Think Progress

New Year’s Day ball drop goes green.

The crystal ball that glides down atop Times Square in New York City at the stroke of midnight tonight will be more energy efficient than previous New Year’s ball drops. Event organizers are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the event by going green:

The new 6ft ball, weighing about 1,100lbs, is covered with 9,576 light-emitting diodes that use the same amount of electricity as 10 toasters. The LEDs are more than twice as bright as the previous bulbs and are capable of creating a palette of 16 million colors.

Wicker named as Lott’s Senate replacement.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour named Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) as Trent Lott’s replacement in the Senate, who resigned recently and is expected to become a lobbyist. “Wicker’s appointment is only temporary — he will have to run for reelection in November 2008,” but Barbour’s plan to hold the election in November 2008 may violate Mississippi election law, which requires a special election within 90 days of Lott’s retirement.

FEMA’s Katrina recovery chief retiring this week.

Gil Jamieson, who for the past two years has overseen the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, announced recently in an internal agency memo that he will retire on Thursday. Recovery efforts under Jamieson have been “widely criticized by local residents and officials who complain that FEMA has created a maze of red tape with its interpretation of laws governing disaster aid.” Soon after Katrina, Jamieson and other top FEMA officials countermanded “a directive” by the FEMA official then-in charge of streamlining the flow of disaster aid “that would have cut through the red tape and expedited a staggering 1,029 rebuilding projects and $5.3 billion.”

899:

The number of American soldiers who died in Iraq during 2007. Despite a dramatic drop in violence during the latter part of the year, 2007 was still “the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion.”

Huckabee would criminalize abortion and punish doctors.

Also during his Meet The Press appearance today, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said that as President he would seek to “find some way to sanction” doctors “who took money to provide abortions to women if he succeeded in outlawing the procedure.” “I don’t know that you’d put him in prison,” added Huckabee. He said that he would “not support penalizing women who sought abortions even if they were outlawed” because he considers a woman who seeks an abortion to be “a victim, not a criminal.”

UPDATE: A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization found that criminalization is ineffective in lowering abortions, and that the procedure is most “dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely.”

U.S. seen internationally as an ‘Endemic Surveillance Society.’

In the recently released annual survey of worldwide privacy rights by Privacy International and EPIC, the United States has been downgraded from “Extensive Surveillance Society” to “Endemic Surveillance Society.” As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is “the worst possible category there is for privacy protections, the category also occupied by countries such as China, Russia, Singapore and Malaysia.” In general, “the 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards.”

Bhutto’s son to lead party.

The Financial Times reports that “Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal, a 19 year old student at Oxford University, will succeed the slain opposition leader as chairperson of Pakistan’s largest party.” In the meantime, Bilawal leaves the “running of the party to his father, Asif Ali Zardari, named a co-chairperson, while he finished his studies.” Bilawal adds:

“The chairmanship of the party is a position often occupied by martyrs and we do not know how long my father will be able to keep this position,” he said. “When I return I promise to lead the party as my mother wanted me to.”

More than 40 killed in violence following Bhutto’s death.

In the days since former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, “nationwide rioting” has “brought life in Pakistan to a standstill.” Yesterday, as “the death toll from the violence climbed above 40,” government officials began “to consider delaying next month’s elections.” Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis writes: “As violence escalates, a temporary postponement of the elections might be best not just for stability but also for the sake of Pakistan’s democratic process.”

CIA tapes were destroyed to ‘save image.’

The New York Times reports that the CIA’s “every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived — by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.” The Times adds:

By late 2002, interrogators were recycling videotapes, preserving only two days of tapes before recording over them, one C.I.A. officer said. Finally, senior agency officials decided that written summaries of prisoners’ answers would suffice.

Still, that decision left hundreds of hours of videotape of the two Qaeda figures locked in an overseas safe.

Clandestine service officers who had overseen the interrogations began pushing hard to destroy the tapes. But George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, was wary, in part because the agency’s top lawyer, Scott W. Muller, advised against it, current and former officials said.

Yet agency officials decided to float the idea of eliminating the tapes on Capitol Hill, hoping for political cover. In February 2003, Mr. Muller told members of the House and Senate oversight committees about the C.I.A’s interest in destroying the tapes for security reasons.

The tapes recorded a program “so closely guarded that President Bush himself had agreed with intelligence officials’ advice that he not be told the locations of the secret C.I.A. prisons.”

Ron Paul rips Fox News as ‘propangadists for war.’

Fox News will reportedly exclude Ron Paul from an upcoming forum of Republican candidates to be broadcast on January 6, 2008. The Boston Globe’s James Pindell reports Paul’s response:

Ron Paul said the decision to exclude him from a debate on Fox News Sunday the weekend before the New Hampshire Primary is proof that the network “is scared” of him.

“They are scared of me and don’t want my message to get out, but it will,” Paul said in an interview at a diner here. “They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative.”

‘I am legend.’

– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), 12/28/07

Bush signs SCHIP extension.

“President Bush on Saturday signed legislation that extends a popular children’s health insurance program after twice vetoing attempts to expand it,” AP reports. “The extension of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is expected to provide states with enough money to cover those enrolled through March 2009.”

Rate of suicide bombs rises in Iraq.

Figures supplied at Gen. David Petraeus’s year-end briefing to journalists “showed a slight rise in suicide car and vest bombs since October.” Petraeus also emphasized that recent security gains in Iraq are “reversible.” “Although the security situation has improved this year, U.S. commanders have been careful not to declare victory after years in which their statements were often seen as overly optimistic,” Reuters adds.

Former Guantanamo inmate set free.

Australian David Hicks, “the first person convicted at an American war crimes trial since World War II was freed from prison on Saturday, after completing his U.S. imposed sentence.” Hicks spent five years in detention at Guantanamo Bay, followed by a nine month sentence in prison. “He was told to remain silent about any alleged abuse he suffered while in custody.”

Bush to veto defense authorization bill.

The White House announced today that President Bush intends to veto a major defense authorization bill, “citing concerns over language that it claims could endanger Iraqi assets held in U.S. banks“:

The President intends to veto H.R. 1585, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (“NDAA”). One provision in the bill – section 1083 – would significantly amend current law (the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act) in ways that would imperil Iraqi assets held in the United States, including reconstruction and central bank funds. If enacted, Section 1083 would permit plaintiffs’ lawyers immediately to freeze Iraqi funds and would expose Iraq to massive liability in lawsuits concerning the misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein regime.

The new democratic government of Iraq, during this crucial period of reconstruction, cannot afford to have its funds entangled in such lawsuits in the United States. Once in place, the restrictions on Iraq’s funds that could result from the bill could take months to lift, and thus Section 1083 cannot become law even for a short period of time.

The bill also contains a 3.5 percent military pay raise. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have condemned Bush’s threat, saying Bush “should have raised its objections earlier” and is “bowing to the demands of the Iraqi government.” More on the legislation HERE.