Miller Agrees to Testify in CIA Leak Probe

WASHINGTON - After nearly three months behind bars, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released Thursday after agreeing to testify about the Bush administration's disclosure of a covert CIA officer's identity.


Miller left the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., after reaching an agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She will appear Friday morning before a grand jury investigating the case.

"My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations," Miller said in a statement.

Her source was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, reported the Times, which supported her contention that her source should be protected.

"As we have throughout this ordeal, we continue to support Judy Miller in the decision she has made," said Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify."Full Text

Looks like someone got tired of a 4'x8' room. Now perhaps we might find out who it is that felt the need to burn a CIA operative because her husband wrote an oped piece. We will also see if Mr. Bush will follow up on his initial statement about firing anyone involved or his amended version that he will fire anyone who is convicted of a crime. Doesn't conviction of a crime above a misdemeanor pretty much preclude you from working in the White House? Especially if you are in jail?

Brown Serving as Consultant to FEMA

CNN - A congressional panel on Tuesday is expected to scrutinize the decision to keep ousted Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown on the federal payroll.

Brown told congressional investigators Monday that he is being paid as a consultant to help FEMA assess what went wrong in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to a senior official familiar with the meeting.

Wait.

Did I read that right?

Brown resigned as FEMA for doing a shitty job, so now FEMA has hired him as a consultant to tell them why such a shitty job was done?

If I get fired at my work I can assure they won't be paying me to come back and tell them why they fired me.

What's up with this?

Via .

House OKs Faith As Head Start Hiring Issue

By BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer Thu Sep 22, 6:09 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to let Head Start centers consider religion when hiring workers, overshadowing its moves to strengthen the preschool program's academics and finances.

The Republican-led House approved a bill that lets churches and other faith-based preschool centers hire only people who share their religion, yet still receive federal tax dollars.

Democrats blasted that idea as discriminatory.

Launched in the 1960s, the nearly $7 billion Head Start program provides comprehensive education to more than 900,000 poor children. Though credited for getting kids ready for school, Head Start has drawn scrutiny as cases of financial waste and questions about academic quality have surfaced nationwide.

Overall, the House bill would insert more competition into Head Start grants, require greater disclosure of how money is spent, and try to improve collaboration among educators in different grades. Yet on Thursday, the dispute over religion eroded the bipartisan support for Head Start's renewal.

I have no problem with Head Start. Sure it might need some tweeking and it looks like that was done here. But they just couldn't help themselves. The bill and funding were trying to push this program to be more than just breakfast before school for poor kids but actually make sure there was a decent educational aspect to this. However, now we get to have religious based descriminatory hiring practices with Federal Funds. This isn't about Democrats being "anti-Christian", for me, this is about someone skipping a few lines of the Constitution when they took their oath for public service.

EPA Wants to Ease Toxic Spill Reporting

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - The government wants to quit forcing companies to report small releases of toxic pollutants and allow them to submit reports on their pollution less frequently.

Saying it wants to ease its regulatory burden on companies, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed adopting a 'short form' that would excuse companies from disclosing spills and other releases of toxic substances...

Sean says:

Tell me this has nothing to do with two guys running the White House who are oil men. Just try and tell me that.

To which Adam replies:

Damnit! I want to, but I can't! This is bad, bad, bad. Bad GOP, BAD!

Sorry, Sean, I can't lie to you either. This is the administration attempting a reach-around to their friends in Big Business (esp. Big Oil, IMHO).

City Official Hordes Relief Supplies In His Home

Nola.com - Police found cases of food, clothes and tools intended for hurricane victims in the backyard, shed and rooms throughout the home of a chief administrative officer of a New Orleans suburb, officials said Wednesday.

Police in Kenner searched Cedric Floyd's home Tuesday because of complaints that city workers were helping themselves to donations for hurricane victims. Floyd, who runs the day-to-day operations in Kenner, was in charge of distributing the donations.

Fire him.

Seriously, he's got to go.

Just a little housekeeping

The spammers have found us. Rather than break out the tinfoil hats, I have turned on the word verification for posting comments. Sorry for any inconvenience.

FEMA Sends Trucks Full Of Ice For Katrina Victims To Maine

KSDK NewsChannel 5 - - City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here, only that the city has been asked to help out with traffic problems. But the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice -- stayed for a few days -- and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.

The truck drivers, who are from all over the country, tell us they were subcontracted by FEMA. They started arriving over the weekend, and city spokesperson Peter Dewitt says as many as 200 trucks could come to the city by the end of the week.

What the fuck?

They don't have places to store ice anywhere near New Orleans? I mean, not even in someplace like Atlanta.

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't this sound colossally stupid?

Via .

I'll bet you had forgotten about this

House Republicans block bid for CIA leak data

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. congressional committees on Wednesday rejected Democrat-backed resolutions that would have compelled the Bush administration to turn over records relating to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and International Relations Committee, who opposed the resolution, said Congress should await the outcome of a federal investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.Full Story


A Federal trial into BALCO illegally distributing steroids didn't stop Congress from having hearings. One might think this is a tad more important. Also, doesn't the Legislative branch have a duty to "check" the Executive branch? Or did I not get an "A" in "Happy Jack" Miller's U.S. Government class at RHS?

NWA Bankruptcy Is on the Table

Star Tribune - Plagued by record fuel prices, high labor costs and enormous debt, the Northwest Airlines board of directors will meet today to decide whether to file for bankruptcy for the first time in the company's 79-year history.

Northwest said Tuesday that no decision on whether to file for bankruptcy had been made, and analysts, while agreeing that a bankruptcy filing might be inevitable, said today's meeting could be one last effort to pressure workers to accept steep pay and job cuts.

'They have a very realistic possibility of being forced to file for bankruptcy, but not necessarily [today],' said Michael E. Levine, a former executive at Northwest and other airlines who is a research scholar at New York University School of Law.

Northwest, like most big airlines, has wrestled with high fuel and labor costs and growing pressure from low-fare airlines such as JetBlue, Southwest and AirTran. Two of Northwest Airlines' rivals -- United Airlines and US Airways -- have entered bankruptcy in recent years. And Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines is widely expected to do so this week.

Though this is not entirely political in scope, I think that there is some bearing here.

The big airlines are all having problems and they're asking for government bailouts (not all, but lots).

Tough.

Perhaps what we're seeing is that the market cannot support massive carriers. This is where I become a free market proponent: smaller carriers seems to be doing fine (look at Southwest, the smaller airline that locked in gas at GREAT prices). Maybe the big carriers need to fail. Does this mean that you couldn't fly from the East Coast to the West? No. A carrier will still provide that, maybe someone smaller, and if it is profitable others will do so as well. Competition is funny like that.

Here's the downside, though, and for this, I don't have an answer: pensions. If the big carriers go under their pensions may have to be paid for by the federally insured pension insurance company (I don't recall their official name offhand). That means that you and me and every other taxpayer would be footing the bill for the pensions of these former airline employees.

I'm not economist and I don't know the intricacies of tax law and such, but it would be nice if there was a way to break up the big carriers into smaller carriers that still paid the original pensions.

Any thoughts?

Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home

ABC News - Military sources tells ABC News that (Rep. William Jefferson, D-La), an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A 5-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched.

Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson's initial request.

Jefferson defended the expedition, saying he set out to see how residents were coping at the Superdome and in his neighborhood. He also insisted that he did not ask the National Guard to transport him.

'I did not seek the use of military assets to help me get around my city,' Jefferson told ABC News. 'There was shooting going on. There was sniping going on. They thought I should be escorted by some military guards, both to the convention center, the Superdome and uptown.'

The water reached to the third step of Jefferson's house, a military source familiar with the incident told ABC News, and the vehicle pulled up onto Jefferson's front lawn so he wouldn't have to walk in the water. Jefferson went into the house alone, the source says, while the soldiers waited on the porch for about an hour.

I'm OK with the tour, he is a senior Congressman from Louisiana after all, and I'd probably be OK with him taking a drive by his house, though that might be pushing it, especially if his house was out of the way, but running in and going through his things for an hour? I'm not so good with that.

We May Have a New Hero

Many reasons have been given for why we fight and our youth must die in Iraq. The reasons now given for why we must continue this war bear no resemblance to the reasons given to gain the support of the American people and the United States Congress prior to our invasion in March of 2003. Before the war, we were told we faced an imminent threat to our national security from Saddam Hussein. This rationale, now proven grossly mistaken, has been changed. Now we’re told we must honor the fallen by “completing the mission.” To do otherwise would demean the sacrifice of those who have died or been wounded. Any lack of support for “completing the mission” is said, by the promoters of the war, to be unpatriotic, un-American, and detrimental to the troops. They insist the only way one can support the troops is to never waver on the policy of nation building, no matter how ill-founded that policy may be. The obvious flaw in this argument is that the mission, of which they so reverently speak, has changed constantly from the very beginning.Full Text-Long

Before anyone thinks I am straying from our mission to blow up partisan politics let me say that these are the opening remarks from a House special order speech I watched on CSPAN this evening. The reason I watched the whole speech is because these words came from the mouth of Representative Ron Paul Republican, Texas.

You owe it to yourself to read the whole text. Mr. Paul uses history to show why current foreign policy regarding the Middle East is flawed and further endangers us. He questions motives for the war and mentions oil several times as the real motives. He also calls to task the illogical assertion that we must honor the fallen in this "war" by continuing to fight and likely getting more killed. Honestly, by that logic the war will never end. No one is spared. The President, his fellow members of Congress and the media.

His remarks are well conceived, well reasoned in addition to being based on history and well timed. Again he is a Republican from Texas.

Internal Memos Show Oil Companies Intentionally Limited Refining Capacity to Drive Up Gasoline Prices

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) today exposed internal oil company memos that show how the industry intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits. The exposure comes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as the oil industry blames environmental regulation for limiting number of U.S. refineries.

The three internal memos from Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco (available at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/fs/) show different ways the oil giants closed down refining capacity and drove independent refiners out of business. The confidential memos demonstrate a nationwide effort by American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying and research arm of the oil industry, to encourage the major refiners to close their refineries in the mid-1990s in order to raise the price at the pump.

"Large oil companies have for a decade artificially shorted the gasoline market to drive up prices," said FTCR president Jamie Court, who successfully fought to keep Shell Oil from needlessly closing its Bakersfield, California refinery this year. "Oil companies know they can make more money by making less gasoline. Katrina should be a wakeup call to America that the refiners profit widely when they keep the system running on empty."

Not sure if this has been confirmed yet, but if legitimate let me be the first person to call bullshit.

Via Sploid.