   Issue #80 - December 2002 - Christmas Jeers 3:13 PM 12/23/02 Washington, DC Police to Monitor Protests With Cameras By: Derrill Holly Police intend to use more than a dozen automated surveillance cameras to keep an eye on large demonstrations planned in the nation's capital next month. The cameras, monitored at police command centers, "I don't think the police ought to be taking video of peaceful demonstrators when there's no hint of lawbreaking", said Art Spitzer, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Capital Area Chapter. The ACLU worries that cameras will deter participation in what they see as expressions of First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and expression. 2:46 PM 12/23/02 Frustrated Veterans Accuse Bush of Breaking Promise By: Wayne Washington "I'm terribly frustrated and extremely angry", said retired Air Force Colonel George "Bud" Day, a Republican who won the Medal of Honor and was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam with Senator John McCain of Arizona. Day said Bush is violating his oft-repeated campaign pledge to veterans: "A promise made is a promise kept." Hoping to get the President to disavow the 1995 decision on veterans health care, Day said he used a Medal of Honor reception in June to ask Bush about it personally. "I said to him: 'Mr. President, I'm Colonel Bud Day. You know your campaign [promise], a promise made is a promise kept, is being broken.' His eyes just glazed over", Day said. "He really had no idea what I was talking about." 1:46 PM 12/23/02 "I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." 1:35 PM 12/23/02  1:06 PM 12/23/02 "In the course of just a week, I had been arrested, handcuffed, thrown into a holding cell, humiliated in a public courthouse and, now, involved in an automobile accident in the middle of the desert. As I stood by the side of the highway, looking up at the vast universe of stars in the black night sky, I thought to myself: 'Things cannot get any worse.'... I wasn't even close." 12:49 PM 12/23/02 Editorial from: Mr Bush and the warmongers in his cabinet want a war against Saddam Hussein. They say they must stop him because he has weapons of mass destruction. But only one leader has weapons of mass destruction and plans to use them. His name is George W Bush and it is he who must be stopped. What he plans to do against Iraq will not save lives or make peace. It will destabilise the world and threaten thousands, possibly millions. 12:31 PM 12/23/02 "Whichever minister or ministers gives the green light for an attack on Iraq will be responsible for the butchery of men, women and children on a massive scale and without any good reason whatever. Out there in the real world, the majority of people are sensible enough to know that this war is absolute madness." 11:57 AM 12/23/02 Bush Science Advisors Put Under a Microscope By: Aaron Zitner When psychologist William R. Miller was asked to join a panel that advises the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he thought he had been selected for his expertise in addiction. Then a Bush administration staff member called with some unexpected questions. Did Miller support abortion rights? What about the death penalty for drug kingpins? And had he voted for President Bush? Apparently, Miller said, he did not give enough right answers. He had not, for example, voted for Bush. He was never appointed to the panel. Researchers are complaining with rising alarm that the Bush administration is using political and ideological screening to try to ensure that its scientific consultants recommend no policies that are out of step with the political agenda of the White House. 11:50 AM 12/23/02  11:04 AM 12/23/02 By: Rheta Grimsley Johnson Politicians don't talk like the George Wallace of my childhood, or at least the smarts one don't. They no longer cuss "outside agitators". They waggle a finger, instead, at the "ever-expanding federal bureaucracy". They don't use racial epithets in 2002; they don't have to. They speak of "welfare cheats" or "welfare mothers" and get the same mileage. The euphemistic pitch is so familiar, we don't even listen. The politicians speak of "conservatism" and "creeping socialism" and "traditional values" in articulating some vague manifesto for a party that has joined successfully the old silk-stocking Republicans, the rednecks, and the fundamentalists. 10:11 AM 12/23/02 "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no crime... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." 9:58 AM 12/23/02 By: Timothy Egan Two years ago this month, a record was set at the height of the West Coast energy crunch: an hour of electric power was sold for $3,250 - more than a hundred times what the same small block had cost a year earlier. Now, power supplies are abundant and wholesale prices have plummeted. But the fallout from what state officials say was the largest manipulation of the energy market in modern times has continued to hit West Coast communities hard. At the height of the rise in energy costs in early 2001, the Bush administration said the West Coast's troubles were a precursor of what would happen if the nation did not build 1,900 power plants over the next 20 years. But state officials in the hardest-hit areas say the crisis was never about energy shortages so much as it was about an epic transfer of wealth. They want payback - in some cases for immediate relief to consumers who cannot pay their bills this winter. 9:37 AM 12/23/02 "The most remarkable aspect of Trent Lott's inevitable defenestration is how meekly the once-proud Senate has surrendered to the designs of Karl Rove. Whatever marvelous qualities Sen. Bill Frist may possess, he has served one term in the Senate, and has pledged to serve no more than two. On the institutional merits, Frist's candidacy for majority leader is a joke. That's a heavy doctor's bag the former heart surgeon is carrying, too. He was one of the authors of the shameful Eli Lilly Thimerosal amendment to the Homeland Security bill, and his fortune derives from family holdings in Columbia/HCA, the crooked health-care company that just agreed to an $880-million settlement of fraud charges with the Justice Department." 7:08 AM 12/23/02  6:59 PM 12/22/02
5:07 PM 12/22/02 Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? By: Nicholas Monahan This morning I'll be escorting my wife to the hospital, where the doctors will perform a Caesarean Section to remove our first child. She didn't want to do it this way - neither of us did - but sometimes the Fates decide otherwise. The Fates or, in our case, government employees. On the morning of October 26th Mary and I entered Portland International Airport, en route to the Las Vegas wedding of one of my best friends. Although we live in Los Angeles, we'd been in Oregon working on a film, and up to that point had had nothing but praise to shower on the city of Portland, a refreshing change of pace from our own suffocating metropolis. At the security checkpoint I was led aside for the "inspection" that's all the rage at airports these days. My shoes were removed. I was told to take off my sweater, then to fold over the waistband of my pants. My baseball hat, hastily jammed on my head at 5 AM, was removed and assiduously examined ("Anything could be in here, sir", I was told, after I asked what I could hide in a baseball hat. Yeah. Anything.) Soon I was standing on one foot, my arms stretched out, the other leg sticking out in front of me àla a DUI test. I began to get pissed off, as most normal people would. My anger increased when I realized that the newly knighted federal employees weren't just examining me, but my 7½ months pregnant wife as well. I'd originally thought that I'd simply been randomly selected for the more excessive than normal search. You know, Number 50 or whatever. Apparently not though - it was both of us. These are your new threats, America: pregnant accountants and their sleepy husbands flying to weddings. WARNING!... Don't read this article unless you really want to get PISSED OFF! 3:04 PM 12/22/02 By: Ernest Partridge What sort of pluperfect arrogance prompts a scientifically illiterate MBA to reject the considered conclusions of 2000 world-class scientists, and then, to arrange the ouster of the scientist in charge of the intergovernmental panel that came to those conclusions? Be advised, my fellow Americans, that this very arrogance resides in the Chief Executive of our Republic - or perhaps more correctly, among those who sponsor and "advise" that Chief Executive. But you knew that already, didn't you? To be sure, George Bush's indifference to informed scientific opinion is no secret. However, the extent of this indifference is not fully appreciated, even less the serious implications thereof. 2:36 PM 12/22/02 "In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. Today we maintain ourselves. Tomorrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated." 2:14 PM 12/22/02 F or economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings: 12:53 PM 12/22/02  12:37 PM 12/22/02 "Inquiries to the White House Press Office and the White House Military Office both received the same response. They say that the White House has always sent the wreath to several designated spots in Arlington National Cemetery, including the Confederate Monument. This appears to be untrue, since no Confederate organization has been aware of the sending of a presidential wreath since the current President's father suspended the practice, citing an ongoing legal controversy among the Confederate groups. President Clinton never reinstated the practice." ...and this group ain't no 'liberal' organization either! 11:56 AM 12/22/02 From:
Halliburton said the probe would look at "cost overruns" on certain engineering and construction jobs. By launching a formal investigation, the SEC has power to subpoena documents related to Halliburton's bookkeeping, including information from third parties. The matter was formerly the subject of an ongoing inquiry that was not considered a formal investigation. Want to bet that the "formal investigation" turns up any wrong doing? 'Vice' pResident Cheney will make sure NOTHING of importance is revealed... and you can take that to the bank! 11:17 AM 12/22/02 Stolen from:
When Clinton had his troubles, he promised he'd stay and fight. He told the truth. Clinton took the most severe beating anyone's ever taken and all the while he was running the world and managing our super economy at the same time... and Clinton's beating lasted for years. Trent couldn't even last two weeks - what a wimp. 10:52 AM 12/22/02 "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." Well... Did you expect a 'thoughtful' quote from Smirk? 10:10 AM 12/22/02 By: Jonathan Rowe Several months ago a professor at the University of North Carolina published findings that turned beliefs about the economy upside down. Health improves, he said, as the economy goes down. When the economy declines, to a point at least, deaths, smoking, obesity, heavy drinking, heart disease, and some kinds of back problems all decline as well. Imagine an accountant who can add but can't subtract, and who is so nearsighted he can't see past his nose. That is the mentality behind the GDP. The GDP simply adds up the money Americans spend and calls the result growth and good, regardless of where the money went and why. By this reckoning, the more medical bills you incur, the more junk food your kids yammer for, the more you sit in traffic, and the more your credit card company rips you off with hidden charges, the better the economy is doing and the more the politicians can brag about the nation's "growth". At the same time the accounting ignores the implications of expenditures that on their face might suggest advance. Perhaps your neighbor loves her SUV. Perhaps she regards it as a step upward in her life. Still, when she drives the thing, she pours gunk into the air and adds to pressures to put oil derricks near coastal beaches. She takes up more space on the road, adding to traffic and causing everyone to burn more gas. Honest accounting would show such costs. The GDP ignores them. 9:11 AM 12/22/02 (To Pay for His Tax Cuts for the Rich)
8:29 AM 12/22/02 By: Thomas L. Friedman Yevgeny Primakov was the Russian envoy and KGB veteran who made several trips to Baghdad in 1990-91 to try to talk Saddam out of Kuwait to avoid a war - 11th-hour diplomacy that drove the first Bush administration crazy. Saddam probably could have kept half of Kuwait had he played along with Mr. Primakov. But he wouldn't compromise and, in the end, got smashed. My guess is that we will see this play again. Before Gulf War II is launched, there will be a Russian-French or Arab delegation that flies to Baghdad and tries to persuade Saddam to spare his family, and everyone else, from a war - either by disclosing his weapons or by going into exile under Arab or European protection. Why? Because, unlike Gulf War I, too many nations don't want Gulf War II to happen... 8:17 AM 12/22/02 By: Tom Brune Bush made Ashcroft, a former Missouri Attorney General, Governor, and U.S. Senator, his first cabinet nominee, setting off a storm of protest by liberal activists. They complained Ashcroft had led a protracted fight against a federal court's school desegregation order and had a voting record during his 1994-2000 Senate term that mirrored that of Lott and other conservatives. Race and civil rights sparked some of the most severe criticism at his bruising Senate confirmation hearings for Attorney General in January 2001, leading to his approval by a narrow 58 to 42 vote. 3:12 AM 12/22/02 Editorial from: Now that Trent Lott has reminded the nation that ugly, antiquated racial attitudes still exist in this country, even in the highest ranks of government, the Bush administration needs to pay even more attention to civil rights concerns regarding several of its judicial nominees. It seems clearer than ever that the White House and the Senate should conduct a more rigorous review of current and future judicial nominees' records on race, and disqualify any whose commitment to equal rights is at all in doubt. The administration has handed judicial selection over to the Republican Party's right wing. This has resulted in the naming of several judges whose views on race raise troubling questions... 7:21 PM 12/21/02 "Few senators have a worse voting record on civil rights than Trent Lott-but Bill Frist is one of them. Frist has voted against sex education, international family planning, emergency contraception (the morning-after pill), affirmative action, hate crimes legislation, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This is the man who is supposed to save face for the GOP in the Senate? Think again." 6:16 PM 12/21/02  5:53 PM 12/21/02 The Senator Who's Worse Than Lott By: Sarah Wildman Sessions entered national politics in the mid-80's not as a politician but as a judicial nominee. Recommended by a fellow Republican from Alabama, then-Senator Jeremiah Denton, Sessions was Ronald Reagan's choice for the U.S. District Court in Alabama in the early spring of 1986. Reagan had gotten cocky by then, as more than 200 of his uberconservative judicial appointees had been rolled out across the country without serious opposition (this was pre-Robert Bork). That is, until the 39-year-old Sessions came up for review. During his nomination hearings, Sessions was opposed by the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way, and other civil rights groups. Senator Denton clung peevishly to his favored nominee until the bitter end, calling Sessions a "victim of a political conspiracy". The Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee finally voted ten to eight against sending Sessions to the Senate floor. The decisive vote was cast by the other Senator from Alabama, Democrat Howard Heflin, a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice, who said: "[M]y duty to the justice system is greater than any duty to any one individual."     - except wherein noted.All rights reserved. |
will keep tabs on anti-war protests planned for the weekend of Jan. 18-19 and the Jan. 22 "March for Life", an anti-abortion commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
Oilfield services company Halliburton Co. said late on Thursday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had launched a formal investigation into its disclosure and accounting practices.
He promised he was going to stay and fight, but he lied.
federal spending on libraries by $39 million.
