs of America's Ponzi era surely went beyond the direct waste of dollars and cents." ... "At the crudest level, Wall Street's ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From [Republican President] Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven't closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, [New York Democratic] Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked." -By Paul Krugman

-IHT.com

20081218

Corporate -

Government -

Investigators -

Politics -

Accounting -

Consumer

"Madoff misled SEC in '06, got off." ... "Securities and Exchange Commission investigators discovered in 2006 that Bernard Madoff had misled the agency about how he managed customer money, according to documents, yet the SEC missed an opportunity to uncover an alleged Ponzi scheme." ... "The documents indicate the agency had Madoff in its sights amid multiple violations that, if pursued, could have blown open his alleged multibillion-dollar scam. Instead, his firm registered as an investment adviser, at the agency's request, and the public got no word of the violations." ... "Harry Markopolos - who once worked for a Madoff rival - sparked the probe with his nearly decadelong campaign to persuade the SEC that Madoff's returns were too good to be true. In recent days, The Wall Street Journal reviewed emails, letters and other documents that Markopolos shared with the SEC over the years." ... "When he first began studying Madoff's investment performance a decade ago, Markopolos told a colleague at the time, "It doesn't make any damn sense," he and the colleague recall. "This has to be a Ponzi scheme."" -By Gregory Zuckerman

-WSJ.com via -GreenwichTime.com

Dick Cheney

Criminal

Torture

War Crimes

Prisons

Law

Military

Intelligence

Politics

Corporate

Media

Iraq

"If Bush and Cheney Commit War Crimes and Everyone Knows It, But Does Nothing, Are They Still Crimes?" ... "As Jon Ponder noted here on Tuesday, a bi-partisan U.S. [United States] Senate panel has found [PDF] that [Republican President] George W. Bush was responsible for approving War Crimes (torture and abuse) at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, [Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney admitted in a recent interview to helping to approve War Crimes (torture and abuse) in interrogations, and the corporate media --- with the lone exception of MSNBC --- have been virtually as silent on what may be the most offensive crimes ever committed by an Executive Branch in the U.S. as they were during the lead-up to and follow-through on the War on Iraq, when those same officials sent our nation into war on the basis of demonstrable lies." ... "George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley, noting the War Crimes now known and admitted to by Bush and Cheney, asked Keith Olbermann Tuesday night, "If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"" ... "During the discussion, Turley mentioned --- no less than three different times --- that it'll be up to the citizens whether or not any action is actually taken to prosecute those who committed these crimes." ... ""It will ultimately depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that's been committed in plain view," Turley suggested. "It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing, and that is what the citizens are doing."" ... "He went on to argue: "There's this gigantic yawn as we hear about a war crime on national television being discussed matter-of-factly by the Vice President."" -ByBrad Friedman

-BradBlog.com

WATCH "Countdown: Jonathan Turley and Bush Admin War Crimes."

-Keith Olbermann via -FireDogLake'sYouTube

Barack Obama

Gay

Politics

Religion

Book

People

Children

Girls

Schools

Pakistan

Palestine

British

Soviet

Military

History

"Three Cups of Tea for Rick Warren." ... "Rick Warren is providing the invocation for the [Democratic President Elect Barack Obama's] presidential inauguration. As a pastor whose books have been read by tens of millions of Americans and whose voice is respected by an equal or larger number, he has tremendous influence and power. And as an open homophobe who aggressively works to wound gay people in this country (as well as pretty much anybody else who doesn’t believe with his own particular and peculiar recently-invented version of Christian theology) he should be the guy with the bull’s-eye on his back for the progressive movement." ... "But consider that metaphor for a moment. In Pakistan there are entire regions filled with people who not only hate gays but hate Americans as well, regardless of religion. We've tried bombing them (as the Soviets did, and the British before them). Three consecutive Western empires have tried threatening them, starving them, poisoning them, infiltrating them, and overpowering them - all without success." ... "And then Greg Mortenson came to one of their villages, had three cups of tea with them (a metaphor for hospitality - they nursed him back to health after a mountain climbing injury - and the title of his best-selling book), and now in dozens of these formerly Taliban-controlled villages the people are rejecting the Taliban, embracing modernity, and openly proclaiming themselves as our friends." ... "His "weapon" for this conversion? He built schools for their children, particularly their previously-banned-from-school girls." ... "We pushed the Palestinians on the West Bank to have open and democratic elections, assuming that because they were using the tool of our culture (the secret ballot) they’d vote in people reflecting the values of our culture. Instead, they voted in Hamas, a group that is openly hostile to us and our allies. Hamas’ “weapon” for winning the hearts and minds of the Palestinians? They supported schools, hospitals, and fed and clothed people." ... "You’d think that we’d have learned from these experiences - particularly those of us who call ourselves “progressives” - that you get your desired results faster when you embrace, engage, and nurture your “enemies” than when you physically or rhetorically bomb them." ... "Barack Obama has learned that lesson, and is applying it in inviting Rick Warren to perform the invocation for his inauguration. In doing so, he is reaching out a hand to those who today are - out of fear and ignorance - pushing away gays the same way their intellectual ancestors pushed away African Americans when anti-miscegenation laws were supported by most of these same “fundamentalist” Christian churches in the 1950s and 1960s." -By Thom Hartmann

-ThomHartmann.com

20081217

Poll -Financial

Consumer -

Job -

Rent -

Federal -

Debt -

History

"New Poll Shows 63% Are Already Hurt by Downturn." ... "The deepening recession has eroded the financial standing and optimism of a broad swath of Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom say that they have been hurt by the downturn and that the country has slipped into long-term economic decline." ... "A new Washington Post-ABC News poll also found that a rapidly increasing share of Americans -- 66 percent, up from just over half a year ago -- are worried about maintaining their standard of living. Nearly two in 10 said they or someone living in their household had lost a job in the past few months, and more than a quarter said they had their pay or hours reduced. And 15 percent said that at some point in the past year they fell behind on their rent or mortgage." ... "The poll captures the widening fallout from the faltering economy that policymakers are struggling to contain. The Federal Reserve yesterday cut its target for the federal funds rate to a range of zero to 0.25 percent, the lowest on record." ... "The poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support new federal spending to stimulate the economy, and majorities of both Democrats and Republicans back the idea." ... "Twenty-four percent approve of the way [Republican] President Bush is handling the economy, and a similarly paltry 23 percent approve of the broader federal response to the crisis." ... "Democrats, Republicans and independents alike are highly critical of the federal action to address the crisis -- among each group, more than seven in 10 disapprove. In part, the criticisms stem from skepticism that the government has put in place adequate controls to avoid waste and fraud in the use of federal money in the economic recovery effort." (1, 2) -By Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen with contributions by Jennifer Agiesta

-WashingtonPost

Auto

Makers

Michigan

"Chrysler to shut assembly lines for at least a month: Rival Ford takes similar steps, extending shutdown times at most plants." ... "Automakers typically close their factories for a couple of weeks over the two weeks during holidays and often, as in Ford's case, target specific plants for even longer idle periods to keep a lid on inventory during times of slack demand. Yet Chrysler's move to idle its entire operation for at least a month reflects just how dire the situation is in Detroit [Michigan]." ... ""This is definitely out of the ordinary," Edmunds.com analyst Jesse Toprak said. "I've never seen this kind of shutdown for this long, and if you read the language Chrysler used in the release, they're leaving the door open for another extension."" -By Shawn Langlois

-MarketWatch

Corporate -

Government -

Law -

Politics

"U.S. Congress to probe SEC role in Madoff affair." ... "A U.S. [United States] House of Representatives panel plans to convene an inquiry in January into the failure of securities regulators to unearth an alleged $50 billion securities fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff, a key lawmaker said on Wednesday." ... "The Securities and Exchange Commission has come under fire for not uncovering the scandal until senior employees of Madoff went to authorities." ... "The agency, chaired by [Republican President Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission chairman] Christopher Cox, has been accused of missing a number of red flags about the way Madoff operated his investment business." ... "Cox, a Republican, said he was gravely concerned about the SEC's failure to examine Madoff's activities, which were flagged going back to at least 1999 and repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff but never recommended for commission action." ... "Madoff's niece, Shana Madoff, a compliance lawyer at Madoff's firm, is married to a former SEC lawyer, Eric Swanson, who was the agency's assistant director in the office of compliance inspections and examinations." ... "SEC compliance chief Lori Richards said Swanson was a member of an examination team that looked into Madoff's broker-dealer business in 1999 and 2004." -By John Poirier and Rachelle Younglai with contributions by Kevin Drawbaugh, Karey Wutkowski, Andre Grenon and John Wallace

-Reuters via -Guardian.co.uk

Russia -

Human -

Rights -

Politics -

History

"Rights activists denounce Russian treason bill: They say legislation backed by Putin is 'in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler'." ... "Rights activists Wednesday denounced new legislation backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that would allow Russian authorities to label any government critic a traitor, calling it a chilling throwback to times of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin." ... "The bill, which is expected to become law, would expand the definition of treason to include damaging Russia's constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. That, activists said, would essentially let authorities interpret any act against the state as treason — a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison." ... ""It returns the Russian justice to the times of 1920-1950s," the activists, which included Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Civic Assistance director Svetlana Gannushkina, said in a joint statement." ... "Alexeyeva said a person who reports government abuses to an NGO — for example Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch — could be deemed to have harmed Russia's interests." ... "During Putin's eight-year presidency, the government has systematically rolled back Russia's post-Soviet political freedoms and that has shown no signs of stopping under Putin's successor and protege, Dmitry Medvedev."

-AP via -MSNBC

Government

Market

Politics

US_Debt

Technology

Housing

"Fed unleashes greatest bubble of all." ... "Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, [Republican President Bush's] Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan have unleashed a series of ever-larger asset bubbles they cannot control." ... "Now the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates to between zero and 0.25 percent, coupled with a promise to keep them there for an extended period, and the threat to conduct even more unconventional operations in the longer-dated Treasury market risks the biggest bubble of all, this time in U.S. government debt." ... "THE ASYMMETRIC EXPERIMENT" ... "Bubble mania is no accident. It is the direct consequence of the Fed’s asymmetric response to shifts in asset prices. Pressed to “lean against the wind” and adopt counter-cyclical interest rate and credit policies in the asset market, senior Fed policymakers have repeatedly demurred." ... "Led by Bernanke and Greenspan, officials have argued it is too hard and subjective to identify bubbles until afterwards, and not the Fed’s job to second-guess asset allocation decisions of professional investors." ... "Even if bubbles could be identified, they argue, pricking them would require swingeing rate rises that would inflict widespread damage on the rest of the economy." ... "Far less damaging to allow asset markets to follow their natural cycle and stand by to cut interest rates sharply, supply liquidity and contain the fallout when the bubble bursts." ... "But the Fed’s asymmetric policy response to rising and falling asset prices (colloquially known as the “Greenspan/Bernanke put”) directly led to much of the excessive risk-taking which has humbled the financial system over the last eighteen months." ... "More importantly, the Fed’s decision to respond to the collapse of the technology and stock market bubble by lowering rates to 1 percent and holding them there for an extended period is now widely accepted as a mistake that contributed to the bond bubble and subsequent housing market boom in the middle of the decade." ... "If the low-rate strategy was a mistake, it was a conscious one." -By John Kemp

-Reuters

20081216

Jim DeMint -

Bob Corker -

Richard Shelby -

Mitch McConnell -

Foreign -

Money -

Politics -

Construction -

Auto -

Makers -

Government -

Emergency -

Legislation -

Labor -

Michigan -

California -

South Carolina -

Alabama -

Tennessee -

Kentucky -

German -

Japanese -

South Korean

"Foreign Auto Makers Won Billions in Government Subsidies: Southern States Gave [Foreign] Auto Companies Tax-breaks and Cash for Training." ... "To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens facing Detroit’s automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the laws of Adam-Smith capitalism." ... "“We don’t think it is the role of government to intervene,” [South Carolina Republican Senator] Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C. [Republican-South Carolina]) told the Fox Business Network last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are already in place.”" ... "Yet this argument — that the government has no business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives, arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even land, have enticed [German automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke] BMW to South Carolina, [German automaker] Mercedes to Alabama and [Japanese automaker] Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is cheap and the labor’s not unionized." ... "Not coincidentally, these Southern states are represented by the same coalition of GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit [Michigan] bailout proposal. That legislation would have provided $14 billion in emergency bridge loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which say they lack the finances to survive the month. Rallying behind the animated opposition of GOP [Republican Senators] Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.[Tennessee]), Richard Shelby (Ala.[Alabama]), Mitch McConnell (Ky.[Kentucky) and South Carolina’s DeMint, Senate Republicans killed the legislation." ... "On Friday, the day following the Senate vote, Shelby told CNBC that if the Big Three had only managed their business operations as well as the foreign companies, known as transplants, they wouldn’t be scrambling now for a taxpayer-funded bailout." ... "“You look at the South,” Shelby said. “You take — not just Mercedes in my hometown — but BMW, Honda and all of them. These companies are flourishing with American workers made in America.”" ... "But the flourishing of the transplants didn’t come without significant taxpayer help. Shelby’s Alabama, for example, secured construction of a [German automaker] Mercedes-Benz plant in 1993 by offering $253 million in state and local tax breaks, worker training and land improvement. For [Japanese automaker] Honda, the state’s sweetener surrounding a 1999 deal to build a mini-van plant was $158 million in similar perks, adding $90 million in enticements when the company expanded the plant three years later. A 2001 deal with [Japanese automaker] Toyota left the company with $29 million in taxpayer gifts." ... "Alabama is hardly alone. Corker’s Tennessee recently lured [German automaker] Volkswagen to build a manufacturing plant in Chattanooga [Tennessee], offering the German automaker tax breaks, training and land preparation that could total $577 million. In 2005, the state inspired Nissan to relocate its headquarters from southern California by offering $197 million in incentives, including $20 million in utility savings." ... "In 1992, South Carolina snagged a BMW plant for $150 million in giveaways. In Mississippi in 2003, Nissan was lured with $363 million. In Georgia, a still-under-construction [South Korean automaker] Kia plant received breaks estimated to be $415 million. The list goes on." -By Mike Lillis

-WashingtonIndependent.com

Corporate -

Government -

Christmas -

Debt -

History -

Accounting -

Politics -

Homeowners -

Auto -

Military -

Space

"Bailout payout tops $8 trillion." ... "As the holiday season commences, it’s worth taking stock of the last gift that [Republican] President George W. Bush and the 110th Congress have left for U.S. [United States] taxpayers." ... "It’s a package of about $8.7 trillion dollars’ worth of potential taxpayer commitments for loans, guarantees and other bailout goodies for businesses and distressed homeowners." ... "Amid the tissue paper:" ... "• More than $1.5 trillion in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. [Corporation] loan guarantees, including a $139 billion assist to the lending arm of General Electric Corp." ... "• $1.8 trillion in cash, tax breaks and loan guarantees doled out from the Treasury Department to taxpayers, financial institutions and credit companies." ... "• $300 billion for homeowners from the Federal Housing Authority." ... "• $25 billion in assistance for auto companies from a program overseen by the Energy Department, which is separate from the bailout proposal that tanked last week in the Senate." ... "• And $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending requirements from the Federal Reserve Bank." ... "According to Bianco Research President James Bianco, who crunched these numbers, that amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic bailouts and big government outlays combined." ... "The New Deal, for instance, cost an estimated $32 billion in its day, which would be about $500 billion in today’s dollars. The Marshall Plan cost about $12.7 billion, which is the equivalent of a paltry $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase? The French got $15 million, which would be worth about $217 billion today." ... "If you take those three items, add in the adjusted costs of the Race to the Moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War and assistance for NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration ], you still get to just $3.92 trillion — not even half of the taxpayers’ exposure today, according to Bianco." -By Jeanne Cummings

-Politico.com via -AP

Dick Cheney -

Torture -

War Crimes -

Criminal -

Terrorism -

Intelligence -

Politics -

Military -

Prison -

Law -

US -

Guantanamo_Bay -

Cuba

"Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics: The vice president [Republican Dick Cheney] says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'" ... "[Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely." ... "Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding." ... ""I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News." ... "Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."" ... "His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the [Republican President] Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture." -By Greg Miller

-LAtimes

Global -

Climate -

History -

Earth -

Fossil Fuel -

Gases -

Antarctic -

Pacific Ocean -

US -

Britain

"NASA reports 2008 is ninth warmest year since 1880." ... "The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature measurements began in 1880, and all of the nine warmest years have occurred in the past 11 years, NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] reported on Tuesday." ... "The new data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and other government agencies on Tuesday adds to the evidence scientists have been observing about a warming Earth as fossil fuel burning emits heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere." ... "NASA also reported that the January to November global temperature was 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit above the average for the 20th Century." ... "NASA also noted that the past year was cooler than any since 2000. Scientists note that global warming is a steady trend, but within it there are natural variations." ... "The NASA report noted that "Eurasia, the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm, while much of the Pacific Ocean was cooler than the long-term average." It said the relatively cooler temperature in the tropical Pacific was due to a La Nina, the cool phase of a natural temperature variation." ... "Britain's Met Office on Tuesday also said that La Nina was part of the reason 2008 was slightly cooler than earlier years this decade. By Britain's accounting, 2008 was the 10th warmest year on record dating back to 1850, and all 10 of the warmest years occurred since 1997." -By Renee Schoof

-McClatchyDC.com

Corporate -

Employees -

New York -

Texas -

US -

Worldwide

"Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million (Update1) ." ... "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. [Incorporated], which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. [United States] government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007." ... "The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits." ... "U.S. [Texas Democratic] Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern." ... "“This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said. “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”" -By Christine Harper

-Bloomberg

China -

US -

British -

Hong Kong -

Taiwan -

Foreign -

Language -

Websites -

Police -

Law -

Journalists -

Radio -

Sports

"China 'bans BBC Chinese website': China appears to have banned a number of foreign websites, including the [United Kingdom's British Broadcasting Corporation] BBC's Chinese language news site and Voice of America in Chinese." ... "The sites had been unblocked after journalists attending the Beijing [China's capital] Olympics complained that the government was censoring sites deemed sensitive." ... "The BBC expressed disappointment at the apparent reinstatement of the ban." ... "But a Chinese government spokesman told journalists that some sites contained content that violated Chinese law." ... "Among the other sites blocked are Asiaweek, Reporters Without Borders and some Hong Kong and Taiwan sites." ... "China imposes strict controls on the dissemination of information through the web, employing teams of people to remove sensitive content, police bloggers and remove access to certain sites." ... "In a statement, the BBC said it was disappointed that Chinese-speaking audiences in China were denied access to BBCChinese.com." ... "It said that except during the 2008 Games, the website had been blocked since its inception nearly a decade ago, and Mandarin radio broadcasts had been "subject to persistent frequency interference for decades"."

-BBC/News

BBCChinese.com

Mitch McConnell

Bob Corker

Richard Shelby

Foreign

Money

Government

Politics

Auto

Makers

Working

People

Kentucky

Tennessee

Alabama

Michigan

"Do Southern Senators Really Want to Start a New War Between the States?" ... "When my Southern pals used to say "The South is gonna rise again," I doubt this is what they had in mind: A cadre of Southern [Republican] Senators, heavily financed by foreign automakers and special interests, declaring war on the American Dream of good wages and decent benefits. When did they decide that hard-working people trying to make a better life for themselves are the enemy?" ... "These Senators may want to think twice. Southern states have been benefiting from Northern taxes for years. If they start another War Between the States, the Federal gravy train might suddenly stop at the Mason-Dixon line." ... "Studies by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation have consistently shown that these Senators' states receive far more from the Federal government than they pay back in taxes. That's an irony that could lead to some Blue State bitterness: They love to preach about fiscal responsibility and lower taxes, but they keep dipping their beak into the Federal trough." ... "I believe the applicable Southern phrase is "a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged."" ... "The numbers in [PDF] the Foundation's most recent study (warning: pdf) speak for themselves: [Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell's Kentucky took in $1.45 from the Feds for every dollar it paid in taxes. That's a 45 cent free ride. [Tennessee Republican Senator] Bob Corker's Tennessee received at 30-cent Federal giveaway. And [Alabama Republican Senator] Richard Shelby's Alabama extracted a whopping 71-cent subsidy from Northern taxpayers." ... "What about Michigan? They lost 31 cents for every dollar they paid. In other words, McConnell, Shelby, and Corker have been skimming a percentage off these autoworkers' taxes for years on behalf of their constituents. Now, when the same Michigan taxpayers need help, these Senators are telling them to get lost." -By RJ Eskow

-HuffingtonPost.com

20081215

US -

Iraq -

Religious -

Fashion

"Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult: Around the Arab world, if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're adding serious insult to the threat of possible injury." ... "It's that cultural significance that has added real sting to the assault by an Iraqi journalist against US [United States Republican] President George W Bush at a Baghdad [Iraq's capital] news conference." ... "In Arab culture it's considered rude even to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being." ... "Certainly, crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public place for fear of offending the person next to you." ... "The sensitivity is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim faith." ... "In addition to ritual ablutions before prayer, Muslims must take off their shoes to pray, and wearing shoes inside a mosque is forbidden." ... "Shoes should either be left at the door of the mosque, or carried (preferably in the left hand with the soles pressed together)." ... "But beyond the Islamic significance, the dirty and degrading implication of the sole of a shoe crosses all religious boundaries in the Middle East. " -By Martin Asser

-BBC/News

20081213

US -

Iraq -

Reconstruction -

Money -

Politics -

Foreign -

Production -

Accounting -

Investigations -

Federal -

History -

Military -

Law

"Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders." ... "An unpublished, 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure." ... "The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures." ... "In one passage, for example, [Republican President Bush's] former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"" ... "Mr. Powell's assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004." ... "Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a p