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By Annia Ciezadlo
26.00
$21
$24
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By Marie Cocco — At the earliest, it is likely to be at least February or March before the first dollar of an Obama recovery plan is felt. This is a national disgrace.
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AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a warning across the ocean to Iran during a visit to Washington Tuesday, urging the international community to convince Tehran that pursuing a nuclear weapons program would be a really, really bad idea.
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Iran’s nuclear program is once again raising concerns among members of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who claim in a new report that, despite earlier signs of cooperation this year, Tehran is leaving key questions unanswered about possible plans to ramp up its uranium enrichment capabilities by the end of this summer.
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The Sydney Morning Herald
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Iranian President and up-and-coming schoolyard brawler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared in a televised address Wednesday his country’s willingness to “bloody the enemy’s nose” in order to defend its national sovereignty. At issue is Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad has declared is negotiable only with U.N. nuclear officials, not the politicized Security Council.
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As many as 166,000 children could be counted as truants in California after the 2nd District Court of Appeal launched a statewide initiative to ensure that home-schoolers were being taught by credentialed teachers.
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payvand.com
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A new report released by American intelligence officials profoundly contradicts President Bush’s claims on the Iran nuclear threat and casts his “World War III” fear-mongering in a dubious light. The National Intelligence Estimate’s declassified assessment, compiled from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, says Iran actually halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 “in response to international pressure.”
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totallychoice.com
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File under “Your Tax Dollars at Work”: Congress has once again approved a three-month extension of a $50-million nationwide abstinence-education program, a move detractors say ignores indications that the approach (shock!) may not be working for America’s teens.
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Although a judge recently ruled Bush’s warrentless wiretapping program unconstitutional, a federal court unanimously agreed to keep the program running until an appeal is decided, though the three judges involved gave little explanation as to how they reached their decision.
Posted on Oct 5, 2006
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Only last week, the president drew a line in the sand over his proposed interrogation rules, threatening to cancel the CIA interrogation program altogether if a trio of rebellious Republicans refused to pass his version. In a total reversal, the Bush administration has reestablished talks with the defiant senators, hoping to work out a deal and pass the stalled legislation.
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From feministing
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An Ohio school board voted to allow discussion of contraception in sex education classes upon learning that 13% of one high school’s female students were pregnant.
Earlier: Congress declines to fund abstinence only-programs
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From the AP: “The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn’t stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.”
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From Salon.com
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Salon reviews a thoughtful new book that examines the mental anguish suffered by homosexual Christians who enter residential programs to battle their sexual desires. (Reg. req’d.)
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From Crooks and Liars
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Truthdig salutes Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who rapped Bush in a letter for not briefing Congress on various intelligence-gathering programs. Check out a video of Hoekstra publicly defending the letter on Fox News: “It is not optional for this president ... or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing.”
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Maybe it was towering piles of evidence attesting to the fact that virginity pledges don’t work, but whatever it was, Congress declined to add more funds to abstinence-until-marriage programs. (Via Salon.)
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The six-nation incentive package aimed at halting Iran’s uraniam enrichment appears to have some purchase in Tehran. But don’t start celebrating. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again vowed that Iran would never back down on its nuclear program.
This is also bad news for Cheney and Rumsfeld: The appearance of diplomatic progress will make a future U.S. invasion all the tougher to justify.
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Iran has rejected an offer by America and five other world powers to extend a series of rewards in exchange for Iran’s abandonment of its nuclear program.
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Mike Luckovich
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Even though the U.S. and five other countries have offered Iran a series of rewards for giving up its nuclear program, Bush and Cheney have given the world ample reason to be skeptical that the White House has any intention of settling this issue diplomatically. (And we’re not alone in this sentiment.)
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That’s the provocative question posed by this N.Y. Times article. “It became obvious to Mr. Bush that he could not ... consider military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites unless he first showed a willingness to engage Iran’s leadership directly over its nuclear program and exhaust every nonmilitary option.”
Has a decision to hit Iran already been made? Are we seeing a charade like the one before the Iraq war?
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The attorney general, in defending the NSA’s collection of millions of U.S. phone records, claims it is constitutional—but conveniently ignores the fact that it appears to be illegal.
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Via Business Week, we learn that an entire niche industry has sprung up to provide the government with commercially purchased telecommunications records that the government isn’t allowed to purchase itself. (TPM Muckraker has a good sum-up.)
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From AMERICAblog
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You won’t believe the envelope that the phone company has apparently been sending out. If it’s not a hoax, the irony is so thick that not even an NSA eavesdropper could penetrate it.
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The phone company says that, despite the claims made in the USA Today story, it never provided phone records to the NSA.
Posted on May 15, 2006
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In the wake of Sept. 11, the vice president argued that the NSA should intercept purely domestic calls and e-mails without warrants, reports the N.Y. Times.
The NSA ultimately decided against the idea, but this report leaves no doubt about Cheney’s regard for civil liberties.
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The Washington Post loaded a poll so it would appear that most Americans support the NSA’s phone record collection program. Blogger Jane Hamsher did the original analysis on this sloppy poll, and Buzzflash sums it up.
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The telecom giant faces two suits—one for $20 billion, another for $5 billion—for handing over customers’ phone records to the NSA.
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From thezreview.co.uk
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President Bush will deliver a rare (for him) television address, a Monday night talk on immigration reform.
Is it too cynical to ask whether he’s wagging the dog to distract attention from the NSA phone record issue?
Is it possible to be too cynical about Bush’s motives?
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Before the USA Today story, The Nation magazine had loads of details on the NSA-telecom spying program: a lawsuit against AT&T; links between telecom officials and the White House; and a history of how these insidious relationships developed.
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The Sept. 11 attacks “did not give the president the limitless power he now claims to intrude on the private communications of the American people,” the N.Y. Times says in an editorial about the NSA spying story.
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From ThinkProgress
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The president claims that the program activities “strictly target Al Qaeda and their known affiliates,” despite USA Today’s claim that the NSA has pored over the records of tens of millions of Americans.
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hardnewsnow.com
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“We’re not mining or trolling though the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,’’ Bush says, without directly addressing the NSA program reported in USA Today.
Meanwhile, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter demands that phone company executives testify before Congress about the data they provided to the NSA.
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“The NSA’s gathering of phone call records of millions of Americans is “something that would make the late Leonid Brezhnev proud of Bush—and [Gen.] Michael Hayden, the Pentagon apparatchik, who saw it through,” Buzzflash writes in an editorial.
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From Comedy Central via Salon.com
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Leahy, exasperated at Alberto Gonzales’ refusal to answer questions about Bush’s spying program, lets rip a Jon Stewart-quality zinger: “Of course, Mr. Attorney General, I forgot. You can’t answer any questions that might be relevant to this.” | video
Posted on Feb 10, 2006
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Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) breaks with the White House and calls for a full congressional inquiry into Bush’s spy program. | story
The dam hasn’t just cracked—it’s gushing.
Posted on Feb 8, 2006
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Bush attends the services of Coretta Scott King while simultaneously pressing on with a warrantless spying program. | story
Forty years ago, the FBI used illegal wiretaps in an attempt to blackmail King’s husband. | Truthdig files
Plus a change…
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U.N. warns that world is running out of patience with Tehran | more
Posted on Jan 9, 2006
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No excuse given, Iranian team leader reportedly heads back to Tehran. | more
Posted on Jan 5, 2006
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A former NSA agent tells Democracy Now! that he will testify to Congress about Bush’s “unlawful and unconstitutional” spy program. Story.
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By Blair Golson An intense debate has been raging on Op-Ed pages and in the blogosphere over the legality of President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. What follows is a roundup of some of the most influential, talked-about and linked-to analyses.
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The president attempts to explain how his 2004 claim that “a wiretap requires court orders” squares with his warrantless surveillance program. Times reporter Eric Licthblau calls Bush’s comments “at odds” with those of his senior aides.
Posted on Jan 1, 2006
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Two of Bush’s most senior advisors made an emergency visit in 2004 to a hospitalized John Ashcroft to get him to override his deputy and sign off on a continued warrantless domestic surveillance program. Read the story
Posted on Jan 1, 2006
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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