News (Page 2) -- March 3, 2006

The Ignorance Defense - "Condoleezza Rice said that no one could have imagined the September 11 attacks, while admitting that Bush had the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing on his desk entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States". Bush said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees", and we now know he had received a full briefing about just that danger, before he went off to play guitar and present John McCain with a cake. Bush had detailed briefings from his own officials prior to the attack on Iraq that the substance of the arguments made by his own Administration in order to lead to war was false, yet the Bush Administration continued to lie until they secured the war they wanted, and now claim that they didn’t know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The neocons swear up and down that they are shocked by the violent uprising in Iraq, and yet Oded Yinon, strategizing for Israel, spelled it out years ago:"

I Do Not Wish to Be Associated With Torture - "On Thursday, March 2, Ray McGovern and 15 others took action today in the halls of Congress. The 16 donned orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by detainees at Guantánamo Bay. They wore gags over their mouths decorated with one word - torture. McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA, also returned his Intelligence Commendation Award medallion which was given to him for "especially commendable service." He delivered the medal to Congressman Pete Hoekstra along with the letter below."

U.S. to sharpen focus on Iran - "The U.S. State Department is creating a special office to deal with foreign policy changes related to Iran and to promote a democratic transition in the Islamic republic, State Department officials said Thursday."

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm - "They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable. And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs. They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast. ... They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted." -- I'm too angry to comment.

Chertoff Has 'Few Days Left,' Sources Say - "In the aftermath of the public revelation of the presidential "teleconference" and mounting criticism of the performance of Michael Chertoff, Administration sources told HUMAN EVENTS today that the secretary of Homeland Security has "only a few days left" in the Bush Cabinet."

Rumsfeld Sept 10, 2001: The Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 TRILLION - "On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said. He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat. "In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten. Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."" -- For those of you who have forgotten the little story on September 10, 2001.

Resolution to Impeach Bush-Cheney Passes 7-3 - " On Tuesday, February 28, 2006, the City and County of San Francisco became the first large municipality to call for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, by a 7-3 vote."

Katrina: Why aren’t we talking about Criminal Negligence? - " It is clear now that Michael Chertoff and George Bush can be directly implicated in the deaths of the 1,300 Americans who died in Hurricane Katrina. The newly released video from the Associated Press proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they were adequately warned of the gravity of the approaching storm and the risks it posed to people of New Orleans. The only question now is whether the charges should be criminal negligence or manslaughter. We leave that to the attorneys."

Why I Cannot Support The Troops In Iraq - "However, for those who do not approve of the president’s war (like that of the father alluded to earlier who believes that George Walker Bush lied to congress in order to obtain approval to send American troops into Iraq), there would be no reason for such to support the troops in Iraq. Really now, how could one support (much less respect) an arrangement in which unscrupulous military recruiters inveigle their way into high schools in order to convince high school seniors that it would be in their best interest to swap their souls for an “up front” payoff, you know what I mean, the enlistment bonus….. the “thirty pieces of silver” offered by recruiters to induce economically deprived young men and women to join the military for nothing more than a feckless opportunity to be a “stand-in trigger man” for the President of the United States, an abject mercenary grunt serving a commander in chief unwilling to send that of his own daughters into combat! No matter how you look at it, such an arrangement is a bargain with The Devil, a compact created in Hell. The military recruits the kids, and the kids allow themselves to become trained assassins assimilated into a ravaged culture of death!"

Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory" - ""Well," says Vonnegut, "I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president." The students seem to agree. "We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries," he says. "They run everything. "We have no Democratic Party. It's financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans. "So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever. "I'm trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It's becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil. "Bush used that line recently," Vonnegut adds. "I should sue him for plagiarism.""

With God on Our Side? - "The moronic level of cable discourse notwithstanding, missing from almost all discussions of the role of religion in public life is what William James famously termed the "varieties of religious experience." The right-wing hijacking of religion's public role in our political discourse is as undeniable as it is inappropriate, and represents one of liberalism's most serious problems."



Hubble Portrait of the Pinwheel Galaxy - "The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime."



Scientists Capture The Speediest Ever Motion In A Molecule - "The fastest ever observations of protons moving within a molecule open a new window on fundamental processes in chemistry and biology, researchers report in the journal Science."