www.legitgov.org/
www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

Tell MSNBC to Stop the Misogyny! ‘Chris Matthews is like the DC sniper, lying in wait, always on the hunt for Hillary.’ Action alert compiled by Lori Price 23 Jan 2008
CLG’s Michael Rectenwald writes to MSNBC top brass: ‘Over the past months, I have been horrified at the treatment of Hillary Clinton by Chris Matthews. I find Chris Matthews to be nearly obsessed, in a sick way, with Hillary Clinton. This obsessiveness has not only been misogynist, it has also been downright insane.’
www.legitgov.org/rectenwald_msnbc_on_matthews.html

935 false statements on 532 occasions preceded war: study 23 Jan 2008
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President [sic] Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements [lies] about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.” The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida [al-CIAduh] or both.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on
_go_pr_wh/misinformation_study

False Pretenses —Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith 23 Jan 2008
President [sic] George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

Iraq Parliament Purges Hussein Vestiges on Flag [Yeah, too bad they don’t purge vestiges of Blackwater on planet.] 23 Jan 2008
Iraqi lawmakers adopted a modified version of the national flag on Tuesday, removing three stars that symbolized the Baathist ideals of unity, freedom and socialism, and Saddam Hussein’s handwritten calligraphy of the Koranic incantation “Allahu akbar.” [Right, all that’s been replaced with a little oil geyser, Halliburton’s “H” and the Blackwater grizzly bear claw. —LRP]
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html

Blackwater is a busy little bee: Bodies of seven family members found in Iraq orchard 22 Jan 2008
Iraqi security forces found the bodies of seven family members on Tuesday, all bearing signs of torture and shot execution-style, as they hunted al Qaeda [al-CIAduh] fighters outside Iraq’s volatile city of Baquba, police said.
www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2282893920080122

Suicide bomber hits school in N Iraq 22 Jan 2008
A suicide bomber blew himself up on Tuesday near a school in the city of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province in northern Iraq, killing a student and wounding 21 people, police said.
news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/22/content_7473721.htm

US military sees first Iraq fatality in new armoured vehicle 22 Jan 2008
An American soldier killed in a weekend roadside bomb attack in Iraq became the first fatality in a new-style armoured vehicle designed to protect troops maximize corporate profits, the US military said on Tuesday. “This was the first fatality involving an IED (roadside bomb) attack on a MRAP anywhere,” spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told AFP.
news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080122/pl_afp
/iraqunrestusmrap_080122153153

UN renews pressure on Iran 23 Jan 2008
Iran came under renewed pressure to suspend its uranium enrichment programme last night, when the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany agreed in principle on a new package of sanctions. A meeting of foreign ministers in Berlin produced a compromise resolution, which slightly expanded existing sanctions on Iranian financial institutions and travel restrictions on government members. It does not, however, include the broader economic embargo sought by the US.
www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2245100,00.html

Israel Resumes Fuel Shipments to Gaza 23 Jan 2008
After widespread criticism of its decision to cut off supplies of industrial diesel oil required to run a power station that serves Gaza City and its hospitals, Israel resumed fuel shipments on Tuesday on what it said would be a temporary basis.
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/world
/middleeast/23mideast.html

Canada Troops Should Stay in Afghanistan, Panel Says 22 Jan 2008
Canada should extend its military mission in Afghanistan beyond 2009 and focus on training the Afghan army and police force, a government-commissioned panel recommended. The panel, led by former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, also called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to send about 1,000 more troops to help Canadian soldiers in the Kandahar province as a condition for an extended mission.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news
?pid=20601082&sid=aLFmMiaziaag

Russian bombers to test-fire missiles in Atlantic 22 Jan 2008
Russia on Tuesday sent two long-range bombers to the Bay of Biscay, off the French and Spanish Atlantic coasts, to test-fire missiles in what it billed as its biggest navy exercise in the area since Soviet times.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080122/ts
_nm/russia_spain_flights_dc_4

N. Korea May Be Taken off Terrorism List 23 Jan 2008
North Korea may soon be on its way to being the second country taken off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism during the Bush administration’s war on of terrorism.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/01/22/AR2008012203644.html

Documents reveal evidence of Afghan prisoner torture 22 Jan 2008
According to newly released documents from a court case brought by human rights groups, a Canadian human rights officer discovered last Nov. 5 an electrical cable and rubber hose alleged to have been used by Afghan jailors in the torture of a prisoner turned over by Canadian forces. The officer, in an interrogation room at the secret police facility in Kandahar, examined a 10-centimetre bruise on the man’s back. “He … pointed to a chair and stated that the implements he had been struck with were underneath it,” reads the court document in the case brought by rights groups seeking to halt the transfer of Canadian detainees to Afghan prisons. “Under the chair we found a large piece of braided electrical wire as well as a rubber hose. He then showed us a bruise on his back that could possibly be the result of a blow.”
www.thestar.com/article/296208

‘Enemy combatant’ receives 17-year US jail term 22 Jan 2008
A US citizen held for more than three years without charge as an “enemy combatant” [Jose Padilla] was today sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison for conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim overseas, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia.
www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2245062,00.html

Jose Padilla sentenced on terrorism charges —He gets 17 years, four months, in case far removed from ‘dirty bomb’ 22 Jan 2008
Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al-Qaida to blow up a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that do not mention those initial allegations. The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke marks another step in the extraordinary personal and legal odyssey for the U.S. citizen who was held [without charge] for 3? years as an enemy combatant after his 2002 arrest amid the “dirty bomb” allegations. He had faced up to life in prison.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22784470/

White House Has No Comprehensive E-Mail Archive —System Used by Clinton Was Scrapped 22 Jan 2008
For years, the Bush regime has relied on an inadequate archiving system for stopped storing the millions of e-mails sent through White House servers, despite court orders and statutes requiring the preservation of such records, according to documents and technical experts. President [sic] Bush’s White House early on scrapped a custom archiving system that the Clinton administration had adopted under a federal court order. From 2001 to 2003, the Bush White House also recorded over computer backup tapes that provided a last line of defense for preserving e-mails. As a result, several years’ worth of electronic communication ‘may have been lost,’ [!] potentially including e-mails documenting administration actions in the run-up to the Iraq war.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/01/21/AR2008012102070.html

Republicans: FISA authority in Constitution 22 Jan 2008
Authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance comes from the Constitution and is vital to stopping foreign terrorist attacks and spies, says a Republican staff assessment of the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID
=/20080121/NATION/884596216/1001

ID card scheme put off until after election —Leaked documents show starting date of 2012 —Pilot plan for foreign nationals to start this year 23 Jan 2008
A compulsory identity card system for British citizens looks as if it will be deferred beyond the next election, according to documents leaked to the Conservatives. As recently as December the Home Office said the ID card system for UK citizens would be phased-in on a voluntary basis from 2009, but a national identity strategy paper, marked restricted, clearly shows the UK-citizens phase of the scheme will now not start until 2012.
www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2245235,00.html

‘For a polar bear population already stressed due to massive climate change, these activities could be the last straw.’ US censors Arctic scientists’ findings as it prepares for oil and gas auction 22 Jan 2008
The United States has blocked the release of a landmark assessment of oil and gas activity in the Arctic as it prepares to sell off exploration licences for the frozen Chukchi Sea off Alaska, one of the last intact habitats of the polar bear. Scientists at the release of the censored report in Norway said there was “huge frustration” that the US had derailed a science-based effort to manage the race for the vast energy reserves of the Arctic.
news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3359083.ece

Oil prices point to hefty profits 21 Jan 2008
Oil at $100 a barrel came and went in a flash. But crude prices that hovered at or above $90 through most of the last three months of 2007 are expected to mean pumped-up quarterly profits as the largest oil companies report their earnings in coming weeks. The dramatic increase in oil prices — an average of about $91 a barrel throughout the fourth quarter, 51 percent higher than the year-ago period — is expected to produce results that surpass the last three months of 2006. [No worries. On the day that Exxon’s next round of record profits is announced, I’m sure another attractive white woman will go missing or Britney Spears will show up at a custody hearing. —LRP]
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5472991.html

Supreme Court rejects appeal by Enron investors 22 Jan 2008
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Enron Corp investors seeking to proceed with a $40 billion class-action lawsuit against investment banks that put together financing deals for the energy trader, which collapsed in 2001.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080122/bs_nm/enron_court_dc_5

Stock Tumble Drives 43 Benchmarks Into Bear Market 22 Jan 2008
More than half of the world’s biggest stock indexes fell into a bear market as mounting concern about a U.S. recession dragged down banking and retail shares across Asia, Europe and Latin America.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid
=newsarchive&sid=aTEHP2k_0aYo

Profit Off 95% at Bank of America 22 Jan 2008
Bank of America said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 95 percent because of huge write-downs of mortgage-related securities and higher provisions for future losses in credit card and home equity loans. Net income was $268 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with $5.26 billion, or $1.16 a share, in the period a year earlier.
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/business/23cnd-bank.html

Fed Cuts Rate 0.75 Percentage Point in Emergency Move 22 Jan 2008
The Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate in an emergency move for the first time since 2001 after stock markets tumbled from Hong Kong to London and the U.S. economy showed increasing signs that it’s headed into a recession. Today’s so-called inter-meeting rate cut is the first since Sept. 17, 2001, when the Fed lowered borrowing costs in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks six days before.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid
=20601087&sid=a.MZINBFglTY

Republican Fred Thompson quits presidential race 22 Jan 2008
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson quit the Republican presidential race on Tuesday, after a string of poor finishes in early primary and caucus states. Thompson’s fate was sealed last Saturday in the South Carolina primary, when he finished third in a state that he had said he needed to win.
www.azcentral.com/news/articles/
0122thompson-quits0122-ON.html

Dems on CNN: Most Watched Primary Debate in Cable News History 22 Jan 2008
Last night’s Democratic Debate in South Carolina on CNN (8pm-10:05pm ET) was the No. 1 most-watched primary debate in cable news history among total viewers and all key demos. The debate averaged 4.9 million Total Viewers and nearly 2 million in A25-54. This is according to Nielsen Fast Nationals (Live + SD).
www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/politics/dems_on_cnn_most_
watched_primary_debate_in_cable_news_history_75518.asp

Oops! Internet Provider Mistakenly Deletes 14,000 E-Mail Accounts 23 Jan 2008
Charter Communications said it had erased thousands of e-mail accounts by mistake. A Charter spokesman said an accident during routine maintenance deleted 14,000 accounts.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22793918/

Review finds no proof that cough meds work 22 Jan 2008
Cough medications have been under scrutiny of late, with concerns that for children, they are ineffective and may actually cause harm. Now, a new review of the products finds that they may not help adults much either.
www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/
20080122/cough_meds_080122/20080122

Whole Foods Chain to Stop Use of Plastic Bags 23 Jan 2008
The Whole Foods Market chain said Tuesday that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags, giving customers instead a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags. The chainwide ban on plastic bags will take effect by April 22, which is Earth Day.
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/business/23bags.html

Lake-effect snowstorm buries Oswego County in 3 feet of snow 22 Jan 2008
A state of emergency was declared in this central New York city on Monday after lake-effect storms dumped up to 3 feet of snow on the region and collapsed the roof of the public works garage. The National Weather service reported 37 inches of snow in Fulton, 36 in the town of Mexico and 34 in the lakeside city of Oswego. 
www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter
/2008-01-21-ny-snow_N.htm