[+/-] Bush order guts twenty years of wildlife protections

The LA Times (reg. req.) is reporting that under a rule issued yesterday by the Bush administration, national forest managers won't have to adhere to strict wildlife protections that have been in place for more than two decades.

The rule is not the last word on the protections, which since 1982 have directed the US Forest Service to manage national forests to maintain "viable populations" of fish and wildlife. Officials could not say when a final regulation would be published.

Issued in 1982 by the Reagan administration, the viability requirement was often cited in lawsuits that forced the Forest Service to reduce timber cutting in regions with declining populations of owls and other animals.

Many conservationists consider it a key safeguard for wildlife.

It states that until final regulations are issued, forest managers can follow the 1982 regulations if they wish but that they are "not in effect." It directs managers to base forest plans on "the best available science." There is no mention of species viability in the temporary rule, but Forest Service spokesman Joseph Walsh said it remained a Forest Service concern. "What we're trying to do is ensure all species have a viable habitat," he said. "If that's not good enough, I don't know what to say."

Environmentalists are calling Wednesday's edict a precursor to a formal abandonment of the viability protections.

[+/-] Post-debate spin has already begun

With five hours to go before tonight's presidential debates, the news media has already begun to spin the results.

Wired Magazine is reporting that the Bush campaign has set up a network of Web sites to carry instant analysis of tonight's debate. The "Debate Feed" will provide the GOP spin in real time to as many as 5,000 conservative Web outlets

It looks like one of them, ABC, has already jumped the gun. Why the hell is this story written in the past tense, as if the debate has already happened?!

After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads, President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath.

The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone to changing his positions.

Bush was expected to confront questions about leading the nation into war on the still-unproven premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He also has faced accusations that he lacked a strategy to deal with the violence and chaos that have left more than 1,000 Americans dead and that the Iraq war has diverted U.S. attention from al-Qaida and other terrorists.

With a record of four years in office to defend, Bush had a debate strategy of being optimistic about Iraq but acknowledging that times were tough. His stance is that Americans know he is a decisive leader even if they don't always agree with his decisions and that Kerry has taken conflicting positions on Iraq and can't be trusted to lead the nation.

Although Kerry voted to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, he says he would not have followed Bush's path to war a path that alienated allies and, the Democrat says, left Americans less secure. Kerry argues Bush is out of touch with reality, paints too rosy a picture about Iraq and lacks a strategy to end the crisis.

Kerry also says Bush has neglected other major problems like North Korea and Iran, two nations suspected of pursing nuclear weapons....

The debate's focus on Iraq was sharpened by bombings in Baghdad Thursday that killed three dozen children.

Ahead in the polls, Bush could afford to settle for a debate draw while Kerry needed something to break the status quo. Some Democrats saw the debates as the last chance for a Kerry breakout.

Thursday night's meeting at the University of Miami was the first of three Bush-Kerry debates over a two-week period. Neither side was underestimating its importance with a TV audience of 30 million to 40 million expected. Almost a third of people surveyed say the debates will be a deciding factor in how they vote.

The first debate drew the nation's attention to hurricane-battered Florida and its political importance. Florida swung the presidency to Bush in the disputed 2000 election and could determine whether he wins re-election.

The debates were staged under a rigid set of rules negotiated by the candidates' representatives to limit spontaneity and opportunities for back-and-forth exchanges.

WTF?!

UPDATE! The handshake between the candidates will go well. 19:31

[+/-] Howard Dean remembers a different Bush

In Howard Dean's new book You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America, he recalls dealing with then Governor Bush:

I hadn't started out a Bush-basher. In fact, I'd been predisposed to like George Bush. I knew him personally and had dealt with him professionally when we were both governors. He'd always been charming and hospitable to me and my family, both in the Governor's Mansion in Texas and at the White House. He'd always been more than upright in the business dealings between our states, keeping his word when he had no legal obligation to do so. What I knew of his record in Texas bespoke a moderate man who was willing to put pragmatism before ideology, to raise taxes when necessary to equalize state education spending, and to take some heat from the right wing of his party for doing so. ("I hate those people," he'd once snarled at me when I ribbed him at a White House governors' gathering about some trouble he was having in Texas with the Christian Coalition.)

I'd approached his presidency with an open mind. I hadn't voted for Bush, but I didn't expect the worst of him, either. After all, I'd always been in the moderate middle of my own party -- a staunch advocate of fiscal discipline, a devotee of balanced budgets, pro-choice but also pro-gun owners' rights, and in favor of the death penalty in some instances. In my races for governor, I'd always enjoyed the support of a certain number of moderate Republicans who shared my commitment to balanced budgets and responsible social spending. "Compassionate conservatism" sounded like something I could live with until the next Democrat ran. And from what I knew of George W. Bush's personality and temperament, I figured I could live with him, too.

I was astounded, then, when Bush cast moderation and conservatism aside and took up the mantle of right-wing extremism....

I remember feeling the same way during 2000. Although I was Gore supporter, Bush at least seemed like a reasonable guy. I had a number of concerns about what he would do to the environment, education and some other issues. It didn't take long for all of those concerns to be replaced by a fear that we were losing democracy itself.

The Bush regime is corrupt to the core: it pains me that I cannot find anything kind to say about them. The needless war, cover-ups, weekely scandals, Abu Ghraib, increasing level of terrorism. Is there anything this bunch can do that doesn't make me ashamed to be an American?

Since the selection of 2000, it has been apparent to many people more learned than me that the Bush cartel does not buy into the legitimacy of the democratic system. If that is true, what is to stop them from attempting to remain in power regardless of the outcome of the November election? Sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but the administration is making plans for it.

However, the recent awakening of pockets of the American people (even conservatives) to the drunk-with-bloodlust erosion of the Bill of Rights under Bush-43 gives me hope that one day I can teach my kids about the resilience of American democracy rather than its passage.

[+/-] Patriot Act provision ruled unconstitutional

Part of the Patriot Act, a central plank of the Bush Administration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge today.

US District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.

In June, the US Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that part of the Patriot legislation violated the constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards.

The judge agreed, stating that the provision "effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge."

The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies, and comes while the ACLU is calling on lawmakers to reject expanding the Act.

The Republican House leadership unveiled their bill, the "9/11 Commission Implementation Act," late Friday. It contains several Patriot Act 2 provisions, and other expansions on law enforcement powers not called for by the 9/11 commission. Noting that the commission did not include any recommendation of Patriot Act expansion, or that due process and judicial review in the immigration system be curtailed, the ACLU called the House bill a "virtual wish list for law enforcement that would undermine liberty."

[+/-] EPA issues illegal gag order to staff

The Bush administration is noted for its strict control of "leaks" to the press and its discipline regarding perceived acts of dissent. Now, the coward's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered its staff to "refrain from answering" questions from the news media.

Earlier this month, Bharat Mathur, the top EPA official for the six-state Mid-western region (covering the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin), issued a memo to the entire staff within the region entitled “Working with the Press.” The memo, however, orders EPA not to communicate with, let alone work with, the press. Instead, all inquiries from reporters are to be routed to the EPA Office of Public Affairs. Mathur’s memo forbids employees from initiating any contact with a reporter or from responding to inquiries made by the members of the press. Even EPA employees who are designated public spokespersons on particular matters must “report their conversations” with reporters to the Office of Public Affairs.

This new EPA non-disclosure policy:

• Overrules previous practice of allowing agency scientists or other specialists to answer questions that fall within their recognized expertise;
• Appears to violate Congressionally-enacted bans on agencies imposing any “nondisclosure policy, form, or agreement” on its employees without explicitly informing employees about their rights to reveal matters covered by statutes such as the Whistleblower Protection Act; and
• Seems designed to hide information by directing reporters away from experts and toward relatively uninformed public affairs staff.

Why the new policy is a bad, if not illegal, idea:

• It is so broad that EPA employees cannot reveal where the bathrooms are located or what the time of day is to a reporter
• It shows the EPA political leadership’s profound fear of the expertise of its own professional staff.
• It appears to violate Congressionally-enacted bans on agencies trying to impose any "nondisclosure policy, form, or agreement" on their employees without informing employees of their rights under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

[+/-] CIA plan to buy Iraq elections

Time Magazine reports that the Bush administration had a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to funnel money to candidates it favored in the forthcoming Iraqi elections.

This plan was derailed by the intervention of Democratic Minority Leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, who remonstrated with National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice about it.

I completely agree with Juan Cole's take on this sad idea:

[T]his sort of behavior by the Bush administration fatally undermines the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. If Muslims think that "democracy" is a stalking horse for CIA control of their country, then they will flee the system and prefer independent-minded strongmen that denounce the US. The constitutional monarchies established in the Middle East by the British were similarly undermined in the popular imagination by the impression they gave of being mere British puppets. This was true of the Wafd Party in Egypt in the 1940s and early 1950s, which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952 in the name of national indepencence. It was also true in Iraq, where in 1958 popular mobs dragged the corpse of the pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said through the streets and finished off the British-installed monarchy.

They lied about WMD's. They lied about connections to terrorists. They lied about not having any intent to invade Iraq before September 11th. They lied about the length of the war. They lied about the nationality of the people who are in the Iraqi insurgency. Now they are also lying about their desire to see democratic elections in Iraq.

[+/-] Satan for Bush

This personal page of Satan is hysterically funny:

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS: Human suffering, George W. Bush, James Belushi movies, tag sales, possession, pleated pants, Paris Hilton, hedonism, Benihana, the Dave Hill Show, danger, cock fights, disease, and just evil in general. Also, if there is a craft fair within 100 miles of wherever I am, I will totally make the drive. I tried fly fishing once but everyone got mad at me for talking too much. Something about scaring away the fish. Whatever. And in case you're wondering- I'm not really sure where I stand on Ashlee Simpson just yet but I am hoping mentioning her right now will help people stumble upon my page when they plug her name into a search engine. But anyway, I think there is still so much more to learn about Jessica Simpson that I really don't understand why we had to move on so quickly to her sister. I do love the Olsen twins though, so stop asking....

[+/-] Soros speech to National Press Club

Check out Soros' speech to National Press Club:

The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it required a strong response. But the President committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make whatever counter-actions we take automatically good. What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong. Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society. President Bush admits no doubt and does not base his decisions on a careful weighing of reality. For 18 months after 9/11 he managed to suppress all dissent. That is how he could lead the nation so far in the wrong direction.

President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden....

[+/-] Bush's hometown paper endorses Kerry

Bush's hometown newspaper has endorsed John Kerry for president, saying the Massachusetts senator will restore American dignity.

The Lone Star Iconoclast, which has a weekly circulation of 425, said in an editorial dated Sept. 29 that Texans should rate the candidates not by hometown or political party, but by where they intend to take the country.

Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.

The Iconoclast, the President's hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper's publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Again, he let us down.

Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.

We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a "wartime president." America is in service 365 days a year. We don't need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don't get done.

The Iconoclast, established in 2000, praised Kerry for "30 years of experience looking out for the American people" and lauded his background as "a highly decorated Vietnam veteran."

[+/-] Reboot the vote

If you are old enough to remember the first Apple Macintosh computer from 1984/5, you probably recall the paper clip trick. Sometimes (okay often) the system would crash and the only way to eject a floppy disk was through the use of a straightened paper clip.

You would think that in 20 years we would have advanced beyond this hack, but apparently not.

Along with more than two dozen eager international election observers, I recently had the pleasure of observing a live demonstration of one of the controversial electronic voting machines that are in place to record and tabulate millions of American votes on election day.

Results, as they say, were mixed.

Approximately five minutes into the audience participation portion of the Election Systems & Software (ES&S) demonstration, the iVotronic machine inexplicably froze; no amount of touch-screen prodding could elicit a response. Not a problem, the ES&S presenter assured bemused observers. All that was required was a system reboot, a bit of technical wizardry that was accomplished with the assistance of a straightened paperclip.

I work in the tech sector. If a vendors can't get a machine or software to work properly during a controlled demo, there is no chance in hell that I will buy their product or hire them. So, what should we expect on election day? Maybe some more of this.

If you are looking for the silver lining, it is in California. Herr Gropenfuhrer signed the voter verified paper trail bill, ensuring that all Californians will have auditable elections by 2006. It requires all electronic voting machines to produce a voter verified paper trail by January 2006, in time for the next statewide election. The law also prohibits the Secretary of State from certifying paperless electronic voting systems after January 1, 2005, and prohibits counties from purchasing such voting systems after January 1, 2006.

[+/-] Faith is a rhino

Thanks to the Raving Atheist for a wonderful Quote of the Day:

Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.

-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith

[+/-] Video game puts players in Kerry's virtual swift boat

An upcoming video game lets players re-enact the Swift boat mission in Vietnam that won Sen. John Kerry a Silver Star award for battlefield heroism.

The first-person shooter "Kuma War" uses a ripped-from-the-headlines approach where gamers can download and then relive actual battles, mainly from the current war in Iraq.

Beginning Sept. 30, the "John Kerry" mission will be available for download as an add-on pack for the game, made by New York-based Kuma Reality Games. The Kerry mission is based on the Navy's records of the encounter on Feb. 28, 1969.

Playing as Lt. John Kerry, you lead three Swift boats into enemy fire on the banks of the Mekong Delta. Don't try to turn around and flee _ the game is scripted, so you have no choice but to attack the enemy before they kill you.

Kerry is unaware of the game and had no comment, spokeswoman Allison Dobson told The Associated Press. She said Kerry doesn't play video games.

To be fair and balanced, I think they oughta make a W game. You can play an AWOL George W. Bush avoiding military police while driving (drunk) to the doctor to get your girlfriend an abortion.

[+/-] Has the nuclear industry's 'holy grail' been found?

A British company claims to have found the "holy grail" of the nuclear energy industry: a solution to the problem of radioactive waste disposal. Amec, the London company that cleaned up Ground Zero in New York and rebuilt the Pentagon after the September 11 attacks, says that its latest process will enable nuclear waste to be stored safely for 200,000 years - longer than the radioactivity will last.

The company says that the method could transform the nuclear energy industry and offer a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

The technique, called geomelting, has been tested successfully by the American government, which is building a $53 million pilot plant in Washington state. It intends to use the method on 300,000 gallons of liquid waste from atom bomb tests in the 1940s.

The Amec process involves mixing nuclear waste with soil or other "glass-formers" in large, lined metal tanks. The mix - 20 per cent waste and 80 per cent soil - is heated through two graphite electrodes at temperatures of up to 3,000C. Gases, mostly carbon dioxide and traces of hydrocarbons, are drawn off and treated separately. The molten substance is then allowed to cool and forms a large glass block that is harder than concrete.

The process, known as vitrification, was devised by the Battelle research institute in Ohio, which also invented the photocopier and the compact disc.

[+/-] Proof that god favors Kerry

You think it is only coincidence that a state with questionable presidential election results would be pummeled by hurricanes just before the next election? Check out this electoral map from 2000, overlaid wit this season's hurricanes. Blue counties supported Gore; pink supported Bush.

Notice how all the hurricanes spared Miami, which voted for Gore, and after leaving Florida socked Georgia and South Carolina, which voted for Bush

This is no longer an interesting coincidence. It is an unmistakable message from God. I hope everyone is listening.

[+/-] The modern Republican party

Concise.

[+/-] House Republicans trample rights of nonreligious and religious minorities

The US House of Representatives today passed a bill that would prevent all federal courts, including the US Supreme Court, from hearing cases pertaining to the interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, or the validity under the Constitution of the Pledge. The bill's proponents seek to deny access to the federal courts to many groups who've already expressed First Amendment concerns about the Pledge of Allegiance.

Make no mistake: this is a Republican bone thrown from its right wing to its far-right wing. The stranglehold that the fundies have on the ReTHUGlican party is remarkable. I am so frustrated by their overwhelming disregard for the long held American legal principles of due process and separation of powers. If this bill becomes law, it will slam federal courthouse doors in the face of Humanists and Americans of minority faiths.

In rejecting an amendment to the bill that was proposed to protect those who are coerced into reciting the Pledge, Congress exposes the bill for what it is: the imposition of religious ideology. The Pledge Protection Act would set a dangerous precedent by stripping federal courts of judicial independence and paving the way to prevent federal judges from ruling on other controversial social issues from abortion and gun control to school vouchers and school prayer.

Restricting the federal courts' ability to protect First Amendment rights severely undermines the American judicial system. Federal courts are uniquely prepared to interpret federal constitutional concerns and to serve as a check on the constitutionality of actions by the Congress and the Executive branch. Congress should not disrupt the balance of power intended by our Founders.

If you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention.

[+/-] "Sin-free" Sunday School

Humanist families in California can now send their children to "sin-free" Sunday school each week, thanks to a grant from the Institute for Humanist Studies. This program focuses on four areas of healthy development for young persons:

• Affirming the worth and dignity of all human beings.
• Asserting human responsibility for human problems.
• Celebrating human interconnection with all of nature.
• Practicing deep democracy.

Enrollment information is here.

As a humanist and a father I constantly wrestle with how to best bring up my kids in an American culture permeated by superstition. I think it will be decades, if not later, before a program like this comes to Virginia, where I presently live.

[+/-] State Department says al Qaeda not in Iraq

Check out this graphic from the State Department's own web site. What country is missing?

[+/-] One year later, Perle is flabbergasted

One year ago, today:

"A year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."
  -- Richard Perle, AEI Keynote speech, September 22, 2003

No monuments in Bagdad, instead we have anarchy:

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll....

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?...

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

I guess that means today, one year later, Mr. Perle is surprised, no?

[+/-] Falwell continues his assault on the law

In yet another attempt to break down the walls between church and state that were established by America's founders, the Rev. Jerry Falwell has opened a law school in hopes of training a generation of attorneys who will fight for conservative causes. Classes began August 23 for the first-year class of 61 law students.

Graduates of the law school -- part of Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, which is affiliated with his Baptist ministry -- will tackle such issues as abortion rights and gay marriage, Falwell said.

Law school Dean Bruce Green, who was previously senior trial attorney for the rabidly anti-gay American Family Association, says that classroom lectures and discussions will fuse the teachings of the Bible with the US Constitution, stressing the connections between faith, law and morality.

The other faculty appear to have similarly neanderthal intellects. Contracts is taught by the author of A Biblical Model for Analysis of Issues of Law and Public Policy. The civil-procedure professor penned Christ’s Atonement As the Model for Civil Justice. Another professor has argued for using a "Christian morality test" as a legal standard for determining when to restrict religious activity.

Definitely a faculty that would be considered among the finest intellects of the thirteeth century!

Joe Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the law school is part of a crusade by Falwell to get the government to carry out his religious agenda:

When Falwell talks about using the legal system to advance his personal religious beliefs, I get a whiff of the Taliban. This is a very diverse country with many different religious beliefs, and when you set up a law school to try to get the government and legal system to conform to only one of them, you're leaving everybody else out.

Ya' think the J.D. degrees awarded there will be called "Doctor of Jesusprudence?" ;)

Seriously, I shudder to think about the dangers posed by fundamentalists armed with the power to rewrite and control law.

[+/-] Fear keeps journalists from asking the toughest questions

Greg Palast writes:

"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions," Rather told the British television audience in June 2002. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American....

"It's an obscene comparison," he said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his neck or career will "bore in on the tough questions."

Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in 1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the fix for little George Bush to get out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard.

What is hot news this month in the USA is a five-year-old story to the rest of the world. And you still wouldn't see it in the USA except that Dan Rather, with a 60 Minutes producer, finally got fed up and ready to step out of line. And, as Dan predicted, he stuck out his neck and got it chopped off....

This is not a story about Dan Rather. The white millionaire celebrity can defend himself without my help. This is really a story about fear, the fear that stops other reporters in the US from following the evidence about this Administration to where it leads. American news guys and news gals, practicing their smiles, adjusting their hairspray levels, bleaching their teeth and performing all the other activities that are at the heart of US TV journalism, will look to the treatment of Dan Rather and say, 'Not me, babe.' No questions will be asked, as Dan predicted, lest they risk necklacing and their careers as news actors burnt to death.

[+/-] Ashcroft is 0 for 5000 on terror convictions

On Sept. 2 a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since 9/11. With the collapse of that case, Ashcroft's record is one of zero terrorism convictions since 9/11.

Did Ashcroft hold a news conference in September when the case was dismissed? Nope. Did he offer any apologies to the defendants who had spent nearly three years in jail? Nope, that wouldn't be good for his boss' campaign, which rests on the "war on terrorism."

In America, as in Iraq, Bush's war is not going as well as he pretends. The President thinks he can win this war by "acting tough" and treating the rule of law and constitutional freedoms as optional. With enough fearmongering, that attitude may win him the election. But it will lose the war. Bush is playing right into al Qaeda's hands by further alienating those we most need on our side.

Until that reversal, the Detroit case had marked the only terrorist conviction obtained from the Justice Department's detention of more than 5,000 foreign nationals in anti-terrorism sweeps since 9/11. So Ashcroft's record is 0 for 5,000. When the attorney general was locking these men up in the immediate wake of the attacks, he held almost daily press conferences to announce how many "suspected terrorists" had been detained. No press conference has been forthcoming to announce that exactly none of them have turned out to be actual terrorists.

And what about Abu Ghraib, the scandal which has done untold damage worldwide to the legitimacy of the fight against terrorism?

[T]he military has still not charged any higher-ups in the Pentagon, and the administration has shown no inclination to appoint an independent commission to investigate. It prefers to leave the investigation to the Justice Department and the Pentagon, the two entities that drafted secret legal memos defending torture.

How do you spell "failure?" A-S-H-C-R-O-F-T

Perhaps the Bush cartel would be more successful against terrorism if they

1. Stopped wasting time trying to keep pop stars out of the country
2. Stopped wasting time trying to find out what Joe Passenger ate on his cross country flight, and
3. Stopped wasting time in Iraq and return to hunting Osama bin Laden.

Just a thought.

[+/-] Google creating a browser?

Google, $1.67 billion richer from its August initial public offering, is spending its money poaching the brightest minds from arch-rival Microsoft and other tech giants.

Based on the half-dozen hires in recent weeks, Google appears to be planning to launch its own Web browser and other software products to challenge Microsoft. Google has wooed:

1. Joshua Bloch, one of the lead developers of Java, from Sun Microsystems.
2. Adam Bosworth, most recently from BEA Systems, who was a driving force behind IE and Microsoft Access
3. Joe Beda, a lead developer on Avalon, Microsoft's code name for the user interface that will part of the next version of Windows, called Longhorn.

The browser rumor is supported by other clues as well. Last month, Google hosted Mozilla Developer Day on its campus, a gathering of programmers that work together to build sequels to the re-named Netscape browser. Mozilla, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.

[+/-] Blind faith makes you a dumbass

Boy, talk about ideological blinders. During a visit to the library this summer, Jim Hertz and his wife, Jan, noticed the poster on a wall and were surprised to see the words "under God" omitted.

They contacted the library and were informed the poster was a historical document donated to the library before 1954, the year Congress approved adding "under God."

End of story, for most people. Not these dogmatic dumbasses.

Hertz said he, his wife and friends will attend the Thursday library board meeting to ask the board to either post a current copy or a note with the outdated pledge explaining why "under God" was omitted. If the board refuses to do either, he said he might run for the library board in the spring.

"We might put together a slate of candidates who will better reflect the wishes of the people of Frankfort," Hertz said. "It seems to me (library trustees) they are not meeting the wishes of the people by not posting a corrected copy of the Pledge of Allegiance. In my opinion, the board is not taking this very seriously."

Full story is here. If you know of any other recent attempts to rewrite history in a fundie-friendly way, please post them in the comments section.

[+/-] Anti-Bush US troops in Iraq

The CS Monitor is reporting that American soldiers in Iraq are vocally supporting Kerry, or at least a strategy for swift withdrawal.

Inside dusty, barricaded camps around Iraq, groups of American troops in between missions are gathering around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking the commander-in-chief. "Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush."

"[For] 9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush - they'd vote for them," said a US soldier in the southern city of Najaf, seeking out a reporter to make his views known. "People are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with Bush."

Fascinating read. Check it out.

[+/-] Kerry leads in electoral votes

The latest Zogby Interactive poll of 16 battleground states shows that Kerry's lead has narrowed but appears to have stabilized. If the election were helld today, Kerry would get 297 electoral votes to Bush's 241.

The Zogby poll begins by assuming that DC and the 34 states that aren't in the battleground poll will vote for the same political party this November as they did in the 2000 election. Thus Bush starts with 189 electoral votes, while Kerry begins with 172. (To win the White House, a candidate must capture 270 electoral votes.)

From that starting point, Zogby adds in the electoral votes from the latest poll, regardless of the margin of error or the spread between the candidates. Kerry's 11 states control 125 votes, while Bush's five states have 52. Thus, if the results on Election Day match the findings of the Zogby poll, Mr. Kerry would win, 297-241.

Although the 56-electoral-vote spread is at its narrowest since late July, Kerry has made more progress than Bush in solidifying his support in the battlegrounds that the Democrats won in 2000. The senator's lead is greater than the margin of error in five of the eight battlegrounds that Al Gore won. Bush's lead is greater than the margin of error in just one of the eight battlegrounds he won last election.

[+/-] Four reasons why Bush is the underdog

Martin Nolan has an interesting historical analysis on the current presidential race. Nolan argues that despite Bush's lead in the opinion polls, history and demographics suggest the president could wind up a loser in November

1. A self-described "war president" needs to be winning the war at re-election time. US troops are bogged down in Iraq, and the death toll is growing.
   
   
2. Bush and his party represent a declining demographic. The Republican Party is a white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant party, as photos from its convention show.
   
   
3. Re-election is not the presidential norm. Only 11 presidents have served eight consecutive years. President Reagan was the last Republican president to be re-elected.
   
   
4. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. The three presidents who failed the first time around to win the popular vote did not return to the White House.

[+/-] Wikipedia hits 10^6

Congratulations to Wikipedia for acheiving what just three years ago was unthinkable: the creation of its one millionth article. Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is currently both the world's largest encyclopedia and its fastest-growing, with articles under active development in more than 100 languages. Nearly 2,500 new articles are added to Wikipedia each day, along with ten times that number of updates to existing articles.

Wikipedia is created entirely by volunteers who contribute, update, and revise articles in a collaborative process governed by Wikipedia's official "neutral point of view" policy, requiring contributors avoid bias in writing articles. Even articles covering controversial topics can be developed using this process. Contributors build upon each other's changes and flawed edits are quickly repaired.

[+/-] Even the UK is abandoning Bush

The Guardian is reporting that the British Army will start pulling troops out of Iraq next month despite the deteriorating security situation in much of the country.

The main British combat force in Iraq, about 5,000-strong, will be reduced by around a third by the end of October during a routine rotation of units. Currently there are 8,000 British troops in the 14,000-strong 'multinational division' in southern Iraq, which has responsibility for about 4.5 million people. The cuts will occur in the combat elements of the deployment - the 5,000-strong infantry and armoured brigade that is committed to the provinces of Basra and Maysan. Four Royal Navy ships will remain in the Gulf.

News of the troop withdrawal comes at a difficult time for Blair, with the publication yesterday of leaked documents suggesting that he was warned a year before the invasion that it could prompt a meltdown.

[+/-] Ask the question, win cash

"How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?"

Bounty to the first person to ask George W. Bush this question in a public forum.

[+/-] Bush will call up new reservists after election

Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., ranking member on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and a former Marine who served in Vietnam, says he has learned through conversations with Pentagon officials that beginning in November, "the Bush administration plans to call up large numbers of the military Guard and Reserves, to include plans that they previously had put off to call up the Individual Ready Reserve."

By the way, why is the government hiring staff for local draft boards?

[+/-] Next for Bush: Fallujah, Iran and the Draft

If Bush is reelected expect two foreign policy acts: (1) A deepening of American involvment in Iraq, starting with an attack on Fallujah; and (2) An attack on Iran.

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."

What a stupid idea. But then, W has never been known for his brains. According to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost.... Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends.... This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

General Hoare: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan. I see no exit. We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency... The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

So with quagmire accomplished in Iraq, what's left to do? Hey! Let's distract everyone with another war! The Bush administration's warnings that it will not "tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran have opened up a lively policy debate in Washington over the merits of military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear program. Analysts close to the administration say military options are under consideration.

Just fucking great. But not too surprising:

1. It's a matter of public record that the war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project.
2. In August 2002 a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
3. In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
4. Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq's Shi'a heartland, rather than await an attack at a time and place of America's choosing.

If you don't yet believe that W will bring back the draft to accomplish his ends, then why is the government hiring staff for local draft boards?

[+/-] (1) Get spammed. (2) Report spam. (3) PROFIT!

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today issued a report assessing whether and how a system that rewards members of the public for tracking down spammers could help improve enforcement of the anti-spam law passed last year.

According to the report, FTC Commissioners believe that reward amounts in the range of $100,000 to $250,000 are reasonable.

Note that the most effective system would target insiders of a spam operation, not recipients of spam. As the report notes:

[C]ybersleuths do not have the power to issue or enforce subpoenas, in most instances they cannot legally obtain and supply to the Commission admissible evidence of a spammer’s identity, whereabouts, or level of illegal activity

Insiders, however, are often privy to this kind of evidence and would not need a subpoena to obtain it. So don't begin forwarding all your spam to the FTC, unless, of course, you are a spammer ;)

[+/-] W not naked and drunk, just naked

According to Wonkette, during his time in the Texas Air National Guard, Bush flew night missions with a Col. Jerry Killian. After finishing up one night and apparently eager to get lit, they adjourned to the Officer's Club, only to be turned away -- it was against club policy to serve airmen still in their flight suits.

Bush and Killian just took their flight suits off and re-entered the bar, buck naked.

I didn't need that mental image. And speaking of ugly mental images, check out Cheney's camel toe.

[+/-] Request a library book...via Amazon

This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Use Jon Udell’s awesome form to generate a "bookmarklet" for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. All you need to know is (1) your library’s URL, and (2) and which system your library uses (which Jon makes simple).

Thanks, Jon! This is so easy, maybe even W will start reading :)

[+/-] Bush steered $23 M in hush money to Barnes

It has been previously revealed that former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes of Texas admitted to pulling some strings to keep Bush out of the jungles of Vietnam. Barnes said: "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard - and I'm ashamed."

So, what did Barnes receive in return? $23 million. You gotta love the investigative tenacity of Greg Palast. Here's the short version:

According to a confidential letter buried deep in the files of the US Justice Department that fell into Palast's hands at BBC television, when Bush was elected governor of Texas, Barnes had left office to become a big time corporate lobbyist. Barnes' client, GTech Corp., due to allegations of corruption, was about to lose its license to run the Texas state lottery.

Barnes, says the Justice Department document, made a call to the newly elected governor's office and saved GTech's state contract. The letter said, "Governor Bush ... made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the '94 campaign." In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of 'Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush's office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, "Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid."

GTech then paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush’s secret, a fee of more than $23 million.

I, for one, will enjoy watching Karl Rove squirm as he tries to fight this one.

[+/-] Six reasons Bush is a coward

Paul Waldman has written a compelling column that includes six examples of W's cowardice:

1. When Bush was told that America was under attack by terrorists, he froze like a deer in the headlights, sitting there listening to "My Pet Goat" for seven interminable minutes before someone came and told him it was OK for him to get up and start doing something presidential. Ask a Bush partisan about this and their spinning will generate enough centrifugal force to suck in anything in the room that isn't bolted down. He was trying to reassure the children, they'll say, and project strength. When Ari Fleischer held up a sign that read, "Don't say anything yet," a real man would not have complied, as Bush did. A real man would have stood up, said, "It's been wonderful to meet you children, but I have to go" and gone to check on the status of the country he was supposed to be leading.
   
   
2. When the September 11 commission wanted to question the President, he ran like a little girl who just saw a spider. First, he said he wouldn't testify. Then he said he'd talk to them, but not under oath, and only for an hour. Finally he agreed, but only so long as no one recorded the session, and Dick Cheney came along to bail him out if things got uncomfortable. These weren't just the actions of a man who had something to hide, they were the actions of a man afraid to answer for what he did and didn't do. And what kind of a wimp can't be questioned without his vice president by his side?
   
   
3. Bush has held only twelve solo press conferences in his presidency, fewer than any other modern president, and you can rest assured there won't be another one between now and November. A real man would take questions from the press, even if some of them are going to be confrontational.
   
   
4. At his last disastrous press conference, Bush couldn't bring himself to admit to a single mistake he had made in office. Real men admit it when they're wrong.
   
   
5. No undecided voters - let alone Democrats - are allowed into Bush campaign events, lest the farcical "Ask the President" events include a question that is not accompanied by fulsome praise of Bush's greatness. A real man would have the guts to encounter voters who don't already love him.
   
   
6. Bush's representatives are now pushing to eliminate from the schedule of debates the 'town hall' scheduled to take place in St. Louis. According to news reports, they are concerned that, though the audience is supposed to consist of undecided voters, a Kerry supporter might sneak in and get to ask a question. What kind of a wimp is scared of answering a question from someone who supports his opponent? After all, Bush is supposed to be the president of all Americans not just those who support him. But he doesn't seem to have the guts to look voters in the eye.

Also check out Josh Marshall's writings on W's moral cowadice.

Do you disagree? Is W a coward or not? Discuss.

[+/-] File-sharing leaps from internet to cellphones

Hey RIAA, can you hear me now?

Music, videos and games could soon be swapped between cellphones using a mobile file-sharing network developed by phone maker Nokia. Lorant Farkas and colleagues, at the Nokia Research Center in Budapest, Hungary, have adapted the peer-to-peer (P2P) schemes used by Internet users to share files and tested them on their 6600 model cellphones.

Computers connected to a P2P network act as both client and server and also relay messages to neighbouring computers, removing the need for a centralised server. Popular internet file-sharing networks such as Gnutella and Kazaa allow users to search one another's hard drives for music or video files and then download them directly.

[+/-] Killer JPEGs gone wild

Microsoft yesterday published a patch for a major security flaw in its software's handling of the JPEG graphics format and urged customers to use a new tool to locate the many applications that are vulnerable.

The critical flaw has to do with how Microsoft's operating systems and other software process the widely used JPEG image format and could let attackers create an image file that would run a malicious program on a victim's computer as soon as the file is viewed. Because the software giant's Internet Explorer browser is vulnerable, Windows users could fall prey to an attack just by visiting a Web site that has affected images.

People, get patched. Then, for humanity's sake, stop using Windows! Switch to Linux. If my tech-unsaavy wife and young kids can use it so can you. At the very least, use a safer browser like Mozilla or Firefox.

[+/-] Will Pennsylvania join Kansas as an educational embarassment?

The Dover Area School Board of York County, Pennsylvania, is considering purchase of a companion textbook to teach creationism as part of the district's high school biology curriculum.

Superintendent Richard Nilsen said the book -- Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins -- is under review by the school board, staff and district curriculum committee, but he said he had no idea when the issue would come up for a vote.

It took two votes after a heated discussion last month for the divided school board to approve the 2004 edition of Prentice Hall Biology, which had offended several board members because it teaches evolution without reference to creationism.

You might recall that in 1999 Kansas deleted the teaching of evolution from the state's science curriculum. It was restored in 2001.

[+/-] Former secretary says she didn't type memos

The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard colonel who supposedly authored memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake, but that they reflect real documents that once existed.

“These are not real,” she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. “They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.”

Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said she is not a supporter of Mr. Bush, who she deemed “unfit for office” and “selected, not elected.”

“I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it,” she said.

“The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,” she said. She also said the memos may have been constructed from memory by someone who had seen Lt. Col. Killian’s private file but were not transcriptions because the language and terminology did not match what he would have used. For instance, she said, the use of the words “billets” and a reference to the “administrative officer” of Mr. Bush’s squadron reflect Army terminology rather than the Air National Guard. Some news reports attribute the CBS reports to a former Army National Guard officer who has a longstanding dispute with the Guard and has previously maintained that the president’s record was sanitized.

Mrs. Knox also cited stylistic differences in the form of the notes, such as the signature on the right side of the document, rather than the left, where she would have put it.

[+/-] Bad hair day

Have you ever been tempted to tear that bad toupee off the guy across the room? Yeah, me too. I guess I won't be trying it anytime soon. Might get arrested.

[+/-] Bush's Harvard professor remembers a lazy liar

A business school professor who taught Bush at Harvard University in the early 1970s says the future president told him that family friends had pulled strings to get him into the Texas Air National Guard.

Yoshi Tsurumi told CNN that the coward confided in him during an after-class hallway conversation during the 1973-74 school year.

He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him through the long waiting list to get him into the Texas National Guard. He thought that was a smart thing to do. What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all for the US to continue with the Vietnam War. That means he was all for other people, Americans, to keep on fighting and dying.

Tsurumi got to know Bush when the future president took his 'Economics EAM' (Environmental Analysis for Management), a required two-semester class from the fall of 1973 to the spring of 1974, Bush's first year at Harvard's business school.

Tsurumi has previously spoken of Bush as a student:

In thirty years you always remember the two kinds of students. One is really good. The other is a George Bush kind. Terrible. Intellectually very shallow. But more importantly immature, but lacking the sense of responsibility, compassion, always indulging in denials when he is called on in his lies. And lies came very easily to him.

Ouch.

[+/-] Toddlers against Bush?

First there was Kids for Kerry. Now Toddlers Against Bush? This video is hysterically funny -- best laugh I've had in weeks.

[+/-] Presidential poll roundup

It's Kerry! A new IBD/TIPP poll put President Bush and Sen. John Kerry in a dead heat, but among registered voters, Kerry holds a two-point edge over Bush.

Wait, no... it's Bush! Bush leads Kerry by 8 percentage points among likely voters in Wisconsin, according to a Gallup poll conducted for Cable News Network and USA Today.

No... wait... it's a tie! The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows Bush with 47% of the vote and Senator Kerry with 46%.

If you aren't registered to vote, get registered. Otherwise, you will likely join the half of the population that is going to be very disappointed this November....

[+/-] Jeb Bush ignores court order, installs Nader on Florida ballot

In a blatantly partisan maneuver to give his brother a leg up on election day, Governor Jeb Bush today ordered that independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name can appear on state ballots for the election. The move will almost certainly help President Bush in the key swing state.

The Florida Democratic Party reacted with outrage and vowed to fight it.

Last week, Florida Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey issued a temporary injunction preventing the state from putting Nader on the 2004 ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law. A hearing on a permanent injunction is scheduled for Wednesday. But Roberts said Hurricane Ivan, which is headed for Florida's Gulf coast, had raised 'a substantial question as to when such a hearing' will be held. As a result, she said, Florida's Department of State had filed an appeal against the temporary injunction. The appeal application automatically lifts the injunction, allowing the counties to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots, which must be mailed by Saturday.

[+/-] Expect scandal in a second W term

Kevin Drum provides an interesting analysis of what to expect in a second Bush term:

What do we have to look forward to if George W. Bush is elected to a second term? One word: scandal.

Don't believe me? Consider the highlight reel of reelected presidents over the past 50 years. Ike won a second term and watched in dismay as his chief of staff was forced to resign over a vicuña coat. Richard Nixon buried George McGovern in 1972 and then resigned a year and a half later when Watergate finally caught up to him. Ronald Reagan sweated out his second term wondering if he'd be impeached over Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton didn't have to wonder: Two years after his reelection, he was defending himself in the first impeachment trial in over a century....

George Bush is especially vulnerable to this since his first term already has several good candidates for scandals waiting to flower. Take your pick: Valerie Plame? The National Guard? Abu Ghraib? Intelligence failures? Or maybe something that hasn't really crossed anybody's radar screen yet, sort of like the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate Hotel that no one took seriously in 1972.

Drum's scenario seems a lot more likely than some of the alternatives, like the coward trying to tackle climate change seriously.

[+/-] Expert says Bush service memos are authentic

The specialized characters and type format used in the controversial documents that suggest George W. Bush the coward disobeyed a direct order from his Texas Air National Guard commander and then got special treatment excusing his actions were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s when Bush was a first lieutenant, forensics experts say.

Philip D. Bouffard, an Ohio-based forensic document examiner, had expressed suspicions about the documents but not says that, after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.

Bouffard, an Ohio document specialist with more than 30 years experience, said that he originally dismissed the Bush documents because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, his view shifted.

[+/-] Who have we become?

Good questions, all:

Have we changed as a people so as to be willing, as the polls show us, to re-elect men and women who have misled us and lied to us every step of the way? Are we willing to accept the fact that, even as our American losses topped 1,000 this week, we probably also killed up to 2,500 'insurgents' in only the last week? Have we, the rational, 'exceptional' people of our history, been overtaken by the war fever and that same identification with the demented warrior-leader as lesser peoples throughout history?

[+/-] In honor of 9/11

In memory of the lives lost three years ago, you need to check this out.

[+/-] Are atheists more moral than the religious?

Are atheists more moral than the religious?

• Atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less numerous in the prison population (0.21%)
  
  
• Japan (the most atheistic nation in the G-8) has the lowest murder rate while the United States (the most Christian nation in the G-8) has the highest. Japan used to have much stronger religious faith, and a state religion, and guess what: Japan was remarkably aggressive and militaristic when "Shinto" was at its peak, and during WW2, when its Emperor was regarded as a God.
  
  
• Louisiana, with America's highest church attendance rate, has twice the national average murder rate.
  
  
• If atheism causes violence, why are right-wing fundamentalists unable to find a shred of statistical evidence to back that claim up?

Why do church steeples have lightening rods? Lack of confidence? :)

[+/-] What the FBI says you "Ought not to know" about 9/11

This is bone-chilling stuff; weirder than a work of spy fiction:

On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, "were told to back off the Saudis."

We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, "SECRET" across the top and "199-I" - meaning this was a national security matter.

The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a "suspected terrorist organization" in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001 -- two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters ... but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest.

It gets weirder. Check it out.

[+/-] Amazing similarities between W and Osama

[+/-] What if Bush ran against Jesus?

(With thanks to Mad Magazine)

[+/-] Liar liar pants on fire

As usual, today's Paul Krugman column nails it:

It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.

It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.

It wasn't always that way. Three years ago, those of us who accused the administration of cooking the budget books were ourselves accused, by moderates as well as by Bush loyalists, of being 'shrill.' These days the coalition of the shrill has widened to include almost every independent budget expert.... many reputable analysts think that the Bush administration routinely fakes even its short-term budget forecasts for the purposes of political spin. And the fakery in its long-term forecasts is much worse.

The administration claims to have a plan to cut the deficit in half over the next five years. But even Bruce Bartlett, a longtime tax-cut advocate, points out that 'projections showing deficits falling assume that Bush's tax cuts expire on schedule.' But Mr. Bush wants those tax cuts made permanent. That is, the administration has a 'plan' to reduce the deficit that depends on Congress's not passing its own legislation.

[+/-] A Day In The Life of Joe Republican

I like this:

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards.

He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too because his employer needs to offer competitive benefits to hire the best people.

Joe prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Read the remainder here.

Other liberal-created government programs and regulations that are effective would include Head Start, AmeriCorps, the Clean Water Act, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare, Medicaid, the ban on leaded gasoline, the bans on DDT, PCBs and CFCs, the Brady Law, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the USDA's Cooperative Extension Service, Direct Student Loans, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the GI Bill, the Interstate Highway System, the Mine Safety & Health Administration, the National Health Service Corps, National Parks, the National Weather Service, the Peace Corps, reemployment screening, school lunches & breakfasts, and WIC. Others?

These programs differentiate the United States from the developing countries of the world. Government is not the solution to all problems, in fact, I much prefer to harness the power of free market. Unfortunately it seems that most republicans are in denial about the positive role government can play.

[+/-] Bush judges most conservative on rights

A nonpartisan study of thousands of federal court cases has found that judges appointed by Bushare the most conservative on record in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties. "George W. Bush is the most conservative president that we have data for," Karp said. "In civil rights and liberties cases, his judges were 25 percent more conservative than those of other Republicans."

The study was published in Judicature, the publication of the American Judicature Society, a nonpartisan organization of judges, lawyers and others involved in justice administration.

[+/-] Survey: Will the left accept a Bush victory?

Every four years after a hard-fought Presidential campaign, the losing party sucks it up and grudgingly accepts the winner as their president. Will it be different this time? After the debacle of the 2000 election, and the acrimonious campaign thus far, will the left actually accept defeat? Has Bush lost so much credibility that a win -- no matter how "clean" -- will be perceived as illegitimate? Discuss.

[+/-] Sharon denies, but someone else was there

More blow-by-blow over W coke tale (pun intended)...

Sharon says, "'I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David - or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David.''

But Sharon has one small problem: There was a third party at the lunch who says Kelley's quotes are accurate.

"We met at the Chelsea Bistro on April 1, 2003," says the insider. "It was a very long lunch. Sharon was talking about affairs in the Bush family ... [that they are] very dysfunctional. She said they talk about family values, but they don't practice what they preach. Then Kitty raised the drug issue. Kitty, who can make a rock talk, said: 'I know about the drugs. I know that W did drugs at Camp David during his father's presidency.' Sharon agreed. She said, 'Absolutely. That's all true.'"

[+/-] Coincidence?

AP: 'U.S. death toll in Iraq passes 1,000 mark' ... 4:27 PM, Sept. 7th, 2004

AP: 'Ridge: Terrorists hope to disrupt election' ... 4:40 PM, Sept. 7th, 2004

(Thanks, Josh, for pointing this out.)

[+/-] Bill Maher on W

Bill Maher has some campaign advice for W:

You can't run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn't run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn't theater security. 9/11 wasn't a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation.

Now, don't get me wrong, Mr. President. I'm not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I'm not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels.

But by the looks of your convention, you'd think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can't keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it's your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don't see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad....

[+/-] Bush plans to skip debate

ReTHUGlican officials say President Bush may skip one of the three debates that have been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates and accepted by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

The officials said Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in the crucial state of Missouri.

So the coward can't face real questions from real people? Who would have guessed based on how he conducts his public appearances?

[+/-] Virginia: The Las Vegas of gay divorce

John R. Prosser, a judge in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, ruled on August 24th that Vermont's controversial “civil union” law, which affords the same legal benefits as marriage to same-sex couples, is null in Virginia. The case before Judge Prosser involved Lisa Miller-Jenkins and Janet Miller-Jenkins, two lesbians from Virginia who travelled to Vermont to join in a civil union. Lisa became pregnant through in-vitro fertilisation, then the couple split. Janet appealed for visitation rights; Lisa claimed sole parentage.

Judge Prosser, who said that Janet was just a “friend” of Lisa's, rather than a co-parent, ruled that Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act, a law passed in July that bans the state from recognising same-sex unions, meant that he could not grant Janet parental rights. The custody battle is continuing in Vermont, and it is unclear how Judge Prosser's ruling will affect that case.

[+/-] Corporate media taking it easy on Bush-cocaine story

As expected, the corporate-controlled media is barely touching the Bush cocaine story. This is the same corporate-controlled media machine that jumped all over Rove's "Swift Boat Liars" crap.

[+/-] These aren't my family's values

A member of a Christian group has been fired after allegedly punching several veterans marching for presidential candidate John Kerry in Monday's Harvest Festival parade in Windsor, Colorado.

I've never read a story like this where it was an atheist who punched out a Christian. I wonder what percentage of prison inmates are atheist. My guess is that it is far lower than the population at large.

[+/-] Latest Zogby poll still shows Kerry ahead

In the latest Zogby Interactive poll President Bush has his best showing since John Kerry accepted his party's nomination in late July.

The poll continues to show Kerry well ahead, leading in 12 of the 16 battlegrounds in Zogby's twice-a-month polls. But Bush took the lead in two states -- Arkansas and Tennessee -- since the poll conducted a week before his convention.

Kerry's 12 states control a total of 135 votes, while Mr. Bush's four have 42. If you add up the numbers, you find that Mr. Kerry would win the Electoral College 307-231. A more detailed analysis is here.

[+/-] Role reversal

What if George Bush had Kerry’s record, and John Kerry had Bush’s?

[+/-] Key files missing from Bush's National Guard records

Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.

Records of Bush's service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount. The five kinds of missing files are:

1. A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush's local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush's draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.
   
   
2. Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to "direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination," according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded "with the command recommendation" to Air Force officials "for final determination."
   
   
3. A written acknowledgment from Bush that he had received the orders grounding him. His Texas commanders were ordered to have Bush sign such a document; but none has been released.
   
   
4. Reports of formal counseling sessions Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months' worth of National Guard training in 1972. No documents have surfaced indicating Bush was counseled or had written authorization to skip that training or make it up later. Commanders did have broad discretion to allow guardsmen to make up for missed training sessions, said Weaver and Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985.
   
   
5. A signed statement from Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he did not promptly transfer to another guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required as part of a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen. Bush was approved in September 1972 to train with the Alabama unit, more than four months after he left Texas.

What a coward.

[+/-] Tommy Franks confirms Fahrenheit 9/11 allegations

Quick quiz. Who claimed that more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that resources were being shifted in preparation for taking on Saddam Hussein? Was it

1. Michael Moore
2. John Kerry
3. General Tommy Franks

If you answered (1) and (2) you are correct!

In a new book, Senator Bob Graham, D-Fla., states that the general who ran the war in Afghanistan said more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that his resources were being shifted in preparation for taking on Saddam Hussein. The Senator contends that just months into combat in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks also told him that fighting terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere should take priority over invading Iraq.

Graham said Franks told him he thought the United States knew less about the situation in Iraq than did some European governments, and the Bush administration should ask them for advice.

[+/-] Bush snorted cocaine at Camp David

A new book claims W snorted cocaine at Camp David.

Here's what associates of the coward say about it:

• Former sister-in-law Sharon Bush: "Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either."
• Former student Torbery George: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't relate to women unless he was loaded."
• Another Yalie says: 'He went out of his way to act crude. It's amazing someone you held in such low esteem later became president."
• Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush "liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine."

Will the mainstream media pick this up and run with it like they did with the Swift Liars? One can only hope.

[+/-] Top 25 censored stories

Project Censored has released its top 25 under-reported news stories for 2003-2004. The top five are:

1. Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
2. Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold Corporations Accountable
3. Bush Administration Censors Science
4. High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians
5. The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

Free your mind. Read them all.

Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country’s major national news media.

[+/-] Kick 'em while they're down

Literally. Yet another example of republican hatred.

[+/-] Pentagon to investigate Kerry war record

Yet another example of the Republican party using the apparatus of the state in support of partisan objectives. That's why we don't see a Justice Department investigation into W's cocaine usage.

The Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator's five Vietnam War decorations. The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the inspector-general's office of the United States navy, for which Sen Kerry served as a Swift Boat captain in 1968.

[+/-] Congress members seek Boykin's dismissal

Wow... this is long overdue. A group of congressional Democrats is asking Mr. Bush to dismiss a senior military intelligence officer who made church speeches that included inflammatory religious remarks while discussing the war on terrorism.

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, whose promotion and appointment was confirmed by the Senate in June 2003, has said publicly that he sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan. In one speech, discussing a US Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told his audience, 'I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

A Pentagon investigation concluded that Boykin violated regulations by failing to make clear he was not speaking in an official capacity when he made nearly two dozen church speeches beginning in Jan. 2002. It also found that Boykin, who made most speeches wearing his uniform, did not get prior clearance for the remarks.