Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues and gospel singer and leader of the Staples Singers Roebuck "Pops" Staples. Enjoy!
Staple Singers - Why Am I Treated So Bad
"The government deals with the citizens from whom it has its mandate in a base and disingenuous mannner, and fails completely to maintain equal justice among them. It not only follows the majority in persecuting htose who happen to be unpopular; it also institutes persecutions of its own, and frequently against men of hte greatest rectitude and largest public usefulness. I marvel that no candidate for the doctorate has ever written a realistic history of hte American Department of Justice, ironically so called. It has engaged in sharp practices since the earliest days, and remains a fecund source of oppression and corruption today."
-- H.L. Mencken
News and Opinion
Eric Holder's lawless legacy
Eric Holder is reaping applause as his six-year reign as Attorney Generalcomes to a close. But Holder's record is profoundly disappointing to anyone who expected the Obama administration to renounce the abuses of the previous administration. Instead, Holder championed a Nixonian-style legal philosophy that presumed that any action the president orders is legal.
Holder championed President Obama's power to assassinate people outside the United States — including Americans — based solely on the president's secret decrees. On March 6, 2012, Holder defended presidentially-ordered killings: "Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, it does not guarantee judicial process." TV comedian Stephen Colbert mocked Holder: "Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do." For Holder and the Obama administration, reciting certain legal phrases in secret memos was all it took to justify executions.
Though Holder had criticized the Bush administration'swarrantless wiretaps before he took office, he became the key defender of National Security Agency's email dragnet. Even after Edward Snowden had revealed that the NSA was illegally vacuuming up millions of Americans' email and other communications, Holder falsely proclaimed in June 2013 that, "The Government cannot target anyone... unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation..." But confidential documents revealed that the NSA's definition of terrorist suspect is so ludicrously broad that it includes "someone searching the web for suspicious stuff."
[And there's more at the link above, it's a big legacy of vile treachery. - js]
Hat tip mimi:
DOJ Says It’s Not Legally Required to Tell Wyden Whether Executive Branch Conduct Was Legal
Ron Wyden has written Eric Holder a letter listing all the unfinished business he’d like the Attorney General to finish before going off to his sinecure defending banks (my assessment, not Wyden’s).
Three of the requests are familiar:
- A request to know the limits of using deadly force against Americans outside of declared war zones
- A request for the withdrawal and declassification of an OLC opinion on common commercial service agreements
- A request that Holder share the Torture Report widely so it can be useful (or maybe even just open it)
But a fourth is, as far as I know, new:
I have asked repeatedly over the past several years for the Department of Justice’s opinion on the lawfulness of particular conduct that involved an Executive Branch agency. I finally received a response to these inquiries in June 2014; however the response simply stated that the Department of Justice was not statutorily obligated to respond to my question. I suppose there my not be a particular law that requires the Department to answer this question, but this response is nonetheless clearly troubling. My question was not hypothetical, and I did not ask to see any pre-decisional legal advice — I simply asked whether the Justice Department believed that the specific actions taken in this case were legal. It would be reasonable for the Department to say “Yes, this conduct was lawful” and explain why, or to say “No, this appears to have been unlawful” and take appropriate follow-up action. Refusing to answer at all is highly problematic and clearly undermines effective oversight of government agencies, especially since the actions in question were carried out in secret. For these reasons, I renew my request for an answer to the question, and I hope that you can help provide one.
Feinstein Vindicated In Intelligence Committee Spat
The Senate Parliamentarian has vindicated former Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein against charges that the California Democrat violated committee rules by sending the full, classified version of her panel’s torture report out to the executive branch.
“There’s nothing there. They’re taking no action,” Feinstein told HuffPost Tuesday.
The news marks a victory for Feinstein in a short-lived but heated partisan feud kickstarted by newly minted Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) upon taking over the panel’s reins in January. Burr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Feinstein’s massive study on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, sparked outrage from Democratic colleagues when he suggested Feinstein had violated committee protocol by sending out the report in December, just before relinquishing control of the panel to Republicans. ...
But despite the seeming victory for Feinstein, the panel chairman said he’s not done with the matter yet.
“We’ll proceed to whatever the next step is gonna be,” Burr said Tuesday. “I think there will be a next step, but it probably won’t be a public one.”
It’s unclear what other avenues are available to Burr if he wants to pursue the matter within the committee.
[Good, maybe if the SSCI can stay embroiled in petty bickering and internecine warfare then they won't be able to pass appropriations and the spooks will be starved. - js]
DOJ Probe Into Alleged Senate and CIA Torture Report Crimes Is Shrouded in Secrecy
Last year, government lawyers made inquires into allegations that CIA personnel and Senate Intelligence Committee staffers broke federal laws in connection with the committee's work on the Senate torture report. But the Department of Justice has classified dozens of pages of documents related to that investigation.
The CIA's internal watchdog and an agency lawyer filed separate criminal referrals with DOJ calling for a criminal investigation into charges that CIA personnel spied on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers while they were conducting a probe into the agency's torture program and that the staffers stole an internal, top-secret CIA document about the torture program.
VICE News filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for those criminal referrals as well as all documents that "refer" to it. In a letter dated January 26, the Justice Department's National Security Division said it identified about 85 pages — and that it was withholding all but two pages on grounds that disclosure would threaten national security, result in an unwarranted invasion of privacy, and reveal behind-the-scenes deliberations.
The DOJ did release two letters [pdf below] to VICE News — both dated July 8, 2014 — in which it advised the CIA "there is insufficient basis to open a criminal investigation" into either the charges that the CIA spied on the Senate or the charges that the Senate stole documents from the CIA. The letters were sent to Howard Cox, the CIA's assistant inspector general for investigations, and Caroline Krass, the agency's top lawyer, 10 days before the CIA's watchdog issued a report that found there was sufficient evidence that CIA personnel not only breached Senate Intelligence Committee staffers' computers and spied on them, but likely violated federal anti-wiretap laws and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Last month, a CIA accountability review board, empaneled by CIA Director John Brennan to look deeper into Inspector General David Buckley's conclusions, rebuked the watchdog's investigation, exonerated the CIA employees alleged to have spied on the Senate, and determined that Senate Intelligence Committee staffers stole an internal CIA study about the torture program referred to as the Panetta Review. Buckley resigned from the CIA last month.
Why America Needs to Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba
FBI put Anonymous 'hacktivist' Jeremy Hammond on terrorism watchlist
The prominent Anonymous “hacktivist” Jeremy Hammond, who participated in some of the hacking collective’s most audacious cyber acts, was placed by the FBI on a terrorism watchlist, the Daily Dot reported on Monday.
The internet news website obtained a leaked document from the New York state division of criminal justice services that shows Hammond was classified as a “possible terrorist organisation member”. The document is marked “destroy after use” and includes the instruction: “Do not advise this individual that they are on a terrorist watchlist.”
The document obtained by the Daily Dot, which is dated from around the time of Hammond’s arrest, suggests that he was put on a central terrorism watchlist compiled by the FBI known as the Terrorist Screening Database. The documents do not spell out what justification, if any, the federal agency offered for including Hammond on the list, raising the possibility that the FBI designated him a possible terrorist by dint of his role as a so-called “hacktivist” within Anonymous.
Civil liberties groups said they were concerned that a hacker with no apparent history of terrorist behaviour or affiliations should be classified in this way.
Obama still argues that we can't have transparency or the terrorists will win
The Obama administration, self-described Most Transparent Administration in History™, is currently engaged in a multi-pronged legal battle to prevent an iota more transparency related to illegal torture. strong>If there was any lingering hope that the President might use the last two years of his final term in office to bring some accountability to the despicable actions of the CIA or the US military, it appears that he will instead continue to use the power of the office to fight to keep them hidden.
Later today, the government will showcase its latest suppression effort, as the Justice Department will urge a federal judge in New York to keep secret hundreds of photos of torture from Abu Ghraib prison from almost a decade ago. President Obama once promised to release the photos, only to reverse himself months after coming into office – and he’s since been fighting for years to keep them secret.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, wrote recently about how US officials issued a “defiant message” after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the hacking of Sony Pictures that “terrorists shouldn’t get to decide the boundaries of our political debate.”
Yet time and again, the government claims the exact opposite under oath when arguing against more transparency: in court, the government has continually argued that terrorists would seize upon the photographs of Abu Ghraib, use them as a recruiting tool and provoke a violent reaction overseas. So, the goverment’s logic dictates, despite the fact that the actions of the US military depicted in the photos were illegal, the American public shouldn’t get to see what actually occurred. ...
The government is making a similar argument in their efforts to keep secret Guantánamo force-feeding videos after multiple newspapers, including the Guardian, sued under the Freedom of Information Act to release the videos. A district court judge, in a landmark ruling late last year, ordered the government to make the videos public. Soon after, the UN human rights committee found that “Force feeding of prisoners on hunger strike constitutes ill-treatment in violation of the Convention [Against Torture].” Yet, the Justice Department continues to appeal the ruling.
Pentagon loses track of weaponry sent to Yemen in recent years
Chaos in Yemen has left the US military unable to monitor the vast arsenal it has spent years providing to its Yemeni counterpart.
Yemen is now functionally leaderless after Houthi rebels took over the capital of Sana’a last month, prompting the resignation of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The rebels are said to control the Yemeni military’s arms depots and bases, giving them effective control of US-provided and other heavy weaponry, including tanks and artillery.
The unrest has “limited our ability to conduct routine end-use monitoring checks and inspections we would normally perform”, a US defense official told the Guardian.
US military officials would not specify which military equipment it could no longer track, but in recent years the US has sold or leased equipment including helicopters, night-vision gear, surveillance equipment, military radios and transport aircraft to Yemen.
Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of Al Qaeda
In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October. ...
He said in the prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of donors to the group. Among those he said he recalled listing in the database were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the country’s leading clerics.
US Hopes Jordan Pilot’s Death Will Get Jordan Deeper Into ISIS War
Never one to let a crisis go to waste, US officials are expressing hope that the video showing the execution of a Jordanian pilot by ISIS will provide them an opportunity to rile up Jordan into escalating their involvement in the war. ..
ISIS seems interested in sucking Jordan deeper into the war in hopes of using it to mobilize their significant population of sympathizers in the country. The US, apparently, sees sucking Jordan further into the war as a benefit to them too.
Exactly why isn’t being stated, but with Jordan right along the Syrian border, it is already being used as a staging area for US-trained rebels. The US may believe that Jordan’s further involvement in the war means more involvement on that border.
Jordan Executes Two Militants and Vows 'Earth-Shaking' Response to Islamic State
Jordan hanged two jihadists at dawn on Wednesday morning in response to the Islamic State group apparently killing one of its fighter pilots by burning him alive.
Failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi and Iraqi al Qaeda militant Ziad al-Karboli had been on death row for several years and were executed at Swaqa prison south of Ammam, the government announced.
Jordanian authorities had vowed an "earth-shaking and decisive" response to a gruesome video released by Islamic State militants showing the murder of 26-year-old airman Moaz al Kasasbeh. Kasasbeh was captured when his F-16 went down in December near the group's Syrian stronghold of Raqaa, while taking part in US-led airstrikes on Islamic State targets in the area.
Jordan had said it would begin executing extremists facing death penalties if he was killed. It ended an eight-year moratorium on capital punishment in December.
Welcome to the most corrupt nation in Europe
Since 1991, officials, members of parliament and businessmen have created complex and highly lucrative schemes to plunder the state budget. The theft has crippled Ukraine. The economy was as large as Poland’s at independence, now it is a third of the size. Ordinary Ukrainians have seen their living standards stagnate, while a handful of oligarchs have become billionaires.
Public fury has fuelled two revolutions. In 2004, street protests helped Viktor Yushchenko defeat an attempt by the then prime minister Viktor Yanukovych to rig the presidential election. During his five years in power, however, Yushchenko failed to dislodge the networks of patronage. Amid widespread disillusionment, he lost the 2010 election to Yanukovych, who was in turn driven out in February, after corruption mutated into still more virulent forms.
Officials from the general prosecutor’s office, who were interviewed by Reuters, claimed that between 2010 and 2014, officials were stealing a fifth of the country’s national output every year. This behaviour has infected all sectors of Ukrainian society. President Yanukovych lived in a vast palace on the edge of Kiev. After he fled, protesters found millions of dollars worth of paintings, icons, books and ceramics stacked in his garage. He’d had nowhere to display them.
Ukraine’s Conscription Plan Fuels Fear, Resentment
Ukraine’s civil war has not been going well since they gave up on the multi-month ceasefire and launched a new attack. Promises of giving rebels a “punch in the teeth” have given way to a flurry of defeats across Donetsk Oblast.
Ukraine’s military is hoping that expanding their conscription and throwing more ill-trained recruits at the frontier will change things, but the move is fueling resentment toward the government and fear among familiesfor the safety of conscripts.
The military says it hopes to bring in some 50,000 new conscripts for the war, but the rebels are also pressing locals in the east into their service, hoping to get 100,000 fighters on their side.
Mexico deports record numbers of women and children in US-driven effort
Tens of thousands fleeing violence and poverty deported to Central America after pressure from the US to prevent migrants reaching American border
Record numbers of women and children fleeing violence and poverty in Central America were deported by Mexican authorities last year, as part of US-driven operations to stem the flow of migrants reaching the American border.
More than 24,000 women were deported from Mexico in 2014 – double the number sent home in 2013. The upsurge in child detentions was even sharper – climbing 230% to just over 23,000, Mexican interior ministry figures reveal.
Many were captured during security operations targeting train and bus routes commonly used by Central American migrants as part of a new strategy called new Southern Border Plan (Plan Frontera Sur). The plan was launched last summer after Barack Obama declared the unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied children and families seeking refuge at the US border an “urgent humanitarian situation”.
The new measures helped prevent a staggering 9,661 Honduran and 7,975 Guatemalan children from reaching the US – almost three times more than in 2013. Almost 11,000 unaccompanied children, including 1,853 aged 11 or younger, were also caught and deported by Mexican authorities.
Mexican officials say the new crackdown is designed to retake control of the historically porous southern frontier and protect migrants from transnational crime groups. But the measures have been widely attributed to pressure from the Americans, who do not want a repeat of last year’s crisis which clogged up the immigration courts and saw tens of thousands women and children crammed into detention centres at the border.
Obama's surveillance struggle: selling 'weak reforms' to Congress (and Merkel)
President must convince even administration loyalists in light of Tuesday’s proposals that he is still serious about protecting Americans’ privacy
Unfinished surveillance reforms hung over the last Washington visit by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, like a bad smell. This time around, the White House has more than just diplomatic relations with a leading European ally to worry about.
As Merkel prepares to meet with Barack Obama again next week, the US president also has to demonstrate to Congress that he is following through on promises he made last January to tackle the abuses revealed by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Though reform legislation on Capitol Hill has stalled, the president will need to seek reauthorisation from Congress for the Patriot Act, which gives the NSA much of its existing powers, by 1 June at the latest. ...
With both these foreign and domestic critics in mind, the administration’s office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) released long-awaited reform proposals on Tuesday that appeared long on rhetoric, if short on substance. ...
Even relative administration loyalists on Capitol Hill are far from impressed with the list of mainly superficial measures that tighten disclosure rules and data retention limits rather than curtail the underlining surveillance powers.
“Apart from the changes the administration announced last year which require prior court approval for specific telephone metadata requests and a reduction of the number of ‘hops’, no new reforms are set out under section 215, and no steps appear to have been taken to end bulk collection and transition to a system where the telephone carriers hold on to their own data,” said Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Dean Baker: New Leftist Greek Leaders Being "Very Smart" to Challenge German-Imposed Austerity
European disunion: Tsipras, Merkel and the conflict at the heart of the EU
“Greece’s election has already produced an unambiguous defeat for Merkel and her austerity-based strategy for sustaining the euro,” Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, wrote this week.
The results in Greece are a society traumatised, elites untouched and taking their money out of the country, no jobs for the young, national output shrunk by a quarter, national debt soaring to levels where it can only be serviced by sacrificing any prospect of recovery.
Five years into what in Brussels is dubbed “the programme”, Greece is not competitive. It has the EU’s first government of hard-left rebels and rightwing antisemitic nationalists.
Has Merkel failed? The Germans angrily reject the very premise of the question, arguing persuasively that they did not create the mess in the first place and yet responded generously by taking the lion’s share of bailing out Greece to the tune of €240bn (£181bn), the biggest rescue ever of an insolvent state. ...
If Germany lost the big battles, it compensated by dictating the terms of its defeats. Yes, there would be bailouts, but Berlin determined the detail of how they worked and the conditions the debtors would need to meet. ...
These conflicts reflected fundamentally different ways of seeing things, deep cultural divisions between the big nations of Europe over how budgets and economic policy work. It has often been a dialogue of the deaf, an exercise in mutual misunderstanding. ...
Five years on, these basic differences in outlook have not been resolved and may be coming to a head in the clash between Athens and Berlin.
The Greek people have spoken and delivered a resounding no to Germany, Tsipras argues. He is quietly supported by France’s François Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi, both of whom argue for “a Europe moving in a different direction” but who are reluctant to pick a fight with Merkel openly and hope Tsipras can tilt the balance of power in their favour.
Syriza may be doing the Eurozone a big favour
Fact is that the Eurozone needs a new compact with its citizens both in crisis-ridden Southern and in better-performing Northern economies. This must promise hope and an end to the self-destructive policies that were enacted both leading up to the crisis and as a reaction to it. A Mea culpa, whether explicit or implicit, is a prerequite to any substantial changes in policies. By telling the truth on how poorly designed the Eurozone’s response has been so far, the new Greek government is sending a clear message to citizens not just in Greece, but also in the rest of the Eurozone. The telegenic presence of Yanis Varoufakis and his accessible analysis of what has gone wrong is reaching citizens across the Eurozone. It is giving hope to millions of EU citizens who have been at the wrong end of the mismanagement of the crisis and who have been losing faith in politics and their leaders. The only real way to avoid the populist backlash from the left and the right that leaders such as Rajoy of Spain and Merkel in Germany fear is to change the political discourse, improve policy and make sure citizens are able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
At home, the Greek government was right to suspend the privatisation programme that has been an abject failure. Trying to sell public assets at fire-sale prices makes little sense, though reforming public institutions is critical. Here the declaration by the government of its intention to take on the entrenched bureaucracy and oligarchs with whom it has far weaker links than either Pasok or ND, who ran previous governments, is sensible and credible. Their declared intention to go after tax evaders is both economically and politically astute. It should help relieve some pressure on the poorest segments of Greek society who have borne the brunt of the crisis so far.
Syriza Needs Alliance Against German "Beggar Thy Neighbor" Policies
Germany wants new Greek rulers to ditch promises - document
Germany wants Greece's new left-wing government to go back on anti-austerity promises made in its first days in office and revert to economic policies its predecessors' agreed with international lenders, a document showed on Wednesday.
Greece promptly rejected such calls.
The document, seen by Reuters, was prepared by Berlin for a meeting of senior euro zone finance officials on Thursday. The officials are to discuss the currency bloc's response to Greek demands for an official debt write-off or restructuring, an end to budget cuts and a reversal of some recent unpopular measures.
The German document stressed that Athens must not roll back any of the cutbacks and reforms made so far in Greece's efforts to improve bloated public finances and regain market trust.
"It is obvious that these suggestions will not be accepted by the Greek government. They are clashing with the recent mandate given by the Greek people and this not help with the growth perspective of Europe," a Greek government official told Reuters.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature more on the testimony of Ludlow survivors, Mary Petrucci and Margaret Dominiski, before the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Tune in at 2pm!
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The Hunting of Billie Holiday & the Roots of the U.S. War on Drugs
The Evening Greens
Final EPA Review Makes It Clear: 'Keystone a Climate Disaster'
In a letter to the State Department released Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the Keystone XL pipeline would "significantly increase" greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands—a declaration environmentalists hope will serve as a final nail in the project's coffin.
"The EPA's assessment is spot-on," said Danielle Droitsch, Canada project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all. ...
In the letter (pdf), EPA said the recent drop in oil prices means that building Keystone XL would promote further expansion of Canadian tar sands, unleashing more greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbating climate change.
"[A]t sustained oil prices within this range, construction of the pipeline is projected to change the economics of oil sands development and result in increased oil sands production, and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, over what would otherwise occur," reads the letter signed by EPA official Cynthia Giles.
"In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close," said 350.org's Bill McKibben. "Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment. The president's got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle."
Canada 'Can't Hide' From Climate Impacts of Energy East Pipeline, Groups Say
More than 100,000 messages from people across Canada were hand-delivered on Monday to the National Energy Board's office in Calgary demanding climate impacts be considered in the agency's review of the proposed Energy East tar sands pipeline.
The largest petition ever delivered to the NEB—organized by environmental and civil society groups including 350.org, Leadnow.ca, the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace, and Avaaz—calls on NEB head Peter Watson to "either include climate impacts and community voices in his review, or lose all credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the Canadian people."
The Energy East pipeline would transport 1.1 million barrels per day of toxic tar sands oil from Alberta to the Atlantic Ocean, traversing at least 90 watersheds and 961 waterways between Alberta and New Brunswick—including some protected by Indigenous treaty rights.
The Energy East pipeline would transport 1.1 million barrels per day of toxic tar sands oil from Alberta to the Atlantic Ocean, traversing at least 90 watersheds and 961 waterways between Alberta and New Brunswick—including some protected by Indigenous treaty rights.
Energy Department Kills Troubled Bush-Era Coal Electricity Project
The Energy Department is walking away from FutureGen, a public-private effort to create a power plant that traps and stores carbon emissions, which began but faltered under President George W. Bush and was revived by the Obama administration.
DOE is yanking funding for the project that was authorized to receive $1.1 billion in funding via the 2009 stimulus law, though the bulk was never spent.
Bush, who proposed FutureGen in 2003, envisioned a pioneering plant that would demonstrate sophisticated technology that uses coal cleanly on a commercial scale. Since then, other projects designed to trap power-plant emissions have begun moving ahead, though large-scale carbon capture remains far from widespread commercial deployment in the electricity sector.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Rosa Parks archive heads to Library of Congress: 'I had been pushed around all my life'
'Detroiters stay out': racial blockades divide a city and its surburbs
Death of prosecutor leaves Argentina's Jewish community angry and distrustful
Departure of CIA’s top watchdog signals roadblocks to reining in agency
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Released from Prison
Finding Voice and Community
A Little Night Music
Pops Staples - Somebody Was Watching
Pops Staples - Down In Mississippi
The Staple Singers - Respect Yourself/I'll Take You There
Pops Staples - Waiting for My Child
The Staple Singers - People Get Ready
Pop Staples - World In Motion
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Pops Staples - Nobody's Fault But Mine
Pops Staples - I Shall Not Be Moved
Pops Staples - Gotta Serve Somebody
Albert King, Pops Staples, & Steve Cropper - Tupelo
Pops Staples - Black Boy
Pops Staples - Jesus Is Going To Make Up (My Dying Bed)
Pops Staples - Grandma's Hands
The Band & The Staple Singers - The Weight
The Staple Singers - Freedom Highway
Pops Staples - Don't Lose This
Pops Staples - Hope In A Hopeless World
Johnny Cash, Pop Staples - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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