the/diseased/republik

US President George W Bush has invoked executive privilege to deny requests by Congress for the testimony of two aides over the firing of federal prosecutors. The row hinges on whether the attorneys were sacked for political motives. Democratic leaders say they could go to court to challenge Mr Bush's move. He invoked the same little-used power last month to withhold subpoenaed documents. The White House says Mr Bush is acting in good faith and has offered to let the aides do off-the-record interviews. The pair in question are Harriet Miers, former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, former political director for the White House. Ms Miers has been summoned to appear under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and Ms Taylor to testify before the House Judiciary Committee the next day. 'Unreasonable' demands The Democratic heads of the two judiciary committees had set a deadline of Monday for the White House to explain the first invocation of p...

Internal memos show that four security contractors who were ambushed and killed in Iraq three years ago were told to go through the dangerous city of Fallujah when a safer route was available, a newspaper reported Sunday. The memos said a Blackwater USA supervisor also plucked two members of each six-man team for other work, reducing the teams' numbers and making them more vulnerable to attack, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Memos from the second team _ whose leader decided to go around Fallujah on March 31, 2004, and which wasn't attacked _ said the teams also were sent without maps, although other memos suggest maps were available, the newspaper said. "These reports were written by people who were not there," Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told The Associated Press. "The answer to what really happened in Fallujah is a tragedy in which four brave men were killed." Tyrrell said she couldn't comment on specifics because of pending liti...

'In his remarkable book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore does a service by focusing on the intimacies of power. In his detailed, highly readable account of Joseph Stalin's entourage, Montefiore shows how power is often a byproduct of informal interaction, a thing of the dinner table, the hunting expedition, the boudoir. 'But Montefiore also poses another question, one more specific to the Soviet leader. Why is it that the experienced, ruthless, conceited men and women around Stalin could so easily fall under his ruinous power, to the extent that some remained loyal even after the murder or imprisonment of members of their families? The answer is deceptively simple: There was no sovereign rule of law to mediate the relation. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Stalin himself became the law, replacing the hard but more egalitarian conventions of the Communist Party. The absolute leader destroyed a system and replaced it with his own absolute ego. 'Ob...

amigoro writes to let us know about an appeals court ruling on Friday that holds that federal agents can snoop on an individual's web surfing, email and all other forms of Internet communication habits without a warrant . The court found recording this kind of information to be analogous to the use of a pen register. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that this technique did not constitute a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. fullstory and discusion @ slashdot .

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Routed in the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is fractured and adrift at a moment when it is viewed by the outside world as the best hope for blunting the militant Hamas movement in the West Bank. Once dominant in Palestinian affairs, the organization long led by the late Yasser Arafat is beset by a weak and aging leadership, internal schisms and a widespread reputation among Palestinians as corrupt, ineffectual and out of touch. Those troubles have some Palestinians wondering whether Fatah is more likely to lose the West Bank than to recapture the Gaza Strip from Hamas. The crisis facing Fatah has deepened since Hamas crushed its forces in Gaza last month, leaving Fatah's authority limited to the West Bank. The United States, Israel and European allies have promised to bolster Abbas, a relative moderate, and his party as a way to isolate Hamas. Fatah ruled unchallenged under Arafat, but was sent reeling after his d...

In a move that has executives from movie studios and record labels grinning from ear to ear, AT&T has announced that it will develop and deploy technology that will attempt to keep pirated content off its network. The move is spurred in part by the company's decision to offer IPTV television service as part of its U-Verse package , AT&T senior VP James W. Cicconi told the Los Angeles Times . Despite the major technical problems inherent in such a program, AT&T is moving ahead. By making themselves into the arbiters of copyright law, the company risks being drawn into a costly "arms race" with programmers who don't like the idea of a massive corporation (and one which appears to have turned over information to the NSA ) peeking into their packets and deciding which ones go through. This is exactly the situation that Dr. Greg Jackson, CIO of the University of Chicago, warned Congress about last week . "The only successful, robust way to address probl...

Mr. Gates our present Sec of Defence cut his teeth on this little number -- it was called the -- Iran-Contra Affair . Arms transaction The Iran-Contra report found that the sales of arms to Iran violated United States Government policy; it also violated the Arms Export Control Act . [2] Overall, if the releasing of hostages was the purpose of arms sales to Iran, the plan was a failure as only three of the 30 hostages were released. [9] First arms sale Michael Ledeen , a consultant of Robert McFarlane , asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for help in the sale of arms to Iran. [11] The general idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons to Iran, then the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons. The Israeli government required that the sale of arms meet high level approval from the United States government, and when Robert McFarlane convinced them that the U.S. government approved the sale, Israel obliged by agreeing to sell the arms. [11] Reagan approved M...

AP via Yahoo: The 53-38 vote to move the resolution to full debate fell seven short of the 60 required. In bringing the matter up, Democrats dared Republicans to vote their true feelings about an attorney general who has alienated even the White House’s strongest defenders by bungling the firings of federal prosecutors and claiming not to recall the details. Republicans did not defend him, but most voted against moving the resolution ahead. Monday’s vote was not the end of scrutiny for Gonzales and his management of the Justice Department—more congressional hearings are scheduled and an internal department investigation continues. Read more

Democrats Monday aim to stick the knife into President George W. Bush's besieged Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, with a rare Senate "no confidence" vote sparked by a row over fired federal prosecutors. The debate is the culmination of an intense Democratic campaign for the scalp of Gonzales, one of Bush's closest political allies, who has also faced calls to resign from some senior Republicans. Bush Monday vigorously defended Gonzales, following up White House accusations that the symbolic and non-binding Senate vote is simply political mischief drummed up by Democrats to appease grass roots supporters. "They can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it's not going to determine who serves in my government," Bush told reporters in Bulgaria before flying back to Washington after a tour of Europe. An afternoon of debate was scheduled on a simple resolution stating that Gonzales "no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the America...

June 11 ( Bloomberg ) -- A divided federal appeals court, in a rebuke to the Bush administration, ruled that an alleged al-Qaeda agent held for four years in U.S. military custody can't be detained indefinitely without being charged. The 2-1 decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia said accused terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri can instead be given a criminal trial in a civilian court. The judges said the U.S. can no longer hold him in a Navy brig in South Carolina. ``The president cannot eliminate constitutional protections (even more details of US Constitution and State's Rights ) with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention,'' the court said. Al-Marri ``can be returned to civilian prosecutors, tried on criminal charges, and, if convicted, punished severely.'' Al-Marri was in the U.S. ...

October 13, 2005 MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITT SUBJECT: Therapy as Policy: CIA and Clandestine Ops In today’s Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports (“CIA to Remain Coordinator of Overseas Spying”) that the Agency’s operations directorate will continue in its senior intelligence community role for coordinating and overseeing all other clandestine human intelligence collection activities of the U.S. Government. This will include the overseas activities of both the FBI and various Defense Department Agencies. As Pincus notes, this “keeps the CIA’s traditional position as leader” of U.S. human collection intact. Approved by the White House, the plan ignores the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s recommendation that – given the CIA’s failures to penetrate Saddam’s Iraq or Bin Laden’s al Qaeda – the task of coordinating the overall management of human intelligence be moved to the office of the director of national intelligence, now headed by Amb. John Negroponte. ...

JON BOYLE IN PARIS A EUROPEAN investigator said yesterday he had proof Poland and Romania hosted secret prisons for the US Central Intelligence Agency in which it interrogated top al-Qaeda suspects using methods akin to torture. Swiss senator Dick Marty said Poland housed some of the CIA's most sensitive prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who says he masterminded the 11 September, 2001, attacks on the US that killed 3,000 people. "There is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania," Mr Marty said in a report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog. He said US intelligence told him the two EU members hosted the secret jails under a special CIA programme, created by George Bush's administration after 9/11 "to kill, capture and detain terrorist suspects deemed of 'high value". Mr Marty said the former president of Poland and the cu...

via Technology News -- Taking into consideration a decision reached last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have issued new guidelines for the protection of wetlands and bodies of water under the Clean Water Act. Critics charge that the new rules impede the organizations' ability to look at the big picture when considering how to protect wetlands. "We're really disappointed with the new guidelines," Julie Sibbing, senior program manager for wetlands and agriculture policy for the National Wildlife Federation, told TechNewsWorld. "The court decision itself left some opening for interpretation, but it seems like the [Bush] administration took every opportunity to retreat from protection in any possible way they could, and we think they retreated unacceptably, even according to what the Rapanos decision said." Furthermore, the new guidance leads to new procedures where individual streams or ponds would be isolated in the de...

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them just pick themselves up and hurry off, as if nothing had ever happened" - Winston Churchill "If someone can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities". - Voltaire And was Churchill and Voltaire absolutely on target. The first Bush action was to create a reason to get some of those pesky Constitutional laws out of the way. You know the ones - Rights of the citizen, Restraint of Abuse of Authority, Habeas Corpus - i.e. "The Rule of Law". Immediately after the Towers were down, even before the smoke cleared, the assault of our Rule of Law began. The Rationale presented was "It's necessary to fight off the enemies of America". Or "we'll fight them over there instead of over here." But why did this Administration bring their assault on the Constitution to full fury? The reason is clear for all but the Ignorant to understand and those inept people took...

NYTimes WASHINGTON, June 4 — If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts. That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language. Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio. “We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel. Emily A. Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. ...

The two presidents, smiling and looking relaxed, have not met since Putin attacked the Bush administration in February, accusing it of trying to force its will on the world and become its "single master." "There's a lot of constructive work we can do and so I'm looking forward to my dialogue with Vladimir Putin this afternoon," Bush said on Thursday. Bush said he would discuss with Putin at a bilateral meeting later in the day his proposal to invite Russian generals and scientists to the United States to reassure them on his plans to put a radar system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The White House has insisted the shield is planned to block any future Iranian nuclear missiles, not Russian ones. But Putin warned he may aim nuclear weapons at European targets unless Washington abandons its proposal. The diplomatic row coupled with harsh criticism over faltering democratic reforms in Russia has soured relations between Washington and Moscow, raising fears t...

Proof by assertion is a logical fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction. Sometimes this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to it not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam). In other cases its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies. This logical fallacy is sometimes used as a form of rhetoric by politicians. In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing. Modern politics contains many examples of proof by assertions. This practice can be observed in the use of political slogans, and the distribution of "talking points," which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum message repetition. The technique is also sometimes used in advertising. The technique is described in a saying, often attributed to Lenin, as "A...

Halliburton Energy Services (NYSE: HAL) is a multinational corporation with operations in over 120 countries. It is based in Houston, Texas in the United States, but has announced that it will establish a new headquarters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where Chairman and CEO David J. Lesar will work and reside. However, corporate offices will remain in Houston [2] and the company will remain incorporated in the United States. [3] Halliburton operates two major business segments: The Energy Services Group provides technical products and services for oil and gas exploration and production, and the KBR subsidiary is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. KBR is in the last stages of being spun off from Halliburton. Halliburton is the only company mentioned by Osama bin Laden in an April 2004 tape in which he claims that "this is a war [in Iraq] that is benefiting major companies with billions of dollars." [13] Similar senti...

how the government is outsourcing its intelligence functions to private companies, thus avoiding congressional and taxpayer oversight, and enriching friends of the administration. "It appears that more and more of the data collection sanctioned by the US government is passed through the hands of private enterprise, Salon reports. 'Because of the cloak of secrecy thrown over the intelligence budgets, there is no way for the American public, or even much of Congress, to know how those contractors are getting the money, what they are doing with it, or how effectively they are using it. The explosion in outsourcing has taken place against a backdrop of intelligence failures for which the Bush administration has been hammered by critics, from Saddam Hussein's fictional weapons of mass destruction to abusive interrogations that have involved employees of private contractors operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Aftergood and other experts also warn that the la...

A total of 10 people are in custody in California, accused of plotting to overthrow the government of Laos. Mike O'Sullivan reports from Los Angeles, the alleged plotters include a former Laotian general and a retired US military officer. A six-month undercover investigation, dubbed "Operation Tarnished Eagle," led to charges against nine people Monday, with charges pending against a tenth. Investigators say the accused met in hotel rooms and restaurants in California's Central Valley, where they plotted to buy hundreds of automatic rifles, antitank missiles, rockets, mines, C-4 explosive and smoke grenades. Authorities say the conspirators were planning to ship the arms by way of safe houses and drop zones in Thailand and Laos. Mercenaries would retrieve the weapons, then blow up government buildings and assassinate officials in Laos in an attempt to overthrow the country's communist government. The accused include Vang Pao, 77, a former Laotian general who is...