Petraeus: what's a couple of missing weapons

..when you've got a crackerjack force like the Iraqi military.

These comments are infuriating:

"Some percentage" of weapons the U.S. military provided to the Iraqi army and Iraqi police units were not tracked by serial number because there were no procedures in place to do so within the Iraqi units, Petraeus said in an interview broadcast last night on Fox News Radio's "Alan Colmes Show."

From a practical standpoint, Petraeus added, it was more important to get the weapons to the Iraqis as they started to enter the fight against a strong insurgency than it was to keep meticulous records.

Of course the worry is that we've been arming the insurgency ourselves all this time. That Iraqi units have either gone AWOL, sold their weapons on the black market, acted as death squads against rival factions or turned those guns on American soldiers.

Hillary Clinton: How could you possibly doubt me?

Hillary Clinton: “I don’t think, based on my 35 years of fighting for what I believe in, I don’t think anybody seriously believes I’m going to be influenced by a lobbyist”.

Actually, they do. Just like they'd believe it about any other candidate. The idea that some people are incorruptible because they've spent a lifetime in politics is a little bit absurd at this point.

It's like the claim that you can't bribe a wealthy man.

Somebody really doesn't want to be a Senator anymore

From the Washington Post site, these are the number of votes missed during the current session of Congress:

Hillary Clinton (D) ......... 11 votes (3.5%)
Dennis Kucinich (D) ......... 71 votes (8.4%)
Barack Obama (D) .......... 59 votes (19.0%)
Ron Paul (R) ................ 169 votes (20.0%)
Christopher Dodd (D) ....... 74 votes (23.9%)
Joseph Biden (D) ............ 78 votes (25.2%)
Tom Tancredo (R) ......... 225 votes (26.6%)
Duncan Hunter (R) ......... 244 votes (28.8%)
Sam Brownback (R) ........ 123 votes (39.7%)
John McCain (R) ........... 149 votes (48.1%)

Most Senators and Congressmen have missed less than 3% of scheduled votes. Only the seriously ill Senator Tim Johnson has missed more votes than John McCain.

Mitt Romney and the Attack of the Clones

I've always found it a little baffling that Mitt Romney, recent convert to the pro-life cause, wasn't won over by the fact that millions of children have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade was decided.

He was won over by the fantasy that scientists were on the verge of creating a new clone army:

ROMNEY: I am pro-life. That’s the truth. And several years ago, when we faced the issue of cloning of embryos in our state, I wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe and said I’m pro-life.

Here were his views on abortion when he was campaigning for Senator of the most liberal state in the Union:

In an October 1994 debate with US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, Romney said: ''I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years we should sustain and support it."

Mitt Romney: we need to have a "person of faith" lead the country.

But you must never, ever, ever ask me about mine.

Romney: "Let me, uh, let me offer just a thought. And that is, uh, one of the great things about this great land, is we have people of different faiths and different persuasions. And uh, I'm convinced that the nation, that the nation does need, the nation does need to have people of different faiths but we need to have a person of faith lead the country."

There's something a little pathetic about a man who runs on cleaning up the "cesspool" that is our culture, and appeals for votes among the most partisan fundamentalists complaining when people ask him about his personal religious values.

Romney likes to cite the fact that many voters want a religious person to lead the country. His problem is that many of the same people who would never vote for an atheist, would never vote for a Mormon, either.

Poor Tommy Thompson gets no respect

Even the political junkies at Americablog have forgotten that there's a already a candidate named Thompson in the GOP field:

And this is the alleged savior of the GOP presidential field -- the yet-to-announce Fred Thompson, at Sunday's GOP clown car debate:

"I believe that Vice President Cheney is criticized for a lot of things that he doesn't do. And I believe that Dick Cheney is an honorable individual. And I think the president of the United States depends a great deal upon him."

Like the Freepers are begging, run, Fred, run.

That comment was, of course, made by Tommy Thompson not Fred. Fred doesn't do debates. He does fireside chats.

The law is meant to protect the powerful from embarassment

George Bush and Alberto Gonzales will likely never be made accountable for violating the FISA law. But the whistleblower who exposed their program - that's a different story:

[T]he raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")

Don't expect many tearful editorials bemoaning the fate of the leaker if he is caught in this case. Those laments are saved for members of the dinner party set.

It's the sign of a completely corrupt government when we struggle to retroactively legalize official wrongdoing while the perpetrators have the gall to prosecute those who expose their actions. State secrets are meant to protect the nation, not its ruling class.


h/t John Cole

Rudy Giuliani defines political correctness

Apparently now political correctness is when you won't say what I want you to say:

Giuliani saved his sharpest jabs for Democrats. "In four debates, not a single Democrat said the word, 'Islamic terrorists.' Now that is taking political correctness to extreme," he said.

Originally the term was used by old-guard communists to mean toeing the party line, as in: "we're fighting Islamic terrorists in Iraq".

Ron Paul: the favorite candidate of active duty soldiers

Ron Paul, alternatively described as a "crank" and an "also ran" by the mainstream media for his opposition to the Iraq war and belief in a smaller government, leads all candidates in donations from the American military.

“Lots of military people turned out to be aware that our campaign got more donations from soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines than any other,” said Paul in a statement on his website. “Funny, that made a big impression in Congress too. Many of my colleagues were amazed and encouraged that you can be against this unconstitutional and disastrous war, and get military support.”

Paul said it is “an outrage that we are accused of not supporting the troops” and called it a “scam when the warmongers claim to be pro-soldier.”

Senate Democrats cave to Bush, again

Unable to hold fast against a president now mired in the high 20's, the Democrats are rapidly proving that the November victory didn't include a backbone transplant. Having caved completely to Bush on the Iraq war supplemental, they've now caved completely to his demands for domestic spying:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

Anyone who believed that September was going to be a magic drop dead date for the president's war strategy should take a lesson from this. Congress believes it is subservient to George Bush. He will continue to treat them with utter contempt until they give him a reason to take them seriously.

Prepare to see Congress's approval numbers drop dramatically again, as voters who elected Democrats to serve as a check on this president, realize that the rubber stamp Congress just changed leadership.



Update - the political consequences are summarized best here:

The Democrats have seriously alienated a significant portion of their base and they will not replace those voters with the Fox News viewers they sought to appease. It's not easy to win an argument (if it's possible at all) against people who claim there's no difference between the parties. Right now, the results are the same as they were seven months ago.

Mitt Romney makes the case for government health care

Unintentionally, I think:

Romney was quick to say he didn't like Clinton's plan and opposed taxes to pay for health care subsidies, but that prompted a question from another patron. "Who's paying for the subsidies if it's not the government of Massachusetts?"

"We found it cost us more money to be giving free care out at hospitals than to help people buy their own private care," Romney said.

That, of course, is one of the standard arguments for the single payer system. It's cheaper to pay up front than to pay for the uninsured when they show up at the emergency room.

Scientists discover the perfect diet

Eat all you want, stay slim, live longer.

Via Nature, we learn that scientists may have stumbled upon a significant breakthrough in life extension while researching heart health.

Researchers have created a mutant mouse that lives longer despite eating more and weighing less — all thanks to the loss of a single protein.

Without this protein, the body is less susceptible to the heart-pounding effects of the hormone adrenaline, and may become more resistant to some forms of stress.

Currently, the main focus of ageing research is on using calorie restriction as a way of activating a metabolic 'fountain of youth'. The new discovery, that knocking out a single cardiac gene could lengthen lifespan, was an unexpected byproduct of heart research.

But in the process, the research team also realised that the mutant mice lived longer than their normal counterparts. Now, in a paper published in Cell this week2, they report that the treated mice lived 30% longer and did not develop the heart stress and bone deterioration that often accompanies ageing.

If this can be extended to humans, it's pretty much the world's dream diet. It's also guaranteed to be more popular than the current leading contender for life extension: Extreme calorie restriction demands a life-long regimen of near starvation.

John McCain votes against ethics reform

Sacrificing the last shreds of his dignity, John McCain joined 13 other Senate Republicans voting against ethics reform today. Despite missing a record number of votes this year, he cut short a campaign stop to make his voice heard against this one.

Enactment of the bill would mark the most sweeping ethics reforms since the Watergate era, requiring lawmakers for the first time to disclose fundraising by lobbyists, tightening rules on gift-giving to staff and lawmakers, forcing lobbyists to disclose their contacts, clamping down on members’ junkets and requiring lawmakers to disclose when they seek earmarked funds for projects in their home states.

Despite having failed to advance Congressional ethics reform during the years his own party was in control, McCain thought this bill was too timid.

But a bloc of conservative Republicans said the plan does not go far enough in shining a light on earmarks, the source of recent corruption scandals on the Hill. They slammed their Republican colleagues for backing the earmark disclosure requirements, which they said would allow members to hide their pet projects by exploiting loopholes in the legislation.

He lent his reputation as a reformer to the same Republican leaders who presided over the biggest pork-barrel spending in history.

This unfortunately isn't the first time McCain has gone soft on transparency in politics.

Fred Thompson: "scientists are morons"

The Republican war on science rages on as Fred Thompson "debunks" global warming theory:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

NASA says the Martian South Pole's ice cap has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter's caught the same cold, because it's warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non-signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus.

Ask Galileo.

That's right, the guy from Die Hard believes that thousands of scientists who spend their lives studying the Earth's climate simply forgot that the Sun is the driving force heating the planet. Unfortunately, he's hardly the only conservative digging in his heels against global warming science and making absurd arguments against it.

Of course, scientists do measure the variations of the Sun and its effects on our climate. Left out of all the commentaries about Mars' ice cap and the Solar connection is that fact that Solar activity has not increased in decades and that the actual measurements of air temperature significantly exceed the predictions based on solar forcing.

Couple that with the fact that, on average, half of the planets in the solar system will be warming and half cooling at any time, that Pluto has just passed the point closest to the sun in it's 248 year orbit, that there is no evidence that Jupiter is warming globally and that 3 years of pictures of a shrinking polar cap is a short term local measurement, not a long term global one -- well you start to wonder where all the evidence against man-made global warming went.

As stated at RealClimate:

There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth…

Barack Obama decrys the neglect of New Orleans

Another candidate responds to the question of rebuilding New Orleans:

Thank you for contacting me about the egregious negligence of the federal government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans, neighborhoods are still deserted; thousands are still homeless or displaced; most public schools are still closed; and police are headquartered in FEMA trailers. There is still a lot of work to do. Going forward, we must not only rebuild New Orleans for all who wish to return, but also ensure that adequate preparations are made for future catastrophes.

After the massive failures of the Bush administration, I helped lead Congressional efforts to bring effective and prompt relief to the Gulf Coast. Together with the Congressional Black Caucus, I introduced the Hurricane Katrina Recovery Act of 2006, which provides comprehensive federal supports for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the reconstruction of New Orleans. In addition, I worked to make all working families that were victims of the disaster eligible for an expanded and refundable Child Tax Credit.

No-bid construction contracts and administrative waste have compounded the governmental failure in New Orleans and further slowed the recovery. To address this problem, I have worked to strengthen government accountability by creating a Chief Financial Officer for federal spending on the Gulf Coast. The CFO would ensure that money is spent appropriately and that all contracts are accessible to local businesses - including small and minority firms - through fair and open competition.

Ultimately, we need to learn from the woeful response to Katrina and make sure that we are better prepared for the next disaster. Prior to Katrina, the federal government did not require localities to make specific plans for safeguarding Americans with special needs. I championed successful legislation that requires special needs planning for future disasters, whether man-made or natural.

After all, we might want to censure Hillary someday

In another example of the absurd logic of our Republican political leaders: James Sensenbrenner worries that, if we don't give George Bush a blank check today, we'll be forced to give every president a blank check in the future.

“I think the White House is going to win in court,” asserted Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the former chairman of the panel. “If we do bring the case to court and lose, then that is going to be viewed as a blank check by the current president and the future presidents to snub the Congress” in its oversight responsibilities.”

Guantanamo judge scolds detainee for dressing badly

Another excerpt from the kangaroo court.

Apparently, the judge was unimpressed that a man who had been held without charge and without access to the outside world for 5 years arrived at the hearing in his prison uniform:

GUANTANAMO Bay detainee David Hicks fronted a US military commission hearing earlier this year in a shapeless prison shirt and baggy trousers, his hair long and unkempt.

His style did not impress the presiding judge, US Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann.

Colonel Kohlmann indicated that Hicks, who stood accused of supporting terrorism and attempted murder, would be better off in a suit and tie, or casual smart attire. It matters what you wear to a terrorism trial, apparently.

Barack Obama supports the separation of church and state

OBAMA: I am proud of my Christian faith. And it informs what I do. And I don't think that people of any faith background should be prohibited from debating in the public square.

But I am a strong believer in the separation of church and state, and I think that we've got to translate...

By the way, I support it not just for the state but also for the church, because that maintains our religious independence and that's why we have such a thriving religious life.

But what I also think is that we are under obligation in public life to translate our religious values into moral terms that all people can share, including those who are not believers. And that is how our democracy's functioning, will continue to function. That's what the founding fathers intended.

Mitt Romney endorses the Stork Theory

The Republican War on Science is reaching new levels of absurdity:

"Senator Obama is wrong if he thinks science-based sex education has any place in kindergarten," Romney told some 150 people at a restaurant in the northern part of the state. "We should be working to clean up the filthy waters our kids are swimming in."

And what exactly is this cesspool of science based sex education Romney is scolding Obama over?

WASHINGTON, July 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Statement from Kathleen M. Burke, CEO, Robert Crown Center for Health Education on age-appropriate sex education for 5 year-olds:

"Age-appropriate classroom sex education for this age group is simply referring to teaching medically appropriate names for parts of the body instead of baby names. We keep it simple -- it isn't necessary to go into detail about the functions of those body parts, but having an accurate vocabulary goes a long way toward developing understanding and respect for themselves and their bodies. In the absence of this proper language, all that is left are unanswered questions, baby names and playground slang.

It also helps when they ask where their baby brother came from.

This is of course, yet another reversal of the former Governor's position.

The president assigns "Why Bush will be a winner" to his staff

Believed to be a candid picture of George Bush (center) discussing his brilliant Iraq war strategy with his cracker jack staff Karl Rove (left) and Stephen Hadley (right). Also shown, Condoleeza Rice and Karen Hughes with their backs to the camera.

Bill Kristol's the-war-is-being-won piece in The Washington Post brought him plenty of ridicule, but at least one person liked it.

President Bush read the July 15 Outlook article that morning and recommended it to his staff.

Russ Feingold renews call for censure of George Bush

In March of 2006, following the discovery that the President was covertly spying on Americans, Russ Feingold (D -Wisconsin) called for the Congress to censure the President for acting in violation of the FISA law.

At the time, the Republicans controlling Congress blocked all oversight of the president. Their idea of a solution was to retroactively legalize the program. The minority Democrats meanwhile, fearful of losing votes by challenging a president whose approval ratings were in the mid 30's, tried to pretend Russ Feingold didn't exist.

Today, Senator Feingold has renewed his call for censure, citing mismanagement of the Iraq war and the assault on the rule of law.

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold announced today that he will introduce two censure resolutions condemning the President, Vice President and other administration officials for misconduct relating to the war in Iraq and for their repeated assaults on the rule of law. Feingold called the resolutions appropriate and necessary steps for Congress to rebuke an administration that is responsible for some of the worst misconduct and the worst abuses of the law in American history.



The first resolution will condemn the President and others for misconduct relating to the war in Iraq including:

* Overstating the case that Saddam Hussein had WMD, particularly nuclear weapons, and falsely implying a relationship with al Qaeda and links to 9/11.

* Failing to plan for the civil conflict and humanitarian problems that the intelligence community predicted.

* Over-stretching the Army, Marine Corps and Guard with prolonged deployments.

* Justifying our military involvement in Iraq by repeatedly distorting the situation on the ground there.



The second resolution will focus on the administration’s attack on the rule of law with respect to, among other things:

* The illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

* Extreme policies on torture, the Geneva Conventions, and detainees at Guantanamo.

* The refusal to recognize legitimate congressional oversight into the improper firings of U.S. Attorneys.

Did I say September? I meant November.

Lt. General Odierno, live from Baghdad, says things are going great so far. But...

"Forty-five days from now, September 1 ... I'll be able to make a bit more accurate assessment if it's something we think is going to continue or something we think is just a blip," he said in a video link from Baghdad.

"In order to do a good assessment, I need at least till November to do that," Odierno added.

Oh and about those benchmarks....

In a separate session, [U.S. Ambassador Ryan] Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that political benchmarks set by President Bush for the Iraqi government were not necessarily the best way to measure progress.

You might remember those were the non-binding benchmarks the Republicans insisted should replace timelines, lest the terrorists win.

FEMA ignored pleas from Katrina victims, again

And you can't blame Brownie for this one.

As early as March 2006, FEMA began to receive complaints about formaldehyde odors. After one trailer was tested, an April 2006 e-mail sent from a FEMA attorney to another staffer concluded, "The end result — well above OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards Tester himself developed eye-watering symptoms of exposure."

Yet, in response to complaints, FEMA's legal department advised that testing "would imply FEMA's ownership of the issue." Another read, "Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK...Should [tests] indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."

From the testimony of Scott Needle, MD to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

My concern in this issue stems from my experience treating children in Hancock County, Mississippi in the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina. In spring 2006, certain patterns of illness emerged among some of my patients. Many children returned repeatedly to my office with symptoms that would not go away, or that would clear up and then recur: sinus infections, ear infections, colds, and other respiratory symptoms.

In talking with these families, I found that they all shared two common characteristics. First, they were all living in travel trailers provided by FEMA. Second, these families reported that their symptoms started not long after moving into these trailers.

Dick Cheney's official duties

A federal judge agrees that outing covert CIA agents is part of Dick Cheney's job description:

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory, " Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

Of course, "speaking with the press" wasn't the problem. Revealing state secrets was.

Absurdity alert: filibuster edition

Just now on CNN: Republican leader Mitch McConnell complaining that Harry Reid tabled the bill that the Republicans filibustered.

Stop poking the hornet's nest

Proving that Homeland Security doesn't even understand basic pest control:

Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush's homeland security adviser, took issue with the suggestion that the president had ignored warnings from the intelligence community that attacking Iraq would stimulate al-Qaeda's drive for recruits and influence.

"You're assuming it's a zero-sum game, which is what I don't understand," Townsend said. "The fact is, we were harassing them in Afghanistan, we're harassing them in Iraq, we're harassing them in other ways, non-militarily, around the world. And the answer is, every time you poke the hornet's nest, they are bound to come back and push back on you. That doesn't suggest to me that we shouldn't be doing it."

Actually, that's exactly why you aren't supposed to poke hornet's nests. You're supposed to fumigate and destroy them:

Do not disturb the nest in anyway.

Do not make any loud noises.

Treating hornets should be done at night, without shaking the nest.

Simply removing the nest will not resolve the problem, because surviving wasps will reconstruct a new one.

Just asking

Does anybody else wish that, instead of inviting groups of sycophants and ego strokers to talk about his legacy, George Bush would have instead called in a group of Senators and foreign policy experts to brain storm a solution to the disaster in Iraq?

And that instead of keeping quiet and "waiting until September" to start debating the country's priorities, we were having a vigorous debate right now?

Tom Coburn asks: "Why can't we just shoot people?"

A "Culture of Life" Republican Senator proves that being a devout Christian doesn't guarantee you have a solid sense of morality:

Tom Coburn, R-OK: "Why is it wrong for a Border Patrol agent who has stopped a van full of drugs, and the guy's running, why is it wrong to shoot him after they've told him to stop?"

U.S. Attorney Sutton: "Under the Constitution, if somebody's not causing you fear, you can't just shoot 'em because you're trying to stop 'em, or you're angry at 'em or you want to teach them a lesson,"

Coburn: "If in fact the message was: 'You come here with drugs, we interdict you and you don't stop, we're going to wing you, we're going to shoot you' – that message itself would do a lot to stop a lot of this."

Sutton: "If we let our agents just open fire, shooting to kill ... some innocent person is going to get gunned down execution-style by a cop, and there's going to be an outcry,"

h/t DSADevil

The party of winners

British journalist Johann Hari on a cruise with America's most partisan wingnuts catches this quote:

Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

Kind of an odd statement after the beating they took last November.

Then again, Brits sometimes have a problem with American-English. Maybe D'Sousa said "Republicans are the party of whiners"

Let the real filibusters begin

A filibuster is an attempt to prolong debate, typically used by the minority to prevent passage of a bill with majority support. Best exemplified in the movie Mr. Smith goes to Washington in which an honest Senator battles against graft and corruption by taking to the well of the Senate and stands his ground until the corruption is exposed and his rivals defeated in shame.

It's hard to believe that just 2 years ago, the Republicans attempted to kill the filibuster entirely. They complained that the Democrats were abusing the system by denying a vote on 10 of Bush's 229 judicial nominees. Former majority leader Bill Frist invented the idea of the "nuclear option" to strip the minority of it's right to continue debate.

But times change. Mitch McConnell embraced the idea of the filibuster within days of the 2006 elections, after the Republicans lost both Houses of Congress. Since January, he's blocked votes over 40 times, on everything from funding renewable energy to implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. No more talk of "up or down votes". Today he's all about minority rights .... well in the Senate, anyway.

So it's good to hear that Harry Reid now plans to start making Republicans take to the floor of the Senate if they don't want to cut off debate.

I'm guessing Senator McConnell isn't going to cut as sympathetic a figure as Jimmy Stewart while he's on the Senate floor arguing against ethics reform and increasing the minimum wage.

Ron Paul: restore Constitutional checks and balances

From Ron Paul's House web site:

Recently, the General Accounting Office studied nineteen instances where the President issued so-called “signing statements.” In such statements, the President essentially begins the process of interpreting legislation – up to and including declaring provisions unconstitutional—hence often refusing to enforce them.

The GAO study found that in nearly 1/3 of the cases studied, the administration failed to enforce the law as enacted.

The legislature should not yield its authority to the executive. Our constitutional republic demands that all branches of government understand and respect our system and jealously guard their own prerogatives.

In modern Washington nothing is more misunderstood, and less appreciated, than the genius of republicanism. Presidents issue signing statements that effectively “approve in part and reject in part,” laws of the land—even though there is no constitutional provision for such a process. In addition, Congress cedes its powers at the crucial moment when a decision on whether or not a war is to be fought will be made, only to then criticize the effort it could have used its powers to stop.

Maybe if we ethnically cleanse Iraq they'll stop fighting?

via ThinkProgress we learn that it isn't only politicians who have stupid ideas for Iraq.

[Michael O'Hanlon and Edward Joseph] hoping to draw the attention of Bush administration policymakers are proposing a partition plan for Iraq that would divide the country into three main regions.

The proposal would require the acquiescence of major political factions in Iraq. There would be substantial, voluntary movement in mixed, volatile areas.

This idea echos the plan supported by Joe Biden and Sam Brownback to divide the country into Shia, Sunni and Kurd dominated regions and is only slightly less stupid than Tommy Thompson's idea to partition the country into 18 parts.

That these men believe that any political factions would acquiesce to an American partition simply proves they haven't been paying attention for the last 4 years. Our forces haven't been able to convince any of the parties to do anything to date. Not even the Shia, who were effectively given the keys to the entire country when the Bush administration created the new government.

As for the substantial, voluntary relocation they imagine, it will most certainly be substantial, but hardly voluntary. We've already seen massive coerced relocations by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish death squads as each faction attempts to claim territory. This plan would legitimize these efforts with an American seal of approval.

We already have a long sad history of these ethnically based partition plans. India and Pakistan remain on the edge of war over boundaries disputed for 60 years now and the European plan to ethnically partition Bosnia resulted in a bloody campaign as all sides slaughtered their rivals in a final land grab.

A plan that calls for the voluntary ethnic-cleansing of Iraq would be a disaster.

Putin decides the Cold War isn't over after all

While George Bush has been obsessesing about small actors like Iran and Syria, he's been completely blind to the threat of a resurgent adversary in Russia.

He saw the Berlin wall fall and the Soviet Union disintegrate. "Reagan won the cold war". Put a check mark in the win column. It's time to move on to the threat of militant Islam.

So he complains that decades old treaties which have helped keep the peace between the two nuclear giants are "outdated", launches wars of preemption, and decides to build a missile shield right on the border of our old nemesis.

The Russians, of course, remember that the original purpose of the "missile shield" was to counter their military power, not Iran's. They see the Vice-President declaring that the United States is the world's sole superpower which won't permit any rival, and they see NATO expanding into old Soviet block nations while hostile forces build up along their borders, first in Afghanistan, then Iraq and soon possibly Iran and Syria.

Vladimir Putin very much sees a growing threat. And he doesn't think it comes from Iran.

Unfortunately, George Bush appears to sincerely believe that "the Cold War is over" and that Russia and the United States have become fast friends. This despite Putin's rollback of democratic reforms in Russia, his assertion of dominance over former Soviet states and his repeated declarations that the Americans have become like the Nazis of old.

And now Putin has taken a page from Bush's playbook and begun declaring treaties outdated himself:

Russia engaged the West in a new round of brinkmanship yesterday when Vladimir Putin effectively tore up a vital treaty designed to end the threat of war in Europe.

In a chilling message to his adversaries, the Russian president signed a decree suspending Moscow's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, a move that will allow Russia to mass tanks on its border with Europe for the first time in 15 years.

Limiting the number of troops that could be stationed on Cold War front lines by both sides, the treaty required Russia to move the bulk of its military hardware east of the Ural Mountains, the geographical divide between Europe and Asia. With the treaty's demise, Mr Putin seems to be declaring a return to adversarial Cold War politics.

Hillary Clinton on the "Right to Return" to New Orleans

From the June 28th debate:

MS. MARTIN: [W]ould you support a federal law guaranteeing the right to return to New Orleans and other Gulf regions devastated by Hurricane Katrina, based on the United Nations Human Rights Standards Governing the Internal Displacement of Citizens?

SEN. CLINTON: I have proposed a 10-point Gulf Coast Recovery Agenda, because it’s sort of as a chicken and an egg issue, Michel.

First, we’ve got to get the hospitals back up. We’ve got to get the law enforcement and the fire departments -- you know, right now this administration has basically neglected with almost criminal indifference the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, in particular New Orleans and the parishes.

So even if we were to give people a right, there is nothing to return to. We have got to rebuild New Orleans, and it’s not only the protection from the levees, it is all the infrastructure. And until very recently, the administration would not give the people of New Orleans the same right we had after 9/11, which was to get FEMA money without a 10 percent match.

And we finally got that changed, but it was outrageous that it took so long.

In May she visited the city and explicitly called for rebuilding the city with significantly greater protection from future storms.

"I believe we should order the corps to achieve Cat 5 protection over time"

The "right to return" refers to a suit brought by many of the city's residents, particularly those who lived in the most devastated areas. They believe that the wealthier communities are trying to build a smaller New Orleans, purged of its poorest citizens. Federal reconstruction aid has been slow to arrive and gone largely to the city's land-owners. Before Katrina, a majority rented their homes and worry that there is no guarantee they will have anyplace to return to.

When the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans was lifted, residents of public housing, many of whom left with only the clothes on their backs, returned to find most of their homes locked and boarded up. This closure was not due to hurricane damage or flooding. In fact, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology architect's assessment in October 2006 showed no structural damage and minimal interior damage to most of these buildings because these all-brick structures were built to withstand such storms.

The city, developers and the feds are planning the largest urban renewal and black removal in U.S. history. While it's clear that blacks were hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, there is no aggressive plan to bring them home.

While HUD professes to want something better for public housing residents, its plan falls woefully short. There is no strategy to replace every unit that is demolished nor to increase the number of affordable housing units to meet growing needs.

"I'm looking for Jack Bauer"

Since so many senior Republican officials dream of styling their national security strategy on FOX's 24 ; it should be remembered that in Jack Bauer's universe the United States has had two presidents assassinated, lost possession of a stealth fighter and a nuclear weapon, seen several reactors melt down, experienced multiple suicide bombings and had at least one city nuked.

This despite the frequent use of enhanced interrogation methods in the national defense.

That's because the fictitious Counter Terrorist Unit is completely inept and disfunctional. Jack Bauer tortures people because he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

The most insidious of traitors

Matt Yglesias thinks Bush took the honorable path in freeing Scooter Libby.

I didn't think he would do it, but it's really the only honorable course of action available to him. It would be silly for Bush to pretend to believe that people deserve to be punished for breaking the law to help cover up his administration's crimes when he clearly believes no such thing.

But, there are those who get absolved for doing Bush's dirty work, and there are those who don't:

Eleven U.S. soldiers _ all from the enlisted ranks _ have been convicted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, with former Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. receiving the harshest sentence, a 10-year prison term.

The leading cause of death among black women

During Tavis Smiley's Democratic debate, the candidates were asked about AIDS and it's affects on black America:

MS. MARTIN: [Y]ou can imagine how disturbed we were to find out from the Centers for Disease Control that African-Americans, though 17 percent of all American teenagers, they are 69 percent of the population of teenagers diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

SEN. CLINTON: You know, it is hard to disagree with anything that has been said, but let me just put this in perspective. If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.

According to the CDC, HIV is the leading cause of death among black women 25-34 years old, and is a significant killer of all American women. Black women are 23 times more likely to contract AIDS than their white counterparts.

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for white women 25-34.

American women as a whole are most likely to die of heart disease or stroke.

Supreme Court Justices attack the Sherman Antitrust Act

In the final day of the current session, the Supreme Court overturned a portion of the Antitrust Act, allowing businesses to join together to fix prices.

WASHINGTON, June 28 — Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that it was not automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on minimum retail prices.

The decision will give producers significantly more, though not unlimited, power to dictate retail prices and to restrict the flexibility of discounters.

Five justices, agreeing with the nation’s major manufacturers, said the new rule could in some instances lead to more competition and better service. But four dissenting justices agreed with 37 states and some consumer groups that abandoning the old rule could result in significantly higher prices and less competition for consumer and other goods.

The court struck down the 96-year-old rule that resale price maintenance agreements were an automatic, or per se, violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In its place, the court instructed judges considering such agreements for possible antitrust violations to apply a case-by-case approach, known as a “rule of reason,” to assess their impact on competition. The new rule is considerably more favorable to defendants.

The decision was handed down on the last day of the court’s term, which has been notable for overturning precedents and for victories for big businesses and antitrust defendants.

No points for guessing which five justices voted in favor of big business.

John Edwards would rebuild New Orleans

Several months ago Pete Abel asked his readers to identify five critical, governance-related questions that should be asked of each of the presidential candidates. Rather than ask five, there was one specific question that I felt should be answered by every candidate running:

What should we do about New Orleans?

In particular:

Should we commit to rebuilding New Orleans within its pre-Katrina boundaries?

Should we relocate all or part of the population to higher ground?

Or, should we allow nature and market forces to determine where we build and what we abandon?

This goes straight to one of the fundamental jobs of a national leader. What do you do when entire communities are destroyed and the people left stranded and homeless?

Many have an opinion about New Orleans. It was built largely below sea level in an area prone to hurricanes and the risk was known for years. Some think the government was corrupt or unprepared. Some think the people took a gamble and lost.

But decisions need to be made. New Orleanians have been given neither a commitment that the city will be protected against a future catastrophic flood, nor a warning that they are taking their chances if they return.

Few will invest in rebuilding their homes until they know the answer to these questions. Will we commit to rebuilding a city below sea level, and grant it protection from the elements, like the Dutch or Venicians do? Will we tell the people that we will no longer insure their financial safety if another storm comes? Will we even guarantee that we'll rebuild water and power systems for those who live in the highest risk areas?

This is an issue much bigger than New Orleans. Floods threaten communities all along the coast and up the Mississippi River, earthquakes threaten virtually every city on the west coast, fire and drought threaten more. If we're willing to abandon one city to its fate, are we willing to abandon all of them?


So taking Pete's advice, I fired off an email to each of the major campaigns asking that particular question. Recently, the John Edwards campaign responded.

As John Edwards watched the horrific images of human suffering caused by Katrina, like many of us, he was heart broken. Unfortunately, those images were not the picture of one city, but of our country today. It does not have to be that way. This is a historic moment when the country is ready to act.

To get New Orleans back on its feet John Edwards believes we need to do three big things:

* Free up available money and distribute it to rebuild the housing, schools, and hospitals so that people have something to come back to.

* Create jobs to bring people back - I've called for the federal government to create 50,000 stepping stone jobs for the Gulf Coast.

* Make the city safe - with levees that can withstand another Katrina and safe from crime.

Many of the problems of New Orleans are not unique to the Crescent City. Every day, 37 million Americans wake up in poverty. John Edwards has a plan for us to eliminate poverty in the next 30 years. It's our moral. He has laid out a detailed plan to do it by creating a "Working Society," which builds on what we have learned to create solutions for the future.

While we do it, John Edwards believes we must end the old racial and economic isolation of too many communities, including pre-Katrina New Orleans. We need to build affordable housing in economically integrated communities (while preserving public housing that's livable today until new homes are ready). That way, the poor housing that separated hundreds of thousands of people from good jobs, good schools and good health care - and new isolation of trailer homes - will be a thing of the past.

We are not the country of the Superdome in New Orleans after Katrina. We are not the country where a mother has to choose between providing heat or electricity for her kids. We are Americans, and we are better than that.

Climate Change: a term laden with fear?

The German magazine, Spiegel, interviews the CEO of the largest chemical company in the world. What gives a man like this nightmares? Apparently the term "climate change"

Hambrecht: I have a problem with the term "climate change." It's laden with fear. The climate is a highly complex system, and it has always changed. If there is one thing we cannot do, it is to allow ourselves to be scared and to seek emotional satisfaction in short-term campaigns.

The term Climate Change is laden with fear? The predictions behind it, maybe, but the term itself is pretty tepid. If we were calling it Apocalypse Forecast or Planetary Inferno maybe.

My guess is there's a different reason the CEO of a chemical company is spooked about climate change. The idea that his industry may be held partly responsible comes to mind.

Hambrecht never actually accuses climatology of being junk science, he just thinks it needs a few more decades of study. And of course, he likes to think there's an up side:

Hambrecht: We must develop a different attitude toward conditions on this earth. Many academics believe that the 12th century was the most successful for people in Europe. It was also the century in which Europe was the warmest. But then came the "little ice age," which lasted until the 19th century and was a difficult time with many epidemics.

On happier nights, he must dream about the monuments that will be built in tribute to industrialists like himself for creating a tropical utopia.

Dick Cheney's toadies

Cheney, who has a habit of firing employees who aren't true believers, has managed to gather a collection of the finest sycophants in American government.

For example Paul Hoffman, who just knew that Dick is both a snowmobile enthusiast and has a peculiar hatred for cutthroat salmon:

Hoffman, now in another job at the Interior Department, said Cheney never told him what to do on either issue -- he didn't have to.

"His genius," Hoffman said, is that "he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision."

Cheney also isn't too big a man to help focus the concentration of those who aren't as quick on the uptake:

Aides praise Cheney's habit of reaching down to officials who are best informed on a subject he is tackling. But the effect of his calls often leads those mid-level officials scrambling to do what they presume to be his bidding.

That's their euphemism for his inclination to get on the phone directly with people who take the law too literally, like the Interior Department official who thought she was supposed to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

That's what happened when a mortified Wooldridge finally returned the vice president's call, after receiving a tart follow-up inquiry from one of his aides. Cheney, she said, "was coming from the perspective that the farmers had to be able to farm -- that was his concern. The fact that the vice president was interested meant that everyone paid attention."

Cheney made sure that attention did not wander. He had Wooldridge brief his staff weekly and, Smith said, he also called the interior secretary directly.

Apparently, the technique is a big motivator. He gets lots of praise from those who survive his trial by fire:

[Mike] Gerson added: "It's principled. He's deeply conscious that this is a dangerous world, and he wants this president and future presidents to be able to deal with that. He feels very strongly about these things, and it's his great virtue and his weakness."

Cheney's deep principle here is that the U.S. should adopt the torture techniques developed by Stalinist Russia.

Cheney's style also saves a lot of unnecessary thinking. Here's how Rob Portman uses Cheney as a "sounding board".

"He never, ever has said to me, 'Do this.' Never. Which is interesting, because that might be the perception of how he operates," Portman said. "But it is 'What do you think of this?' Well, he's the vice president of the United States -- and obviously I'm interested in his point of view."

And finally, Edward Lazear, who extolls Dick's ability to run an efficient operation:

When Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, broached the idea of limiting the popular mortgage tax deduction, he said he quickly dropped it after Cheney told him it would never fly with Congress. "He's a big timesaver for us in that he takes off the table a lot of things he knows aren't going to go anywhere," Lazear said.

Lazear, who is otherwise known as a fierce advocate for his views, said that he may argue a point with Cheney "for 10 minutes or so" but that in the end [Lazear] is always convinced. "I can't think of a time when I have thought I was right and the vice president was wrong."

Dick Cheney: "holding the line on spending"

From the Washington Post's series on the vice president, we learn from his supporters that he is the go-to guy on economic issues, a "small-government" conservative who keeps George Bush faithful to Republican core principles.

Such stands by Cheney were not uncommon, said Bolten, the White House chief of staff. Cheney often stepped in if he sensed the administration was softening its commitment to Republican "first principles," Bolten said, and he was "a pretty vigorous voice for holding the line on spending and for holding the line on tax cuts." Longtime Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said the vice president brings a "spine quotient" to internal debates.

None of his aides actually cite any instances where Cheney lobbied for spending restraint, but if we take them at their word this is apparently the only area Cheney has failed to get his way.

Bush and Cheney have added over $3 trillion to the national debt and they aren't done yet.

Chris Dodd comes out for forced labor

From Chris Dodd's American Community Initiative*:

Mandate Community Service as a Requirement for Recipients of Social Security and Medicaid. Under the Dodd plan, every senior-citizen in America will be required to perform 100 hours of community-based service prior to receiving government aid. Community service will give every senior in America an opportunity to gain new knowledge and skills while contributing to their communities and their own sense of pride. Service dollars will be provided to states based on the over 65 population with additional dollars for technical assistance and program administration. States and cities will have the flexibility to tailor their individual programs and requirements to meet their community’s immediate needs – all programs will be locally designed. The program is only mandatory when fully funded by the federal government. Participation in this fully funded program is a condition of receiving federal aid.


Summer of Service for Retired Seniors. By reaching the elderly when they become idle, the Dodd plan will foster a powerful connection to community, transforming a time when retirees too often become isolated into a positive, defining life experience. Summer of Service creates a competitive grant program that enables states and localities to offer pensioners an opportunity to participate in a structured community service program over the summer months. Through Summer of Service, the elderly perform socially valuable, full-time community service for eight weeks over the summer in exchange for a small stipend plus a $500 good neighbor award for each Summer of Service for up to four summers. Summer of Service employs service-learning models to teach civic participation skills, help our elders see themselves as resources to their communities, expand social opportunities and discourage “feelings of uselessness” while providing tangible benefits to the communities in which projects are performed. Encouraging all retirees, regardless of age, income, or disability, to engage in community service, Summer of Service will become a rite of passage for every person in America.

*These plans always sound great once you're too old to be subject to them yourself.

There's a big difference between volunteerism and forced labor.

The attorney general scandal is becoming a voting rights scandal

What originally appeared to be a case of executive arrogance is rapidly becoming a scandal about voter suppression and outright racism in the Justice Department.

Originally, reports that the Patriot Act had been rewritten to allow A.G. Gonzales to appoint new U.S. Attorneys without ever subjecting them to Senate approval looked like the Bush administration simply grabbing more power. Most believed that he only wanted to appoint a group of loyalists throughout the agency and purge anyone who showed a sense of independence. So we had lots of arguments about USA's "serving at the pleasure of the president" and too many editorials suggesting the scandal was overblown.

That would've been bad enough. An agency like the Justice Department has to be seen as fair and non-partisan in it's enforcement of the nation's laws.

But in time after time, starting with Iglesias' firing for refusing to pursue a weak case against Democrats, through the USA Spakovsky shutting down investigations of voter discrimination, to the appointment of Karl Rove's hatchet man, Tim Griffin, the common denominator is always voter suppression.

Specifically, the Justice Department has been actively involved in voter "caging" and discrimination, particularly in the states of Florida and Ohio.

The latest report implicates yet another U.S. Attorney in an attempt to strip African Americans of their right to vote:

Four days before the 2004 election, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief sent an unusual letter to a federal judge in Ohio who was weighing whether to let Republicans challenge the credentials of 23,000 mostly African-American voters.

The case was triggered by allegations that Republicans had sent a mass mailing to mostly Democratic-leaning minorities and used undeliverable letters to compile a list of voters potentially vulnerable to eligibility challenges.

This time, the culprit was Alex Acosta, then Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, now USA for the Southern District of Florida. In his official capacity, he submitted a letter to the judge hearing the case, arguing:

that it would "undermine" the enforcement of state and federal election laws if citizens could not challenge voters’ credentials.

In other words the head of the Civil Rights division was openly supporting a partisan challenge against tens of thousands of minority voters.

Fred Thompson: every woman's fantasy?

Continuing to demonstrate an utter lack of interest in the 19 candidates already running for president, we get another puff piece about a man who might jump in the race.

In the battle for the women’s vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton - the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president.

Seriously, how many women can the guy have dated.

From one of his exes:

“Fred is a perfect example of chivalry. He’s the kind of man little girls dream about marrying, who opens doors for you, lights your cigarettes, helps you on with your coat, buys wonderful gifts. It’s every woman’s fantasy.”

Now, I realize this puts him way ahead of Giuliani in terms of the ex-vote, but this isn't Brad Pitt we're talking about here. A choice between voting for the first woman president and voting for the guy from Die Hard 2 doesn't constitute an epic battle over the women's vote.

How to suck up to the boss, Monica Goodling edition

An odd note from the recently released Monica Goodling files. During the weeks when she was busy purging U. S. Attorneys for investigating voter discrimination and replacing them with Karl Rove proteges she had a habit of tagging this quote to the end of her email messages:

"[W]e rededicate ourselves to the ideals that inspired our founders. During that hot summer in Philadelphia more than 200 years ago, from our desperate fight for independence to the darkest days of a civil war, to the hard-fought battles of the 20th century, there were many chances to lose our heart, our nerve, or our way. But Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths: We know that the freedom we defend is meant for all men and women, and for all times. And we know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat; it is courage." - President George W. Bush, July 4, 2005

Bill Kristol is an idiot

From ThinkProgress:

Kristol said the exemptions for the president and vice president were “reasonable enough.” He called it “a pain in the neck” to have “some bureaucrat” from the National Archives “come and inspect your safe to see whether you’re locking it up properly each night.”

I'm pretty sure that's what Wen Ho Lee thought too.

Bush wants to end program to dismantle Soviet nukes

The Bush administration hates treaties, even when they're profoundly in our national security interests. The latest target is the 1991 START treaty, and they hope to replace a rigorous verification regime with an informal handshake.

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, co-creator of the program that’s helped Russia dismantle and secure large portions of its Soviet-era nuclear forces, strongly urged the Bush administration on Thursday to reconsider plans to end the treaty based system that allows Moscow and Washington to monitor each other’s nuclear arsenals.

“The predictability and confidence provided by treaty verification reduces the chances of misinterpretation, miscalculation and error.” He said that Russian-American relations were “complicated enough without introducing more elements of uncertainty into the nuclear relationship.”

Describing the 16 year old system as "outdated" and chafing under restrictions preventing him from designing bunker buster nuclear weapons, George Bush wants to replace on-site verification with increased intelligence operations. (The type that failed spectacularly in the lead up to the Iraq war.)

Preferring to focus on enemies who don't have nuclear missile capabilities, like Iran and al Qaeda, he's forgotten that the only true existential threat to America comes from Moscow.

The intelligence community isn't happy with the idea:

Alarmed by the stress on the limited fleet of U.S. spy satellites, however, U.S. intelligence agencies oppose weakening the on-site inspections and other means that give U.S. officials a window into the only nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the United States.

Most disturbingly, George Bush literally believes that Russia no longer poses a threat to the United States. He thinks "the Cold War is over" and doesn't understand why the Russians oppose a missile defense system in Poland.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has rolled back democratic reforms, arrested political rivals, assassinated journalists and compares the U.S. to Nazi Germany. He sees us at his doorstep and very much believes we're a threat.

Dick Cheney: the unitary (vice) executive ?

From the Washington Post:

Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.

Cheney's obsession with personal privacy and security is legendary. After 9/11 it was the vice president who fled to an undisclosed location, vanishing from the public eye for most of the next 2 years. And while you can easily find high resolution satellite images of the White House, the Pentagon, military bases and nuclear reactors, the historic residence of the Vice President has been absurdly pixelated.

Cheney's refusal to follow the rules governing national secrecy (which exist to ensure those secrets aren't deliberately or accidentally released), show that he believes the president is his subordinate, not the other way around.

NASA will launch the first mission to tour the asteroid belt

On July 7, NASA is scheduled to launch the spacecraft on a four-year journey to the asteroid belt. Once there, Dawn will do some asteroid-hopping, going into orbit around Vesta in 2011 and Ceres in 2015. Dawn will be the first spacecraft to orbit two targets. At least 100,000 asteroids inhabit the asteroid belt, a reservoir of leftover material from the formation of our solar-system planets 4.6 billion years ago.

Dawn also will be the first satellite to tour a dwarf planet. The International Astronomical Union named Ceres one of three dwarf planets in 2006. Ceres is round like planets in our solar system, but it does not clear debris out of its orbit as our planets do.

To date, NASA has flown by only a few small asteroids ( up to a few dozen kilometers in size). Those bodies typically look like oddly shaped giant rocks and are fairly uniform in composition.

At almost 1000 km across, Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt and is roughly spherical. Vesta is about half that size, but is one of the most heterogeneous objects in the belt with a differentiated crust and mantle.

Chile's lost lake

A glacial lake in the Southern Andes is now an empty crater 100 feet deep.

The lake, some 20,000 square metres in area, was last seen in March. By May, all that was left was a 30-metre-deep crater and a few pieces of stranded ice that used to float on top of the water. A river running from it had reduced to a trickle, according to the park rangers who first noticed the lake was missing.

It's not the first time that a lake has disappeared, although it is quite rare for bodies of water to vanish so quickly. In central Russia in May 2005, Lake Beloye disappeared "overnight" according to local reports. People assumed that the water had been sucked into an underground cave or river. Scott Lake, in Florida, disappeared into a sinkhole over the course of a week in June 2006.

From NewScientist:

I am not for one moment suggesting that researchers at Chile's National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) are careless - suffice to say that since March, they have managed to lose a 2-hectare (5-acre) lake.

CBS news has more:

Global warming could have melted the ice and increased water levels, which, in turn, could have put pressure on the glacial lake's walls and caused a break, he said. But global warming is not going to cause the lake to disappear in one month.

Update 7/4/2007: mystery solved

Scientists yesterday told Chilean media that "a build-up of water opened a crack in an ice wall along one side of the lake", and the contents then "flowed through the crack into a nearby fjord and from there into the sea, leaving behind a dry lake-bed littered with icebergs".

Glacier expert Andres Rivera, who visited the site as part of a "missing lakes" investigative team, happily reported: "It looks like it's slowly filling up with water again." He did, however, offer the traditional warning that the lake's escape was "evidence of the effects of global warming"

"Tim needs to be carefully managed"

Following the catastrophic loss of both chambers of Congress, the A.G.'s office pushed forward in appointing Karl Rove's political apprentice, Tim Griffin, as a U.S. Attorney for Arkansas. Senators became alarmed when they realized that a clause in the recently reauthorized Patriot Act enabled the A.G. to appoint USA's without Senate confirmation.

From the House Judiciary Committee document dump:

From: Sampson, Kyle Friday, December 15,2006 4:45 PM
To: 'Oprisan. Christopher G.', Goodling, Monica

Importance: High

The Senators' Chiefs of Staff now have been notified of our intention (1) to put Griffin in as USA under an AG appointment and (2) to issue a press release our of DOJ today stating the same.

Chris, I think the While House (you) needs to continue the dialogue with the Senators re our desire to have the President nominate, and the Senate confirm. Griffin. They think they smell a rat, i.e., that we are doing an end around of their advice and consent authority by exercising the new, unlimited AG appointment authority.

Monica, please be sure that the Griffin meeting with Sen. Pryor gets scheduled.

Kyle Sampson
Chief of Staff
U.S. Department of Justice

This plan blew up when Arkansas Senator Pryor (D) objected to Griffin's appointment and the attempt to cut the Senate out of the process. The press quickly caught wind of the scandal and by February, Griffin was panicking and in daily contact with Monica Goodling over his status.

From: Sampson, Kyle, Friday, February 02, 2007 2:35 PM
To: Oprison, Christopher G.; Scott Jennings

Here's the letter the AG sent to Sen. Pryor this week. Bill and Sara both signed off on it; I should have sent to you two as well. I think it lays out the way forward pretty clearly.

---------------------
From: Oprison, Christopher G., Friday, February 02, 2007 2:42 PM
To: Sampson, Kyle

Was Tim provided a copy of this letter or informed of it in sum and substance. If not, should he, as a courtesy? I defer to you on that

---------------------
From: Sampson, Kyle Friday, February 02, 2007 2:45 PM
To: 'Oprison, Christopher G.'
Cc: Goodling, Monica

Tim needs to be carefully managed

monica (cc'd hereto) is the one here who tim calls regularly as tim is frequently calling you also, perhaps the two of you should compare notes
monica, what say you?

---------------------
From: Goodling, Monica Friday, February 02, 2007 2:57 PM
To: Sampson, Kyle; 'Oprison, Christopher G.'
Subject: RE: E.D. Ark. - Griffin

Yes, Tim and I speak daily. It's likely to be discussed on Tuesday at the hearing, so he should know. I pondered this yesterday, but when we spoke he was spun up and I didn't think it was the best time. Yesterday's issue has now been resolved, so barring any concerns from you guys, I'll let him know today that the AG and the Senator have continued their discussions and that the AG sent the letter up as part of that dialogue. (And share it with him.)

Griffin, Sampson and Goodling have since resigned.

Griffin now stands accused of engaging in voter "caging": attempting to deny Democrats the right to vote by challenging their residency status.

Let's find a way to blame Bill Clinton

From Monica Goodling's email files:

Andrea, do you want to send this to the Counsel's office? Please check this, but I think we have data on all the Clinton USA nominations in the last 3 years of his Administration - there were 19 new USAs. Can we make an argument that Pres. Bush has sent fewer nominations up (that it is quite normal for USAS to resign 2 years before the Admin ends), and how can we discover the circumstances of the Clinton Administration USA resignations? I will send out to judiciary staff soon. What do you think?

And her reply?

It is true that it is common for many U.S. Attorneys to move on for various reasons, but I don't think we want to say that we have sent fewer nominations up.

Clinton had only 122 nominated and confirmed U.S. Attorneys -- so about a third of his districts turned over and had two U.S. Attorneys nominated and confirmed. President Bush is already at 124 so we are running pretty close to the same amount of turnover right now, but our number will climb higher by the end.

From 1/1/1999 to 12/5/2000,19 Presidentially-appointed and senate-confirmed USAs resigned their positions.

Rats.

Darn Clinton.

How do I get into the 15% tax bracket?

Next time you're worried about Paris Hilton's tax rate going up, remember, she probably already pays less than you do:

At the heart of the newest proposal is an attempt to bar private equity and hedge fund operators from a longstanding, but little understood, practice that has allowed them to pay a lower capital gains rate of 15 percent instead of the ordinary top income tax rate of 35 percent on their performance fees, which typically represent most of their annual income

For comparison, the typical American is paying 20-25% of their income in federal taxes after deductions. The rich technically pay more, but only on earned income, and the stories of wealthy people paying 50%, 70% or 90% are simply not true today.

And if their income comes from capital gains, or inheritance, they pay far less than the average Joe.

FEC nominee accused of blocking voting rights investigations

Hans von Spakovsky, recess appointed by George Bush to be a member of the Federal Elections Commission, has been accused of preventing career Justice employees from bringing suits or investigating allegations of voter discrimination.

A former Justice Department political appointee blocked career lawyers from filing at least three lawsuits charging local and county governments with violating the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, seven former senior department employees charged Monday.

Hans von Spakovsky also derailed at least two investigations into possible voter discrimination, the former employees of the Voting Rights Section said in interviews and in a letter to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. They urged the panel to reject von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

This is the flip side of the accusation that U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department were being coerced into investigating "voter fraud" and were actively involved in voter suppression.

The FEC is responsible for enforcing the nation's campaign finance laws.

Three members were recess appointed by Bush in 2006. Spakovsky, Steven Walther and Robert Lenhard, who fought to overturn McCain-Feingold. The terms of the other members have officially expired.

Missing soldier's wife threatened

While the U.S. military searches for a soldier missing in Iraq, kidnapped by insurgents possibly allied with al Qaeda, his wife back home in Massachusetts may be deported by the U.S. government.

h/t Americablog