Today’s Headlines 1/31/08

Today’s headlines brought to you by

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Top Story

Mukasey: ‘I Don’t Know’ Whether Bush Has Violated FISA
In (Wednesday’s) Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Mike Mukasey … said he “can’t contemplate” a situation where President Bush would assert “Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.” (Republican Sen. Arlen) Specter shot back, “Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act…didn’t he?” Mukasey continued to hedge: “… I don’t know whether he acted in violation of statutes.”
And what’s more, he DOESN’T WANT to know. Click through to watch the video.—Caro

The Heretik

The World

Rocket attack wounds 3 British soldiers
BASRA, Iraq - Rockets slammed into the British base near the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Thursday, slightly wounding three British soldiers, a spokesman said. Iraq.

Analysis: One strategy for Iraq oil, power
There's optimism in Iraq, at least from a mysterious cadre called the Energy Fusion Cell, which for the past eight months worked to bring coherence to both U.S. and Iraqi initiatives in the oil, gas and power sectors

Iraq to provide gas to EU
Brussels - Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, was in Brussels on Thursday to discuss plans to supply the European Union with natural gas from its vast Ekas field.

Mubarak meets Iranian parliament speaker
CAIRO, Egypt - An Iranian official who met Wednesday with Egypt's president said the two countries could soon restore diplomatic relations severed nearly three decades ago.

Provocative sanctions (The Hindu, India's National Newspaper)
The belligerence and aggression implicit in the decision by the United States to unilaterally impose yet another set of sanctions on Iran has upped the ante in the region… In the face of Washington’s reckless and abrasive policy, Teheran has signalled that it will not agree to suspend the enrichment of uranium, a U.S.-set precondition for multilateral discussions on its nuclear programme.

Suicide bomber kills Afghan official
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing Helmand province's deputy governor and five other people, officials said.

US completes military base in Afghanistan province
Another piece of the United States' regional jigsaw is in place with the completion of a military base in Afghanistan's Kunar province, just three kilometers from Bajaur Agency in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistani lawyers torch Musharraf effigy: witnesses
LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) - Thousands of Pakistani lawyers burned an effigy of President Pervez Musharraf during nationwide protests Thursday to press for the release of the country's deposed chief justice, witnesses said.

Shell profits surge to record 31 billion dollars in 2007
LONDON (AFP) - Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that net profits leapt 23 percent last year to a record 31.331 billion dollars (21.115 billion euros), energised by soaring crude prices.

Lawmaker killed in Kenya's Rift Valley
NAIROBI, Kenya - An opposition lawmaker was gunned down by a police officer Thursday in the second fatal shooting of an opposition legislator this week amid ethnic fighting sparked by Kenya's disputed presidential election, officials said.

The Nation

Budget plan likely to show huge deficit
WASHINGTON - The budget President Bush unveils on Monday is likely to feature deficits reaching $400 billion this year and next, leaving his successor a fiscal ledger dripping with red ink.

Bush defends Iraq war strategy
LAS VEGAS - Sandwiching a war speech in between Republican fundraisers, President Bush is making clear that his priority is to keep Iraq secure, not just to get troops home.

U.S. Commanders in Iraq Favor Pause in Troop Cuts
Senior U.S. military commanders here say they want to freeze troop reductions starting this summer for at least a month, making it more likely that the next administration will inherit as many troops in Iraq as there were before President Bush announced a "surge" of forces a year ago.

Army suicides up as much as 20 percent
WASHINGTON - As many as 121 Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a jump of some 20 percent over the year before, officials said Thursday.

Brain screenings for vets may be flawed
WASHINGTON - Thousands of Iraq war veterans who could have suffered traumatic brain injury may be getting unnecessary or inadequate health care because Veterans Affairs officials have yet to determine whether their initial screening tests are reliable, investigators say.
Flawed screening tests. Uh huh. This administration has made it a policy to deny government benefits across the board, and only grant them when the rejected person appeals the decision.—Caro

24 Hours After Touting Clean Coal In SOTU, White House Drops Ambitious Clean Coal Project
During Monday’s State of the Union address, Bush said, “Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.” Yet just 24 hours (later), Bush’s Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman indicated the White House was pulling the plug on the ambitious FutureGen project, a clean coal plant that was touted as “the cleanest fossil fuel fired power plant in the world.”

In stealthy move, CMS eyes end to care-coordination program
Starting in July, 68,000 Medicare beneficiaries in five states and the District of Columbia will be dropped from care-coordination programs treating their diabetes and congestive heart failure…The under-the-radar nature of CMS’s decision contrasts with promises of transparency from acting Administrator Kerry Weems, who said when he took office last September that he would conduct “business in daylight” and stop “cocktail-hour press release(s).”

Senate panel passes $157 billion stimulus plan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Finance Committee approved a $157 billion economic stimulus package on Wednesday that offers smaller tax rebates to more people than a plan passed by the U.S. House of Representatives … (but) would go to about 20 million low-income retirees on Social Security who would not receive checks under the $146 billion House stimulus bill.

Subprime Lenders Get Tax Breaks in U.S. Senate Stimulus Plan
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Subprime lenders, homebuilders and banks stand to benefit from a $14.4 billion tax break passed yesterday by a Senate committee as part of an economic stimulus package.

Poll: Big expectations for new president
Large majorities of voters believe the president has considerable sway on a range of big issues such as inflation, interest rates, the federal deficit, taxes and more. Fully three-quarters believe the president has at least some influence over health care costs, for example. Sixty-nine percent can see the president making gasoline prices go up or down. They are less certain, though, about the president's ability to change how things really work in Washington: 55 percent think it's possible; 44 percent are doubtful, no matter who's elected. Call it optimism with a cynical streak. Or cynicism with an optimistic streak. David Wells, a consultant from suburban Nashville, Tenn., calls it reality.

Clinton, McCain likely gain most from dropout candidates
For the Democrats, the decision by former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to abandon his campaign could swing votes to both New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, though probably more to her. Edwards' supporters are similar in demographic profile and outlook to Clinton's. A smaller number were drawn to Edwards for his outspoken call to change Washington, which could lead them into the Obama camp. For Republicans, the withdrawal of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani likely will push many of his supporters to Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Investors want more interest rate cuts
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, criticized last year for being too tentative in cutting interest rates, has shown he can act boldly. But the Fed's two aggressive rate cuts in the past eight days have left investors demanding still more.
That would be stock and bond investors. People who depend on the income from interest on CDs are screwed.—Caro

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Blog for a Cause!: The Global Voices Guide of Blog Advocacy
Global Voices Advocacy is pleased to announce the second of several planned manuals focused on the topics of circumventing internet filtering, anonymous blogging and effective use of Internet-based tools in campaigns for social and political change.

A gentler capitalism
Every few decades, America's business leaders change their minds about what obligations corporations and the wealthy have to society… Such a shift, if truly underway today, will have enormous political consequences in the years to come. If the consensus in the executive suites is that economic inequality has risen too much, or that too many social needs like healthcare are going unmet, or that the polar ice caps might really melt, the next president and Congress will have more success tackling these problems. It is far easier to get things done in Washington when Wall Street isn't digging in its heels.
So our job as progressives, many of us Democrats, is to determine which of the candidates left to us will be better able and willing to take advantage of this shift in emphasis.—Caro

I Have Questions for Barack Obama (by Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister blog, writing at No Quarter)
How do you pursue an agenda that appeals to conservatives, but is also progressive?... What is the common purpose around which you envision the country rallying? Do you regard “transcending partisanship” an end in itself, and do you foresee the GOP rallying around this goal? If so, how and why do you imagine that will happen? Assume for a moment that you are nominated and subsequently elected, and, despite being “the kind of president” in whom Americans can believe, the profound partisan rancor that currently plagues the nation doesn’t evaporate, that Americans fail to rally around a common purpose. What is Plan B?

Barack Obama: Bamboozling America (by Larry Pinkney, the Black Commentator)
We Black Americans have often and generally been so physically and emotionally brutalized in this nation that we sometimes vicariously tie up our hopes and dreams with others who appear to have somehow accomplished that which we ourselves have not, due to systemic economic, social, and political oppression. This is a fact that has not escaped the attention of Barack Obama and his political advisors/handlers from the corporate military/industrial complex. Thus, his game is simple: Play on the unfulfilled hopes, dreams, and needs of Black people. Sell the people a pipe dream in order to attain your own personal goals. This is what I refer to as political pimping, and this is precisely what Barack Obama and his advisors/handlers are doing, not only to Black America, but to the nation as a whole. Through the use of double-speak, Barack Obama keeps the people from seeing who and what he really is.
Several white males I know have fallen in love with Obama, while the black males I know have not. The Obama lovers think there will be some kind of rosy future for us all if Obama becomes the Democratic candidate and then wins the election. Hillary Clinton is too divisive, they say, not realizing that the right wing hasn’t even gotten started yet on its vilification of Obama. Many Democrats, and many progressives, seem congenitally incapable of understanding that IT’S THE CORPORATOCRACY, STUPID! We need to stop fooling ourselves into believing any one person can be our savior, no matter how good that person at convincing us to be in love with love, and to believe in belief. I’m not happy with the allegiance of either of the remaining Democratic candidates to the corporatocracy, but of the two, Clinton’s proposals are more progressive. And that’s why, now that Edwards has dropped out of the race, I will vote for her on Tuesday.—Caro

'NY Post' Endorses Obama
NEW YORK Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had been, at least off and on, surprisingly kind to Hillary Clinton for quite some time -- she is a home state U.S. Senator after all. That ended today when on its Web site (in print tomorrow) it endorsed Barack Obama in next week's key primary, and used some of its usual colorful language in doing it.
See what I mean? Conservatives love Obama.—Caro

Obama eviscerates Hillary (by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog)
(T)his is particularly pointed from Obama. “’I know it is tempting — after another presidency by a man named George Bush — to simply turn back the clock, and to build a bridge back to the 20th century,’ he said in Denver. ‘... It's not enough to say you'll be ready from Day One — you have to be right from Day One,’ he added in unmistakable criticisms of Clinton, who often claims she's better prepared to govern, and her husband, who pledged during his own presidency to build a bridge to the 21st century.”
Actually, Obama has been landing these kinds of barbs from the beginning. His mention of Reagan in Nevada contained a deliberate put-down of Bill Clinton. And every time the Clintons defend themselves they’re crucified.—Caro

IN WHICH YOU’RE DECEIVED ONCE AGAIN: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
(W)e don’t know Harold Meyerson; maybe he actually doesn’t know that “the old, irrational Clinton hatred is alive and well in certain parts of the media,” including in the “part of the media” known as the Washington Post. (The “part of the media” which employs him.) After all, Meyerson has his head in the clouds; he spends his time with our most pre-eminent philosophers, on Olympian heights, not down here on the teeming plain, where the world’s dumbest people run the “press corps” and indulge in that “old, irrational hatred.” Maybe he doesn’t read Dowd or Herbert, Robinson or Milbank; perhaps he has never heard of Chris Matthews. Perhaps he “deceives” you without understanding. But even then, today’s column deceives.

My evil ways (by Paul Krugman)
Hmm. A little while back I learned from various sources that the reason I criticize Barack Obama is that my son works for Hillary. This was news to me, since I wasn’t aware that I have any children. Now I learn that it’s important that I disclose that I was Bill Clinton’s chief economic adviser in 1992. This is also news to me, since I wasn’t aware that I worked for the campaign at all.
And where do you suppose those rumors are coming from?—Caro

Key 9/11 Commission Staffer Held Secret Meetings With Rove, Scaled Back Criticisms of White House
A forthcoming book by NYT reporter Philip Shenon — “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation” — asserts that former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow interfered with the 9/11 report. According to the book, Zelikow had failed to inform the commission at the time he was hired that he was instrumental in helping Condoleezza Rice set up Bush’s National Security Council in 2001. Some panel staffers believe Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance prior to 9/11 as “amount(ing) to incompetence.”

Israeli Prez: Use Facebook To Fight Hate
Israel's 84-year-old president Shimon Peres told a group of international students about his idea to combat anti-Semitism: Use the social networking site Facebook to counter the spread of hate.

Technology & Science

Scientists Say Bush Stifles Science and Lets Global Leadership Slip
In his final State of the Union address, President George W. Bush devoted several lines to science and technology topics. He called for research and funding to reduce oil dependency and reverse the growth of greenhouse gases… But several scientists around the country aren't buying what they see as rhetoric not backed by funding. And they are frustrated by what they view as the White House's morality-based politics that they say ignores scientific evidence, distorts facts and leads to outright censorship of reports and scientists.

Trains, bloggers are threats in US drill
WASHINGTON - It's the government's idea of a really bad day: Washington's Metro trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Bloggers reveal locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found on London's subway.

Super Bowl Fans Should Heed Heart Risk Finding
German study found higher chances of cardiovascular trouble during 2006 World Cup matches

Folic Acid May Help Prevent Premature Birth
Women took the B vitamin for one year before conception, study reports.

Mercury in Childhood Vaccines Excreted Quickly
Doesn't have time to build to dangerous levels in body, possibly cause autism, new research contends.

Allergic Disease Linked To Irritable Bowel Syndrome
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2008) — Adults with allergy symptoms report a high incidence of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), suggesting a link between atopic disorders and IBS according to a new study.

Minimally Invasive Surgery Fixes Aneurysms
Study finds advantages over conventional operation

Device Zeroes In On Small Breast Tumors
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2008) — A new medical imager for detecting and guiding the biopsy of suspicious breast cancer lesions is capable of spotting tumors that are half the size of the smallest ones detected by standard imaging systems, according to a new study.

One Common Ancestor Behind Blue Eyes
People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes.

NASA Photos Reveal Mercury Is Shrinking
WASHINGTON (AP) - The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider.

Environment

Actions don't match 'green' attitudes
Just a slim majority of Americans consider global warming "a very serious problem," despite an avalanche of publicity on the issue, and many aren't even taking the "green" actions they support, a nationwide survey suggested today.

Antarctic ice riddle keeps sea-level secrets
TROLL STATION, Antarctica (Reuters) - A deep freeze holding 90 percent of the world's ice, Antarctica is one of the biggest puzzles in the debate on global warming with risks that any thaw could raise sea levels faster than U.N. projections. Even if a fraction melted, Antarctica could damage nations from Bangladesh to Tuvalu in the Pacific and cities from Shanghai to New York. It has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft) if it melted, over thousands of years.

UN: Climate Change May Cost $20 Trillion
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report.
But NOT doing anything about it might cost even more. See below.—Caro

Warmer Atlantic Worsens Hurricanes
WASHINGTON (AP) - When the water in the hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic warms one degree in the dead of summer, overall hurricane activity jumps by half, according to a new study.

Hawaii's governor calls for agreement on climate change – Summary
Washington - Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle called on climate officials from the world's biggest polluting countries to find common ground on combatting global warming, at the start of a US-hosted meeting on the Pacific island Wednesday.

UK greenhouse gas emissions fall in 2006
Britain reversed previous estimates to say its emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases fell in 2006, showing on Thursday that it was already nearing a self-imposed goal for 2025.

Screen-printed Solar Cells In Many Colors And Designs, Even Used In Windows
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2008) — Newly designed solar cells can be screen-printed in a wide array of colors and patterns to allow them to be attractively incorporated into building design. The solar cells also can be used on windows, providing shading from glare while generating electricity. The key component of the new modules is an organic dye which in combination with nanoparticles converts sunlight into electricity. Due to the small size of the nanoparticles, the modules are semi-transparent. This aspect makes them well suited for façade integration.

E. Coli Bacteria: A Future Source Of Energy?
By genetically modifying the bacteria, Thomas Wood, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has "tweaked" a strain of E. coli so that it produces substantial amounts of hydrogen…. Renewable, clean and efficient, hydrogen is the key ingredient in fuel-cell technology, which has the potential to power everything from portable electronics to automobiles and even entire power plants.

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