News (Page 2) -- April 9, 2006

Vermont Democrats call for Bush impeachment - "Democratic Party leaders in Vermont on Saturday passed a motion asking Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush."

W.House does not dispute Bush leak allegation - "The White House on Friday chose not to challenge a prosecutor's disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized top official Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose intelligence on Iraq in 2003, as Libby alleges."

It's a 'state of civil war', admits Iraqi government official - "Iraq is in a state of civil war, a senior Iraqi official admitted for the first time yesterday, on the eve of today's third anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. ... "On a daily basis Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians are being killed and the only undeclared thing is that a civil war has not been officially announced by the parties involved.""

Iraqi prisoners vanishing in 'black hole': Blair envoy - ""You did feel that people were disappearing into black holes and it's very difficult," she said. The human rights envoy suspected the reason for this problem was incompetence rather than malice." -- Can incompetence be used as an excuse to commit a crime?

US leak of Zarqawi letter riles Israelis - "ISRAELI military intelligence officials have accused President George W Bush’s administration of undermining their attempts to infiltrate Al-Qaeda’s operations in Iraq by revealing the contents of a secret letter written by Osama Bin Laden’s second-in-command, writes Uzi Mahnaimi. Israel passed the letter — in which Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined his Middle East strategy to Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq — to Washington last October on condition of strict anonymity."

Bill Moyers: A Culture of Corruption - "Money is choking our democracy to death. Our elections are bought out from under us and our public officials are doing the bidding of mercenaries. So powerful is the hold of wealth on politics that we cannot say America is working for all Americans. The majority may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a secure retirement, and clean air and water, but there is no government "of, by, and for the people" to deliver on those aspirations. Our system of privately financed campaigns has shut regular people out of any meaningful participation in democracy. Less than one-half of one percent of all Americans made a political contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004. When the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives has topped $1 million, we can no longer refer to that chamber as "The People's House." Congress belongs to the highest bidder."

If You Love Your Country, You Should Question 9/11 - "On March 20th, the aforementioned actor appeared on the Alex Jones radio show to discuss his thoughts on 9/11. He said he didn’t believe that a plane hit the Pentagon, and added the Twin Towers looked like they were imploded. And the best response anyone could come up with was to say he was nuts and likes prostitutes. Interesting."

America's war on the web - "IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will. In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald."

Helen Thomas: Want More Bush? Elect McCain. - "McCain also has taken other stands that should put him in good with Southern conservatives. Hailing from a military family -- his father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy -- he is a strong supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and believes the number of U.S. troops there should be beefed up. He is against abortion rights and gun-control laws and believes students should be taught the religion-oriented "intelligent design" theory of creation as well as the theory of scientific evolution. ... If he wins the presidency, the country can expect a continuation of Bush's aggressive foreign policy and ultra-right domestic programs." -- And he will never get my vote.

Pssst! Who's behind the decline of politics? [Consultants.] - "Some of my best friends are consultants. They tend to be the most entertaining people in the political community: eccentric, fanatic, creative, violently verbal and deeply hilarious—the sort of people who sat in the back of the room in high school and shot spitballs at the future politicians sitting up front. But their impact on politics has been perverse. Rather than make the game more interesting, they have drained a good deal of the life from our democracy. They have become specialists in caution, literal reactionaries—they react to the results of their polling and focus groups; they fear anything they haven't tested."

Struggling? - "President Bush and his party are struggling in the polls right now. Every attempt by the adminstration to sell the war in Iraq has only led to his numbers falling more. In the mean time, we get more and more news out of Washington about the abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution by the Bush White House, and every day, we see the Republican Congress, instead of dealing with the violations of law by Bush, enabling them to continue on. They have put the party before the country, and more and more people are waking up to that fact."

George, Please Tell Me, Would You Consider Becoming Religious? - "No president of the United States has asserted his religiosity more than George W. Bush. And yet, as a person who takes his own religious tradition seriously, no president has so embarrassed me by acting in such a way as to violate the essential ethical message of religion and the teachings of its most honored founders."

'The Science Guy' is entertaining and provocative at MCC lecture - "
The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light. A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence. “We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children."

What's wrong with America's high schools? - "In today's data-happy era of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly one out of three public high school students won't graduate, not just in Shelbyville but around the nation. For Latinos and African-Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50 percent. Virtually no community, small or large, rural or urban, has escaped the problem. ... The dispute is difficult to referee, particularly in the wake of decades of lax accounting by states and schools. But the majority of analysts and lawmakers have come to this consensus: the numbers have remained unchecked at approximately 30 percent through two decades of intense educational reform, and the magnitude of the problem has been consistently, and often willfully, ignored. ... Dropping out of high school today is to your societal health what smoking is to your physical health, an indicator of a host of poor outcomes to follow, from low lifetime earnings to high incarceration rates to a high likelihood that your children will drop out of high school and start the cycle anew."