It was just a few years ago the very idea that the Arctic was showing signs of increased summer melts was hooted down as alarmist. The threat to native species and native cultures presented by the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was laughed off as just another crazy, radical, environmentalist scheme to mess with the economy. Except for a few wigged-out pockets of denial amplified by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, most of the laughing has ceased. Not, of course, that the Cheney-Bush administration has retreated from its censorship of science, as noted here by smintheus, to provide one example. In that instance, the censorship came about for the purpose of getting some new Arctic oil leases into the ... uh ... pipeline without pesky scientific concerns being allowed to introduce obstacles into the discussion.

Discussion of the situation is made more difficult because the melting is not a steady downward plunge. This year, for instance, as of a week ago, Arctic sea ice extent clocked in at 3.44 million square miles. This was well below the 1979-2000 average of 3.83 million square miles. But it was 0.41 million square miles above the value for July 16 last year.

So, you can expect to hear any day now from the usual suspects that the wider extent of ice this year proves the Arctic may not be heading for ice-free summers in the next couple of decades. This claim, of course, will ignored data showing that, while first-year ice is thicker than was predicted this summer, multi-year ice is much thinner than seen in 2006 and 2007. In other words, the long-term trend and consequences are not in doubt, whatever spikes may occur year-to-year.

Meanwhile, nationalists and entrepreneurs seem to have no doubts about the melting. There continues to be a laying of claims to the Arctic seabed, which began last year when famed explorer Artur Chilingarov led a Russian North Pole expedition and planted a Russian flag 13,390 feet below the surface, and remarked: "The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass"

Paul Coring at the Globe and Mail wrote Tuesday:

"We were there first and we can claim the entire Arctic, but if our neighbours like Canada want some part of it, then maybe we can negotiate with them," says Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian ultranationalist, who happily hands out pictures of a Russian flag sitting on the seabed at the North Pole. ...

Supposedly cooler heads prevailed in Greenland this spring at a meeting of the five circumpolar countries: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States. They agreed "to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims" in a joint communiqué called the Ilulissat Declaration.

But the race to claim the top of the world and, more importantly, reap the vast bonanza of oil and gas believed to lie beneath the Arctic seabed is only just getting under way. ...

No surprise, then, that Russia is conducting naval exercises in the Arctic. Canada had soldiers stamping about in the North this spring, and some analysts fear power projection, not talks at the UN, will decide who controls the Arctic.

Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries can extend their zones beyond 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometres) from their coasts if they can prove the outer edge of the continental shelf extends beyond that distance. Hence, the contentious Russian claim to the Lomonosov Ridge.

The prize may be huge. One study estimates 400 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the Arctic seabed, beyond the existing 200-nautical-mile economic zones where countries can regulate and control drilling. That's a little less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

Following the lead of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters announced Monday in Colorado, Ohio, Montana, Michigan, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., that it is endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President.

^{Included in the photograph to the right, in my old stomping grounds around Confluence Park in Denver, are Tony Massaro, the LCV's Senior Vice President for Political Affairs and Public Education,  former Secretary of Energy Federico Peña, and freshman Congressman Ed Perlmutter from Colorado's 7th District.}

"Senator Obama’s proven record and his commitment to a clean, renewable energy future make him the best choice for President," LCV President Gene Karpinski said.

"At a time when this country must reinvent itself for a new energy future, we can imagine no better steward than Barack Obama. Under his leadership, America will finally achieve the economic growth, environmental protection, and national security that are possible with a new, clean energy economy."

"We have a real choice here," said Carol Browner, LCV board member and the longest-serving EPA Administrator in the agency’s history.

"Barack Obama has been a committed leader and has offered bold and comprehensive proposals when it comes to global warming, energy and the environment. John McCain, whose plan will be a continuation of Bush-era political gimmicks, will carry on Bush’s legacy of failure when it comes to energy policy,"

For thirty-eight years, LCV’s annual Environmental Scorecard has been the nationally accepted, non-partisan, environmental report card for our leaders. Barack Obama has earned an impressive lifetime 86% score.  His opponent, Senator McCain, has earned only a 24% score.  

Juliet Eilperin at Washington Post campaign log "The Trail" wrote:

A new ad from the McCain campaign blaming Obama for rising gas prices prompted the following response from Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder: "It's only July, but we're already seeing dishonest and hypocritical gutter politics from John McCain. Flip-flopping John McCain said just two weeks ago that our dangerous dependence on oil 'has been 30 years in the making,' but now he tries to blame Obama -- even though it's McCain who has been in Washington for 26 years. Here's the truth. The Bush/McCain drilling plan won't lower gas prices but will increase our over-reliance on oil. We can provide relief from high gas prices while growing the economy, protecting our security and fighting global warming by focusing on conservation, clean energy and transportation choices instead."

Twenty-six years in Washington. Which is just one year shy of the 27 years the U.S. has had a lousy energy policy, courtesy, originally, of Ronald Reagan and the folks who told us that low-carbon alternatives were a scam and energy conservationists just wanted us all to "freeze to death in the dark."

Happy 90th birthday, Nelson Mandela! In case you haven't heard, Mister Bush has signed a law that says you can visit the United States without having to get the Secretary of State to write you a pass saying you're not a terrorist.

Former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern write about 'Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies at Consortium News.

Writing consequent to former Attorney General John Ashcroft's  Thursday testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, those two big lies, they explain in detail, are, first, that after failing to prevent the September 11 attacks the Cheney-Bush administration pulled out the stops to avoid another attack. And, second, that torture saves lives.

What accounts for the blithe departure from international and national law — not to mention time-honored civilized procedures for dealing with prisoners and detainees?

What accounts for the marginalization of those military, FBI and other professionals who warned that torture is not only a war crime but also that it doesn’t yield reliable information — that, rather, it is the very best recruiting tool for terrorists?

We suggest four reasons why George "I don’t care what the international lawyers say" Bush and dark-side Dick Cheney opted for torture:

1 - Deceit: Granted, torture does not yield truthful information. It can, though, be an excellent way to obtain the untruthful information you may wish to acquire. All you really need to know is what you want the victims to "confess" to and torture them, or render them abroad to "friendly" intelligence services toward the same end.

One case that speaks volumes is that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured and rendered to Egypt, where, under torture, he told his interrogators precisely what they wanted to hear. ...

2 - Sadism: Cheney’s open advocacy of waterboarding speaks volumes, but what about the President? Sad to say, as psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch, has noted:

"Bush’s certitude that he is right gives him carte blanche for destructive behavior. He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a BB gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers (explaining that the resulting wound was ‘only a cigarette burn’)..."

3 - Intimidation: Are you perhaps in some "shock and awe" at the prospect of the President designating you an "enemy combatant" and sending you off to the Navy brig in South Carolina for an indefinite stay? He now has court approval to do precisely that, and we are proceeding on faith that this joint article will not bring us "enhanced interrogation techniques." ...

4 -- Because We Can: Lord Acton was, of course, right. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And closeness to it does the same. ...

The very transparency of the excuses for torture serves to demonstrate that this kind of power is in place, and is not to be questioned.

As is often the case, you can't get the full flavor from excerpts. Click on through to the whole essay.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

The trustees of Southern Methodist University have been given the the go-ahead to lease campus land for the George W. Bush Presidential Library, where thousands of copies of The Pet Goat and transcripts from warrantless wiretaps will be housed.

If a majority of San Francisco voters give an "aye" in November to a ballot measure certified Thursday, however, a rather different kind of public building will be named after the current occupant of the White House. It's now called the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant. If voters approve, it will become the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

Backers of the measure, who for several months circulated a petition to place [it] on the ballot, turned in more than 12,000 signatures on July 7, said organizer Brian McConnell. The Department of Elections today informed those supporters, the self-proclaimed Presidential Memorial Commission, that they had enough valid signatures - a minimum of 7,168 registered San Francisco voters - to qualify for the November ballot, he said.

McConnell, who came up with the idea over beers with friends, often donned an Uncle Sam outfit to drum up support for the petition. Other signature gatherers - all volunteers - often carried around an American flag and blasted patriotic music from a boom box to attract attention. He said today that the campaign to pass the measure will be an equally grassroots effort.

San Francisco Republicans say the plan stinks and they plan to oppose it, according to the Associated Press.

McConnell says the name-change makes perfect sense to memorialize an administration that has dragged our nation (and a few others) through the muck on a daily basis, leaving behind a mess that will take a decade or two to clean up.  

How disrespectful. How juvenile. How delightful.

But surely Richard Bruce Cheney should also be honored with his own appropriately labeled memorial. Whenever the brown has flowed during the past seven-and-a-half years, the gray eminence of this administration has been in it up to his eyebrows.

Media Matters took note of the fact that on Monday GOP strategist Andrea Tantaros again referred to Barack Obama as a "fancy lad" on the July 14 edition of America's Newsroom on Fox News. The first time she did this was July 7 on MSNBC:

Tantaros was discussing the possibility of Obama's speaking in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and called the proposition "risky," adding that "Obama needs some gravitas, and so that's why they're sending him there. He's a fancy lad. He likes fancy language with fancy backdrops. And that's exactly why they're putting him there." On neither MSNBC nor Fox News was her remark challenged by the anchors of the shows. On MSNBC, Democratic strategist David Goodfriend responded to Tantaros by saying: "Well, first of all, just in response to what Andrea said, there isn't a single Ivy League fancy guy on that ticket."

Here's the tubular version.

At Pandagon, Pam Spaulding links to a definition and writes that a "fancy lad" is a "guy who is very 'girly'":

What is it with the GOP and the insistence on gay-baiting? This is the party of closeted, tortured men trolling for sex in airport bathrooms, park restrooms and assaulting fellow Republicans in their sleep with oral sex attacks, yet they persist in trying to tar Dems with the gay label. The taunts are so high school at this point.

Just goes to show how twisted these slugs are with their view that "Muslim" is a smear and "gay" is a smear. Something had to replace "Red," I suppose. It and "your mama wears combat boots" just don't have the punch they used to.

What else will they conjure with the conventions still weeks away?

+ + +

The Overnight News Digest has been posted and includes a story on how Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party may be banned by the Constitutional Court on charges of undermining secularism.

Check out pico's Diary, Literature for Kossacks: Satire.

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed out today that the Terrorist Watch List Has Hit One Million Names

"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."

Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke [Monday] along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Civil Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.

"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."

A year ago, when the list was only 755,000 names, Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies, said: "It undermines the authority of the list. There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists." In 2004, there were 158,000 names on the list. You can read the Government Accountability Office's October 2007 report on the terrorism watch list here.

The ACLU is calling for controls to be placed on the watch list, including: 1) due process, 2) a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based, 3) tight criteria for adding names to the list, 4) rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the list.

The organization also called upon the President to issue an executive order requiring a review of the list and the limiting of those on to people "for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist ties or activities. The review should be concluded within 3 months."

One name was removed from the list just this month, that of Nelson Mandela, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former President of post-apartheid South Africa. (He turns 90 on Friday.)

The ACLU has also announced the creation of an online form where victims of the watch list can tell their stories. A link to the form is available online here.

+ + +

^{Total coalition military fatalities in Iraq since March 2003: 4119}

Total Iraqi fatalities due to the invasion and occupation: Unknown, but as high as 1.4 million

Total coalition fatalities in Afghanistan since 2001: 891

Total Afghan fatalities because of the war: Unknown, many thousands

At The Independent, Michael McCarthy writes:

^{Return of the ivory trade}

The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.

Alarmed conservationists are warning of a new wave of elephant killing across both Africa and Asia if China is allowed to become a legal importer, as looks likely at a meeting in Geneva next week.

The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say.

"This is going to mean a return to the bad old days where elephants are being shot into extinction," said Allan Thornton, of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the group which provided much of the evidence on which the original ivory ban was based in 1989. ...

The EIA released an internal Chinese government document yesterday which, it said, showed that, over 12 years, officials had lost track of 121 tonnes of ivory from the country's official stockpile – equivalent to the tusks of 11,000 elephants. "We have not been able to account for the shortfall through the sale of legal ivory by the selected selling sites," Chinese officials reported in the document to Cites in 2003. "This suggests a large amount of illegal sale of the ivory stockpile has taken place."

Asked about the document, officials from China's Foreign Ministry said they had no information on the subject.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

+ + +

Because of the
Obama
Obama, Obama
Bo Bama
Banana, Fanna, Fo, Fama
Fee, Fie, Moe, Mama
Obama
Diary surge tonight, you might have missed this one well worth reading by A Siegel:

^{What Fraction Of America’s $4+/Gallon Gasoline Is Due To The War In Iraq?}

Over at the Oil Drum, a blog that has been gaining a much-deserved increase in attention, Heading Out writes:

^{Asking one of the less comfortable questions about our energy future...}

The evidence seems to be pointing to an overall increase in the global decline rate for existing wells. What this means is that, if world production is around 86 million barrels a day, then to replace existing declines next year, an additional new production of 4.47 mbd [million barrels a day] at 5.2% decline, instead of the 3.87 mbd required at 4.5% decline, will be needed just to stabilize supply at a fixed level. If the rate is accelerating this difference of 600,000 bd will increase and drop the top line of the curves such as those that Khebab and others have so carefully assembled.

This increased decline rate is already being reported, and thus the potential peak in 2010 that the graph shows is already at risk and we may struggle to get much above the numbers that we are at today. Bear in mind that decline rates are cumulative over the years, and that outyear production must be that much greater to sustain supply, relative to today’s production.

At present there is still considerable complacency about how the oil supply situation will play out. There is an implication that this is just a difficult period to get through, and that, in a relatively short time the situation will get better. Sadly I would suggest that even our current thinking here is largely overly optimistic, and that instead it is going to be much more difficult, faster than we expect. But also, in light of peoples’ expectations about oil really being there at a reasonable price, the greater the dangers of civil unrest, as it occurs without proper public education as to the reason that "there is no more" signs start to spring up at gas stations.

The Overnight News Digest is posted, and includes an item on the direct cost of operations in Iraq, now at $535,635,000,000.

Update: In the two hours since this Diary has been posted, that figure above has risen to $535,665,000,000. In other words, in two hours, the U.S. has directly spent on the Iraq occupation what the Department of Energy is spending over three years in demonstration and development projects for plug-in hybrid vehicles.  

From CongressDaily (subscription only):

^{Dorgan Assails Pentagon For Inaction On Contractorss}

Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan of North Dakota Wednesday castigated the Defense Department for not addressing contractor malfeasance in Iraq.

"I’ve seen precious little activity out of the Pentagon," Dorgan said at a meeting of his panel, which focused on Kellogg, Brown and Root.

Charles Smith, the former chief of the Field Support Contracting Division for the Army Field Support Command, said he personally saw KBR submit $1 billion in overcharges to the Army, including excessive meal counts for more soldiers than were stationed at a camp and more trucks than the Army needed, and was fired for protesting.

Smith, who was in charge of the LOGCAP III contract in Iraq overseeing the KBR contract, said the Defense Department Contracting Agency documented $1.8 billion in unsupported charges from KBR.

"In 31 years of doing this work, I have never seen anything like the way KBR’s unsupported charges were handled by the Department of Defense," Smith said.

Surely there is an immunity deal that can be cooked up to save KBR and other contractors from embarrassment and legal action.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

At Climate Progress, Joseph Romm writes:

^{Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb}

The Phone Call — based on a true story

Major cable network: What do you think of T. Boone Pickens’ latest energy plan ?

Climate Progress: Half of it is great, the big push on wind power. Heck, even the Bush administration says wind power could be 20% of U.S. electricity. But the notion that we would use the wind power to free up natural gas in order to fuel a transition to natural gas vehicles makes no sense. Why would we go to the trouble of switching our vehicle fleet from running on one expensive fossil fuel to another expensive fossil fuel? Any freed up natural gas should be used to displace coal....

Major cable network: I was hoping you liked the whole plan. That way we could use you on the show.... You don’t have any ideas of who might like the whole thing?

Climate Progress [Long pause, crickets chirp, the wind sighs, sea levels rise a few meters]: No. The people who will like the renewables part probably won’t be thrilled about the fossil fuel part, and vice versa.

Major cable network: Thanks. I’m sure we will find some reason to use you soon.

I am thinking about working that into a screenplay about a mild-mannered blogger for a great metropolitan progressive think tank who sacrifices his chance to be on television because he refuses to endorse an inane idea. I was looking at Matt Damon to play me, especially now that he has put on a little weight.

You can read about Swiftboater Pickens's energy plan here or straight from the horse's mouth here and what Man is 5 and other Kossacks have to say here, and A Siegel has to say here.

Romm's take on the subject is the most complete so far, however, and it is devastating:

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that "Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel."

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Right now, "We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity." Most of that electricity comes from gas burned in combined cycle gas turbines at an overall efficiency of up to 60%. Why in the world would the federal government — or anyone else — spend billions and billion of dollars on natural gas fueling stations and natural gas vehicles in order to burn the gas with an efficiency of 15% to 20%? Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander in such a fashion.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

Political blogging in Egypt has its limits. Government responses apparently don't. At the Christian Science Monitor, Liam Stack wrote on Monday:

^{Politics on Facebook brings trouble for young Egyptian}

When Egypt’s secular opposition groups called for a nationwide strike to support disgruntled factory workers last April, Ahmed Maher wanted to help. So he did what many middle-class 20-somethings here do: He logged onto Facebook.

Two weeks before the strike, he and a friend, Esraa Abdel Fattah, started a group on the popular social-networking site to support the walkout and invited friends to join. But soon they realized they had much more than just a new Facebook group on their hands. ...

By the day of the strike, more than 60,000 Egyptians had joined the group, and Maher went into hiding rather than face the possible wrath of the country’s feared State Security Investigations (SSI) unit. ...

Even though the second nationwide strike never got off the ground, Maher was arrested in early May, just two days after he had returned home, by four carloads of plainclothes police.

In an interview last week, Maher says he was shackled, blindfolded, and stripped. He says the police dragged him across the floor and beat him for almost 12 hours. They demanded to know the password to his Facebook account and asked for information about the 60,000 people in the group, then threatened to rape him if he would not comply, he says.

"Maher’s treatment is part of a pattern of abuse and extralegal intimidation by state officials," says Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. "Egypt needs to put an end to the lawlessness of its law enforcement officers."

From Agence France Presse June 1:

A blogger released after weeks behind bars over deadly protests at Egypt's biggest textile plant for higher pay and controls on prices, said Monday he and his fellow detainees suffered weeks of "torture".

"We were subjected to electric shocks, to beatings and there was no food and or drink for the first few days," blogger Karim el-Beheiri told AFP a day after his release. "We went through weeks of torture and humiliation."

Beheiri, Tarek Amin and Kamal al-Fayoumy, three worker activists, were arrested on April 6 at the Misr Spinning and Weaving company in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla after riots which left three people dead and hundreds detained.

An interior ministry official confirmed the three had been released but denied they had been mistreated.

"These are false accusations," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Everything took place within a framework of human rights."

Amira al Hussaini at Global Voices wrote on May 16:

Egyptian bloggers, cyberactivists and activists on the ground continue to pay the price for speaking up against the rising cost of living and calling for higher wages and a better life. What started as a call for a strike on April 6, quickly spiralled out of control, with a face off between rioters, protesters and the police. Here's an account of what has happened and is still happening to some of the activists who have used the worldwide web to spread news of what is happening at home.

During the unrest, on April 6 and 7, Egyptian bloggers worked round the clock telling the world about the workers' revolt that shook their country, as thousands rioted at a textile mill in Al Mahalla. They were also among the first casualties of the unrest, which left some killed, scores injured and an undetermined number of activists, organisers and mere spectators behind bars. Their coverage came in the form of blog posts, YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, Flickr shots, Facebook messages and all other online tools they could get their hands on.

The saga seems to continue, as some activists are still detained, six weeks after their arrest, prompting calls from their colleagues for their immediate release. Others, allegedly harassed, physically abused and later released by the police, continue to use online tools to tell the world their story.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

From PR Newswire:

^{President Bush Boosts Porn Industry With Economic Stimulus Plan, According to AIMRCo}

An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will "boost our economy and encourage job creation," has surfaced this week. An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, "Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market."

Jillian Fox, spokeswoman for LSGmodels.com, one of the sites reporting figures to AIMRCo, added, "In a June 15, 2008 survey to our members, thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership."

(h/t to Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend)

Thank you, House Democrats.

That is, thank you to the 151 House Democrats (and, oh yeah, four Republicans) who voted Thursday against continuing to fund the occupation of Iraq. As opposed to the 80 who voted for it. In other words, thanks to the majority.

I know that a handful of you don't really deserve thanks. You voted "nay" with the full knowledge that this funding was going to pass anyway. If you had seen that the vote was going to be a little closer, had there actually been the possibility that the nays would have constituted the House majority, you would have voted "aye" for fear of being labeled, come November - or on the upcoming Fourth of July - as an unpatriotic terrorist-sympathizer who doesn't "support the troops." So maybe that thanks is really only due to 147 of you. Or 143. Who knows? No way to parse out all the ulterior motive possibilities.

Nearly six years ago, 126 House Democrats voted against the Iraq War Resolution, officially known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. You weren't properly thanked for that. Eighty-one Democrats voted for the AUMF.

If you happen to be one of those who voted against the funding today and also voted against the AUMF in 2002, a double huzzah.

And if you're a visitor to this site whose Representative is one of the folks listed below, drop her or him a thank-you by e-mail or a phone call.

Neil Abercrombie, Gary Ackerman, Thomas H. Allen, Jason Andrews, Michael Arcuri, Joe Baca, Tammy Baldwin, Xavier Becerra, Sanford Bishop, Timothy Bishop, Earl Blumenauer, Leonard Boswell, Robert Brady, Bruce Braley, G.K. Butterfield, Lois Capps, Michael E. Capuano, Dennis A. Cardoza, Russ Carnahan, Christopher P. Carson, Andre Castor, Yvette E. Clarke, Wm. Lacy Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, Steve Cohen, John Conyers Jr., Jerry F. Costello, Joe Courtney, Joseph Crowley, Elijah E. Cummings.

Danny K. Davis, Peter A. DeFazio, Diana DeGette, William D. Delahunt, Rosa L. DeLauro, John D. Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Michael F. Doyle, Donna F. Edwards, Keith Ellison, Eliot Engel, Anna G. Eshoo, Chaka Fattah, Bob Filner, Barney Frank, Al Green, Raul M. Grijalva, Luis V. Gutierrez, John J. Hall, Phil Hare, Jane Harman, Alcee L. Hastings, Brian Higgins, Maurice D. Hinchey, Mazie K. Hirono, Paul Hodes, Rush Holt, Michael M. Honda, Darlene Hooley

Jay Inslee, Steve Israel, Jesse L Jackson Jr., Sheila Jackson-Lee, William J. Jefferson, Henry C. Johnson, E.B. Johnson, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Steve Kagen, Marcy Kaptur, Patrick J. Kennedy, Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, Ron Klein, Dennis Kucinich, James R. Langevin, John B. Larson, Barbara Lee, John Lewis, David Loebsack, Zoe Lofgren, Nita M. Lowey, Stephen Lynch

Carolyn Maloney, Edward J. Markey, Doris O. Matsui, Carolyn McCarthy, Betty McCollum, Jim McDermott, James P. McGovern, Jerry McNerney, Michael R. McNulty, Kendrick B. Meek, Gregory W. Meeks, Michael H. Michaud, Brad Miller, George Miller, Gwen Moore, James P. Moran, Christopher S. Murphy, Patrick Murphy, Jerrold Nadler, Grace F. Napolitano, Richard E. Neal, James L. Oberstar, David R. Obey, John W. Olver, Frank Pallone Jr., Bill Pascrell Jr., Ed Pastor, Donald M. Payne, Nancy Pelosi, David E. Price

Nick J. Rahall II, Charles B. Rangel, Laura Richardson, Steve R. Rothman, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Linda T. Sánchez, Loretta Sanchez, John P. Sarbanes, Janice D. Schakowsky, Adam B. Schiff, Robert C. Scott, Jose E. Serrano, Carol Shea-Porter, Brad Sherman, Albio Sires, Louise Slaughter, Adam Smith, Hilda Solis, Jackie Speier, Bart Stupak, Betty Sutton, Ellen Tauscher, Mike Thompson, Bennie G. Thompson, John F. Tierney, Edolphus Towns, Nicki Tsongas

Tom Udall, Chris Van Hollen, Nydia Velázquez, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Melvin L. Watt, Henry Waxman, Anthony D. Weiner, Peter Welch, Robert Wexler, Lynn Woolsey, David Wu, John A. Yarmuth.

Total fatalities of American military in Iraq since March 2003: 4101

Total fatalities of coalition military: 4414

Total Iraqi fatalities as a result of the invasion and occupation: Unknown, but as many as 1.4 million

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

Andrew Kramer at The New York Times writes:

^{Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back}

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat. ...

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The United States government played no role whatsoever in this matter. Having oil men in the Presidency and Vice Presidency at the time of these no-bid contracts is just a cowinkydance.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

You may wish to check out Troutfishing's Diary, Bush Slanders Troops, Blaming Them For His Own Torture Policy.

On February 12, 2004, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, two activists who had been together for 51 years, married each other after San Franciso declared same-sex marriages legal. The California Supreme Court subsequently nullified their marriage and some 4000 others in a ruling saying the city had no authority to approve the marriages in defiance of state law. Last month, the same court ended the state's ban on gay marriage. So, Monday night, Martin, 87, and Lyon, 83, got married again. Once again, as in 2004, they were the first couple to take advantage of the legal change.

^{Same-sex weddings start with union of elderly San Francisco couple}

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who officiated the ceremony in the reception area of his office, said it was a fitting way to memorialize last month's state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in California, which took effect at 5:01 p.m. ...

The couple made their way out of the office and onto the balcony area where a cake - and large crowd- was waiting. Rose petals fluttered down from the ceiling as the crowd cheered and cameras flashed.

"This is an extraordinary moment in history and extraordinary moment in time" Newsom said to the crowd. "They are extraordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives and spent half a century fighting for justice and equality."

Lyon drew laughter with her comments.

"When we first got together, we were not really thinking about getting married, we were thinking about getting together," she said. "I think it's a wonderful day."

"Ditto," Martin said.

Martin and Lyon have lived in the same house in San Francisco since 1955. That same year, at a time of flourishing McCarthyism, which hunted not only communists, but also gays, the pair helped found, with six other women, the Daughters of Bilitis, the nation's first lesbian rights organization. They risked everything. Martin was elected president and Lyon secretary. "DOB went on to define its purpose as bringing lesbians into the public discourse through education, encouraging responsible research studies, and advocating for changes in the penal code."

The organization held its first national convention in 1960, in downtown San Francisco.

Highlights included discussions on psychosexual behavior, status of gay bars, religious attitudes, legal problems of lesbian couples and entertainment. Phyllis and Del hosted a pre-convention reception at their home. Their address and phone number were printed in the program. From that point on there was no turning back for DOB or the couple who brought it out of the closet.

Unfortunately, in 1969 the National Organization for Women (NOW) President Betty Friedan labeled lesbians "The Lavender Menace." Again entering unfriendly territory, Del and Phyllis were two of the first out lesbians to join NOW, insisting on the couple's membership rate. At the 1971 and 1973 NOW conventions, the oppression of lesbians as a feminist issue was acknowledged in resolutions that Del and Phyllis were instrumental in getting adopted.

In 1972, they were also instrumental in setting up the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club. That year their book Lesbian/Woman, depicting lesbian lives in a positive way, was published. The book was chosen in the 1990s by Publishers Weekly as one of the 20 most  influential women's books of the '70s and '80s).

In 1976, Martin wrote Battered Wives, a catalyst for establishing a network of battered women's shelters. Lyon became co-director of the National Sex Forum, which initiated the use of explicitly sexual films as a teaching tool, and subsequently became a member of The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, which grants doctoral and other degrees in sexology.

Activists for life. Spouses forever. Congratulations!

+ + +

Tuesday is the 1875th day since Mission Accomplished.

There are 216 days left of the Cheney-Bush regime.

The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story, U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases.

Tom Teicholz at the Los Angeles Times writes:

The pariah loophole
^{Former Nazis remain free because no country will accept them.}

John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. The 88-year-old accused Nazi concentration camp guard was stripped of his citizenship and ordered sent to Ukraine, his birthplace; Poland, the locus of the crimes; or Germany, the heir to the Nazi regime under which he served.

Yet, as it now stands, he is still in the United States. Why? He can't be exiled unless another country agrees to accept him. For the time being, he remains free.

In this, Demjanjuk is not alone. There are five other former Nazi criminals against whom the U.S. Justice Department successfully completed deportation proceedings but whom no country has been willing to accept. Romanian-born Johann Leprich, a guard at Mauthausen camp in Austria, is one; his deportation was finalized in 2006. Another is Jakiw Palij, born in a region of Poland that is now in Ukraine. He was a guard at Poland's Trawniki labor camp (where in a single day in 1943, 6,000 prisoners were murdered), and his deportation was finalized in January 2006. Mykola Wasylyk, another Trawniki guard also found to be at the Budzyn camp, had his final appeal denied in 2004.

Theodor Szehinskyj, also born in a part of Ukraine that used to be Poland, was in the SS unit called the Death's Head Brigade and was a guard at the Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and the Warsaw concentration camps. His deportation litigation was completed in March 2006.

Finally, there is Anton Tittjung. Tittjung was born in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Croatia. He was a Waffen SS member and a guard at Mauthausen.

Should any of these criminals worry that deportation is imminent, they might take comfort from the fact that the Supreme Court declined to hear Tittjung's final appeal way back in 2000. He still remains free in the United States. In addition, in recent years, four of their denaturalized Nazi peers died before they were ever deported.

Demanjuk was first charged in 1977 at age 57 for falsifying his 1952 applications to enter the U.S. and to get his citizenship in 1958. His citizenship was revoked in 1981, and he was extradited to Israel in 1986. Convicted and sentenced to death in Israel, Demjanjuk later had his sentence overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court on the grounds of reasonable doubt. In 1993, when he was 73, a U.S. Appeals Court overturned the 1981 ruling. In 1998, Demjanjuk regained his U.S. citizenship. But it was revoked again in 2002, when Demjanjuk was 82, after a new trial. An appeals court upheld the revocation in 2004. Late in 2005, an immigration judge ordered him deported. In 2006, the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the deportation order. In January, the Sixth Circuit Court refused to review the order. Last month, the Supreme Court did the same.

Now 88, Demjanjuk, like the other war criminals still alive, has two goals in mind: stay free and run out the clock.  

Demjanjuk is one of the Nazis the anti-Semite Pat Buchanan chose to defend in the 1980s. For instance, in a 1982 interview with Allan Ryan Jr., then head of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, Buchanan said: "You've got a great atrocity that occurred 35-45 years ago, okay? Why continue to invest...put millions of dollars into investigating that. I mean, why keep a special office to investigate Nazi war crimes. ...why not abolish your office?"

One of the camps where Demjanjuk has been accused of being a guard was the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Some 800,000 people were murdered in the camp's gas chambers. Today on the site, 17,000 stones stand in a symbolic cemetery. It is said that 17,000 is the largest number of Jews gassed in a single day at the camp. More than 130 of the stones are inscribed with the names of the cities from where victims were deported to Treblinka.

Should aged Nazi war criminals, those who helped put the 800,000 into mass graves at Treblinka and the ashes of millions of others into the ground at other camps be left in peace to live out their dotage? What should be the statute of limitations on war crimes?

The Overnight News Digest is posted,  and includes a story that puts the lie to Senator Lindsey Graham's comment Thursday: "They said an al Qaeda member has a constitutional right to go to a federal court of their choosing and say, 'Judge, let me go,' The Nazis never had that right."

John Demjanjuk would beg to differ, Senator.

Margaret Talev at McClatchy Newspapers writes about Boumediene v. Bush [Caution: 70-page pdf].

^{McCain rebuffed, Obama vindicated by court's Guantanamo ruling}

Obama applauded the ruling, saying it was a repudiation of "yet another failed policy supported by John McCain."

Although both senators have opposed the use of torture in military interrogations of detainees and advocated closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, they've taken different stances when it comes to detainees' legal rights.

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who survived torture, helped shape the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It established a military-commission trial system as an alternative to civilian courts and said that federal courts couldn't consider habeas corpus petitions of detainees at Guantanamo; that is, detainees couldn't challenge in U.S. civilian courts the grounds on which they were being held.

McCain voted for it and Obama voted against it. ...

One of Obama's campaign-speech lines has been that if he's elected president, "I will restore habeas corpus" to detainees.

Obama, who has a law degree and taught constitutional law, said Thursday's opinion undercut President Bush's views on executive power, raised questions about McCain's judgment and was "an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

"Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy," he said. ...

McCain noted at a press conference in Boston that he had not yet read the decision but that Chief Justice John G. Roberts' dissent was worthy of attention. Having not read the decision, he knew this how?

Three times in four years, the Supreme Court has ruled against the Cheney-Bush administration's shameless detention of terrorist suspects at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, the 45-square-mile area wrenched from Spain in 1898 and effectively stolen from Cuba in 1903 with a coerced treaty. From the White House's point of view, Guantánamo was perfect, neither Cuba nor the United States, a jurisdictionless no-man's-land where the rule of law could be ignored and the precepts of civilized behavior violated on a daily basis without the prying eyes of bleeding-heart terror-symps or the other two branches of government that the Founders chose to provide as limiters of executive power.

This third decision, like the previous ones - Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - doesn't mean Gitmo will be shut down or the prisoners there (who haven't been already released or transferred to places like Bagram in Afghanistan) will go free any time soon. But the ruling is another major smackdown for the royalist approach Mister Bush and his legal theorists have tried to impose on the nation at the point of a bayonet labeled "9/11."

As Human Rights Watch's Legal and Policy Director James Ross writes in Salon:

^{Supreme Court to Bush: You're not above the law}

In the end, Boumediene says that the U.S. president cannot be a law unto himself. It says that anyone held in what is de facto U.S. territory -- no matter what crimes he may have committed or where he is from -- is entitled to challenge his detention. And that's something really worth celebrating.

From Italy, President Bush said Thursday that he disagreed with the ruling but "we will abide by the court's decision" -- as if he believes the administration has a choice in the matter. In the past, the administration has shown an incredible tenacity for seeking to undermine the rule of law. But then again, maybe President Bush will come to realize that his Guantánamo approach hasn't worked. That detaining hundreds of people who were later released without charge causes more harm than good. That trying people before ad hoc military commissions is a doomed process -- and that the federal courts can competently prosecute people for acts of terrorism, as they already do regularly. And that making the U.S. safe against acts of terrorism can be achieved with the help of the law, rather than by riding roughshod over it.

Don't hold your breath.

Indeed. Don't hold your breath. There are still 220 days until January 20.

Tonight, a tidbit from the early days of Daily Kos, June 11, 2002, to be precise. More proof that some things never change, even if the press secretary does.

It wasn't "The Little Caterpillar"

Last week, Bush surprised people by rejecting a report issued by the EPA admitting global warming was a scientific certainty. When asked about the report, Bush dismissively said "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy." I was shocked. What, Bush read a 268-page report? That would require some sort of adult attention span!

Well, Ari Fleischer finally admitted that Dubya lied: "Whenever presidents say they read it, you can read that to be he was briefed." That may be the case with Shrub and Reagan, but competent presidents do their own reading.

Of course had President Gore made this lie, it would be all over Fox news for weeks ...

The Overnight News Digest is posted and informs us that Norway legalizes gay marriage.