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By John W. Dean
$18.16
$3.49
$22
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Joao Silva / The N.Y. Times
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The city of Ramadi, epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency, has already been reduced to such ruins that constantly under-fire American forces are planning to bulldoze three blocks in the center of the city and create a mini Green Zone in an attempt to gain the upper hand on the insurgents.
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No matter how silly Stephen Colbert makes politicians look on his show, an appearance on “The Colbert Report” is the best (and maybe the only) way to make young voters pay attention and respond to their representatives in Congress, according to The Washington Times.
Posted on Jul 5, 2006
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Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay, who six weeks ago was found guilty in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history, and who was expected to face decades in prison for his fraud and conspiracy convictions in the Enron collapse, died of a heart attack on Wednesday. He was 64.
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The acclaimed journalist (and Truthdig contributor), who has spent the last three years in Iraq, explains how his street smarts, Arabic skills and Middle Eastern looks afforded him a view of the Iraqi insurgency almost unparalleled among Western journalists. Check out the Buzzflash interview.
Posted on Jul 5, 2006
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According to the AP: “A defiant North Korea test-fired a long-range missile Wednesday that may be capable of reaching America, but it failed seconds after launch. The North also tested five smaller missiles in an exercise the White House called “provocative” but not an immediate threat.
Bush’s NSA advisor calls it provocative behavior.
The Japanese foreign minister said there was a “very high possibility” that his country would impose economic sanctions on North Korea.
Posted on Jul 4, 2006
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — While Sen. Joe Lieberman has come clean as a true believer in the Bush crusade, Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to shamefully waffle on the Iraq question, which is particularly galling, given her position as the party’s supposed front-runner.
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Members of the decade-old unit at the spy agency have been reassigned within the CIA, an indication that, according to some, “reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was” or, according to detractors, “reflect[s] a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.”
Posted on Jul 4, 2006
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From CNN
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As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is in charge of bills that control the future of the Internet (like Net Neutrality). So you’ll understand why we at Truthdig start crying when we read about the 85-year-old’s feeble grasp of this world-changing technology. A few Stevens quotes:
“An internet was sent by my staff at 10 o?clock…”
“What happens to your own personal internet…?”
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The investigative journalist par excellence tells CNN that many higher-ups in the Pentagon have grave concerns about the White House’s military designs in Iran.
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Left: From the Bergen County Record; right: AP / Marcio Jose Sanchez
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Phew!
What a past few years it has been for the American flag ... embraced throughout the world after the Sept. 11 attacks; denounced throughout the world not long after; subject to a Republican attempt to make it fireproof during the last two national election cycles….
So with flags waving high during this Fourth of July, Truthdig invites its readers to reflect in the comments box on the nature of patriotism and nationalism. Here are some primers from E.J. Dionne, Howard Zinn and John Kerry (more)
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...weren’t the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it,” writes Nicholas Kristof at the N.Y. Times. “Be very wary of Mr. Bush’s effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.”
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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The president told federal investigators that he ordered Vice President Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter the allegations made by former Ambassador Joe Wilson that the White House had misrepresented intelligence to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with Bush’s statement, as quoted by Murray Waas of the National Journal.
If this story is correct, this not only links Bush with the CIA leak case, it puts him squarely at its helm.
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The 21-year-old former Army private first class was recently discharged because of a “personality disorder.” Four other members of his former platoon are also implicated in the killing of the Iraqis and are being held at a U.S. base in Iraq.
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A brutal dictator in North Korea threatens our country with an “annihilating strike and a nuclear war” in response to America’s rhetoric over N. Korea’s possible missile launch (which was probably a hoax anyway).
Keep in mind that Sen. Orrin Hatch said that passing the flag-burning amendment was “the most important thing the Senate could be doing.” Good to know the Republicans really have their eye on the ball.
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Even the conservative New York Post is running an article on Ann Coulter’s plagiarism in her new book.
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The inestimable Seymour Hersh delivers another can’t-miss update on Bush & Co.‘s plans to strike Iran. Hersh points out that even more so than about Iraq, we are clueless about Iran’s capabilities, and many military planners are seething that the White House is taking Iran’s nuclear capabilites for granted.
Summarized version of article
Full-text version
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The former president bemoans the current White House’s obsession with secrecy: “Increasingly, developed and developing nations are recognizing that a free flow of information is fundamental for democracy.”
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According to a new study, not only does a higher income not make you much happier, but people with higher incomes tend to be tenser and spend less time on simple leisure activities.
The Washingon Post has more.
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By Jabari Asim — African-Americans give away a greater percentage of their money to charitable causes than whites.
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By Marie Cocco — As we celebrate our Independence Day, let us thank the Supreme Court for granting us deliverance from the tyranny of a president who tried to fashion himself king.
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The NSA asked AT&T to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allege lawyers filing a lawsuit on behalf of telephone company customers.
This is huge because, according to a lawyer on the case, “The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11…. This undermines that assertion.’‘
Posted on Jul 2, 2006
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Any municipality in the state apparently can post the commandments as long as they’re displayed alongside other historic documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Mayflower Compact.
Didn’t the Supreme Court have something to say about this recently?
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More and more towns are putting lobbyists on the payroll to tap federal tax money through earmarks (those special appropriations that make their way into omnibus bills in Congress). According to the NYT, “since 1998, the number of public entities hiring private firms to represent them in Washington has nearly doubled to 1,421 from 763.” Bridges, roads, walkways, pedestrian crosswalks… cities and towns are finding that a little bit of lobbying can go a long way.
Posted on Jul 2, 2006
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The Air Force Office of Scientific Research will fund a three-year research project shepherded by Versatile Information Systems Inc. that will seek out “relevant and credible” information pertaining to terrorist activity on blogs. (via boingboing.net)
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A first in the state’s history, the executive order halted road construction and lottery ticket sales, and put over half the state’s 80,000 employees on furlough. Gov. Jon S. Corzine ordered the shutdown after legislators missed a June 30 budget deadline due to disagreements over a measure to raise the sales tax to close a budget gap. Depending on a court ruling, the state’s 12 casinos may also have to shut their doors.
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From MSNBC
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He’s been described as “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of,” and “Cheney’s Cheney.” He’s David Addington, the vice president’s chief of staff, and he’s behind the legal arguments to support presidential-sanctioned torture, the attempt to discredit Joe Wilson, and the bogus Niger uranium story. The New Yorker has a must-read profile.
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Yahoo! health columnist Patrick Moore wraps up his five-part series on George Bush’s untreated alcoholism with a zinger: “President Bush cannot be of service to his country until he looks inward and surrenders to the fact that he is an alcoholic, with all the challenges the disease of alcoholism carries with it.”
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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Truthdig salutes the 86-year-old Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which struck down the military tribunals Bush set up to try Guantanamo detainees. But more important, this decision, in the words of a Yale law professor, “effectively undermines the Administration’s strongest claims about Presidential power,” and may constitute the legal framework necessary to halt the more egregious of Bush’s civil liberties-infringing programs—like warrantless wiretapping and holding terrorism suspects without trial.
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From deskpicture.com
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The political satirist reports on the president’s discovery of what could be the greatest wedge issue of the 2006 midterm elections.
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Dwayne Powell
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The president’s former counter-terrorism chief says the White House wants “the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny.”
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From EA
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Supposed Internet experts, working off $7 million in public money, reported to the Pentagon and to Congress that terrorists are retooling American video games for use as recruitment tools. Problem is, it wasn’t the terrorists who did the retooling; it was American fans—something a 10-year-old could have discovered by using Google…(more)
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ABC News gets an extremely rare (maybe unprecedented) look at the inside of Guantanamo Bay. Watch it.
The head interrogator denies all use of torture, and even refers to his interrogations as “custodial interviews.”
The room pictured above—which has a plush lazy chair—is supposedly one of the interrogation rooms.
This sugar-coated look at Gitmo feels sort of like the tours of North Korea that Westerners sometimes get.
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ABC News
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A huge billboard bearing harsh public service ads like these greet motorists entering Montana. They’re part of a massive anti-meth campaign funded by software billionaire Thomas Siebel to combat a drug that’s ravaging the country’s rural and gay communities (and is making headway elsewhere).
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Iraq’s national security advisor won’t publicly disclose the burial place of the slain terrorist leader.
A man claiming to be Bin Laden said in a new tape that “What scares you after the death of Zarqawi is your knowledge that, left alone, Muslims will give Zarqawi a huge funeral, which shows the sympathy of the Muslims with their sons of holy warriors.”
Posted on Jun 30, 2006
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The newspaper originally reported that AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon have been providing phone call data to the NSA. But now USA Today says it can’t confirm that either BellSouth or Verizon provided the data. (AT&T definitely appears to have done so.)
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The accused soldiers belong to the same platoon that recently saw two of its members abducted, tortured and beheaded by Iraqi. It is unclear whether there is any connection between the killings.
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Colbert sums up the N.Y. Times bank records issue. This clip also contains the not-to-be-missed zinger about Brit Hume and Superman.
Posted on Jun 30, 2006
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On “The Daily Show,” Al Gore says he is giving away 100% of the profits of his book and movie to causes related to global warming. But Jon Stewart has a better idea….
Posted on Jun 30, 2006
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The Democratic congressman from Massachusetts puts the GOP representative from Arizona in his place while debating the N.Y. Times censure issue.
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