Gonzales Puts The Squeeze on Ashcroft in ICU

The big political news yesterday was James Comey's astonishing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (watch it on the YouTube video, above), in which he told the incredible story of Abu Gonzales and Andy Card making a late night run to the intensive care unit room of John Ashcroft, trying to get him to do an end-around around Acting US Attorney Comey's refusal to reauthorize the illegal NSA wiretap program. And then Bush went ahead and authorized the program anyway, even though the Justice Department had told him explicitly: IT WAS ILLEGAL. That's called a felony, folks. Probably multiple felonies.

Watch that YouTube video. It's like a scene from a film, except it's real.

Gonzales was White House counsel when he tried to put the squeeze on critically ill Ashcroft. It is incredible that he is now Attorney General. I am amazed that the US now has a worse AG than Witchcroft himself, but clearly that's the case.

I didn't have to time to do this story justice, so read these excellent analyses around blogtopia:

Glenn Greenwald, salon.com: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal

TPMuckraker.com: Comey Details White House Attempt to Force Approval of Secret Program

ThinkProgress: Comey Breaks Silence: White House Tried To Force Incapacitated Ashcroft To Back Spying Program

Front paged here:

WaPo: Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed
Ailing Ashcroft Pressured on Spy Program, Former Deputy Says

NYTimes: President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping

Jerry Falwell Did Make History

Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988)

Wikipedia: Hustler Magazine v. Falwell

Legal history, that is, when his award for damages for this Hustler magazine ad was overturned by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds:

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Army Corps of Engineers is so often involved in projects like this, which backfire. Last fall they excavated 500,000 cubic yards of sand from the beaches of Surf City, New Jersey, in order to improve the beach.

The unintended consequence? The dredging unlodged 1,111 pieces of WWI ordinance that had been dumped in the ocean. So the beaches were closed for months, and at a cost of $2.3 million dollars, the beaches were cleared of the ancient discarded weapons. The beaches are being reopened, but now there are special rules: You can't dig any deeper than 12" into the sand.

Just the kind of place you want to take the kids!

NYTimes: After Ordnance Scare, Beachgoers Told to Dig With Care

Aaron Houston for The New York Times

A fuze, a device used to ignite explosives that dates from World War I, was found Monday by a detection crew in shallow water off Surf City.

Got To Make Some of These

Kool-Aid Dill Pickle

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

NYTimes: A Sweet So Sour: Kool-Aid Dills

[] “They’re easy to make a gallon,” Ms. Williams said. “You pull the pickles from the jar, cut them in halves, make double-strength Kool-Aid, add a pound of sugar, shake and let it sit — best in the refrigerator — for about a week. The taste takes to anything. A while back I made a mistake and bought a jar of pickle chips instead of halves or wholes. Came out fine. This whole Kool-Aid pickle thing is going so good, you wonder why somebody hasn’t put a patent on them.”

Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007

Given that Jerry Falwell blamed me, a feminist, for 9/11, I have a hard time saying anything nice about the man. As Atrios says, let's hope he finds God more forgiving than he thought he was. (or, even better, lets hope that he finds out that God is female!)

A compilation of some of the lowlights of his public statements: The Carpetbagger Report: Jerry Falwell dies at age 73

Wikipedia: Jerry Falwell

NYTimes: Rev. Jerry Falwell Is Dead at 73

Kirsten Gillibrand in NYTimes

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Potential rivals for Representative Kirsten Gillibrand's seat in Congress include a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a former candidate for governor.

Part 3 of the series:

NYTimes: The Freshman
Barely in Office, but G.O.P. Rivals Are Circling

Milford, New York, where the picture is taken, is also the home of the Cooperstown Brewing Co., where you can buy my favorite beer, Old Slugger, as well as other baseball-named beers. I wonder if John Sweeney has partaken of their wares? The New York Times outlines several Republicans who will run for Gillibrand's seat in 2008, but Sweeney is not mentioned.

Save Darfur: Divest

I saw this on BlueGal:

The reason Fidelity feels they can't divest from genocide is because that would mean divesting large holdings from China. China is an international scourge on so many levels. “They’re too big a market to be held accountable to international standards” is a sick testimony to Western greed. That and Wal Mart. Oh, wait. That’s cheap junk from China, isn’t it?

Look at her. Just look at her face.

h/t Quakerdave, who would like as many of you as possible to post this vid to your blogs.

Chemicals and Cancer

The LATimes reports on a new study linking breast cancer to many chemicals common to our environment.

LATimes: Common chemicals are linked to breast cancer
Of the 216 compounds, many in the air, food or everyday items.

LATimes: Chemical carcinogens (list)

It Isn't Your Imagination

Typical Sunday talk show panel: Four white men, one white woman, no minorities
All those talking head shows are filled with white men. Men outnumber women 4 to 1; white outnumber minorities 7 to 1.



Media Matters for America: Sunday Shutout: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows

Rudy Giuliani: "Said all the right things, but did all the wrong things"

I hope the Republicans are foolish enough to run Rudy Giuliani in 2008. He's crooked and a real jerk. Here are just two articles about his perfidy.

WaPo: In Private Sector, Giuliani Parlayed Fame Into Wealth
Candidate's Firm Has Taken On Controversial Executives, Clients

On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich.

And at the same time he was busily making himself rich, he was exposing thousands of Ground Zero workers to toxic dust by failing to enforce federal requirements regarding respirator use:

NYTimes: Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge.

[]

The city’s handling of safety issues has been criticized by doctors, unions and occupational safety experts. Mr. Giuliani’s oversight of the operation was condemned in a 2006 book, “Grand Illusion,” by Wayne Barrett, a longtime critic of the former mayor, and Dan Collins. Mr. Barrett said in an interview that when it came to safety, Mr. Giuliani “said all the right things, but did all the wrong things.”

And of course, by failing to do the right thing in the long term, he saved money in the short term, and used the speed of the Ground Zero cleanup to burnish his own reputation, which he then sold around the world (see WaPo article at top.) For Rudy, it's all about the Benjamins, and public health and the little people be damned.

Infections

Today's Washington Post has an article about the antibiotic-resistant infections sweeping the nations' hospitals. This made me think of Steve Gilliard of the News Blog, who has suffered a relapse in his fight to get out of the hospital and get well. He was already weak from serious kidney and heart problems; now he has a system-wide infection and can only be visited by people in what his friend Jen calls "bunnysuits". Steve was the first 'big' blogger ever to link to this site, so we have a special place in our heart for him and pray for his recovery.

It also made me think about a factor not mentioned in the article, Big Food's aggressive use of antibiotics in the production of meat. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70% -- seventy percent! -- of the antibiotics used in this country are used on animals being fattened for slaughter:

It is livestock producers, however, who use the vast majority of antibiotics produced in the United States. An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are used for nontherapeutic purposes such as accelerating animal growth and compensating for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on large-scale confinement facilities known as "factory farms." This translates to about 25 million pounds of antibiotics and related drugs fed every year to livestock for nontherapeutic purposes—almost eight times the amount given to humans to treat disease.

Another reason to become a vegetarian.


1999 Guardian (uk) series: Antibiotics in our food

Time: Playing Chicken With Our Antibiotics
Overtreatment is creating dangerously resistant germs (2002)

Center for Science in the Public Interest: Antibiotic Resistance Project

Tell Your Mama 'Bout O'Bama

"I've got pieces of everybody in me," Obama has acknowledged. (Orlin Wagner - AP)

No wonder I like Obama so much. He's one of my people! O'Bama it is.

WaPo: Tiny Irish Village Is Latest Place to Claim Obama as Its Own

MONEYGALL, Ireland -- Here they call him O'Bama.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Democratic candidate for president, is the talk of this village because recently unearthed records indicate that he is a son of Moneygall.

Stephen Neill, a local Anglican rector, said church documents he has found, along with census, immigration and other records tracked down by U.S. genealogists, appear to show that Obama's great-great-great-grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, was reared in Moneygall, then left for America in 1850, when he was 19.

Farewell to Robbie Fowler

Today Robbie Fowler, the hero of the Kop, will play his last game in a Liverpool kit. My favorite story about Robbie Fowler is that he went to Istanbul in 2005 and was sitting in the stands as a fan when Liverpool won its fifth European Cup (even though he was at the time a Man City player). For today, I switched from Didier Drogba (out with injury) to Fowler in my fantasy team. I'm sure the Liverpool team will do everything possible to help God score in his final Liverpool game. Even Rafa hopes he will score today. Here are a few videos of Robbie Fowler to enjoy if you're not getting the game live. Robbie Fowler, you'll never walk alone.

His return to Liverpool last year:

All of Fowler's goals after his return:

100 Players Who Shook The Kop: #4, Robbie Fowler

Compilation of great Fowler goals:

Fastest hat-trick in EPL by Robbie Fowler (1994):


Observer Sport Monthly (uk): Don't look back in anger

Mother's Day For Peace

The history of Mother's Day:

In the United States, Mother's Day was originally suggested by poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe. In 1870, after witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. This "Mother's Day Proclamation" would plant the seed for what would eventually become a national holiday.

After writing the proclamation, Howe had it translated into many languages and spent the next two years of her life distributing it and speaking to women leaders all over the world. In her book Reminiscences, Howe wrote, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" She devoted much of the next two years to this cause, and began holding annual "Mother's Day" gatherings in Boston, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

In 1907, thirty-seven years after the proclamation was written, women's rights activist Anna Jarvis began campaigning for the establishment of a nationally observed Mother¹s Day holiday. And in 1914, four years after Howe's death, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day as a national holiday.

Julia Ward Howe's original Mother's Day Proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Mother's Day For Peace

Julia Ward Howe

Anucha Browne Sanders Trial Date Set

Or, as the New York Post puts it: SEPT. 10 TRIAL DATE FOR ISIAH

And let the leaking (from the defense, surely) begin:

Legal sources predict the trial to last two weeks, allowing Thomas to be ready for Knicks' training camp Oct. 1 in Charleston, S.C. Sources deny settlement talks took place recently.

"There's going to be a trial," one legal source said. Browne-Sanders declined comment.

Interestingly, Isiah has dumped his initial attorney and replaced him with a her, the former head of the New York Women's Bar Association. Given Thomas's personnel choices at New York and Indiana, I think this may be a disaster in the making. Like the Stephon Marbury deal.

East Valley Tribune (Phoenix): Inside the NBA: New act in Knicks circus: Thomas trial slated for fall

Barely relevant P.S.: 13 years ago today, Isiah Thomas retired from the NBA.

Just For Laughs

GQ: The Real Colbert Report Every time I see the GQ cover photo of Colbert holdng his baby self on a magazine stand, it cracks me up.

Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons

Predictions of the Year 2000
from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900

Dependable Renegade has John McCain, still out there visiting in his flak jacket:

The Gates of Hell

Applebee's in Petaluma, CA

Colonial Williamsburg

Graceland

Orlando, Florida

historic San Francisco

The Lower East Side
Indiana

And my personal favorite: Portland, Maine

Yo Blair

Don't let the door hit you when you leave office on June 27th.

I used to compare Blair favorably to Chimpy McFlightsuit, because he could speak English fluently unlike President Malaprop, but he also made the historically foolish decision to invade Iraq. He will not be judged well by history.

"Yo Blair" greeting audible at second 17 of this NBC Today Show report

AC Milan 3 - Manchester United 0

AC Milan's Kaka (C) and Gennaro Gattuso celebrate at the end of their Champions League semi-final second leg soccer match as Manchester United's Darren Fletcher (R) leaves the pitch at the San Siro stadium in Milan May 2, 2007. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini (ITALY)
AC Milan and Liverpool will meet in a rematch of the 2005 Champions League final on May 23rd in Athens. Milan trounced Manchester United yesterday. The Mancs were missing three of their four starting defenders (Rio Ferdinand, Gary Neville, and Patrice Evra) but I thought the game was won and lost in the midfield where Gattuso dominated play.

BBC: AC Milan 3-0 Man Utd (agg 5-3)
Mighty Milan destroy Man Utd

Goal.com: AC Milan - Manchester United: AC Milan Player Ratings

Goal.com: AC Milan - Manchester United: Manchester United FC Player Ratings

Liverpool 1 - Chelsea 0 - Liverpool Advance on Penalties, 4-1

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard celebrates after team-mate Dirk Kuyt scored the penalty that clinches victory for Liverpool against Chelsea during their European Champions League semi final second leg football match at Anfield, Liverpool. Liverpool won on penalty kicks after the two teams were tied 1-1 on aggregate after extra time.(AFP/Carl De Souza)

Independent (uk): Liverpool have the final say as Mourinho falls to nemesis again

Independent (uk): Liverpool 1 Chelsea 0 (1-1 on agg, Liv. win 4-1 on pens): Reina saves best until last as Liverpool take road to Athens

Food Blogging

I never thought I'd become a food blogger, but so many stories have food in them today.

(1) Save Chocolate! Due to popular demand (meaning the FDA got slammed) the consumer comment period on Big Food's petition to be allowed to substitute vegetable fat for cocoa butter has been extended to June 25, 2007. Don'tMessWithOurChocolate.com has a sample letter you can use in composing your petition to the FDA. I don't want to buy a bar of Crisco, do you?

(2) Pizza. Resigned-in-disgrace AIDS Czar Randall Tobias, patron of the DC escort service, said this in his defense:

[ABC Investigative Reporter Brian] ROSS: Well, David, I talked to him one day before he resigned and told him that we had found his name and personal phone number on a list of clients of the so-called DC Madam’s escort service in Washington. And what he told me was that he in fact had been a customer of the service, but that he had not had sex. He had had what he called gals come over to his condo to give him a massage. He claimed there was no sex but that he was stunned by the fact that we were aware he was a client and that was his conversation. I asked him if he knew any of the young women, their names. He said he didn’t remember them at all. He said it was like ordering pizza.

I don't even know what to say about a comment like that.

(3) Melamine. Apparently our food supply is awash in the stuff, much of it coming from China. It's ground up and added to feed and grains. When a food is tested for nutritional value, melamine looks like protein, so it 'boosts' that number. It's all part of the scientific breakdown of food into scientific categories or nutrients, which has had a disastrous effect on the American and the world diet. Read this article from the Times magazine a few months ago: the best diet is to eat food your grandmother would recognize as food. Mostly plants, and nothing reconstituted in a factory. Most of it tastes like crap, anyway.

NYTimes: Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China