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05.19 How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means For Our Kids' Future 05.19 As Schools Crumble: Quiet Call for Revolution in Philly Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Health Care & Environment
05.21 Rapid Climate Changes Turn North Woods into Moose Graveyard 05.20 Collateral Damage in the Marcellus Shale 05.18 Apple to Use Only Green Power for Main Data Center 05.18 New law makes Vermont the first state to ban fracking 05.18 Department of Energy Pretends that Low Levels of Radiation Are Safe 05.17 Only biofuels will cut plane emissions 05.17 Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find 05.15 Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit 05.15 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water 05.14 German Government to Oppose Fracking 05.11 Petition calls on Brazilian president to veto 'catastrophic' forest code 05.11 Bans on School Junk Food Pay Off in California 05.11 When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed 05.10 Game Over for the Climate 05.10 Pollution: the great leveller 05.10 New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children 05.10 Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat Ref. High health-care costs: It’s all in the pricing - graphic Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here) Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries “News” Media
05.20 Corporate Media: Dan Rather on Real Time with Bill Maher [video] Daily The Daily Howler Justice Matters
05.17 Federal court enjoins NDAA 05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional? 05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED 05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent US Politics, Policy & Culture
05.21 The Rise of the New Economy Movement 05.21 Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrong 05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage 05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars 05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage 05.16 If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information? [video] 05.15 IMAGE: It doesn't have to be true, just credible... 05.15 WEDDING BELLS 05.15 Memo to Mitt: Time to Fess Up on Bullying 05.14 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.” 05.14 Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane 05.11 Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side 05.11 Fixable Error, New Insight, and Social Security 05.10 Ballot Access 05.10 Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom High Crimes?
Economics, Crony Capitalism
05.21 Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis 05.21 MANIPULATIONS: FACEBOOK is a fiat stock, its valuation is no different than fiat money... 05.21 Obama pledges tough enforcement of Wall Street reforms 05.18 Barack Obama tells EU: boost growth now or face a global crisis 05.18 Bank runs intensifying in the Euro zone 05.18 The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Obama on JPMorgan 05.17 Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD Documentary) 05.17 Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders 05.17 Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders 05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video] 05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business 05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina 05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis 05.14 Why We Regulate 05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts 05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks 05.11 Wall Street’s immunity 05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform 05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream 05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors 05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply Ref. Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders Ref. Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD Documentary) Ref. We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income International
05.17 South Sudan slides towards destitution amid border conflict with Sudan 05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone 05.14 Noam Chomsky on: 05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World 05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery 05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death 05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same 05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre 05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam 05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest 05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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FINALLY:Conyers Seeks Probe of Bush Crimes7 January 2009In one of the first acts of the 111th Congress, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers proposed legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the “broad range” of policies pursued by the Bush administration “under claims of unreviewable war powers,” including torture of detainees and warrantless wiretaps. Conyers’s proposal for a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties also signals that Congress will devote significant time this year to investigating the Bush administration’s most controversial actions with an eye to rolling back its expansion of executive power. Many civil liberties and human rights groups feared that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Barack Obama’s administration would duck any sustained inquiry into wrongdoing by George W. Bush and his subordinates, to avoid angering Republicans. While Conyers’s plan falls short of the criminal probe that civil rights groups have sought, neither would it prevent a criminal investigation by Obama’s Justice Department if the new administration moves in that direction, said two aides on Obama’s transition team who spoke on condition of anonymity. Obama has been ambivalent about how to proceed regarding wrongdoing by the Bush administration. He said during the campaign that willful criminality should be punished because “nobody is above the law,” but also expressed concern that an investigation might get bogged down in recriminations and could be viewed by Republicans as “a partisan witch hunt.” Obama also has suggested he might support some form of truth commission as a way of ascertaining the facts, which would be in line with Conyers’s plan. The proposed blue-ribbon panel would consist of nine members, with no more than five from the same political party. Appointed by the President and congressional leaders, the panel would have a budget of about $3 million and subpoena power to compel testimony from high-level members of the Bush administration. The panel would file an initial report to the President and Congress within one year and a final report six months later. The report would include “any recommendations the Commission considers appropriate.” lt is unclear if criminal prosecution could be one of the recommendations of the panel. Mukasey's Stand Last year, amid disclosures about White House approval of brutal interrogation tactics used against “war on terror” detainees, Conyers called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether these actions constituted war crimes. But Mukasey didn’t act. In a roundtable discussion with reporters on Dec. 3, Mukasey revealed his thinking, arguing that there is no legal basis to prosecute current and former administration officials for authorizing torture and warrantless domestic surveillance because those decisions were made in the context of a presidential interest in protecting national security. "There is absolutely no evidence that anybody who rendered a legal opinion, either with respect to surveillance or with respect to interrogation policies, did so for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful,” Mukasey said. Regarding Justice Department legal opinions sanctioning these actions, Mukasey said he feared that second-guessing of those opinions would send “the message ... that if you come up with an answer that is not considered desirable in the future you might face prosecution, and that creates an incentive not to give an honest answer but to give an answer that may be acceptable in the future.” The war-crimes issue surfaced again when Vice President Dick Cheney gave media interviews last month in which he talked unapologetically about his role in approving harsh interrogation tactics, including the simulated drowning of waterboarding which is widely regarded as torture. Conyers’s proposed legislation was introduced on the same day that the Senate Judiciary Committee gave reporters three previously unreleased Justice Department legal opinions pertaining to Bush’s authority to declare war with Iraq. The legal opinions were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo, former Justice Department attorneys who also drafted the infamous August 2002 “Torture Memo” that authorized CIA interrogators to waterboard high-level prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has spent the past four years investigating the genesis of that memo, specifically whether Bybee and Yoo provided the White House with poor legal advice. In Bybee’s newly released Oct. 23, 2002, 47-page opinion, he stakes out broad war-making powers for Bush, claiming the President "possesses constitutional authority for ordering the use of force against Iraq to protect our national interests.” The memo was drafted about two weeks after Congress approved a resolution authorizing Bush to "use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” In the memo, Bybee reaffirmed an earlier opinion that Bush possessed the necessary war-making powers regardless of what Congress did. "This memorandum confirms our prior advice to you regarding the scope of the President's authority. We conclude that the President possesses constitutional authority for ordering the use of force against Iraq to protect our national interests," Bybee's memo said. “This independent authority is supplemented by congressional authorization in the form of the [1991] Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution ..., which supports the use of force to secure lraq' s compliance with its international obligations following the liberation of Kuwait, and the [2001] Authorization for Use of Military Force ..., which supports military action against Iraq if the President determines Iraq provided assistance to the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "In addition, using force against Iraq would be consistent with international law, because it would be authorized by the United Nations Security Council, or would be justified as anticipatory self-defense." As it turned out, the UN Security Council did not approve military action against Iraq, forcing Bush to assemble an ad hoc multinational force that he called the "coalition of the willing." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan later acknowledged that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law. There also has been no credible evidence indicating that Iraq provided any assistance to the 9/11 hijackers. Another newly released legal opinion, written by Bybee’s successor, Jack Goldsmith, authorized Iraqi prisoners be moved to other countries to be interrogated — a practice known as rendition. The existence of the three new legal opinions were first reported Tuesday by McClatchy Newspapers, which added that “Yoo supplements those arguments [on presidential powers] in two other memos dated Nov. 8, 2002 and Dec. 7, 2002.” Conyers’s legislation for the blue-ribbon commission was co-sponsored by Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters, Jerrold Nadler, Linda Sanchez, Bill Delahunt, Luis Gutierrez, Bobby Scott and Steve Cohen. Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org. This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author. Copyright © 2009 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on January 8, 2009. |
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