The WAWG Blog

Conservative Progress for America Voter Fund functioned like a political action committee without registering to become one – The Progress for America Voter Fund attacked John Kerry in the last presidential race. As a result, they have received the largest fine ever levied by the Federal Election Commission.

Glenn Beck makes more distasteful comments – Dina Sansing from US Weekly was stunned into silence when Glenn Beck hinted that he’d like to take some nude photos of her during the discussion about tawdry pictures of American Idol’s Antonella Barba.

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U.S. Intel Was Wrong on North Korea – The Bush administration has long accused North Korea of secretly pursuing a nuclear bomb using enriched uranium, in parallel with their public efforts to make one out of plutonium. But now, U.S. intelligence officials are admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made, raising new questions about the White House’s North Korea policy and underscoring broader questions about the reliability of American estimates of foreign weapons programs.

White House and Senate Republicans Threaten to Veto 9/11 Bill to Prevent Airport Workers from Unionizing – As the Senate began debating legislation yesterday geared towards implementing many of the stalled recommendations of the 9/11 commission, President Bush warned that he would rather veto the bill than allow union protection to be extended to 45,000 airport workers, as called for by one provision. One day earlier, 36 Senate Republicans promised Bush that they would provide the needed votes to uphold his threatened veto.

Fired US Attorney Says Lawmakers Pressured Him to Probe Democrats – David C. Iglesias, the departing U.S. attorney in New Mexico, yesterday added to widespread speculation that his dismissal was politically motivated, saying that two members of Congress attempted to pressure him to speed up a probe of Democrats just before the November elections. Iglesias also responded to claims by the Justice Department his firing was due to performance and attendance issues, countering with his positive job reviews and data showing increasing numbers of prosecutions. He also noted that he is required to serve 40 days a year in the Navy Reserve.

Top Officials Knew of Neglect at Walter Reed – Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003 the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army’s top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to several officials.

US Warns Europe Against Probe of CIA Activities in Europe – John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, today warned European nations against continuing with their ongoing inquiries into secret CIA activities in the EU, saying that their efforts may undermine intelligence cooperation between the United States and European nations. EU lawmakers wasted no time rejecting Bellinger’s criticism and called on the United States to halt its “unacceptable” policy of imprisoning suspects indefinitely without trial.

Regards,

Jim

FOX News Contributor Dick Morris One Of Top 100 Tax Delinquents In Connecticut – Republican political consultant and Fox News contributor Dick Morris owes Connecticut over $280,000 in taxes and has been on the state’s list of tax delinquents for years. Morris is infamous for remarks such as Bush’s ratings are going to soar over the next year, and, “The people who said this storm [Hurricane Katrina] is going to hurt Bush’s presidency are just wrong,” and “if the election were held today that they [Democrats] would win the White House, whoever was the nominee. And it is not because of George Bush’s failures, it’s because of his successes.” Morris makes the claim that he is a bipartisan consultant although as early as 1988, he has said he decided to work only for Republicans, a claim he reiterated in 1995; although he worked secretly on the Clinton campaign in 1992.

Latest data on America’s fiscal outlook shows “a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control” – The January update was based on new data supplied to the Government Accountability Office by the Congressional Budget Office, and identified spiraling national health care costs as the main culprit for the country’s budgetary woes. The report also challenged a key assumption about the nation’s fiscal future made by President George W. Bush in his release of the 2008 budget. Using a pair of different simulations of government outlays, the GAO bluntly states that “the Nation’s long-term fiscal future is ‘at risk.'” It considers different futures in which discretionary spending grows more quickly or slowly, and in which tax cuts are renewed or allowed to expire.

Some US aid distributed to Sunni groups in Lebanon falls into the hands of radical groups – “We’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” a former senior intelligence official said, and that has “serious potential unintended consequences.” Such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” the source said. “It’s a very high-risk venture.” A member of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government in Lebanon said: “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al-Qaeda types to have a presence here.” In some cases, the clandestine operations rely on Saudi Arabia and its national security advisor, Prince Bandar, to provide the funding, so that operations remain secret,

Fox News Guest says media are liberals who normally don’t care about the troops – On Fox News, James Pinkerton makes the laughable observation that the media failed to report about the scandal at Walter Reed because they are liberals who normally don’t worry about the troops so why would they care about the conditions at Walter Reed.

GOOD NEWS!

On 2-22-07, I told you about TXU’s plans for new coal-fired generating plants. But now, … Environmentalists Hail Takeover Plan for Texas Utility
– The prospective owners of Texas’ largest electric utility – whose $45 million takeover bid was approved last night by TXU Corp.’s board – have said they plan to cancel eight of 11 coal plants proposed by the company and also back national legislation for mandatory reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, in what environmentalists hail as a potentially major turning point in the battle against global warming.

Regards,

Jim

Texas Governor Perry took Merck money before mandating cervical vaccine – Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) says that it’s just a coincidence that he and eight other lawmakers received donations of $5,000 each from Merck lobbyists just a few days before mandating the drug giant’s HPV cervical cancer vaccine for all females in Texas ages 12 and up.

Oil and Coal Lobbyist in Bed with Interior Department

• Steven Griles, lobbyist for coal, oil, and other corporate interests gets job in Interior Department.
• Griles begins lobbying on the inside for his former clients. On one occasion, for example, he calls over to the Environmental Protection Agency to urge that an environmental study not delay a huge coal-bed methane project planned by his former clients in Wyoming and Nevada.
• Interior Department assigns an official to keep an eye on Griles.  That official is Sue Ellen Wooldridge, then the deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
• Griles and Wooldridge begin dating.  But they didn’t tell that to anyone at the Interior Department, especially not the Inspector General, who was investigating Griles for ethics violations.
• Wooldridge writes a letter to the Inspector General siding with Griles.
• Griles recommends Wooldridge for promotion to be the Solicitor of the Interior Department.
• At her confirmation hearing before the Senate, Wooldridge is asked about any possible conflicts of interest, as she would now be overseeing all ethics matters at Interior. She says no.
• Griles leaves the Interior Department to return to lobbying for energy interests, and Wooldridge is again promoted, this time to being the Justice Department’s top environmental prosecutor.  She is again asked during her Senate confirmation hearing if there are any possible conflicts of interest for her taking the job.  She does not mention Griles.
• Griles and Wooldridge, who are already living in a condo together, decide to buy a $1 million vacation home with another oil lobbyist, Don Duncan, the top lobbyist for ConocoPhillips.
• A few months later, Wooldridge, on behalf of the government, signs a deal to let ConnoPhillips “delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup.”
• Griles has now been informed by federal prosecutors that he is a target in the Abramoff investigation

46 of 49 Nations Approve Cluster Bomb Ban; US Snubs Conference – A declaration calling for a 2008 treaty banning cluster bombs was adopted Friday by 46 out of 49 nations attending a conference in Oslo. Though Poland, Romania and Japan opted to vote against the resolution, the U.S. did them one better, refusing to even attend the conference.

Egyptian Blogger Sentenced to Jail – An Egyptian court has sentenced 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman to four years in jail after Soliman used his blog to call President Hosni Mubarak a dictator and criticize the country’s top Islamic institution as “the university of terrorism”.  It’s worth noting, once again, that the Bush administration’s passion for Democratic reform in the Middle East has not extended to its ally Egypt, long rumored to be the White House’s proxy torturer of choice.

N.Y.U. Student Republicans Mount “Immigrant” Hunt – Members of the College Republican club of New York University held a “Find the Illegal Immigrant” challenge.  An student played an “illegal immigrant,” wearing a name tag saying as much.  The first contestant to find him or her in the crowd was supposed to win a prize.

Army deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs – In the Army — in the midst of a war — the number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005,

EPA Closing Its Libraries, Destroys Documents – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun closing its nationwide network of scientific libraries, effectively preventing EPA scientists and the public from accessing vast amounts of data and information on issues from toxicology to pollution. Several libraries have already been dismantled, with their contents either destroyed or shipped to repositories where they are uncataloged and inaccessible.  Members of Congress have asked the EPA to cease and desist.  Please call EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson at (202) 564-4700 and tell him that scientists and the public should retain access to this information.  Urge him to immediately halt the dismantling of the library system

Michael Savage says Diane Sawyer: is a “lying whore” who “in essence, is agreeing that the Holocaust didn’t occur” – On the February 16 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage asserted that ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer was “aiding and abetting” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a February 13 interview, in which, Savage claimed, Sawyer had refused to challenge Ahmadinejad’s statements denying the existence of the Holocaust.  Savage said: “Here Diane Sawyer goes to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and does not once say to him, ‘How could you deny the Holocaust?  Here are the pictures of the 6 or 7 million Jews that Hitler killed. How dare you do this to the world?’ ” Savage added: “So Diane Sawyer, in essence, is agreeing that the Holocaust didn’t occur.”  In fact, in her interview with Ahmadinejad, Sawyer asked, “Would you be willing to go to Auschwitz and see their documentation?  You’re a scientist.  Would you be willing to look at the room with documentation?”  When Ahmadinejad responded: “Do you think it would solve any problem?” Sawyer replied: “It would be information for you if you genuinely believe it’s a myth.”   Savage said Sawyer was “disgusting” and “full of crap” and repeatedly called her a “lying whore,” a “prostitute,” and a “witch.”  He added, “I stand by those words, and if you don’t like it, sue me. Take me to a court of law for calling you a whore, because you are an intellectual prostitute for what you have done for ratings.”  Click on the title above for addresses and phone numbers where you can register your complaints about Savage.

Regards,
Jim

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), President Bush’s political appointees have been hard at work pushing misinformation about science and scientific work since August 2001.

Here is a list, by agency, of the 62 cases documented by UCS of Bush’s Administration’s obfuscation of science:

Army
Army Science Board

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Cattle Grazing
Post Disturbance Logging

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Abstinence Only Sex Education Science
Abstinence Only Sex Education Curriculum
Breast Cancer
HIV/AIDS Education
Childhood Lead Poisoning Panel
Sexually Transmitted Disease Panel at CDC

Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Airborne Bacteria
Forest Management
Spotted Owl

Department of Education
School Vouchers

Department of Energy
Aluminum Tubes in Iraq
National Nuclear Security Administration Panel

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
International AIDS Conference
Prescription Drugs Mifepristone and Misoprostol
Vetting of experts on WHO Panel
Workplace Safety Panel

Department of Justice (DOJ)
Racial Profiling

Department of State
Arms Control Advisory Panel

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Air Quality Monitoring
National Ambient Air Quality Standards
Atrazine
Climate Change
Fuel Efficiency
Mercury
Libraries
Mountaintop Removal Mining
Oil Extraction
Pesticides
Particulate Matter Pollution
Plywood Plant
Air Quality Proposals
Selenium
Toxic Chemicals Release
Ground Zero

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Emergency Contraception
UCS Federal Scientists Surveys
Ketek
Nerve Stimulator
Reproductive Health Advisory Committee
Vioxx

National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH Drug Abuse Panel
NIH Fogarty International

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
James Hansen

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
UCS Federal Scientists Surveys
Hurricanes
Endangered Salmon

Navy
Sonar and Whales

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
OMB Peer Review

President’s Council on Bioethics
President’s Council on Bioethics

Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
Bull trout
Endangered Species Act
Florida Panther
UCS Federal Scientists Surveys
Endangered Species Genetics
Marbled Murrelet
Mountaintop Removal Mining
Prairie Dogs
Red Frog
Roundtail Chub
Sage Grouse
Trumpeter Swans
Tabernaemontana rotensis (a plant)

Note: UCS Surveys and Mountaintop Removal Mining are placed under more than one agency.

UCS also stated, “In 2004, 62 renowned scientists and science advisors signed a scientist statement on scientific integrity, denouncing political interference in science and calling for reform. On December 9, 2006, UCS released the names of more than 10,000 scientists of all backgrounds from all 50 states—including 52 Nobel Laureates—who have since joined their colleagues on this statement.”

TXU Coal Plant Lawyer Says That Global Warming is “For Kings And Presidents…To Decide” – A lawyer for TXU Corp has told the judges who will rule on whether it can build a slew of new coal-burning power plants here that global warming is not on the docket, and none of their concern. “It’s for kings and presidents and world leaders to decide how to address global warming,” argued TXU attorney John Riley. “It’s not for air permit hearings.” With no kings in sight, Texans who oppose TXU’s plan to build 11 new plants across the state are nonetheless looking to two administrative judges to block the plan. They argue it would double CO2 emissions here overnight. Texas already emits more of the greenhouse gas than any other state in the country.

Bush Administration Not Listening to Pentagon, AGAIN – Vice President Dick Cheney called the pullout of British troops from Southern Iraq “an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well.” But the Pentagon, in its most recent quarterly report to Congress, listed Basra in Southern Iraq as one of five cities outside Baghdad where violence remained “significant,” and said the region was one of only two “not ready for transition” to Iraqi authorities.

Health Spending On Pace to Double in 10 Years – U.S. spending on prescription drugs, hospital care and other health services is expected to double to $4.1 trillion – nearly 20 cents of every dollar spent – over the next decade, up from $2.1 trillion in 2006, according to a report out Wednesday from the National Health Statistics Group.

State ID Laws Causing Low Voter Turnout – States that imposed identification requirements on voters reduced turnout at the polls in the 2004 presidential election by about 3 percent, and by two to three times as much for minorities, according to new research, supporting concerns that blacks and Hispanics could be disproportionately affected by ID requirements.

Conservative columnist backs homophobic athlete, says NBA ‘love machines’ wouldn’t shower with gays or ‘morbidly obese women’ – A columnist known for his conservative stance on morals writes that former NBA star Tim Hardaway was right to some degree in his harsh dismissal of homosexuals, and says most basketball players wouldn’t want gays showering with them any more than they would want “profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women.”

Fox News Claims Iraqi Insurgency Is Not “Homegrown”, is Made up Mostly of Foreign Fighters – Fox’s Red Eye panel discussed the development during the Feb. 21 show where the panel claimed the Iraqi insurgency is made up mostly of foreign fighters “which we’ve pretty much known all along”, and is not “homegrown.” Fox is either completely ignorant of the war in Iraq or is plainly lying to the audience. The Iraqi insurgency actually is “homegrown”, with only 10% of insurgents made up of foreign fighters. These numbers come from a U.S. government study that states, “Up to 3,000 foreign insurgents may be fighting in Iraq, but they remain a small part of the overall rebellion, a US military analyst has suggested…The figure is three times as large as unofficial Pentagon estimates, but may total no more than 10% of insurgents.”

Fox News Conflates MoveOn Members With “Perverts and Arsonists” – On Feb. 22, Fox’s Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld and panel discussed the topic of virtual child pornography by saying, “Isn’t it better to create an alternate universe where perverts and arsonists and people who belong to Moveon.org, can go and do these things without causing any problems?” This blatantly offensive comparison is not worthy of a news station. To contact Red Eye about the slur, you can send an e-mail to redeye@foxnews.com.

Bush Escalation May Shorten Downtime for National Guard Units – The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, with units from Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio facing the prospect of drastically shortened breaks between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday. The Oklahoma unit had not been scheduled to go back to Iraq until 2010, and brigades from the other three states not until 2009.

Fox News’ Repeatedly Attempts To Discredit Barack Obama – The short video (linked below) exposes Fox News’ repeated attempts to discredit Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Watch at the link below to see Fox anchors misrepresent Obama’s education, the implications of his middle name, and focus on his smoking habit.

Regards,

Jim

Dick Cheney and Libby countermanded and misled colleagues as they pursued clearing Cheney’s name in connection with flawed pre-war intelligence – Hours of testimony and reams of documents in the trial of Lewis Libby has shown Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff Libby countermanding and even occasionally misleading colleagues at the highest levels of President Bush’s inner circle as the two pursued their own goal of clearing Cheney’s name in connection with flawed pre-war intelligence.

U.S. placing missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic may start new cold war with Russia – In a statement reflecting the growing distrust between Moscow and the West, a top Russian general on Monday warned that Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted by Russian missiles if they agree to host U.S. missile defense bases. The stark threat, by missile forces chief Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, was one of the most bellicose comments yet by Russian officials on the issue, which 10 days ago led President Vladimir Putin to warn of a “new Cold War” in a speech in Munich that shocked Western governments.

Justice Dept. inflated terror stats to include marriage fraud and drug cases – Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday. Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found.

Glenn Beck Says, “I Find It Difficult To Feel Bad For New Orleans” – Glenn Beck, who called the Katrina families “scumbags“, attacks New Orleans again..

I find it very difficult in some ways to feel bad for New Orleans, because you’ve voted your government in. It’s a bad government. You didn’t know that after Katrina, as you were sitting there and the buses were underwater, but the city of New Orleans would like to let you know that crime usually decreases during Mardi Gras.

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Bush friends hold plum jobs, retain power in Washington – Six years into Mr. Bush’s presidency, the corps of loyal Texans who accompanied him to Washington from Austin remains a powerful force inside the administration, a steady source of comfort for an increasingly isolated president. No matter how grim the polls or dire the news in Iraq, they have stood by Mr. Bush — and been rewarded with plum jobs — as their lives have grown increasingly intertwined with one another’s and with his.

Church will continue to provide disgraced former pastor Ted Haggard approximate $130,000 salary – Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in November after former male escort Mike Jones alleged Haggard paid him for sex and sometimes snorted methamphetamine. Haggard was removed as senior pastor at New Life and admitted to “sexual immorality” in a letter to the church.

FOX News Says Teachers Unions more dangerous than Al Qaeda and Democrats are to blame for Iraq – On Hannity & Colmes (2/19/07), FOX News favorite Neal Boortz announced that teachers unions are more dangerous than Al Qaeda. That was just the first of many attempts to paint Americans with whom he disagrees as equivalent to enemy combatants. The guest on that show also said, “But our efforts in Iraq have been sabotaged by Democrat hatred of George Bush.”

Bush Makes it Easier for Him to Declare Martial Law and Take Over Local Law Enforcement – A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

Big Brother is Watching You – Innocent Americans’ data is being swept up and stored thanks to the use of the “full pipe” data gathering technique. Second, that the government’s Total Information Awareness Program – which was “killed” but never defunded – was being used to build domestic spying facilities around the country. Whistleblowers have come forward to establish the existence of another secret spy room on AT&T’s network, built post 9-11.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates Says Reviews for Windows Vista Have Been Fantastic Despite all the Bad Reviews – Asked if there was anything that would make Microsoft cautious about the outlook for Vista, Microsoft founder Bill Gates replied: “I don’t know what you mean. Vista’s had an incredible reception. The reviews have been fantastic. This is a big, big advance in the Windows platform.”

Bill Gates seems to be in an alternate universe. Windows Vista’s “incredible” reception and “fantastic” reviews includes:

The Register: Vista first look: Bugs and confusion; “Don’t buy it” – February 14, 2007

Forbes: “Dim Vista: Windows Vista utterly unimaginative, internally discordant and woefully out of tune” – February 9, 2007

Digit: Don’t buy Vista; Microsoft may be driving millions to stick with XP or move to Apple Mac – February 05, 2007

TIME Magazine: Microsoft’s Windows Vista “an embarrassment to the good name of American innovation” – February 02, 2007

The Inquirer: Microsoft’s Windows Vista Makes Me Sad: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007

Digit: “Microsoft’s Windows Vista may be the best reason yet to buy an Apple Mac” – January 29, 2007

Pioneer Press: Vista’s pretty, but it’s a shameless Mac OS X imitator – January 29, 2007

CNET Reviews Windows Vista: Is that all? Clunky and not very intuitive vs. Mac OS X; warmed-over XP – January 24, 2007

Wall Street Journal: Mossberg: Microsoft’s Windows Vista offers lesser imitations of Apple’s Mac OS X features – January 18, 2007

Technology Review: Windows Vista disappointment drives longtime “Microsoft apologist” to Apple’s Mac OS X – January 17, 2007

InformationWeek Review: Apple’s Mac OS X shines in comparison with Microsoft’s Windows Vista – January 06, 2007

NY Times’ Pogue reviews Microsoft’s Windows Vista: “Looks, Locks, Lacks” – December 14, 2006

Dave Winer: “Microsoft isn’t an innovator, and never was – they are always playing catch-up” – December 01, 2006

The Inquirer: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006

Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006

Microsoft second rate copy job: Windows Vista Flip3D vs. Apple Mac OS X Expose’ – June 26, 2006

Windows Vista rips-off Mac OS X at great hardware cost (and Apple gains in the end) – June 13, 2006

Computerworld: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista – June 02, 2006

Why Vista’s DRM is Bad for you – February 14, 2007

Computerworld: Windows expert dumps Windows, switches to Apple’s Mac OS X – February 08, 2007

Windows sufferer spends six hours trying to “upgrade” to Vista, says: “I should’ve bought a Mac” – February 07, 2007

Ballmer Blames Pirates for Poor Vista Sales – February 19, 2007

Regards,

Jim

Month to Month Change

In this sixteenth survey of the web, The WAWG Index group average was up by 0.8 percent from January 2007. Of the fourteen categories tracked, 8 were down, 5 were up, and 1 was unchanged. The cumulative change for the index is up 225 percent since October 2005. The largest decrease for January, at 9%, was for “national security.” The largest increase was for “control of mass media” at 23%.

Twelve Month Moving Average

Through February, the 12 month group moving average for all fourteen categories was at 14.0 percent. It was 19.6 percent last month. Of the fourteen categories tracked, 4 have twelve month averages that were down while 10 are up – a change of one from last month. “Separation of church and state” went negative, from +0.3 to -0.2 percent.

Consumer Product Safety Commission Kept Findings About Lead in Lunchboxes Secret – In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunchboxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe — and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels. But that’s not what they told the public. Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found “no instances of hazardous levels.” And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

This January Was the Warmest on Record – U.S. climatologists say that last month was by far the hottest January on record, with the world’s land areas found to be 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average. That breaks the old record, set in 2002, by 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit; especially significant, say meteorologists, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time.

Wounded Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Walter Reed Army Medical Center – With combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing after more than five years, the Army’s top medical center is showing the strain, forcing hundreds of wounded and maimed U.S. soldiers to await their discharge – overdue, in more than 700 instances, thanks to an overwhelmed bureaucracy – in filthy, vermin-infested rooms.

Republican Donor Indicted for Terrorism Financing – Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari has been indicted for terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and other charges. Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party and he claims to have been named National Republican Campaign Committee New York State Businessman of the Year in 2003.

Regards,

Jim

Senator Ted Stevens wants to ban Wikipedia – Remember US Senator Ted Stevens, the guy who infamously called the Internet a series of tubes? Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among other things, would require that any school or library that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block access to interactive Web sites, including social networking sites, and possibly blogs as well. It appears that the definition of those sites is so vague that it could include sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators. There are so many things wrong with this bill, it’s hard to count them all. But its greatest irony would be banning Wikipedia — perhaps the most widely used reference resource in the world — from libraries and schools.

White House Is Reported to Be Linked to Dismissal of U.S. Attorney – A United States attorney in Arkansas who was dismissed from his job last year by the Justice Department was ousted after Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, intervened on behalf of the man who replaced him, according to Congressional aides briefed on the matter.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a bill aimed at curbing the administration’s power to avoid the confirmation process for replacement prosecutors.

Cheney’s son-in-law used revolving door to stop chemical security regulations – The son-in-law of Vice President Dick Cheney, Philip Perry, has entered and exited the Bush administration twice, and as a consequence helped free the chemical industry from upgraded security measures in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, according to an article in the March edition of the Washington Monthly. “A flippant critic might say the father-in-law has been prosecuting a war that creates more terrorists abroad, while the son-in-law has been working to ensure they’ll have easy targets at home.”

Billions Squandered in Iraq – About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

Republican Congressman misquotes Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime – During House floor debate on the Iraq War resolution Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) misquoted Abraham Lincoln as saying, “Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” The only problem: Lincoln never said such a thing. It was actually J. Michael Waller in a piece he wrote for Insight magazine in December of 2003. FactCheck.org has counted 18,000 references to the Lincoln “quote” by people who typically support Bush’s war policy and, moreover, oppose critics of the president’s war policy. Now that’s “Truthiness” at work.

Justice Official Bought Vacation Home With Oil Lobbyist – A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.

Memo in Texas House of Representatives says evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs – Texas House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges. The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools” and claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs. It states, “Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” The memo supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as “Kabbalists” and laments “Hollywood’s unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism.”

Regards,

Jim

Cheney’s 2002 phone call set the stage for CIA leak probe – A story in Vice-President Dick Cheney’s morning newspaper reported that telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency on September 10, 2001, apparently warned that Al Qaeda was about to launch a major attack against the United States, possibly the next day. But the intercepts were not translated until September 12, 2001, the story said, the day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Because someone had leaked the highly classified information from the NSA intercepts, Cheney warned Graham, the Bush administration was considering ending all cooperation with the joint inquiry by the Senate and House Intelligence committees on the government’s failure to predict and prevent the September 11 attacks. Classified records would no longer be turned over to the Hill, the vice president threatened, and administration witnesses would not be available for interviews or testimony. On that morning in June 2002, Cheney could not have known that his complaints to Graham about the leaking of classified information would help set events in motion that eventually would lead to the prosecution of his own chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, as the result of a separate leak investigation. Much more at the web link…

Bush killed talks with Iran according to Ex-Bush administration official – Former Bush National Security Council official Flynt Leverett, speaking on Wednesday at a forum held by the New America Foundation, told a crowd in a Senate office building that in 2003 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell received a “grand bargain” offer from Iran and was rebuffed by the White House. In [Secretary Powell’s] words, he ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’ A former Bush National Security Council official also says Condoleezza Rice likely lied to Congress about not seeing document.

Right-Wingers Go Nuts Over Yale Singers Getting Beat Up; Say it Was Because They Sang Star-Spangled Banner in San Francisco – Last month the wingnuts were outraged when the Baker’s Dozen, a Yale singing group, was attacked in San Francisco. Wingnut blogger Gateway Pundit had a post title that says it all…Yale Group Gets Beaten for Performing “Star Spangled Banner.”

More jumped on the band wagon giving insights such as this from the conservative Bullwinkle Blog:

“The ever-tolerant left of Pelosiville attacked a group of college students for singing the Star-Spangled Banner…

Liberalism at its best, San Francisco style. Show any patriotism and suffer the consequences. Of course the Left will disavow the culprits and say that since the leader is from a prominient family they must be conservatives all the while ignoring that the prominent family tag applies to Nancy Pelosi and every other limosine liberal in the U.S..”

Fox News’ Sean Hannity got in on the outrage when he had on his program, Sharyar Aziz, one of the singers assaulted. Aziz didn’t know why they were assaulted but Hannity tried to steer him on that. From News Hounds…..

Aziz: “Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you what was going through their minds, what it was that made them feel, you know, that a call needed to be made,” Aziz answered. ” … I couldn’t tell you what was the trigger, the initial trigger, what it was …”

Hannity jumped in to say “It seems related to the Anthem. Do you think it is?”

Then Hannity offered a $10,000 reward for the apparent anti-American lefty dirty hippies….

“And you know, I want to get these people that did this to you, and I hope – working with your attorney and the detectives out there that we’re able to find them. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to offer a $10,000 reward for anybody that will come and testify that as a witness to this, to help get these people – you know, America is still a country where you can sing the national anthem and not be attacked viciously like this, and cruelly like this.”

On Feb. 13, the San Francisco Gate reports that “as many as three U.S. Marines were involved” in the alleged attack. There have been no arrests in the matter so the attorney for the victims has written the Marine Corps who do not appear to have been all that helpful thus far. It appears that this may been a hate crime against gays by red-blooded,”patriotic” Americans rather than an act by liberal, anti-American, Star Spangled-Banner-hating, Pelosiville liberals. What will Hannity do with his $10,000?

CIA Approached Italy About Kidnapping terrorism Suspects in 2001 – The CIA spoke with Italy’s spy chief about kidnapping terrorism suspects in Italy and flying them abroad days after the September 11 attacks, according to testimony from a former Italian intelligence official in the kidnapping trial of several U.S. and Italian agents. A Milan judge is expected to decide on Friday whether to indict 26 Americans, most of them believed to be CIA agents, in the case. So in reality habeas corpus has been out the window for the last six years.

Secret CIA flights forcibly removed terror suspects in Europe – The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations. The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said. The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice. The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

U.S. Trade Deficit Hits Another High – The U.S. trade deficit climbed to a record high for the fifth straight year, with 2006 imports exceeding exports by $764 billion, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, prompting some analysts to cut their economic growth projections.

SEC Seeks to Curtail Investor’s Lawsuits Against Corporate Fraud – Last Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a little-noticed brief in the Supreme Court urging the adoption of a legal standard that would make it harder for shareholders to prevail in fraud lawsuits against publicly traded companies and their executives. Meanwhile, the agency is said to be considering ways to protect accounting firms from large damage awards in cases brought by investors and companies.

Fox News Channel Bombs with Comedy Show – The Fox News Channel debuts “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” at 10 p.m. Sunday and repeats it at 10 p.m. Feb. 25. This show was meant to be a conservative version of “The Daily Show.” It is a botch. Fox News Channel does not know how to do slashing comical commentary. “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” does not comment on what is happening [as “The Daily Show” does]; it simply takes swipes at people. These people include Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Ed Begley Jr. Other joke topics are the ACLU, Time magazine, children’s books and global warming. Laughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts.

“The 1/2 Hour News Hour” was developed by Joel Surnow, who is also producer of “24,” the show where torture works. [“The 1/2 Hour News Hour” sounds like another form of torture. – JLV]

Regards,

Jim