Salon.com News | Return of the body counts: "With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam?"

(Via AlterNet.)

NASA Chief to Oust 20: "Several sources spoke of a corps of younger scientists and engineers, including Griffin, who had been groomed in the 1970s and 1980s as NASA's next generation of leaders only to be shoved aside during the past 15 years. They said Griffin hopes to bring them back.

'The people around him will be quite outstanding,' one source said. 'The philosophy is that good people attract outstanding people. This is going to be a very high-intensity environment, and NASA needs experienced, outstanding people.'"

(Via Washington Post.)

Salon.com Politics: "Republicans opted to drastically cut back on what had already been dwindling funds dedicated to public radio and television.

According to the Washington Post's page 1 story today, 'A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as 'Sesame Street,' 'Reading Rainbow,' 'Arthur' and 'Postcards From Buster.''

Even more dramatic was this move:

'In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.'"

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Papers Reach Iraq Boiling Point: "Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.

While still refusing to use the 'W' word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is, 'withdrawal' -- some at least are finally using the 'L' word, for lies."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Pentagon's Manpower Crisis: "Military recruiting numbers are deep into the Porta-Potty. The all-volunteer military has been run into the ground -- and now it's broken."

...

"They were short last month by a whopping 42 percent. Let's break that percentage down. For April, the active-duty Army was short of its target of 6,600 by 3,379. Think about that. 3,379 short. It's not like we need millions of bodies here. Just 3,379. We are at war, we have a population of over 290 million people, and we can't get 3,379 people to join the fight? Wow.

We would have an easier time convincing parents to send their kids to the Neverland ranch for a sleepover party."

(Via AlterNet.)

LewRockwell.com Blog: Alarming News Campaign: "It's always interesting to see what's trumpeted by our state-compliant media. For a long time, the military has had trouble recuiting kids to kill and be killed in Iraq, even testosterone-addled teenagers. The reserves and the national guard have been even less successful. Such news was suppressed outside of alternative sources. FOX, as usual, was a policeman on the matter. Now the whole media are talking about the shortfall. The reason: softening us up for the immoral and unconstitutional draft."

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

The Shout: "The opinion is not explicit that the PGP evidence was used to show criminal intent or consciousness of guilt, but I think that is fairly implied, especially since the court is not clear or specific about the relevance of the PGP evidence to the problem of the missing child porn photos. Police did not find encrypted files on the defendant's machine, or evidence that the illegal pictures were encrypted or erased. The opinion references the defendant's 'encrypting capability' in the context of other evidence he expected the police to raid him, which could be read either as consciousness of guilt, or as reasn to believe he disposed of the photos. And the victim's testimony that defendant took digital photos of her is not corroborated by the encryption technology in the strict sens of that word. So there is reason to believe that the court drew a broad negative inference from the mere presence of encryption technologies, and this is the reason for concern.

Perhaps more worrisome isn't what this opinion says or doesn't say, but how it could be used by courts looking at this issue in the future. This is why its important for appellate courts to be more explicit about exactly what they are ruling. "

So while nobody likes kiddie-porn freaks, we can't let law enforcement use these indefensible cases to subvert the law to take away everyone's rights.

(Via Schneier on Security.)

Backscatter X-Ray Technology: "The TSA has recently announced a proposal to use these machines to screen airport passengers.

I'm not impressed with this security trade-off. Yes, backscatter X-ray machines might be able to detect things that conventional screening might miss. But I already think we're spending too much effort screening airplane passengers at the expense of screening luggage and airport employees...to say nothing of the money we should be spending on non-airport security.

On the other side, these machines are expensive and the technology is incredibly intrusive. I don't think that people should be subjected to strip searches before they board airplanes. And I believe that most people would be appalled by the prospect of security screeners seeing them naked."

(Via Schneier on Security.)

Salon.com News | U.N. nuke alert: "Electronic drawings that give comprehensive details of how to build and test equipment essential for making nuclear bombs have vanished and could be for sale on the international black market, according to U.N. investigators. The blueprints, running to hundreds of pages, show how to make centrifuges for enriching uranium. In addition, the investigators have been unable to trace key components for uranium centrifuge rigs and fear that drawings for a nuclear warhead have been secreted away and could be for sale."

(Via Salon.)

LewRockwell.com Blog: Taser Spectacle: "I was able to watch the taser spectacle that Lew had shown us a few days ago. There are a number of things that strike me about this whole sorry episode.

First, the officer obviously is acting according to his training, which is done military style. (More proof of the militarization of the police in this country.) In the past, the 'poorly-trained' officer would have waited or just would have started writing the ticket while the woman was talking."

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

“Raising hell on Internet” credited with raising profile of Downing Street Memo.: "Bloggers have been credited by as raising the level of awareness of the Downing Street Memo to sufficient critical mass that journalism in the US can no longer ignore it, as had been mainstream media practice before Monday."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Al Franken catches Bill O'Reilly doing a...: "So much O'Reilly, so little time. This one is particularly egregious. The Spark Notes summary: O’Reilly took video from Senator Joe Biden’s Sunday appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, edited it to misrepresent what Biden said, then advocated his now edited-out position (all the while criticizing him)"

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Bush Hyping Patriot Act Claims: "There’s no doubt that information-sharing was extremely influential in leading to the FBI’s apprehension of Faris, but whether the Patriot Act allowed for greater information sharing is doubtful. Faris’s capture has been politicized before. In June 2004, John Ashcroft took to the microphone in Columbus, Ohio, during the middle of a heated presidential election to announce the ‘capture’ of Faris, who was already in jail serving a 20-year sentence. Many read the Bush administration’s actions on the Faris capture as being a political act to push for the renewal of the Patriot Act, and they claim the Act is not as influential as Bush would lead us to believe.

The Columbus Dispatch investigated this question and found some skepticism regarding Bush’s claim. Nancy Luque, a prominent defense attorney in Washington, was quoted as saying, ‘Ashcroft is using this [capture of Faris] as a paid political announcement for the Patriot Act when I see nothing here that required its use. The information-sharing is better, but I doubt that is a result of the Patriot Act, but more to do with 9/11.’"

(Via Think Progress.)

When Marine recruiters go way beyond the call: "Just a few tests. And so many free opportunities, the recruiters told him.

He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an 'apathy discharge' if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to.

At about 3:30 in the morning, Alex was awakened in the motel and fed a little something. Twelve hours later, without further sleep or food, he had taken a battery of tests and signed a lot of papers he hadn't gotten a chance to read. 'Just formalities,' he was told. 'Sign here. And here. Nothing to worry about.'"

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "Our sources tell us that a photo-op took place today with Howard Dean and Senator Harry Reid in Reid’s private office (these are usually secreted away in the Capitol Building itself, near the Senate floor). FOX News's Brian Wilson reportedly spent the photo op angrily interrupting reporters and shouting questions out of turn. After an initial swarm, reporters squeezed out the door. FOX's Brian Wilson was apparently wearing no credential of any kind (that wasn’t a red flag to anyone) and behaving 'bizarrely angry' so the Washington Post's Mark Leibovich asked who he was."

(Via AMERICAblog.)

The Pimping of the President: "Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist have been caught billing clients for face time with George W. Bush."

(Via AlterNet.)

Think Progress » Bush’s Downing Street Answer Raises More Questions: "President Bush, for his part, never rejects the idea that the intelligence was being fixed around his policy of attacking Iraq. (Wouldn’t that be the most damaging claim you’d want to rebut?) Instead, Bush takes the same tact as Blair and emphasized that he hadn’t gone to the U.N. at the time the memo was written. Bush’s argument appears to be that, because the administration had not yet gone to the U.N., there’s no way he could have already decided to attack Iraq."

(Via NervousFishblog.)

Salon.com | The I-word: "June 9, 2005  |  Mark Tushnet, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Ralph Nader wrote last week that 'mainstream political discourse' should include a discussion of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Others have made similar observations. Economist Brad DeLong, for example, routinely ends many of his blog posts with 'Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Impeach them now.' The so-called Downing Street memo is the latest occasion for their outrage.

The memo was written in 2002 as the Bush administration was building its case for attacking Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism. According to the memo, the head of the British foreign intelligence service reported on 'his recent talks in Washington,' informing the leaders of Tony Blair's foreign policy team that 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed' around the policy of removing Saddam Hussein."

(Via Salon.)

Do We Really Need the USA Patriot Act?: "By now it should be clear that the Bush administration cannot be trusted to tell the truth about its intentions or its actions. Sad to say, this regime can be trusted all too often to abuse both power and confidentiality. Arbitrary arrest. Lengthy detention without charges. Physical and mental abuse amounting to torture and leading to death. Attempts to punish for thought or association as well as action. Doctored reports. Systematic withholding of information and documents. These are the hallmarks of the Bush administration. They are also symptomatic of a misuse of power that the US Constitution, unlike the USA Patriot Act, was devised to prevent.

Senate Democrats like Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, John Rockefeller of West Virginia and Diane Feinstein of California are right. We should be thinking in terms of curtailing, not extending or expanding the scope of a hugely controversial act never responsibly debated in the first place.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni confessed that delays inherent in the requirement for judicial sanction have led to 'no specific instance' of harm to the national security."

(Via WhirledView.)

U.S. Medical Privacy Law Gutted: "In the U.S., medical privacy is largely governed by a 1996 law called HIPAA. Among many other provisions, HIPAA regulates the privacy and security surrounding electronic medical records. HIPAA specifies civil penalties against companies that don't comply with the regulations, as well as criminal penalties against individuals and corporations who knowingly steal or misuse patient data.

The civil penalties have long been viewed as irrelevant by the health care industry. Now the criminal penalties have been gutted:

An authoritative new ruling by the Justice Department sharply limits the government's ability to prosecute people for criminal violations of the law that protects the privacy of medical records."

(Via Schneier on Security.)

Secrecy News for 06/06/05: HPSCI CALLS FOR PROSECUTION OF LEAKS : "The Department of Justice should 'place a higher priority on investigating and prosecuting illegal disclosures of classified information,' the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) said in its new report on the 2006 Intelligence Authorization Act.

'Hundreds of 'leaks' have been reported to the Department over the past ten years, without a single indictment or prosecution,' the House Committee complained, echoing similar findings in the report of the Silberman-Robb WMD Commission.

The Committee, which opposed the 9-11 Commission's recommendation to reduce unnecessary secrecy by disclosing the size of the intelligence budget, was silent on overclassification. But it cited inter-agency information sharing as an issue requiring focused attention. 'Information 'ownership' must be a concept of the past, not the future.'"

(Via Secrecy News.)

Washington Wavers on ElBaradei [3]: "Two U.S. officials tell Dafna Linzer at the Washington Post the Bush Administration will drop efforts to deny Mohamed ElBaradei a third term as IAEA Director-General:

‘We’re willing to lift our objections under certain conditions,’ one of the officials said.
‘Namely, get tougher on Iran.’"

...

"The conditions appear to be spin, spun by the Bush Administration to reduce the appearance of being no-talent ass-clowns."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Americans: We're safer going with the Dems : "The full results of the latest Washington Post/ABC news poll are in, with more bad news for President Bush. In addition to finding that Bush's approval rating remains at a career low and that a majority of Americans think he's not paying attention to issues that are important to them, the results show that 52 percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq has not made the U.S. safer. The Post points out that this finding marks 'the first time a majority of Americans disagreed with the central notion Bush has offered to build support for war: that the fight there will make Americans safer from terrorists at home.'"

(Via Salon.)

Poll Finds Dimmer View of Iraq War: "For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While the focus in Washington has shifted from the Iraq conflict to Social Security and other domestic matters, the survey found that Americans continue to rank Iraq second only to the economy in importance -- and that many are losing patience with the enterprise."

You'd think they'd have a link to it or something...

(Via Washington Post.)

Metro Spending Often Veers From Core Transit Mission: "Even as Metro officials complain that tight finances are crippling their ability to run the Washington area's subways and buses, they continue to pour millions into programs that have little to do with transporting passengers."

Listed in the article are various charges for things that look like massive wastes of money. For the most part they are; but that isn't the problem. Metro doesn't have enough good management to keep itself operational, and is hemorrhaging money to compensate.

(Via Washington Post.)

Guantanamo Bay Prison Could Close, Bush Hints: "President Bush opened the door for the first time yesterday to the idea of shutting down the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility that has become a symbol of excess for critics of the United States around the world since it was opened after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

While Bush continued to defend the treatment of prisoners at the camp, he pointedly did not rule out suggestions by two leading Democrats that the facility be closed in an effort to repair the tarnished U.S. image abroad. 'We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America,' Bush told Fox News Channel when asked about the prospect. 'What we don't want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us.'

The president's comments surprised many in the administration and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld seemed to shoot down the notion, telling reporters flying with him to Europe that he was unaware of any consideration being given to shutting down Guantanamo Bay. "

(Via Washington Post.)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Close Camp Delta: "Closing the detention center at Guanatanmo Bay would not only show the world the U.S.'s commitment to the rule of law, it is also in our security interests."

(Via AlterNet.)

The Nation | Blog | Editor's Cut | Republicans Act Like Addicts | Katrina vanden Heuvel: "I'm beginning to grow concerned for the Republicans. They can't stay on message, they can't pass any reforms, they can't support their President, they can't whip count and they can't get along. They are starting to act like, well, Democrats.

The seven moderate Republicans who compromised on the filibuster were savaged first as traitors, then as dupes. There have been threats of reprisals and primary challenges. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been mockingly nicknamed 'The Senator from New York.' An Anybody-But-McCain movement looks to be gaining momentum within the party's base.

The relationship between Congressional Republicans and the White House doesn't look much healthier. Congress has refused to deal with Bush's privatization reforms. A teary-eyed Senator George Voinovich wouldn't switch his vote on John Bolton, delaying a vote. And despite the President's strong support for the zygote, Congressional Republicans defied his veto threat and voted in significant numbers to pass funding for stem cell research."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Jun 8, 2005: Administration lies about climate change: "Don't miss this New York Times story about how a top administration official — previously a top lobbyist for the oil industry — rewrote sections of a White House report on climate change to create doubts about the scientific conclusions on global warming.

The science on global warming is clear, and editing a scientific report (paid for by taxpayers) in order to change its conclusions is lying, plain and simple."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

Classical Values :: Intolerance is inhumane!: "At any rate, via InstaPundit, I see that James Dobson is most annoyed about Spongebob Squarepants' gay tolerance. Apparently, he thinks that tolerance is synonymous with promotion of homosexuality. I'm not quite sure I follow the logic there, because tolerance is not defined. It would seem to me that tolerance means tolerance not only of homosexuals (who of course practice homosexuality by definition), but it might also mean tolerance of whatever it is that 'promotion' means. Religious tolerance means more than tolerating religion; it means tolerating the promotion of religion. Tolerance is of course a two way street, and it always struck me that if promotion is tolerated, then opposition to promotion must also be tolerated. Otherwise, promotion becomes intolerant. But if intolerance is promoted, it can eventually cancel the tolerance which allows it in the first place.

Anyway, it's convoluted as hell, but I'm against intolerance of any sort, and I think James Dobson really ought to choose his targets more carefully. In any event, preaching tolerance is not the same as promoting homosexuality because tolerance -- even tolerance of promotion -- is not promotion."

(Via Technorati.)

Kaine Campaign Invests in National Dem Netroots Outreach: "It gets better and better!  The Kaine campaign's new It Stops in Virginia campaign has gone national, with blogads on some of the major Democratic national blogs.

Looks like the Kaine campaign has covered the big guns in the national grassroots Democratic blogosphere, with buys on DailyKos, Eschaton, and MyDD as far as I've seen this morning.   (If you see the ads anywhere else, please include the link in comments!)

A weeklong ad buy on these three blogs would cost the Kaine campaign less than $1,000, but reaches hundreds of thousands of viewers per day - viewers that according to Blogads surveys are likely to have volunteered for campaigns in 2004, have an average annual income over $75K, and a median age of 40.  A great likely donor base, especially with a campaign appeal that will fire up national Democrats eager to fight back against misleading Republican attack ads."

(Via Democracy for Virginia.)

The White Supremacy Whitewash: "The Unabomber and the Oklahoma City bombing proved that domestic terrorism can be just as devastating as threats from abroad. Unfortunately, experts who study hate crimes are becoming increasingly concerned about what they see to be an increase in hate-related incidents here at home, particularly ‘toward gay people and immigrants, as well as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.’"

Without quoting the entire post:

1. Domestic hate groups are up, a lot.
2. White supremacist groups are growing and splintering. — Expect more Timothy McVeighs.
3. And of course, the Dept of Homeland Security isn't doing shit about it. Their job is to persecute minority populations within the U.S. White supremacist groups are out of scope.

(Via Think Progress.)

mamas don't let your pilots grow up to be jewboys: "Oh, so now Republicans are blocking investigations into anti-Semitism and harrassment of Jews and other non-Christians at the Air Force Academy.    Why?  Because right-wing evangelicals are their voting base, and they'd rather tolerate some anti-Semitism than annoy their base.  But you knew that.   

We get this info from the Forward*, which my grandfather read every day from the 1920's until his death in the late 1960's.  Back then it was called the 'Jewish Daily Forward.'   A highly recommended book is 'A Bintel Brief:  Letters to the Editors of the Jewish Daily Forward.'  But I digress.  (*via Daou Report and Mark A. R. Kleiman)

Republicans won't even permit an investigation.  In the Newspeak world of today's GOP,  Rep. Duncan Hunter describes the idea of investigating possible bias and prejudice as 'a move toward one religion and against another.'   Wow.  So I guess that, by that logic, Republicans would say that integrating those bus stations in the South was 'a move toward one race and against another.'    Oh, yeah, they probably did say that."

(Via Night Light.)

Martini Republic - W Bush: the great disassembler.: "Whenever Bush says we're safer because we invaded Iraq, bear this in mind:

U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

The material, along with tons of munitions, explosives, irreplaceable artifacts and billions of dollars, was lost in the chaos of post-war Iraq, as too-few troops (per the inspired ideologically-driven stupidity of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) failed to secure equipment with potential WMD use, although via inspections we had a list of exactly where everything was.

Before the war, the equipment was secured and inspected regularly;  after the invasion, it was left unguarded, and Bush refused to let the inspectors back into the country to track the equipment — which is now missing."

(Via Martini Republic.)

AlterNet: Debating Guantanamo: Editor’s Note: A week ago Amnesty International accused the Bush administration of being a "leading purveyor and practitioner" of human rights violations. Since then, debate has intensified over the U.S. war on terror. On Tuesday, Bush described the Amnesty report as 'absurd.' What follows is a debate between Amnesty's William Schulz and attorney David Rivkin, who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations."

...

"WILLIAM SCHULTZ: Well, it's quite interesting that the Vice President doesn't take Amnesty seriously. The President calls us absurd. But, you know, when Amnesty International took on Saddam Hussein 20 years ago, when Donald Rumsfeld was courting him, and even in the run-up to the Iraq war; when Amnesty International was regularly quoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials about Saddam Hussein's brutality — under those circumstances, this administration didn't think we were absurd at all. When we criticize Cuba, when we criticize North Korea, when we criticize China, as we have repeatedly, this administration applauds Amnesty International. But when we criticize the United States, we are suddenly absurd. I think the administration doth protest too much.

Let me clarify one point of your introduction, though, Amy. Amnesty International has urged that the United States undertake these investigations with a high-level commission and the appointment of a special prosecutor. And we have only said that if the United States fails to do its job, then other countries who are party to the Convention Against Torture and other international instrumentalities, have a legal obligation to investigate and, if appropriate, if they find evidence, then, of course, to prosecute."

...

"So, bottom line is we are releasing people because we're humanitarian, we're compassionate, and, frankly, we have been pushed to do so for the rest of the world -- by the rest of the world. I wouldn't deduce anything from it.

But let me give you the bottom line: I would not deny, and I don't think any reasonable person would deny, that some problems have occurred. But the facts, the statistics are very simple. We have close to 70,000 detainees. 70,000 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Castro Strikes a Nerve: "In April 2005 the international community began to take a closer look at the United States justice system as its government attempted to explain and or deny the presence of admitted terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles. As news stories sprouted from even mainstream media calling for the extradition of Posada to Venezuela, a country with which the U.S. has had a longstanding extradition treaty, Washington went into a frenzy.

After some false starts concerning what it was going to do about Posada, Washington 'defended' its position by hurling barbs at Cuban President Fidel Castro about the political asylum granted to Assata Shakur by the Cuban government. President Castro retorted that Ms. Shakur had not received justice in the United States and that she, like many other political prisoners, had been persecuted and denied a fair trial.

By aiming the spotlight on the criminal justice system in the United States, President Castro exposed a tender nerve for Washington. My more than 20 years as a criminal defense lawyer and professor of criminal defense advocacy confirm the widely known assessment that every aspect of the criminal justice system is ripe for criticism and laden with hypocrisy.

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation on earth. The population of the United States comprises 5% of the world's population but its incarcerated population is equal to more than 25% of the world's prisoners."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: The Foreign Language of Choice: "The emphasis on framing and language is not a covert attempt to push women's issues that are controversial -- be it abortion or contraception -- off the progressive agenda. Quite to the contrary, it is a refusal to accept the conservative definition of the issues involved, and put forward a positive vision, based on deeply progressive values and moral perspective.

Many of the feminist organizations have come to the conclusion that the word 'choice,' and the concept of choice, is a bad idea. Deborah Tannen, who is one of the best-known linguists in the country, observed over a decade ago that the word 'choice' is taken from a consumer vocabulary -- as compared to the word 'life,' which is taken from a moral vocabulary.

Morality beats consumerism every time.

Moreover, the word 'choice' versus 'decision' is a bad idea because 'choice' is less serious a word than 'decision.' From a linguistic perspective, 'choice' was in itself a bad choice."

...

"The second reparsing that Dean did in that interview was to take up the question of unwanted pregnancies itself. No one wants unwanted pregnancies, and there's no reason why we should have them since have the means to prevent these pregnancies. A very high percentage of the unwanted pregnancies are among women and girls who have been denied sex education and contraception. And yet the right-wing has been denying sex education to students, and in many cases, even denying contraception through its abstinence-only programs. Now we also face "vigilante pharmacists" who are not just imposing their own will on these women and depriving them of their personal freedom, but also their access to much-needed contraception.

In other words, the right-wing is actually creating unwanted pregnancies."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: A Correspondent Comes Home: "It isn't an accident that, after 11 weeks, only as I'm leaving again, do I find myself able to write about what it was like to come home -- back to the United States after my latest several month stint in Iraq. Only now, with the U.S. growing ever smaller in my rearview mirror, with the strange distance that closeness to Iraq brings, do I find the needed space in which the words begin to flow.

For these last three months, I've been bound up inside, living two lives -- my body walking the streets of my home country; my heart and mind so often still wandering war-ravaged Iraq.

Even now, on a train from Philadelphia to New York on my way to catch a plane overseas, my urge is to call Iraq; to call, to be exact, my interpreter and friend, Abu Talat in Baghdad. The papers this morning reported at least four car bombs detonating in the capital; so, to say I was concerned for him would be something of an understatement."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: Start Making Sense: Make Iraq Topic #1: "At the opening dinner last night, Richard Parker, in presenting an award to John Kenneth Galbraith, read from a letter Galbraith had written to JFK in 1961: 'The right,' he wrote, 'will always criticize reasonableness as softness... When they speak of total victory they invite total annihilation. They aren't brave but suicidal. There is a curious superficial pugnacity about the American people, which, I am persuaded, does not go very deep. They applaud the noisy man but they reconsider if they think him dangerous. We must make it clear that these men are dangerous.'

It's time the Democratic Party stopped being afraid of upsetting Wall Street and Big Pharma. Drug companies will pocket $139 billion in profits as a result of the new Medicare prescription drug law alone. Can you believe passing a prescription benefit that doesn't allow the government to negotiate bulk-purchasing discounts? If you were the CEO of a private company signing off on a deal like that, you'd be fired."

(Via AlterNet.)