On Tuesday, Hatch said he may have misspoken at the event, and he was speaking of conditions in post-Hussein Iraq and the terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"Saddam clearly had a long history of supporting terrorists, but I was not talking about any formal link between Saddam and al-Qaida before the war," Hatch said in a statement.

"Instead, I pointed out that the current insurgency in Iraq includes al-Qaida, under the leadership of al-Zarqawi, along with former elements of Saddam's regime."

In 2002 scientists recorded the lowest concentration of sea ice ever in The Arctic.
.....
Less ice means more open water. More open water means greater absorption of solar energy. More absorption of solar energy means increased rates of warming in the ocean, which naturally tends to yield faster rates of ice loss.

...the glaciers of Greenland, which carry ice from the interior out to the sea, have gone on a tear. They're flowing, on average, about twice as fast as they were a decade ago...
.....
If all of Greenland's ice were plopped into the ocean, sea level would rise a catastrophic 20 feet or more. Until yesterday, most experts thought global warming might make it happen in a couple of thousand years. Now they're talking hundreds.

The New York Times reported that Deutsch tried to limit reporters' access to Jim Hansen, a noted NASA climate scientist, and insisted that a Web designer insert the word "theory" before any mention of the Big Bang.

"George attracted attention because some of the things he demanded were so outrageous," Hansen wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"There's essentially no ice at all," said George Leshkevich, a scientist who has studied Great Lakes ice for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, since 1973. "I've never seen that."

"the former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of 'cherry-picking' intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

From the National Journal, as I eluded to earlier this week, it would appear that the focus of the CIA Leak investigation is headed straight towards the office of the Vice President. "Scooter" Libby has testified, and many sources with firsthand knowledge have confirmed, that Cheney authorized Libby to release classified information, including details of the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war. Time for another round of the White House Press Corps vs. Scottie to find what he's not able to comment on regarding this on-going investigation as it relates to Mr. Cheney's conduct. See for yourself here.

From the AP, there should be little doubt at this point that the president is seriously concerned about the direction investigations into his NSA domestic spying program are headed. Yesterday, Congresswoman Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence (the committee which oversees the NSA) made clear her intentions for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program. This, just a day after the conservative publication Insight Magazine reported on Karl Rove's latest attempts to strong-arm Republican congresspersons into siding with the president on the legality of the program. This morning, President Bush held a press conference in the apparent hope to connect a thwarted terrorist attack involving "shoe bombs" which targeted Los Angeles shortly after 9/11 (Bush called the target of the attack the Liberty Tower, but it was actually the Library Tower, and is now the US Bank Tower) with the NSA domestic spying program - though he never specifically connected the two. The mayor of LA, Antonio Villaraigosa, claims this is the first he's ever heard of such a plot and described communication with the White House as "non-existent." Seems odd that you wouldn't notify, through some means, the mayor of a city targeted in a terrorist attack, just as kind of a heads up or something, you know. See for yourself here.

From the Washington Post, on at least two occasions the chief Judges from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were warned by a top Justice Department lawyer that evidence obtained in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court. Those revelations "infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. See for yourself here.

From CNN, more good news for the White House today as embattled former FEMA chief, Michael Brown has indicated that he is willing, if not eager, to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina, to a Senate inquiry unless the White House forbids it AND offers legal support.
See for yourself here.

From Statesman.com, Judge Frank Monroe of Austin has some apparent concerns regarding the new Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which took effect Oct. 17, 2005. In his ruling, he called some of its provisions "inane," "absurd" and incomprehensible to "any rational human being." Judge Monroe continued in his written ruling highlighting his concerns with this statement, "Apparently, it is not the individual consumers of this country that make the donations to the members of Congress that allow them to be elected and re-elected and re-elected and re-elected." The judge has received quite a bit of attention within the legal community regarding the ruling. See for yourself here.

From the AP, good news for indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as he takes over a coveted spot on the Appropriations Committee vacated by the convicted Republican Congressman from CA, Randy "Duke" Cunningham. As most of us know, this is only temporary position for Mr.DeLay, though he did also manage to grab a seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is currently investigating an influence-peddling scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with lawmakers. Convenient no!?! wink, wink. See for yourself here.

...Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed...

...Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists...

...Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government....

...We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that's because they can't explain it.

Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world...

...The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately...

...In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past presidents - like Wilson and Roosevelt - were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.

So that argument is baseless, and it's deeply troubling that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public...

...The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an "old law" or "out of date" and they can't comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with it - except when they don't...

..The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours...

...FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely...

...In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking...

...When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me to no court - not the Supreme Court or any other court - that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration's effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious...

...The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute...

...A recent letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that "every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief's authority, it has upheld the statute." The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA "recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area." And "Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls." Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.

The President's claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless...

...None of the President's arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA's domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn't break the law, you haven't broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal." But that is not how our constitutional democracy works...

From Insight Magazine, every moron's favorite plastic patriot, and the president's most bestest advisor ever, Benedict Karl has come out of his spider hole once again in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into Bush's NSA domestic spying program. Karl is threatening to "blacklist" any Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who fails to find that, despite what the FISA law specifically states in regards to warrantless spying, not to mention the fourth ammendment of the Bill of Rights, the President did/does in fact, have the inherent legal authority to spy on American's without obtaining a warrant.

So instead of allowing this on-going investigation to run it's course without so much as say...commenting on it, as has been the White House stance for most of the investigations looking into it's conduct, Karl Rove is seeking to influence the vote of these senators by threatening to cut-off any further political or financial support. You know, Mara Salvatrucha 13 wouldn't dick around with silly schoolyard tactics like this. For MS 13, "If you are not loyal, you are dead."

See Karl, they'd straight assasinate these traitorous bitches, no warning no nothing. Karl Rove, your a pussy if you don't take a tougher stance then this punkass "if you don't vote for us we'll never talk to you again" nonsense. Where are your balls ma'an, threaten to kill each member of their family or something.

Karl's comments are not suprising however, as it should be very clear by now just how Karl feels about pesky things, which have hampered the White House's amazingly lucrative treasure hunts, like the constitution or the rule of law in general.

More and more it would appear that this investigation is headed towards the office of the Vice President. From Newsweek, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion Fitzgerald felt he could not charge former VP Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby with violating a 1982 law banning the outing of a covert CIA agent, because he lacked sufficient evidence to prove that Libby was aware of Valerie Plame's covert status when he talked about her three times with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. This contradicts claims by the White House and White House apologists who have long held that Plame was not covert at the time of her outing. The new papers show Libby testified he was told about Plame by Cheney "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June - before he talked about her with Miller and Time magazine's Matt Cooper. See for yourself here.

More analysis of the eight newly unredacted pages here from emptywheel over at the Next Hurrah. See for yourself here.

Late last week we learned that Fitzgerald ran into a bit of a "snag", shall we say, when attempting to locate some emails for certain time periods in 2003 from both the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President as they were, for some reason yet to be explained, not "preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Odd, no? See for yourself here.

More bad news for the White House on the warrantless domestic spying front, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter, on today's Meet the Press, said that the administration's legal argument is "very strained and unrealistic" elaborating further that "the issue was never raised with the Congress. And there is a specific statute on the books, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which says flatly that you can't undertake that kind of surveillance without a court order." Despite what other Senators might be saying, specifically the Chairman of other committees, Specter's opinion is really the one that matters right now and the White House knows it, which is likely why we heard from Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts just a couple of days ago. That's called misdirection, kids. See the Video for yourself here.

More from ABC News. See for yourself here.

From Newsweek, according to administration and Capitol Hill officials, in a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week, Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, told California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, when asked about the extent of presidential powers to fight al Qaeda, that he believed that the president could indeed order the killing of a suspected al Qaeda operative on US soil. Particularly discomforting considering that it was also the opinion of this administration that a US citizen could be labeled as an enemy combatant. So, if this administration were to get its way with the Patriot Act II, which according to section 501 would expand the definition of "enemy combatant" to all American citizens who "may" have violated any provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act, it would be reasonable to conclude (though I hope this a huge stretch on my part) that the president could in fact by-pass the courts, as he has no apparent misgivings about doing, and order the killing of a US citizen. Under past presidents I'd be hesitant to go quite this far, but this president has a history of pushing things to the very limits of acceptability, legality, and constitutionality. No super-secret program involving black helicopters and men in black, folks. Ma'an do I miss my wacko conspiracy theories. See for yourself here.

(UPDATE: Jeralyn from TalkLeft has more on the subject, this regarding a similar stance taken by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) on the president's authority to execute someone on US soil without so much as a Miranda warning, let alone the rest of the burdensome process, say like a trial or better yet indictment. See for yourself here.)

From RawStory, "moderate Senators on both sides of the aisle are quietly considering a range of options that would attempt at the very least to delineate the President's authority, if not roll it back." This "range of options" is said to include a constitutional amendment. Note to the fundies from the right, THIS WOULD BE WHAT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS ARE FOR! See for yourself here.

1.) From the NY Times via georgia10 over at DailyKos (with many more terrific links within the post), an exchange at yesterday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing between Senator Wyden (D-OR) and General Hayden (NSA director at the time the warrantless domestic spying program was initiated):

A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress.

Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring.

"Senator," General Hayden said, "I'd like to answer in closed session."

2.) From the AP via RawStory, George H.W. Bush (41), Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have apparently tried once before to get a warrantless wire tap program similar to the one George W. Bush (43) authorized for the NSA to conduct, and is currently under scrutiny for, when they were with the Ford administration (Bush 41 was director of the CIA at the time). This, of course, was shot down after some intense debate. But times were different then, there was no legitimate threat to the US at the time like al Qaeda is today (except for the Soviets during that whole 'Cold War' thingamajig):

George H.W. Bush, then director of the CIA, wanted to ensure "no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence" under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, according to a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained that some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge's approval. Such a refusal "seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community," Bush wrote.

In another document, Jack Marsh, a White House adviser, outlined options for Ford over the wiretap legislation. Marsh alerted Ford to objections by Bush as CIA director and by Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft over the scope of a provision to require judicial oversight of wiretaps. At the time, Rumsfeld was defense secretary, Kissinger was secretary of state and Scowcroft was the White House national security adviser.

Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

"People don't change their stripes," said Kenneth C. Bass a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during the Carter administration.

3.) Then there's this, from the AP via AmericaBlog, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts says Bush's Domestic Spying Program IS constitutional. This, of course, from the man who still continues to stall Phase II of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence. This would be the part where the part where Senate Intelligence Committee actually look into HOW THE INTELLIGENCE WAS USED. An investigation that has NEVER taken place, despite what you may have heard from the Bush White House and Republican apologists.

And finally for today

4.) From the NYTimes via TChris over at TalkLeft:

[Even though] companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites ... promise to protect the privacy of their users, they routinely hand over the most intimate information in response to legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases.
...
When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

Despite recent claims by the president, vice president, and their minions that had this warrantless domestic spying program been in place prior to 9/11, those events would have been prevented, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress yesterday that in the 4 plus years that the program has been in place it has led to a whole bunch of leads, but ZERO al Qaeda operatives. From the NY Daily News. See for yourself here.

According to the Boston Globe, despite Bush's remarks during his State of the Union address that not only is the warrantless domestic spying program perfectly legal, but that past presidents have done it too (does that argument ever work, I think I remember trying that one when I was a kid, but with little success), many legal experts, both conservative and liberal, seem to disagree rather strongly. On both counts. Keep trying baby, maybe if you close your eyes so tight you see 'fireworks' and you keep believing really, really hard your dream (our nightmare) will come true. See for yourself here.

From ThinkProgress, Intelligence officials are refusing to answer questions about the warrantless domestic spying program. This should be expected, nobody wants to incriminate themselves. See for yourself here.

RawStory is reporting that in recent court filings related to the CIA leak investigation "no formal damage assessment has been done with regard to how the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame affected the agency's operations worldwide. They also hint that Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby may have outed Plame on the orders of his 'superiors.'" Nuh uh!?! See for yourself here.

The National Journal is reporting that "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." See for yourself here.

The Guardian Unlimited is reporting that in a recently revealed secret British memo, yes another one (they'veapparentlyy got as many problems as we do in keeping secrets, wonder why that is), Bush and Blair had agreed to go into Iraq with or without UN backing and better yet, planned to attempt to lure Saddam into war by painting a U2 reconnaissance aircraft in UN colors and fly it over Iraq in hopes that he would fire upon it. At this point, if you still believe that we only went to war as a last resort, you're a willful idiot. See for yourself here.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 53% of Americans now believe that Bush deliberately misled them on Iraq WMDs. 84% of Republicans still refuse to believe the president would intentionally mislead them. Stubborn critters aren't they? From Editor & Publisher. See for yourself here.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.

FISA FAQ (from the Electronic Frontier Foundation)

From CQ.com. According to a Nov.5 2001 memo issued by the US Army's top intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Noonan Jr., it is perfectly legal for the US military to "receive" domestic intelligence information, even though it is not legal for them to "collect" it. Here's some of what he had to say in the memo:

"Remember, merely receiving information does not constitute 'collection' under AR [Army Regulation] 381-10; collection entails receiving 'for use,' " he added. (Army Regulation 381-10, "U.S. Army Intelligence Activities," was reissued on Nov. 22, 2005, but had not previously been disclosed publicly.) "Army intelligence may always receive information, if only to determine its intelligence value and whether it can be collected, retained, or disseminated in accordance with governing policy,"

And who does the intelligence community view as a signifigant threat? Antiwar protesters, of course.

The Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) was launched in 2002 with the mission of "gathering information and conducting activities to protect DoD and the nation against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, assassinations, and terrorist activities," according to a CIFA brochure. Its TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters, according to a Pentagon official.

"More than 5,000 TALON reports" were "received and shared throughout the government" in the program's first year of operation," Carol A. Haave, deputy undersecretary of Defense for counterintelligence and security, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2004.

"At that rate, about 12,500 Talon reports would have been filed during the approximately 2 1/2 years the program has existed," The Washington Post concluded Tuesday.

From RawStrory.com. That pinko commie outfit only concerned with Civil Rights, the ACLU (I'm a card carrying member), is up to their old America hating ways again. From the ACLU's Press Release:

"The Pentagon's monitoring of anti-war protesters is yet another example of a government agency using its powers to spy on law-abiding Americans who criticize U.S. policies," said ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner. "How can we believe that the National Security Agency is intercepting only al Qaeda phone calls when we have evidence that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on Quakers in Fort Lauderdale?"

The President has claimed that he can spy on American's essentially because Article II of the Constitution says he can as long as we're at war. Well this should come as welcome news to all of us. From the WashingtonPost.com.

Administration officials seem to refer to the "long war" more frequently these days. President Bush mentioned it during his State of the Union address this week. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the term is a way of telling people the truth about the fight against terrorism.

"Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away," Rumsfeld said.

He said this does not mean U.S. troops will be in Iraq indefinitely, but rather that the U.S. will be fighting violent extremists for many years to come.

From ThinkProgress. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan continues to try and make the NSA domestic spying issue a partisan issue, but when high profile conservative figures such as Grover Norquist call the program illegal, it's hard to get that strategy to stick.

Referring to what some see as a conflict between fighting vicious terrorists and upholding all civil liberties, Norquist said, "It's not either/or. If the president thinks he needs different tools, pass a law to get them. Don't break the existing laws."

Additional Reading. From CommonDreams.org.