friday reads

Congress is asking questions about another ex-employee of government contracting firm KBR who claims she was raped in Iraq.


The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction faces four seperate investigations.


A mistrial has been declared in the "Liberty City 7" trial in Miami on Thursday. One defendant was acquitted in the case of plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and wage war against the U.S.


The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.


Glenn Greenwald:

The Senate is going to take up debate today on the new FISA bill -- including the provisions for telecom amnesty and presidential surveillance powers -- and Harry Reid is apparently bringing the bill to the floor (a) in precisely the way designed to help the administration's goal of ensuring there is telecom amnesty and fewer surveillance oversight protections and (b) contrary to the way his office has been assuring everyone concerned that it would be done.

Paul Krugman: After the Money's Gone

Digby: Unleashing The Beast


Bill O'Reilly declares victory over reality.


A Who's Who of America's top scientists are launching a quixotic last-minute effort this week to force presidential candidates to detail the role science would play in their administrations -- a question they say is key to the future of the country, if not the world.


AlterNet: Big Coal's Dirty Plans for Our Energy Future

thursday reads

A year after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist regime in Somalia, the country has become Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe.


Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) says he's hatched a plan that will secure health care for children, help to restore America's reputation around the world, and empower the the Democratic party to rediscover the courage of its convictions. He calls it "impeachment hearings."


This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo's infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005.


Linsay Beyerstein: Kiriakou and the Kite Runner


Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. [*snort*]

wednesday reads

The Most Vulgar, Disgusting, and Foul Joke in the World


Sketching the campaign


Tom's Review of Books

Whip It

Drew Barrymore will make her directing debut next year with “Whip It,” a film about the mad world of roller derby, according to Production Charts.

The film is in pre-production, with no casting announcements made yet.

Shauna Cross is the screenwriter. Cross is a member of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls and recently published a teen-oriented novel called Derby Girl.

tuesday reads

Meet war criminal John Kiriakou.


A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.


Two car bombs rammed into the office of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the country's constitutional court in upmarket areas of Algiers.


Scott Horton: Undermining Military Justice


Larry Johnson: Disentangling Torture TapeGate

Kevin Drum

Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn't be destroyed. The CIA's top lawyer had been involved for the entire time. And yet we're supposed to believe that, in 2005, a mid-ranking agency lawyer suddenly decided the tapes could be destroyed and the head of the clandestine branch then gave the order to do so without anyone else being involved? Really? Does anyone actually believe this story?

Attempts to find out what Congress actually knew about the 2002 torture of detainees held by the CIA are running right into the brick wall of classification. Only this time, it's not just CIA stonewalling that's keeping the facts concealed. Members of Congress are quick to put the classification muzzle on themselves.


The New Jersey Senate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment.


Time Hackers

The Stupid, It Burns!

Iraq needs a Pinochet

monday reads

Glenn Greenwald: Democratic Complicity in Bush’s Torture Regimen


The UN climate talks seeking a new pact on global warming hit a potential problem today when the US said it was unwilling to approve a draft agreement setting firm targets for cuts to carbon pollution.


The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid. This southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out of oil and gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is a restless place. In the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the tension and the poverty has delivered an opportunity for a new and terrible phenomenon that is leading to the abuse and the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And it is being done in the name of Christianity.


A gunman killed two staff members at a missionary training center early Sunday after being told he couldn't spend the night, and about 12 hours later four people were shot at a busy megachurch in Colorado Springs.


Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.


Tengrain Presents...Chimpy McStagger in...Pants on fire


Winter Soldier