From Editor and Publisher
By Greg Mitchell

Sixty-three years after the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Bomb is still very much with us. The U.S. retains over 5000 nuclear weapons — does this surprise you? — with better than 4000 said to be “operational.” There are plans to reduce this number, but only by 15%. The Russians still have many of their nukes but these remnants of the “superpower” era — and the lack of airtight security surrounding them — get little play today. All we seem to hear about are alleged or possible Iranian or North Korean or freelance terrorist nuclear devices.

The fact is, our “first use” policy — dating back to 1945 — remains in effect and past Gallup polls have shown that large numbers of Americans would endorse using The Bomb against our enemies if need be. So at this time of year it is always important to look back at how the original “first-strike” was explained to the press, distorted, and then became part of the decades-long narrative of how, in this view, nuclear weapons can be used — and used again.

The Truman announcement of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and the flood of material from the War Department, written by The New York Times’ William L. Laurence the following day, firmly established the nuclear narrative. It would not take long, however, for breaks in the official story to appear.

At first, journalists had to follow where the Pentagon led. Wartime censorship remained in effect, and there was no way any reporter could reach Hiroshima for a look around. One of the few early stories that did not come directly from the military was a wire service report filed by a journalist traveling with the president on the Atlantic, returning from Europe. Approved by military censors, it went beyond, but not far beyond, the measured tone of the president’s official statement. It depicted Truman, his voice “tense with excitement,” personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. “The experiment,” he announced, “has been an overwhelming success.”

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From The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild

Who is Bush to lecture the Chinese—or anyone, for that matter—on human rights?

There he was in Thailand, pressing China to uphold human rights when he has done more than any other President to heap scorn on them.

After 9/11, he said, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.”

And Cheney said, it was time to go over to the “dark side.”

And that’s exactly what Bush and Cheney have done.

They’ve illegally kidnapped hundreds of people and disappeared them into black sites.

They’ve had some of these victims tortured with waterboarding and made many others hang by their arms for hours on end.

They’ve held hundreds of people without charge for years in Guantanamo and at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

And they’ve held thousands of people without charge for years in Iraq, often caging them in brutal containers.

Time and time again, Bush and Cheney and their apologists in the Justice Department have asserted the right to flout international treaties on human rights essentially whenever they feel like it.

They are serial human rights abusers.

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From The Baltimore Sun
By Stephen Kiehl and Josh Mitchell

A day after the Justice Department released hundreds of documents purporting to link Bruce E. Ivins to the 2001 anthrax killings, scientists and legal experts criticized the strength of the case and cast doubt on whether it could have succeeded.

Federal investigators presented a raft of circumstantial evidence this week intended to prove Ivins’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But officials lacked direct evidence, such as hair fibers, DNA samples or handwriting analysis, that the eccentric microbiologist created the deadly powder in his Fort Detrick lab. Questions also remain about Ivins’ ability to convert the spores stored in his lab into the powder sent through the mail.

More than half a dozen experts in law and bioterrorism pointed out yesterday what they consider major flaws in the government’s case and said they were not convinced that Ivins acted alone in mailing the letters that killed five people - or that he was involved at all. They said that the science that led the FBI to Ivins has not been explained and that the other evidence did not amount to conclusive proof.

Because Ivins committed suicide last week, that evidence will never be tested at trial, but his attorney has repeatedly insisted that the scientist was innocent.

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From Global Research
By Dr. Ellen Hodgson Brown

Last week, Congress passed a housing bill that gave the Treasury Department a blank check to inject billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, snatching them from insolvency. To accommodate this blank check, Congress obligingly raised its debt ceiling by $800 billion. Ouch! That’s nearly a trillion dollars. Why was it necessary to incur this potentially crippling public debt to bail out two completely private, for-profit behemoths, which have run themselves into bankruptcy with their own risky investment schemes? Policymakers said it was essential to maintain the country’s creditworthiness with foreign lenders, which today hold about one-fifth of Fannie and Freddie securities. According to a July 21 report by Heather Timmons in The New York Times:

One out of 10 American mortgages is, in effect, in the hands of institutions and governments outside the United States.1

Ten percent of American mortgages are now owned by foreigners? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation)? They were supposedly set up to fund “the American dream” – home ownership by Americans. Today, American homes are owned by anonymous pools of private investors, many of whom are foreign governments and foreign central banks. How did we manage to give away the farm? And why are we bowing to the interests of foreign investors to the point of driving our own government into bankruptcy? The federal debt is already nearly ten trillion dollars, more than the government can ever possibly repay with taxes.

According to analysts, the bailout of the two mortgage giants is necessary “because America’s relations with a host of countries are intricately tied to Fannie and Freddie,” and because we need to assure “Americans’ future ability to gain access to credit. If foreign companies and governments abandon United States investments, home, auto and credit card loans will be much more difficult to come by.”2

Read more Mortgage Crisis

From The Regressive Antidote
By David Michael Green

Any American who’s been on the planet for more than a few years has lived through a series of economic ups and downs – what economists call the business cycle. These booms and busts seem to follow one another as inevitably as sunset does sunrise.

Phil Gramm hasn’t apparently noticed, but we’re now pretty deep into an economic downturn – whether or not it officially qualifies as a recession yet or is simply on the way to becoming one.

But two things are especially striking about this particular iteration of our economic malaise. One is that we never quite seem to have had the boom we were supposed to get in between this bust and the last one. Gross domestic product, the key single indicator of economic health used to measure the state of the economy, has done reasonably well since the downturn that began in 2000. So has the stock market, and so, especially, have the one percent or so of the richest Americans, who have lately transitioned from being ridiculously rich to obscenely rich.

Most of the rest of us, on the other hand, may be excused for wondering when the good times hit, ‘cause we somehow missed it. It’s funny (hah-hah, right?), but in the go-go late 1990s, some economists were wondering whether Alan “The Second Coming” Greenspan and Robert “Token Wall Street Pseudo-Democrat” Rubin hadn’t actually killed the business cycle forever, with only good times to come for generations on end. Ironically, the subsequent decade may be considered to have posed the same question, only with a very different meaning. Given the absence of any serious recovery content in the latest alleged recovery, maybe the business cycle is dead – only not with permanent boom, but permanent bust, instead.

In truth, though, we may come to look upon years like 2004 or 2005 as the good ol’ days. That’s because the second unique thing about the present downturn is the depth of down to which we may now be turning. I’m sure somebody was relieved when George Bush recently informed the country that the economic fundamentals are solid, but it sure wasn’t me. Hard as it is to imagine that this president could get something wrong or speak, uh, somewhat less than candidly, my fear is that conditions are quite the opposite of those the cheerleader-in-chief portrayed. I remember well the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This one doesn’t feel anything like those. It seems a lot bigger. My fear is that the bottom may be falling out. My fear is that it’s the fire this time.

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From AlterNet
By Joshua Holland

There is nothing more terrifying to corporate America than the prospect of dealing with its workforce on an even playing field, and, along with allies on the Right, it’s pulling out all the stops to keep that from happening. At stake is much more than the usual tax breaks, trade deals and relentless deregulation; corporations are gearing up for a fight to preserve a status quo in which the largest share of America’s national income goes to profits and the smallest share to wages since the Great Depression — in fact, since the government started tracking those figures.

There will be many heated legislative battles if 2008 shakes out with larger Congressional majorities for Democrats and an Obama White House — fights over war and peace, energy policy, health care reform and immigration. But it may be a bill that many Americans have never heard of that sparks the most pitched battle Washington has seen since the Civil Rights Act. It’s called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — a measure that would go a long way toward guaranteeing working people the right to join a union if they so choose — and it has the potential to reverse more than three decades of painful stagflation, with prices rising and paychecks flat, for America’s middle class and working poor.

The Chamber of Commerce, D.C. lobbyists, firms that rely on cheap labor and a host of “astroturf” front groups are building a war chest that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to build a firewall against EFCA and other efforts to put a check on corporate power and rebuild a declining middle class. A recent report on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about how Wal-Mart — the nation’s largest employer — is “mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors” in an effort to discourage its workers from voting Democratic this fall generated quite a bit of controversy. According to a report in the National Journal that received less attention, “several business-backed groups … (including) two fledgling coalitions fighting labor-supported legislation and the conservative political group Freedom’s Watch are trying to raise $100 million for issue advocacy and get-out-the-vote efforts to benefit about 10 GOP Senate races.”

It’s the EFCA — the idea that working people who want to join a union can — that has corporate America quaking in its collective boots. The bill passed the House easily in 2007 — by 56 votes — and had majority support in the Senate. But it didn’t reach the 60 votes required to kill a GOP-led filibuster, and that massive war chest being amassed by the corporate Right is, in part, an attempt to maintain a firewall of at least 41 anti-union senators — mostly Republicans joined by a few corporatist Dems — to kill the bill in the 2009 Congress. President Bush threatened to veto the legislation if it had passed in 2007, but this time around, they fear that a Democrat will be sitting in the White House. Obama was a co-sponsor of the 2007 legislation; McCain opposed it.

Read more Middle Class

From In These Times
By David Sirota

Drinking a pint in Butte, Montana’s M&M bar should be an entry in a “Things to Do Before You Die” book. Sitting in this historic watering hole that has been open 24/7 for most of the last century, you get to imbibe rich spirits — local beers and ghosts of ages past.

When I hit the M&M this week, though, the wood-paneled walls told fewer tales of copper kings like Marcus Daly and hometown heroes like Evel Knievel, and more stories of new political power. Plastered amid the ever-present St. Patrick’s Day trappings were Obama for President signs - artifacts from the senator’s recent visit.

While Butte’s Finlen Hotel brandishes faded photographs of John F. Kennedy’s 1959 stay, major presidential candidates don’t normally visit frontier mining towns. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Democratic convention in Denver: The Intermountain West — in its understated style — has become the most important political battleground in America.

Today, 22 Electoral College votes in the area are up for grabs, meaning this vast expanse is more pivotal than Ohio. And that’s only the beginning of the Rocky Mountain region’s burgeoning influence on energy, taxes, trade and health care.

For example, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) — and thus the complex politics of his home state — will have an enormous impact on petroleum and climate policy. And whatever legislation he crafts will be shaped by four congressional races along a stretch of I-25 that cuts through a tri-state oil and gas boom.

Read more Funny Things

From The NY Times
By Paul Krugman

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

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From The Raw Story
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane

On Wednesday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart took on Senator John McCain’s insistence that offshore drilling is the answer to our energy problems.

“We need to drill here! We need to drill now!” McCain recently demanded.

“The administration’s own Department of Energy says the effects of drilling now wouldn’t even be felt until 2030,” Stewart objected. “Unless we could somehow whittle that figure down?”

“Oil company executives say that it could be as short a time as one to two years,” McCain has stated. On another occasion, he suggested it could be just “a matter of months.”

“Drilling offshore has already saved us!” Stewart exclaimed. “Cyborgs from the future have been sent here to drill offshore to prevent Osama bin Laden from killing John Connor!”

Stewart acknowledged that even Barack Obama, who was insisting in June that “my job is not to go with the polls,” has now announced that his own plan “does include a limited amount of new offshore drilling.”

“Damn!” said Stewart, but he added, “To be fair, Obama released an energy plan that included a comprehensive list … touching on everything from investing in alternative energy to turning off your lights to making sure your tires are inflated.”

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From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

Richard Nixon, August 8, 1974, 9:01 p.m. from the Oval Office:

From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require. . . . Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

Thirty-four years ago today, Richard Nixon was forced from office as a result of mounting public anger, which in turn fueled the bipartisan intent of Congress to impeach him, due to his involvement in the relatively minor Watergate crimes. Accountability of that sort for our highest political leaders is today inconceivable.

Rather than investigate and punish violations of the Constitution and other laws, our political class conceals those crimes for as long as it can, endorses them when they are disclosed, and then acts to protect the lawbreakers. Public opinion is steadfastly ignored, rendered virtually irrelevant. Congress has deliberately made itself completely impotent, while the sprawling Executive enjoys virtual omnipotence and freedom from any real accountability. Laws are written not just for, but literally by, the largest corporations and their lobbyists — even including, as we recently witnessed, laws that have no purpose other than to immunize them from consequences when they are caught deliberately breaking our laws.

Our basic Constitutional framework is being continuously assaulted while the lawless Surveillance State expands without limits, all justified by a condition of permanent War. The list is as familiar as it is long. A massive Surveillance State that functions in the dark, with no oversight, and without the slightest concern for Constitutional limits. Torture, rendition, military commissions, Guantanamo, secret CIA black sites, the abolition of habeas corpus. Endless, unconditional funding for “the War.” Rampant lawbreaking without the slightest consequences. An Executive that has shielded itself completely from any limits, investigation or oversight while seizing greater and greater power in virtually every area and spouting full-scale falsehoods about the most serious matters as a matter of course. Political leaders who have assessed that they are best served by ignoring all of this when they aren’t eagerly enabling it.

Read more Accountability