Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Salon.com Books | "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism": "On November 13, 2003, Moore was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court after he defied a judge's order to remove the 2.6-ton Ten Commandments monument he'd installed in the Montgomery judicial building. On the coasts, he seemed a ridiculous figure, the latest in a line of grotesque Southern anachronisms. After all, Moore is a man who, in a 2002 court decision awarding custody of three children to their allegedly abusive father over their lesbian mother, called homosexuality 'abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated,' and argued, 'The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.' He's a man who writes rhyming poetry decrying the teaching of evolution and who fought against the Alabama ballot measure to remove segregationist language from the state constitution.

To the growing Christian nationalist movement, though, Roy Moore is a martyr, cut down by secular tyranny for daring to assert God's truth."

(Via Salon.)

NSA Sweep "Waste of Time," Analyst Says

Defense Tech: NSA Sweep "Waste of Time," Analyst Says: "It'd be one thing if the NSA's massive sweep of our phone records was actually helping catch terrorists. But what if it's not working at all? A leading practitioner of the kind of analysis the NSA is supposedly performing in this surveillance program says that 'it's a waste of time, a waste of resources. And it lets the real terrorists run free.'"

(Via Schneier on Security.)

NSA Creating Massive Phone-Call Database

NSA Creating Massive Phone-Call Database: "This is important to every American, not just those with something to hide. Matthew Yglesias explains why:

It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself."

(Via Schneier on Security.)

Terrorist watch list follies, and my time in the TSA's Constitution-free zone

Terrorist watch list follies, and my time in the TSA's Constitution-free zone: "To sum up, if you run afoul of the nation's 'national security' apparatus, you're completely on your own. There are no firm rules, no case law, no real appeals processes, no normal array of Constitutional rights, no lawyers to help, and generally none of the other things that we as American citizens expect to be able to fall back on when we've been (justly or unjustly) identified by the government as wrong-doers."

(Via Schneier on Security.)

One Final GOP Rip-Off Before November

AlterNet: One Final GOP Rip-Off Before November: "hich brings me to the measure passed by the Republican Senate this week. When you're looking for loose cash these days, where better to look than Iraq and Afghanistan? And this week they went straight for it. The Senate was considering a supplemental bill to fund reconstruction in the countries we deconstructed during Bush's first term in office. The sum the White House requested: a lip-smacking $109 billion.

...

Under prior authorizations, Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds were described as 'relief and reconstruction' funds. Under the measure passed by the Senate this week, the newly authorized funds would fall under the description 'foreign operation' funds.

Here's the rub: Under law, relief and reconstruction funds must be audited by Stuart Bowen's bean counters. But Bowen has no authority over appropriations designated as foreign operations funds. Those funds are audited by the State Department inspector general."

(Via AlterNet.)

The children they gave away - Salon.com Life

The children they gave away - Salon.com Life: "It was the 1960s and Joyce was going to beauty school in Florida when she realized she was pregnant. When her mother found out, Joyce says, she was 'dumped' at a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Alabama. 'It was an old, old, old house with big rooms,' she remembers now. '[And] I had no control ... It was like being in a car wreck or something. Once you start skidding, that's it. [So] I kind of skidded through it.'

Joyce is just one of more than a million and a half women who were sent to maternity homes to surrender their children for adoption in the decades between World War II and the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. They were college freshman working their way through school with two jobs. They were tomboys, sorority girls and valedictorians. They were mothers and they were invisible."

(Via Salon.)

Mr. Goss deserves to receive the medal

Jesus' General: "You may have heard that Porter Goss resigned as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. You might also recall that his predecessor, George Tenet, was awarded the Presidential Medal for Freedom for ignoring the reports of CIA analysts who concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Certainly, Mr. Goss deserves to receive the medal as well for purging those same analysts from the agency."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Stephen Colbert: New American Hero

AlterNet: Stephen Colbert: New American Hero: "Salon's Joan Walsh points out, 'Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents' dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: 'He wasn't funny.''

On the Democratic political front, as John Aravosis wrote on AmericaBlog, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., actually stepped up to defend President Bush, saying, according to The Hill:

'I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough … He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect.'

'I'm certainly not a defender of the administration,' Hoyer reassured stunned observers, but Colbert 'crossed the line' with many jokes that were 'in bad taste.'

Criticizing Colbert for being rude would be pretty funny if it weren't so depressing. Rude? Since when has politics in this administration used the Marquis of Queensbury rules? Is Dick Cheney sweet and accommodating? When, in their march to power, has the right wing had good manners -- about abortion or gay marriage, or in the push for invading Iraq? Sure, mention decorum and one thinks immediately of Karl Rove, of Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, of Jerry Falwell blaming America's bad morals for 9/11."

(Via AlterNet.)

Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities

Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities: "Nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census report released today.

Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group. They accounted for 49 percent of the country's growth from 2004 to 2005, the report shows. And the increase in young children is largely a Hispanic story, driving 70 percent of the growth in children younger than 5. Forty-five percent of U.S. children younger than 5 are minorities.

...

William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, predicted that the United States will have 'a multicultural population that will probably be more tolerant, accommodating to other races and more able to succeed in a global economy.'"

(Via Google News.)

UK Attorney General Calls for Guantanamo to Close: " The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is set to trigger a diplomatic row between Britain and the United States by calling for Guantanamo Bay to close.

    

The decision by the government's chief legal adviser to denounce the detention centre in Cuba as 'unacceptable' will dismay the Bush administration, which has continually rejected claims that the camp breaches international laws on human rights.

    

But Goldsmith will tell a global security conference at the Royal United Services Institute this week that the camp at Guantanamo Bay must not continue. 'It is time, in my view, that it should close.' An urbane lawyer who eschews the limelight, Goldsmith is not known for shooting from the hip in such unequivocal terms; however, it is clear he has harboured grave doubts for some time over the legality of Guantanamo under international law."

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

CIA #3 Dusty Foggo Is Next to Go: "The upheaval at the CIA is unlikely to end anytime soon. Earlier today, the agency circulated an internal announcement that agency's third ranking official, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, has decided to step aside. News of Foggo's departure inevitably will be overshadowed by the Hayden nomination, but its effects will continue to resonate within the agency. As NEWSWEEK first reported, the CIA's inspector general has been investigating whether Foggo helped steer agency contracts to companies run by Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator when former San Diego congressman and ex-Navy air ace Randy (Duke) Cunningham pleaded guilty in a Congressional bribery scandal. The CIA has acknowledged that its internal watchdog is investigating whether Foggo helped steer any contracts to Wilkes, an old friend. The inspector general was looking into at least one specific contract, worth between $2 million and $3 million, which a CIA base in Germany granted to a company run by a relative of Wilkes. At the time the contract was issued, Foggo headed the CIA base's logistics office, though he did not sign the contract."

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

Nigerian Children Used in Pfizer Drug Experiments: " A panel of Nigerian medical experts has concluded that Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital.

    

That finding is detailed in a lengthy Nigerian government report that has remained unreleased for five years, despite inquiries from the children's attorneys and from the media. The Washington Post recently obtained a copy of the confidential report, which is attracting congressional interest. It was provided by a source who asked to remain anonymous because of personal safety concerns.

    

The report concludes that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to nearly 100 children and infants. Pfizer selected the patients at a field hospital in the city of Kano, where the children had been taken to be treated for an often deadly strain of meningitis. At the time, Doctors Without Borders was dispensing approved antibiotics at the hospital.

    

Pfizer's experiment was 'an illegal trial of an unregistered drug,' the Nigerian panel concluded, and a 'clear case of exploitation of the ignorant.'"

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

Spies Among Us: "The outfit stumbled in 2002, when two of its agents were assigned to follow around the county executive. Their job: to determine whether he was being tailed - not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they'd written the license-plate number of an undercover car, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now suing the county. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial neatly summed up the incident: 'So now we know: Glazed hams are safe in DeKalb County.'

    

Glazed hams aren't the only items that America's local cops are protecting from dubious threats. U.S. News has identified nearly a dozen cases in which city and county police, in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web. Unlike with Washington's warrantless domestic surveillance program, little attention has been focused on the role of state and local authorities in the war on terrorism. A U.S.News inquiry found that federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into once discredited state and local police intelligence operations. Millions more have gone into building up regional law enforcement databases to unprecedented levels. In dozens of interviews, officials across the nation have stressed that the enhanced intelligence work is vital to the nation's security, but even its biggest boosters worry about a lack of training and standards. 'This is going to be the challenge,' says Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, 'to ensure that while getting bin Laden we don't transgress over the law. We've been burned so badly in the past - we can't do that again.'"

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

Martini Republic » BushCo wants its very own Creep in charge of CIA:

"QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I’d like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use —
GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But the —
GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.
QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.
GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But does it not say probable —
GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says —

Of course, the 4th Amendment to our Constitution specifically refers to ‘probable cause’ and warrants, two requirements Hayden and Bush have repeatedly ignored:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Which telegraphs where the Bush administration is headed with this choice to head the CIA. Choosing Hayden sends a few messages. First of all, it says to critics of warrantless domestic spying,: ‘fuck all of you and the Constitution your rode in on.’"

(Via Martini Republic.)

Martini Republic » Apocalypse Now: "Apocalypse Now: Bush calls his war ‘World War III’. Ironically, a few years ago, when flogging the nation for war, that’s what he said Osama called it."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Iraq: "CBS News Poll. April 28-30, 2006. N=719 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4 (for all adults). RV = registered voters

'Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?'

	Approve	Disapprove	Unsure
	%	%	%
ALL adults	30	64	6

(Via PollingReport.com.)

Baghdad Burning: "We immediately began hearing about the Iranian revolutionary guard, and how they had formed a militia of Iraqis who had defected to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. We heard how they were already inside of the country and were helping to loot and burn everything from governmental facilities to museums. The Hakims and Badr made their debut, followed by several other clerics with their personal guard and militias, all seeping in from Iran.

Today they rule the country. Over the duration of three years, and through the use of vicious militias, assassinations and abductions, they’ve managed to install themselves firmly in the Green Zone. We constantly hear our new puppets rant and rave against Syria, against Saudi Arabia, against Turkey, even against the country they have to thank for their rise to power- America… But no one dares to talk about the role Iran is planning in the country."

(Via Baghdad Burning.)