December 5, 2006

THE THINKING SPOT

Four Hopeful Signs **** Amidst the anger, dismay and depression felt by millions of Americans who see their country's civil liberties being unnecessarily surrendered in the name of 'The Global War on Terror,' there are occasional signs that our justice system is still alive and well
http://tinyurl.com/yfjhu6

HARD TRUTH
*************************************
"The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind." -- Thomas Paine
(1737-1809)
*************************************

WAR
**************************************
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it: Mohandas Gandhi
***************************************

Gates Says US Not Winning War in Iraq - the United States was not winning the war in Iraq, and that an American failure there could help to ignite "a regional conflagration" in the Middle East.
http://tinyurl.com/yy3j9n

Tony Snow: Bush Disagrees With Gates...We Are “Winning” In Iraq...
http://tinyurl.com/ychnap

Nearly as Many Contractors as Soldiers in Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/ygrvcy

US Rendition Foiled in Norway -- Under Norwegian law, no one can be deported to a country where he or she could face torture or the death penalty. Judges in Norway have ruled that Iraq is such a place and will probably remain that way for years.
http://tinyurl.com/yhap2y

THE WHITE HOUSE

Rep. Moran: Bush Told To Be Extra Sensitive About Sen-Elect Webb’s Son…
http://tinyurl.com/y6mhxa

Bush DID KNOW that Webb's son was almost killed! Although we all detest and hold Bush in the greatest contempt, I think such speculation went even beyond the realm of believability for most of us, the thought that this President could be so crude and uncivil as to strut the power of his office and demand that Jim Webb tell him how things were going with his son while in full knowledge that his son had almost died.
http://tinyurl.com/y4982x

I Don’t Talk To My Dad About Policy…“I Am The Commander-In-Chief”...When Bush phones home, policy rarely on agenda
http://tinyurl.com/skaq4

Ex-Prez Bush Sheds Tears of Pride Praising son Jeb in Speech. If he Talks for Dubya, Tears will be for Much Different Reason
http://tinyurl.com/trnct

CABINETS, COMMISSIONS, etc

State Department 'depleted' by mass resignations, 'slow steps'
http://tinyurl.com/y86scy

The price of silence - So, the silence of the most vocal of Bush's critics on the 9/11 panel is bought with a plum 4 year assignment on the Export-Import Bank board.
http://tinyurl.com/swn23

Smuggling, Theft, Bribery at Homeland Security Agency - some of the most disturbing examples coming from the sprawling agency's own employees.
http://tinyurl.com/y8u8ho

POLITICS

Government blacks out whole response to ethics watchdog's FOIA request --- A response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) yielded 100 pages of almost entirely redacted or blacked out material.
http://tinyurl.com/y6dtsb

Gingrich Lies To Assault Free Speech Again - Not content with last week's brazen attack on the First Amendment during a speaking engagement in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich has swung another right hook in the direction of freedom of speech, by exploiting non-existent statements and Neo-Con propaganda as a reason for shutting down websites and gagging political dissent in America.
http://tinyurl.com/yefkeo

The People Party vs. The Money Party: Here Are the Players
http://tinyurl.com/y8htej

White Wall: Union Leadership Needs People of Color
http://tinyurl.com/ukmxg

SCANDAL

V. Fair: White House knew of Foley?
http://tinyurl.com/yk48ad

LEGAL ITEMS
*****************************************
Only the winners decide what were war crimes.: Gary Wills - Author
*****************************************

Fed court to hear 'landmark torture case' against Rumsfeld --- The ACLU and another legal rights organization, Human Rights First, are to appear in court here on Friday "to argue that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is directly responsible for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody," said the release..."The hearing will be the first time a federal court will consider whether top U.S. officials can be held legally accountable for the torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan," the release continues, adding that the lawsuit was first filed in 2005 "on behalf of nine Iraqi and Afghan former detainees."
http://tinyurl.com/y5h5l7

Justices Must Protect Minorities' Rights - the Supreme Court must promote the political rights of minorities and look beyond the Constitution's text when necessary to ensure that "no one gets too powerful." by Justice Breyer
http://tinyurl.com/y87a5p

Justices Weigh Race, School Admissions *** The ultimate decision is likely to be one of the most defining of the court headed by the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., and a powerful statement about where the nation stands more than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education demanded an end to segregated schools.
http://tinyurl.com/ybcy4r

ELECTION ITEMS

Denial after blog claims disgraced Dole won't seek re-election
http://tinyurl.com/yj5yp5

Wealthy Texans paying to derail Hillary Clinton - Richard Collins has put at least $80,000 into a group called Stop Her Now, which launched a new Web site last week targeting the possible frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/y3vpxs

Hillary: I'm going to go for this
http://tinyurl.com/yyv6f2

Wal-Mart Girds for Showdown With New Congress on Unions, Trade - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., long an ally of Republicans, has spent the last two years ramping up political donations to Democrats. The company will soon find out whether that bet will pay off.
http://tinyurl.com/yagzvc

Protesters Demand Revote for Florida Congressional Seat
http://tinyurl.com/yduoso

Panel Rejects Paper Trail Requirement for Voting Machines -- A federal advisory panel on Monday rejected a recommendation that states use only voting machines that produced results that could be independently verified.
http://tinyurl.com/yax472

Barach Obama is saying *Maybe*
http://tinyurl.com/yjhups

ECONOMY

Denver housing market in free-fall as foreclosures eclipse record Denver housing market in free-fall as foreclosures eclipse record -- Denver's 2006 real estate foreclosure rate is now officially the worst on record. With one month left in the year, foreclosures have already eclipsed the record set during the 1988 oil industry collapse which sent Colorado's economy into a tail-spin.
http://tinyurl.com/vblj6

The Housing Crash Recession of 2007 - "As we approach the end of 2006, the economy's prospects for next year appear more gloomy with each new piece of economic data," says Dean Baker. "And, just like President Bush in his assessment of the situation in Iraq, the economic forecasters are gradually revising their forecasts downward, as it no longer appears credible to present the rosy pictures that they had been trying to sell. The trouble began early in the year, when the housing boom that was supposed to continue forever turned into a housing bust."
http://tinyurl.com/umh4f

IRAQ IS BROKE -- MAYBE WE WILL BE, TOO Unless American leadership is even crazier than it has been these last few years, we will be out or well on our way out of the grotesquely expensive disaster in the desert. But many Americans who consider themselves middle-class may be on hard or harder times two years from now. We are living in a house of cards.--Indeed, credit cards, hundreds of millions of them, are part of the reason for the troubles next time. But easy, expensive credit isn't the only danger for "ordinary" Americans. A falling real estate market is a sword over the heads of Americans who have maintained their lifestyle by borrowing against the rising value of their homes. And, most important, whether buying with cash or plastic, ordinary Americans are simply making less money for more work.
http://tinyurl.com/y9wzj9

The Dollar Melts as Iraq Burns
http://tinyurl.com/yak3z4

U.S. predicts bumper year in arms sales - The U.S. government is on its way to brokering about $20 billion in arms sales in the fiscal year that began October 1, steady with last year's near-record total, the Pentagon official responsible for such sales said on Monday .--- ((America: Supplying the global death trade!))
http://tinyurl.com/y8ogjk

CONGRESS
*************************************
“Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right.” : Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968
*************************************

Democrats Who Opposed War Move Into Key Positions -- With the Democrats taking over control of the House next January, the views that some voiced during two days of debate four years ago are worth recalling, since many of those lawmakers will move into positions of power. They include not only members of the new House leadership but also the incoming chairmen of the Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget and Judiciary committees and the Select Committee on Intelligence
http://tinyurl.com/ylo6dn

Republican "Do Nothing" Congress' Last Act is to Sabotage New Democratic Majorities by Leaving them 9 of 11 Appropriations Bills
http://tinyurl.com/tjwzm

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, Incoming Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Bush Shouldn't be worried; he should be terrified.
http://tinyurl.com/yc8xkf

Dingell Seeks Energy and Commerce Oversight - "There has been literally no oversight in the last six years," Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.), incoming chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told Muckraker yesterday. "It's been nothing more than Kabuki theater." That's why Dingell says he's gearing up to hold oversight hearings investigating the Bush administration's energy and environmental policies, as are his Democratic colleagues Barbara Boxer (Calif.), soon-to-be-chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Henry Waxman (Calif.), incoming chair of the House Government Reform Committee, which conducts oversight of the US EPA.
http://tinyurl.com/yl4s3v

Sen.Boxer Says No More Environment Rollbacks - Environmental rollbacks from the Bush administration "in the dead of the night" are history, the incoming head of the Senate environment committee declared Tuesday. "That's over. We are going to bring these things into the light," Senator Barbara Boxer said.
http://tinyurl.com/ydf5h5

House to Consider Abortion Anesthesia Bill - fetuses feel pain and require abortion providers to offer pregnant patients anesthesia for their unborn child.
http://tinyurl.com/y25mpy

Tuesday a bill to open a large area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling after it became clear the legislation lacked the two-thirds vote needed for passage.
http://tinyurl.com/y8ggc3

ENVIRONMENT

Nuclear Waste Dumps for 11 Communities
http://tinyurl.com/y9xb3x

Energy Crisis? Let’s Stop Ignoring the Obvious:
http://tinyurl.com/yj7ukb

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Study Confirms: Neanderthals Were Cannibals...
http://tinyurl.com/y83sqm

Researchers are teaching robots to interact intelligently with humans:
http://tinyurl.com/yhxwdp

INTERNATIONAL

Richest 2% 'own half the world'
http://tinyurl.com/y94j6h

Israel, Iran Holding Debt Talks –
http://tinyurl.com/ybqyxh

Thailand issues license to manufacture generic version of Efavirenz; snubs Merck AIDS drug monopoly:
http://tinyurl.com/yf8kln

Search for Crops That Can Survive Global Warming
http://tinyurl.com/yctunp

MILITARY
***************************************
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty: George Washington
***************************************

Navy Times Editorial Blasts “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” Policy As “Failed”...
http://tinyurl.com/y5gwnb

MEDIA AND JOURNALISM
**************************************
“The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press.” . . . . “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” "At the Audubon, December 13, 1964." In Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman, 96-114. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964, 101
**************************************

New Wesley Clark Book Coming Next Year...Vehicle For '08 Presidential Bid...
http://tinyurl.com/y58ptk

EDITORIALS - OPINIONS

Two More Years -- "We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they're still in short supply."
http://tinyurl.com/yl6dlq

Bush's Second-Biggest Mistake
http://tinyurl.com/yjzkbj

A CIA Insider's Take on Gates (Ray McGovern) - former CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates's branch chief in the early 1970s writes: "As Iraq goes down the drain, and 'the crazies' accelerate their campaign to bomb Iran, what is more important than a defense secretary from whom Congress can expect truthful testimony? Hold the Gates nomination over to January."
http://tinyurl.com/yee84f

HEALTH

Stem cells 'could cure diabetes' - “Advances made in the past two to three years have been astonishing. The prospects are very exciting.” Research is under way to try to convert embryonic and adult stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells.
http://tinyurl.com/yesnyl

The EPA has found a clever way to potentially regulate colloidal silver out of the market: they've announced they will classify the substance as a "nanotechnology pesticide" and force colloidal silver companies to prove it's safe if they want to keep selling it....But where is the EPA's scrutiny of all other nanotech particles in foods, skin care products and drugs? Nowhere to be found, of course.
http://tinyurl.com/yzak43

New Canadian plan against cancer focuses on diagnosis, screening and treatment, but not nutrition:
http://tinyurl.com/y9vzch

Consumer sues food company over "fake" guacamole:
http://tinyurl.com/y6t6yd

New York City Passes Trans-Fat Ban - from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.
http://tinyurl.com/ygrdgf