Why Does Everyone Hate the U.S.?

It's bad enough that the administration unapologetically and publically advocates torture, but because of the secret CIA prisons we've been keeping in Europe, those countries face losing EU voting rights.

The Bush administration pledged yesterday to respond to a formal inquiry from the European Union over reports of covert CIA prisons for al Qaeda captives in Eastern Europe, acknowledging for the first time that the controversy over the secret prison system has upset European allies.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, writing on behalf of the European Union, sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a letter yesterday seeking "clarification" about the matter, the British Embassy said. Franco Frattini, the union's top justice official, warned Monday that any E.U. country discovered to have hosted CIA prisons will face "serious consequences," including losing its E.U. voting rights.
...
"The United States realizes that these are topics that are generating interest among European publics as well as parliaments, and that these questions need to be responded to," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, adding, "These are certainly legitimate questions."

Tennessee high school newspaper seized

Copies of a high school's student newspaper were seized by administrators because the edition contained stories about birth control and tattoos, stirring a First Amendment debate.

Administrators at Oak Ridge High School went into teachers' classrooms, desks and mailboxes to retrieve all 1,800 copies of the newspaper Tuesday, said teacher Wanda Grooms, who advises the staff, and Brittany Thomas, the student editor. The Oak Leaf's birth control article listed success rates for different methods and said contraceptives were available from doctors and the local health department. Superintendent Tom Bailey said the article needed to be edited so it would be acceptable for the entire school.

The edition also contained a photo of an unidentified student's tattoo, and the student had not told her parents about the tattoo, said Superintendent Tom Bailey. "I have a problem with the idea of putting something in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something from the parents," he said.

The paper can be reprinted if the changes are made, he said.

"We have a responsibility to the public to do the right thing," he said. "We've got 14 year-olds that read the newspaper."...

"This is a terrible lesson in civics," University of Tennessee journalism professor Dwight Teeter said. "This is an issue about the administration wanting to have control. Either the students are going to have a voice, or you're going to have a PR rag for the administration."

Tattoos and birth control? That's the best you can do? I'm sorry, did I step back in time to 1958? This is something right out of a John Waters movie.

Some Rare Good News: Tsunami Aid

Here's some rare pleasant news on how donation surpluses from last year's tsunami can help fulfill longer term goals in affected regions. Hate to be a Debbie Downer but do note the difference in total contributions for the Pakistani earthquake (~$73 Million) vs those of the tsunami ($1.3 billion!).

As the anniversary of the tsunami that struck South Asia approaches, relief groups find themselves in the unusual situation of still having money in the bank.

Roughly half of the estimated $1.3 billion that Americans donated to help the victims of the disaster is still available, and the charities that received it have big plans to rebuild infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals and lives.

"From our point of view, this is like dying and going to heaven," said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children. "It allows us to put together a coherent and systematic long-term plan, rather than living day to day and year to year as we normally do."

Save the Children has never before received enough money for disaster aid to sustain a five-year recovery plan, Mr. MacCormack said. "The only other time we had five years of funding in advance was when the Gates Foundation gave us a $50 million grant for programs to reduce newborn mortality," he said, referring to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Grass-roots philanthropy for the victims of the tsunami broke all fund-raising records for an international humanitarian crisis. The onslaught of money was so robust that it has made the philanthropic response to the earthquake in Pakistan - $73.4 million, according to data collected by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University - seem miserly when in fact it has been generous by historic standards.

More Republicans to Get In Trouble Over Corruption?

As more shady dealings are exposed as a result of the Jack Abramoff investigation, some Republicans may face charges of corruption. This includes Tom Delay who is already "facing separate campaign finance charges in his home state of Texas."

The Justice Department's wide-ranging investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has entered a highly active phase as prosecutors are beginning to move on evidence pointing to possible corruption in Congress and executive branch agencies, lawyers involved in the case said.

Prosecutors have already told one lawmaker, Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), and his former chief of staff that they are preparing a possible bribery case against them, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The 35 to 40 investigators and prosecutors on the Abramoff case are focused on at least half a dozen members of Congress, lawyers and others close to the probe said. The investigators are looking at payments made by Abramoff and his colleagues to the wives of some lawmakers and at actions taken by senior Capitol Hill aides, some of whom went to work for Abramoff at the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, lawyers and others familiar with the probe said.

University of Kansas Evolutionists Fight Back

There are some people in Kansas taking a hard line against those supporting the inclusion of intelligent design in science classes.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

"Creationism is mythology," Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."

Earlier this month, the state Board of Education adopted new science teaching standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory, defying the view of science groups.
...
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism _ a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation as the handiwork of God _ camouflaged in scientific language as a way to get around court rulings that creationism injects religion into public schools.

John Calvert, an attorney and managing director of the Intelligent Design Network in Johnson County, said Mirecki will go down in history as a laughingstock.

"To equate intelligent design to mythology is really an absurdity, and it's just another example of labeling anybody who proposes (intelligent design) to be simply a religious nut," Calvert said. "That's the reason for this little charade."

How non-religious folk who advocate that intelligent design be taught in science classes?

[Thanks to T. Lo for the tip]

Note to Republicans: It's OK to Care About the Environment

Here is some news on recently passed legislation to limit auto emissions. And from a state with a Republican governor! Who guessed it could happen? If New York is able to get this to stick, other Northeastern states will follow so this has some pretty far reaching implications. Let's hope the auto industry lobbyists don't kill this.

Environmentalists say the regulations will not lead to the extinction of any class of vehicle, but simply pressure the industry to sell more of the fuel-saving technologies they have already developed, including hybrid systems that use a combination of electricity and gasoline. And that, they say, will curtail one of the main contributors to global warming.

"The two biggest contributors to global warming are power plants and motor vehicles," said David Doniger, a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If you deal with them, you deal with more than two-thirds of the problem."

But automakers contend that the regulations will limit the availability of many sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, vans and larger sedans, since they will effectively require huge leaps in gas mileage to rein in emissions. The industry also says the rules will force them to curb sales of more-powerful engines in the state, and ultimately harm consumers by increasing the cost of vehicles.

"Harm consumers?" How do they figure? Since when did doing things in the best interests of the planet and future generations fall under the category of "harm?" If we need to pay a cost penalty to reduce the detrimental effects of all the driving we do, so be it. And I say this as an SUV owning fool...

Top Secret: Bombs Away!

This story comes from UK's Daily Mirror, so not sure how reliable it is, but if it's true, then this is seriously fucked up. But there's got to be something to it if the Washington Post and BBC are taking it seriously:

Britain's attorney general yesterday told the Daily Mirror and other newspapers not to publish further details from a top-secret memo that detailed a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in which Bush expressed a desire to bomb an Arab TV station.

According to the Mirror, "the five-page memo -- stamped 'Top Secret' -- records a threat by Bush to unleash 'military action' against the TV station [al-Jazeera], which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments."

The White House has dismissed the story as "unworthy of comment."

Aljazeera says it is "going through a due diligence process of verifying the details." If the leaked memo is authentic, said Aljazeera, "it would cast serious doubts in regard to the US administration's version of previous incidents involving Aljazeera's journalists and offices."

In April 2003, an Aljazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. In November 2001, Aljazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile, although no staff were in the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a 'terrorist' site and did not know it was Aljazeera's office.

The Guardian said the action of Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was unprecedented. "It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq."

The Times of London reported that Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle "dismissed comments by Whitehall officials that any suggestion of an attack would have been in jest. 'This is a matter of great interest. There was an attack on the hotel in Baghdad used by al Jazeera journalists which caused great controversy. The US also attacked a Serbian TV station (during the Kosovo war). It is easy to dismiss this as a glib comment, but I don’t find it very funny at all,' he said."

However, the BBC's Website gave some credence to the "jest" explanation: "BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said: 'An attack on al Jazeera would also have been an attack on Qatar, where the US military has its Middle East headquarters. So the possibility has to be considered that Mr. Bush was in fact making some kind of joke and that this was not a serious proposition.'" (A joke?!)

Preemptive strike is one thing (which I whole heartedly disagree with) but this is murder! Read more about the origins of this story here.

Japan Makes the U.S. Look Progressive and Educated

This is rather disturbing: Overt racism has become a best seller in Japan and highlights the fashionable nature of nationalism and xenophobia in Japan today.

[Two new] comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."

Additionally, the comics highlight the Japanese nationalist movements to minimize war atrocities committed in World War II. Contrast this with Austria - which criminalizes denial of the Holocaust. [Thanks to Kat for the link.]

War Is Worth It.... Right?

Here's some great news to help sell the moral superiority of the US in the Iraq war:

The US has now admitted using white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja last year, after earlier denying it.

The substance can cause burning of the flesh but is not illegal and is not classified as a chemical weapon.
...
Italian TV station Rai alleged last week that the US had used phosphorus against built-up areas, and that civilians were killed.

The report sparked fury among Italian anti-war protesters, who demonstrated outside the US embassy in Rome.

The US initially said white phosphorus had been used only to illuminate enemy positions, but now admits it was used as a weapon.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract that denial is a public relations disaster for the US.

Fox News: Fair and Balanced

Yea, Fox News is a joke and yes everyone gets that "Fair and Balanced" is the most ironic catch-phrase ever, but in case you don't get irony, this one's for you:

WASHINGTON - Fox News is refusing to air an ad critical of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, citing its lawyers' contention that the spot is factually incorrect.

A spokesman for the groups sponsoring the ad said the network's decision reflects the political right's effort to shield President Bush's choice for the high court.

The ad says that as an appellate court judge, Alito has "ruled to make it easier for corporations to discriminate ... even voted to approve strip search of a 10-year-old girl." Referring to a document Alito wrote in 1985 while seeking a job in the Reagan administration, it quotes him as saying that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

The groups backing the ad include the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil rights, People for The American Way and abortion rights organizations.

In a 2004 decision, the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in the case of four police officers who faced a lawsuit after the search of a mother and her 10-year-old daughter in the course of executing a search warrant for narcotics.

The court said "searching Jane and Mary Doe for evidence beyond the scope of the warrant and without probable cause violated their clearly established Fourth Amendment rights." The court pointed out that "a search warrant for a premises does not constitute a license to search everyone inside."

Alito dissented in the case, saying the best reading of the warrant is that it authorized the search of anyone found on the premises. He added that even if the warrant didn't explicitly give that authorization, "a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so."

Paul Shur, a spokesman for Fox, said that according to the network's lawyers, the ad is "factually incorrect and we've given them an opportunity to fix it."

Said Jim Jordan, a spokesman for the groups: "The entire right wing establishment, from Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell to Fox News, has circled the wagons around Sam Alito."

Asked about changing the ad in response to Fox's request, Jordan said, "Roger Ailes doesn't get to edit our ads." Ailes is chairman of Fox News.

Officials said the ad would run on cable television news programs nationally as well as in Maine and Rhode Island, two states that have three moderate Republican senators.

They declined to say how much would be spent, but officials at rival organizations placed the expenditure at less than $65,000, an amount unlikely to make a significant impact.

Take Backs are for Pussies

What is so wrong with acknowledging a mistake? Dubya and Cheney make it sound like reversing one's opinion is unreasonable and just unpatriotic! In the case of politicians, they're accusing them of pandering to the current wave of popular opinion (and Bush's falling approval ratings). While that may be the case, how do they explain people that have always disapproved of the war? Or Bill Clinton's recent comments?

[11/17/05 Update:]
Official tough guy (Representative John Murtha) disagrees with Cheney.

Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.

FEMA Gonna Get Cut

If FEMA were a person, someone might have to stab them. I'm not sayin' it'd be me. But someone... Is it me or does this seem like a really dickish move on the part of FEMA? They're notifying hurricane victims that the free cheese is running out on their hotel rooms. All I know is, if it were me, I'd be hella peeved cause it just seems like yet another situation of really poor planning on FEMA's part to give such short notice. The uncertain nature of the other continuing benefits prolly gives a nice sense of comfort to all the displaced people huh?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday warned an estimated 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in government-subsidized hotels that they have until Dec. 1 to find other housing before it stops paying for their rooms.

The announcement effectively starts the clock ticking toward a new exodus of Gulf Coast storm victims who have been living rent-free in 5,700 hotels in 51 states and U.S. territories under the $273 million program.

Under FEMA's decision, the evacuees will have 15 days to lease apartments, make other arrangements or begin paying their own bills. Many families will be eligible for as much as $2,358 for three months' rental assistance from FEMA, payments that may be extended for as long as 18 months.

How Am I Gonna Live in Canada Now?

I thought those Canadians were cool but some Hoser introduced legislation to force internet providers to facilitate easy monitoring of Internet activity as well as identification of users (the latter without a warrant).

Thanks to Slashdot for this one. Like they say, it sounds like this won't pass but it's scary that someone is proposing this already. It's prolly just a matter of time till the government can instantly find out exactly how much porn I download.

Here's a link to the original blog post from Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet & E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.

We're All Fed Up and We're Not Gonna Take It No More

Could it be that the tide of public opinion is leading to an actual reaction from Congress to Dubya's crappy leadership? Depending on whose spin you subscribe to, the latest shenanigans coming out of the Senate are either a defeat [AP] or triumph [WashPost] for Democrats.

From the AP:

The GOP-controlled Senate rejected a Democratic call Tuesday for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but urged President Bush to outline his plan for "the successful completion of the mission" in a bill reflecting a growing bipartisan unease with his Iraq policies.
...
The bill was not without victories for the president, including support for the military tribunals Bush has set up to try detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet even that was tempered, with language letting the inmates appeal to a federal court their designation as enemy combatants and their sentences.

From the Washington Post:

For the past three years, President Bush has set the course on U.S. policy in Iraq, and Republicans in Congress -- and many Democrats, too -- have dutifully followed his lead. Yesterday the Senate, responding to growing public frustration with the administration's war policy, signaled that those days are coming to an end.

The rebuff to the White House was muffled in the modulated language of a bipartisan amendment, but the message could not have been more clear. With their constituents increasingly unhappy with the U.S. mission in Iraq, Democrats and now Republicans are demanding that the administration show that it has a strategy to turn the conflict over to the Iraqis and eventually bring U.S. troops home.

Kansas, the great thinkers of our time

On Tuesday, fueled by the popular opposition to the Darwinian theory of evolution, the Kansas State Board of Education stepped into this fraught philosophical territory. In the course of revising the state's science standards to include criticism ofevolution, the board promulgated a new definition of science itself.

The changes in the official state definition are subtle and lawyerly, and involve mainly the removal of two words: "natural explanations." But they are a red flag to scientists, who say the changes obliterate the distinction between the natural and the supernatural that goes back to Galileo and the foundations of science.

The old definition reads in part, "Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." The new one calls science "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

Adrian Melott, a physics professor at the University of Kansas who has long been fighting Darwin's opponents, said, "The only reason to take out 'natural explanations' is if you want to open the door to supernatural explanations."

Next week on Science Times Kansas edition, scientists conduct experiments on the buoyancy of witches.

Man it feels good to be right (I mean left)

It seemed like people would never listen to reason. The country elected a 'tard; a seemingly harmless one at that, until you look behind him and notice all the scary motherfuckers who are pulling his strings. But today, it looks like America is finally waking up from its stupor.

Almost six in ten — 57 percent — said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest. Whites, Southerners and white evangelicals (i.e. hey seeds) were most likely to believe Bush is honest.

Bush, who promised in the 2000 campaign to uphold "honor and integrity" in the White House, last week ordered White House workers, from presidential advisers to low-ranking aides, to attend ethics classes.

The president gets credit from a majority for being strong and decisive, but he's also seen by an overwhelming number of people as "stubborn," a perception reinforced by his refusal to yield on issues like the Iraq war, tax cuts and support for staffers under intense pressure. More than eight in ten — 82 percent — described Bush as "stubborn," with almost that many Republicans agreeing to that description.

His job approval rating remains at his all-time low in the AP-Ipsos poll of 37 percent.

But that Texas cowboy (actually, New England born, ivy league schooled, trust fund brat) aint givin up with out a fight. Today Bush plans to use his Veterans Day speech to fight back against Democratic charges that the White House misused intelligence to gain support for the Iraq war. What a surprise, using the military, his one remaining ally, to bolster support. Those poor schmucks have no choice but to support their commander-in-chief, otherwise how can they live with the dirty, sinking feeling that this war is just not right.

"The president is going to directly take on the false attacks that Democratic leaders have been making," a senior administration official told Reuters. Democrats in recent weeks have been accusing the White House of manipulating intelligence on Iraq and leaking classified information to discredit critics of the war...

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said on Thursday Democrats were insisting that Americans "get the truth about why the White House cherry-picked and leaked intelligence to sell the war in Iraq." He added: "The president may think this matter can be swept under the rug or pardoned away, but Democrats know America can do better."... (Continues)

From Reviled to Revered to Reviled

So Kat and I were talking about the whole Judith Miller situation at the NY Times and we realized that neither of us really understood what the hell was going on. So I looked back a bit and this article on Miller's recent retirement from the NY Times has provided a nice summary of what the heck happened.

Apparently, she was the conduit for some of the skewed "intelligence" the Bush administration was handing out preceding the Iraq War and was pretty heavily criticized. The chronology kinda works like this:
1) Link to an old Slate article here.
2) I thought she was upholding some fine journalistic principals for refusing to name her source for the Valerie Plame leak.
3) Her Farewell Letter here.

Alleged Enemy Combatants Stuck Indefinitely

Here's a disturbing development of US Policy on enemy combatants. Since the law (and last year's Supreme Court ruling) allows enemy combatants to challenge their detention, those in power have seen fit to rewrite the law.

The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.

The vote, 49 to 42, on an amendment to a military budget bill by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, comes at a time of intense debate over the government's treatment of prisoners in American custody worldwide, and just days after the Senate passed a measure by Senator John McCain banning abusive treatment of them.

If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.

While it may help us to more easily sleep at night thinking all the people held are guilty of something, wouldn't it be best if they were able to get fair trials? Check this link to Amnesty International on the story of one Canadian being detained at Guantanamo Bay.

And now for some good news:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives abandoned, at least temporarily, a drive to open Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling after concluding on Wednesday the initiative was threatening passage of a huge bill to cut spending...

Environmentalists have opposed expanding oil drilling to the sensitive area in Alaska and some Florida congressmen have worked to kill the offshore oil and gas drilling plan. Both projects have been a high priority of U.S. oil companies.With a more ambitious, $54 billion spending-reduction bill getting bogged down in the House, Republican leaders jettisoned the oil drilling plans for now.

And

The House of Representatives unanimously approved a motion favoring a four-year expiration on some of the most controversial provisions of the Act. This "motion to instruct" the joint conference committee members won wide bipartisan support and signals that leaders are concerned about the secretive powers at the heart of the Patriot Act controversy.

While the motion is non-binding, it sends a powerful message just as the conference committee prepares to vote on the competing versions of the Patriot Act passed by the House and the Senate. It is a rebuke to the Bush administration and their effort to make all of the expiring Patriot Act powers permanent or extend them for ten years before the next review.

Bank of Wal-Mart

The world's largest retailer wants to open a bank, and its critics are showering federal regulators with pleas to say no.

Wal-Mart Stores' application to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to charter a bank has drawn 1,550 mostly negative comments, the most ever. With bank-charter applications, a half-dozen comments is considered a lot, the FDIC says.

Wal-Mart wants to start an industrial loan corporation (ILC), a type of bank that regulators let commercial businesses operate for specific purposes, such as processing payments. Most negative comments stressed the dangers of an unregulated commercial company owning a federally insured bank.

Among the concerns: "Is the parent company sufficiently regulated? Will credit decisions be objective? Will economic power become too concentrated?" says Edward Yingling, CEO of the American Bankers Association, a trade group of independent banks that opposes Wal-Mart's application...

Opponents, ranging from banks to unions, fear that Wal-Mart might someday move to put its own banks in its stores, in turn devastating community banks...

Wal-Mart says it has no plans to use the ILC to offer banking services to the public, though it does plan to offer certificates of deposit to non-profits. It says it wants to form an ILC only to save "millions" of dollars that it pays financial institutions for processing its debit, credit and electronic check transactions...

This is Wal-Mart's fourth attempt to get into banking. In 1999, it tried to buy an Oklahoma thrift, but a change in federal law banned thrift ownership by commercial entities. In 2001, it tried to partner with Toronto-Dominion Bank to open branches in stores but failed to get the OK of the Office of Thrift Supervision. In 2002, it tried to buy an ILC in California, but a state law was passed prohibiting non-financial institutions from owning ILCs.

Give us 10%

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for oil and gas companies to devote a portion of their nearly $100 billion profits in the latest quarter to families who could see a 50-percent hike in heating bills this winter.

Grassley has sent letters to three oil companies asking them to contribute 10 percent of their profits to the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program or similar state- or utility-run plans.

"In light of record profits and rising energy costs, it seems only logical for the companies to practice good corporate citizenship by helping low-income families and seniors," Grassley wrote.

The Bush administration is encouraging charitable giving at a company's discretion but is against a tax on the companies' profits, citing problems caused by windfall taxes implemented in the 1980s. (Read: Why put even the smallest burden on the rich corporations when I can trample on the welfare of those poor fools who help elect me.)

[Update 11/9/05]
Unbelievable! Oil companies are actually trying to defend their huge profits.

Together the [5 major American oil] companies earned more than $25 billion in profits in the July-September quarter as the price of crude oil hit $70 a barrel and gasoline surged to record levels after the disruptions of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Raymond [chairman of Exxon Mobil Corp.,] said the profits are in line with other industries when earnings are compared to the industry's enormous revenues.

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

I wish the headline above was an exagerration of some sort but that's actually the headline of this Washington Post story. How can we violate some of the most fundamental principals that this country was built on? What ever happened to the assumption that one was innocent until proven guilty? How can we let people be held indefinitely? Sickening.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

[Update 11/3/05] The EU ain't all that happy about this now. Check out this update from the Associated Press.

Bush Actually Does Something about the Bird Flu

So Dubya is actually doing something for once to prepare for a potential crisis? Oh wait, he's months behind Canada, Britain and Australia! Big surprise. Thanks for coming back from vacation!

Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Democrat who has criticized Mr. Bush's approach to the possibility of an outbreak, today called the proposal a "long-awaited first step toward a comprehensive pandemic flu plan that America needs and deserves."

"The president's plan needs to be stronger to ensure that the American people have the protections they deserve," he said.

"In particular, we need to strengthen the capacity of hospitals and health care facilities to respond and react to a pandemic. Stockpiles alone aren't enough without the capacity to make use of them."

Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat and the Senate minority leader, said the president had not responded quickly enough to the potential crisis.

"The United States has already fallen behind nations like Canada, Britain and Australia who finalized their avian flu plans months ago," Mr. Reid said in a statement. "The recent spread of avian flu to Europe proves we cannot afford to drag our feet any longer. The looming threat of a pandemic demands action now."

Netflix Porn

Don't you just love entrepreneurs? These guys are living the American dream with their very own porn rental startup. (It's like Netflix for porn.) This article is pretty funny just cause they offer quotes like the one below.

Today, their San Fernando Valley office space has a warehouse stocked with enough dirty DVDs to keep a Jamboree's worth of Boy Scouts permanently ensconced in their tents. Their schedules include meetings with sex toy experts and parties with porn stars. They have xxx wl tattoos on their wrists.

Catholic school cancels fashion show, calls it gay

A Roman Catholic school [in Milwaukee] is canceling a fashion show by the
manufacturer of American Girl dolls and books amid conservative groups'
criticism of a girls organization that receives support from the company. St.
Luke School in Brookfield notified its parents of the decision through bulletins
at Masses over the weekend.

Two national groups - the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago and the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. - have raised questions about the American Girl brand and its parent company, Mattel Inc., because of the company's fund-raising for Girls Inc., formerly known as Girls Clubs of America.

The American Family Association has called Girls Inc. "a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group." Girls Inc., which has more than 1,500 centers across the country, says it provides a variety of programs to educate and encourage girls and does accept lesbian sexual orientation. Alexander Kopelman, director of communications, said it does not include abortion in its programming, though it does not control what leaders say if girls ask about it.

Money raised through ticket and raffle sales at the planned fashion show was to go toward a new playground and a refurbished library at St. Luke School.

"It's a bargain we'll just have to pass up," wrote Frank Malloy, St. Luke pastor. "The cost is too high. Our integrity isn't for sale."

Commence the pulling out of the hair now. I thank god everyday I don't live in the stix.

[Thanks Maria for the tip!]