New legal memos by top Bush administration officials say that the Endangered Species Act can't be used to protect animals and their habitats from climate change by regulating specific sources of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of global warming.
The assessment, outlined in memos sent earlier this month and leaked Tuesday, provides the official legal justification for limiting protections under the Endangered Species Act.
Memos tell wildlife officials to ignore global-warming impact
CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents.
Bipartisan House report finds that Bush made ‘inappropriate’ use of executive privilege
A bipartisan report released today by the House Oversight Committee finds that President Bush made a ‘legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege” when the administration withheld Patrick Fitzgerald’s interview with Vice President Cheney on the CIA leak scandal. A separate report also criticizes Bush’s assertion of executive privilege regarding his recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions:
More...
TVNL Comment: And the penalty for such misconduct is.....???
This is How Fascism Comes: Reflections on the Cost of Silence
For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week--what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America--please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy.
Lawyers Criticize Quality of Guantanamo Interpreters
Something was being lost in interpretation. Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national accused of war crimes and murder for his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was speaking in Arabic. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a Marine colonel and military judge at Guantanamo Bay, was listening to a simultaneous interpretation in English.
A linguist working with Hawsawi's team later estimated that half of what the defendant said was rendered incorrectly by court interpreters and that Hawsawi didn't understand at least 25 percent of what was said in English.
Doctors often skip key test before surgery
People on Medicare who get elective surgery to open blocked heart arteries often do not get the recommended stress tests to confirm the surgery is warranted, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
More than 800,000 PCI procedures are performed each year and they represent big business for medical device makers including Boston Scientific Corp, Medtronic Inc, Abbott Laboratories Inc and Johnson & Johnson.
Friendly fire in Iraq — and a coverup
The Army says no, but a graphic video and eyewitness testimony indicate that a U.S. tank killed two American soldiers. The mother of one soldier demands answers.
When Pfc. Albert Nelson died in Iraq in 2006, the Army first told Feggins that he might have been killed by friendly fire, and then that it was enemy mortars. She says she never believed the Army’s explanation. “I always felt like they were lying to me,” she said. “I could never prove it.”
She did not know that there was a video of his death until I contacted her recently.
Iraqi VP: U.S., Iraq won't reach accord on troops this year
Time's running out for reaching a security agreement with the U.S., and an accord is unlikely before the end of this year, Iraq's Sunni Muslim vice president said Monday.
The United Nations mandate that authorizes the U.S. military presence in Iraq will expire on Dec. 31 and without a so-called status of forces agreement, it's questionable whether the U.S. will have a legitimate right to maintain its troops in Iraq, Vice President Tariq al Hashimi told McClatchy.
TVNL Comment: Did the US have a legitimate right to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place? Just asking.
Ex-Official: Palin Lied, Threw Me Under Bus
The man at the center of the Sarah Palin "Troopergate" scandal says the Alaska governor lied about him, and he wants his reputation back.
Monegan called Palin's charges against him "absurdly baseless," filled with "disturbing inaccuracies" and "distortions of the record" in filings to the board submitted Monday.
The accusations, his lawyer wrote, were part of an "unwarranted, unfair, and very personal attack on a man who has served the people of Alaska with distinction for almost 35 years."
Page 968 of 1061
