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By John W. Dean
$11.66
By Michael Lewis
$15.37
$23
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RJ Matson, Cagle Cartoons, The St. Louis Post Dispatch —
Posted on Jun 19, 2011
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Flickr / kathleencaring
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The U.S. is caught up in three wars, a budget crisis and high unemployment. So what are Republican politicians working on? Cutting long-standing environmental regulations and shifting the burden of oversight from the federal to the state level.
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Perhaps shoring himself up for campaign 2012, President Obama announced Monday that he would give individual states the choice to opt out of his health care plan if they can come up with a viable alternative—but regardless, they’ll have to wait until 2017.
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AP / Nick Ut
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By Bill Boyarsky — The budget cuts being proposed in state capitals around the country may sound vague and abstract, but what they boil down to are many scenes of misery.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Joining with a number of his Latin American neighbors, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has formally recognized “the Palestine state as free and independent within its borders ... .”
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Pat Bagley, Cagle Cartoons, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Nov 12, 2010
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http://gov.ca.gov/
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That’s Gov. Schwarzenegger: 1, and some 200,000 California state workers: SOL. On Monday, the Golden State’s Supreme Court officially signaled its support for Schwarzenegger’s mandate that some state employees take three days off, unpaid, per month. A real crowd-pleaser!
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Flickr / bpbailey
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In retaliation against California’s tuition hikes and education budget cuts, students from across the state kicked off a “Day of Action and Strike in Defense of Public Education” on Thursday with assemblies, walkouts and teach-ins. The action was part of a national protest.
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Flickr/mamagrrrl
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According to a consortium of anti-smoking organizations, U.S. state governments are raking in more money than ever from tobacco companies but aren’t spending as much as they had in recent years on preventing their constituents from starting to light up or on helping them quit.
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bbc.co.uk
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A Taliban attack Sunday morning on Pakistan’s army headquarters has pressed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to warn about the waning authority of the Pakistani state in the face of violence by “extremists.” Security forces were later able to defeat the attackers and free 40 hostages.
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gov.ca.gov
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As if delivering the tagline of his latest movie, California’s governor announced to the state Legislature Tuesday that the “day of reckoning is here.” But Democrats are fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut funding for schools, the poor and sick children while refusing to raise taxes.
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By Matt Welch —
Instead of making the positive case for big government, or at least beginning to explain, let alone defend, what Sacramento does with all that money, California’s political class has instead opted for a four-pronged strategy: deny, scare, attack, then call for higher taxes.
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osmoothie.com
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California has the biggest economy in the union, but the state is in a real hole. With major shortfalls and a $40 billion budget in legislative gridlock, Sacramento has laid off some workers, furloughed others and slashed wages. Now the governor is threatening to, er, terminate 20,000 more employees.
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Flickr / Photo Mojo
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s far-fetched to think Hillary Clinton’s performance as secretary of state would be influenced by foreign donations to her husband’s charitable foundation. But it is naive to think that the newly revealed list of donors won’t provoke suspicion and give rise to conspiracy theories.
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By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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Multiple news outlets, from ABC to Fox, now confirm that Robert Gates will retain his post as secretary of defense for at least the first year of the Obama administration. The president-elect will roll out Gates and his other hawks during a national security team unveiling next week.
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AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — The thousands of same-gender couples who have married in the few months since the California Supreme Court cleared the way are in fact married. The notion that a majority vote by people who are not party to these marriages of love, commitment, care and family will have the power to impose a divorce on these couples is flatly repugnant.
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California Governor's Office
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Tight credit has put California’s state budget into a bit of a pickle, with funding for the government’s day-to-day operations drying up faster than Sarah Palin’s popularity. A sign of trouble is a letter—leaked Friday—from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that warned of a potential emergency request for a $7-billion loan within the coming weeks.
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thewe.cc
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The International Court of Justice on Friday requested the U.S. not execute five death-row inmates in a decision that will put both the U.S.‘s controversial capital punishment policy and its historic rejection of international legal bodies in the global spotlight.
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State propaganda works through repetition, brevity, fear and unquestioned punditry. Meet “The O’Reilly Factor Lite,” a brilliantly produced one-minute clip that will provide everything you need to know to understand what “The O’Reilly Factor” is really about.
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Celebrations are under way this week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. While world leaders added their congratulations and support to heighten the festivities, over 20,000 Palestians (most of whom, as this Mosaic Intelligence Report points out, are Israeli citizens) marked the occasion with a protest march at the abandoned Palestinian village of Safouria.
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AP photo / Muhammed Muheisen
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President Bush, commenting Thursday in Jerusalem, spoke out in favor of the creation of an independent Palestinian state. He followed that strong suggestion with another: financial compensation for Palestinian refugees forced to leave their homes in areas that are now part of Israel.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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If Israeli and Palestinian officials can’t find a way to establish a Palestinian state, the state of Israel won’t survive, according to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. These words of warning came on the heels of Olmert’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Bush in Annapolis, Md., during which the three leaders laid out plans and set goals for formal peace talks.
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guardian.co.uk
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Amid the fracas over who can marry whom, professor and author Stephanie Coontz poses a provocative question in Monday’s New York Times that leads to some interesting history and shifts the focus of the debate: “Why do people—gay or straight—need the state’s permission to marry?”
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Asked to what extent the State Department had covered up corruption in the government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the department’s top Mideast official told the House Oversight Committee that information that could “damage” the U.S. relationship with Iraq is considered “confidential.” That didn’t go over well with committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who then threw down the gauntlet.
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youtube.com
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Get ready for the inevitable barrage of jokes on late-night television: The Washington state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a law holding politicians legally accountable for lying about their opponents is unconstitutional.
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The House voted 389 to 30 to pass a bill that would make private contractors working for the U.S. government in Iraq subject to United States law. It’s the second time Congress has attempted to apply some sense to the legal vacuum created by the Bush administration and its Coalition Provisional Authority, which pushed through what amounts to blanket immunity for mercenaries.
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By Joe Conason — None of the progressive-sounding proposals in the president’s speech stand any chance of actually arriving on Capitol Hill as legislation.
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated on Thursday that she still believed Iraq would emerge “as a country that is a stabilizing factor” for the Mideast, and that President Bush would not ask for continued investment if he—and she—did not believe the venture was worthwhile. Well, that’s good to know. For a few years there, it seemed like they didn’t know what they were doing.
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Hurrah for the Garden State, whose state Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples are entitled to “the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes.”
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A senior State Department official recently had a frank chat with Al Jazeera, saying: “I think there is great room for strong criticism, because without doubt, there was arrogance and stupidity by the United States in Iraq.” Though Alberto Fernandez denies using those particular words, the BBC has verified the statement.
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“There’s steam coming out of [Bush’s] ears over the Foley thing,” someone close to Bush told the N.Y. Daily News. The president is reportedly likewise furious with administration insiders for being so candid with Bob Woodward for his new book.
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Bob Woodward said Dick Cheney in a phone call cursed at him over Woodward’s revelations about the White House’s meetings with Henry Kissinger. Cheney then hung up on him, the reporter said.
Woodward called it a “metaphor” of how the White House reacts these days to news it doesn’t like.
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From cavalierdaily.com
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Truthdig tips its hat this week to Bob Woodward, whose book “State of Denial” plowed over much-trod territory and still managed to surface plenty of fresh headlines. (Video and more after the jump…)
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In his “60 Minutes” interview, Bob Woodward said Henry Kissinger “is almost like a member of the [Bush] family,” and that in his frequent meetings with Bush and Cheney, Kissinger’s dogmatic ‘stay the course’ advice on Iraq amounts to “fighting the Vietnam war again.”
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More from Woodward’s book: President Bush’s then-chief of staff and Bush’s wife, Laura, pleaded with the president to fire Rumsfeld during 2004 and 2005. But Cheney and Rove convinced Bush that doing so would send the wrong message.
Also, there’s more evidence that Bush’s knowledge about the horrible state of affairs in Iraq was at incredible odds with his public statements.
Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command, basically agreed with Rep. John Murtha about the hopeless situation in Iraq.
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Among them: Bush ignored calls from a top Iraqi advisor in 2003 to send more troops to fight the insurgency; Rumsfeld wouldn’t return Rice’s calls until Bush made him do so; the top U.S. general in the Middle East told visitors in 2005 that Rumsfeld has no credibility to defend the war publicly….
Posted on Sep 29, 2006
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From CBS
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In his new book, “State of Denial,” Bob Woodward reports that Iraqi insurgents attack our troops over 100 times per day—far more than what Bush has disclosed publicly. Also: Key intelligence predicts the situation will deteriorate in 2007 before getting better. (“60 Minutes” will air a Woodward interview this Sunday.)
Yes, we know Woodward frequently acts as a White House stenographer, but he also surfaces real game-changing news.
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dw-world.de
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While speaking about the Darfur crisis at the United Nations, the secretary of state warned the Sudanese government that “other measures” were available, should it continue to block a U.N. peacekeeping proposal. Such measures are unlikely to include force, so long as the U.S. maintains troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan while flirting with an invasion of Iran.
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California will become the first state to cap greenhouse gas emissions, should a deal reached between Gov. Schwarzenegger and state Democrats pass the Legislature. The deal is seen as a betrayal by Republicans, who oppose a state cap on emissions.
Posted on Aug 30, 2006
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palmbeachpost.com
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The Katherine Harris campaign tried on Saturday to clarify the candidate’s latest ride on the crazy train, when she said that separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told” and that “God is the one who chooses our rulers.” It’s an interesting idea coming from Harris, who worked so hard in the 2000 election to disenfranchise voters on Bush’s behalf. (h/t: Americablog)
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From the BBC
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Katherine Harris, villain of the 2004 Florida recount saga and a congresswoman running for U.S. Senate, recently dismissed to an interviewer the idea that religion should stay out of politics, saying, “God is the one who chooses our rulers.”
So was it God or was it Katherine Harris who fraudulently threw all those eligible black citizens off the voting rolls in 2004? Hey, if she wants to run with the “omnipotent God” logic, she can’t have it both ways….
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By Ellen Goodman — Washington state’s Supreme Court says it limited marriage to heterosexual couples in order to encourage procreation. OK, so what about straight couples that can’t or don’t want to have kids? Are they banned from marriage, too?
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More inspiring news about our government: A State Dept. agency used an accounting shell game to hide cost overruns on Iraq projects and withheld info on scheduling delays from Congress.
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Bigots are delighting at this blow against tolerance. Massachusetts is now the only state still extending full marriage benefits to homosexual couples.
On an intellectual level, it’s interesting to read the logical flights of fancy that judges have to make in their opinions to codify this kind of hatred into law.
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AP / Assad Muhsin
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The Iraqi government ordered everyone off the streets of the Iraqi capital after insurgents set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops outside the Green Zone. Dozens of deaths were reported around the country in this one day alone.
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An indispensible roundup, and it’s not just The War and The Spying. Alternet also points to presidential signing statements, free speech zones, the Internet clampdown, and touchscreen voting machines.
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The administration is using this tactic at a rate of three lawsuits per year—purportedly to keep national security information safe. But one expert says that in cases like these, “the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another.”
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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