Why David Broder Doesn't Deserve His Position at the Top of the Media Food Chain

By Jamison Foser, Media Matters for America
Posted on May 1, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51271/

Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder is widely known as the "dean" of political journalists. According to his Washington Week biography, Broder "has been called 'the high priest of political journalism' by author Timothy Crouse, 'the unchallenged "dean" of what many political reporters like to think is their "priesthood" ' by U.S. News, and 'probably the most respected and influential political journalist in the country' by columnist Richard Reeves. Esquire said Broder 'has few challengers as the most influential political journalist in the country.'

NBC's Tim Russert -- himself often described as the nation's most influential journalist -- calls Broder "the most objective and respected reporter I know in this town." In 2005, Russert praised Broder's "superb" analysis and noted that he had appeared more often on Meet the Press than any other guest -- nearly 400 times in all.

It's clear what political journalists say about Broder. But what does Broder's exalted position atop the media food chain say about the state of political journalism?

***

Broder's assault this week on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid touched off a new round of criticism of Broder's work. Twice this week, Broder lashed out at Reid over Reid's comments about the Iraq war. On Monday, Broder suggested that Senate Democrats might dump Reid as their leader, telling XM Radio listeners that "the Democrats are gonna have to have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid," accusing Reid of a "bumbling performance" and saying Reid is an embarrassment to the party. Broder went on to claim that "every six weeks or so there's another episode where he has to apologize for the way in which he has bungled the Democratic case."

As Think Progress noted, "It's apparently irrelevant [to Broder] that Reid's views are shared by President Bush's regular military adviser Henry Kissinger, or senior U.S. military officials, or the majority of the American people."

And Greg Sargent reported, "[I]t looks as if Broder completely butchered his facts in asserting that Reid has had to apologize 'every six weeks.' I just checked with Reid's office, and they told me in no uncertain terms that Reid has not apologized for any of his remarks during his first four months or so as majority leader. He certainly hasn't apologized for the 'war is lost' comment."

But Broder was just getting started. In his April 26 Post column, Broder compared Reid to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, claiming that Reid, like Gonzales, is "a continuing embarrassment, thanks to his amateurish performance" and asserting that there is a "long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end."

But Broder didn't name a single senator of either party to support his contention. Indeed, the entire Senate Democratic Caucus responded by sending a letter to the Post in which they praised Reid as an "extraordinary leader who has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb."

In claiming that Reid is as much an embarrassment as Gonzales, Broder cheated a bit: He not only distorted Reid's comments, he glossed over Gonzales' failings -- a complete description of which would have made the comparison laughable. Broder made only passing mention of Gonzales, downplaying his involvement in the scandal surrounding the Bush administration's purge of federal prosecutors, and omitting any mention of other Gonzales controversies.

In fact, Broder has written nearly nothing about Gonzales since he became attorney general, despite his involvement in several high-profile controversies. In his March 29 column, Broder wrote that Gonzales "has given his president plenty of reasons to fire him," noting "the Justice Department … has been reduced in stature and has lost the trust of both the public and its career employees under Gonzales." But Broder didn't bother to explain what Gonzales has done to reduce the DOJ's stature and erode public trust in the department. Instead, he took a stroll down memory lane, devoting the bulk of the column to Ronald Reagan's decision not to fire his budget director.

And that was the first column Broder had written that so much as mentioned Gonzales in more than a year.

This "dean" of the Washington Press corps, this "titan[] of journalism," this "superb" analyst, this "most influential political journalist in the country," this "superman" thinks that the attorney general of the United States should be fired; that he has reduced the Justice Department in stature and caused both the public and career DOJ employees to lose trust in the department.

But this superman won't tell you why. He believes the attorney general -- one of the most important public officials in the nation -- has violated the public trust and should be fired. But he won't use his influence and credibility to explain his case. He won't tell his readers what one of their most powerful government officials is doing wrong. Not even a hint.

***

On Oct. 7, 1969, the Washington Post published a lament by David Broder that the nasty anti-war activists were out to "break" an unfairly maligned president named Nixon:

The likelihood is great that they will succeed again, for breaking a president is, like most feats, easier to accomplish the second time around. Once learned, the techniques can readily be applied as often as desired -- even when the circumstances seem less than propitious. No matter that this president is pulling troops out of Vietnam, while the last one was sending them in; no matter that in 1969 the casualties and violence are declining, while in 1968 they were on the rise. Men have learned to break a president, and, like any discovery that imparts power to its possessors, the mere availability of this knowledge guarantees that it will be used.

It may seem unfair to take advantage of the benefit of hindsight to note the absurdity of defending Richard Nixon from unfair attacks. But that probably wasn't the first time Broder displayed highly questionable judgment, and it certainly wasn't the last.

One of the most revealing statements Broder -- or, perhaps, any political journalist -- has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).

Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the "Washington Establishment" -- which under anybody's definition includes both Broder and Quinn -- was so angry at Clinton: "He came in here, and he trashed the place … and it's not his place."

Broder's implication -- that Washington was his place, not the president's -- is arrogant enough. But Broder's other comment speaks volumes: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to."

Try to imagine what would happen if, say, John Kerry made a comment like that. Just try. Try to imagine what the nation's pundit class and political reporters would say about John Kerry if he said that, unlike those immoral rubes out in the rest of the country, Washingtonians don't like being lied to. He would be relentlessly flayed as an arrogant elitist. And Broder would likely lead the charge, declaring that Kerry's "arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself."

But John Kerry didn't say it. David Broder did. That's what Broder thinks: He and his Beltway buddies, unlike the rest of you chumps, don't like being lied to. Keep that in mind the next time Broder criticizes a politician for being "arrogant" or "elitist."

You won't have to wait long. Broder can't seem to resist portraying progressives as arrogant elitists. Last year, for example, he described anti-war Democrats as "elitist" -- despite a majority of Americans agreeing with the stance. Being against a war that a majority of your fellow citizens also oppose isn't "elitist." Suggesting that you and your Beltway pals are uniquely offended by lying -- that's elitist.

***

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Broder used his perch at the Washington Post to heckle Al Gore for telling the American people, in detail, what he would do as president. No, we are not making this up. Broder described Gore's convention speech as "a request to step inside a seminar room, listen closely and take notes," adding, "Never has a candidate provided more detailed information on his autobiography and the program initiatives he plans. One more paragraph and he would have been onto the budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. … [M]y, how he went on about what he wants to do as president. … For all his Washington experience, Gore does not seem to have grasped Bush's point that a chief executive is smart to focus on a few key reforms, rather than dissipating his leadership on a crammed agenda. Or perhaps Gore just felt it necessary to throw a bone to every one of the constituency groups in the Democratic Party."

Broder did write of his "hunch" that Gore's "approach was highly effective -- for what Gore wanted to do." (Indeed, as Bob Somerby has noted, the speech was a success, and Gore's standing in the polls improved afterward.) But Broder also made clear his lack of interest in Gore's details and plans: "I have to confess, my attention wandered as he went on through page after page of other swell ideas, and somewhere between hate crimes legislation and a crime victim's constitutional amendment, I almost nodded off." Even the headline on Broder's column -- "Gore tells all" -- seemed to be a shot at the vice president.

By contrast, Broder had nothing but praise for George W. Bush's 2000 convention speech:

Lifted by an acceptance speech of exceptional eloquence and powered by a party enjoying unusual unity, Texas Gov. George W. Bush embarks on the final stage of his quest for the White House with prospects that almost measure up to his brimming self-confidence. […]

[T]he acceptance speech he delivered Thursday night was a success.

It contained almost everything good political rhetoric can provide -- humor, personal warmth, effective jibes at the opposition and glimpses of what his father, the former president, used to call "the vision thing." And Bush had rehearsed it enough to make it his own.

Reading Broder's reaction to Bush's speech, you wouldn't have known whether Bush made mention of a single policy, proposal, or issue in his speech. You would, however, have learned that "Bush is seen by the public as a stronger leader -- and, by almost any measure, a man more likely to help cure the poisonous partisanship of the capital city."

With a superman like David Broder leading the fight for less substance and fewer details, nobody should have been surprised by Thursday night's Democratic debate, in which moderator Brian Williams asked candidates about haircuts and horse-race polls, and repeatedly dumbed down the debate with questions instructing the candidates to raise their hands in response, or to "say a name or to pass." No details, please -- our titans of journalism might nod off. Just raise your hand and move on.

For those (progressives, at least) who do dare offer details and facts, Broder is quick to deride them as know-it-alls. "Gore tells all," Broder mocked in 2000. Then, in 2006, he wrote, "Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself." That same year, he similarly took Hillary Clinton to task:

For those who remember the former first lady's effort at comprehensive healthcare reform in 1993-94, the scope of her energy initiative is a throwback to those days. She called for the creation of a Strategic Energy Fund, financed in part by taxes on oil company profits, and a National Institute of Energy, with a multibillion-dollar bankroll for financing innovative conservation and efficiency plans.

She offered her proposal with the same self-assurance that she had brought to the healthcare debate -- a tone that suggested that "if you just listen carefully to all the things I can tell you on the basis of the study I have given this subject, you will know exactly what to do."

Well, at least Broder is consistent: he doesn't like "know-it-alls"; too many details, and he's bound to fall asleep.

Well, maybe "consistent" isn't the word. Earlier this month, he wrote:

Obama's soaring rhetoric has left some of his audiences hungry for more substance from the senator. That was the case at a March 24 healthcare forum in Las Vegas, where Obama promised to achieve universal coverage as president but had to admit that -- unlike former senator John Edwards of North Carolina -- he had not yet formulated a plan for getting there. And it was the case again Wednesday, when he was one of seven candidates addressing several thousand members of the Building and Construction Trades, AFL-CIO, at their convention in Washington.

Got that? Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton? Know-it-alls. Barack Obama? Light on substance. George Bush? Just right.

***

Like Brian Williams, we're running short on time, so we'll move to the lightning round:

• In 1998, Broder suggested President Clinton should resign, apparently because he "he may well have lied to a federal grand jury." Read that again: Broder wasn't even sure if he thought Clinton lied to a federal grand jury, but thought he should resign. Because maybe he lied. About an affair.

  But in 2006, Broder wrote that President Bush "has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution." Did he think this "lawless and reckless" president who "repeatedly defied the Constitution" should resign? If he thought so, he did not tell us. Broder believes his president is a lawless man who repeatedly defies the Constitution -- yet this superman, this titan, this great and influential man will not say it is time for the president to step down. Now, if Bush "may well have lied" about sex … then, perhaps this titan would be stirred to speak out a little more boldly.

• Broder has repeatedly and disingenuously defended his window-peering coverage of the Clintons' marriage, despite having previously denounced such journalism. He hasn't entirely abandoned his earlier stance, though: when asked if he would write a similar article about Republican candidates, Broder replied: "Why would I write such an article? I know of no occasion for that." He is, however, "the most objective and respected reporter" Tim Russert knows.
• In 2002, when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a prominent leader in the Republican Party, was forced to step down from his leadership position after suggesting the country would have been better off had we elected a segregationist president in 1948, David Broder explained that the "losers" in the matter were … Democrats, because four years earlier, they hadn't impeached President Clinton.
• In 2005, Broder blamed Democrats -- who were in the minority in both the House and the Senate -- for Congress' failure to conduct oversight hearings. Which, of course, they didn't have the power to do, being in the minority and all. Then, in March 2007 -- just two months into Democratic control of Congress -- Broder complained that the House had "slowed to a crawl," doing little other than "filling time with investigations." Later that month, Broder claimed "Democrats find it easier to investigate than to legislate. … Accountability is certainly important, but Democrats must know that people were really voting for action on Iraq, healthcare, immigration, energy and a few other problems. Investigations are useful, but only legislation on big issues changes lives." In yet another March column, Broder warned, "It seems doubtful that Democrats can help themselves … with more investigations … At some point, Democrats have to give people something to vote for. People already know what they're against -- the Republicans."

  So, when Democrats didn't control Congress, David Broder thought that oversight hearings were good, and blamed Democrats -- who lacked the authority to conduct such hearings -- for their absence. Now that Democrats control Congress, Broder warns Democrats not to conduct oversight investigations.

• In 2005, Broder actually touted President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. 'Nuff said.
• In December 2006, Broder praised Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as "stalwarts of economic and national security policy." No, really.
• In 2006, he called on journalists to apologize to Karl Rove for suggesting he was part of the campaign to out Valerie Plame, despite the fact that … Karl Rove was part of the campaign to out Valerie Plame.
• In August 2006, Broder warned that if Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Connecticut Senate primary, it would portend general election disaster for the Democrats. Lieberman lost that primary, and yet the Democrats thoroughly trounced the GOP in the fall.
• In June 2006, Broder criticized Hillary Clinton for her "shortsightedness" after she had criticized the media for kowtowing to the Bush administration. In arguing that Clinton was off base, Broder noted a "front-page story" in that morning's Post about the Downing Street Memos, concluding, "Who does she think is doing this work if not investigative reporters? Give us a break." Broder's invocation of a Washington Post article about the Downing Street Memos as evidence that the Post has aggressively reported stories that are bad for Bush seems disingenuous given that even Post Ombudsman Michael Getler and reporters Howard Kurtz and Jefferson Morley acknowledged that the paper was slow to cover the Memo story.
• Last September, Broder wrote a column ostensibly about the "moral scale" of the debate over torture that somehow managed to avoid his own newspaper's report, three days earlier, that the United States had "secretly whisked" an innocent Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was beaten, forced to make a false confession, and "kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months." Instead, as we explained at the time, "while paying lip service to the 'moral scale,' Broder suggested to the reader that he is kept awake at night by the 'loud' and 'vituperative' statements of bloggers and Democratic congressmen -- rather than by the thought that the Bush administration's pro-torture stance not only results in inhumane treatment of those we torture, but increases the risk of our own troops facing similar treatment from foreign regimes." In that column, as he so often does, Broder expressed confidence that the likes of Joe Lieberman and John McCain -- "these are not ordinary men," Broder stressed -- would step in and put an end to U.S. torture.
• Earlier this year, Broder claimed that the New York Times is "not normally solicitous of Republicans' feelings." Broder's attack on the Times was not only a pitch-perfect rendition of a common GOP talking point, it was also clearly false: The Times actually has a "conservative beat" … but no "progressive beat." That's small change, however, compared to Broder's recent slur that Democrats have little "sympathy for" the military. If this whole "dean of political reporters" thing doesn't work out, Broder can always start a new career as a speechwriter for Vice President Dick Cheney.
• Earlier this month, the Post was criticized for running an op-ed by Liz* Cheney in which she echoed attacks on Nancy Pelosi made by her father, the vice president, without disclosing the relationship between the two. Despite the fact that the lack of disclosure was apparently a violation of Post policy, Broder declared that it would have been "gratuitous" to include such a disclosure.
• In mid-February, Broder predicted a political comeback by President Bush, declaring "he is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge." Instead, Bush's poll ratings (28 percent approval in the latest Harris poll) remain so dismal that conservative columnists have taken to arguing that the fact that Bush has spent a year in the mid-30s is a good thing, as it demonstrates consistency. No, really. On March 30, Broder was asked about that prediction during an online discussion:

Bush remains as popular as a kick in the head, but rather than revising his absurd prediction, as promised, Broder declares Harry Reid a political incompetent.

Think about where the Democrats were when Harry Reid became their leader in the Senate. Think about where they are now. Think about David Broder's recent prediction of a Bush comeback; his touting of Bush's response to Katrina; his praise for Cheney and Rumsfeld; his claims that journalists should apologize to Karl Rove for saying he did something he did; his call for fewer details and less discussion of policy from candidates; his defense of Richard Nixon; his prediction that if Joe Lieberman lost his primary, Democrats would perform poorly in the general election; his double standards in his coverage of candidates personal lives; his suggestion that Bill Clinton should have resigned because he "may well have lied" about sex; his unwillingness to say that a "lawless" president who "repeatedly defied the Constitution" should step down; his elitist and arrogant statement that he and his pals care more about being lied to than you do; his hypocritical statement that Kerry's and Gore's "arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself."

Think about all that, and ask yourself: If you were David Broder, wouldn't you -- just maybe -- think twice before accusing someone else of "bumbling" and "ineptitude"?

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51271/

Abstinence Education Doesn't Work

A government report ordered by Congress shows that abstinence-only education is ineffective. What do you think?

Xander Griffey,
Construction Worker
"I find it astonishing that our public schools were unable to beat out the most basic human instinct that perpetuates our species."

Penelope Schaal,
Tailor
"That's it. From now on my kids will learn about sex the way I did–from a grabby uncle."

Kurt Dobler,
Dog Trainer
"To give the course some credit, it is by far the easiest to teach."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/61206

NORML Responds To White House's 'Potent Pot' Scare Campaign

April 26, 2007 - Washington, DC, USA

Washington, DC: Data published this week by the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project indicating an increase in the strength of cannabis' primary psychoactive ingredient THC is further evidence of the failure of criminal pot prohibition, NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said today.

"The federal government spends billions of dollars each year enforcing criminal marijuana laws and what does it have to show for it: more marijuana users, greater marijuana availability, and stronger pot," he said.

St. Pierre added, however, that more potent marijuana is not necessarily more dangerous. "Marijuana poses no risk of fatal overdose, regardless of THC content," he said. "In addition, studies indicate that cannabis consumers readily distinguish between high and low potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly, just as an alcohol consumer would drink fewer ounces of (high potency) bourbon than they would ounces of (low potency) beer."

St. Pierre also denied claims that the availability of stronger cannabis was responsible for the rise in so-called "marijuana treatment" admissions. "The overwhelming majority of young people in the US referred to 'treatment' for marijuana are there because they violated state pot laws, not because they or their loved ones believed they were suffering ill effects from cannabis," he said. "In reality, this surge in treatment admissions is an outgrowth of enhanced marijuana law enforcement, not enhanced marijuana potency."

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at paul@norml.org.

Related:

Arrests Drive Spike In "Marijuana Treatment" Admissions, Study Says

June 30, 2005 - Rockville, MD, USA

Rockville, MD: The majority of individuals admitted to drug rehabilitation for marijuana are referred there by the criminal justice system, according to a new report published by the Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS).

Fifty-eight percent of those entering drug treatment for marijuana in 2002 were referred by the criminal justice system, the report found, up from 48 percent in 1992. Referrals from schools and health care/drug abuse care providers comprised another 15 percent of all admissions. By comparison, only 38 percent of those admitted to treatment for alcohol and only 29 percent of those admitted to treatment for cocaine were referred by the criminal justice system.

"Contrary to the Bush Administration's claims, it is marijuana prohibition - not the use of marijuana itself - that is driving up rates of marijuana 'treatment' admissions," NORML Senior Policy Analyst Paul Armentano said. "The record increase in the number of individuals now seeking 'treatment' for cannabis is due to a proportional increase in the number of those arrested by law enforcement for marijuana violations and subsequently referred to drug treatment by the criminal justice system. Primarily, these are young people arrested for minor pot possession offenses, brought before a criminal judge or drug court, and ordered to drug rehabilitation in lieu of jail or juvenile detention."

According to a previous 2002 DASIS report, since 1995 the proportion of marijuana treatment admissions from all sources other than the criminal justice system has actually declined, Armentano said. "At a time when tens of thousands of Americans are being denied access to drug treatment due to a lack of bed space or federal funding, it is unconscionable that these clinics are bursting at the seams needlessly housing marijuana smokers," he said.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500. The DASIS report, "Differences in Marijuana Admissions Based on Source of Referral: 2002," is available at:
http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/MJreferrals.htm

Social Conservatism As a Coercive Tool Of The State

By Bruce Wilson
Posted on April 29, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/wilson/51232/

James Veverka's writing transcends categories and typologies, and he runs his analysis back over a thousand years:

"Uncomfortable as it makes people to compare religion with dictatorships, the most dangerous dictatorships of the 20th century were also radically socially conservative in regards to family values and sexuality. Whether it was the Motherland, the Fatherland or the Christian Nation, the same rigid moral message of intolerance runs through them.

Like religious conservatives throughout history and indeed, in the present, they used the state as a coercive tool to force their version of a conscience upon the rest of people. While only one-third of people generally tend to be socially conservative, this does not make a difference to those possessed with the compulsion to force their morality upon all others for their own good. This is not to say fundamentalists and other religious extremists are Nazis or Stalinists, but that they hold very similar views on these 'family values' and sexuality subjects and employ similar language in their positions and propaganda. They represent similar dangers to free societies as they always have throughout all of western history.

Ververka continues:

"It is for the same reasons, and rather ironically, that many conservatives have coined the word "Islamafascists" to describe religious fundamentalists of Islam. But both religions have a fundamentalist wing that continually attacks modernity and secularism. Radical Islamists want to fight off the same forces of western modernity that Christian extremists do. At the UN, we see Islamic nations, the Catholic Church and Protestant fundamentalists on the same side in the matters of science and society, modernity and secularism.

It may surprise many that hardline communists were also hardline social conservatives on the matters of family and sexuality. It is the nature of extremism to incorporate far out views on these matters into state policy. The answers to this perverse mix of despotism and family values lies in the natures of religion and nationalism. It is not about left versus right because social conservatism can be found in both as tools of the state. Social conservatism, both religious and secular, when wed to nationalism and embraced as state policy, has almost always turned into an enemy of tolerance and liberty. In fact, social conservatives in the USA, led by Christian conservatives, have fought or disagreed with religious diversity, religious equality, abolition of slavery, Suffrage, desegregation, integrating the armed forces, Brown v Board of Education, mixed race marriages, respect and equality for Jews (not in MY country club!), the Civil Rights Act of 1965, gender equality laws, women in authority, working women, reproductive education, family planning, contraception, condoms, gay rights and a host of others. It was humanists, both religious and secular that banded together to win the rights movements of the past. Such is the case presently with regards to gay, lesbian and family planning rights.

"Such people are sinning against God and will lead to the ultimate destruction of the family and our nation. I am unalterably opposed to such things, and will do everything I can to restrict the freedom of these people to spread their contagious infection to the youth of this nation." . . . "If the widespread practice of homosexuality will bring about the destruction of your nation, if it will bring about terrorist bombs, if it'll bring about earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, it isn't necessarily something we ought to open our arms to."

In an Interview with Molly Ivins on September 14, 1993 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), Pat Robertson added to his history of bigotry and ignorance when he said:

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians."

Because of popular cultural myths and the religious right's propaganda, both misinformed and dishonest, most people don't realize that Nazi Germany and Stalin were on the same page as religious conservatives regarding homosexuals. The anti-gay propaganda of both the religious conservatives and the Nazis is nearly identical. One is religious, the other secular, but the message is the same. The views are the same. The doctrines are the same. The blind hatred is the same. Both embrace rigid patriarchal family views that see women as men-helpers and baby-makers. Both consider their views "virtues". Both are the moral crusaders to save the family in a nation that is supposedly threatened by decadence (Weimar Germany then and counterculture now). The sky is falling; civilization will crumble if the family isn't saved. Both are extreme right wing ideologies that embrace a state enforced social conservatism. Both are blends of extreme nationalism and extreme obsessions with law and order and the moral fiber of the nation. Both loudly proclaim their so-called family values as the salvation of the nation. Without them, civilization will collapse. [ read more ]

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/wilson/51232/

Report: federal contractors owe billions in unpaid taxes

By Joshua Holland
Posted on April 30, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/51247/

Truthout:

... a recent GAO inquiry reveals that about 113,800 contractors working for a variety of federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the General Services Administration, have built up $7.7 billion in unpaid taxes. This matches untidily with a March GAO report saying that more than 21,000 doctors, health professionals or medical suppliers, collecting billions in federal Medicare dollars, simultaneously owed more than $1 billion in federal income taxes.

According to another new report, when it comes to contracts for rebuilding Iraq, those patriotic contractors are still doing a heckuva job ...

The U.S. project to rebuild Iraq remains far short of its targets, leaving the country plagued by power outages, inadequate oil production and shortages of clean water and health care, according to a report to be issued today by a U.S. government oversight agency.

The 232-page quarterly review by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction presents a sobering picture of the challenges of reconstruction in a war zone.

The inspector general's report lays out how even successful endeavors -- for example, the completion of more than 800 school projects and training for thousands of teachers -- haven't realized their potential because of security risks. During a four-year-old insurgency and sectarian fighting, less than a third of Iraq's 3.5 million students attend class, according to the report, which cited Iraqi Education Ministry statistics.

The report found that almost all of the nearly $20 billion in reconstruction funds appropriated by Congress in 2003 has been allocated. More than half of the projects to be undertaken with that money have been completed, and many more are underway. In the medical field, for example, only 15 of 141 primary health-care centers have been completed -- and only eight of those are open to the public -- but 126 projects are slated to be finished by the end of the year.

As in past reports, the inspector general's office found some of the most significant reconstruction shortfalls were in electricity production. "Electricity has the longest way to go," special inspector general Stuart W. Bowen Jr. said in an interview Friday.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq's power system produced 4,500 megawatts a day with an aging infrastructure in which 85 percent of power plants were at least 20 years old, the report said. Reconstruction officials initially hoped to increase daily output to 6,750 megawatts by the summer of 2004, a target later lowered to 6,000 megawatts. But in the most recent quarter, Iraq generated only 3,832 megawatts a day.

The shortage was particularly acute in Baghdad. Before the war, the city received an average of 16 to 24 hours of power a day. Last spring, Baghdad averaged eight hours of electricity a day. This year, during the last week of March, the city received only 6.5 hours a day. The rest of the country, however, received an average of 14 hours of power a day.

Slightly more than three-quarters of the $4.2 billion in reconstruction funds allocated by Congress for electricity have been spent, and 402 of 537 electricity projects have been completed.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/51247/

Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'

Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.

This is an example of viral, anti-herb propaganda. We are supposed to believe that after decades of scientists publishing studies of the benign nature of cannabis, as well as its medicinal properties, that now it is a precursor of psychosis. I, for one, am going to follow the money in search of the sponsors of this study.--Pete

A King's College London team gave healthy volunteers the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

They then recorded reduced activity in an area of the brain which keeps inappropriate thoughts at bay.

THC levels are thought to have doubled in street cannabis in recent years - at the expense of other ingredients which may have a beneficial effect.

If something has an active effect in inducing the symptoms of psychosis after one dose, then it would not be at all surprising if repeated use induced the chronic condition
Professor Robin Murray
Institute of Psychiatry

A separate study has shown that one of these ingredients - cannabidiol (CBD) - has the potential to dampen down psychotic symptoms, and could form the basis of new treatments.

The research will be discussed at a conference on the impact of cannabis use to be held at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College this week.

Dependency

Although figures are not kept, it is estimated that as many as 500,000 people in the UK may be dependent on cannabis.

Increasing numbers of people are seeking help for cannabis problems at specialist clinics. In 2005, only heroin users accounted for a greater proportion of patients.

Experts are concerned that street cannabis is becoming increasingly potent. It is thought that average THC content has risen from 6% to 12% in recent years.

The Institute of Psychiatry study gave THC, CBD or placebo capsules to adult male volunteers who had not abused cannabis.

They then carried out brain scans, and a battery of tests, and found that those who took THC showed reduced activity in an area of the brain called the inferior frontal cortex, which keeps inappropriate thoughts and behaviour, such as swearing and paranoia in check.

The effects were short-lived, but some people appeared more vulnerable than others.

In a second study, a team from Yale University administered THC intravenously.

Even at relatively low doses, they found 50% of healthy volunteers began to show symptoms of psychosis.

Volunteers who already had a history of psychotic symptoms appeared to be particularly vulnerable.

Side effects

A third study, by the University of Cologne, compared the effect of CBD and a commonly used anti-psychotic medicine, Amisulpride, on 42 patients with a history of schizophrenia.

After four weeks both groups showed a reduction in psychotic symptoms, but the CBD group were less prone to side effects, such as muscle stiffness and weight gain.

We strongly urge the government to heed the growing evidence and take urgent action to warn young people that some of them are risking lifelong mental illness
Marjorie Wallace
Sane

The researchers warned that THC and CBD compete with each other biochemically, so a rise in THC levels would blunt any positive impact of CBD.

Professor Robin Murray, a consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry, said the research provided the strongest evidence that cannabis had a significant impact on the brain.

He said proving a long-term effect was extremely difficult, as it was not ethical or feasible to stimulate long-term psychosis in volunteers.

However, he said: "If something has an active effect in inducing the symptoms of psychosis after one dose, then it would not be at all surprising if repeated use induced the chronic condition."

Professor Murray also warned that the high potency cannabis now widely available was likely to pose a much bigger risk to health than the significantly weaker formulations of previous years.

"It is similar to comparing the effect of drinking a glass of wine at the weekend with drinking a bottle of vodka every day."

Marjorie Wallace, of the mental health charity Sane, called the research a "significant contribution" to the understanding of the dangers of cannabis.

"Sane has been saying for years that there is a link between psychosis and the drug, particularly in its more potent forms.

"We strongly urge the government to heed the growing evidence and take urgent action to warn young people that some of them are risking lifelong mental illness - that they are playing Russian roulette with their minds."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/6606931.stm

Published: 2007/04/30 12:05:13 GMT

© BBC MMVII

U.S. excluding car-bomb deaths to show ‘surge’ progress

US officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since Pres. Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians. While the number of “sectarian murders” not involving bombs has decreased, the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising: up from 323 in March to 365 just through April 24. Bush told Charlie Rose that counting those bombings would be handing their perpetrators “victory.” (Boy, is this guy a genius or what?--Pete)

Experts who have studied car bombings say it's no surprise that US officials would want to exclude their victims from any measure of success. Car bombs are almost impossible to detect and stop, particularly in a traffic-jammed city such as Baghdad. US officials in Baghdad concede that while they've found scores of car bomb factories in Iraq, they've made only a small dent in the manufacturing of these weapons.

Source

RELIGION

THE FIVE JUSTICES who voted to restrict abortions were all Catholic men.

Study: Marijuana halts growth of lung cancer tumors

in research on mice, active ingredient in pot shrank growths by half, reduced cancer lesions
By Angela Zimm
Bloomberg News
April 22, 2007
Article Here...

Giving marijuana to mice with cancer shrank their lung tumors by half and slowed the spread of the disease, findings that may one day expand legal use of the drug as a treatment, researchers said.

The research is the first to show that marijuana's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, blocks a known cancer-related protein that's already the target of drugs such as ImClone System's Erbitux and Amgen's Vectibix.

The findings, presented this past week at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Los Angeles, add to evidence that marijuana may have anti-tumor properties and its potential should be probed further, researchers said.

Scientists speculate THC may activate biological pathways that halt cancer cell division or block development of blood vessels that feed tumors.

"THC can have a potential therapeutic role," said Anju Preet, the study's lead author and a researcher at Harvard University's division of experimental medicine. "Maybe THC is killing cells. The preliminary studies are promising."

Tumor cells dosed with THC also showed a reduction in epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, which means the substance may be acting in ways similar to Erbitux and Vectibix, which block the protein, Preet said.

The group includes Erbitux, which treats colon and head and neck cancers; Vectibix, which treats colon cancer; Genentech's Tarceva, approved for lung and pancreatic cancer; and AstraZeneca's Iressa, which treats lung cancer.

Lung cancer cells with high levels of EGFR are generally very aggressive and treatment resistant, researchers said.

THC activates "cannabinoid receptors," which are proteins found in the brain and other parts of the body that are involved in a number of biological functions, including inflammation and pain. Researchers set out to see if they could inhibit tumor growth by targeting these receptors in human lung tumor samples and in mice.
In addition to reducing tumor size by half, THC was associated with a 60 percent reduction in cancer lesions in the lungs of mice.

The Black Panthers: a guaranteed cure for right-wing gun mania

By Guest Blogger
Posted on April 27, 2007, Printed on April 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//51129/

Editor's note: this is a guest post from Roy at Alicublog

Gosh, the Perfesser sure is laying it on thick with the gun posts, isn't he? Columbine in the New River Valley really put the zap on his head.

Clearly the poor man is suffering from Posse-Comitatus-itis, a disorder characterized by itchy trigger fingers. As long as the fit is on him, we will never hear the end of his plaintive cries for universal gun ownership -- by force if necessary.

Fortunately I know the cure:

Bring back the Black Panthers! In the 60s there was no more outspoken group of gun-rights enthusiasts. The Panthers marched in state capitols, bravely brandishing their firearms in defiance of those that would take away their Second Amendment rights.

No swifter cure for Posse-Comitatus-itis has been found! Soon open-carry laws were shutting down all over the place -- including California, where the sight of black folk with firearms worked so effectively on Governor Ronald Reagan's Posse-Comitatus-itis that he signed the Mulford Act.

Displays of armed negritude will work like lightning on the Perfesser's condition, and on the cracker community he serves.

Then we'll only have to think of ways to get him to shut up about everything else.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//51129/

Russia to pull out of arms treaty, says Putin

For years our government's military arm has been surrounding Russia with military bases, while Putin has been forced to capitulate and accept due to a standoff - the U.S. offensive machine operates unopposed in might. Our best and brightest have once again shot themselves in the foot. The nuclear race is on! Again! Oh, good!--Pete

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow

Last Updated: 5:51am BST 27/04/2007

Russia is to withdraw from Europe's key arms control treaty in response to United States plans to install missile defence systems in Eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin announced yesterday. The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which was signed in the dying months of the Cold War, is regarded as the cornerstone of stability in Europe. It places limits on the number of conventional weapons and foreign forces that can be deployed among member nations. In his annual state of the nation address, the Russian president accused the United States of a plot to build up its military forces on Russia's western borders. "Our partners are conducting themselves incorrectly to say the least, gaining one-sided advances," he said. "They are using the complicated situation to expand military bases near our borders. Moreover they plan to locate elements of a missile defence system in the Czech Republic and Poland." Already strained relations between the two Cold War superpowers deteriorated markedly when the Pentagon announced plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. Moscow has rejected Washington's pleas that the shield was meant to defend Europe from a rogue missile attack by Iran, claiming that Russia's nuclear arsenal was the target. American attempts to mollify the Kremlin by inviting Russia to inspect the proposed sites and co-operate in the project have been rebuffed. In the first indication that the United States was losing patience with Moscow's intransigence on the issue, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, yesterday described Russia's fears as "ludicrous". "The Russians have thousands of warheads," she told a press conference in Oslo prior to a Nato meeting. "The idea that somehow you can stop the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn't make sense." Mr Putin said he had decided to declare a moratorium on an updated version of the treaty because Nato powers had failed to ratify it. The United States and its Nato allies have said they would not ratify the treaty until Russia withdrew its troops from Moscow-backed breakaway republics in Georgia and Moldova - an argument the Kremlin dismisses as a pretext to allow Washington to boost its military presence in eastern Europe. Yesterday, Miss Rice urged Russia to live up to its commitments. "These are treaty obligations and everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations," Miss Rice said. It is unclear what Moscow would gain by withdrawing from the treaty beyond being freed to move additional troops into western Russia, or possibly into Belarus, which shares a border with the European Union. Analysts suggested that there was a certain amount of posturing on Mr Putin's part. Already regarded as an energy superpower, Russia is desperate to be taken seriously as a military power too. Defence spending has quadrupled under Mr Putin and an ambitious strategy to modernise the military was announced last year, including plans for a new generation of ballistic missiles capable of breaching US defences. With these grandiose plans under his belt, Mr Putin is aggrieved that he is not being given the respect he feels he deserves by the United States, analysts say. Washington has dragged its feet on Russian proposals for a new bilateral treaty on reducing nuclear weapons, similar to those signed during the Cold War, which would give Mr Putin enormous domestic prestige. With a presidential election due early next year, Mr Putin's protests may also have a domestic dimension. By teaching Russians that the United States is again a military threat, they are less likely to vote for the liberal opposition, which, Mr Putin claimed in his speech, was being funded by western governments.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

The Property Cops: Homeowner Associations Ban Eco-Friendly Practices

By Stan Cox, AlterNet
Posted on April 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51001/

The house Heather and Joseph Sarachek were building in Scarsdale, N.Y., was to be a model of green efficiency, complete with geothermal heating and cooling. Even the electricity to run the system would be clean, coming from solar panels on their roof -- but when the time came to install the panels last fall, construction came to an abrupt halt.

A local Board of Architectural Review refused to issue the Saracheks a permit for the solar apparatus, having received a letter from at least 15 neighbors -- among them doctors, lawyers and other presumably well-educated people -- arguing that the panels "would clearly be an eyesore in our lovely Quaker Ridge neighborhood."

This March -- four months, $20,000 in extra construction and legal costs, and 107 petition signatures later, and after agreeing to plant a screen of trees to hide their "eyesore" -- the Saracheks finally got the board's decision reversed. On a 4-3 vote, the victory was a squeaker. But it meant that the prosperous Village of Scarsdale, where the average house is valued at $834,000, would see its first solar panels ever.

HOAs: blocking the green path

On April 14, in more than 1,400 locations from coast to coast, Americans rallied around the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent within the next four decades. On April 22, the San Francisco Chronicle's Earth Day editorial spoke for millions of us when it urged, "The whole planet, with billions of people and scores of governments, must work together on the same page. It's the only way to curb the global threats of rising temperatures, dirty air and polluted and life-depleted oceans. One day in late April isn't enough."

But too many cities, counties, towns and subdivisions are still working off the wrong "page" by banning ecologically sound practices and even mandating consumption and waste. Rooted in outdated aesthetics and plain old snobbery, those regulations make less sense than ever on a planet in peril.

The Saracheks and other Scarsdale residents live under citywide architectural restrictions, but 57 million Americans -- approaching one person out of five -- live in homes regulated by homeowner associations (HOAs). These private groups hold sway not only in gated havens of the rich but in many more modest neighborhoods as well.

HOA boards of directors are usually elected by residents, but their architectural review committees often are not. They have sweeping powers to enforce so-called restrictive covenants, which can control almost any aspect of the property, from the size of the house or garage down to details like changes in paint color or placement of basketball hoops. When a house is sold, the covenant goes with it.

The Community Associations Institute cites polls showing that 78 percent of homeowners belonging to HOAs believe the rules they live under "protect and enhance" property values. And when it comes to enforcing neighborhood behavior, it's what people believe that counts.

Many homeowners' associations post their covenants on their websites for the convenience of members. Doing some simple searches, I recently found and read a few dozen such documents. They are often highly detailed in describing what is allowed, what is not and what happens if you don't do what you're supposed to do or fail to do what they require.

I was looking for rules that affect a home's environmental footprint, and there were plenty. The most common restrictions were ones that prohibit drying clothes outdoors (effectively forcing the use of electric or gas dryers), forbid or restrict the placement of solar devices, dictate industrial-style lawn and landscape care or set a minimum square footage of floor space. Most also ban political signs, which itself can be an important environmental issue.

HOA documents are littered with those and a host of other bans on earth-friendly practices. Here are excerpts, taken directly from HOA covenants, that illustrate the kinds of prohibitions being enforced across the country:

Westerley subdivision in Sterling, Va.: "Solar panels and solar collectors are prohibited."

Camelot in Cottleville, Mo.: "Exterior solar collection systems, wind generator systems or other similar appliances are prohibited."

Peach Creek in Lisle, Ill.: "Compost piles may not be created on any properties ... A window fan is never allowed to be placed in the front windows of a home."

Quail Cove in Tucson, Ariz.: "Outdoor clotheslines are not permitted." (in a region where the great outdoors is like the inside of a clothes dryer!)

Crest Mountain in Asheville, N.C.: "The following are precluded: Outside clotheslines or clothes drying ... window air conditioning units ... vegetable gardens ..."

Tavistock Farms in Leesburg, Va.: "Vegetable gardens must not exceed 64 square feet." (With no more than 8 feet by 8 feet for growing vegetables, should they really be calling this place "farms"?)

Sun Valley in Waldorf, Md.: "No awnings in the front of the house will be allowed."

Suppression of clotheslines has probably received more attention over the past few years than any other type of anti-green restriction. Despite renewed interest in "solar drying," highlighted each April 19 by National Hanging Out Day, HOAs across the country are retaining their laundry-line prohibitions -- reflecting, say critics, their deep-seated prudishness and class bias.

People rarely confront HOAs directly over clothesline rules; most either conform or covertly disobey. Alice (not her real name) lives in the Lakeside Estates subdivision of Austin, Texas. Because her HOA bans outdoor clothes drying, Alice told me by email, she slips out to her back yard on summer mornings with one of those expanding "umbrella"-style clotheslines, puts it up, and hangs her laundry: "I put things out and try to get them in as soon as I can. I don't leave my clothesline out when it isn't in use."

Alice has received no warnings from her HOA -- yet. But you wouldn't expect such guerilla-style energy conservation to be necessary in laid-back Austin. Alice says, "Yeah, usually people think of Austin and they think of relaxed attitudes. But I think since the housing market boomed, it has made people a lot less relaxed."

Evidence to back up her theory can be found just across town, beyond the northwest corner of Austin's city limits in the middle-class suburb of Hunter's Chase. There, Jason and Lisa Spangler have been maintaining a garden of native wildflowers and other plants in their front yard for years. But they almost lost their native plantings in August 2002, when they received a violation notice on behalf of their HOA.

Jason told me, "Someone came by on a 'random inspection,' taking pictures, and thought it was some sort of grass and weeds." The Spanglers faced legal action if they didn't mow it all down.

They stood their ground, and the showdown came at a meeting of the municipal utility district that enforces the rules in Hunter's Chase. At the meeting, characterized by Spangler as "very unpleasant," he and Lisa were asked how they could have something "so ugly" in their front yard. No one seemed impressed that they used no herbicides, insecticides or fertilizers on their wildflower garden. "One board member said she had an art degree," said Jason, "and she could see that 'texture' of our yard just didn't look right."

To the board's chagrin, the Spanglers had backed up their claims with extensive documentation from the Native Plant Society of Texas. Lisa says board members resented what they saw as an intrusion by out-of-towners: "They asked, 'How much did you pay these people?'" But, said Jason, the evidence was overwhelming, and "they had no choice but to approve the garden."

Mandating consumption

West of Austin, in more drought-prone parts of the American West, lawns remain the rule. Although xeriscaping -- water-conserving landscape design -- is becoming more common, one developer recently told the Colorado Springs Gazette that for the most part, "There's no question. People want green, nice, good-looking sod."

Even if they don't want it, their HOA might well force it on them. And environmentally questionable rules can intrude well beyond the front lawn. For example, by mandating minimum square footages, many associations are helping pump up the already-bloated American home.

A 2005 articlein the Journal of Industrial Ecology showed that a very well-insulated 3,000-square-foot house consumes more energy than a poorly insulated 1,500-square-footer. And building a 25 percent smaller house saves more trees than are saved by using advanced wood-efficient construction techniques.

The average U.S. house in the 1970s had 1,500 square feet; by 2006, the typical house was heating and air conditioning almost 2,500 square feet, despite having fewer people living in it. The average home today has three times as much living space per person as in the 1950s . Many HOAs want to keep those numbers going up.

Here are some more typical passages from covenants imposed by HOAs in several states, each mandating some kind of stepped-up resource consumption or pollution:

Piedmont community in Pine Mountain, Ga.: "Size and square footage of heated and conditioned space: A minimum 2,750 square feet."

Cobblestone in Wichita, Kan.: "Minimum living area excluding the basement: Single level -- 1,800 square feet. Two level -- 2,000 square feet [with] central heating and air conditioning ... Seeded or sodded grass lawn on entire lot." Also "minimum of two car garage -- concrete driveway" (no cobblestone driveways in Cobblestone!)

Van Zandt Farms in Haslet, Texas: "Sprinklers shall be installed in the front yard of each residence."

Eagle Point Golf Community near Medford, Ore.: "Lawns shall be watered, fertilized and sprayed for weeds and/or insects and diseases as needed to keep them healthy and green. They shall be mowed on a regular basis."

Applewood Park in Tigard, Ore.: "... a mowed lawn that is regularly fertilized and is free of weeds and debris, ... including clover and dandelions." (This is followed by a helpful hint: "There is a product called 'Bayer' that works well for removing clover.")

Covington Estates in Fishers, Ind.: "Each lot shall maintain at least two continuous dusk-to-dawn lights ..."

Franklin Green in Franklin, Tenn.: "Each residence shall include an attached garage for a minimum of two cars and a maximum of three cars."

Bent Tree West in Dallas, Texas: "Any garages, servants' quarters, storage rooms, or carports erected or placed on any portion of said lot must be attached to the main structure ... garages shall provide a space for a minimum of two conventional automobiles." (servants' quarters?)

Penalties for breaking such rules can range from small fines to foreclosure and loss of the home. Anti-HOA activists maintain lengthy lists of cases in which families have been foreclosed upon -- like the Orlando, Fla., woman whose house was put up for sale because she hadn't paid $108 in association dues.

The Peach Creek Homeowners Association guidelines, which say they "exist for the benefit of our community to help maintain property values," are typical, stating that a homeowner who commits a fifth offense and owes $200 or more in fines is subject to "legal action and/or forcible entry and eviction."

In an apparent attempt to provide some reassurance, the document speaks in the voice of Big Brother: "If a homeowner is found in violation of a rule, regulation or guideline and fined, remember this action is taken because the majority of homeowners in Peach Creek consider it to be just and proper."

Some states crack down

State legislatures are starting to rein in HOAs that try to ban environmentally responsible practices. At least 12 states have adopted laws that guarantee the right to erect solar equipment, although most of them permit HOAs to enforce "reasonable" conditions.

Hawaii, for example, passed a law in 2005 that ensures a right to solar energy. The legislation grew out of experiences like that of Matthew Calloni of 'Ewa Beach, who fought a yearlong legal battle with his HOA to put a solar water heater on his townhouse. And a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March that, if passed, will protect homeowners nationwide from HOA solar bans.

Many HOAs rules forbid panels anywhere but on the rear of the house, flat against the roof. If the rear part of your roof doesn't face south or is in the shade, that's tough. Now before the Arizona legislature is a bill, HB 2593, that would prevent HOAs from requiring solar panels to be positioned inefficiently or in expensive locations.

Florida is one of the more progressive states in curbing HOA abuses, with legislation guaranteeing citizens the right to have solar panels, use clotheslines, and plant non-grass front yards, overruling any neighborhood policies to the contrary. Joanne Oliver of Ponce Inlet, Fla., was a highly successful realtor in Miami for 15 years. I asked her to imagine that she were showing a house in one of the upscale communities where she had handled properties and that the house next door sported solar equipment on the roof, a line full of laundry in the rear, and a front yard covered with tall native plants. Would that affect the price of the neighboring house she's trying to sell?

"Solar panels," she told me, "would not be a negative these days. And a different kind of front yard, yes, I think people might tend to go for that. That could catch on. But clotheslines!" -- here, she couldn't stop laughing -- "I can't remember the last time I saw a clothesline in Miami. That just doesn't happen. Wait, I have seen one clothesline recently -- behind my mother's house in Ohio!"

Local control, bad and good

The simplest way to stay out of trouble with HOA property cops, of course, is to live in a neighborhood that doesn't have private covenants. My city of Salina, Kan., is like many communites in having some restrictive subdivisions but a much larger territory that remains free.

Our house is in the covenant-free zone. We wake up each morning to the crowing of roosters that belong to neighbors across the alley. (The birds aren't quite legal, but nobody complains.) A couple of streets over, other neighbors have painted the entire front of their house as an American flag. Protruding from the south side of our own house is a solar water-heating apparatus that would almost certainly give those meddlesome Scarsdale aesthetes a case of the hives.

In much of America, this live-and-let-live attitude is still the rule. Lisa and Jason Spangler told me they'd never had neighbors complain about their non-lawn in Austin. In fact, said Jason, "Neighbors walking by often stop and compliment our prairie flowers." It was an overzealous HOA bureaucracy, not the community itself, that tried to kill their garden.

University of Arizona associate professor Paul Robbins says that the key point of his book "Lawn People," expected out in June, is to show that the economy and the culture cannot be meaningfully separated and that "it is this blurring that so marks contemporary capitalist urban ecologies."

As he put it to me, his work shows that "distinctions between the meaning of our lives and the values of our properties are often intermingled and difficult to distinguish. There are clear tensions between our many contradictory desires; we want to be good citizens, good consumers, and good environmental stewards -- a triumvirate that may simply be materially unachievable."

Even homeowners who put being a "good consumer" a distant third among those three desires will find that consumption remains the housing industry's No. 1 concern. When real estate values are considered as crucial as they are in the America of 2007, it doesn't matter what real people in real neighborhoods prefer. Players who have a big stake in the game have little tolerance for anything that smacks of green frugality.

Anti-environmental HOA restrictions are part of a larger problem: the growing power of such "private governments" to control people's use of their own property. But if the tide of ecological destruction's going to be turned, then flag-waving, don't-tread-on-me appeals to property rights, while helpful in some cases, will turn out to be a big hindrance in others.

If a neighborhood wants to outlaw four-car garages or ban daily lawn sprinkling during a water shortage, only the most fanatical property-rights crusaders are likely to object. But what if a more farsighted HOA decides to ban all toxic lawn chemicals or silence the shriek of leaf blowers in the fall (or maybe declare its streets off-limits to Hummers!)?

I'd want to live under regulations like those, and you might also, but there are plenty of people who'd fight hard for their right to blow leaves and spray weeds, just as hard as you or I would fight for the right to put a "Let's Get Out of Iraq" sign in the front yard.

A struggle to defend private property is always sure to draw broad support from across the political spectrum; however, resistance by environmentally minded homeowners will have to be mounted collectively and on the merits of the issues themselves, not just as a fight for property rights.

Meanwhile, here are suggestions for those living under the rule of HOAs: Resistance to clothesline bans is being led by Project Laundry List. There is a highly informative guide [PDF] to dealing with restrictions on solar equipment; some information on green landscaping, including how to deal with restrictions; or how about an edible front yard?

Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kan.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51001/

Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.

April 26, 2007 | Issue 43•17

MIDDLE EAST—With the Iraq war in its fifth year, the war in Afghanistan in its sixth, and conflict between Israel and the rest of the region continuing unabated for more than half a century, intelligence sources are warning that a new wave of violence in the Middle East may soon blah blah blah, etc. etc., you know the rest.

Yet another act of violence in response to something else terrible that occurred in, oh, let's say Basra.

"Tensions in the region are extremely high," said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who added the same old same old while answering reporters' questions. "We're disappointed by the events of the last few months, but we're confident that we're about to [yakety yakety yak]."

The U.N. has issued a strongly worded whatever denouncing someone or something presumably having to do with the vicious explosive things that raged across this, or shattered the predawn calm of that, or ripped suddenly through the other, killing umpteen innocent civilians in a Jerusalem bus or Beirut discotheque or Fallujah mosque or whatever it was this time.

Either a car bomb killed people or a car hit a roadside bomb, killing people.

In the aftermath of a whole series of incidents, there have also been troubling reports of just fill in the blanks. Middle East experts say the still somehow worsening situation has inflamed age-old sectarian tensions between the Sunnis, Shiites, Semites, Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Persians, Wahhabis, radicals, extremists, Baathists, mullahs, clerics, et al, which is likely to lead to more gurgle-gurgle over the coming weeks and months.

A certain number of U.S. troops were also killed somewhere in some tragic fashion, while a much greater number were wounded. Meanwhile, impoverished or oppressed supporters of whichever faction carried out the attack or ambush probably celebrated, angering an angry U.S. public that is already angry. Locals are calling for an investigation into excessive force or outright corruption by military or political officials on one of the 15 sides of the various conflicts, although the implicated party has categorically denied wrongdoing, just like they always do, without fail, every time this happens, which is daily, it seems.

And in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

In Israel, Palestinians and Israelis escalated tensions and so on and so on ad infinitum, ad eternum, and some say, ad absurdum, and although Hamas released a statement condemning Israeli forces for the resulting civilian deaths, Israeli officials say the teens were armed with rocket launchers, though it doesn't really matter.

Also, Ahmadinejad, Iran's nuclear program, bin Laden at large, Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, Fallujah, renegade mullahs, embedded and/or beheaded journalists, oil revenues, stockpiles of former Soviet armaments, freedom, racism, Halliburton, women's role in Islamic society, the Quran, withdrawing troops, economic disparities, Sikhs, Pakistanis, oil, rebuilding, stories of hope, the Saudi royal family, the Holy Land, insurgents, and the tragedy of Sept. 11th.

In an attempt to increase public support of whatever the fuck it is he thinks he's doing, President Bush trotted out the same old whoop-de-do you've heard over and over at a solemn-yet-resolute speech attended by soldiers, or religious leaders, or firemen, or some mix of ethnic-looking people from one of those countries.

"We have to give this plan time to wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom, ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang," President Bush may as well have said. "May God [help/bless/save] the United States of America."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/middle_east_conflict_intensifies

Greenwashing Fears Raised by Berkeley-BP Initiative

by Michelle Chen, The NewStandard
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4735

Apr. 24 – Fresh ties are budding between public universities and a leading oil company, seeding fears that industry is profiting from climate-change research at the expense of scientific integrity.

Expanding a pattern of university and corporate linkages, the University of California–Berkeley has sparked debate on campus and off by entering a proposed $500 million arrangement with petrol giant BP. The 10-year initiative, which also involves Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will establish an institute that would host research by both university and industry personnel on "economically viable solutions to global energy challenges."

The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) would be the largest of several climate-change research deals recently cut between industry and academia. Stanford University launched a similar program in 2002 with funding from ExxonMobil, General Electric and Toyota. Iowa State sealed a $22.5 million biofuels-development initiative with Conoco-Phillips this month.

Although industry-funded academic research is widespread, students, faculty and public-interest groups have challenged the EBI and similar partnerships as scientifically shortsighted "greenwashing" – public image management aimed at papering over a long history of environmental crimes.

Ignacio Chapela, a Berkeley environmental-science professor and longtime critic of the university's corporate collaborations, predicts the EBI will push the future of climate change further into the grasp of business interests. "It's the same people," he told The NewStandard, "with the same ideas, with the same approaches – simply giving a new techno-fix to problems that they created themselves."
Corporate campus

The primary mission put forth in the current EBI proposal is to enhance the biofuels industry – specifically, to "ensure that EBI makes core discoveries in the field and secures corresponding patent positions." A few of the Institute's initiatives would also probe new fossil-fuel extraction and processing technologies.

Under the proposal, a joint panel of academic and corporate representatives would govern the program and approve research proposals. Though the university could hold sole or joint patent rights on findings it helped produce, BP could negotiate exclusive licenses for the initial marketing of products, including reserving a time period to "evaluate the commercial potential of a given technology."

Maren Poitras, a student-organizer with the campus-based Stop-BP-Berkeley campaign, said the proposal has been crafted to "create the greatest profit for BP through control of the patents and technology of the 'alternative' biofuel market."

The campaign is especially concerned about the planned deployment of up to fifty of BP's own "investigators" on campus to conduct research in "leased" space next to but separate from academic labs. BP personnel could also move freely between the corporate and university spaces, collaborating with academic researchers. And BP could claim intellectual-property rights on discoveries associated with its "proprietary" space, from which non-BP researchers would "be excluded entirely... in the performance of their university activities."

Critics point out that while BP investigators could participate in and draw from Berkeley-based research, university scientists would not have reciprocal access to proprietary work.

"I think it would be fine if we equivalently had ecology research units embedded within corporate BP hierarchy," said Berkeley biology professor Robert Dudley, who sits on the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Academic Senate, the university's faculty governing body. The proposed arrangement, he continued, "certainly gives the potential implication that the university is for sale to the highest bidder to do what they want."

Consumer advocates also demand more public input and transparency in the management of the EBI. John M. Simpson of the California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights said the agreement must ensure that for any useful discovery, "all companies and other research institutions should have equal access to it and be able to use it, because it's research done in a public university."

Berkeley spokesperson Robert Sanders told TNS the EBI deal would follow the publicly funded UC system's principles on "agreements with external parties," including "a commitment to make the fruits of its research widely available."

When company and university personnel have collaborated under previous research partnerships, Sanders added, "it's a bonus for everybody that industry researchers are actually interacting with our researchers and students. It gives you a good grounding in the real world."

BP spokesperson Valerie Corr said, "We respect the right of students and faculty to freely voice their opinions." But she declined to comment in detail on specific provisions of the contract, as it is not yet finalized.

Berkeley's alignment with the world of corporate-led science has divided the faculty between those eager for EBI funds and those wishing to distance the university from industry interests.

At an Academic Senate meeting last week, opponents of the EBI proposal pushed resolutions calling for stronger oversight, including the creation of an independent committee to monitor corporate research ties. Pro-EBI faculty voted down the initiative and passed far weaker oversight measures, stating that interference in research "based solely on the source of funds" would violate "academic freedom."
Greener oil?

Some in the environmental and scientific communities view university-industry partnerships like the EBI with skepticism – particularly since leading oil corporations until recently denied the environmental threat of global warming altogether. But they also say such deals may be necessary for addressing climate change on a wide scale.

"It's a source of revenue for both [parties], and it's a source of a certain degree of prestige for industry," said Mark S. Frankel, director of the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Such alliances, he cautioned, should be judged by whether they ultimately succeed in "moving things from the bench in the lab into the marketplace, without creating conflicts of interest that impair the public mission of our universities."

Deron Lovaas, vehicles-campaign director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said oil companies' current power over energy markets means society has no choice but to rely on corporations like BP to advance alternative fuel sources.

"They're the ones that ultimately will decide how big a role this is going to play in our energy future," Lovaas told TNS. "That's just the reality, in terms of who owns the infrastructure."

But Professor Chapela said there is a precedent for public financing of crucial research. If the industry were genuinely concerned about the environmental consequences of its actions, he said, it would simply hand funding to a public agency less burdened by corporate influence. BP could follow the model of the federally chartered National Science Foundation and "put this money into a fund for the legislature to actually distribute to the places where it's necessary."

Opponents of the partnership say BP's history of "greenwashing" its damaging practices – from intense oil drilling in northern Alaska to last year's massive spill at Prudhoe Bay – should be reason enough to reject the deal. BP's track record has doubly outraged environmentalists, as it has overlapped with its "Beyond Petroleum" media campaign, touting supposedly eco-friendly corporate initiatives.

Some critics of oil corporations say that for all the hype surrounding university partnerships, the industry has shown little interest in seriously investing in research. The five major oil companies devoted less than 2 percent of total cash flows to research and development activities in 2004, according to an analysis commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute.

Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said corporations with a financial stake in research could act as gatekeepers instead of stewards for the alternative-energy sector.

"These are oil companies; they get the vast majority of their revenue from oil," he said. "And as a result, they're not all that interested in seeing their existing assets depleted unnecessarily by rapid shifts to alternative technologies. So if they're the ones doing the investment and controlling intellectual property, you have to wonder, isn't that kind of a conflict of interest? How interested are they going to be in rapidly bringing that to market?"
Scientific and political crossroads

Even if the EBI initiative succeeds in promoting biofuels, skeptics question the fixation on producing energy through agriculture.

Some scientists argue that an explosion in biofuel crops like sugar and palm oil could upset the ecological balance in countries considered prime fodder for the industry, such as Brazil and Indonesia. Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad Patzek said intensive expansion of biofuel agriculture could lead to "the absolute destruction of the tropical ecosystems" and exacerbate global-warming problems.

Berkeley ecologist Chapela warned that the EBI's approach could "simply shove the problem over again to future generations and to places in the world where people cannot protect themselves." Rather than seeking a single, technocratic energy solution, he said, scientists should explore more-nuanced research paths: measures like building ecologically efficient urban infrastructures, or empowering individual communities to develop localized strategies for curbing gas emissions that lead to climate change.

"The only way we can get there," he said, "is if we have a place where diversity of research and opinion, and the freedom to research, [are] protected against things like BP."

© 2007 The NewStandard. All rights reserved. The NewStandard is a non-profit publisher that encourages noncommercial reproduction of its content. Reprints must prominently attribute the author and The NewStandard, hyperlink to http://newstandardnews.net (online) or display newstandardnews.net (print), and carry this notice.

House committee subpoenas Rice on Iraq

Wed Apr 25, 2007 7:44PM EDT

By Thomas Ferraro, Reuters
Reuters Article Here

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday subpoenaed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about a central and later refuted administration justification for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

But the administration said it might fight the subpoena, citing a legal doctrine that can shield a president and his aides from having to answer questions from Congress.

"Those matters are covered by executive privilege," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, moving toward a possible legal showdown with the Democratic-led Congress.

On a party-line vote of 21-10, the House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a subpoena for Rice, which was quickly issued.

It directs her to answer questions from the panel next month about the administration's claim -- later proven false -- that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for nuclear arms.

"There was one person in the White House who had primary responsibility to get the intelligence about Iraq right -- and that was Secretary Rice who was then President George W. Bush's national security adviser," said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.

"The American public was misled about the threat posed by Iraq, and this committee is going to do its part to find out why," Waxman said.

The claim about Niger was a major factor in the administration's case for war, and critics later accused the White House of having twisted intelligence to build support. The administration denies it.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, ranking Republican on Waxman's committee, accused Democrats of going on a "fishing expedition."

Davis noted that a number of previous investigations had concluded that the claim about Niger "reflected the broadly supported state of knowledge at that time."

WHITE HOUSE SCRUTINY

Waxman said there had been investigations about mistakes within the intelligence community, but he wanted to determine "what went wrong inside the White House."

The subpoena for Rice was part of a flurry of action on Wednesday in the stepped-up congressional oversight of how the Bush administration operates. Since Democrats took control of Congress from Bush's Republicans in January, there have been more than 400 oversight hearings.

"There is a difference between oversight and over-reaching," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

The House Judiciary Committee voted to authorize a subpoena of Monica Goodling, a former Justice Department official, and seek a court order of immunity for her in its probe of the firing last year of eight of the 93 U.S. attorneys.

"Taking this step will compel her to testify, under penalty of contempt," said Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat seeking to determine if the dismissals were politically motivated.

Goodling had earlier invoked her right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which grilled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week about the ousted prosecutors, authorized a subpoena for Sara Taylor of the White House office of political affairs.

Bush has vowed to oppose any attempt to compel sworn congressional testimony from White House aides in the investigation of the ousted prosecutors. Gonzales contends that the firings were justified, but mishandled.

(Additional reporting by Susan Pleming, Toby Zakaria and Arshad Mohammed)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on April 23, 2007, Printed on April 25, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50406/

One of the most important bills for working Americans of the last 10 years is likely to go down in defeat, even though Democrats control Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an anti-union-busting measure that would restore the right to form unions, a right working people have enjoyed mostly on paper since the "Reagan revolution" stacked the deck against workers trying to organize. The House passed the bill last month, but it's widely expected to be defeated in the Senate, and if it does survive, it will almost certainly fall to George Bush's veto pen.

If EFCA is defeated, it will carry little or no political cost, largely because America's corporatocracy has done a bang-up job of framing the debate. A coalition of big business groups conducted a wildly misleading poll, one that gave respondents the (false) idea that the bill will diminish rather than protect workers' rights -- specifically, their right to a fair vote about whether to unionize. They've taken that spin and synchronized it across the whole of the conservative communications infrastructure -- from business-funded think tanks to right-wing blogs, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to lawmakers walking the halls of Congress.

But while the right's rhetoric has been in perfect lockstep, the bill's been pushed almost exclusively by organized labor, with too little outreach to the broader progressive movement and little in the way of a coordinated and effective message. As a result, the media's characterized it as a "union bill" -- which plays to the idea that it's driven by "special interests" -- and it's likely to die a quiet death with little notice among the general public.

Given the Democratic control of Congress and the debilitated state of working America, this is a tragedy. The need for reform is urgent. Union busting has reached a high art form in the United States. Companies no longer need thugs and gun-toting Pinkertons to keep workers from exercising their legal rights to organize; now they have high-priced, Armani-wearing lawyers, who simply brainwash workers into silence.

The tactics are as subtle as they are insidious. A study by Cornell University labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner found that: nine in 10 employers facing a union campaign force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent train supervisors on how to attack unions and require them to deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee; half of employers threaten to shut down the plant if workers organize; and three out of four hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, "often based on mass psychology and distorting the law."

Increasingly, cunning forms of intimidation are often enough to produce a "no" vote. If organizers manage to get and win a vote among workers to unionize, management is able to dispute the outcome, and the case can drag on, often for years. While it's pending, pro-union workers lose their jobs: A study published this year (PDF) by economists John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer found that "almost one in five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign."

That's illegal -- workers are guaranteed the right to organize -- but since the Reagan administration gutted U.S. labor protections, companies that cross the line pay modest penalties that can be written off as part of the cost of remaining union-free.

The result has been predictable: Between 1975 and 2004, the rate of union workers in the private sector fell by almost two thirds (PDF). In 2000, only one in seven American employees were covered by a collective bargaining agreement, while two-thirds of all workers in the rest of world's highly advanced economies enjoyed that protection.

The decline in union membership can account, at least in part, for exploding income and wealth inequality. As economist Dean Baker writes in his new book, "The United States Since 1980," in the 20 years following the election of Ronald Reagan, "the share of national income that went to the richest 5 percent of families rose by more than one-third … [while] the share of income going to the poorest 20 percent of the population fell by more than 25 percent."

A stronger labor movement would go a long way towards reversing that trend. Unionized workers earn 15 percent more than their non-union counterparts, have more vacation time and are more likely to have employer-funded pensions and health insurance (PDF).

A strong labor movement isn't only vital for union members; labor's decline over the past three decades is at least partially to blame for American workers' loss of benefits and job security, for a dysfunctional immigration system, for the near absence of family and medical leave and for the easy passage of NAFTA-style corporate investment deals, despite Americans' widespread unhappiness with their outcomes.

Healthy unions lift up all working people; economists have long discussed the "union threat effect" -- that employers offer higher pay and better benefits to workers who don't belong to a union in order to keep them from joining one.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is simple: It beefs up penalties for employers who violate workers' rights under the law, creates a mediation and arbitration system for disputes, and allows workers to form a union if a majority simply sign a card saying they want representation (a summary of the measure can be found here). This bill alone won't reverse the long decline of American labor -- union organizers say more is needed to create a truly level playing field -- but it would be a huge step in the right direction.

EFCA is an enormous threat to the leisure class -- in 2004, the share of national income going to workers was the lowest since they started tracking the data in 1929, while corporate profits were at an all-time high -- and the campaign they've mounted to kill the measure shows that, regardless of how much George W. Bush's presidency damaged the conservative movement, the Right still has significant advantages in steering the debate.

According to "RollCall," "Deep-pocketed corporate lobbying groups have joined together [to kill EFCA], today announcing the launch of a new coalition to coordinate their activities." The industry group, called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, "has the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others." The group sponsored a series of ads attacking lawmakers who supported the measure in key House districts and is expected to ratchet up the campaign in the Senate.

The coalition's spin makes no mention of beefing up penalties for violating workers' rights or creating new dispute-settlement procedures; instead, they seized on a compelling talking point tailored to America's political culture: That the "card-check" provision of the EFCA does away with the secret ballots that Americans have come to expect when casting their votes.

Big Business commissioned a Zogby poll that's dangerously close to the political "push-polls" of campaign infamy. The questions were remarkably dishonest, and the results were what the pollsters and their clients were looking for.

Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: "Every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union."

Nine out of ten respondents agreed, including 87 percent of Democrats. That's to be expected; the strategy is to depict management's assault on the ability to organize as protecting "workers' rights." Seven out of ten respondents said they'd be less likely to vote for a member of Congress "who voted in favor of taking away a worker's right to have a federally supervised secret ballot election to decide whether to organize a union."

Armed with their push-poll, the right's noise machine has been typically disciplined; all corners of the conservative movement are on message: Big Labor wants to do away with secret ballots, and it's pulling the Democrats' strings to make it happen.

Perhaps EFCA will defy expectations and become law (you can help out here). If it doesn't, it will be, in part, because progressive institutions -- the blogosphere, labor, liberal Democrats -- haven't yet developed the kind of close coordination the Right can still muster. Missing is a nice, easy-to-understand alternative narrative -- something like: "End the Stalinist election process," or "the Soviets also had secret ballots" -- and the infrastructure needed to repeat that message over and over again.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50406/

The Daily Show Does Wolfowitz and Paramour

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/50813/

C'mon, ya know ya wanna see it.