http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=8405
Bush's Warrantless Spying: Does the President Really Know Best? - "OK, everyone who has studied the Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency, raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone? f you are not raising your hand, you're not alone. As regular readers of Tomdispatch are aware, only recently has the world received notice that President Bush's "I can do anything I want" approach to governance has a name: the Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency. Not having heard of this concept, and thinking perhaps that I had missed something in Constitutional Law, I decided to survey a random sampling of attorneys about it. The group included civil practitioners, prosecutors, a federal judge, a former federal prosecutor who has a PhD as well as a J.D., defense attorneys, and a U.S. magistrate. The precise question was, "When did you first hear about the Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency?" Most said, "The past few weeks," but my favorite was, "A few seconds ago, when you asked about it." All agreed that the term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution and that, the last time they checked, we still had three branches of government. ... You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to know that Bush's legal justifications are weak. You merely have to consider the administration's duplicitous conduct. The Bush team has deliberately concealed this program, not only from the public and Congress, but, most damning of all, from the very agency that is responsible for executing the laws of this country: the Department of Justice (DOJ). ... Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly, even to their own people, they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country. Using a tragically familiar modus operandi, Bush has carried out his unlawful spying scheme by acting not as a unitary executive (whatever that is), but as a solitary executive -- as if the President Knows Best." -- Tell me again why this man and his administration are still in office.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0118-20.htm
The New Lord Protector - "The contrast between the Republicans’ furor over the Supreme Court’s eminent domain decision and their nonchalance towards President Bush’s (possible) misuse of power is bizarre. It’s almost as if Republicans believe that dictators rise to power and strip citizens of their rights through zoning decisions. It's almost as if they never read any history."
http://interventionmag.com/Primary/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=104
The West Has Picked A Fight With Iran That It Cannot Win - "Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a fight. Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme makes any sense at all. The very talk of it - macho phrases about "all options open" - suggests an international community so crazed with video game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought."
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0118-27.htm
Cut and run from reality - "Harvard professor Niall Ferguson has resorted to science fiction in an attempt to raise the levels of testosterone required for continued support of the eternal imperial war. ... How can he write this stuff with a straight face?"
http://secularfront.blogspot.com/2006/01/cut-and-run-from-reality.html
The latest Bush mega-catastrophe is now pharmaceuticals - " No matter what you think of George W. Bush, he is staking out his claim as a bona fide Horseman of the Apocalypse. With his Hand of Hell in Iraq already yielding countless dead, $200 billion wasted and a global war against Islam well on its way to Armageddon, Bush has definitively established his ability to wreck unparalleled disaster on a global scale with zero positive outcome. By drowning New Orleans and turning its alleged rebuilding plan into a sinkhole of corruption and disarray, he has shown he can lay waste to an entire American city. And now he is visiting disease and death on tens of millions of our elderly and ill with a botched Medicare/Medicaid drug plan that has plunged the nation's pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states even closer to bankruptcy. As you read this, millions of Americans are without medications that may be life-sustaining because of what Bush has done to "improve" their pharmaceutical plan. One can only shudder at what might come next."
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2006/1298
White House Won't Release Details Of Abramoff Visits - "According to Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Abramoff had "a few" such meetings. But the spokesman won't say when or with whom. Nor will he say which interests Abramoff was representing -- or how he got access to the White House."
http://www.nbc6.net/news/6192996/detail.html
Feds aim for more data sharing by terrorist screeners - "The Bush administration said Tuesday that it would make greater use of what the U.S. government calls "travel intelligence," or methods of linking databases to try to detect terrorists before they travel."
http://news.com.com/Feds+aim+for+more+data+sharing+by+terrorist+screeners/2100-7348_3-6027824.html?tag=nefd.lede
WUWJW?
http://secularfront.blogspot.com/2006/01/wuwjw.html
'Fossil fuel' theory takes hit with NASA finding - "NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel."
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675
Suits Seek End to Domestic Spying - "Federal lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens."
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70032-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_4
The silencing of college presidents - "Much has changed in a few decades. The president's role as fund-raiser has grown. The university system and its expectations are stacked against any president providing the kind of public moral leadership that once characterized our profession. Too much risk is involved. Prospective students, donors, trustees, and alumni could be offended. Faculty may fear that a president's opinion too forcefully expressed might impinge on academic freedom. And since 9/11, dissent of almost any kind has been labeled as unpatriotic, and even reasoned debate on hot button social issues is viewed as dangerously controversial. Thus, while many of my colleagues will state positions on issues clearly affecting their campuses, like financial aid, they are loath to venture an opinion outside of academe. Who can blame them? The system demands more but wants to hear from us less. But I wonder what it would take for more of us to speak out?"
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/01/13/the_silencing_of_college_presidents/?p1=email_to_a_friend
43% of first-time home buyers put no money down - "The trend is potentially ominous. The real estate market is cooling in some areas, and rates on adjustable-rate loans are creeping up. As a result, some no-money-down buyers could owe more than their homes are worth."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/housing/2006-01-17-real-estate-usat_x.htm
Sandia researchers to model nano-size battery to be implanted in eye to power artificial retina
http://sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2006/comp-soft-math/eye.html
Yogurt bacteria may soon fight HIV - "Brown University scientists say they've genetically modified some of the 'friendly bacteria' found in yogurt to release a drug that blocks HIV infection."
http://upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060117-072954-4097r
Warning over Viagra and damage to sight - "Men who take drugs for impotency such as Viagra or Cialis and who have previously had a heart attack may have a 10-fold increased risk of damaging their eyesight, an American study claims today. It warns that increasing use of the drugs could produce an increase in a rare condition that can cause irreversible loss of vision."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/17/wsight17.xml
Internet users judge Web sites in less than a blink - "In just one-twentieth of a second--less than half the time it takes to blink--people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an Internet site."
http://news.com.com/Internet+users+judge+Web+sites+in+less+than+a+blink/2100-1025_3-6027886.html?tag=nefd.top
Quote of the Day
"God takes care of mankind, but men perish by those miseries which they madly and voluntarily bring upon themselves."
~ Flavius Josephus
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