August 4, 2008 We're glad it's the Washington Post, and not just us "bloggers", asking questions about this anthrax case. Had we been the ones pointing to the questions that WaPo is now pointing to, we'd have been accused of forwarding "just another conspiracy theory" and the notable questions raised might have been relegated to the trash-bin of history. Since it's WaPo raising the questions, on the other hand, the trash-bin will take an extra day or two to fill up, but we suspect the results may eventually be the same: Legend will have it that the lone "Anthrax Killer," Bruce E. Ivins, killed himself just before he was to be indicted on capital murder charges. Case closed on the previously-unsolved deadly series of terrorist attacks that occurred on American soil since. That said, it's certainly odd the way that WaPo has been covering this story. While their top story on page A1 today is headlined "Scientists Question FBI's Probe of Anthrax Attacks" and sub-titled "Ivins Could Not Have Been Attacker, Some Say," the paper nonetheless managed to scrub from their website. Full Story
August 4, 2008 Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued her search for book sales and it seems her search for a plausible rationale for personally blocking any impeachment investigation of President Bush. The latest explanation can in an interview with Time Magazine. It seems that she would not allow an investigation because Bush would never have supplied incriminating evidence against himself. It seems that House investigators rely on the accused to build an impeachment case. Before moving to the obvious problems with the latest rationale for blocking any impeachment effort for years, it is worth noting that it took the Speaker's book tour to finally prompt her to answer questions about her decision. Only last week, Pelosi used the august body of the hosts of The View to reveal her view on impeachment: there is simply no evidence of crimes committed by President Bush, click here. My understanding is that her office was inundated with copies of the various documented crimes alleged against Bush. Now, Pelosi is claiming a different rationale: they could not rely on the White House and GOP supplying the evidence needed to convict. Full Story
August 4, 2008 Despite the expectation of easy passage, AIPAC's controversial resolution is stalled in committee. The efforts of antiwar groups who mobilized messages of protest proved fruitful, but the debate over the use of military force in Iran is just beginning. Ordinarily, the American Israel Policy Action Committee (AIPAC) has an influence on U.S. foreign policy which goes unchallenged. In the case of the current House resolution, H. Con. Res. 362, despite the intense pressure exerted by AIPAC, some members of the United States House of Representatives who initially were about to rubber stamp this reckless non-binding resolution promoted by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, are having a change of heart. After receiving many thousands of messages which pointed out that the resolution could be interpreted as Congressional authorization for military action against Iran, legislators began expressing their own reservations. Full Story
August 4, 2008 Three myths about the cold war" 'We won the cold war'! But in fact, the end was negotiated. 'The Soviet Union collapsed because the US brought pressure to bear or because Unca Ronnie 'outspent' them.' In fact, the opposite is true as you will learn. 'Ronald Reagan defeated communism'. In fact, Ronald Reagan defeated America! Let's set the record straight. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with the fall of communism. A great statesman-- Mikhail Gorbachev --deserves the credit for withdrawing nuclear weapons from Eastern Europe which he did upon his own initiative. Gorbachev was the architect of Perestroika and, later, Glasnost. Reagan merely followed the leader. As I have pointed out: Ronald Reagan Blew the World's Last Chance for Peace! It was Gorbachev --a real leader --who had put total nuclear disarmament on the table. It was an offer Reagan could not accept! Reagan had bosses who had already made him an offer he didn't refuse: the sale of his soul! Full Story
August 3, 2008 One of four men who helped a New Hampshire couple avoid arrest for tax evasion last year was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while another was sentenced to 2 1/2 years behind bars. Jason Gerhard, 22, of Brookhaven, N.Y., was convicted in April of helping tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown, whom he brought guns during a prolonged standoff with authorities. He was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to impede federal agents, being an accessory after the fact and possessing or carrying weapons in connection with a crime of violence. Robert Wolffe, 50, of Randolph, Vt., who pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy and accessory charges similar to Gerhard's, was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in prison. Wolffe had cooperated with prosecutors and testified against Gerhard, Daniel Riley of Cohoes, N.Y., and Cirino Gonzalez, of Alice, Texas, at trial in April. Riley and Gonzalez were convicted. Full Story
August 3, 2008 Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group "devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream." When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani's efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military's tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting: McCain: And some of those tactics - you mention the war in Iraq - are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc. Full Story
August 3, 2008 The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the "War on Terror," and yesterday's revelations in Time - based on disclosures by a "senior American official" (now retired), who was "a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings" after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that "a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island" - will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely. The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the U.S. government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret "War on Terror" prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition" and the practice of torture. Full Story
August 1, 2008 An Army scientist committed suicide as federal prosecutors readied an indictment alleging he mailed anthrax-laced letters in 2001 in what authorities said Friday may have been a bizarre attempt to test a vaccine for the deadly poison. The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, worked at the Army's biodefense labs at Ft. Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday. He had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers recently filed in local court by a social worker. The developments marked an unexpected turn in an episode that rattled a nation shaken only a few weeks earlier by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Letters containing anthrax powder turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, killing five and sending numerous victims to hospitals with anthrax poisoning. Ivins' attorney asserted the scientist's innocence and said he had been cooperating with investigators for more than a year. Full Story
August 1, 2008 So determined were Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers to limit the scope and intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson's Rules of the House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President, which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich's proposed articles of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President Ronald Reagan, saying he would have to reference his listing of crimes to the "resident" of the White House, without naming him. In the end, the ludicrous rule imposing a gag on calling the president a criminal fell by the wayside, with witness Vincent Bugliosi, a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had "lied" the country into an illegal and unnecessary war, and with committee member Shiela Jackson Lee (D-TX) suggesting that the president may have committed treason in invading Iraq, and that he appeared to be preparing to commit it again with an unprovoked invasion of Iran. Full Story
August 1, 2008 In one of the most significant legal rulings in the tech industry this year, a Superior Court judge in California has ruled that the practice of charging consumers a fee for ending their cell phone contract early is illegal and violates state law. The preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers $18.2 million in reimbursements and, more importantly, orders Sprint to stop trying to collect another $54.7 million from California customers (some 2 million customers total) who have canceled their contracts but refused or failed to pay the termination fee. While an appeal is inevitable, the ruling could have massive fallout throughout the industry. Without the threat of levying early termination fees, the cellular carriers lose the power that's enabled them to lock customers into contracts for multiple years at a time. And while those contracts can be heinously long, they also let the carriers offer cell phone hardware at reduced (subsidized) prices. AT&T's two-year contract is the only reason the iPhone 3G costs $199. Full Story
August 1, 2008 Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh - a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker - revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President's office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. In Hersh's most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The "meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. 'The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,'" according to one of Hersh's sources. During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney's office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected. Full Story
August 1, 2008 A federal judge on Thursday rejected President Bush's contention that senior White House advisers are immune from subpoenas, siding with Congress' power to investigate the executive branch and handing a victory to Democrats probing the dismissal of nine federal prosecutors. The unprecedented ruling undercut three presidential confidants who have defied congressional subpoenas for information that Bush says is protected by executive privilege. Democrats swiftly announced they would schedule hearings in September, at the height of election season. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House could soon vote on a contempt citation against one of the three officials, Karl Rove, formerly Bush's top adviser. "It certainly strengthens our hand," she said of the ruling. "This decision should send a clear signal to the Bush administration that it must cooperate fully with Congress and that former administration officials Harriet Miers and Karl Rove must testify before Congress." That wasn't clear at all to the White House or Rove's attorney. Bush administration lawyers were reviewing the ruling and were widely expected to appeal. They also could seek a stay that would suspend any further congressional proceedings. Full Story
