February 6, 2006
Media Code: We will not broadcast these hearings
Let's hope Americans are this dumb
White House spying defense rests on shaky legal ground
What's needed at this point is a sober, bipartisan investigation into just what has been going on. Senate hearings that begin today, with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as the leadoff witness, provide that opportunity, if only both sides will use it.

February 5, 2006
Code: Let's pass another tax cut and see if Americans are really this dumb
"Staggering tax increases, immense deficits or deep cuts in every category of spending"
"That will present future Congresses with impossible choices: staggering tax increases, immense deficits or deep cuts in every category of spending," Bush warned. "We need to put aside partisan politics and work together and get this problem solved."

February 6, 2006
Code: There's a criminal in the White House
Specter Criticizes Rationale for Spying
Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes that President Bush violated a 1978 law specifically calling for a secret court to consider and approve such monitoring. The Pennsylvania Republican branded Gonzales' explanations to date as "strained and unrealistic."

February 2, 2006
We've ignored liberal bashing for decades, has it led to this?
Has today's political discourse come to this?
And when the president was introduced to the packed House chamber, a chorus of lusty boos rang out in the saloon.

It was going to be an interesting hour.

"If we gain back the House, we can impeach Bush," he said.

There you have the loyal opposition. It says something about the level of political discourse in our country today.

February 4, 2006
Marine veteran calls for Bush Impeachment
Sheeler, a marine veteran who served during the first Iraq war and an outspoken, 1970's style democrat, declared, "It's time we as ordinary citizens stop talking and start acting to bring the change we want to see in our America."

February 2, 2006
Arab view SOTU: "liberation" means occupation, "freedom" means war, "victory" means victims"
But its narrative is so foreign to the thinking of most people in the Arab world that they've come to hear Bush's language as a kind of code: "liberation" means occupation, "freedom" means war, "victory" means victims, "reconstruction" means chaos, "democracy" means following directives from Washington. Bush, whatever his intentions—and I think he should be credited with some good ones—has come to be seen as a caricature, talking about strength and determination, projecting an image of stubbornness and confusion.

February 2, 2006
17 US House Reps Want Bush Impeach Probe
The total number of Members of US Congress who want Bush's impeachment or resignation is actually seventeen (17), including 14 co-sponsors of H. Res 635, plus US Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) who called for Bush's impeachment over wiretapping, and US Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Bobby Rush (D-GA) who have called for Bush to step down.

The 14 members who have signed on to H. Res. 635 are Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. Sheila-Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Major Owens (D-NY), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), according to Thomas.loc.gov.

February 1, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Bush and Blair discussed using American Spyplane in UN colours to lure Saddam into war
President Bush said: "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

February 2, 2006
What Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner
1. For School Prayer and Amending the Constitution: Rep. Boehner supported a school prayer amendment to the United States Constitution in 1997. . .

February 3, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Cheney, Libby were informed uranium claim was false
Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.

June 7, 2003 (posted January 4, 2006)
In case you forgot
Bush ignores UN call for inspectors
June 7, 2003: The call for a resumption of UN inspections, which was endorsed on Thursday by an overwhelming majority of council members, including Britain, America's closest military ally, came as the Bush Administration faces charges by members of Congress and some intelligence analysts that it may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the invasion.

It also reflected a growing consensus in the 15-nation council that the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) should test US and British claims that Iraq continued to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

February 3, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Memo: Bush/Blair wanted war in January 2003
(Who needs proof)A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

February 3, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Judge Slams Ex-EPA Chief Over Sept. 11
NEW YORK - A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.

February 3, 2006
Senate Session on Security Erupts in Spying Debate
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Senate Democrats on Thursday angrily accused the Bush administration of mounting a public relations campaign to defend the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program while withholding details of the secret eavesdropping from Congressional oversight committees.

February 2, 2006
Bush to seek $120 billion more for wars
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Thursday it will ask Congress for $120 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If approved by Congress, the war money would push spending related to the wars toward a staggering half-trillion dollars.

January 31, 2006
Conservatives Respond to Bush's SOTU
"In parts of the speech, he sounded like he had undergone a conversion from being the biggest spender in American history to a fiscal conservative. But conservatives have heard this kind of rhetoric often from Presidents named Bush.

February 1, 2006
Matthews repeated spy program falsehoods immediately after SOTU
Chris Matthews praised the "strong statements" that President Bush made defending his domestic spying program without correcting Bush's discredited suggestion that two 9-11 hijackers could have been caught if the program had existed.

February 1, 2006
White House, Chertoff Faulted Over Katrina
WASHINGTON - Capitol Police dropped a charge of unlawful conduct against antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan on Wednesday and apologized for ejecting her and a congressman's wife from President Bush's State of the Union address for wearing T-shirts with war messages.

February 1, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Homeland Defense Lie
White House, Chertoff Faulted Over Katrina
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the report misleading because federal officials and supplies were already at the Gulf Coast before Katrina hit. He said Chertoff did not activate a government plan for dealing with catastrophes because it is used only to respond to unexpected disasters.

Homeland Defense Website: "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation."

February 1, 2006
Fascism Alert
Police Remove Sheehan From Bush Speech
WASHINGTON - Cindy Sheehan finally got her invitation to see President Bush again, but before she set eyes on him at the State of the Union address, Capitol Police removed her from the gallery overlooking the House chamber.

January 30, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Press Misses Bush's Blatant Attempt to Obstruct the Abramoff Investigation
At the same time that Mr. Hillman was conducting a grand jury and submitting evidence aimed at Bush's allies and perhaps Bush himself, he was meeting with Bush, who was, in effect, offering him a bribe.

January 31, 2006
Bush gives Abramoff's prosecutor a judgeship
Last week, President Bush removed Noel L. Hillman, the chief prosecutor in the Jack Abramoff lobbying and bribery scandal, from the case. Bush's action came as the media and his critics swarmed around the problem of trying to pry publicly owned photographs of Bush with Abramoff from the White House.

February 01, 2006
Left's Chorus Grows for Bush Impeachment
On Tuesday, eight-term California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters said the president should be impeached for authorizing the warrantless surveillance of some Americans through the National Security Agency.

January 28, 2006
Dana Milbank Lie: impeachment advocates are fringe element
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank depicted advocates of impeachment as a fringe element of the Democratic Party, while ignoring polling that shows that a majority of Americans believe Congress should consider impeaching Bush over his authorization of warrantless domestic surveillance.

January 31, 2006
Impeachment: Time for Citizens to Insist Bush Obey the Law
The recent admission that the President was wiretapping while ignoring the Foreign Intelligence Security Act has once again opened up the possibility of impeachment. Indeed, there are press reports that the Administration is preparing for impeachment and sees the upcoming hearings on the FISA violations as a precursor to impeachment. And, a Google search of Bush impeachment finds the issue is being discussed throughout the country.

January 31, 2006
A Criminal Act
Feingold Accuses Gonzales of Perjury
In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

January 31, 2006
President facing 'gray and gloomy' electorate
The overall political climate for Bush is "gray and gloomy," says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. "In general, people are just not in a happy mood."

January 31, 2006
Fascism Alert
New Patriot Act Allows Arrest of Demonstrators
WASHINGTON — A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.

January 28, 2006
85% of Dems in PA Favor Pro-Impeachment Candidates
A new poll conducted in Pennsylvania (a battleground "purple" state) by Zogby International and commissioned by OpEdNews.com found that 84.9 percent of Democrats said they would be likely to vote for a congressional candidate who "supports having impeachment proceedings against President Bush."  Only 7.0 percent said they were not likely to vote for such a candidate.

January 29, 2006
Not bad
Ted Koppel: The State of Television News
The accusation that television news has a political agenda misses the point. Right now, the main agenda is to give people what they want. It is not partisanship but profitability that shapes what you see.

Most particularly on cable news, a calculated subjectivity has, indeed, displaced the old-fashioned goal of conveying the news dispassionately. But that, too, has less to do with partisan politics than simple capitalism. Thus, one cable network experiments with the subjectivity of tender engagement: "I care and therefore you should care." Another opts for chest-thumping certitude: "I know and therefore you should care."

January 29, 2006
The Six Year Itch
The poll also shows that the public prefers the direction Democrats in Congress would take the country as opposed to the path set by the president, that Americans trust Democrats over Republicans to address the country's biggest problems and that they strongly favor Democrats over Republicans in their vote for the House.

January 29, 2006
Bush Poll: Weakest Since Nixon
Bush's bottom-line job rating — 42 percent of Americans approve of his work, 56 percent disapprove — is the worst for a president entering his sixth year in office since Watergate hammered Richard Nixon. And Bush's is not a single-issue problem: More than half disapprove of his work in eight out of nine areas tested in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, from Iraq to immigration to health care.

Feb. 6, 2006 issue
Palace Revolt-Conservatives Who Fought Bush's Power-Grab Pay Heavy Price
These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril

An August 2002 OLC memo, signed by the then head of the OLC—Jay Bybee—but drafted by Yoo, gave the agency what it needed. The controversial document, which became famous as the "torture memo" when it leaked two years later, defined torture so narrowly that, short of maiming or killing a prisoner, interrogators had a free hand. What's more, the memo claimed license for the president to order methods that would be torture by anyone's definition—and to do it wholesale, and not just in specific cases.

January 27, 2006
'It's turning into our Vietnam'
Like most Americans in the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll Jan. 20-22, McGonigal disapproves of the way President Bush is handling Iraq. He believes the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein but worries that civil war or the rise of a new dictator is inevitable. "I don't think they want us to liberate them," he says. "Their population is split."

January 30, 2006
Lawmakers Push Bush on Abramoff Contacts
WASHINGTON - Republican lawmakers said Sunday that President Bush should publicly disclose White House contacts with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to felony charges in an influence-peddling case.

January 30, 2006
Savings Rate at Lowest Level Since Depression
WASHINGTON - Americans' personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in 2005, something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other big-ticket items.

January 29, 2006
White House Official Warned Abramoff
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's former chief procurement official tipped off lobbyist Jack Abramoff that the government was about to suspend the federal contracts of an Abramoff client, newly filed court papers say.

January 29, 2006
Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

January 28, 2006
US troops in Iraq cut by up to 20 percent
(The Murtha Pull-Out Plan Continues) Kuwait CITY (AFP) - The United States has reduced its forces in Iraq by up to 20 percent in the last two months. Veteran Democrat Congressman John Murtha said earlier this month he expected the US administration to be forced to pull out all troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

January 27, 2006
Absurdity Alert
US Senate condemns Iran nuclear program
(So what are we going to do about it? Go to war? Talk is cheap.) WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate voted unanimously to condemn Iran's nuclear program and to support referring Iran to the UN Security Council for allegedly violating nuclear non proliferation obligations.

January 28, 2006
Army to Investigate Gay Porn Allegations
RALEIGH, N.C. - Army officials are investigating allegations that members of the celebrated 82nd Airborne Division appear on a gay pornography Web site, a spokeswoman said Friday.

January 29, 2006
Wolfowitz honeymoon at World Bank appears over
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Barely eight months after taking office, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is fulfilling the fears of some staffers who looked askance at the hawkish former Pentagon number two's appointment.

January 29, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Involuntary Servitude
Army forces 50,000 soldiers into extended duty
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called "stop-loss," but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat.

January 30, 2006
Religious Groups Get Chunk of AIDS Money
New groups are springing up to win a piece of President Bush's $15 billion AIDS program, with traditional players and religious groups joining forces to improve their chances in a competition that already has targeted nearly a quarter of its grants for faith-based organizations.

January 29, 2006
Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.

"It's not something you can adapt to," Hansen said in an interview. "We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something."

January 29, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him
The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

January 28, 2006
Bush to Propose Trimming Army Reserve
WASHINGTON President Bush will use his new budget to propose cutting the size of the Army Reserve to its lowest level in three decades and stripping up to $4 billion from two fighter aircraft programs.

January 27, 2006
Earmarks (pork) Explode under GOP Control
{Graphic) The amount of money spent on pork barrel projects -- special state or local projects tacked onto federal legislation -- has almost tripled over the past 10 years, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.

January 26, 2006
Broadcaster says truth no longer matters
"Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news," said Aaron Brown, whose four-year period as anchor of CNN's NewsNight ended in November, when network executives gave his job to Anderson Cooper in a bid to push the show's ratings closer to front-runner Fox News.

January 27, 2006
Murtha Says Iraq Is Now a 'Civil War'
"Our troops are the target," Murtha told the newspaper. "We're not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We're fighting a civil war in Iraq. We've got to give them an incentive. We fought our Civil War. Let them fight their civil war."

January 27, 2006
Poll: Americans Favor New Direction
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll taken this week as Bush prepares to deliver his annual State of the Union speech shows that the president wins the approval of only 43 percent of the public, a 7-point drop from a year ago. Three out of five say America is seriously off course, and by 62 to 31 percent those surveyed want to move in a different direction than the one Bush has set forth.

January 27, 2006
US economy hits the brakes in fourth quarter
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US economic growth slowed dramatically in the last three months of 2005 to 1.1 percent, from 4.1 percent in the previous quarter, the government said.

January 27, 2006
Top Democrats move to block Bush high court nominee
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Leading Democrat Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy said they would try to block Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito by preventing a vote on him with a filibuster.

January 26, 2006
Poll: Most think Bush is failing second term'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate in November's congressional elections who opposes President Bush, and 58 percent consider his second term a failure so far, according to a poll released Thursday.

Fewer people consider Bush to be honest and trustworthy now than did a year ago, and 53 percent said they believe his administration deliberately misled the public about Iraq's purported weapons program before the U.S. invasion in 2003, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found.

January 28, 2006
WaPO/ABC Poll: 76% want Bush to release info on Abramof
The survey found that three in four -- 76 percent -- of Americans said Bush should release lists of all meetings between aides and Abramoff; 18 percent disagreed. Two in three Republicans joined with eight in 10 Democrats and political independents in favoring disclosure, according to the poll.

January 25, 2006
Rumsfeld Attacks Pentagon Study
Krepinevich's study was presented to the Pentagon last November at a cost of $137,000. Interestingly, the phrase that's garnered Krepinevich's study so much attention, "the thin green line," is not new — it first appeared in a report he wrote in August 2004 for his think thank, the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments. The text of that "thin green line" report appears verbatim, including some new paragraphs, as a full chapter in his new 136-page report.

January 25, 2006
Army, Marines strained to breaking point, second study finds
The report, produced by a team led by former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, follows by a day the release of a Pentagon-funded study that drew similar conclusions.

January 26, 2006
U.S. general: Forces in Iraq 'stretched'
DIWANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — The top U.S. general in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that American forces in this country are "stretched," but he said he will only recommend withdrawals based on operational needs.

January 27, 2006
Very Good
Spying and lying in 21st-century America
"Most people just don't understand how pervasive [US] government surveillance is. If you place an international phone call, the odds that the National Security Agency is looking are very good. If it goes by oceanic fiber-optic cable, they are listening to it. If it goes by satellite, they are listening to it. If it is a radio broadcast or a cell-phone conversation, in principle, they could listen to it. Frankly, they can get what they want." - John Pike (US military analyst)

As pervasive as is the US government's disregard of the constitution, laws and treaties, and the expressed intent of Congress with respect to civil rights, the administration has also engaged in manipulating and even creating news under cover of "information warfare".

January 26, 2006
Terrorists Demand Release of Iraqi Women - Bush Releases Them
Rudisill denied the decision to release the Iraqis is linked to the Jan. 7 kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll, whose captors said they'd kill her on Jan. 20 unless the U.S. freed all females prisoners in Iraq. The deadline passed with no word on Carroll's fate.

"This has nothing to do with that," Rudisill said. "It's a normal process that all detainees, including women, go through."

January 25, 2006 issue
More evidence of torture
An Impeachable offense
EU nations knew of secret CIA flights
Marty, a former public prosecutor and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE), earlier this week said it was highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the "rendition" of more than 100 allegedly illegally detained terror suspects on their territories.

January 24, 2006 issue
Pew Poll: Americans are Pessimistic About Economy
The cost of gasoline, home heating fuel and health-care are the leading economic concerns among Americans, the poll found. Eighty-two percent of respondents said gas prices are a "very big" or "big" problem for the economy and 87 percent said that's the case for home heating and energy prices. Ninety percent of respondents cited health-care costs as a problem for the nation's economy.

January 24, 2006 issue
2005 USO Tour - Where are the republicans?
If you think big names are entertaining our troops, guess again. This list is pathetic. Where are all the republicans actors, musicians etc. who claim to support our troops? Where's their big mouth entertainers like Rush and O'Reilly? Are you getting sick of their pseudo patriotism yet?

January 24, 2006 issue
Some activists, politicians speaking openly about impeachment
With numbers like that, impeachment could become an issue in this fall's congressional elections - and dramatically raise the stakes. If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, a leading proponent of starting an official impeachment inquiry, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would become chairman of the House committee that could pursue it.

January 23-29, 2006 issue
Impeachment: The White House prepares for the worst
The Bush administration is bracing for impeachment hearings in Congress.

"A coalition in Congress is being formed to support impeachment," an administration source said.

Sources said a prelude to the impeachment process could begin with hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee in February. They said the hearings would focus on the secret electronic surveillance program and whether Mr. Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

January 23, 2006 issue
ARG Poll: Bush 36% Approval
George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has returned to its lowest point in Bush's presidency as Americans again turn less optimistic about the national economy according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 34% approve and 60% disapprove.

A total of 15% of Americans say they believe the national economy will be better a year from now, 19% say it will be the same, 62% say it will be worse, and 4% are undecided.

January 24, 2006 issue
An Impeachable Offense - a lie
White House Was Told Hurricane Posed Danger
Other documents to be released Tuesday show that the weekend before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Homeland Security Department officials predicted that its impact would be worse than a doomsday-like emergency planning exercise conducted in Louisiana in July 2004.

January 24, 2006 issue
An Impeachable Offense
White House Stalls Katrina Probe
In some cases, staff at the White House and other federal agencies have refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In addition, agency officials won't answer seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House, the senators said.

January 24, 2006 issue
Pentagon Planning Document Leaves Iraq Out of Equation
But in the Pentagon blueprint, officials are once again talking about a futuristic force of robots, networked computers and drone aircraft. And they are planning no significant shift in resources to bulk up ground forces strained by the lengthy occupation of Iraq.

January 24, 2006 issue
Only 10 war-on-terror detainees have been charged
US seeks no death penalties
Only 10 war-on-terror detainees have so far been charged and referred to special military commissions for trial, and the United States is not seeking the death penalty in any of those cases.

January 24, 2006 issue
Army Stretched to Breaking Point
WASHINGTON - Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

January 24, 2006 issue
Impeach the GOP Congress
GOP cut deals with lobbyists without any public debate
The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings, according to CBO and other health policy experts.

January 23, 2006 issue
Attacks in Iraq jumped in 2005
The number of attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces and civilians increased 29% last year, and insurgents are increasingly targeting Iraqis, the U.S. military says.

Insurgents launched 34,131 attacks last year, up from 26,496 the year before, according to U.S. military figures released Sunday.

January 23, 2006 issue
"What the President Ordered in This Case Was a Crime"
So widespread is this faith that almost one quarter of those who identified themselves as "very conservative" expressed support for impeachment as a response to the spying scandal

January 23, 2006 issue
Former Guard Calls Top Brass Culpable for Abuse
Ambuhl says she and other MPs used aggressive techniques against detainees because that is what military intelligence soldiers and civilian interrogators told her to do.

Trainers from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taught the MPs how to put detainees in "stress positions." She said military intelligence officials told them to keep detainees naked, embarrass them or make them exercise until they reached exhaustion.

January 22, 2006 issue
The Firestorm Over My Column
Deborah Howell: My mistake set off a firestorm. I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal, as some Republicans claim. I didn't say that. It's not a bipartisan scandal; it's a Republican scandal, and that's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms.

January 20, 2006 issue
Media Bias
News organizations devote little attention to NSA spying
On January 20, 35 days after the NSA story first broke, the Times ran one 1,324-word article about the NSA operation written by two reporters. The Post ran one 945-word article written by one reporter. Combined: two articles, three reporters, 2,269 words.

January 22, 2006 issue
An Impeachable Offense
Halliburton Cited in Iraq Contamination
"The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River," Granger wrote in one of several documents. The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations Monday.

January 22, 2006 issue
A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
As of Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006, at least 2,224 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,741 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include six military civilians.

January 22, 2006 issue
Judge voids law defining marriage as male-female union
Baltimore -- A Circuit Court judge sided with nine gay couples Friday, ruling that Maryland's law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman violates the state's constitution.

January 22, 2006
When George Met Jack
The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s.

January 30, 2006
The Pentagon's Spy on Americans Program
But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States.

January 22, 2006
US army officer convicted for former Iraqi general's death
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- A low-ranking U.S. army officer was found guilty of negligent homicide, but not guilty on the more serious charge of murder of an Iraqi general during an interrogation in 2003, local media reported on Sunday.

However, the military jury only convicted Welshofer of negligent homicide, a minor charge that carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison.

January 10, 2006
Why budget fixes can't wait
"We have a big problem," says Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist. "The biggest [economic] risk we face is a major financial meltdown, leading to high interest rates.... Why? Because the country is broke"

January 17, 2006
War's stunning price tag
LAST WEEK, at the annual meeting of the American Economic Assn., we presented a new estimate for the likely cost of the war in Iraq. We suggested that the final bill will be much higher than previously reckoned — between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay. Putting that into perspective, the highest-grossing movie of all time, "Titanic," earned $1.8 billion worldwide — about half the cost the U.S. incurs in Iraq every week.

January 20, 2006
The comptroller: fiscal doom
In Walker's view, the impending demographic wave is only part of the problem. The growth of entitlements and the healthcare system in general threatens to bankrupt the nation, he says, referring to a potential "Argentina scenario"

January 20, 2006
Group seeks criminal probe of GOP lawmaker
The Campaign for a Cleaner Congress (CCC) wrote the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section asking for a bribery probe of Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

January 21, 2006
Belafonte Continues Tirade Against Bush
NEW YORK - Entertainer Harry Belafonte, one of the Bush administration's harshest critics, compared the Homeland Security Department to the Nazi Gestapo on Saturday and attacked the president as a liar.

January 21, 2006
Medicare Drug Program May Harm GOP
WASHINGTON — Only months ago, congressional Republicans thought the new Medicare prescription drug benefit would help them make political inroads among traditionally Democratic senior citizens. Instead, they are facing a potentially damaging backlash among members of that crucial voting bloc, their families and even conservative activists dismayed over the program's bungled launch.

January 21, 2006
Call is out to impeach Bush
The recommendation by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., law scholar Jonathan Turley and Florida-based political activist Richard Hersh emerged at an unofficial Judiciary Committee hearing staged entirely by Democrats.

January 20, 2006
Transcript: Sheikh Osama Bin Laden
This takes me back to the original subject, I say that results of polls please those who are sensible, and Bush's opposition to them is a mistake. The reality shows that the war against America and its allies has not been limited to Iraq as he (Bush) claims. Iraq has become a point of attraction and restorer of (our) energies. At the same time, the Mujahideen, all praise be to Allah, have managed repeatedly to penetrate all security measures adopted by the unjust allied countries. The proof of this is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of the European nations who are in this aggressive coalition.

January 20, 2006
Google Shares Have Biggest Drop After Justice Suit

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Google Inc. had their biggest drop ever after the company was sued by the U.S. Justice Department to hand over information on Web searches and as concern mounted that sales growth may slow.

Google, which more than doubled last year, fell 8.5 percent as earnings shortfalls drove U.S. stocks to their largest decline in two years. The stock dropped 14 percent in the past three days and the company's market capitalization has tumbled $20 billion, more than the entire value of Amazon.com Inc.

January 20, 2006
Pentagon man jailed over spying
He was accused of passing information to Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) from 2002 to 2004. The 58-year-old said he had hoped the lobbyists would use their contacts to get policies he was unhappy with changed.

January 20, 2006
Oil Prices Surge, Stocks Fall
Crude oil for February delivery surged $1.52, or 2.3 percent, to settle at $68.35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after trading as high as $68.80 a barrel. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 213.32 points, or 2 percent, to close at 10,667.39

January 18, 2006
Wash. Post ombudsman's won't respond to critics
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has reportedly posted on the Post's internal message board -- specifically mentioning a reply she made to a Media Matters item, which she claimed "just brought another attack" -- "From now on, I don't reply."

January 20, 2006
Privacy experts condemn subpoena of Google
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Right-to-privacy groups said on Friday an attempt by the Bush administration to force Google Inc. to turn over a broad range of materials from its databases set a dangerous precedent that should worry all Americans.

January 19, 2006
Feds take porn fight to Google
The government said it needed the information to prepare its case to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the Supreme Court blocked from taking effect two years ago.

January 20, 2006
Possible Impeachable Offense
What does the Google subpoena mean?
Preparing to defend a controversial Internet pornography law in court, the Justice Department has demanded search logs from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online.

The department asked the search giants to hand over millions of records involving what search terms people have used on the sites and what Web sites are accessible via the search engines.

January 15, 2006
The myth that shapes Bush's world
THE PRESIDENT believes and often states, as if it were a self-evident truth, that "democracies are peaceful countries." Germany, the primary instigator of World War I, was a democracy.Democratic Italy joined the entente because it had been spoiling for a fight to wrest South Tyrol from Austria. What is one to make of the Mexican and Spanish-American wars, in which, on the flimsiest pretexts, the United States, the leading democracy in the world, moved to war?

January 18, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

January 17, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Whose Fault Is 'Curveball' Mess?
Jan. 16, 2006 - The Bush administration's reliance on a secret source, code-named Curveball, to make its case that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction is one of the great embarrassments of the run-up to the Iraq war. Curveball, the primary source for Secretary of State Colin Powell's prewar assertion to the United Nations that Saddam Hussein was hiding mobile germ-warfare labs, was later discredited. By why was the United States fooled to begin with?

January 19, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Bush administration violated the National Security Act
The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday.

January 18, 2006
Markets Slump: Trading in Japan Halted
The exchange was brought to its knees by a technical problem; its systems couldn't handle a tidal wave of small sell orders. It was the first time in the Nikkei's 57-year history that trading in all stocks and bonds was halted.

Other global indexes followed Japan's lead, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Germany's DAX rolling back 1 percent. London's FTSE shed almost 0.5 percent.

January 18, 2006
Oil near $67 as Nigeria tensions rise
U.S. crude oil climbed as far as $66.91 a barrel, the highest since September 30, and was up 54 cents at $66.85 at 1230 GMT. London Brent crude was up 45 cents at $65.35.

January 18, 2006
Consumer Prices Rise at Largest Rate Since 2000
The Labor Department reported that its closely watched Consumer Price Index was up 3.4 percent for the 12 months ending in December, the biggest jump since a similar 3.4 percent rise in 2000, another year when energy prices were soaring. But outside of the volatile sectors of food and energy, core inflation posted a 2.2 percent rise for all of 2005, unchanged from the 2004 gain.

January 12, 2006
The Church of GDP
What's the dominant religion of the past 100 years? The answer isn't Christianity with its 2.1 billion followers, or Islam with its 1.3 billion. It's the idea of economic growth, the Church of GDP.

Janauary 17, 2006
Treasury yield curve inverts again
Inverted yield curves are seen as indicating a slowdown, and possible recession since they reflect market bets that the Federal Reserve will have to lower interest rates to combat any economic weakness.

Janauary 13, 2006
Deficit Could Top $400 Billion
This is the third straight year in which the White House has summoned reporters well ahead of the official budget release to project a higher-than-anticipated deficit. In the past two years, when final deficit figures have come in at record or near-record levels, White House officials have boasted that they had made progress, since the final numbers were below estimates.

Janauary 18, 2006
An Impeachable Offense
Human Rights Watch: torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration
Roth said the illegal tactics were fueling terrorist recruitment, discouraging public assistance of counterterrorism efforts and creating a pool of unprosecutable detainees.

Janauary 17, 2006
Media repeated Gonzales's false claim that Gore speech was "inconsistent" with Clinton administration policies
Numerous media outlets echoed Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's criticisms of former Vice President Al Gore's January 16 speech, which was highly critical of President Bush's authorization of warrantless domestic espionage in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Gonzales argued that Gore was being "inconsistent" because the Clinton administration did the same thing; in fact, Clinton's use of warrantless physical searches, which Gonzales cited, did not violate FISA because at the time FISA did not address physical searches.

Janauary 18, 2006
GOP Club for Growth endorses Cuellar, its first Democrat
Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas is the first Democrat to receive an endorsement from the Club for Growth, which champions free trade, school choice and other issues dear to many Republicans. (They also support tax cuts during times of war and in the face of record deficits.)

Janauary 18, 2006
Sen. Clinton compared GOP-run House to a 'plantation'
NEW YORK - A day after Hillary Clinton blasted the Bush administration and compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation, Republicans said Tuesday that the New York senator was out of line.

Janauary 17, 2006
FBI Missed Internal Signs of Espionage
By the government's own account, FBI analyst Leandro Aragoncillo was spying in plain sight. He rummaged through FBI computers for intelligence reports unrelated to his work and then e-mailed the classified documents to opposition leaders in the Philippines.

Janauary 14, 2006
Soldiers who buy their own armor may not get benefits
The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

January 17, 2006
Republican lawyers and judges lie
Gonzales Lies about Clinton and Warrantless Physical Searches
"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," the Democrat maintained.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore had a different view, contending that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

January 17, 2006
Lawsuits seek to block Bush's domestic eavesdropping program
Federal lawsuits filed Tuesday sought to halt President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.