BEIRUT, July 24 -- On an unannounced trip to ravaged Beirut, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined a plan Monday to deploy an international force, possibly led by NATO, in a buffer zone just inside Lebanon for 60 to 90 days, after which it would expand its mission to help the Lebanese army regain control of the south, Lebanese and U.S. officials said.
--sourceGeorge W. Bush did not invent the document known as the presidential signing statement; he inherited it. Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and even James Monroe, in 1830, authored the statements, which spell out the president's sometimes controversial interpretation of the very law he's signing. But no president has used signing statements quite like Bush. Although the president has not issued more statements in total than any other president, he has challenged more than 750 laws in more than 100 signing statements.
And he has used them to, in effect, challenge parts of laws, and challenge them more aggressively, than any president before him. Bush's liberal use of those statements first attracted attention in December 2005, when he signed a torture ban—but then added a statement reserving the right not to enforce the ban, alongside his signature. Since then, Congress has held a hearing to investigate Bush's use of the statements, a bipartisan advocacy group has condemned their use, and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank has introduced a bill that would allow Congress to override content in them that contradicts signed legislation.Now, U.S. News has learned, an American Bar Association task force is set to suggest even stronger action. In a report to be released Monday, the task force will recommend that Congress pass legislation providing for some sort of judicial review of the signing statements. Some task force members want to simply give Congress the right to sue over the signing statements; other task force members will not characterize what sort of judicial review might ultimately emerge.
Republican lawmakers losing positive tone on course of war
story HERE
The NYT off-leads news that the U.S. is expediting a shipment of bombs to Israel, authorized as part of a 2005 arms package. Israel requested the precision-guided bombs a few days ago; an anonymous U.S. official says that weapons were rushed because of Israel's ally status.
With midterm elections less than four months away, the poll also asked respondents whether they would choose a Democratic or Republican candidate "if the election for Congress were held today." Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the Democratic candidate, up from 41% in April, while 31% said they would vote for the Republican candidate, down from 37% in April.
The NYT and LAT front, and the Post stuffs, the latest from Iraq, where the U.N. announced about 100 civilians were killed per day last month, a much higher rate than earlier in the year. The U.N. got the numbers for the Iraqi health ministry and Baghdad's morgue. Nearly 60 people died yesterday when a suicide bomber hit day laborers in Kufa, a Shiite holy city. The bomb exploded across the street from cleric Moqtada Sadr's main mosque.
The LAT's conclusion: "IN IRAQ, CIVIL WAR ALL BUT DECLARED."
Or as visiting Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the NYT while hanging in the Green Zone, "The situation seems far more stable than when I was here two or three years ago. The security seems better, people are more relaxed."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans' international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.--story
The department's Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.
At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.
Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.
Beyond the war, death penalty news makes it to the NYT front, with Missouri officials unable to find an anesthesiologist willing to assist with executions. A federal judge had ordered the state to hire a board-certified anesthesiologist after the doctor who had been giving out the drugs for lethal injections said in a deposition that he, um, improvised in the process. Apparently, the state proposed the job to 298 anesthesiologists, and they all said no.
Maybe they could just stick with the same guy. Sure, he says his dyslexia has led him to mix up phone numbers and cable bill account numbers, and that "it's not unusual for me to make mistakes." But as the NYT points out: "He indicated in his testimony, however, that he had made no mistakes in his death chamber work and that the mistakes elsewhere were 'not medically crucial.'"
A frontpage NYT piece profiles the GI now-accused of raping an Iraqi girl and killing her along with her family. He was a high school dropout with three misdemeanors and was accepted into the Army just as the military, desperate for recruits, began issuing more "moral waivers."--today's papers
There is a growing likelihood that no one will be indicted in the case of the teenage girl who was serially raped on an Israel Air Force base in the south, since the Military Police have failed to turn up any evidence that the servicemen who had sex with her knew she was under the age of consent.
Military Police unlikely to press charges in IAF teen rape case - Haaretz - Israel News
Blogged with Flock
. "The Iraq reconstruction is winding down," said an Army spokesman. "There is no need for new contracts to replace the existing" ones.
--attribution
We're moving along in a positive direction in many, many areas," said the U.S military's top spokesman in Baghdad. Or, as Iraq's national security adviser put it to Al-Jazeera, "We are at the gates of civil war.
Andy Rowe thought he had life after the Army pretty well figured out before he came home from eight months in Afghanistan in November 2003.
An Army reservist since high school, Rowe, 27, planned to serve out the remaining four months of his military obligation in the inactive Reserve, get his honorable discharge and then use his GI Bill education benefits to go to college, just as his father did more than 30 years ago.
But Rowe soon realized that, despite his time in a combat zone, he didn't qualify for those education benefits unless he remained in the Reserves or Guard.
It's the same for tens of thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve troops mobilized since 9/11 — the largest deployment of reservists since World War II.
When military benefits were updated in 1984 through a law called the Montgomery GI Bill, members of Congress and even the military did not envision reservists being called into active duty as frequently as they are today. The law did not extend full college benefits to citizen soldiers and terminated them once they left the Guard or Reserve.
But since 2001, more than 500,000 reservists and Guard troops have been deployed for homeland security duties or sent to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet when they get home, they don't get the same benefits as those who were active-duty service members.
"Looking at how the Reserve forces are being used now, it really upset me," said Rowe, called up from the inactive Reserves to serve in Afghanistan.
--story
Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny.--TPM
I read the review of “The 10 Rules of Sam Walton: Success Secrets for Remarkable Results,” by Michael Bergdahl (“From Iowa to Wal-Mart, Sam Walton Lived by Rules,” June 26 book review) with great sardonic feeling.attribution
Bergdahl wants us to admire Walton for his 10 rules, but Walton and his heirs basically fail in following his rule to “share success with those who have helped you.”
Walton’s legacy is to shift the burden of supporting society to middle-class taxpayers by paying millions of his employees and suppliers as little as possible and forcing tens of thousands of small businesses out of competition.
He coerced local governments to give him economic incentives and tax breaks. At the same time, he got taxpayers to relieve him of his obligation to pay a living wage so that so many of his employees wouldn’t have to go on welfare or public health care.
Compare Walton’s legacy of giving the great bulk of his $80 billion estate to only his small family, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have pledged nearly $40 billion each (with more to come) for the health-care and education needs of the disadvantaged — the group Walton exploited.
Hurray for Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in setting an example of philanthropy totally different from the example set by the Walton family.
— George Thrailkill, Adel.
I thought “cut and run” was a description of the current administration: cut taxes while you run up a huge national debt.
— Stan Beyerman, Des Moines.
Describing those held at Guantanamo as "detainees" or "enemy combatants" is not accurate.
The Supreme Court's Hamdan decision declared them to be prisoners of war, entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, until such time as a properly constituted tribunal concludes otherwise. The thrust of the Court's decision was that the military commissions set up by the Administration did not include the basic procedural safeguards necessary to qualify as a properly constituted tribunal.
As a matter of law now, the United States is holding prisoners of war at Guatanamo Bay. That's a fact, which is obscured when journalists continue to use language first put forth by the Administration specifically to avoid the strictures of the Geneva Conventions.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008968
The NYT fronts an interview with a man—a fundamentalist Muslim—who was taken off the streets of Tanzania three years ago and "rendered" to a secret U.S. jail in Afghanistan where he says guards "suspended me by my arms and attached my feet to the floor. They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink." He was held at a "dark prison" and his recollections jibe with what of others who've been held there. "The American man told me I would die there," he said. Sixteen months after he was taken he was released without charges or an explanation.--today's papers for the links
President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are hell-bent on doing any darn thing they please at any time for any purpose they specify.attribution
They just sit back and gleefully watch U.S. citizens squirm at the fast erosion of our constitutional liberties because they are convinced we will swallow their hollow reasoning that everything they do is done because they are protecting us from terrorists.
My 80 years of personal freedoms are sinking fast into some secret black hole dug by you know who — and it isn’t the terrorists.
— Robert B. Sanderson, West Des Moines.
Last year in the United States, heart disease caused 696,947 deaths, cancer 557,271, tobacco 435,000, medical errors 250,000, alcohol 85,000, air pollution 60,000, firearms 29,000 and terrorists 0.attribution
You are in more danger from lightning, sharks, mosquitoes or falling airplane parts than from terrorists. For any significant terrorism in the United States, you have to go back to 9/11.
Terrorism is being used as a boogie man by the far right to scare people into giving up their constitutional rights and freedom. There was no al-Qaida in Iraq before the war. Even now, according to the Pentagon, only 5 percent of the resistance in Iraq are foreign jihadists.
That means 95 percent of the resistance consists of Iraqi citizens who feel they are fighting to expel a foreign invader. How can President George Bush claim that his war is to bring freedom when the current U.S. government provides aid to about 43 dictatorships worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorists originated?
— Jay Miller, Hills.
One has to wonder what offended the Bush administration so much about the recent report on efforts to track the financing of terrorists.
The administration has been clear that they are correctly trying to disrupt the financial activities of terrorists.
It would take a terrorist with a very limited view of American competence to assume the federal government is not monitoring certain financial transactions.
Meanwhile, the Brussels-based banking consortium assisting in the program, Swift, shows no sign of withdrawing its cooperation. Upon consideration, one almost has to wonder what "offends" the vice president so much.
It seems the administration is so used to embarrassing leaks, such as secret prisons in Eastern Europe or domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, that it is uncomfortable with a leak that shows some degree of competence.
— Zach Steele, Iowa City
The TASA Standard defines trailer volume (and the upper volume limit) with a with a number that is derived using a measurement technique called: "LEQ(m)."says so right here.
The incoming Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was awarded an $18.7 million cash bonus for half a year of work as the chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group, the company said yesterday.--source
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who talk on cellphones while driving, even using "hands-free" devices, are as impaired as drunk drivers, researchers said on Thursday.--source
BEIJI, Iraq - Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday.--full story
The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of assaulting in the March incident, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
The case represents the latest allegations against U.S. soldiers stemming from the deaths of Iraqis. At least 14 U.S. troops have been convicted.
I heard on the news in Iowa last winter we had thousands of Iowans who had their utilities cut because they couldn't pay their heating bill. But what are Republicans worried about? Flag-burning.
How many thousands of Iowans do you know who have burned the flag? If Iowans burned the flag, it was because they tried to get some heat last winter. Are Republicans out of touch?
- D. A. Benda, Toledo.
"Are we supposed to just sit back and take it?"attribution
--Dam Bartlett in response to the White House attacking the media for leaks made by SAO.
To Abramoff, African Client was "Monkey Coloney" Jack Abramoff was a devout and observant Jew, we're told. But his religiosity slipped at times -- especially when talking about the clients he considered his marks.--more muck HERE
For instance, the tiny African nation of Gabon -- whom Abramoff tried to swindle for $9 million in exchange for setting up a meeting with President Bush -- he referred to as "a monkey coloney [sic]."
We already knew his pet name for some Native American tribes ("troglodytes"), although apparently his nefarious sidekick, Michael Scanlon, didn't know what the word meant. “What am I, a dictionary? :) It’s a lower form of existence, basically,” Abramoff e-mailed Scanlon. Just to be clear, Jack added that the indians were "morons." (Roll Call)
WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) thought he had a deal when--story
President Bush, faced with a veto-proof margin in Congress, agreed to sign a bill banning the torture of detainees. Not quite. While Bush signed the new law, he also quietly approved another document: a signing statement reserving his right to ignore the law. McCain was furious, and so were other lawmakers.
...
Rather than give Congress the opportunity to override a veto with a two-thirds majority in each house, he has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret the law on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the USA Patriot Act.
One of the actions undertaken by the Americans and Iraqis was the expulsion of about 50 Iraqis from a three-block area where the new outpost was being set up. The Iraqi civilians were told to gather their things and go—where to was not clear.--story
Bush and Rove's campaign themes include:and the way to counter that? from klook:
Tax cuts: Make them permanent and prosperity will follow.
Seal the border: A guest worker program isn't amnesty.
Medicare: Democrats talk about it; the GOP reformed it.
Energy: It's time to just say no to Mideast oil.
God and family: Increase faith-based programs and confirm conservative judges who promote family values.
Blame the media: They hate us anyway, and now their leaks are damaging national security.
--story
Tax cuts: Make them fair and prosperity will follow. Tax cuts that favor the mega-wealthy don't help middle-class families.
Seal the border: Our ports are not secure, thanks to Dubai Dubya.
Medicare: Democrats saved it; the GOP is trying to destroy it.
Energy: It's time to just say no to Mideast oil. So let's actively support alternative energy sources, let's mandate that vehicles consume less fuel, and let's stop buddying-up to oil sheikhs (photo of Bush holding hands with one of his turbaned petro-sweeties).
God and family: Let's honor the vision of the founders and keep government from meddling in church and family matters.
Blame the media: They hate us anyway, and now their lack of oversight is damaging national security.
And on the "cut and run" meme - most Americans can understand the concept of "good money after bad." At this point, it's clear that the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. To continue slogging it out in a baseless, unproductive, expensive war is to throw good money (American lives, military resources, etc.) after bad. Never forget: The majority of American voters are with the Democrats on Iraq.
There is a lot of touching detail about the relationship between Buffett, 75, and Gates, 50. The NYT says the two "have become extremely close business associates and confidants since they met in 1991," traveling together, advising one another, and "regularly playing online bridge games."
FORTUNE EXCLUSIVE: The world's second richest man - who's now worth $44 billion - tells editor-at-large Carol Loomis he will start giving away 85% of his wealth in July - most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
--more
There are two ways to fight a battle like ours. One is to whisper in the ear of the masses, try subtlely and gradually to change the gender expectations and mythic structures of our culture. That's me. The other is to step up and confront the thousands of atrocities that are taking place around the world on an immediate, one-by-one basis. That's a great deal harder, and that's Equality Now. It's not about politics; it's about basic human decency.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Network adds to its line up of Hollywood Stars and National Leaders
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - June 13, 2005 -- QTELEVISION NETWORK, the television network for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community, announced today that it has signed Cheryl Jacques on as special political commentator of the weekly "Political IQ" segment of "On "Q Live" as well as a special guest host for other events.
"We are absolutely thrilled to have Cheryl join our team. She is a true professional and national leader for the GLBT community - we couldn't have asked for a better person and politician to join our network," said Frank Olsen, President and CEO of QTelevision Network. "We are always looking to add to our dynamic team, and this is a great score for us - we anticipate that Cheryl will add great value."
A national leader in the gay civil rights movement, Cheryl Jacques was the first openly gay State Senator in Massachusetts history. She served as the President of the Human Rights Campaign and successfully spearheaded the defeat of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Cheryl Jacques is a sought after national speaker on gay civil rights and politics. She appears frequently as a commentator on such shows as the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, ABC's World News Tonight, The O'Reilly Factor, CrossFire, ABC's Good Morning America, Nightline, Fox News, CNN, NPR and many other television and radio broadcasts. Jacques is of Counsel to the Boston law firm of Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten.
"I am excited about being part of the QTelevision team and having the opportunity to speak to the GLBT community about the impact politics has on their lives" said Jacques. "QTelevision is a dynamic network that offers a variety of educational and informative programming."
QTelevision Network is unique in that it was built by and for the gay community. The company offers a channel that will unite gay and lesbian audiences through a network that educates, entertains and informs. The network is currently traveling across the country to present live, national coverage of gay pride celebrations during the entire month of June.
About QTelevision Network: This television network was organized to create and develop a network devoted to providing television programming for the gay and lesbian community. While the company expects much of its subscriber base to be comprised of members of the gay and lesbian population, management also believes that quality programming about the gay and lesbian experience, designed to entertain, educate and inform, will attract many other segments of the viewing public. The company's programming will be available on a subscription basis to those desiring its programming. The network will broadcast 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Providing distribution via satellite ensures availability of the network across the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. QTelevision Network is the Network for the Gay Games VII. For further information on programming and subscriptions, please visitwww.qtelevision.com.
Press Release Information Source: QTelevision Network
"In the general's briefing, the future American role in Iraq is divided into three phases. The next 12 months was described as a period of stabilization."—Today's NYT.
"The president said that we have moved from a period of major military conflict to a period of stabilization."—Donald Rumsfeld, press conference, May 2, 2003.
Rear Adm. Harry Harris has described the suicides of three prisoners at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." Harris would have us ignore the fact that these men have been held for four years without charges, contact with an attorney, contact with their families; they are subject to torture and "stress positions" with absolutely no idea if or when they will ever get out.attribution
These were not acts of desperate men who had lost all hope, according to Harris.
Rather, they were carefully choreographed and conducted military operations intended to strike at the United States and our freedoms from their prison cells. They attacked America by killing themselves.
What a load of dung. I do not know anyone foolish enough to drink that Kool-Aid. You exemplify everything that is wrong with the U.S. military and America today.
— Larry Wohlgemuth, Vietnam-era veteran, Ankeny.
