http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0131-25.htm

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http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0131-27.htm

[photopress:feet.jpg,full,pp_image]An appeals court reinstated the most serious terrorism charge against Jose Padilla today, reversing the decision of a lower court that the charge duplicated another that Padilla has also been indicted with.

There are a couple of things worth remembering here. The first is that Padillia is an American arrested on American soil. Administration officials, when they arrested him, said he was part of Al Qaeda and involved in plots to explode a dirty bomb and blow up a natural gas facility.

Last fall the New York Times got a look at some videotape (a frame from the tape is above) that the government shot while holding him at a Navy brig in South Carolina. The video shows a docile prisoner shackled and wearing black out goggle and sound blocking headphones, all for a simple walk down the hall. Padilla’s lawyers say he was tortured.

The second important point is that Padilla was only charged after it looked like the Supreme Court was about to rule that the government couldn’t lock up an America indefinitely, with no access to counsel, just because the president says so. And what is the connection between the current charges and Al Qaeda and the dirty bomb and the gas facility? None. The government seems to have completely forgotten about all those nasty things it said Padilla had done.

[photopress:hearing_1.jpg,full,pp_image]At a Senate hearing today experts said Congress does have the power to stop the war in Iraq.

“I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war,” said Bradford Berenson, a Washington lawyer who was a White House associate counsel under Bush from 2001 to 2003.

You can read the entire story here and an essay on the historical basis of the issue here.

Scientists came to Capital Hill today to tell a Congressional Committee that the Bush administration has repeatedly pressured researchers to downplay the evidence of global warming.

“Our investigations found high-quality science struggling to get out,” Francesca Grifo of the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

You can read the entire story here.

A 21 year old college student went to Tampa police on Saturday, saying she had been raped that afternoon. They took here to a local clinic where she was prescribed the morning after pill. She took the first pill but was then arrested by police after they discovered a failure to appear warrant from a theft charge when she was 17. (Her lawyer says she thought that had all been cleared up years ago.) The police found out about the outstanding warrant while the victim was trying to identify the crime scene. Instead of continuing the investigation, her lawyer say they stopped immediately, handcuffed her and took her to jail.

Here’s where the story gets even more outrageous. While in jail, the victim’s mother said a nurse supervisor refused to let her take the second dose of the morning after pill because, the supervisor said, it was against her religion.

The police department is apologizing for locking the woman up but they are mum about denying her access to the birth control medication.

This is the kind of treatment you would expect a woman to receive from the Taliban, not in Florida.

You can watch the CNN story below:

Being the “decider” that he is, President Bush has signed an executive order that gives him or his political appointees final say over how federal agencies enforce the laws that Congress passes.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

When it comes to protecting the enivronment or the rights and safety of workers, who do you think is going to do a better job—the career professionals at that agency or the Decider?

This is very reminiscent of the interference the Administration has run on scientific issues, particularly climate change. The top climate scientists at NASA–a veteran of over thirty years with the agency–was muzzled by political appointees who didn’t want him talking about global warming. It was only after the New York Times started writing about the gag order that the Administration backed off and allowed the scientist to talk about science.

UPDATE: Looks like old habits die hard. At a Congressional hearing this morning the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that nearly half of 279 government scientists they questioned said their papers had been edited or they had been told to remove terms like “climate change” and “global warming.”

[photopress:eu.gif,full,pp_image]While the United States becomes increasingly provocative with Iran, European allies are resisting the pressure to turn up the heat. According to today’s NYT, “the resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran.”

European officials say close business ties (especially relating to oil) make it more difficult for them to enforce UN sanctions against Iran as strictly as the US would like. You have to wonder, though, if it’s more than just business interests that have lead the Europeans to be less aggressive. A recent BBC poll certainly shows that public opinion in Europe and around the world doesn’t support US foreign policy.

“We want to squeeze the Iranians,” said a European official. “But there are varying degrees of political will in Europe about turning the thumbscrews. It’s not straightforward for the European Union to do what the United States wants.”

Meanwhile traditional US allies in the Middle East, like Kuwait, are also trying to put a little distance between themselves and the US over Iran.  They see the US as transients in the region, and after the Americans leave, they will still have to maintain a relationship with Iran.  And some experts don’t like the way the geopolitical landscape is looking.

“The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East,” said Khaled al-Dakhil, a Saudi writer and academic. “There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It’s more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region.”

As the evidence mounts that the US is planning some sort of military action against Iran, it looks like the mainstream media is set to go along for the ride.

In a report on CNN this morning, Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr referenced “evidence” that Iran is supporting and supplying insurgents in Iraq.

What evidence?

[photopress:abzd.jpg,full,pp_image]Starr says the State Department”wants to unveil classified evidence….but much of that evidence is already out there if you know where to look.” And Starr knows just where to look: Bush Administration officials. As proof that Iran is deeply involved in Iraq, she cited statements from CIA Director Michael Hayden, General John Abezaid, and unnamed “US officials.”

It may be true that Iran is arming the insurgency in Iraq, but so far we really haven’t seen the evidence. Without doubt the Administration will soon start “revealing” what they tell us is clear and convincing proof that Iran is a threat to the United States. When that happens, will the media do a better job taking a critical look at that evidence than they did during the run up to the Iraq war? So far, it’s not looking good.
Here is an excerpt from Starr’s report:

The LA Times is reporting this morning on the latest effort from producer Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed and Walmart: the High Cost of Low Price.) The two minute video is a montage of some of John McCain’s I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it moments.

For your viewing pleasure, we present it here:

[photopress:school.jpg,full,pp_image]How can the chaos that has engulfed Iraq keep getting deeper? Somehow it does.

Over the weekend bombs were set off in the courtyard of a girls school in Baghdad, killing five children and injuring 21. The images of coffins laid out for the victims, of bloody school books makes it hard to imagine how Iraqi’s can even carry on any kind of day-to-day living.

Now this morning there is news of a massive battle near Najaf. The Iraqi army was said to have been trying to stop a planned attack by a radical messianic cult on Shia holy sites. Reports indicate the Iraqis felt outgunned and called in US military support. In the end US forces killed 250 Iraqis before the battle ended.

Details of what happened are sketchy. The US forces used tanks and F-16 fighter bombers. An Iraqi military source said the dead wore headbands declaring them to be “Soldiers of Heaven”. The Najaf governor Asaad Abu Gilel said the authorities had discovered a conspiracy to kill some of the senior clergy.

The Independent has the full story.

[photopress:bear_1_2_3.jpg,full,pp_image]Global warming is going to be a big news story this week as we approach the Friday release of a UN report on climate change. This would be a good time to pause for a review of some of the basics around the story.

The report is the product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)–an organization made up of thousands of climate change scientists from around the world. The IPCC was formed by the UN nearly twenty years ago and periodically releases a comprehensive report on what is known and not known about climate change. The last came out in 2001 and the report that will officially be released this week in Paris will be their fourth since the panel’s inception.

Read more

[photopress:bushqueen.jpg,full,pp_image]When it comes to building an imperial presidency, George Bush makes Richard Nixon look like a hack. One of Nixon’s problems was the devotion that a few members of his Administration showed to the Constitution. President Bush, on the other hand, has been smart enough to surround himself with people who don’t even dare question his judgments, let alone challenge him when he flaunts constitutional principles.

A prime example is the handmaiden now running the Justice Department, Alberto Gonzales. We learned late last week that Gonzales is using a little known provision in the Patriot Act (did anybody actually read that bill?) to fill vacant US attorney positions with right wing lawyers who have shown a willingness to do the Administration’s bidding. The appointments are seen as an end run on Congress, since they avoid the Senate confirmation hearings that US attorneys are supposed to face.

On Friday former Nixon lawyer John Dean wrote about the bait and switch deal that Gonzales and the Administration pulled on Sen. Arlen Specter. During negotiations on the renewal of the Patriot Act, Gonzales agreed that the Administration would submit to more vigorous Congressional oversight. But when it came time to sign the bill, Bush added one of his notorious signing statements which said, basically, “just kidding about the oversight thing.” Read more

[photopress:rove.jpg,full,pp_image]It appears Scooter Libby’s trial isn’t going to be much fun for the White House. Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett have been subpoenaed to testify and the result, some say, is likely to be a revealing and unsavory look at the way this Administration has conducted itself.

“This is obviously primarily about the guilt or innocence of the defendant,” former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC News. “But in a larger sense, it’s going to be an examination and perhaps even a trial about how this administration has conducted itself on matters of national security and on Iraq, specifically.”

Read the entire story here.

[photopress:crowd.jpg,full,pp_image]It was a clear, beautiful day in Washington yesterday as a crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands and may have passed six figures gathered to protest the Iraq war. By all accounts the crowd was pretty diverse–young people, older people, Iraq vets in camouflage and kids in strollers.

With Mr. Bush facing low approval ratings and Congress continuing to debate the terms of a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop increase, grandmothers in wheelchairs, housewives pushing strollers, seasoned dissenters in tie-dye and veterans in uniform turned out to take their discontent to the streets.

“I grew up during the Vietnam War, but I never protested it and never had my lottery number called to go fight,” said David Quinly, a 54-year-old carpenter from Prairie Village, Kan., who arrived here Friday night with about 50 others after a 23-hour bus ride.

“In my view, this one is a war of choice and a war for profit against a culture and people we don’t understand,” Mr. Quinly said. “I knew I had to speak up this time.”

Read the entire story here.

[photopress:missile_bulava_bg.jpg,full,pp_image]The United States has reached agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to build American anti-missile sites in those countries and although administration officials say the weapons systems are necessary to protect against long range Iranian missiles, the Russians definitely don’t see it that way. Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Kamynin said today that his country will view the installations as an escalation of American military presence in Eastern Europe.

Read more

[photopress:bushiran.jpg,full,pp_image]After the White House confirmed that President Bush has authorized the killing of Iranians inside Iraq (as CNN put it “from Catch and Release to License to Kill”) Bush spoke to reporters during a photo op.  The most ominous moment came when Bush said “our struggle is not with the Iranian people.” Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like 2002 when he said, over and over again, that the US had no quarrel with the Iraqi people?

During the exchange Bush also said “the choice is the Iranian government’s choice.”  He didn’t say exactly what that “choice” is about, but that too sounds like the pre-Iraq war rhetoric, when the president struck a “my hands are tied” attitude about invading Iraq.

Here is Bush at the photo-op:

[photopress:march_1.jpg,full,pp_image] Tom Andrews of Win Without War says the turnout for a big anti-war march in Washington this weekend will be “in the six figures.” The biggest march will be in DC, but smaller protests are planned for over 50 cities around the country.

A spokesperson for the umbrella group organizing the march said they are trying to send a message to Washington.

“People started saying to us right after the election ‘well, what is Congress going to do?’  And we quickly realized the real question is ‘what are we going to do to push this Congress to do what they said they were going to do to get elected’. So we figured we got to get people into Washington as soon as possible after the new session of Congress began.”

Read the entire story here.

[photopress:elderly.jpg,full,pp_image]You can rest easy. The Pentagon is out there protecting us from the threat to our way of life posed by those sneaky Quakers. The ACLU has found that the Defense Department has been monitoring the activities of American’s involved in anti-war protests, like the one planned for Saturday.

At least 186 antiwar protests in the United States have been monitored by the Pentagon’s domestic surveillance program, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which also found that the Defense Department collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in a single anti-terrorism database.

The internal Defense Department documents show it is monitoring the activities of a wide swath of peace groups, including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and the umbrella group United for Peace and Justice, which is spearheading what organizers hope will be a massive march on Washington this Saturday.Read the entire story here.

Read the entire story here.

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