The San Francisco Chronicle reports a plan for aerial spraying of pesticides over several SF Bay Area cities -- including San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, and Tiburon -- to combat a potential threat of infestation by the little known   light brown apple moth, an exotic  agricultural pest.  The spraying is proposed to occur at night, starting in August, 2008, and continuing over as much as a five year duration  The chemical agent -- Checkmate -- contains a pheromone ingredient to disrupt mating of the moths, as well as other inert ingredients, whose identities, while partially known or suspected, may also constitute a protected trade secret.

Despite local protests and a court injunction (later overturned) spraying has already occurred in Monterey County, where, despite assurances of product safety, some adverse health effects have been reported.  Further details appear in the Chronicle story.

Two days ago I posted a diary proposing  a 28th amendment (the ‘Blackwater Amendment’) to the US Constitution, with the goal of prohibiting the use by government of private quasi-military or para-military organizations –  defined roughly as corporate entities whose stock in trade includes the use of lethal force-- in foreign or domestic settings.  Here is the text.

No person in the service, under the orders, or at the behest or bidding of the United States Government shall employ, pursuant to their duties as such,  a firearm, or any other lethal or physical weapon of  aggression, protection, or restraint, except that the said person be an employee of the United States Government, such as a member of the Armed Forces, an agent of the Justice Department, or in exceptional cases, a deputized federal marshal or equivalent, subject to the full battery of institutional laws, liabilities, and constraints customarily applying to such persons.

The dangers of private security contractors to civil society have been much discussed in light of the recent shootings of Iraqi civilians by employees of Blackwater Security.  Author Naomi Wolf (among others) has emphasized, in a current diary on Dkos,  the dangers  to Democracy of a Praetorian Guard responsible ultimately to the President, and largely protected from the legal consequences of their actions.

I propose to fix this problem by amending the US Constitution; please continue reading for further details.

This will be very brief --thinkprogress has the story. Also, apologies to anyone else who beat me to the punch. The Lieberman-Kyl amendment, called, by Jim Webb, "Cheney's fondest pipe dream"  has passed the senate, by the above noted margin.

Hey! Rank and file Kossacks! Kos Kewl Kidz! Our avowed goal here at DKos is to elect Democrats, right?  Well, a major story, about how that could get much harder, has been brewing, and even made Saturday's NY Times, although with an idiotic spin, of which more later.

The story has never hit the big time on DKos, despite having been diaried multiple times, here, here, here, here,  and also by RDemocrat, Bartimaeus Blue and MrWiggins Esq.  Apologies to others whose vigilance I have overlooked in this post.

This is going to be a fairly short diary.

What I am describing may not show up for all kos users, but I am getting them everytime I enter the site, or change pages.

The Plame Civil Suit has has been dismissed.  Stop me if this has been diaried  elsewhere.  I just stumbled onto it while trolling news sites.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled that the civil suit by Plame and her husband, former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, was preempted by laws that protect federal workers.

He ruled that the actions of Cheney and other officials, though arguably "highly unsavory," were within the scope of their government service. Federal officials are normally granted immunity from being sued in an individual capacity as long as their actions fall within their customary duties in government.

The return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has been blogged here today, notably by NewDealer, who launches from Frank Rich's NYT column;  there's also a Times editorial entitled "Al Qaeda Resurgent".

Rich's story references an interview by the ever-vigilant Keith Olbermann, of Richard Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's 'Bin Laden Unit'; and several quotes from this are given and discussed in today's Kos threads.  What I haven't seen here, and forgive me if I missed it, is a link to the video, which is chilling in the extreme.

The latest issue of the New Yorker devotes several pages to profiling  Joel Surnow -- Hollywood winger, friend of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and, most notably, producer of the hit TV series on counter-terrorism, "24".  As is well known, the show has become popular and notorious for frequently depicting interrogations under torture of terror suspects, by steely eyed hero Jack Bauer (played by actor Kiefer Sutherland).  

A mangled version of this diary appeared yesterday, and I quickly removed it, although not before the alert  xxdr zombiexx had most graciously commented on my having missed his recent post here: my bad.  vyan has also diaried the New Yorker article, most informatively.

I still believe the topic is live, and worthy of more discussion , as it poses the question: Whither the heart and soul of America?

'Ghost Plane', the recent book by freelance journalist and former London Times  reporter, Stephen Grey  details his use of plane spotters to trace the paths of nominally secret CIA flights, on which terror suspects were spirited to foreign prisions for interrogation under torture.  Thankfully, the CIA was blessedly incompetent in covering its own bloody tracks,

Hard to believe this has not  been diaried; but I searched and did not find.  Glenn Reynolds has an Op-Ed in Tuesday's NY TImes -- in praise of a new town ordinance in Greenleaf, Idaho:

Last month, Greenleaf, Idaho, adopted Ordinance 208, calling for its citizens to own guns and keep them ready in their homes in case of emergency. It’s not a response to high crime rates. As The Associated Press reported, “Greenleaf doesn’t really have crime ... the most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.” Rather, it’s a statement about preparedness in the event of an emergency, and an effort to promote a culture of self-reliance.

Kos has frontlined Tom Edsall's fantasy of a permanant Red State Realignment; as a NYT subscriber, I'm being twice weekly showered with Edsall's drivel , via his current gig as guest columnist, following the (unlamented) departure of John Tierney.  Edsall's one note samba is that the Democratic sweep of Congress was chancy ...

It is by now an open open secret that the US has (for some time) been carrying out special operations in Iran -- presumably including reconaissance missions -- aimed at preparing for open warfare, probably in the form of an air attack.  We have all heard the neo-con rationale/fantasy for such war: namely that bombing will achieve the twofold purpose of a i) destroying Iran's nuclear capability (or at any rate, setting it back several years), as well as ii) de-legitimizing the current Iranian regime, and encouraging a dissident uprising and coup.  In fact, I believe that the Bushite junta has a far more sinister agenda.

Recent efforts,  on the part of  Right-wing  Commentariat and Blogosphere, have sought to revive the notion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which he planned to use in attacks on the US, but which he spirited across the border to Syria, in miraculous and timely fashion, to avoid their detection by invading US forces.   Much has been made   of the report that Saddam was caught on tape, bragging about the ease with which such attacks might be carried out.  

What interests me, however is the presence of countervailing voices from the Right...
 

An excellent piece by Eliot Weinberger, entitled  What I heard about Iraq in 2005, appears in the latest issue of The London Review of Books, a contrarian journal rather much overlooked by the Kos Community.

The piece is packed with bullets, of which I offer this sample:

"I heard a man who had been in Abu Ghraib prison say: `The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.'"

Also this:

"I heard a Pentagon spokesman, Major General Rick Lynch, say: `We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction.' I heard him quote the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: `Remember, half the battle is the battlefield of the media.'"

We all suffer from outrage fatique in the face of the Bushite onslaught; this will help re-sharpen your edge.

This will be brief, with no specific links, as I write in haste.  Interested readers can easily find -- at atrios and buzzflash -- the requisite references to Yoo's sanction for the torture of children, if the president wills it.

Simply put, the man is a danger to the republic, and has no legitimate place in a public university -- more bluntly, California taxpayers should find the means to remove him from the chair he currently occupies in the law school at  UC Berkeley.

...we can make all the noise we want about 2006, and it will be for naught.   I am not linking to today's brilliant Krugman (he's been on  a roll lately); you can easily find it yourselves.

The point is this: given that, by the numbers Gore won Florida in 2000 ...

...and was struck in return.   Okay, you caught me;  it was actually Jonathan Bush, to whose nasty letter of complaint (NYT Book Review, Nov. 7)  Kittly Kelley now  replies .   Registration required, but well worth it:  the force of controlled anger is palpable in her letter, and the writing is punchy and memorable -- including the apostrophe of Delay quoted in my headline above.