Action Item: stop AT&T in California

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Friday May 12, 2006 · 9:33 AM PDT

2006/05/12 · 09:33

So, after reading the news yesterday, I wasn't surprised at all to wake up and find that the new NSA mess was the headline story in my LA Times this morning. What did surprise me though was that AT&T was mentionned in 1 other place in the A section of my paper. AT&T took out a full page ad today advocating on behalf of a bill, AB 2987, which would allow AT&T and other major telecom companies to enter into local communities and provide cable service without getting franchise agreements with the local communities.

This bill has already been controversial in California, as local governments have claimed it will cost them millions of dollars. AT&T and other telecom companies have already put hundreds of thousands of lobbyist dollars into this fight, and are sure to keep doing so. Read More

FISA, the Truong case, Search Warrants, and the 4th amendment

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Wednesday March 22, 2006 · 11:22 AM PST

2006/03/22 · 11:22

Yesterday, at a White Sox Message Board where I spend a good deal of time, I was sent to This piece by Byron York of the National Review. I have to admit, when I first read it, it troubled me. Based on the presentation of Mr. York in that piece, he seemed to have a convincing argument that there was a legal basis for Mr. Bush's wiretapping program.

Not one to be convinced lightly, I went in and spent some time reading the actual decision Mr. York refers to. And what I found I think not only showed where Mr. York made a key error, I think it is a very illuminating look at exactly what Mr. Bush has been doing wrong, and how the key justifications made for it by Conservative commentators are fundamentally wrong. Read More

My God, US Navy ship sat unused off Gulf Coast all week

balta1701

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Sunday September 04, 2005 · 10:30 AM PDT

2005/09/04 · 10:30

My God, the military has had the Bataan, an amphibious assault ship, sitting off the Gulf Coast for the entire week since the hurricane hit, and they've been basically doing nothing and waiting for orders. They flew a few helicopter missions, but nothing else. Their hospital beds are empty. Their freshwater generators are unused. Their landing craft - LVT's, LCAC's, LCU's, the sorts of vehicles that can move from water to land without a second thought (sound useful?) sat there doing nothing. 1 LCU actually left the ship loaded with food and a doctor, and was ordered to turn around when the ship was ordered back out to see.

My god.

Guess who's job it would have been to order the Bataan into the fray? You guessed it. Fema.

That ship was exactly what you wanted to have in the area...it was in the area, and it was ordered to stay away. Just giving that ship orders to do something could have saved literally thousands of lives.

Climate Scientists respond to Barton

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Monday July 18, 2005 · 9:26 AM PDT

2005/07/18 · 09:26

A few weeks ago, Representative Barton from Texas sent requests to several noted climatologists asking for significant amounts of data with regards to the "Hockey Stick" climate theory (a series of papers showing a large temperature spike at the end of the 20th century).

The three main researchers who received these requests have completed their replies, as have a number of other interested organizations. Realclimate is hosting them all. Read More

LATimes repeats claim that Sudan offered U.S. Bin Laden

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Friday April 29, 2005 · 9:40 AM PDT

2005/04/29 · 09:40

In a piece that started on page 1 of today's LA Times, the paper of record for L.A. repeated the debunked claim that Sudan repeatedly offered Osama Bin Laden to the U.S. during the 1990's. They did so without citing any new information to that effect, and in fact, did so without citing any source at all. Read More

Drudge: Repubs back down on Ethics committee

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Tuesday April 26, 2005 · 6:07 PM PDT

2005/04/26 · 18:07

I don't see this up yet, and there's no link yet, but our good friend Drudge has this posted right now.

WASH POST: House Republican leaders decided late Tuesday to rescind controversial rule change that led to the three-month shutdown of the ethics committee... Developing...

Don't know if I buy it...and I'm sure there's some sort of catch, but on the surface it at least seems to be good news.

South Park takes on Schiavo Case

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Wednesday March 30, 2005 · 10:01 PM PST

2005/03/30 · 22:01

For the love of God you must see this week's episode of South Park. The episode was one of the best I've seen in years. I literally rolled onto the floor laughing. Absolutely hilarious send-up of the Schiavo case. Considering how often Comedy Central replays those, you should be able to find a time when its on. A plot summary will be posted in the extended box.
Read More

Gallup Poll on Soc. Sec: method is absolute garbage

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Tuesday March 22, 2005 · 4:48 PM PST

2005/03/22 · 16:48

I find there to be something incredibly wrong with this CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Read through these first few paragraphs and see if you spot it. Read More

DOD trying to charge wounded soldiers for meals, again

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Thursday January 27, 2005 · 9:14 PM PST

2005/01/27 · 21:14

For crying out loud, I thought they tried this about a year ago and we managed to get them to stop it.

Most patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington have a lot on their minds: the war they just fought, the injuries they came home with, the future that lies ahead. The last thing a wounded soldier needs to worry about is where the next meal is coming from. But for hundreds of Walter Reed patients, that's a real concern. Starting this month, the Army has started making some wounded soldiers pay for the food they eat at the hospital.

balta1701

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Wednesday January 26, 2005 · 9:48 AM PST

2005/01/26 · 09:48

George W. Bush is a terrible human being. Absolutely terrible. From the transcript of this morning's press conference with the man. Read More

The Right Wing Noise Machine and the Kos/Dean flap

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Saturday January 15, 2005 · 10:51 PM PST

2005/01/15 · 22:51

The more I think about it, the more I think that this whole "Kos was getting paid" flap is actually a perfect example of what David Brock labeled "The Right Wing Noise Machine" working overtime. It's almost a remarkable case study of exactly how it works, from top to bottom.

Let's examine what happened here, starting at the very beginning. About a week ago, the Armstrong Williams story broke. It came out that the Administration had been paying a journalist/commentator to publicise the NCLB act with taxpayer dollars. Rumors spread rapidly that this wasn't the only case we were going to see of this behavior. Rapidly, David Corn was saying Mr. Williams told him there were more people, bloggers and a few journalists realized that the people associated with the payments was the same company associated with similar funding to try to support the Medi-Can't bill, and news organizations started filing dozens of FOIA requests to see where else the Administration had used this tactic. Read More

Newsweek: U.S. considering "Death Squads" in Iraq.

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Sunday January 09, 2005 · 8:09 AM PST

2005/01/09 · 08:09

Update [2005-1-9 11:9:45 by Armando]: Promoted from the Diaries by Armando. I made some slight changes, repeating part of a quote from below the fold on the front and added bold for emphasis on some text.

Man, when they put Negroponte in charge of Iraq, I never thought he'd be able to use his experience this well. Now please, keep in mind, this is Newsweek reporting this. It's not CBS, it's not the NYT, it's not the Washington Times, its not Drudge.

What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"--and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency--as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time--than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.

Emphasis supplied.

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