ACLU Says New Specter-Cheney NSA Bill Provides Sham Oversight, Says Congress Must Be Independent of the Executive

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly rebuked new legislation offered by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) that would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “optional” review over the National Security Agency’s controversial program to spy on Americans. The legislation was announced this morning and was drafted in close consultation with the White House. (more…)

U.S borrowing, trade deficits are unsustainable

You can’t expect the International Monetary Fund to come out and say the world is headed for a global financial crash. And it isn’t saying that.

But what it is saying, in its own careful way, is that the risk of such a calamity is increasing. (more…)

North Korea and Iran remain defiant on their nuclear programs. Vladimir Putin is befriending every regime at odds with Bush, from Tehran to Damascus to Caracas. Neocon meddling in the Bear’s backyard has gotten us bit.

Unless we grade foreign policy on the nobility of the intent, which is how the liberals used to defend disasters like Yalta, it is not credible to call Bush’s foreign policy a success. The Lebanon debacle, once U.S. complicity is exposed, is unlikely to win anyone a Nobel.

Bush’s trade policy has left us with annual deficits of $800 billion with the world and $200 billion with Beijing. Once the greatest creditor nation in history, we are now the greatest debtor. U.S. manufacturing has been hollowed out with thousands of plants closed and 3 million industrial jobs vanishing since Bush took office. (more…)

Halliburton woke up Friday, determined to debunk a film by Robert Greenwald that it has not seen. You have to wonder just what Halliburton’s CEO and department of agitation and propaganda are thinking. The reaction to Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is similar to CEO David Lesar’s ads in which he says that Halliburton is doing a great job in Iraq: Both are without first hand knowledge, based on fantasy and hearsay. (more…)

We can never move beyond 9/11 until we have a complete, thorough and non-partisan investigation of the events of the day and what underlies them.

Now that all the books have been published and promoted; the Hollywood films have all opened (and closed); all the radio and television commentaries and commemorative specials have been broadcast; all the dramas (and the so-called “docudramas”) and even a handful of reality-based, actual “documentaries” have aired and been argued over, ad infinitum and ad nauseum, on the web and in the blogosphere…at long last, and after all has been said (but so little really has been done) where do we find ourselves? And where do we go from here, on the long, confusing, circuitous and still ever-painful path from 9/11? (more…)

Hydropower, Geothermal Research Could Disappear In 2007 U.S. Budget

“What they’re saying is that if your program doesn’t have to do with biofuels, wind, or solar, you won’t have a program.”
Karl Gawell, executive director,
Geothermal Energy Association

(more…)

Iran’s leaders are calling for a new relationship with Britain, at a time when Tehran’s international clout has been strengthened by events in Lebanon and Iraq.

“We are now at a new beginning,” said Iran’s new ambassador to London, Rasoul Movahedian. “The world has been changed, the region has been changed, and it is time for us to think of a new modality of our relationship. There are grounds of common interest for both Iran and Great Britain to work together.”