CIA agent who led Bin Laden hunt ... unit dismantled because of bureaucratic jealousies

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | CIA attacked by agent who led Bin Laden hunt: "Agent who led Bin Laden hunt criticises CIA | Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington | Saturday July 8, 2006 | The Guardian

� Closure of unit 'wasted 10 years' experience' .... � Al-Qaida reasserting its influence, says ex-chief

The man who led America's hunt for Osama bin Laden has said the CIA was wrong to disband the only unit devoted entirely to the terrorist leader's pursuit - just at a time when al-Qaida is reasserting its influence over global jihad.

Shutting down the Bin Laden unit squandered 10 years of expertise in the war on terror, said Michael Scheuer, who founded the unit in 1995 and arguably knows more about Bin Laden than any other western intelligence official. He believes the unit was dismantled because of bureaucratic jealousies within the CIA, and that the closure delivers a further setback to a pursuit that has been squeezed for resources for the past two years.

'What it robs you of is a critical mass of officers who have been working on this together for a decade,' he told the Guardian. 'We had a breed of specialists rare in an intelligence community that prides itself on generalists. It provided a base from which to build a cadre of people specialising in attacking Sunni extremist operations, who sacrificed promotions and other emoluments in their employment in the clandestine service, where specialists were looked on as nerds.'" ...

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA: "by Angry Girl | Nightweed.com

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/

How US hid the suicide secrets of Guantanamo

The Observer | World | How US hid the suicide secrets of Guantanamo: "David Rose | Sunday June 18, 2006 | The Observer

After three inmates killed themselves, the Pentagon declared the suicides an act of 'asymmetric warfare', banned the media and went on a PR offensive. But as despair grows within the camp, so too does outrage mount at its brutal and secretive regime
...

Yet our bizarre experience raises a fundamental question: when it comes to Guantanamo, can the world believe a single word that Gordon and his numerous cohorts say? There is, to say the least, an alternative explanation for the three Guantanamo deaths. Since early 2003, when the Red Cross issued the first of many reports stating that inmates were experiencing high levels of depression, there has been mounting evidence that detention there has wrought havoc on some prisoners' mental health. It is not so surprising: most prisoners get just two 30-minute periods out of their cells - the size of a double bed - each week, except when being interrogated. Some have endured this since 2002, and have no idea when, if ever, they may leave.

By the time of my own visit in October 2003, a fifth of them were on Prozac and there had been so many suicide attempts - 40 by August 2003 - that the Pentagon had reclassified hangings as 'manipulative self-injurious behaviours'. Cannily, perhaps, it has refused to give exact statistics on how many SIBs have occurred, claiming that since the reclassification there have been (until last week) only two genuine attempted suicides. ...

Records reveal Hastert's hand in land deal

Records reveal Hastert's hand in land deal | Chicago Tribune: "$3 million gain for 3 partners in 3 years | By Mike Dorning and Andrew Zajac | Washington Bureau | Published June 15, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and two partners turned a profit of more than $3 million on property they accumulated and sold in just over three years near the route of a proposed controversial freeway on the western fringe of suburban Chicago, according to land records and financial disclosure reports released Wednesday.

Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean rejected the notion that the land, located 5 1/2 miles from the proposed Prairie Parkway route, rose in value because of the highway project. The speaker long has been an aggressive proponent of the highway and helped secure more than $200 million in federal funding through an earmark in federal transportation legislation.

The property near Plano, Ill., was sold three months after the transportation bill was signed into law. It was purchased by a real estate developer who is planning to build more than 1,500 homes on the land.
...
Hastert received five-eighths of the proceeds from the land sale, said Dallas Ingemunson, one of his partners. That indicates a profit of more than $1.5 million for Hastert.

The Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based ethics advocacy group, assailed Hastert for allegedly profiteering from the proposed highway. The group charged that he had sought to conceal his interest because the sale was made through a land trust that did not publicly identify Hastert as a partner.

Hastert profited `in secrecy'

"Speaker Hastert's trust allowed him to profit--in secrecy--from the very growth that he cites to justify the Prairie Parkway," said Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the foundation, in a statement to reporters. ...

Newly released emails suggest Army Corps lied about Cheney role in Halliburton contract

The Raw Story | Newly released emails suggest Army Corps lied about Cheney role in Halliburton contract: "Newly released emails suggest Army Corps lied about Cheney role in Halliburton contract | Avery Walker |

New documents obtained by a conservative watchdog group suggest that the US Army Corp of Engineers may have publicly lied regarding the involvement of the Vice President's office in awarding a 2003 multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract to Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, RAW STORY has learned.

RAW STORY has obtained a copy of the emails, which were acquired by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

The newly released emails show the Army Corps attempting to deflect attention from Cheney's office by distributing talking points that would mask Cheney's purported role. The Corps could not immediately be reached for comment.

Among the 100 pages of newly-obtained documents is an 2003 email in which Army Corps official Carol Sanders writes, "Mr. Robert Andersen, Chief Counsel, USACE, participated in a 60 Minutes interview today in New York regarding the sole source award of the oil response contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root... [Andersen] was able to make many of the points we had planned."

Sanders subsequently provided sound bites from the interview, including, "There was no contact whatsoever (with the VP office)." ...

George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Rumsfeld | Salon

George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Rumsfeld | Salon: "By Sidney Blumenthal

The former president's secret campaign to oust the secretary of defense was rebuffed by President Bush, a source says.

Former President George H.W. Bush waged a secret campaign over several months early this year to remove Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The elder Bush went so far as to recruit Rumsfeld's potential replacement, personally asking a retired four-star general if he would accept the position, a reliable source close to the general told me. But the former president's effort failed, apparently rebuffed by the current president. When seven retired generals who had been commanders in Iraq demanded Rumsfeld's resignation in April, the younger Bush leapt to his defense. "I'm the decider and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain," he said. His endorsement of Rumsfeld was a rebuke not only to the generals but also to his father.

The elder Bush's intervention was an extraordinary attempt to rescue simultaneously his son, the family legacy and the country. ...

Chertoff calling for a more rational, risk-based allotment of federal resources ... New York -40%, Washington -40%, Lousiville + 70%

Terrorists Target Milwaukee!: "And other headlines you're unlikely to see. | Saturday, June 3, 2006; Page A16

MICHAEL CHERTOFF took control of the Department of Homeland Security calling for a more rational, risk-based allotment of federal resources to prepare for and combat the threat of terrorist attacks. So where is the rationality, and what is the risk, that would justify increasing homeland security grants to Charlotte, Omaha, Milwaukee and Tampa and cutting those to New York and Washington?

Unfortunately, Mr. Chertoff and his team aren't offering satisfying explanations for those funding decisions, which were determined according to a formula -- ostensibly risk-based -- whose details are secret. If there is a sound reason why Louisville's grant has jumped by 70 percent while the Washington area's and New York's have plummeted by 40 percent, we haven't heard it. If there is any sense to rating the risk of catastrophe in Washington in the bottom 25 percent of the nation's cities, while rating the Washington metropolitan area in the top 25 percent, we haven't heard that, either."
...

We take Mr. Chertoff's point that New York has been showered with federal homeland security dollars since Sept. 11, 2001 -- $528 million at last count -- and that has built a lot of security infrastructure there. Ditto Washington, which has received more than $227 million. It is also true that nearly half the Urban Areas Security Initiative grants for 2006 will go to just five metropolitan areas -- New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco -- while the increases for smaller cities are relatively small in dollar terms.

But it remains the case, so far as intelligence experts can determine, that al-Qaeda is intent on carrying out massive, showy, extravagantly lethal attacks of the sort that are possible in Washington, New York and just a handful of other American cities. And in those cities, there are clearly unmet needs; for instance, the District remains without hospital emergency capacity adequate to deal with a major terrorist attack. It seems folly, therefore, to suppose that efforts to safeguard New York and Washington can be eased while attention is turned to a dozen mid-sized cities, let alone to 270,000 potentially vulnerable bits and pieces of officially designated critical infrastructure spread across the nation. ..

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?: "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15) ...

===============
1) Manual Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating, ''Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether,'' The Washington Post, November 11, 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41106-2004Nov10.html

2) The New York Times Editorial Desk, ''About Those Election Results,'' The New York Times, November 14, 2004. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70615FA3C5B0C778DDDA80994DC404482&n
=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fE%2fElection%20Results

3) United States Department of Defense, ''Defense Department Special Briefing on Federal Voting Assistance Program,'' August 6, 2004. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040806-1502.html

4) Overseas Vote Foundation, ''2004 Post Election Survey Results,'' June 2005, page 11. http://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/downloads/surveys/ovf_survey_01jun2005_
v1.0_usletter.pdf

5) Jennifer Joan Lee, ''Pentagon Blocks Site for Voters Outside U.S.,'' International Herald Tribune, September 20, 2004.

6) Meg Landers, ''Librarian Bares Possible Voter Registration Dodge,'' Mail Tribune (Jackson County, OR), September 21, 2004. http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0921/local/stories/02local.htm

7) Mark Brunswick and Pat Doyle, ''Voter Registration; 3 former workers: Firm paid pro-Bush bonuses; One said he was told his job was to bring back cards for GOP voters,'' Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), October 27, 2004.

8) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President. http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/2004pres.pdf

9) Ellen Theisen and Warren Stewart, Summary Report on New Mexico State Election Data, January 4, 2005, pg. 2. http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/files/
NewMexico2004ElectionDataReport-v2.pdf

James W. Bronsan, ''In 2004, New Mexico Worst at Counting Votes,'' Scripps Howard News Service, December 22, 2004. 10) ''A Summary of the 2004 Election Day Survey; How We Voted: People, Ballots & Polling Places; A Report to the American People by the United States Election Assistance Commission,'' September 2005, pg. 10. http://www.eac.gov/election_survey_2004/pdf/EDS%20exec.%20summary.pdf

11) Facts mentioned in this paragraph are subsequently cited throughout the story.

12) See ''Ohio?s Missing Votes.''

13) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President. http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/2004pres.pdf

14) Democratic National Committee, Voting Rights Institute, "Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio," June 22, 2005. Page 5 http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/www.democrats.org/pdfs/ohvrireport/fullreport.pdf

15) See ''VIII. Rural Counties.''

16) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofksy International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 3 http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf

17) This refers to data for German national elections in 1994, 1998 and 2002, previously cited by Steven F. Freeman.

18) Dick Morris, "Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage," The Hill, November 4, 2004. http://www.hillnews.com/morris/110404.aspx

19) Martin Plissner, "Exit Polls to Protect the Vote," The New York Times, October 17, 2004.

....

Minorities unfairly pay more for mortgages, study says - MarketWatch

Minorities unfairly pay more for mortgages, study says - MarketWatch: "Trade group challenges study's findings; credit quality at issue" | By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch | Last Update: 6:02 PM ET May 31, 2006

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- African-Americans and Latinos enter into high-priced, subprime mortgages more often than white borrowers with identical credit qualifications, according to a study by the Center for Responsible Lending.

The report, released Wednesday, examined 50,000 subprime loans using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and supplemented with the Loan Performance Subprime Asset-Backed Securities Database. The two sources were used to isolate borrowers' race and ethnicity from all other risk factors, the report's author said.

"For many types of loans, borrowers of color in our database were more than 30% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers, even after accounting for differences in risk," according to the report.

...

When 2004 HMDA data was first released, it showed blacks and Hispanics were more likely to end up in the high-cost subprime market than whites. But the government said the statistics couldn't be taken as "evidence of bias in lending decisions," Armstrong said.

Lenders argued minority borrowers tend to be less affluent, have weaker credit histories and make smaller down payments, said Debbie Bocian, senior researcher for the Center for Responsible Lending.

"We weren't convinced. Our organization was created to fight predatory lending, and we wanted to make sure that borrowers of all races and ethnicities had fair access to home financing," Bocian said in a statement.

"So, we supplemented the 2004 HMDA data with information from a proprietary loan-level database that contains critical information on the risk profiles of its loans," she said. "We looked at a large national sample of loans -- about 50,000 subprime mortgages in all."

According to the study, African-American borrowers were more likely to receive higher-rate home purchase and refinance loans than white borrowers with similar qualifications. Those with prepayment penalties on their subprime home loans were 6% to 34% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers.

Latino borrowers purchasing homes were 29% to 142% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than non-Latino, white borrowers with similar qualifications, the study concluded. ...

FEC finds Frist violated law by failing to disclose $1.4 million personal loan

The Raw Story | FEC finds Frist violated law by failing to disclose $1.4 million personal loan: "RAW STORY | Published: Thursday June 1, 2006

Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) received notice from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) indicating that in response to a complaint filed by CREW, the FEC found that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's 2000 Senate campaign committee, Frist 2000, Inc. violated federal campaign finance laws, RAW STORY can report. Their release follows. ...

CREW's complaint alleged -- and the FEC agreed -- that Frist 2000, Inc. failed to disclose a $1.44 million loan taken out jointly by Frist 2000, Inc. and by Frist's 1994 campaign committee, Bill Frist for Senate, Inc. The result of the discrepancy was to make it appear that Frist 2000, Inc. had significantly more money that it actually had. ...

Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'

Independent Online Edition > Americas: "Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV' | By Andrew Buncombe in Washington | Published: 29 May 2006

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air." ...

Think Progress � Loyalty to Bush is this Administration’s Affirmative Action Policy

Think Progress � Loyalty to Bush is this Administration’s Affirmative Action Policy: "

In a veiled attempt to undermine affirmative action for minorities, President Bush in 2003 assailed the University of Michigan’s law school admissions policy as unconstitutional, charging the law school with giving minorities preferential treatment in reaching diversity targets for its incoming class. This principle, however, doesn’t seem to apply to President Bush or his administration.

Blake Gottesman, a.k.a. “Peanut”, Special Assistant to the President and Personal Aide, is stepping down in August to attend Harvard Business School. It’s a great accomplishment considering the school only admits 10% to 15% of its applicants. But to even be considered for admission, the school states firmly at the top of its qualifications, a prospective student “must have completed a degree program at an accredited U.S. four-year undergraduate college/university.”

Peanut on the other hand, only attended college for one year, and never finished. He has, however, dated Jenna Bush, makes the President peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and dog-sits for Miss Beazley.

It is inconceivable President Bush did not lend a helping hand in getting Peanut and Julian Flannery accepted into HBS. Loyalty is this administration’s affirmative action policy and loyalty to Bush seems to be Harvard’s too.

– Sam Davis

BluegrassReport.org: ******GRAND JURY INDICTS GOVERNOR ERNIE FLETCHER (R)******

BluegrassReport.org: ******GRAND JURY INDICTS GOVERNOR ERNIE FLETCHER (R)******: "Thursday, May 11, 2006

It's time for some accountability for those who violated our trust during the Republican Culture of Corruption.

Our incompetent and corrupt Governor Fletcher (R) has been indicted! (AP now has updated story).

Grand Jury Indicts Gov. Ernie Fletcher
Ryan Alessi, Herald-Leader

The special grand jury that’s been investigating state government hiring practices indicted Gov. Ernie Fletcher on three misdemeanors for conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination.

The jury also indicted former Transportation Cabinet official Sam Beverage for perjury, which is a felony.

And the jury also submitted to Franklin Circuit Judge William Graham 14 more indictments that are under seal.

Those indictments cover crimes that may have occurred before Aug. 29, 2005, when Fletcher pardoned all administration officials except himself." ...

There's no hint that, say, President Bush might have had any role: 'FEMA's senior political appointees ... had little or no prior relevant emergency-m

Sound off: Where the views and opinions of our staff and others are expressed on various topics that relate to Bush: "The Crony Fairy
by Paul Krugman | The New York Times | April 28, 2006

The U.S. government is being stalked by an invisible bandit, the Crony Fairy, who visits key agencies by dead of night, snatches away qualified people and replaces them with unqualified political appointees. There's no way to catch or stop the Crony Fairy, so our only hope is to change the agencies' names. That way she might get confused, and leave our government able to function.

That, at least, is how I interpret the report on responses to Hurricane Katrina that was just released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The report points out that the Federal Emergency Management Agency 'had been operating at a more than 15 percent staff-vacancy rate for over a year before Katrina struck' -- that means many of the people who knew what they were doing had left. And it adds that 'FEMA's senior political appointees ... had little or no prior relevant emergency-management experience.'

But the report says nothing about what caused the qualified people to leave and who appointed unqualified people to take their place. There's no hint that, say, President Bush might have had any role. So those political appointees must have been installed by the Crony Fairy.

Rather than trying to fix FEMA, the report calls for replacing it with a new organization, the National Preparedness and Response Agency. As far as I can tell, the new agency would have exactly the same responsibilities as FEMA. But 'senior N.P.R.A. officials would be selected from the ranks of professionals with experience in crisis management.' I guess it's impossible to select qualified people to run FEMA; if you try, the Crony Fairy will spirit them away and replace them with Michael Brown. But she might not know her way to N.P.R.A." ...

ABC: Homeland Inspector General says he was pressured to 'tone down' criticism of Bush before election ... "deride us and to dismiss our criticism,”

The Raw Story | ABC: Homeland Inspector General says he was pressured to 'tone down' criticism of Bush before election: "RAW STORY | Published: Monday May 1, 2006

The former inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security says he was pressured to tone down criticism of security failures in the months before the 2004 Presidential election, ABC NEWS is reporting.
...

Clark Kent Ervin says he was confronted personally by then Secretary Tom Ridge “to intimidate me, to stare me down, to force me to back off, to not look into these areas that would be controversial, not to issue critical reports.”

Ervin will appear this evening on ABC News’ Nightline in advance of the publication of his memoirs, “Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack.”

Ervin says Ridge and his top aides saw him as “a traitor and a turncoat” because of a series of reports his office delivered to Congress detailing failures by the Department of Homeland Security.

Ervin says he believes another 9/ll hijack attack could be carried out. “I am quite confident that it could be done again,” he tells ABC News.

He says Ridge and others in the Bush Administration urged him to tone down his report. “Rather than acknowledging the vulnerability, efforts were made to deride us and to dismiss our criticism,” Ervin says. ...

GOP Blocks Measures Boosting Taxes on Oil Companies' Profits

GOP Blocks Measures Boosting Taxes on Oil Companies' Profits: "Provisions Passed by Senate Would Raise About $5 Billion | By Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 26, 2006; Page A06

While Republican leaders sharply criticize soaring gasoline prices and energy industry profits, GOP negotiators have decided to knock out provisions in a major tax bill that would force the oil companies to pay billions of dollars more in taxes on their profits.

House and Senate tax writers have been struggling to reach an accord on separate tax bills approved last year to extend some expiring tax cuts enacted during President Bush's first term. But House Republicans have raised strong objections to Senate-passed provisions that would raise nearly $5 billion in taxes over five years -- primarily by changing arcane accounting rules that have allowed oil companies to substantially lower their tax bills, according to House and Senate tax aides familiar with the talks." ...

Eighteen families paying millions to kill estate tax

The Raw Story | Eighteen families paying millions to kill estate tax: "RAW STORY | Published: Wednesday April 26, 2006

Eighteen of America's wealthiest families, including the Timkens of Canton, are bankrolling efforts to permanently repeal estate taxes that would save their families a total of $71.6 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by public interest groups, the (information-restricted) Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Excerpts:"

Groups funded by the super-rich have engaged in a deceptive campaign to convince the public that estate taxes cause widespread problems for small businesses and family farms when they actually affect about one in 370 estates, said the report released by Public Citizen and Boston-based United for a Fair Economy.

Groups that support estate tax repeal say they're close to getting the 60 votes they need in the Senate. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform says 68 percent of Americans want the tax eliminated. He says estate taxes affect a broad range of people and dismissed the report's contention that it only affects the super rich as "tired rhetoric of hate and envy."

They said families including those that founded Wal-Mart, Gallo wineries, Nordstrom's department stores, Wegman's grocery stores, the Mars candy company, Cox media chain and Campbell Soup Co. joined the Timkens in bankrolling an effort the groups' report called "one of the biggest con jobs in recent history."

VA Contracts Go to Ex-Chief's Company - Los Angeles Times

VA Contracts Go to Ex-Chief's Company - Los Angeles Times: "By Walter F. Roche Jr., Times Staff Writer | April 23, 2006

Anthony J. Principi has held key positions at the Diamond Bar medical firm before and after heading the agency. Fees could exceed $1 billion.

WASHINGTON — A Diamond Bar company headed by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi could get fees exceeding $1 billion from the VA, much of it on contracts approved and amended while he ran the agency, records show.

Principi was president of the medical services company QTC Management Inc. before he joined President Bush's Cabinet in 2001. He ran the VA for four years, then returned to the firm as chairman of the board.

While he was VA secretary, Principi's past and future corporate home collected about $246 million in fees, according to VA records. Congressional Budget Office projections show the contracts could be worth as much as $1.2 billion through 2008.

Principi said he had no role in awarding, amending or administering VA contracts with QTC. ...

Daily Kos: Roberts called out on delaying Phase II again; Whines and spins in response

Daily Kos: Roberts called out on delaying Phase II again; Whines and spins in response: "by joc | Fri Apr 14, 2006 at 02:20:55 AM PDT

Senator Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in 2004 that he would begin Phase II of the investigation into the pre-war 'intelligence' about the mythical Iraqi weapons of mass destruction shortly after the elections were over. The reason for that delay was that it wouldn't be good to have the hearings hurt by partisans trying to use them for political gain during the election process. Of course, keeping the report under wraps was a political plus for the Repubicans..."

As soon as the elections were over Senator Roberts came to the conclusion that Phase II was no longer necessary, since the American people had elected Bush. However, the abysmal job this Administration has been doing in Iraq has brought the pressure back, and Senator Roberts has been forced to shift his stance from 'no longer necessary' to 'when we can find the time.'

In today's NYT, Senator Roberts has a whiny letter to the editor, crying about how mean and impatient the Times is being.

There is no evidence that the White House manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. The Senate Intelligence Committee pointed out in its 511-page report, which 17 Democrats and Republicans unanimously approved, that the intelligence assessments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were very declarative.

For instance, the N.I.E. said, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." Such forward-leaning assessments were prevalent in the N.I.E. Only later, through the committee's review, did we learn that these assessments were not supported by the underlying intelligence and were the result of flawed tradecraft and sloppy analysis.

With respect to alleged Republican foot-dragging on the phase II reports: on April 5, I announced that after the Easter recess, the committee will hold a series of closed meetings to move forward on phase II, including committee approval of factual findings and conclusions concerning three of the report's five elements. These findings will be fact-based and thorough. They will not be based upon agenda-driven and innuendo-laced press reports. ...

DeLay's war chest: raised nearly $500,000 in the six weeks before announcing his resignation

Chron.com | DeLay's war chest grows to $1.4 million: "April 18, 2006, 12:43PM | By MICHAEL HEDGES | Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

He raised nearly $500,000 in the six weeks before announcing his resignation

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay raised campaign money at a relatively high rate in the six weeks before revealing that he planned to give up his congressional seat, according to disclosures made available Monday.

The $484,475 received by his campaign from Feb. 15 to March 31 helped bring his total cash reserve to $1.4 million, which can be used for legal expenses or political activities." ...

War Bill Includes Millions to Move Just-Rebuilt Line: "... turn this tragedy into a giveaway for economic developers."

Mississippi Senators' Rail Plan Challenged: "By Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post Staff Writer | Tuesday, April 18, 2006; Page A01

War Bill Includes Millions to Move Just-Rebuilt Line

Mississippi's two U.S. senators included $700 million in an emergency war spending bill to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line that has already been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of at least $250 million."

Republican Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who have the backing of their state's economic development agencies and tourism industry, say the CSX freight line must be moved to save it from the next hurricane and to protect Mississippi's growing coastal population from rail accidents. But critics of the measure call it a gift to coastal developers and the casino industry that would be paid for with money carved out of tight Katrina relief funds and piggybacked onto funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a $250 million repair," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is planning to challenge the funding ... "it is wrong for senators to turn this tragedy into a giveaway for economic developers."

Securing money for pet home-state projects is nothing new for Lott, a famous benefactor of the Mississippi coastline, or for Cochran, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. ...

9 in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study ...

Comparison of Schizophrenia Drugs Often Favors Firm Funding Study: "By Shankar Vedantam | Washington Post Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. recently funded five studies that compared its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa with Risperdal, a competing drug made by Janssen. All five showed Zyprexa was superior in treating schizophrenia.

But when Janssen sponsored its own studies comparing the two drugs, Risperdal came out ahead in three out of four.
...
In fact, when psychiatrist John Davis analyzed every publicly available trial funded by the pharmaceutical industry pitting five new antipsychotic drugs against one another, nine in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study.
...
By contrast, when the federal government recently compared a broader range of drugs in typical schizophrenia patients in a lengthy trial, two medications that stood out were cheaper drugs not under patent ...
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"A perfectly independent agency has to be set up that says, 'Here are the areas where trials must be done,' " said Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "There will be two classes of trials -- the believable ones and the non-believable ones."
...
But several experts say industry-sponsored trials are failing to answer the questions doctors really need answered: Which drug works best for which patient? Are differences in drugs worth the differences in cost? How many patients are likely to recover entirely, rather than just show progress in the right direction? ...

one-third of [Iraq 1 veterans] now receive disability compensation

Iraq Mess is Literally Making People Sick :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - ch: "Judy Leurquin" | April 10, 2006

Of the more than 670,000 troops deployed to the Gulf in 1991, about one-third of them now receive disability compensation.Remember your mother's warning, "If you can't clean up after yourself, don't make the mess"? Didn't we subject our children to that mantra?

Take Iraq, for example. During the 1991 Gulf War our military attacked Iraq and its people with over 350 tons of depleted uranium (DU). During the current war and occupation we've fired 2,200-plus tons on people and cities all over Iraq. A byproduct of uranium enrichment, DU remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years. We have turned the cradle of civilization into a toxic wasteland.

DU is cheap. Nuclear power plants are glad to have arms manufacturers take this radioactive waste material off their hands. DU is effective, 1.7 times denser than lead. It's pyrophoric, burning everything it hits into a charred crisp.

When DU weapons strike targets, a fine aerosol of uranium oxide is formed, which can be inhaled. Inhaled particles can cause serious damage, especially the insoluble particles that can remain in the body a long time. DU is an alpha emitter that wreaks havoc on DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes. Over time, mutations form and cancers develop. Children have been born with birth defects. DU has been found in all parts of the body.

Initial symptoms of DU contamination may include severe headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, night sweats, fever, poor appetite, joint pain, gastrointestinal problems, rashes and oozing lesions. Later on more serious conditions develop, including cognitive difficulties, memory loss, mood swings, neuropathies, blood disorders, menstrual problems, burning semen, increased pain and greater immobility. Death by DU poisoning can be slow and agonizing.

Of the more than 670,000 troops deployed to the Gulf in 1991, about one-third of them now receive disability compensation. According to Doug Rokke, former Army physicist and director of DU cleanup following the first gulf war, more than 11,000 have died since that war ended. (The ground war, which lasted only 100 hours, claimed 179 lives, most from friendly fire.)

Gulf War I troops were exposed to a plethora of harmful substances. There were untested vaccinations, unproven prophylactic medications, potent insect repellents, carcinogen-laden cleaning products, oil fires, sarin gas, and depleted uranium. While most doctors and scientists agree that the unexplained illnesses, which they labeled Gulf War Syndrome, are likely due to a synergistic effect of all of the toxic exposures, some argue that DU caused most of the problems. ...

Bush’s EPA Nominee Has Relaxed Rules For Polluters, Weakened Clean Air Legislation

Think Progress � Bush’s EPA Nominee Has Relaxed Rules For Polluters, Weakened Clean Air Legislation: "Bush’s EPA Nominee Has Relaxed Rules For Polluters, Weakened Clean Air Legislation

William Wehrum, President Bush’s nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR), has earned a reputation in Washington as “the behind-the-scenes architect” of some of the Bush administration’s most controversial initiatives. Some lowlights:

- Wehrum was a lead author of Bush’s “Clear Skies” legislation, which would have loosened emissions caps on dangerous airborne toxins.

- In 2002, while serving as OAR’s general counsel, Wehrum shepherded through a rule written by forest products industry lobbyists that relaxed the emission standards for formaldehyde. Wehrum had previously represented those same timber interests as a lobbyist.

- In 2004, Wehrum implemented new industry-friendly mercury guidelines that substantially weakened the Clean Air Act. Again, Wehrum’s former lobbying firm played an instrumental role in drafting the rule.

- Just this week, a draft of a new air pollution rule, drafted under the oversight of Wehrum, came under fire from congressional leaders. The proposal would allow polluters to discharge thousands of pounds of airborne toxins while “virtually avoiding regulation.“

The good news: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) plans to put a hold on Wehrum’s nomination if it moves to the Senate floor."

Bush authorized leak of Iraq intelligence estimate, indicted ex-Cheney aide says [... leading to outing of CIA Agent]

The Raw Story | Bush authorized leak of Iraq intelligence estimate, indicted ex-Cheney aide says: "RAW STORY | Published: Thursday April 6, 2006

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a n Publish Post ew court filing from the special prosecutor in the case, ...
...
Dems call for Bush to 'come clean,' cite 8 denials

After today's claim by Ex-VP chief of staff "Scooter" Libby that he was led to believe the President had approved the leak of classified information to reporters, Democrats have called for the President to set the record straight about his alleged involvement.

"President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in a brief statement. "It's time for the President to come clean about his involvement in the leak case."

The statement was accompanied by eight of the numerous instances in which Bush or his spokesman, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, denied the President had knowledge of the leak.

That incidents identified by Democrats follow:

President Bush, 9/30/03:

President Bush, 9/30/03:

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. . . . I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative. I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information."

President Bush, 6/10/04:

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"If someone committed crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

White House Press Secretary, 9/29/03:

White House Press Secretary, 10/7/03: