The uncontrollable mob

Looks like the GOP is going to opt out of the YouTube debate

Such democracy is so unruly. Nothing like reinforcing the fact that the GOP rich white men are out of touch with current culture.

I bet they'd agree if the questions came from Jack Bauer...

and just another reason why the GOP is not so hot with the 18 to 35 crowd

The half truth, the partial truth, and anything but the truth

Senate Press Conference Calling For Gonzales Special Prosecutor

.. and Rove finally issued a subpoena as part of attorney firing investigation.

Gonzales

This guy really is a piece of work.

It looks like he may have lied yesterday, and unless he revises his testimony, may face perjury probe.

A video update here: Leahy Doesn’t Buy White House Lies (with the extra bonus clarification of the Cheney f*ck you to Leahy story).

The Whitehouse Coup

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

This looks interesting. How come I have never heard of this? Thank god they failed. And it looks like fascism runs in the Bush family.

One-quarter

Political Wire: Bush Hits 25% Approval

Wow. That's low.

The YouTube Debate questions

For democrats

Joe Biden on republican malarkey

Malarkey!

Slow posting

For the next two 1/2 months... or until my thesis is finished. Until then I will be posting at a very reduced rate...

have a good summer!

Inside The Surge

To continue...

The discussion on this post, here is another perspective on the current practice of development.

Wow

Want to ogle at the sad state of our media today, check this out

from here

these people really haven't left high-school.

Executive privilege trumps all

Another Bush surge: Escalating his own powers

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

Uzodinma Iweala

Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa

Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying."

Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?

The true North, stoned and free

Canada is a nation of stoners

Well, only 16.8% of those between 15 to 64 use marijuana, compared to a global average of 3.8%. Not exactly a nation of stoners, but not bad.

'Give me your money'

make that a hug

It started about midnight June 16 when friends were finishing dinner outside a D.C. home, authorities and witnesses said. That's when a hooded man pointed a handgun at the girl's head.

''Give me your money, or I'll start shooting,'' he said, according to the witnesses.

One guest replied, "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?'' said Cristina Rowan.

The intruder had a sip of Chateau Malescot St-Exupery and said, ''Damn, that's good wine.''

The would-be robber took another sip and put the gun in his sweat pants.

Then the man apologized.

''I think I may have come to the wrong house,'' he said. ''Can I get a hug?''

Rowan wrapped her arms around the man, and the four other guests followed.

The man walked away a few moments later. The group called 911.

Damn hippies.

Because our viewers demanded it

Iraq PM says...

Country can manage without U.S.

At what point to we honor their sovereignty?

Well, my guess is never because, well, Bush doesn't really understand the term:

Impeachment Panel Excerpt

"Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis."

The Moore-Gupta spat continues

this time on Larry King Live

Although, now it is less interesting - just squabbling over facts, all of which still make Moore's point. Overall however, the more press the better. Finally, people willmight wake up to the problems with the system.

No more Friedman Units

Friedman finally gives up hope. Friedman argues for a time table withdrawal from Iraq. No more Friedman Units for him.

Actually, he argues that we should consider an 'all in' or 'all out' strategy. Since the 'all in' strategy is not politically feasible, then he is left with the 'all out' strategy. This means setting timetables for withdrawal, although not without first one last ditch diplomatic effort! But, what makes this more interesting is that it should be UN led not US led.

For all these reasons, I prefer setting a withdrawal date, but accompanying it with a last-ditch U.N.-led — not U.S. — diplomatic effort to get the Iraqi parties to resolve their political differences. If they can, then any withdrawal can be postponed. If they can’t agree — even with a gun to their heads about to go off — then staying is truly pointless and leaving by a set date is the only option.

While in general I am a fan of diplomacy, this is a silly idea. Why? Because Bush and Co. will never allow that to happen. Period. End of debate. I guess it comes down to withdrawal.

Panel moves to cut off funds to Cheney

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to cut off funding for Vice President Dick Cheney's office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules.

A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president's budget until Cheney's office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

Michael Moore VS Wolf Blitzer - Round II

Going with the gut

This will show up on Colbert next week: Homeland Security chief warns of 'Increased risk’: Chertoff bases 'gut feeling' on history, al-Qaeda statements.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of al-Qaeda. "We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated that his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.

DC Madam

Holy cow. The DC Madam has put all the phone records online. You can even go and download them... I downloaded one and they are in TIF image format.

Give the people a call :)

The first to admit

Michael Moore slams CNN, Wolf Blitzer on live TV

Scroll down and watch

And by the way, Lou Dobbs is a right Git, with a capital G.

France ruins all the Chili!

The Path to Happiness

Compassion

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” - Dalai Lama

In experiments run by Davidson and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers studied the brain functions of experienced meditators. Each of the practitioners - six were Buddhist monks and two were lay people - had completed over 10,000 (and up to 50,000) hours of meditation, which is about the same amount of time it takes to become expert in a musical instrument.

These experienced meditators were compared with a group of 10 students who had undertaken a week of meditative training involving 45 minutes of practice a day.

Davidson’s principal tool for examining the meditators was functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which reveal in real time which parts of the brain are most active. In earlier experiments Davidson had shown that fMRI can image where different emotional states take place in the brain. When people experience negative states such as anxiety or depression, brain areas that are most active are the amygdala and the right prefrontal cortex. When people experience positive emotions — happiness, love, confidence, etc — activity in the left prefrontal cortex is heightened. So remember: left is positive, right is negative.

In the more recent study, brain activity was studied both when the meditators’ brains were in a neutral state and while they cultivated unconditional loving-kindness (metta) and compassion. For the beginners there were only minor changes in brain activity between the neutral state and the meditation on lovingkindness, but for the experienced meditators there were massive changes — the degree of change being correlated with the number of hours of meditation each individual had done.

When the experienced meditators generated strong feelings of compassion there was a strong increase in activity in the left (or positive) side of the prefrontal cortex and a decrease in activity on the right (or negative) side. Developing compassion, then, results in the same kinds of brain activity that are shown when someone is in an particularly strong state of wellbeing and happiness. Meditators of course have long known experientially that feelings of love and compassion are accompanied by feelings of happiness, wellbeing, and even of bliss, but in scientific circles these subjective observations have to be backed up by measurements before they can be trusted as reliable data.

A DOJ Lawyer speaks out

Bush justice is a national disgrace

Playing catch-up

Stanford on iTunes U, Stanford's answer to MIT Open CourseWare

Good stuff.

Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner - New York Times

Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.

But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements.

Strange. Don't they know how the MSM is supposed to work?

Strange... blogger seems to be bloggered. Can't change the title.

MoveOn Petition

Stop Executive Overreach

Petition: Stop Executive Overreach

You've probably seen the news that President Bush let Scooter Libby, the one man who was convicted for the lies around the Iraq war, go free.

The obstruction of justice doesn't stop there. The Senate recently subpoenaed documents from the Vice President's office around the illegal wiretapping program and so far he has not complied. It's clear this administration thinks it's above the law.

That's un-American, and it's time for Congress to re-assert its constitutional authority and hold this administration accountable.

Stop the Bush administration's obstruction of justice and sign the petition to Congress.

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to your Senators and Representative.

China blames growing social unrest on anger over pollution

Dirty water and air kill 500,000 a year, says report:

Do not fear no no not logic

Wow. The complete lack of coherent argument is mesmerizing in its single minded simplicity! I would be embarrassed to speak such silliness, but yet, they show no shame... Interesting. Emotional pandering, I must learn that skill.

Sorry Thomas Friedman, The World Is Round

For those who find Friedman irritating...

The no vacation nation

Europe heads to beach, America heads to work

Canada and Japan are only slightly better with only 10 paid vacation days guaranteed by law compared to the Europeans who get 4 weeks by law.

Of course, "In the United States, leave was generally harder to secure for people in low-pay and part-time jobs."

And in totally unrelated news, there is a new theory out there: Yawning keeps the brain cool.

A history lesson

A little birdy told me about this very interesting piece: The defeat that made Britain great

I Chong

The "Libby Motion"

Bush Rationale on Libby Stirs Legal Debate

By saying that the sentence was excessive, I wonder if he understood the ramifications of saying that,” said Ellen S. Podgor, who teaches criminal law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla. “This is opening up a can of worms about federal sentencing.”

The Libby clemency will be the basis for many legal arguments, said Susan James, an Alabama lawyer representing Don E. Siegelman, the state’s former governor, who is appealing a sentence he received last week of 88 months for obstruction of justice and other offenses.

“It’s far more important than if he’d just pardoned Libby,” Ms. James said, as forgiving a given offense as an act of executive grace would have had only political repercussions. “What you’re going to see is people like me quoting President Bush in every pleading that comes across every federal judge’s desk.”

Indeed, Mr. Bush’s decision may have given birth to a new sort of legal document.

“I anticipate that we’re going to get a new motion called ‘the Libby motion,’ ” Professor Podgor said. “It will basically say, ‘My client should have got what Libby got, and here’s why.’

Perhaps this is a way to argue out of the 3 strikes stupidity in California. However, this certainly doesn't signal a change:

Nor is there a reason to think that the Justice Department has changed its position about the sentencing system generally. Indeed, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said last month that the department would push for legislation making federal sentences tougher and less flexible.

It is just more of the same: IOKIYAR

Yoga Today and everyday

A new yoga 1 hour yoga workout each day

it is available through itunes podcast.

I did one the other day, not bad at all.

Put them to work in the administration!

Clever orangutans confirm Aesop's fable

Fireworks

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment: You ceased to be the President of the United States



Happy 4th

Call it what it is

Obstruction of Justice, Continued

All of this means that Bush's decision yesterday to commute Libby's prison sentence isn't just a matter of unequal justice. It is also a potentially self-serving and corrupt act.

Was there a quid pro quo at work? Was Libby being repaid for falling on his sword and protecting his bosses from further scrutiny? Alternately, was he being repaid for his defense team's abrupt decision in mid-trial not to drag Cheney into court, where he would have faced cross-examination by Fitzgerald? (See my March 8 column, Did Libby Make a Deal?)

Looks like the House may be looking into it, at least the theoretical potential misuse of presidential power

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. announced that he will be holding a full committee hearing next week titled, “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.” The hearing will be held next Wednesday, July 11, at 10:15 am in the committee’s hearing room, 2141 Rayburn House Office Building.

“In light of yesterday’s announcement by the President that he was commuting the prison sentence for Scooter Libby, it is imperative that Congress look into presidential authority to grant clemency, and how such power may be abused,” Conyers said. “Taken to its extreme, the use of such authority could completely circumvent the law enforcement process and prevent credible efforts to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch.”

and just a wee bit more:

It will never die

There is still 'Scepticism' over climate claims

I'm beginning to question the responsibility of bringing new people into this world.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t

Bush spares Libby from prison term

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”

Paris gets an unusually log sentence, and Libby has his sentence commuted. Justice!

I'll believe it when I see it

Leahy: If Bush And Cheney Don’t Cooperate With Subpoenas He Will Push To Find Them In Contempt Of Congress

Should get interesting...

New Mexican Bud

Law Requires N.M. to Grow Its Own Pot

Wow, real undercover reporting

Their men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire