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A War Without End or Oversight
An honorable president would have the gumption to veto bills he found objectionable. But as Americans have learned by now, there is no room for honor in President Bush’s Oval Office.
He prefers chicanery in the form of “signing statements.”
Prior to delivering the State of the Union Address on Monday, Bush eviscerated four key provisions of the new defense bill by saying he will ignore parts of the law he doesn’t like.
Bush finds objectionable provisions that:
* Forbid the United States from building a permanent military base in Iraq and controlling Iraq’s oil reserves.
* Create a wartime commission to investigate waste, fraud and abuse by military contractors and finally hold them accountable.
* Offer protection for employees of government contractors who expose wrongdoing.
* Require intelligence officers within 45 days to either respond or state why they will not produce documents requested by the Armed Services committees of Congress.
The Bush administration repeatedly has denied concerns that it seeks to create a permanent base in Iraq. But this signing statement and the president’s reluctance to bring before Congress a pact it is negotiating with Iraq regarding the presence of U.S. troops beyond 2008 indicate otherwise.
McCain doomed, gets Hollywood endorsementLook out Mike Huckabee! Seems like you're not the only candidate in the race with the backing of a washed-up Hollywood jarhead of yesteryear! On Fox And Friends, John McCain got himself a key endorsement from roided-up elderly action-movie star Sylvester Stallone, who offered his own scintillating mumblecore tribute on how McCain's plan for a new century of endless wars will totally help the box office grosses of his turgid Rambo franchise.
Cheney emails missing from day leak probe startedLast week, House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed that the White House failed to preserve emails for at least 473 separate days. Waxman’s report said “Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.” Among the sixteen days for which email are missing from Vice President Cheney’s office “is Sept. 30, 2003, the same day the day the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced they were investigating who outed former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.”
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Hearts Polar Bears - NOT!
Alaskans know a lot more about bears than most people. Over the years - as in lots of years - bear species come and go. The Polar bear diverged from the Brown bear only 200,000 years ago. They were preceded in Alaska by the Arctodus Simus, a larger, less omnivorous animal that disappeared here about 12,000 years ago. All three shared Alaska for a far longer time than human civilization has existed.
There are similar numbers of Polar Bears worldwide - just around 30,000 - as there are Brown bears in Alaska. There are a similar number of Polar bears in Alaska as there are the Brown bear subspecies, the huge Kodiak Bear, around 3,000 of each. Just as Polar bears diverged from Brown bears long ago, they can mate, and do, creating the hybrid known as Nanulak.
Although the only known Nanulak was bagged by an American hunter on Banks Island in upper Canada, Alaska communities are concerned that should the hybrid get started where the two creatures' habitats overlap, the result will be a very large, mean animal that doesn't hibernate.
Palin, for her part, sounded somewhat pragmatic in an op-ed she wrote on January 8, but her statement, "[t]o help ensure that polar bears are around for centuries, Alaska has engaged in research and worked with the federal government to protect them," appears to be disingenuous, given the demand that Prof. Steiner fork over a half a million bucks to have access to some of the information the governor touts as having been done purely on the species' behalf.
Megachurch Money Hypocrisy Sparks Church-State ShowdownThe New Testament reports that Jesus rarely used fancy modes of transportation to get around. He walked most of the time, although Matthew and other gospels mention that he once rode a borrowed donkey into Jerusalem, where he burst into the Temple and tossed out the money changers.
Nearly 2,000 years later, some who claim to speak in Jesus' name are taking a different view. Consider Bishop Eddie Long, who pastors a megachurch in Lithonia, Ga. With a salary approaching $1 million a year and a nine-bathroom mansion situated on 20 acres, Long's choice of vehicles reflects his opulent lifestyle: He drives a $350,000 Bentley.
Far from casting out money changers, Long is likely to join them. In a 2005 profile in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he defended his high-flying ways, insisting, "I pastor a multimillion dollar congregation. You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."
Long's lack of humility has probably done him no favors. At the time, U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), expressed dismay.
"When I hear about leaders of charities being provided a $300,000 Bentley to drive around in, my fear is that it's the taxpayers who subsidize this charity who are really being taken for a ride," he quipped.
In November, Grassley, who serves as ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, ramped things up a bit. He announced that he is seeking detailed financial information from six mega-ministries, Long's among them.
The move sent shock waves through the evangelical community. Grassley is a conservative Republican whose votes on social issues usually please the Religious Right. (His 2006 rating from the Family Research Council was 87 percent.) But the senator has long had an interest in preserving the integrity of the tax laws and has in the past complained about secular non-profits violating the law.
In 2005-06, Grassley held a series of hearings on Capitol Hill that included testimony from large non-profit groups such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Red Cross. Now he's turning his sights to the religious sector.
Grassley's investigation focuses on six ministries, all of which preach the "prosperity gospel" -- the theological assertion that wealth is a reward from God:
* Benny Hinn, a TV preacher who runs the World Healing Center Church in Grapevine, Texas. Hinn, who travels the globe conducting faith-healing revivals, lives in a seven-bathroom, eight-bedroom mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean valued at $10 million. It is claimed as a parsonage.
* The Rev. Creflo Dollar's World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. Dollar drives a Rolls Royce and has large homes in Georgia and New York. He is asked to provide a list of all vehicles provided for himself, his wife, board members and ministry employees.
* Paula and Randy White's Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla. In a letter to the ministry, Grassley asks the couple to provide a list of expense account items "including, but not limited to, clothing expenses and any cosmetic surgery for years 2004 to present."
* Joyce Meyer Ministries in Fenton, Mo. Grassley asks Meyer and her husband David to explain expenditures like a $23,000 commode with a marble top, a $30,000 conference table, an $11,000 French clock and a $19,000 pair of vases for the ministry headquarters.
* Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, Texas. Copeland is asked to explain how cash offerings are handled during overseas crusades and to explain the use of a ministry jet for "layovers" in Maui, Fiji and Honolulu.
* Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. Among other things, Long is asked to explain a church official's 2005 claim that Long no longer accepts a salary from the church but does take a "love offering."
In each case, Grassley is requesting detailed financial information. The ministries are asked to provide audited financial statements, lists of board members, employment contracts and other information.
Other requests are specific to certain ministries. It has been widely reported, for example, that Hinn often uses a ministry jet to travel to the crusades he holds. This jet often stops along the way for "layovers" at popular vacation spots.
Grassley asks Hinn to provide "a list of all layover trips taken in years 2001 to present" as well as "the number of ministry personnel who stayed during the layover (including name and addresses), the hotel name(s), the lodging costs, the food costs, salary expenses, aircraft costs, and all other layover expenses paid [by the ministry]."
McCain And Lieberman Declare ‘The Surge Worked’ Despie Evidence to the Contrary
CLAIM: “The surge worked.”
FACT: In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by President Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only “met one legislative benchmark and partially met another.” Since then, progress has stalled on key areas laid out by Bush: an oil law, de-Baathification reform, a process for amending the Constitution and provincial elections.
CLAIM: “Conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge.”
FACT: Though the “surge” has helped Sunni Arabs in Anbar province push al Qaeda in Iraq to the sidelines, the decision to turn on al Qaeda was not caused by the “surge.” U.S. commanders wisely “took advantage of these changing dynamics,” but they did not cause them. Additionally, as al Qaeda’s presence has decreased, sectarian strife has increased.
Populism Is on the RiseBack in August, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled “An Economic Populist Is Rising In the GOP Presidential Primary.” In that article, I predicted that Republican Mike Huckabee would rise and potentially win the Iowa caucuses based on his relentless focus on economic inequality and class-based populism. I chided the media and Democrats for ignoring him, and when I wrote this article, I was laughed at by many reporters, pundits and readers alike.
In November, I wrote a nationally syndicated column for Creators Syndicate entitled “The Huey Longs of Iowa” about both Huckabee and John Edwards. I once again noted that these two underdog candidates were competing in the Iowa caucus despite being outspent precisely because both men were running as bare-knuckled economic populists. As the only nationally syndicated columnist to write something like this, I was largely dismissed and laughed off by national political reporters, pundits and many readers, with most telling me the Iowa race was between only Romney and Giuliani on the Republican side, and only Clinton and Obama on the Democratic side.
Now the results are in: Huckabee has resoundingly won the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards duked it out in a dogfight with Barack Obama, who has over the last month adopted much of Edwards’ populist rhetoric. That Edwards was even close in this race at all, and that Huckabee won outright is a success for both candidates considering they were grossly outspent by candidates being funded by huge corporate interests. More importantly, these results (regardless of who ends up winning what is effectively a tie in the Democratic race) resoundingly support precisely what I wrote way back when the Punditburo in Washington was still berating economic populism, and downplaying the very real class-based anger that is roiling America.
The National Surveillance WorldFor those interested in tracking the disintegration of civil rights as a global phenomenon and the simultaneous rise of massive national surveillance bureaucracies, we have a significant tool. Two NGOs, Privacy International, a UK privacy group, and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center have compiled a system for measuring surveillance societies, rating various nations for their civil liberties records. In general they find, unsurprisingly, that nations recently liberated from Communism (excluding Russia) are those which most zealously guard civil liberties and attempt to contain surveillance of their populace. The U.S. had a strong tradition for protecting its citizenry from surveillance, which collapsed under George W. Bush.
The Edge Annual Question — 2008When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
