'Tis the season for the bloated defense authorization bill to begin its journey towards passage, and as usual if you look hard enough, the legislation is stuffed full of all kinds of goodies. Since defense authorization will always pass, it has become an omnibus wish-list bill for anyone who wants anything out of our government, and this year is no different. …

Section 815 for S. 3454, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, has the innocuous title of "Reduction of Supply Chain Risk in the Acquisition of National Security Systems." This section could essentially create "de facto" debarments of small businesses across DoD federal contracting programs, with potential for these "de facto" debarments to touch every corner of federal government contracting, thus creating a blacklist where businesses would be debarred from working with the government. The proponents of Section 815 have justified this blacklist as necessary to ensure national security and mitigate supply chain risk.

We are about to find out yet again whether we are a nation of laws or men. The U.S. Senate will be voting perhaps as early as Tuesday on the FAA Reauthorization Act, including whether House-passed Section 806 will remain part of the bill. FedEx and its CEO Fred Smith have railed against Section 806 for several years now, claiming that it will lead to unionization of their Express division and endless labor strife, affecting the entire U.S. economy. These claims are all self-interested bluster, of course.

Section 806 is really about equal application of the laws of our country to all similarly situated businesses -- which should rise or fall in the marketplace based on their competitive abilities, not favoritism by the Congress.

Elizabeth Warren's Devasting Report to Congress

"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!"

On Tuesday, a congressional panel headed by ex-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren released a report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's handling of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Warren was appointed to lead the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) in November by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. From the opening paragraph on, the Warren report makes clear that Congress is frustrated with Geithner's so-called "Financial Rescue Plan" and doesn't have the foggiest idea of what he is trying to do. Here are the first few lines of "Assessing Treasury's Strategy: Six Months of TARP":

Six months and $1 trillion later, and Congress still cannot figure out what Geithner is up to. It's a wonder the Treasury Secretary hasn't been fired already.

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- By 2011? No recovery? No new bull? "Hey Paul, why do you keep talking about a bigger crash coming by 2011?" Readers ask that often. So here's a sequel to my predictions of 2000 and 2004, with a look three years ahead:

...

(for story, scroll down slightly after following the link)

The Fundamentals of the Campaign were Unsound

Why McCain Lost

When Republican consultants like Mary Matalin and Steve Schmidt first pondered [trying to sink Obama by hanging former Weatherman Bill Ayers round his neck] in the late summer, it must have seemed to them like a no-brainer – a reprise of the way George H.W. Bush finished off Michael Dukakis in 1988. Lee Atwater, Bush's smear manager, picked up Al Gore's use of Horton – the black rapist furloughed for a weekend, under a law passed by Gov. Dukakis – and retooled it, throwing in slurs about Dukakis as being some foreign outsider. So, in the final weeks of Campaign 2008, Barack Hussein Obama would be hit with similar accusations (actually, first aired by Hillary Clinton last April) of being an alien radical, with intimate ties to a man who had tried to blow up Congress and the Pentagon.

It might have worked but for the fact, which apparently escaped the notice of the well-paid campaign consultants running the McCain campaign – that America was engulfed in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. There was a total disconnect between the financial hurricane hitting America and some archaeology about a Sixties radical sitting with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, a nonprofit financed by the Annenberg Foundation (and today featuring board members from other known terrorist organizations such as British Petroleum and the Swiss banking giant UBS, whose U.S. operation has on its payroll as a vice president McCain's pal and advisor, Phil Gramm).

"There was only one Democratic US Senator seeking reelection this year that Republicans seriously suggested they might be able to beat.

Kennedy is on his own, and out of the running. "

The Bush administration's latest prescription for the ailing financial industry — a program that clears the way for the U.S. government to buy a $250 billion equity stake in the nation's banks — provided only the slightest glimmer of optimism in the U.S. financial markets Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson were careful to tiptoe around the idea that with the program they were nationalizing the nation's banks. Instead, they preferred to cast their decision to spend about a third of the $700 billion Congress provided as a "recapitalization" effort. The president said the decision to buy shares in the nation's leading banks was "not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it."

Anderson is circulating a letter that reads:

By showing that the American people - without political partisanship - support the disclosure of the truth through public hearings, we can make a difference, together standing up for the truth, the rule of law, and our Constitution.

The country owes Rep. Dennis Kucinich a debt of gratitude.

Each article of impeachment is supported by brief but credible bullet-points to suggest prima facie that an high crime has occurred.

Introduced in Congress June 9, 2008.

Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.

The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with an assault on U.S. civil liberty that Bush justified in the name of the "war on terror." The government assured us that the draconian measures apply only to "terrorists." The word terrorist, however, was not defined. The government claimed the discretionary power to decide who is a terrorist without having to present evidence or charges in a court of law.

Terrorist legislation and executive assertions created a basis upon which federal authorities claimed they were free to suspend suspects' civil liberties in order to defend Americans from terrorism. Only after civil liberties groups and federal courts challenged some of the unconstitutional laws and procedures did realization spread that the Bush administration's assault on the Bill of Rights is a greater threat to Americans than are terrorists.

What Do the Pentagon's Budget Numbers Mean?

The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget

The new 2009 defense budget has just been released. The more you look into the numbers, the more things become unclear, very unclear. Most of the numbers being released today are inaccurate or incomplete, or both. Other numbers will change as the year progresses, but we do not know if they will go up or down.

The $518.3 billion is incomplete; it does not include $70 billion requested to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that number too is inaccurate. It does not include enough money to fight the wars for more than a few months in 2009. If the violence in Iraq stays at its recently reduced levels--or even declines - that $70 billion should be about doubled to get through the entire year. If things fall apart in Iraq and continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan, as is very likely, that 70 billion should be about tripled. In either case, the amount requested in the budget for the wars is off by $70 to $140 billion.

NEW ORLEANS (MarketWatch) -- Gathered in this city struggling to regain its footing after Hurricane Katrina, a group of leading economists said the U.S. is getting hit by another damaging storm: the global credit crunch.

Many analysts gathered at the American Economic Association's two-day annual meeting spoke of a recession as almost a given but differed over how severe it will be.
"The recession is likely to be a serious one," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

"We are going to have very low growth in the first two quarters of the year. Whether it is negative or zero, it is going to feel like the same thing," Rajan said.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination that the mainstream media like to ignore or belittle, stands head and shoulders above the moral midgets and shriveled sophists in that contest, especially today, after he successfully forced the full House to vote to send his bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney to a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich, whose Cheney impeachment bill, despite having 22 co-sponsors, has been stalled for over six months thanks to the unconscionable machinations of the Democratic Congressional leadership and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, should now get at least a genuine debate in the House Judiciary Committee. With enough pressure from constituents, his bill might even go into hearings.

The Michael Mukasey Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing has demonstrated that Mukasey cannot be relied upon to function independently as U.S. Attorney General. Nevertheless, Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee seem so thrilled that Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales that they're willing to vote for him even though he's another loyal Bushie. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, backed down on his promise to hold up the confirmation hearing until the administration turned over material his committee had requested regarding several investigations. Leahy said of Mukasey after the hearing, "He's at least answered the questions, which is better than his predecessor. He's going to be different than Gonzales on all the issues, I think. He will certainly be better than Gonzales on morale."

Mukasey doesn't seem to have a memory problem; he relied on a different excuse for dodging the Senators' hard questions: he hasn't been "read in on" the details of Bush policies, such as interrogation techniques, or the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Mukasey claims he doesn't know what water boarding is, so he can't say if it constitutes torture. Say what?

The international outcry over the recent Blackwater shootings forced the world to closely examine and appreciate the complex reality of the United States government's overdependence on private military contractors operating in Iraq. The foremost expert and most cited authority on the subject is Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institute, co-founder of "The U.S. Policy towards the Islamic World" Program, and author of the seminal work on private military contractors, "Corporate Warriors." This interview, his most recent, examines the most current repercussions caused by the Blackwater scandal and private military firms within an overall context of The Iraq War, U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East, and America's public relations with the Muslim world.

Good Movie, Now Where's the Movement?

Sicko and the Politics of Health Care

By RALPH NADER

He sat there dejected and indignant-twenty years ago-in our office. His position as editor of the monthly muckraking magazine, Mother Jones, had broken up. He was looking for a job that would allow him to bring his conscience to work.

We gave him a place and support to start Moore's Weekly -- a media critique.

Michael Moore has gone a long way since that short-lived publication. He went on to do documentary films, starting with Roger and Me-meaning of course, Michael Moore.

Rich, famous and Hollywood chic, Moore will open his latest film - 'Sicko' in theatres around the country on June 29, 2007. To many of those who have already seen this indictment and conviction of the corporations that sell health care under an array of tricky conditions, it is his best move yet.

Why the School of the Americas is a Black Eye on Democracy

The Torture Academy

In the next few hours, Congress is scheduled to vote on the McGovern-Lewis amendment that, if passed, could close down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly and better known as the School of the Americas (SOA). The SOA, an immensely controversial U.S. military training facility, for decades has been used to instruct Latin American military personnel in order to professionalize their skills. It officially had its name changed by Congress in December 2000, to be reopened the following month as WHINSEC. The name-change was entirely at the Pentagon's request, and was selected upon the recommendation of private political consultants as a public relations stunt to get rid of the poor public image that the acronym SOA instantly conjured up. At the same time, Pentagon officials were sending out a barrage of phone calls in a full press campaign on the Hill to save the institution from being discarded by Congressional reformers.

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Countering Terrorism; How Not To Do It

Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are "safer" is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.

Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans-"The Global War on Terror"-rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.

Let us suppose that the Bush-Cheney administration answers the neocons' prayer and does indeed bomb Iran sometime soon. The plan apparently involves more than the destruction of nuclear facilities, replicating Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. (That attack, by the way was condemned by the whole world, including a furious President Ronald Reagan). It includes an all-out assault on the Iranian political and religious leadership. Government buildings and officials' residences will be targeted, guaranteeing collateral damage.
Since Iran is a highly complex society, and its government widely unpopular, there may well be some local support for a "shock and awe" campaign. We know that the administration has cultivated ties with the Mujahadeen Khalq (even though they remain on the State Department's terrorist list) and the Pakistan-based Balochi separatist group Jundallah (the Party of God). These among other organizations will get their marching orders amid the "creative chaos" produced by the attack. There can be no large deployment of U.S. troops in Iran, unless they evacuate from Afghanistan and Iraq which is unlikely.

I doubt that administration plans for the construction of a post-attack Iranian polity are any more sophisticated than their plans for post-Taliban Afghanistan or occupied Iraq. Some have suggested that the neocons' goal is actually to plunge the Muslim Middle East into prolonged pandemonium, insuring that all foes of Israel are off-balance and terrorized by the might of Israel's protector for generations to come. "Neocons," writes Paul Craig Roberts, "have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the US government."

Dublin, Ireland

Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said after George signed the new weak as a newborn baby funding authorization bill: "Now, I think the president's policy will begin to unravel." Begin to unravel? How many more of our children will have to be killed and how much more of Iraq will have to be demolished before you all think enough unraveling has occurred? How many more crimes will BushCo be allowed to commit while their poll numbers are crumbling before you all gain the political "courage" to hold them accountable. If Iraq hasn't unraveled in Ms. Pelosi's mind, what will it take? With almost 700,000 Iraqis dead and four million refugees (which the US refuses to admit) how could it get worse? Well, it is getting worse and it can get much worse thanks to your complicity.

Time for a Summer of Action

The Democrats Cave to Bush

In reaction to President Bush's veto the Democrats are reportedly caving in to give him a Iraq War funding without any obligation to end the war. They are making Bush "the decider" once again. It seems that rather than having a lame duck president we have a lame Congress. The only thing that will end the war is constant, organized and focused pressure from Americans who oppose the war....

We want peace advocates to come and join us not only in traditional lobbying but in "extraordinary lobbying." The "Summer of Action" will build on the successful efforts of activists in DC and around the country who have been engaging in "extraordinary lobbying" by occupying offices, protesting in the Halls of Congress and sending a consistent message to end the war. It will build on the Occupation Project, Voices for Creative Non-Violence, and the Declaration of Peace. Already, key anti-war groups are supporting this effort including United For Peace and Justice and Voters For Peace.

Bring people from your local peace group and plan an office occupation or a demonstration inside one of the congressional office buildings as part of the "Summer of Action." Or, come alone and join our ongoing efforts to pressure Congress. ...

On March 6 of 2003, shortly before his shocking invasion of Iraq, President George Bush said the following: "I'm convinced that a liberated Iraq will be -- will be important for that troubled part of the world. The Iraqi people are plenty capable of governing themselves. Iraq is a sophisticated society. Iraq's got money. Iraq will provide a place where people can see that the Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a federation. Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change, positive change. So there's a lot more at stake than just American security, and the security of people close by Saddam Hussein. Freedom is at stake, as well, and I take that very seriously."

There are several statements within those few short phrases that positively boggle the mind. A close look at each only increases the confusion.

"A liberated Iraq."

One can only wonder at Mr. Bush's understanding of the word 'liberate.' When a nation is freed from a man who is clearly a murderous dictator, and is immediately then put under the control of an occupying army that results in the killing of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, the word 'liberation' does not immediately spring to mind. 'Conquest' seems far more appropriate...

We need your help to advocate for a public broadcasting system that offers more independent programming, harder-hitting journalism, and the educational, ad-free content that is missing from commercial media.

Write a letter to Congress to guarantee permanent funding for public broadcasting.

Early on in the movement to oppose Bush's wars of aggression, Ramsey Clark and folks associated with the Workers' World Party advocated that the president be impeached. I recall attending antiwar demonstrations where people would go around collecting signatures on impeachment petitions, and thinking to myself:

(1) "No way this is feasible, given Bush's popularity ratings and growing fascist trends," and

(2) "Can't we do better in any case than channel our energies into some legal procedure that will---even if it were to succeed---leave the whole imperialist war machine intact?"

That was before the tide of U.S. public opinion turned, due primarily to the efforts of the people of an invaded country to resist that imperialist war machine. Had the project been the "cakewalk" predicted by prominent neocon Ken Adelman, Bush and his allies in the corporate media might have continued to persuade the masses that the invasion of Iraq was part of a rational, justifiable, heroic and even holy "war on terrorism."

Investigation after investigation convinces all with eyes to see and ears to hear that the war on Iraq is wrong. The tight grip of the corporate media on the American mind would not have allowed the decisive shift of opinion about the war had it not been for the success of the "insurgents" in making life hell for the invaders.

The complex and divided resistance movement, rather than antiwar activists in the American streets, has forced Americans to conclude that Bush did something profoundly immoral in attacking Iraq. The revelation (or what was for some a revelation) that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction and no appreciable al-Qaeda ties has helped millions to figure out that the Iraq War is based on calculated lies.

Congress should levy a 'Victory Over Terror' tax on the superrich which would expire once our troops are safely home.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," cries George W. Bush, the downmarket, twangy version of Shakespeare's Henry V. But that king, on stage and off, was a war leader who actually fought in the battles he asked other men to die in. Regardless, the President is moving to commit more of our soldiers and more of our money to try one more time to win the war in Iraq.

The President has not been talking about how Operation New Way Forward is to be paid for. Some of it will be paid for in our young people's lives, of course, but as for the money... Congress is to appropriate it, the Treasury Department is to borrow it from China and Mr. Bush will spend it.

With football in playoff mode and spring training two months away, participants in any of the Web's innumerable fantasy sports leagues may see this winter as a fallow period, a time when they could get rusty. Lucky for them, the 110th Congress convenes on January 4.

Sure, playing fantasy sports might be a great way to turn statistical acumen into cold, hard cash. But Fantasy Congress, a project unveiled this fall by four Claremont McKenna College students, will allow you to keep your mind sharp by number-crunching quorums, caucuses, earmarks, and filibusters.

It's easy! Just create an account, join or create a league (sorry, "M@!$%#s for Justice," "Mark Foley Fan Club," and "McCarthyism R Us" are already taken) and set to drafting a delegation of real-life Capitol Hill hotshots. The better numbers they put up — i.e., the better their skill at glad-handing and backslapping and backroom negotiation, thus furthering their bills along the tortuous journey toward the president's desk — the more points you'll rack up.

Members of Congress earn points as they push their wannabe laws through the bicameral legislature, from introduction of a bill in the House or Senate chamber (five points), to committee and floor votes (five to 25 points, depending), all the way up to the Oval Office and the president's coveted John Hancock (50 points). Various procedural vagaries and real-life factors also affect point totals.

Even in GOP, Few Back the President

Sen. John McCain, leading a blue-ribbon congressional delegation to Baghdad before Christmas, collected evidence that a "surge" of more U.S. troops is needed in Iraq. But not all his colleagues who accompanied him were convinced. What's more, he will find himself among a dwindling minority inside the Senate Republican caucus when Congress reconvenes this week.

President Bush and McCain, the front-runner for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, will have trouble finding support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators when pressing for a surge of 30,000 troops. "It's Alice in Wonderland," Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposal. "I'm absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly."

What to do about Iraq poses not only a national policy crisis but profound political problems for the Republican Party. Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops.

GOP Lawmakers Divided About 'Surge' in Troops

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 -- Republican lawmakers appear uneasy about -- and in some cases outright dismissive of -- the idea of sending many more troops to Iraq, as President Bush contemplates such a "surge" as part of his new strategy for stabilizing the country.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a leading GOP presidential contender for 2008, has been aggressively promoting a plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, and the idea has been gaining traction at the White House as a way to improve security in Baghdad.

But the proposition generates far less enthusiasm among rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom must face the voters again in 2008, presenting a potential obstacle for Bush as he hones the plan, according to lawmakers, aides and congressional analysts.

DOWNLOADS — Impeach Bush Now Action Tools

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"I've never seen industry so deathly afraid of the current politics surrounding climate change policy," a Bush administration environmental official told me. With good reason. As Democrats take control of Congress, once-firm opposition to the green lobby's campaign of imposing carbon emission controls is weak.

Panicky captains of industry have themselves largely to blame for failing to respond to the environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation. One government official says "industry appears utterly helpless and utterly clueless as to how to respond." But the Bush administration itself is a house divided with support for greens and severe carbon regulation inside the Energy Department, reaching up to the secretary himself.

None of this necessarily means climate change will become law during the next two years, with President Bush wielding his veto pen if any bill escapes the Senate's gridlock. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, reassuming chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee after a dozen years' absence, will try to protect the automotive industry from draconian regulation. But over the long term, industry is losing to the greens.

The stakes are immense, as shown by the impact of the bill to implement the Kyoto proposal co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the favorite Democrat of many Republicans. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that this measure would reduce gross domestic product by $776 billion annually, raise gasoline prices 40 cents a gallon, raise natural gas prices 46 percent and cut coal production by nearly 60 percent. Charles River Associates, business consultants, predicts that it would kill 600,000 jobs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican lawmaker on Thursday stood by his warning that unless there is a crackdown on immigration, more Muslims like an incoming Minnesota Democrat would place theirs hands on the Koran at congressional swearing-in ceremonies.

Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia, who has triggered a flurry of criticism in recent days for this stand, said he does not favor banning use of the Koran in such ceremonies.

"But I'm for restricting immigration so that we don't have a majority of Muslims elected to the United States House of Representatives," Goode said in an interview with Fox TV.

...

"I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way," Goode wrote fellow Virginians.

"The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt (my) position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran," Goode wrote.

Mark Dearden chooses his words with extreme precision. And not just with the deliberateness of a 36-year-old with a BA from Brigham Young, an MA in public health from Tulane and an MD from George Washington University. Dearden is also an active-duty lieutenant commander in the Navy who joined in 1997 and is still considering the possibility of a lifetime military career. "So this was a very difficult decision for me to come to," he says in a quiet, thoughtful voice. "I don't take this decision lightly.

Nor should he. Just a few weeks ago Dearden took the dramatic step of signing a petition to Congress--what's being called by its organizers an Appeal for Redress--opposing the war in Iraq and calling for the withdrawal of US troops. When the Appeal is delivered to Capitol Hill in mid-January, all the names of its almost 1,000 uniformed endorsers will be seen by members of Congress, if they care to look. But with his Nation interview, Dearden is now going public. And while the military cannot take reprisals against those who have supported the Appeal, many of the signers agree that there are an infinite number of ways they can be punished, including internal evaluations, denial of promotions and harsh assignments or postings. "I'm expressing a right of people in the military to contact their elected representatives, and I have done nothing illegal or disrespectful," says Dearden, now an anesthesiology resident at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. After two tours in Iraq attached to a Marine battalion, including participation in the initial 2003 invasion, Dearden says that signing the Appeal gave him "closure" on what he describes as very tough deployments. "It gave me peace," he says.

Dearden has indeed joined the most significant movement of organized and dissident GIs seen in America since 1969, when 1,366 active-duty service members signed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for an end to the Vietnam War. The Appeal for Redress, surfacing only in late October, has taken anti-Iraq War sentiment that's been simmering within the ranks and surfaced it as a mainstream plea backed by the enormous moral authority of active-duty personnel. It's an undeniable barometer of rising military dissent and provides a strong argument that the best way to support the troops is to recognize their demand to be withdrawn from Iraq.

The Democratic Party and its feckless leaders in Congress are about to fall into a trap. The trap is being sprung by President Bush and his too clever brain trust, but the sad fact is that it was actually laid by the Democrats themselves.

Taking over the Congress on a wave of popular revulsion at the twin catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats could have issued immediate calls for an end to those wars, a return of the troops, and investigations into the criminal causes of those costly fiascos. They could have initiated efforts to halt funding for further war and foreign occupation. Of course, taking such stands and actions would have opened them to charges of being "soft on terror," but the public clearly isn't buying that crap any more. With a little courage and leadership they could have handled it, and come out winners.

Instead, they took what they thought was the easy road, condemning not the criminal policies themselves, but only the administration's handling of the wars. This led some to call not for an end to the wars, but for more troops.

Now, Bush has called their bluff by proposing just that: more troops for Iraq (the so-called "surge" option), and a major expansion of the army over the longer term--the better to allow the president to invade other countries even as the nation is already mired in two losing wars.

And what are the Democrats in Congress going to do?

Bernanke Gets High Grades on 1st Anniversary

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. and NEW YORK, December 19, 2006 – Contrary to the Federal Reserve Board's indication that inflation looms as a bigger threat to the economy than recession, American CFOs are more concerned about recession in 2007.

According to the 2006 fourth quarter "CFO Outlook Survey," conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, 30% of the participating CFOs indicated they were quite to very concerned about recession, compared to 16% who are quite to very concerned about inflation. Including those CFOs who indicated "moderate" concern, 59% worry about recession compared to 53% who worry about inflation.

"CFOs are concerned about both inflation and recession but on balance today see recession as the larger threat," said John Elliott, Dean of the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College. "The tension between these views suggests the current Fed attitude of wait and see may be about right."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Tim Johnson has been conscious at times since his emergency brain surgery last week, his spokeswoman said Monday. But he is currently being sedated so he can rest.

The South Dakota Democrat has made it through the first 72 hours since the Wednesday evening brain surgery, spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said, a benchmark that doctors consider a good sign for recovery. The senator remains in critical but stable condition, she added.

Fisher said the next ``target'' for doctors is to watch his progress over the next week.

The senator showed some signs of recovery late last week, responding to voices, opening his eyes and moving his limbs. But his long-term prognosis is still unclear.

By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted, including an end to the use of most electronic voting machines without a paper trail, federal voting officials and legislators say.

New federal guidelines, along with legislation given a strong chance to pass in Congress next year, will probably combine to make the paperless voting machines obsolete, the officials say. States and counties that bought the machines will have to modify them to hook up printers, at federal expense, while others are planning to scrap the machines and buy new ones.

Five states — Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Delaware — still use only the paperless machines, and 10 states have counties that use them and have not made plans to change.

Another significant change that will affect how votes are counted involves the recording and tallying software embedded in each electronic machine. Under changes approved by the Election Assistance Commission yesterday, voting machine manufacturers would have to make their crucial software code available to federal inspectors. The code is now checked mainly by private testing laboratories paid by the manufacturers. Mr. Holt would go even further, requiring the commission to make the code publicly available.

The Pell Grant program has not only had policy changes throughout the years but politics at the national level have also influenced the awarding of the grants. During the early 1970s and despite President Nixon's statements in favor of Pell Grants, his Office of Education refused to release the $122 million dollars appropriated by Congress. In the late 1970s, under Presidents Ford and Carter, Pell Grants were at their dollar value peak, covering almost 80% of college costs.

The 1980s and 90s, however, were a different story. Budget tightening by the Reagan administration fell heavily on moderate income college students. Purchasing power fell and with increasing numbers of low income people, Pell Grant eligibility was stretched too thin. In the 1990s President Clinton ordered the largest dollar increase in Pell Grant history, but even that boost left the grants' purchasing far below its peak in the 1970s.

Starve the Iraq War Beast

To prohibit the use of funds to deploy United States Armed Forces to Iraq.
Bring the troops home and stop throwing money into the Iraq quagmire.

Impeachment is an essential tool for preserving democracy. The framers of our Constitution, determined to provide protections against grave abuses of power by a president, created the impeachment process as a special procedure for citizens. Through their representatives, citizens would be able to remove a president run amok.

Our founders created a new form of government that was designed to preserve liberty by breaking up power among three co-equal branches of government and instituting a system of checks and balances. But they worried deeply about presidential misconduct. Left unchallenged, it could be "fatal to the Republic," said James Madison. The new democracy needed the ability to remove a president, if necessary.

Congress will convene on Tuesday for what some fear will be the lamest of lame-duck sessions, and GOP leaders have decided to take a minimalist approach before turning over the reins of power to the Democrats.

"There is a lot of battle fatigue among members, probably on both sides of the aisle," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), usually a reliable conservative firebrand. "Contrary to popular belief, members of Congress are human beings. They have a certain shelf life and a certain amount of energy to be drawn on. We're tired."

Minimum wage, mixed impact

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- It's all about who gets the bigger paychecks.

A federally mandated raise for the nation's lowest-paid workers could mean bigger business for some of the best-known retailers.

Democrats, set to take control of both chambers of Congress, have vowed to make a hike in the minimum wage a top priority come January. And analysts say a boost, while likely to be fought by business groups and some retail-industry lobbyists, would benefit some value-oriented stores.

That's because many minimum-wage earners are struggling to make ends meet, so any extra dollars in their pockets are likely to be spent rather than saved.

Autopsy reports acquired from American military sources

On October 25, 2005 the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) posted to their website 44 autopsy reports, acquired from American military sources, covering the deaths of civilians who died while in US military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-2004. A press release by ACLU announcing the deaths resulted from torture was immediately picked up by Associated Press (AP) wire service, making the story available to US corporate media nationwide. A thorough check of Nexus-Lexus and Proquest electronic data bases, using the keywords ACLU and autopsy, showed that at least 95 percent of the daily papers in the US did not to pick up the story nor did AP ever conduct follow up coverage on the issue.

The autopsy reports provide positive proof of widespread torture by US forces. Our research team at Project Censored felt that this story should have been front page news throughout the country. Instead the story was hardly covered and quickly disappeared.

AP Bias on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The study found that there is a strong correlation between the likelihood of a person's death receiving coverage by AP and that person's nationality. In 2004 there were 141 reports of Israeli deaths in AP headlines and lead paragraphs, while in reality there were only 108 Israeli deaths, this difference comes from reporting a death more than once. During this same period, Palestinian deaths were reported as 543 by the AP, but at the time 821 Palestinians had been killed. The ratio of actual number of Israeli conflict deaths to Palestinian deaths in 2004 was 1:7, yet AP reported deaths of Israelis to Palestinians at a 2:1 ratio. In other words, the AP reported 131 percent of Israeli deaths, whereas they only reported 66 percent of Palestinian deaths.

The same could be said of AP's reporting of children's deaths. Nine reports of Israeli children's deaths were reported by the AP in headlines and leading paragraphs in 2004, while eight actually occurred. Only 27 Palestinian children deaths were reported by AP when actually 179 children died. While there were 22 times more Palestinian children's deaths than Israeli children's deaths, the AP reported 113 percent of Israeli children's deaths and 15 percent of Palestinian children's deaths.