Open Thread

Who is getting a good night's sleep: Judith Miller? Karl Rove? Matthew Cooper? Read More......

GOP Culture of Corruption engulfs Kentucky

Add Ernie Fletcher to the growing list of GOP elected officials with ethical problems swirling around. Three of his staffers, including the Deputy Chief of Staff, were indicted today:

A special grand jury indicted three of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's subordinates Wednesday, including his deputy chief of staff, on various misdemeanor charges, including criminal conspiracy and political discrimination.

Dick Murgatroyd, Fletcher's deputy chief of staff and former deputy transportation secretary, was indicted on allegations of political discrimination, criminal conspiracy and violating state employees' rights. Cory Meadows, executive director of transportation enhancement programs; and Dan Druen, a Transportation Cabinet commissioner, were also indicted on misdemeanor political discrimination and criminal conspiracy charges. Druen had previously been indicted on other misdemeanor charges related to the investigation.

Kentucky is a GOP cesspool now, too. That didn't take long. Fletcher was just elected in 2003. Read More......

While Bush denies global warming, polar bear numbers plummeting

Oh boy.

As the pack ice that is the bedrock of their existence melts because of global warming, polar bears are facing unprecedented environmental stress that will soon cause their numbers to plummet, according to a report by a panel of the world's leading experts on the species.

In a closed meeting here late last month, 40 members of the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union concluded that the imposing white carnivores -- the world's largest bear -- should now be classified as a "vulnerable" species based on a likely 30 percent decline in their worldwide population over the next 35 to 50 years. There are now 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears across the Arctic.

"The principal cause of this decline is climatic warming and its consequent negative affects on the sea ice habitat of polar bears," according to a statement released after the meeting. Scientists from five countries, including the United States, attended the meeting.

"All of the evidence is heading in the same direction, and the trend is dramatic," said Scott Schliebe, who led the Seattle meeting and is polar bear project leader in Alaska for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In a shrinking ice environment, the ability of the bears to find food, to reproduce and to survive will all be reduced."

Mr. Schliebe clarified he was speaking for himself, not the US Government. Our leader is over in Scotland this week preventing world action on global warming:

The panel's conclusions became public this week as President Bush traveled to a Group of Eight meeting in Scotland, where U.S. officials have lobbied to prevent any specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases from being included in the meeting's final communique. The United States is the only member of the G-8 that has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for reducing emissions that many scientists say are causing Earth to warm up.

Killing the polar bears off. The GOP should be proud. What a great legacy for Bush. Read More......

Judith Miller is in the pokey

First, what Atrios says.

And, it is kinda interesting that in the build up to the Iraq war she had her head up the butt of Ahmad Chalabi, who probably really is a criminal.

Now, he's the minister of Oil in Iraq and she's in jail. Go figure. Read More......

Religious right talking about the draft, and in favor of it

I think they're softening up the ground for Bush to make it easier for him to reinstate the draft. The "military expert" is one the religious right always uses, and this is published in their propaganda organ. They don't publish something like this without a reason. And when Bush's radical right buddies start pushing a draft, everyone under 40 had better watch it.

A military expert and Pentagon advisor says the United States should look at Germany if it wants to find a way to solve the long-term military recruiting problem. While President Bush and most Pentagon officials want to avoid a draft, retired Army Lt. Colonel Bob Maginnis says unless the pace of the war on terror decreases, conscription might be America's best recourse. He notes, "I have a half-brother who lives in Germany who, when he was 18, after his high school, had to provide mandatory public service -- either the military or he could go into social service. It was still the same 18-month obligation. He helped invalids in his community, and it was an organized program." While his brother chose the social service option, Maginnis points out that the Germans "fill their army with conscripts who would rather go into the army." The military advisor says unless the current pace of the war decreases, the U.S. might have to reinstate the draft, and he feels the German option would be fair to everyone.

Read More......

One more important point about Bush's bike accident

It's been pouring rain here all day. Two hours after Bush ran over the cop, the sidewalks and streets were still SOPPING wet - I'm talking 100% wet and glistening. And this idiot decided to take a bike ride when it was sopping wet out. And what happened? Big surprise. His brakes didn't work and he skidded into a cop.

The man is an idiot, or worse, an arrogant egomaniac who thinks he's the king of the world so how dare the rain stop him from a good bike ride. Of course, this time, he sent someone to the hospital because of his arrogance and his negligence. I'm glad he's being nice to the cop, but that's a bit little and a bit too late. I'm really serious about this. It says something about a man who would take his bike out on sopping wet pavement, when other people are around, and then, surprise, send someone to the hospital. He's an idiot. And, he also just made an ass, yet again, of all of us. Read More......

Open Thread

Busy day...what's up? Read More......

Miller off to jail -- Cooper got the green light from his source

Update from AP:

Miller:

A federal judge today ordered the jailing of a New York Times reporter for refusing to divulge a confidential source, but a Time magazine reporter facing possible jail time in the same case reversed course and agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity.

Judith Miller, a national security correspondent for the New York Times, told U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan that she could not break her word in order to stay out of jail. Hogan then ordered her taken into custody immediately for civil contempt of court and incarcerated in the Washington area. She is expected to serve jail time that could last as long as the grand jury continues investigating, possibly until late October.

Cooper:

Matthew Cooper, a White House correspondent for Time, avoided jail when he told U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan shortly before his appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington that his source had specifically released him from any obligation to protect the source's identity.

"I am prepared to testify," said Cooper, who wrote an article about the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

Read More......

Bush has another bicycle accident, in Scotland

What? Was the White House under attack again?

Moron. And it sounds like he really hurt the cop who he collided with. Lovely. And this man has his finger on the nuclear trigger. Read More......

Scottish photo blogging - more G8 protests, and Bobbies (mmm...)

Another day, another protest outside my hotel. This was one was, unexpectedly, rather small. Only 1,000 people, max. And they're only allowing around 5,000 to protest at Gleneeagles, the site of the summit, so I have no clue where the other 194,000 or so expected protesters have gone. Hmm... Perhaps there's a free Benny Hill festival I don't know about.

Anyway, I spent several hours trailing the protest, talking to some protesters, cops and others. So figured I'd post my latest G8 travelogue...



Even more crowds.



Protester being interviewed.



Enter, the Bobbies!



The Bobbies were trying to look intimidating.



And intimidating...



Then REALLY trying to look intimidating.



But then it hit me.

The Bobbies were kind of hot.



And even kind of cute.



I'd dare say, REALLY cute.



And some were even downright hot.



Is that a baton on your Bobby?



Bosom Bobbies (ok, not really Bobbies, but it was a pretty cute scene).



Probably not as big a Bobby fan as me.



Definitely not as big a Bobby fan as me.



That's because he was seconds away from being arrested for keeping his face covered 100% by a scarf, and then refusing to remove the scarf when asked nicely to do so... See the video here (1.9 megs).arrest1.mpg

Man, this has totally deteriorated into Bobby Blogging. Ah, what the heck - after posting hot pics of Natalie Imbruglia and Melissa Fitzgerald, it was time we visited the boys.

You can watch a few more videos of the protests here:

protest1.mpg
protest2.mpg
poverty3.mpg
protest4.mpg

live8 Read More......

Time's Matthew Cooper Will Testify

AP is reporting:

Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper agreed Wednesday to testify about his sources in a government leak of a CIA agent's identity, a dramatic about-face which came as he faced going to jail.

"I am prepared to testify. I will comply" with the court's order, Cooper told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan.

What does this mean for Karl Rove? That's all I want to know. Read More......

Halliburton Rips Off Pentagon...And Gets A Raise

Hey, just because the Pentagon is questioning more than $1 billion in billing from Halliburton, that's no reason to stop using them. No way. So the Pentagon re-upped with a Halliburton subsidiary about two months ago, plans to pay them about $5 billion instead of $4 billion for the same services from last year and forgot to mention it to anyone because they've been, you know, busy. Uh-huh.

Among the billing being questioned: $152,000 for movie rentals. You just know the Baghdad Blockbuster is raking it in on those late fees! Read More......

Aid To Africa: Throwing Money Down The Drain?

A fair, tough-minded article in the NYT that looks at the rampant corruption infecting many African countries. We can argue for days about the root causes, but the simple fact is that corruption is a real problem when tackling the dire poverty and disease of the continent. It's one reason, I think, John was arguing that it's too simple-minded to say that all the current blame for the sorry state of that region is on the heads of the Western powers. But even Bush says about 7 countries meet his strict standards for nations that are on firm enough footing to ensure aid isn't wasted and another six are close. And we could funnel aid to international health orgs to try and help the other countries that don't qualify.

A few more points. Here's an Independent story from the UK about Mozambique, one nation that is a nascent success story. And here's an inspiring NYT interview with Paul Farmer, who has been fighting to get decent health care to third world countries. Finally, how come the far right never complains when the US throws money at corrupt monarchies and military dictatorships like the oil rich Saudis or Pakistan, but the minute you try to feed starving children in Africa they get in a lather over how THOSE countries are corrupt? Read More......

Bush To Far Right: Shhhhhh About Our Agenda!

Bush is urging the far right to tone down the heated rhetoric about the opening on the Supreme Court. And stop mentioning all those hot button issues like abortion and equal rights for gays and government-sponsored religion.

Why? Because Bush wants to play nice? No. Because Bush doesn't agree with their agenda? Nope again. It's because Bush wholeheartedly agrees with their fringe, far right agenda and he knows most Americans don't.

Most Americans believe in a woman's right to choose. Most Americans don't believe someone should be fired from their jobs or be denied housing or kept away from their loved ones dying bedside simply because they're gay. Most Americans are uncomfortable with the government raising one particular religion -- say, oh, I don't know, fundamentalist Christianity -- high above all others. Most Americans want the government to stay out of their private lives and not take away their right to make end-of-life decisions for themselves and their loved ones. Most Americans believe in reasonable gun control. And on and on.

Bush doesn't. The far right doesn't. And they want to put someone on the Supreme Court who is WAY out of the mainstream of judicial thought on all these issues. Someone like Robert Bork, who recently said people imagined he would have overturned Roe v. Wade. And you know what, he said? They were right. Read More......

Bisexuality Study: NYT Gives Prominence To Disgraced Researcher

Everyone is probably familiar with this New York Times article about a study on bisexuality. It was one of the top five emailed stories on the NYT website and probably got picked up around the country. I ignored it at first because a casual glance at the study and its methodology led me to conclude it was shoddy and suspect. At best, it seemed like the typical mainstream press distortion of research: one little study makes one little observation and it gets trumpted around the country as a "fact," in this case the idea that men aren't bisexual, they're just either gay, straight, or lying.

You would think, you would hope that the New York Times would do a little research of its own before splashing the work of Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the study's lead author. But no. It took threader Kathleen to alert me to what the NYT should have known before presenting this study uncritically.

1. Dr. J. Michael Bailey had to step down from the chairmanship of the psychology dept. at Northwestern just last year because of ethics charges related to earlier research.

2. Bailey has been linked to a racist, neo-eugenics movement called the Human Biodiversity Institute by the Southern Poverty Law Center

3. Bailey's previous attention-getter was a book on transgenders that extrapolated from about nine transgenders he claimed to befriend into a study. Many of the people profiled claimed convincingly they had no idea they were part of a research study. (A violation of ethics.) One claimed Bailey slept with them. (Also a violation.) Though ostensibly science, it contained no footnotes. This book led to the investigation of Bailey that resulted in his stepping down as chair, though he remains a professor at Northwestern. The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled Bailey and the controversy, all but labeling him as a closet case.

4. Bailey claims to be gay-friendly but is so at odds with the GLBT community at Northwestern that campus groups urge people NOT to cooperate with his studies. Gee, think that might make any research he does there harder to accept as valid? (Bailey has reportedly found it difficult to recruit people for his research.) The Chicago Free Press paints a rather sad picture of Bailey trying to convince people he isn't anti-gay or biased by calling for a public meeting virtually no one attended, just weeks before the New York Times would treat his latest research as front-page of the Science section newsworthy.

5. Some of Bailey's more silly and offensive comments that should raise red flags for anyone wondering about his bias: most transexuals are "especially motivated" to shoplift and "especially suited to prostitution." Bailey says that if it became possible to genetically identify a fetus as "gay" and a parent chose to abort because they wanted a straight child, this would be "morally neutral." Yep, gay eugenics. Aborting gay fetuses wouldn't do anyone harm, he says. He's not anti-gay, just "pro-parental liberty."

I am furious that I had to find out all this stuff on my own by having a threader point me in the right direction. I'm not saying no one should ever report on anything Bailey ever does in the future, but is it too much to ask for context and a little background? Obviously, Bailey's history makes this study HIGHLY suspect: he has stepped down as a chair at Northwestern over allegations of misconduct; Bailey is seen with hostility by the GLBT community at Northwestern, making it difficult for him to find subjects to study; he is linked to a group the Southern Poverty Law Center says is filled with people linked to hate groups and is pro-eugenics; and he makes pro-eugenic statements and patently silly claims about transexuals.

At the very least, shouldn't the New York Times have known about this before trumpeting his study on the front page of the Science section? Obviously they didn't or they would have at least referenced it. More responsibly, it should have highly colored their coverage, leading to a far different article about a controversial researcher's attempts to come back from ignominy with yet another attention-getting study that is shoddily put together.

Please email the New York Times (letters@nytimes.com) and any other publication that gave this study unquestioning coverage. Tell them about Bailey's disgraced past, the claims of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the people who feel abused by his past research. Ask them why none of this vitally important information was in the original story. Tell them that the very least the NYT can do is a followup story that gives a full picture of Bailey, places his research in its proper context, speaks to people at Northwestern, talks with critical researchers about the validity of his study, looks into whether the team in Toronto that also worked on the study is also linked to hate groups and anything else you can think of.

This is a classic example of where bloggers can have an impact if we move quickly and present FACTS that dramatically change what people will remember about this story. Let us know about any responses you get. Read More......

Anyone feel a draft? My new RADAR article is up

RADAR:

...Even more to the point, although the Bush administration may be promising publicly that there will be no draft, privately they’ve been planning one for more than a year. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last year that the Selective Service secretly asked for the authority to increase the draft age to 34 and to include women. (Mind you, they suddenly need this added authority for a draft they assure us will never occur.)

But it won’t be enough to just draft a bunch of grunts. The Post-Intelligencer also reported that “Selective Service planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts began last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.” And the New York Times reported that in 2004 that the Selective Service updated its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers and paid an outside consultant to figure out how to implement such a draft and how to sell it to the public.

That sure is a lot of prep work for something no one’s considering doing.

Read More......

Wash. Post on Karl Rove, barely

The Post has one newsworthy item in the Plame affair story:

Fitzgerald may learn more details from Cooper's notes. Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials -- not the other way around -- that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee.

However, they way they deal with the Rove issue is typically frustrating. Not only are they still reporting spin from Rove's lawyer, they had Rove in their offices yesterday and didn't get any news from him. Grrrrrr:

On Saturday, Rove's attorney said that Rove spoke with Cooper during the critical period in July 2003, just after Wilson's piece appeared, when reporters were calling the White House to ask questions about Wilson's assertions. But he said that Rove did not reveal Plame's identity and that Fitzgerald has assured him Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Okay, Washington Post reporters, please read Lawrence O'Donnell's recent post on Huffington Post...there must be at least one reporter over there who knows that these words like "target" have very specific meanings, and that you could be led astray if you don't follow up with the right questions. Now, that can be hard work...but it really matters. So don't just keep telling us Rove is not a target, or was not a target, when there seems to be more going on with the investigation.

Then, WP, you put this in the story:

At a lunch meeting yesterday with Washington Post reporters and editors, Rove declined to answer questions about the Plame case.

Then what the hell did you talk about? How smart he is? At least could you tell us how he declined? Did he say: my lawyer won't let me talk about this? Or did he just say I won't talk about it, and a whole room of Washington Post reporters and editors just said, okay.

Think about this. Despite this growing controversy, Rove has so much confidence in his ability to dupe the press, that he went right in to the Washington Post without any qualms or concerns. He really does view the media as patsies. Read More......

Open Thread

Get it started Read More......

Finally met Bob Geldof

And got, perhaps, the lousiest photo of my life. It was via my cell cam, light was low, and though my camera has adustments to get damn good pics in bars etc., I felt terrible asking him to wait, so we shot anyway, and here's what we got:



Another of the bloggers, Darren Barringer (who works with Joe Trippi), said he was interviewing folks at a pub yesterday (yeah, right, Darren), and they said they wished Geldof ran for Parliament. And if he did, they'd demand that he be Prime Minister because he's the only politician who's proven for years that he cares about helping real people. Say what you will about stars who try to help out on social causes, but it's true that Geldof has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. And he showed no attitude at all when I bugged him at 12:30 at night in a crowded bar for a photo (after droves of people had just done the same). I give him kudos for that, because by about the 150th person of the night who comes up to you, that has to get annoying after a while - he handled it charmingly well.



This is just a quick shot of the "lounge" last night where they held a party for all the delegates to the Live 8 events. Was very nice, nothing special, just a nice club, great music, called the Opal Lounge.

And finally, here's another pic of Melissa from West Wing while we were en route via Heathrow. Such a nice woman (she's the second woman back). Behind her is Josh Trevino - he writes for RedState.org, big ole conservative blog, but he's actually a really nice guyy



Another really nice person is Charmaine (?), I call her Charlemagne, who is a blogger and who works at - where else? - the Family Research Council. I know, trust me, I was a bit surprised when I met her and found out she was traveling with us. She is a genuinely sweet person and we've become friends. We've only just begun to have the talk about politics, gays, and the FRC. I hope to have more with her.

This is my new bud, Charmaine:



Technorati tag: live8 Read More......

Bisexual? Yeah, right!

OK, I avoided this article at first because it seemed to extrapolate a great deal from one poorly done study -- something the media specializes in. As you know, the NYT reported on a study that claims to show most men who say they are bisexual are in fact basically attracted to one sex -- namely men. So those bis are liars.

My problems with the study: they recruited 101 young men -- 33 of whom said they were bi, 30 straight, and 30 homosexual. First of all, why young men? The researchers seem to be confusing young men who haven't fully come out yet with bisexuals. It's commonly understood that some young men first feel comfortable saying they're bi before finally admitting they're gay. Other young men presumably self-identify with "bi" because it's cool and rebellious.

They might have easily eliminated these by casting a wider net, using older people or at least using bisexual people who'd had significant, long-term relationships with people of both sexes. And the films they showed were of sex between two men or sex between two women, with bi men supposed to be turned on by the lesbian action. Duh! That's how you find out who is straight!

It seems a lot of to do about nothing. But I'm particularly sensitive to it because I do have very good friends who are bisexual and they are one of the last groups even gays happily discriminate against -- bi? Yeah, right, they say. Why is it so hard to believe that since some people are primarily attracted to people of the opposite sex and some people are primarily attracted to people of the same sex that some people are able to have meaningful sexual and emotional relationships with people of both sexes. I'd find it more shocking if there weren't bisexuals. Read More......

Open Thread

Keep it going... Read More......