The Nation | Blog | Editor's Cut | Sweet Victory: NYC Makes Way for Hybrids | Katrina vanden Heuvel: "Frustrated by exorbitant gas prices, Kwame Corsi, a taxi driver from the Bronx, had been waiting years for the chance to drive a hybrid car. In New York, where 93 percent of the city's cabs are Crown Victorias (large Ford models that guzzle a gallon every twelve miles), drivers like Corsi often pay up to $100 dollars a day on fuel. Up until last week, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission had refused to grant medallions for hybrid taxis.

Now, thanks to the City Council's unanimous decision to approve the 'Clean Air Taxis Act,' Corsi will get his wish and New Yorkers will literally breathe easier."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Verified Voting Hearings in Richmond: "Virginia Verified Voting has sent out an alert about an upcoming meeting of the 'Joint Subcommittee Studying the Voting Equipment Certification Process' on Tuesday, July 19.  VaVV lists the subcommittee members here.  Their alert reads:

Virginia is holding hearings to consider requiring voter-verified paper audit trails for voting equipment. Many Virginia jurisdictions have purchased paperless electronic voting machines, and others are considering doing so.

Digital voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail are subject to programming errors and possible fraud, with no ability for meaningful audits or recounts."

Now, let's remember something from Schneier on Security:

Two programmers can become a lone programmer, says Hursti, who has figured out a way to control the entire central tabulator by way of a single memory card swap, and also how to make tampered polling place tapes match tampered central tabulator results. This more complex approach is untested, but based on testing performed May 26, Hursti says he has absolutely no reason to believe it wouldn't work.

Three memory card tests demonstrated successful manipulation of election results, and showed that 1990 and 2002 FEC-required safeguards are being violated in the Diebold version 1.94 opti-scan system.

Emphasis mine.

(Via Democracy for Virginia.)

AlterNet: Is Rove Going Down?: "According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame being Joe Wilson's wife, and her involvement in his being sent on the Niger/yellowcake mission. If it can be proven that such a meeting occurred, then Rove will be in deep trouble -- especially if it is established that Rove made three phone calls leaking the info about Plame and her CIA gig? one to  Matt Cooper, one to  Walter Pincus, and one to Robert Novak.

Other than intent, the other big legal question raised was: will Rove be able to get away with claiming that he did not know Plame was an undercover agent?

We all know what happened after Rove placed those calls. The question is, what will happen now? "

...

"Today's press gaggle took place aboard Air Force One on the way to Scotland. Now, given that Rove may or may not be the subject of a federal investigation, one would think that our intrepid White House reporters might, you know, ask the White House spokesman about that."

(Via AlterNet.)

LewRockwell.com Blog: RE: The Garrison State: "Lew, if the CSIS guy who spoke to Alan Bock is right and these bombings are the work of al-Qaeda types who cut their teeth bombing US Army and Marine Corps convoys in Iraq, that will take nearly all the air out of any arguments Tony Blair can make about Europe being more secure as a result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq."

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US army denies medic abuse claims: "US army medics have not been involved in the widespread abuse of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, an internal military review has found.

About 1,000 US medical personnel were interviewed for the study, of whom 32 said they had seen prisoner abuse.

The study followed claims in the medical journal The Lancet that some army doctors had aided abusive guards. Rights group Amnesty International said the study - which did not involve the Red Cross or detainees - was flawed."

(Via BBC News.)

Salon.com Politics: "It's a coincidence -- an accident of the automated process that randomly assigns cases to judge -- but it underscores the importance of the fight over judicial nominees: When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit takes up the question of the rights of foreign nationals being held at Guantánamo Bay, two of the three judges who decide the case will be just-confirmed nominees of George W. Bush."

(Via Salon.)

Politics News Article | Reuters.com: "A state senator said on Wednesday a federal probe into the California National Guard may hamper his own investigation into allegations that the Guard spied on anti-war protesters.

'I fear that what may occur here is that the federal authorities, if they find damning evidence of the Guard acting outside the law, may very well take possession of that material and take it out of the state of California depriving us of any access to that information,' said state Sen. Joe Dunn.

'If that's what's happening, it is a cover up, plain and simple and that's what we want to prevent.'"

(Via Reuters.)

BBC NEWS | Business | G8 statements delayed to Friday: "World leaders at the G8 summit have put back all announcements until Friday after a series of deadly blasts in London temporarily disrupted talks.

The world leaders paused to condemn what they called 'an attack on civilised peoples everywhere'."

(Via BBC News.)

U.S. Raises Threat Level for Mass Transit - New York Times: "Government and transit officials in the United States were intensifying security today, especially around mass transit systems, in response to the series of deadly explosions during the morning rush in London.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a midday news conference in Washington that the terror alert level for mass transit systems was being raised to orange, the second-highest level on the five-level scale."

(Via NY Times.)

BBC SPORT | IOC sympathy over London blasts: "Olympic chiefs have offered sympathy to Tony Blair and Mayor Ken Livingstone over terrorist attacks in London. The International Olympic Committee said the blasts would not affect the decision, made on Wednesday, to award the 2012 Games to London."

(Via BBC News.)

PressEsc - G8 debt drop “unlikely” to help – Stanford research: "In June finance ministers of the Group of 8, the world's wealthiest industrialized nations, agreed to cancel at least $40 billion in debt owed by the world's poorest nations, many of them in Africa, but in research funded by the National Science Foundation and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University associate professor Peter Henry and economist Serkan Arslanalp of the International Monetary Fund analyzed the tradeoffs and demonstrated that debt relief may not be the most efficient way to help these very poor nations.

'The good news is that the G8 announcement focuses attention on the economic problems of the highly indebted poor countries, but you have to understand the tradeoffs,' Henry said. 'Debt forgiveness isn't free.'"

(Via PressEsc.)

Attacks on London Transit System: "On 7 July 2005, a series of roughly simultaneous bombings occurred on the London public transport system. Underground trains and buses were the targets of the attacks. At least four explosions have been confirmed by UK authorities.

Sequence of events:

• 8:52 AM GMT Explosion on train leaving Liverpool Station
• 8:56 AM GMT Explosion on train between King's Cross and Russell Square stations
• 9:17 AM GMT Explosion at Edgeware Road Station
• 9:47 AM GMT Explosion on Number 30 Bus at Upper Woburn Square
"

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)