on the lam from siegfried and roy, i found them lounging in the front display window of the local Salvation Army store. big place full of everyone else's stuff, an amazing array of castoffs and oddities.
these were the best thing they had going, and the only thing behind the glass tagged "Display Only."
i so wanted them for the living room.
Remember those fake video news reports the Bush administration has been distributing to local television stations? Back in February, the Government Accountability Office warned federal agencies to stop pushing the phony news reports on the grounds that continuing to do so would amount to the distribution of domestic propaganda in violation of federal law.That might have been the end of the matter, but the Bush administration has other ideas. Last week, budget director Josh Bolten and a Justice Department lawyer named Steven Bradbury issued their own opinion about the fake news stories. Their conclusion: The GAO is wrong, and the fake news reports are perfectly legal. Moreover, as the Washington Post reports today, Bolten and Bradbury said that legal advice for the executive branch is supposed to come not from the Government Accountability Office but from the Justice's Office of Legal Counsel.
That would be the same Office of Legal Counsel that issued a legal memorandum in August 2002 defining torture out of existence and opining that the president's commander-in-chief power gives him authority to defy federal law in the name of national security -- and the same Office of Legal Counsel that retracted that memo in December 2004, just in time for Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearings.
Full story.
Then at the mid-day briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan officially confirmed that the White House is blowing off the Government Accountability Office's finding that prepackaged administration video news releases constitute illegal covert propaganda.
In short, they are stealing bread from the mouths of the poor and stuffing cake into the maws of the wealthy.
But the terms of this debate are actually pretty straightforward. The president and his supporters want to get the government out of the Social Security business by ending guaranteed benefits. It's really as simple as that. Not complicated. They'll put in its place some system of private accounts where you can save money on your own. And if it works out, great. If it doesn't, it's your problem.
Social Security is about spreading out the risk and the security by having near-universal participation in one program. That's what it is. You pay in through the course of your working years and after you retire you receive your guaranteed benefit every month for the rest of your life. It is that issue of guarantee -- which, in its nature, only a program like Social Security can provide -- which the president and his supporters are trying to do away with, either all at once or in stages.
Feb. 25, 2005 | Washington -- Ten members of the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel who voted that a group of powerful pain killers should continue to be sold had ties to the drug makers, an advocacy group says. A study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest indicates that 10 of the 32 panel members had ties to either Pfizer Inc. or Merck & Co., ranging from consulting fees and speaking honoraria to research support.
The FDA issued a statement saying it screened members of the panel for conflicts of interest. "This transparent process requires the agency to carefully weigh any potential financial interest with the need for essential scientific expertise in order to protect and advance the public health," the agency said.
After three days of hearings on the drugs, known as Cox-2 inhibitors, the panel voted 31-1 to keep Pfizer's Celebrex on the market, 17-13 with 2 abstentions in favor of Pfizer's Bextra and 17-15 that Merck's Vioxx should be allowed back on sale.
Merck pulled Vioxx from the market Sept. 30 after heart problems were reported in some users. Similar questions were later raised about the other two drugs, prompting the FDA to call the advisory panel to look into the matter.
Since drug companies fund many studies it is not unusual for researchers to have ties to manufacturers, though some have questioned the practice.
The transcript, including the votes by the individual members of the panel, has not yet been posted by the FDA. However, a copy obtained by The Associated Press indicated that the 10 panel members in question voted 10-0 in favor of keeping Celebrex and Bextra available and 9-1 in favor of allowing Vioxx to be brought back onto the market.
Without those ballots the vote would have been 13-7 in favor of withdrawing Bextra and 14-8 to keep Vioxx off sale.
The industry ties of the panel members were first reported Friday by The New York Times.
There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war. The International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that while Iran now admits having concealed for 18 years nuclear activities that should have been reported to the IAEA, it is has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Iran says it is now cooperating fully with international inspections, and it denies having anything but a peaceful nuclear energy program.
Vice President Cheney is giving interviews and speeches that paint a stark picture of a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran and declaring that this is something the Bush administration will not tolerate. Iranian exiles are providing the press and governments with a steady stream of new "evidence" concerning Iran's nuclear weapons activities. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that Iran will not be allowed to use the cover of civilian nuclear power to acquire nuclear weapons, but says an attack on Iran is "not on the agenda at this point." U.S. allies, while saying they share the concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, remain determined to pursue diplomacy and say they cannot conceive of any circumstance that would lead them to use military force. And the press is beginning to uncover U.S. moves that seem designed to lay the basis for military action against Iran.
Full article
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) -- An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors.
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01
The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.
The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.
Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.
The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.
The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.
Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."
This story is far from over. The preponderance of evidence is closing in on those people in control of our government. Torture, death. Who are we really?
As he fielded questions on everything from Iranian nukes to presidential personnel, the often blunt and plainspoken president employed the full range of artful dodges.
Qualifications for a director of national intelligence? "I'm going to find somebody who knows something about intelligence," Bush disclosed.
Timeline for Iraq? "We'd like to achieve our objective as quickly as possible."
Vladimir Putin's turn toward autocracy? "If we disagree with decisions, we can do so in a friendly and positive way."
When the subject turned to Social Security, the president made clear that questions about his views on the subject were strictly out of bounds -- as when CNN's John King asked why Bush wasn't talking about "tough measures" such as raising the retirement age or cutting benefits.
"Now the temptation is going to be, by well-meaning people such as yourself, John, and others here as we run up to the issue, to get me to negotiate with myself in public," Bush said. Saying he was trying to "condition" reporters, he added: "I'm not going to negotiate with myself and I will negotiate at the appropriate time with the law writers, and so thank you for trying."
When another questioner asked Bush to make his case for personal Social Security accounts, a wary Bush sought to suppress the negotiator within. "Yeah, I will try to explain how without negotiating with myself," he began.
The resourceful Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times pointed out that Bush had already negotiated with himself by ruling out benefit cuts for retirees and near-retirees, then asked Bush to define "near-retired."
The president saw through this plea for self-negotiation. "Yeah, well, that's going to fall in the negotiating-with-myself category," he said.
For all the bobbing and weaving, yesterday's news conference hinted at an emerging new style for Bush. In his first 45 months in office, he had 15 full-fledged news conferences, fewer than any other postwar president. Bush, a stickler for discipline, didn't want to make unintended news, or to be embarrassed by an unexpected question, as when he was asked what his biggest mistake had been. But since his reelection, Bush has had two news conferences in as many months.
Bush is finding that, with some careful deflection of questions, he can hold a nearly hour-long news conference without serious gaffes or unintentionally making news. At times, his bluntness got the better of him, as when he acknowledged that "we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now."
At one point, Bush deflected with psychoanalysis. Asked about Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's use of a signature machine on letters to the next-of-kin of slain soldiers, Bush testified that "I know Secretary Rumsfeld's heart."
And, when asked "where do you stand on regime change" in North Korea, he used the old debater's trick of rephrasing the question. "I'll tell you where I stand," Bush said. "I stand on continuing the six-party talks with North Korea to convince Kim Jong Il to give up his weapons."
When the inevitable question came about the doomed nomination of Bernard B. Kerik to be homeland security secretary, Bush deftly avoided any mention of Kerik's various personal problems and any hint that the White House's vetting process had failed.
"And so the lessons learned is: Continue to vet, and ask good questions," he said. Only the chuckle and shrug of the shoulders accompanying those words suggested there might be more to the story.
