Observations on current events

Quid Pro Quo At The Highest Level:

Jason Leopold: George W. Bush and Kenneth Lay
"The Bush administration knew Enron was on a collision course two months before the high-flying energy company collapsed in a wave of accounting scandals that wiped out $60 billion in shareholder value and left thousands of company employees penniless.
It was August 15, 2001, when Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge met with then-White House Economic Adviser Robert McNally, one day after Jeff Skilling made a stunning announcement that he was stepping down as president of Enron.
Shortridge confided in McNally that Enron was headed for a financial meltdown - one that could very well cripple the country's energy markets - and urged the White House economic adviser to alert President Bush about the company's financial problems so he could help put together a federal bailout, according to thousands of pages of documents about the meeting released by the government's Enron Task Force.
It certainly made sense for Enron to seek help from the White House. In August of 2001, Ken Lay was still known as 'Kenny Boy' to President Bush, a nickname Bush bestowed upon him when the two men were up and comers in the Texas energy and political industries respectively.
When Bush announced his intention to run for president, Enron and its employees gave more than $1 million to Bush's 2000 election campaign, the Republican Party and the Bush Inaugural, and Bush aides used the Enron corporate jet during the post-election fracas in Florida.
With Thursday's guilty verdicts against Lay and Skilling on numerous counts of accounting fraud, conspiracy, and dozens of other charges, perhaps Enron should be remembered as - in addition to a symbol of greed - the first in what has become a long list of scandals that can be directly linked to the White House..."


Privacy:

Int'l Herald Tribune: European Court Bars Passing Passenger Data to U.S.
"The European Union's highest court ruled today that an agreement providing for the transfer of extensive personal data on air passengers to the authorities in the United States was illegal. The decision forces the two sides back to the negotiating table at a time when privacy safeguards are increasingly being debated...
...The court upheld a challenge to the agreement brought by the European Parliament, which was not consulted when the accord was reached amid intense pressure from the Bush administration following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. However, it sidestepped the thorny question of whether the transfers of passenger records — including names, passport details, credit card numbers, addresses and phone numbers — violated the civil rights of European citizens.
Parliamentary opponents of the agreement nonetheless said they were pleased with the ruling.
'The European Court is saying yes, the European Parliament was right, that the data transfer agreement is illegal,' said Graham Watson, a British member of the European Union Parliament and chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. 'What will now be needed is some pretty tough talking to get a new agreement in which our concerns about privacy are properly addressed.'
The court gave the European Commission a four-month grace period, until Sept. 30, to negotiate a new treaty with the United States, during which time passenger records would continue to be provided according to the terms of the original agreement.
'This puts European airlines flying passengers in and out of the U.S. in a real dilemma,' said Watson. 'Either they violate E.U. law and give the U.S. what they want or the risk the States turning around and saying your airplanes can't come here,'..."

The NSA And Civil Liberties:

Seymour Hersh: Listening In
"...FISA requires the government to get a warrant from a special court if it wants to eavesdrop on calls made or received by Americans. (It is generally legal for the government to wiretap a call if it is purely foreign.) The legal implications of chaining are less clear. Two people who worked on the N.S.A. call-tracking program told me they believed that, in its early stages, it did not violate the law. 'We were not listening to an individual’s conversation,' a defense contractor said. 'We were gathering data on the incidence of calls made to and from his phone by people associated with him and others.' Similarly, the Administration intelligence official said that no warrant was needed, because 'there’s no personal identifier involved, other than the metadata from a call being placed.'
But the point, obviously, was to identify terrorists. 'After you hit something, you have to figure out what to do with it,' the Administration intelligence official told me. The next step, theoretically, could have been to get a suspect’s name and go to the fisa court for a warrant to listen in. One problem, however, was the volume and the ambiguity of the data that had already been generated. ('There’s too many calls and not enough judges in the world,' the former senior intelligence
official said.) The agency would also have had to reveal how far it had gone, and how many Americans were involved. And there was a risk that the court could shut down the program.
Instead, the N.S.A. began, in some cases, to eavesdrop on callers (often using computers to listen for key words) or to investigate them using traditional police methods. A government consultant told me that tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored in one way or the other. 'In the old days, you needed probable cause to listen in,' the consultant explained. 'But you could not listen in to generate probable cause. What they’re doing is a violation of the spirit of the law.' One C.I.A. officer told me that the Administration, by not approaching the FISA court early on, had made it much harder to go to the court later.
The Administration intelligence official acknowledged that the implications of the program had not been fully thought out. 'There’s a lot that needs to be looked at,' he said. 'We are in a technology age. We need to tweak fisa, and we need to reconsider how we handle privacy issues,'..."

The Raw Story: FCC says they cannot investigate NSA data mining
"The Federal Communications Commission has told a Democratic congressman that they cannot investigate the National Security Agency's domestic data mining program because it is classified, RAW STORY has learned.
In a letter to Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey (posted here), FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the program could not be scrutinized because it was classified..."


Kenny-Boy Lay And The Pro-Business Culture Of Deregulation:

Greg Palast: THE AL CAPONE OF ELECTRICITY - Ken Lay Will Get Away with his Real Crimes
"...The George W. Bush administration, within 72 hours of his inauguration, issued an executive order lifting the Clinton Energy Department's effective ban on speculative trading in the California power market. The state was still in crisis, facing blackouts and 300 percent increases in power bills, the result of 'deregulating' its electric system, as first suggested by Lay...
...Even more sinister than Bush's hasty executive order allowing Enron to resume speculation in the California power market was his appointment of Pat Wood as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the government's electricity cops. The choice of Wood was suggested, in secret, by Enron.
This put Lay one step ahead of Al Capone who had to buy the cops. Lay just had them appointed.
Wood may have been as honest as the day is long, but on his watch, Enron and the industry treaded through the power market like Godzilla through a kindergarten. And it continues under a new chairman, also suggested by Enron.
What about the $6.3 billion filched from the wallets of California consumers, let alone the larger sums taken in by power profiteers nationwide? The Lay-blessed federal regulators barely batted an eye.
Lay's brainchild of deregulation was coupled with his other grand idea: a massive increase in industry largesse to politicians. By unsubtle, but perfectly legal, means around FDR's prohibition on political donations, Enron PACs and its executives became the top Bush funders..."

Is The Administration Above The Law?

Ray McGovern: Should Gen. Hayden Be Confirmed or Court-Martialed?
"...It is interesting, if not surprising, that Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, party loyalist Pat Roberts, decided to call no previous NSA director to testify at the Hayden nomination hearing. Adm. Inman would have been the most experienced and able witness (especially in view of his intimate knowledge of the history of FISA). Roberts would have been well aware that for Inman it is one thing to praise Hayden to Lou Dobbs, and quite another to state under oath that Hayden had not already disqualified himself for the job. It is altogether understandable that Roberts would be reluctant to subject a basically honest officer like Inman to withering cross-examination by the likes of Sen. Russ Feingold.
Call my thinking 'quaint' or 'obsolete,' but I can find no excuse for an officer who lets nearness to absolute power, together with hired-gun lawyers, corrupt and blur his oath to defend the Constitution and responsibility not to obey illegal orders. When I was an Army officer, both were drummed into us; and if we reneged on those promises, we were liable to being drummed out. So I would agree with the first former NSA director quoted above. Hayden should be court-martialed, not confirmed. And Alexander, too."


The Cost of Empire:

Reuters: Pentagon Secret Spending at Post-Cold War High
"The Pentagon's spending on secret programs has hit its highest point since the end of the Cold War, a Washington-based research group said in a report released this week.
Classified programs appear to account for about $30.1 billion, or 19 percent, of the acquisition funds sought in the Defense Department budget for fiscal 2007, according to the report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment.
In real terms, the 2007 request was for more classified spending than in any defense budget since 1988, near the Cold War's end, when the Pentagon received an inflation-adjusted $29.4 billion for such projects, it said..."

Are TelCo Denials 'Authorized' Misinformation?

Think Progress: New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcos To Lie Without Violating Securities Law
"In recent days, AT&T, Bell South and Verizon have all issued statements denying that they’ve handed over phone records to the NSA, as reported by USA today.

There are three possibilities:

1) The USA Today story is inaccurate;

2) The telcos left enough wiggle room in the statements that both the USA Today story and their statements are accurate; or

3) The statements from the telcos are inaccurate.

Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))
There is no evidence that this executive order has been used by John Negroponte with respect to the telcos. Of course, if it was used, we wouldn’t know about it..."

Tax Policy:

It should surprise noone that Bush sees no problem with paying calculated political favors to his 'base' in the top income bracket while increasing deficits (the bill our society hands to its children). Bush can say he is many things, but conservative is not one of them, as his fiscal irresponsibility shows. He's the opposite of a Robin Hood, taking from the poor and the middle class, in order to give to the rich, who apparently couldn't possibly survive without the help.

Knight-Ridder: Bush's Tax Cuts Lose More Money Than They Generate
"When President Bush signed legislation Wednesday to extend lower tax rates for capital gains and dividend income through 2010, he suggested that his tax cuts are behind a surge of new revenue into the Treasury, and implied that it's enough to offset the revenue lost by these reductions.
At a ceremony on the White House lawn, Bush said his tax cuts had helped the economy grow, 'which means more tax revenue for the federal Treasury.'
That's just not true. A host of studies, some of them written by economists who served in the Bush administration, have concluded that tax reductions mean less money for the Treasury.
The cuts Bush extended Wednesday will cost the Treasury an estimated $70 billion over five years. They may help spur economic growth, but they still lose more revenue than they generate. And unless they're matched by lower federal spending, they worsen federal budget deficits.
To be sure, tax revenues grew by $274 billion in 2005, a 15 percent increase over the previous year, and receipts are growing this year too.
But does that mean the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts generated enough additional revenue to pay for themselves?
'No,' said Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He was the chief economist for Bush's Council of Economic Advisers in 2001 and 2002, then the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office until late last year.
Holtz-Eakin said other factors were behind the surge in tax revenues. One is that revenues rise as the population and the economy grow. Revenues would have risen in the post-2001 economic recovery with or without tax reductions, just as they did in the '90s.
Treasury Secretary John Snow conceded Tuesday that the much-touted tax cuts for capital gains and dividend income don't drive today's strong economy..."


Border Security:

NY Times: Seeking to Control Borders, Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors
"The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a 'virtual fence' along the nation's land borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan - like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment - the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States..."


Journalism:

Norman Solomon: Corporate Media and Advocacy Journalism
"...News outlets are adept at producing vivid stories about misfortune. Those stories might be emotionally affecting or even politically mobilizing in terms of relief efforts. But the overarching matter of priorities is not apt to come into media focus. In general, corporate-employed journalists are not much more inclined to hammer at the skewed character of national and global priorities than corporate chieftains or government officials are.
In a world where so much wealth and so much poverty coexist, the maintenance of a rough status quo depends on a sense of propriety that borders on - and even intersects with - moral if not legal criminality. The institutional realities of power may numb us to our own personal sense of the distinction between what is just and what is just not acceptable.
On this planet in 2006, no greater contrast exists than the gap between human hunger and military spending. While international relief agencies slash already-meager food budgets because of funding shortfalls, the largesse for weaponry and war continues to be grotesquely generous. The globe's biggest offender is the United States government, which at the current skyrocketing rate of expenditures is - if you add up all the standard budgets and 'supplemental' appropriations for war - closing in on a time when US military spending will reach $2 billion per day..."


Iraq:

NBC News: Murtha: Marines Killed Iraqi Civilians "In Cold Blood"
"...On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.
U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.
Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that 'there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.'
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.
One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine..."

Washington Post: Italy to Withdraw Troops, Calls Iraq Occupation "Grave Error"
"Another U.S. ally in the war in Iraq distanced itself from the U.S.- led effort today when Italy's new prime minister, Romano Prodi, called the invasion and occupation a 'grave error' and said he would propose a withdrawal of Italian troops.
'We consider the war in Iraq and the occupation of the country a grave error,' Prodi told the upper house of Parliament, wire services reported. 'It has not resolved, but complicated the situation of security.' Italy has about 3,000 troops in Iraq in peacekeeping roles. They are already due to be withdrawn in groups before the end of the year. Prodi did not set forth a timetable for withdrawal and it was unclear whether he would speed up the departure..."

Electronic Voting:

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Will Major Media Stop Hiding Electronic Election Fraud?
"That the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen has become an article of faith for millions of mainstream Americans. But there has been barely a whiff of coverage in the major media about any problems with the electronic voting machines that made those thefts possible - until now.
A recent OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll of Pennsylvania residents, found that '39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. But let's look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary source of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically.'
Here, from that poll, are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70%; MSNBC 65%; CBS 64%; ABC 56%; Other 56%; NBC 49%; FOX 0.5%.
With 99% of Fox viewers believing that the election was 'legitimate,' only the constant propaganda of Rupert Murdoch's disinformation campaign stands in the way of a majority of Americans coming to grips with the reality of two consecutive stolen elections.
That the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post finally ran coverage of problems with electronic voting machines this week is itself big news. It says the scandals surrounding computer fraud and financial illegalities at Diebold and other electronic voting machine companies have become simply too big and blatant for even the bought, docile mainstream media (MSM) to ignore.
The gaping holes in the security of electronic voting machines are pretty old news. Bev Harris's blackboxvoting.com has been issuing definitive research since Florida 2000. Freepress.org warned of the impending electronic theft of Ohio 2004 with Diebold machines eight months before it happened.
After that election, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) issued a report confirming that security flaws could allow a single hacker with a wi-fi to shift the vote counts at entire precincts just by driving by. Then the Government Accountability Office reported that security flaws were vast and unacceptable throughout the national network of electronic machines.
Despite overwhelming evidence that George W. Bush has occupied the White House due to the fraudulent manipulations of the GOP Secretaries of State in Florida and Ohio, none of this has seeped into 'journals of record' like the Times and Post.
Until this week. The Times was sparked out of its stupor on May 11, after officials in California and Pennsylvania warned that Diebold touch-screen machines, slated to be used in upcoming primaries, were hopelessly compromised. Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science and Pittsburgh's high-tech Carnegie-Mellon University, called it 'the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system.'
Douglas W. Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa, says 'this is a barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door.'
The Times refers to the uproar as 'the latest concern about touch-screen machines' while having completely ignored dozens of complaints in Ohio 2004 that voters who selected John Kerry's name saw George W. Bush's light up, or saw the light on Kerry's repeatedly go out before they could complete the voting process.
The Wall Street Journal ran the following kicker: 'Some former backers of technology seek return to paper ballots, citing glitches, fraud fears.'
The WSJ could have ran that story last year after the bipartisan commission on federal election reform co-chaired by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker noted in no uncertain terms that: 'Software can be modified maliciously before being installed into individual voting machines. There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries.'
Indeed. There's every reason because of the unprecedented power and money involved in U.S. politics to trust them less than anybody else..."


Energy Policy:

Sylvie Kauffman: Pipeline Diplomacy
"Forget about Iraq: This watchword tacitly in force at the heart of the transatlantic establishment today allows the West to put up a united front opposite the many crises it must confront, of which Iran is the top-ranking star against a background of global energy insecurity.
'Today, pipelines have become as sexy as missiles,' an American expert recently remarked at the Brussels Forum, a conference organized in the European capital by the German Marshall Fund, an American foundation devoted to strengthening transatlantic ties. 'The problem is that you don't gallivant pipelines around the world like aircraft carriers.'
For the backdrop to all the areas of tension that worry transatlantic leaders - whether it be Iran, Islamist terrorism, or Russia and its progression - is the energy crisis. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso cites energy as one of the three great transatlantic challenges: the others are trade and promoting democracy. With a price above $70 a barrel, 'elevated oil prices are here to stay,' and 'energy is crucial for our long-term stability,' he observes. Europe and the United States alone consume 44% of the world's oil.
Energy instability, gas and oil producing countries' desire to better control their resources to the detriment of international companies (illustrated notably by the spectacular initiatives of President Evo Morales in Bolivia and his colleague Hugo Chavez in Venezuela), the rise in demand and prices, the reduction in global oil production, the fact that Iran harbors the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, Russia's assertiveness as an energy power: All of these factors shatter the landscape..."

Bullying The Fourth Estate:

Journalists, serving the public interest in exposing government law-breaking, malfeasance, and corruption are *clearly* the only enemy of the Republic, or at least so thinks Team Bush...

ABC News: The Blotter
"A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
'It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,' the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.
Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials. The CIA asked for an FBI investigation of leaks of classified information following those reports.
People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.
A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators."

The New Great-If-You-Can-Afford-It Internet:

Robert B. Reich: War on The Web
"This week, the House is expected to vote on something termed, in perfect Orwellian prose, the 'Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006.' It will be the first real battle in the coming War of Internet Democracy...
...Price discrimination is as old as capitalism. Instead of charging everyone the same for the same product or service, sellers divide things up according to grade or quality. Buyers willing to pay the most can get the best, while other buyers get lesser quality, according to how much they pay. Theoretically, this is efficient. Sellers who also have something of a monopoly (as do the Internet pipe companies) can make a killing.
But even if it's efficient, it's not democratic. And here's the rub. The Internet has been the place where Davids can take on Goliaths, where someone without resources but with brains and guts and information can skewer the high and mighty. At a time in our nation's history when wealth and power are becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, it's been the one forum in which all voices are equal.
Will the pipe companies be able to end Internet democracy? Perhaps if enough of the small guys make enough of a fuss, Congress may listen. But don't bet on it. This Congress is not in the habit of listening to small guys..."


On Torture:

Washington Post: Fired Officer Believed CIA Lied to Congress
"A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But another CIA officer - the agency's deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan - was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA's interrogations.
That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with journalists, including Washington Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that 'CIA people had lied' in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading..."

Thank You, Mr. Fitzgerald!

AP: Well, that about says it all.
"...A new court filing presents handwritten notes of Cheney. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is using them to assert that the vice president and Libby, working together, were focusing much attention on Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush administration critic....
...Cheney's notes on the margins of Wilson's opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, reflect 'the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president,' Fitzgerald said in the court filing late Friday...
...Cheney's notes 'support the proposition that publication of the Wilson op-ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant - his chief of staff - on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions,' according to the file..."

Again, How Cheney Pushes The Limits Of Executive Power:

Cheney's desire to grab power for the Executive can be understood in the context of the 'emasuclation' that Congress imposed after Nixon's crimes. Nixon's assertion of 'If the President does it, it's not illegal' is as absurd now as it was then.

New York Times: Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping
"In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.
But N.S.A. lawyers, trained in the agency's strict rules against domestic spying and reluctant to approve any eavesdropping without warrants, insisted that it should be limited to communications into and out of the country, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the debate inside the Bush administration late in 2001.
The N.S.A.'s position ultimately prevailed. But just how Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the agency at the time, designed the program, persuaded wary N.S.A. officers to accept it and sold the White House on its limits is not yet clear..."


Is The NSA Above The Law?

If Congress fails to reign in the Executive, then the answser is clearly 'Yes.'

CongressDaily: NSA Whistle-Blower Will Go Before Congress
"A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens.
Russell Tice, who worked on what are known as 'special access programs,' has wanted to meet in a closed session with members of Congress and their staff since President Bush announced in December that he had secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order. In an interview late Thursday, Tice said the Senate Armed Services Committee finally asked him to meet next week in a secure facility on Capitol Hill.
Tice was fired from the NSA last May. He said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden, who has been nominated to become director of the CIA. Tice said one of his co-workers personally informed Hayden that illegal and unconstitutional activity was occurring.
The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold Hayden's confirmation hearing next week. 'I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It's pretty hard to believe,' Tice said. 'I hope that they'll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn't exist right now.'
Tice originally asked to meet with the Senate and House Intelligence committees, but they did not respond to his request. The NSA did not reply to written questions seeking comment for this story.
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans.
'It's an angle that you haven't heard about yet,' he said,'..."

Chicago Tribune Editorial: The NSA Has Your Number
"The National Security Agency has been amassing a vast, secret database with records of tens of millions of telephone calls made by Americans, USA Today reported on Thursday. Telephone companies started to turn over records of millions of their customers' phone calls not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The government has created the largest database ever assembled, according to an anonymous source quoted by the newspaper.

The government apparently has even bigger plans 'to create a database of every call ever made within the nation's borders' to identify and track suspected terrorists...
...At first blush this program carries troubling echoes of Total Information Awareness, a proposed Defense Department 'data-mining' expedition into a mass of personal information on individuals' driver's licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals, medical prescriptions, banking transactions and more. That was curbed by Congress after a public outcry. It seems the people who wanted to bring you TIA didn't get the message.
This program seems to be far broader than the NSA surveillance of communications between the U.S. and overseas, which prompted great concern when it was revealed last December. Though that program is more intrusive-it involves eavesdropping on conversations-it is at least focused on communications between people in the U.S. and people abroad who are suspected of being connected to terrorism.
That overseas surveillance effort, this page has argued, could be justified and extended if it included some modest judicial oversight.
But this vast mining of domestic phone records … this is something else..."


Government Plays 'National Security' Card

This refrain is getting tired...

New York Times: In Abduction Case, US Argues Secrecy Over Law
"Invoking the need to protect 'state secrets,' the Justice Department urged a federal judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a man whose experience came to symbolize what some have called the unaccountability of a government program that secretly ships terrorism suspects to overseas prisons.
Khaled el-Masri, a Kuwaiti-born German, had gone to Macedonia on vacation when he was arrested there on Dec. 31, 2003, and flown to a prison in Afghanistan, where he was held for five months before being released.
During his incarceration in Kabul, he has said, he was shackled, beaten and injected with drugs. United States officials have said that his case was one of mistaken identity; intelligence authorities may have confused him with an operative of Al Qaeda with a similar name.
The officials said he was released in May 2004 on the direct orders of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorism suspect..."

Will the same card be played here? 'Discussing details of the program would require the revalation of state secrets, so the suit must be dismissed.'

New York Times: Phone Companies Face Massive Lawsuits for Spying
"...Legal experts said the companies faced the prospect of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages over cooperation in the program, citing communications privacy legislation stretching back to the 1930's. A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers..."


Only Those Who Sing Bush's Praises Gets Contracts

One has to wonder: where does the standard of competence enter into the decision-making equation, if 'loyalty' is given such overweighted import.

New York Times: Silent Sam and Anecdotal Al
"...This would be the moment at which we would normally call on the president to ask for Mr. Jackson's resignation. But the country has long since learned that Mr. Bush does not regard poor performance as a firing offense, though the record on that score is clear. So far, Mr. Jackson's standout achievement has been to drop all pretense in revealing how the administration really works..."

The (Fleeting) Right To Privacy:

The connections of such incompetent and negligent corporations to the highest levels of power, and the determent to the public interest of such questionable links ought to be the focus of much more serious journalism.
The failure of the Times to make the association Palast alleges in the article is an example of the dramatic failure of American corporate journalism.

Greg Palast: THE SPIES WHO SHAG US - The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
"...Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.
They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for 'commercial' purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.
Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?
ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.
I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 'felons' that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.
And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected.
And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, 'hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]' from medical to voting records.
And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was 'the number one' provider of DNA info to the FBI.
'And that scares the hell out of me,' said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida 'felons,' Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test 'results' on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.
But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about 'surveillance' of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin).."

Domestic Surveillance:

NY Times: Qwest's Refusal of N.S.A. Query Is Explained
"The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today.
In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive, Joseph N. Nacchio, made the decision after asking whether 'a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request.'
Mr. Nacchio learned that no warrant had been granted and that there was a 'disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process,' said the lawyer, Herbert J. Stern. As a result, the statement said, Mr. Nacchio concluded that 'the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act,'..."

AP: Justice Department Drops Probe of Domestic Spying
"The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.
'We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,' OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday..."


Electronic Voting:

Inside Bay Area: Diebold Voting Machine Security Flaw "Worst Ever"
"Computer scientists say a security hole recently found in Diebold Election Systems' touch-screen voting machines is the 'worst ever' in a voting system.
Election officials from Iowa to Maryland have been rushing to limit the risk of vote fraud or disabled voting machines since the hole was reported Wednesday.
Scientists, who have conferred with Diebold representatives, said Diebold programmers created the security hole intentionally as a means of quickly upgrading voting software on its electronic voting machines.
The hole allows someone with a common computer component and knowledge of Diebold systems to load almost any software without a password or proof of authenticity and potentially without leaving telltale signs of the change.
'I think it's the most serious thing I've heard to date,' said Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin, who published the first security analysis of Diebold voting software in 2003. 'Even describing why I think it's serious is dangerous. This is something that's so easy to do that if the public were to hear about it, it would raise the risk of someone doing it.... This is the worst-case scenario, almost,'..."

Domestic Surveillance:

New York Times Editorial: Ever-Expanding Secret
"Ever since its secret domestic wiretapping program was exposed, the Bush administration has depicted it as a narrow examination of calls made by and to terrorism suspects. But its refusal to provide any details about the extent of the spying has raised doubts. Now there is more reason than ever to be worried — and angry — about how wide the government's web has been reaching.
According to an article in USA Today, the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records on tens of millions of Americans with the cooperation of the three largest telecommunications companies in the nation. The scope of the domestic spying described in the article is breathtaking. The government is reported to be working with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to collect data on phone calls made by untold millions of customers.
President Bush has insisted in the past that the government is monitoring only calls that begin or end overseas. But according to USA Today, it has actually been collecting information on purely domestic calls. One source told the paper that the program had produced 'the largest database ever assembled in the world.'
The government has stressed that it is not listening in on phone calls, only analyzing the data to look for calling patterns. But if all the details of the program are confirmed, the invasion of privacy is substantial. By cross-referencing phone numbers with databases that link numbers to names and addresses, the government could compile dossiers of what people and organizations each American is in contact with.
The phone companies are doing a great disservice to their customers by cooperating. To its credit, one major company, Qwest, refused, according to the article, because it had doubts about the program's legality.
What we have here is a clandestine surveillance program of enormous size, which is being operated by members of the administration who are subject to no limits or scrutiny beyond what they deem to impose on one another. If the White House had gotten its way, the program would have run secretly until the war on terror ended — that is, forever.
Congress must stop pretending that it has no serious responsibilities for monitoring the situation. The Senate should call back Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and ask him — this time, under oath — about the scope of the program. This time, lawmakers should not roll over when Mr. Gonzales declines to provide answers. The confirmation hearings of Michael Hayden, President Bush's nominee for Central Intelligence Agency director, are also a natural forum for a serious, thorough and pointed review of exactly what has been going on.
Most of all, Congress should pass legislation that removes any doubt that this kind of warrantless spying on ordinary Americans is illegal. If the administration finds the current procedures for getting court approval of wiretaps too restrictive, this would be the time to make any needed adjustments.
President Bush began his defense of the N.S.A. program yesterday by invoking, as he often does, Sept. 11. The attacks that day firmed the nation's resolve to protect itself against its enemies, but they did not give the president the limitless power he now claims to intrude on the private communications of the American people."

Quid Pro Quo:

The Tennessean: Vaccine makers helped write Frist-backed shield law
"Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.
E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines.
The communications were made public in a report released this week by the group Public Citizen. Its study follows a February story in The Tennessean that Frist, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., ordered the vaccine liability language inserted in a defense spending bill in December without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice.
The group, called the Biotechnology Industry Organization, wanted such language in the bill, the e-mails reflect..."

Dallas Business Journal: HUD secretary's blunt warning
"Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush..."


Electronic Voting:

The Morning Call (PA): Voting machine warning issued
"Alerted late Tuesday that new electronic voting machines that many counties bought are vulnerable to tampering, election officials in Schuylkill and Carbon counties say they will keep the equipment locked up tight until the May 16 primary.
A 'potential security vulnerability' in machines sold by Diebold Election Systems Inc. of McKinney, Texas, could let 'unauthorized software to be loaded on to the system,' Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortez said in a warning issued to the counties..."

The Fourth Estate:

Sidney Blumenthal: Ridicule and contempt
"The most scathing public critique of the Bush presidency and the complicity of a craven press corps was delivered at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday by a comedian. Bush was reported afterwards to be seething, while the press corps responded with stone-cold silence. In many of their reports of the event they airbrushed out the joker.
Stephen Colbert performed within 10 yards of Bush's hostile stare and before 2,600 members of the press and their guests. After his mock praise of Bush as a rock against reality, Colbert censured the press by flattering its misfeasance. 'Over the last five years you people were so good - over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out ... Here's how it works: the president makes decisions ... The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spellcheck and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!'..."


Again, The U.S. Shows Its Displeasure At Democracy In Action:

It is quite clear that the U.S. feels it has the right to dictate to the Mexican parliament on internal matters...

The Guardian (UK) - US asks Mexico to reconsider 'stupid' drug law
"Mexico is to reconsider a drug law that would have permitted the possession of small quantities of hard drugs, after the US warned the legislation could promote drug tourism to the country's resorts.
The Mexican president, Vicente Fox, yesterday sent the decriminalisation bill back to his country's congress for changes, in a reversal of his promise the previous day that he would sign the bill into law..."

Democracy Now! - Headlines for May 1, 2006
"...Army Officer to Face Criminal Charges for Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse

The Army has announced for the first time that an officer will face criminal charges in connection to the prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The Army is accusing Lt. Colonel Steven Jordan of oppressing Iraqi detainees by subjecting them to forced nudity and intimidation by military dogs. Jordan headed the interrogation center at the prison. He reportedly attempted to hide the abuse of Iraqi detainees by building a plywood wall inside the prison to prevent Iraqi police officers from seeing what was taking place. He is also accused of repeatedly lying to investigators. Former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman says the charges against Jordan might prove that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized criminal conduct. In a December 2002 memo Rumsfeld authorized interrogators at Guantanamo to do what Jordan is accused of - the use of forced nudity and dogs to scare and intimidate detainees.


Prostitution Allegations Surface in Cunnigham Case

In Washington, the FBI has launched an investigation into whether a defense contractor bribed former Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham with prostitutes in order to win political favors. Cunningham resigned last November after admitting to accepting $2.4 million in bribes. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. The defense contractor Brent Wilkes is now being accused of giving Cunningham - and possibly other lawmakers -- free prostitutes, free limo rides and free stays in rented rooms at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels.



Rush Limbaugh Arrested on Prescription Drug Charges

In media news, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was arrested on Friday on prescription drug fraud charges. Limbaugh turned himself in on Friday after he reached a plea bargain stemming from a two-year-old investigation over whether he illegally purchased thousands of painkiller drugs. Prosecutors have agreed to drop the charge in 18 months if Limbaugh continues his treatment for drug addiction.



New York County Plans to Offer Free Wireless

In technology news, Suffolk County on Long Island, New York is planning a offer free wireless throughout the county. The system would be one of the largest government-sponsored wireless networks in the nation..."

Billions For Bush's War Of Choice...

...keeps taxpayer dollars flowing to the 'right' Pentagon contractors. Any proposal to spend billions on U.S. infrastructure, education, or health care is, of course, out of the question.

BBC: US war costs 'could hit $811bn'
"The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has soared and may now reach $811bn (£445bn), says a report by the Congressional Research Service.
It estimates that Congress has appropriated $368bn for the global war on terror, including both conflicts.
It says that if the current spending bill is approved, US war costs will reach $439bn, and it estimates that an extra $371bn may be needed by 2016..."


Questional Executive Authority:

Los Angeles Times: Data Show How Patriot Act Used
"The FBI issued thousands of subpoenas to banks, phone companies and Internet providers last year, aggressively using a power enhanced under the Patriot Act to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens, Justice Department data released late Friday showed.
The report given to members of Congress was the first to detail the government's use of a controversial form of administrative subpoena that has drawn fire because it can be issued by investigators without court oversight.
The Justice Department report also disclosed that its use of electronic surveillance and search warrants in national security investigations jumped 15% in 2005.
The data show that U.S. authorities are in some cases escalating their use of anti-terrorism statutes.
Civil liberties groups said they found the new information worrisome. They said it raised concerns about whether investigators were being sensitive to the rights of citizens caught in terrorism-related probes..."

The Boston Globe: Bush challenges hundreds of laws
"President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, 'whistle-blower' protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty 'to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to 'execute' a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.
But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override..."

The Chicago Tribune: Bush Team Imposes Thick Veil of Secrecy
"As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as 'top secret' or 'confidential,' one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and 'any other entity within the executive branch' to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt.
Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when such offices as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is 'not under any duty' to provide it.
That is only one way the Bush administration, from its opening weeks in 2001, has asserted control over information. By keeping secret so many directives and actions, the administration has precluded the public-and often members of Congress-from knowing about some of the most significant decisions and acts of the White House..."

Jim Hightower: Bush's Imperial Presidency
"...Of course, George, if you have reason to believe that a particular American is talking to al-Qaida, you should scoot over to FISA pronto and get a spy warrant. We don't have time to wait for no stinking court order, he shouts, we gotta jump on these traitors quicker than a gator on a poodle. The FISA system is 'too cumbersome' -- we need 'agility.'
Yeah, well, democracy is supposed to be a little cumbersome, so guys like you don't run amok. Fact is, FISA judges can act PDQ and are hardly restrictive. Of the 5,645 times Bush has requested surveillance warrants, how many did the court reject or defer? Only six! Besides, FISA lets presidents go a-snooping all they want, the instant they want, then come back to court three days later to get the warrant. How cumbersome is that? Even GOP lawmakers didn't buy the agility line, so Bush next tried claiming that Congress had actually given him the go-ahead to bypass the law. On Sept. 14, 2001, he said Congress passed the 'authorization for use of military force,' empowering him to use all necessary force against the 9/11 terrorists. Yet none of the 518 lawmakers who voted for this say that it included permission for Bush to spy illegally on our people. In fact, George W. specifically asked congressional leaders to give him this permission but was turned down. Finally, Bush has resorted to spouting Nixon's maxim that a president's official actions are inherently legal. Even though he broke the law knowingly and repeatedly, the Bushites assert that it's OK, citing a dangerous and thoroughly un-American defense that, as commander-in-chief, he has the constitutional right to break any law in the interest of national security. In matters of war and foreign policy, he, Cheney, and Alberto 'See No Evil' Gonzales claim that the president's authority cannot be checked by Congress or the judiciary -- indeed, they don't even have to be informed.
Nonsense. He's commander-in-chief of the military -- not of the country. He's president, not king. And as president, he's the head of only one of the three co-equal branches. Yet bizarrely and pathetically, Congress has rolled over and even cheered this gross usurpation of its clear constitutional responsibilities -- including its power to declare war, control the public purse, regulate the military, ratify treaties, make laws 'necessary and proper' for the conduct of all government, provide oversight of executive actions and generally serve the public as a check and balance against presidential abuses..."