JPBlog

When Bush quietly signed the "Patriot" Act this month, in addition to signing away some of our most precious freedoms, he signed an addendum that said that he didn't have to obey the law requiring him to inform congress how the FBI was using its extended police powers under the Act. This president really believes he is above the law--that it does not apply to him.

Read the article from the Boston Globe (free registration required)

And Congress is letting him get by with it.

In fact, the Republicans are proposing to amend FISA so as to decriminalize Bush's felonious authorization of illegal wiretapping.

The George C. Marshall Institute, one of the proliferating cadre of right-wing scientific disinformation organizations devoted to the short-term interests of the military-industrial complex, is hosting its annual awards dinner on June 13, 2006.

The honoree this year is President George W. Bush, who is being honored for his contributions to "science, public policy, and public service."

Our own Haley Barbour will deliver the keynote address.

I didn't make this up, honest. My imagination isn't that wild.

Turning from farce to tragedy, Dr. Stephen Schneider has an excellent article here on the problems scientists encounter when speaking out on subjects with political and economic implications.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publication, Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations, has become available on the web. It is a deep analysis of the effect of peak oil on the Army and what must be done to ameliorate the potentially disastrous results of a worldwide energy shortage. A sample:

In these times of tightening classical energy options, the Army needs to take steps comparable to those in the national agenda mentioned above by modernizing infrastructure, optimizing end-use, minimizing environmental impact, pulling technology markets, cooperating in regional purchases, and leveraging alternate financing. Special attention to the diversification of sources is appropriate. This incorporates a massive expansion in renewable energy purchases, a vast increase in renewable distributed generation including photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, microturbines and biomass, and the large-scale networking of on-site generation. (Emphasis added)

Now ask yourself—honestly—do you think that a single one of these suggestions has the slightest chance of being implemented by the Bush administration? Is the Pope a Cajun? Should I even bother to ask?

You can download the document from the military website here.

If you cannot get it from the military website you can download it here (1.3 Mb).

The Department of Agriculture has announced that a cow on an Alabama farm has been diagnosed with BSE - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

Other news: The U. S. Department of Agriculture plans to cut back drastically on testing cattle for BSE. We always knew they had our welfare in mind, didn't we?

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has some sage advice: become a vegetarian:

“This disturbing discovery should alert consumers to the many problems with meat-heavy diets,” says PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D. “Mad cow disease is terrifying, but the truth is that all animal products are a health risk because they’re loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol.”

PCRM offers consumers a Vegetarian Starter Kit, which can be downloaded as a PDF file or ordered in printed form.

Another first class article by Newberry on globalization, rent and lowering barriers to entry. I don't have time to read all the interesting stuff on Newberry's blog, The Blogging of the President, but every time I dip into it, I always emerge with my brain swarming with new ideas. He must never sleep.

One irresistible quote out of many:

But what the government of the US should be doing, rather than fighting a Boer War in Iraq - is realizing that the petro-engine economy is coming to an end. The very existence of an era of globalization is a sure sign of it, because it means that production is not improving quickly enough to create zones of higher productive value, merely the ability to equalize zones that exist.

This means focusing on the reality of The End of Extraction. It is extraction that is distorting our economic system, because everything has to be protected, or made to be fictionally as profitable as extracting oil from the sands of Saudi Arabia. As Professor [Lester] Thurow correctly points out, this leads to fudging the books, and eventually to financial scandals and collapse.

This blog and publication has been scandelously negligent about conveying news and announcements of the Mobile to New Orleans march organized and sponsored by Veterans for Peace that began the other day. Here is the website and here is the running blog for the march.

According to the Washington Post, former Whitehouse advisor Claude A. Allen was arrested for stealing approximately $5,000 from two department stores in Montgomery, Alabama. Allen had resigned his post last month "to spend more time with his family."

Bush nominated Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2003, but his nomination was blocked by Democrats who pointed out his inexperience. It look as though inexperience was the least of his problems.

It's hard to describe my reaction to this news. The time for smugness has long gone; the story of Bush appointees making the transition from power and respect to conviction and contempt has happened so often that it has lost its ability to surprise. It's all weariness now. Never in the history of this nation has the executive branch harbored so many crooks, sycophants and political hacks. Grant's administration was a Trappist monastery by comparison.

Renowned muckraker Doug Thompson published an impressive rant on the Bush Administration's effort to intimidate journalists who expose the ever-widening circles of corruption emanating from the Whitehouse. He also has some bitter barbs at a few mainstream media reporters who called him on the telephone or emailed him requesting his sources. Thompson is a courageous man and represents a great American tradition more honored in the breach than in the observance by the MSM.

7/7/2006 Unfortunately, Thompson's rant is no long on the site.

By way of Progresso Weekly comes the story of Alberto J. Mora, former general counsel for the Navy, a staunchly Republican, conservative, Cuban-American, appointed to the position by the Bush administration, who, when he learned of the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantánamo, attempted to stop it. To his dismay, he learned that the policy of allowing cruel and inhuman treatment had been approved by Secretary Rumsfeld. The complete story by Jane Mayer appears in The New Yorker. A memo written by Mr. Mora to the inspector general of the Navy is reproduced here (1.3 Mb)

The Internet is what it is because until now the owners of the hardware were forced by law to treat all content equally. Now that the net is a very big deal, the carriers would like to change that, and they are lobbying Congress heavily to allow them to treat certain users and certain kinds of content favorably--for a price, of course. If Congress abandons the common carrier model for one that gives the network owners a say in what goes over the net and for what price, the Internet as we know it will vanish, along with many of the benefits that accrue to an open commons for ideas.

This is something worth fighting for, folks.

Information Week: Test of Net Neutrality

A real possibility.