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Mosques monitored for radiation: report

Fri Dec 23, 2005 4:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials have secretly monitored radiation levels at Muslim sites, including mosques and private homes, since September 11, 2001 as part of a top secret program searching for nuclear bombs, U.S. News and World Report said on Friday.
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"In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program," the magazine said.
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An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny the U.S. News and World Report article and said, "We can't talk about a classified program."

"The FBI's overriding priority is to prevent, disrupt and defeat terrorist operations in the U.S. All investigations and operations conducted by the FBI are intelligence driven and predicated on specific information about potential criminal acts or terrorist threats, and are conducted in strict conformance with federal law," he added.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group said the report, coupled with news of the domestic eavesdropping, "could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights."

"All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims," it said in a statement.
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Vice President Dick Cheney was among those briefed on the monitoring program, the publication said.

Boosting Democracy, On Purpose or Not

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, December 22, 2005; A29

...the reasonable guy that Bush and his speechwriters brought forth on Sunday night vanished when the president strode into a White House news conference on Monday. He went back into combat mode to dampen the outcry over the powers of the presidency and domestic intelligence surveillance.

Not even conservatives will rush to endorse the expansive powers that Bush claims to find in the Constitution to enable the National Security Agency to evade existing law and systematically conduct wiretaps against terrorism suspects on U.S. soil without warrants.
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The kind of secrecy and obsessive concern about the powers of the presidency for their own sake that this administration showed even before Sept. 11, 2001, are inconsistent with the workings of American democracy, as well as with the fragmentation of power that marks the nation-state system today.

Senate Blocks Arctic Drilling Provision

Democrats Stymie Defense Bill
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; 2:42 PM

The Senate today failed to pass a major defense appropriations bill after a Democratic-led bloc stymied it with a filibuster in an effort to force removal of a controversial provision on oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

With 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster and cut off debate on the bill, its backers fell short by four votes. The tally on a motion to invoke cloture so the Senate could move to a vote on the bill itself was 56-44.

The Senate showdown came over a provision allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a measure that was added to the $453 billion fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). The bill includes money to support U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as $29 billion to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
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Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charged on the Senate floor, "Our military is being held hostage by this issue, Arctic drilling." Calling the provision "another gift to special interests," he said, "It's time we said no to an abuse of power."

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said that even though the bill provides vital defense funding, he was joining the filibuster on principle to prevent attachments such as the drilling provision. "If we yield to this tactic on ANWR," he said, "next year it will be someone else's pet project attached to the defense spending bill."
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The provision would allow oil companies to drill in a coastal plain that covers about 1.5 million acres of the wildlife refuge, which encompasses a total of about 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska.

More than 10 billion barrels of crude oil are estimated to lie under the refuge, and President Bush has repeatedly urged that they be tapped to help ease U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

But opponents say oil drilling is incompatible with environmental protection in the refuge. Moreover, they say, the impact on the U.S. fuel supply would be minimal and would not be seen for years.
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Big Leaf Maple

A photo from the archives: this big leaf maple is host to lichen and fern in the temperate rain forest of the Pacific Northwest.

Iraq: as in Football, Citizens Need to Call Their Own Plays

Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2005. Looking through the goalposts at the changing nature of American freedom. Originally from The Providence Journal, Tuesday, December 6, 2005.
By John R. MacArthur.

Football aphorisms and analogies usually leave me cold—such “life lesson” clichés seem designed to pacify an already somnolent population of television-addicted zombies.

Even as a football-loving kid, I suspected there was something truly screwed up about Vince Lombardi's celebrated phrase, “Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.”
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Probably none of this would matter much to me if I hadn't played football for Martin J. “Mac” McCarty, a coach who considered excessive sideline intervention anathema to his idea of education. Call it quaint, but Mac sincerely believed that football built character in adolescent boys—that is, if you let the boys play the game. We ran a very simple offense (with some audibles), and with few exceptions Mac insisted on his quarterbacks' calling their own plays in the huddle.
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After he retired, in 1988, Mac would call me occasionally to chat. Sometimes our conversation would turn to the degraded state of modern sports and society. To his horror, even North Shore football had changed for the worse: His young successor was calling all the plays from the sidelines, in total contravention of Mac's mantra of independence and initiative. “Jeez,” he would say disgustedly, “the whole point was to learn how to think for yourself out there.”
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So is the top-down control of football an apt analogy for the political arena? To be sure, said Robinson. “It's part of the culture. I'm sick to death of the [overly scripted, overly managed politician] not answering the question. But the media deserves the blame, too, because they tear down anybody who says what they think.”

Which led Robinson to President Bush and his latest advertising campaign: “I pick up the paper the other day and there's Bush and the 'Plan for Victory' in Iraq.” The old coach laughed, then added, with some irony, “I wish him well—but the Plan for Victory in Iraq?”
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link to original

Greetings from Wisconsin

Report: Bush Had More Prewar Intelligence Than Congress

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; A23

A congressional report made public yesterday concluded that President Bush and his inner circle had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress when it gave Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq.

Democrats said the 14-page report contradicts Bush's contention that lawmakers saw all the evidence before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, stating that the president and a small number of advisers "have access to a far greater volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information."
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The Bush administration has routinely denied Congress access to documents, saying it would have a chilling effect on deliberations. The report, however, concludes that the Bush administration has been more restrictive than its predecessors in sharing intelligence with Congress.

Political Language Orwell Quote

"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
– George Orwell
(Quotes change daily at antiwar.com/casualties/)