Under Obama, military commissions may return

“By any measure, our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure,” Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama said as a candidate for president.

However, in what would appear to be a major reversal from campaign promises, the Obama administration is on the verge of reestablishing controversial military commissions the Bush administration used to try terror war prisoners, a Saturday report revealed.

The Raw Story

Government Could Destroy Records in Hundreds of Guantanamo Cases

A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some written by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.

ProPublica

Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Medicine

Target Women is a recurring segment on Current TV’s weekly television show, infoMania. In each episode of Target Women, Sarah Haskins takes a look at the often-ridiculous way the media reaches out to women.

Current

Justice Dept. drops case against war resister Watada

The Department of Justice has dropped its case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a war resister who refused Iraq deployment in June 2006 and denounced President George W. Bush’s decision to invade as illegal and immoral. …In Feb. 2007, military judge Lieutenant Colonel John Head halted Watada’s case following possible inconsistencies concerning a “stipulation of fact” agreed before the hearing. The decision led to a mistrial, ending Watada’s court martial. The Army appealed, but a judge said Watada could not be tried again on the same charges, as it would violate his right to be free of double jeopardy.

The Raw Story

How Safe Are Cosmetics and Body Care Products?

Cosmetics—makeup, creams, fragrances—have been around for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian and Roman women famously caked on lead-based foundation. (Lead, a metal, can cause nerve, muscle and organ damage.) But surely lead-laden cosmetics have been phased out along with lead-lined water pipes, right? Not necessarily.

Scientific American

Wind Turbine Output Boosted 30% by Breakthrough Design

Technological advancements in wind energy efficiency have generally come incrementally and usually made via a process of increasingly large wind turbine blades. Put simply, the model has been: longer blades = more output per turbine.

Clean Technica

The Quiet Coup

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

The Atlantic

Administration Seeks an Out On Bailout Rules for Firms

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

Washington Post

Bailout Watchdog: Treasury’s stonewalling

Elizabeth Warren, the law professor appointed as Congress’s oversight czar on bank bailouts, blasted the Treasury Department — saying new legislation might be needed to give the House and Senate more access to details of the $700 billion rescue program.

Warren, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday morning, said keeping Congress in the loop isn’t a “priority” of Secretary Tim Geithner — and suggested a possible “next step” would be to pass legislation that would “require [Treasury] to consult” with her.

Glenn Thrush

Where Wall Street Trades in Political Currency

With sweeping reforms coming, the Wall Street-Washington connection may be more important than ever, and political connections may be the new currency for deal makers.

Below is a matrix of Wall Street chiefs and private-equity bosses, as well as their personal contributions to politicians in 2007 and 2008, as recorded by the Center for Responsive Politics. The list, which gives politicians’ titles at the time, also illustrates the political action committee money given by each chief’s firm and its employees.

NY Times

The Definition of Insanity

A few months ago, I did some posts and TV appearances discussing some of the problems that would inevitably occur with the appointment of Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson as the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. As Mother Jones subsequently reported, we’ve already seen some of those problems happen.

Open Left

Mr. Taleb Goes to Washington

Nassim Taleb is an unlikely choice to play the Jimmy Stewart role in a 21st-century remake of the Depression-era classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But the tale of a naive do-gooder who tries to remind a corrupt political class of its obligations was re-enacted this week when Taleb attended the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Finance conference in Washington, D.C.

The Big Money

Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG?

Eliot Spitzer is back and he’s talking. The thought of this, no doubt, brings a small shiver to the boardrooms of some of the perps walking around trying to figure out how to hide the money this week. Today Edward Liddy testified that there have been death threats made to or about executives who received bonuses, so no names will be put on the record, but these anonymous players must know that the jig is up in the land of easy-money. Isn’t what to do a no-brainer for these great Americans?

AlterNet

Specter Announces His Intention To Vote Against Employee Free Choice Act

Today on the Senate floor, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) announced his intention to vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter was the only Republican to vote for cloture when the measure was last considered in 2007. During his announcement, Specter noted his previous support for EFCA, but suggested that the current condition of the economy makes “this a particularly bad time to enact employee’s choice legislation”

Think Progress

Recruited to Serve and Sniff — Again

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t just forcing thousands of soldiers and Marines to deploy for two and three tours. The sacrifice is being shared by a key, and growing, part of the U.S. military: highly trained German shepherds and Belgian Malinois. In a war with no front lines, they have become valuable at sniffing out makeshift bombs, which cause most U.S. casualties.

Washington Post

Around the Country, Calls for Lawmakers to Address “Real Problems, Not Imaginary Ones”

As several states enter critical phases in their legislative sessions, the debate for one of the most controversial election reforms continues to dominate headlines and legislative hearings. This year, more than 26 states introduced legislation to go above and beyond federal election law relating to voter ID, despite near consensus among voting rights advocates that it hurts the process far more than it helps. Last week, the hysteria around voter ID reached an all time high in six states, evoking public concern from advocates and citizens alike.

Open Left

The Woman Who Could Nail Bush: Are the Worst of the Torture Memos Still to Come?

On March 19, the nomination of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the OLC was endorsed by the Judiciary Committee with every Republican voting against her and Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) abstaining. The nomination was to have been brought to the Senate floor for a vote on Monday and then again on Wednesday, but it has been held back. Republican leaders, it appears, are playing with the notion of making Johnsen the target of their first filibuster.

AlterNet

Insurers shun those taking certain meds

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You’ll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.

Miami Herald

Mexico troops move in to retake warring border city

Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across Mexico’s bloodiest drug war city on Tuesday, trying to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the U.S. border.

Sirens blared as the army staged one of its biggest troop build-ups in years in Ciudad Juarez, a desert city across the border from El Paso, Texas, where near-daily clashes between drug gangs and police have terrified residents.

Reuters

Homeless in Gaza

With nearly 3,000 families homeless, rented accommodation is scarce in Gaza – Mr Atamna’s pregnant wife and seven children are now staying with relatives, while he sleeps in a corrugated metal shack next to his ruined house.

The Israeli military says it destroyed buildings because of “substantial operational needs”, for example because of booby traps or militants in them, but Amnesty International says “wanton destruction” occurred, in violation of international law.

BBC News

Secretary-General’s remarks on International Women’s Day

One year ago, I launched a campaign calling on people and governments the world over to unite to end violence against women and girls.

We called it “Unite to End Violence against Women”. And unite we must.

United Nations

Women and Conflict

Women experience the brunt of the world’s poverty, with serious implications for their health and livelihoods. They also suffer disproportionately during crises – whether earthquakes, floods, wars or famines.

Reuters AlertNet

The shame of Iraq’s pariah widows

Her husband and three brothers were killed. Her parents were already dead. Her house was burnt down. She was pregnant at the time and lost the baby.

But, in the months that followed, Nadia Hussein had to endure much more.

BBC News

New Foundation to aid women with restraining orders

I just learned about the Tiana Angelique Notice Foundation, created to aid women with restraining orders and prevent domestic violence. The foundation is named for Tiana Angelique (and created by her family), a 25 year old graduate student in CT, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on Feb. 14. It was the last time he violated her restraining order against him.

Feministing

Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller?

Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job. Economists cite a few reasons: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours.

New York Times

Ex-UN prosecutor: Bush may be next up for International Criminal Court

An ex-UN prosecutor has said that following the issuance of an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, former US President George W. Bush could — and should — be next on the International Criminal Court’s list.

The Raw Story

Schloz-Backed Voter Fraud Lawsuit Bites The Dust

Another nail in the coffin for those bogus GOP claims of voter fraud…

Remember how Todd Graves was fired as US Attorney for the western district of Missouri, after he wouldn’t go along with a Bradley Schlozman-backed effort to sue Democratic state officials for failing to purge ineligible voters from the rolls, alleging that this failure could open the door to rampant voter fraud? The Bushies then moved Schlozman himself into Graves’ position as US Attorney so that he could push the case personally.

TPM Muckraker

Campaign Against Obama Health Plan Run By Notorious Conservative PR Firm

A new group called Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR) is about to launch the opening salvo in the fight to sink President Obama’s health care plan.

CPR is running TV, radio, and web ads that attempt to stoke irrational fears of “a central national board” in charge of medical decision-making, asking Americans to envision a world where “bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.” Of course, that vision has nothing to do with the president’s health care plan, but the truth shouldn’t be an impediment to CPR’s dream of killing health care reform.

Talking Points Memo

Who Are The AIG Counterparties? Here Are Some…

Over at TPM, Josh has been doggedly highlighting the refusal of both AIG and the federal government to reveal the identity of AIG’s counter-parties in its disastrous credit default swaps. And several lawmakers have in recent days pressed Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke on the issue.

TPM Muckraker

Mike is right about the Iraq War. It is all about oil, and lots of it. Early estimates indicated that there were at least 118 billion barrels of oil in known reserves under the Iraqi soil. That is about half of what is in Saudi Arabia and about four times the reserves of the U.S. (which varies depending upon how we count the reserves in the Gulf of Mexico). More oil is being discovered in Iraq than previously known. Before the Iraq War started, there were around 1,600 oil wells in Iraq producing about 1.1 million barrels a day. Texas produced about the same about of oil (1.1 million barrels a day) but had over 157,000 oil wells pumping it out of the ground. The numbers have changed slightly, but the picture is the same.

War for Oil

If you recall all those burning oil wells after the first Gulf War in Kuwait, you will understand that many of those burning wells were gushing oil and gas. That’s why they continued to burn. This illustrates how many of the wells in that region are under pressure and how petroleum flows to the surface with no need of pumps. Iraqi oil fields are some of the least expensive places on the planet to extract oil. Oil there is shallower and easier to drill for than many of our current U.S. wells. It is often pressurized, with lots of oil per well, as you can see by doing the math comparing the Texas and Iraq wells. By the way, those Gulf of Mexico oil wells can be as deep as five miles down and super expensive. Wells in Iraq can be as low as a few thousand feet with easy drilling.

Before Bush Jr. invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein had contracts worth billions of dollars with Russian (Zarubezhneft Oil and Lukoil Corporation), Chinese (China National Petroleum Corporation) and French firms (Total Fina Elf Oil and GAZ DE FRANCE) to extract and process Iraqi oil. This is why the French were so upset at us. It wasn’t so much at Bush’s six-guns-ablazing approach to the war as it was their loss of these valuable oil contracts for their corporate team. With Saddam & Sons, the Russians, Chinese and French out of the way, the British (British Petroleum) and the U.S. (ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobile, Halliburton, etc.) could move in on the action. Cheney and the neocons even planned that the proceeds from the oil were supposed to pay for the war. It seems that not only couldn’t they use an adding machine, but they were also ignorant of the cultural geography of Iraq and weren’t good at executing the war in the region either. So the Bush administration dug into Iraq for the long haul.

No U.S. president can completely pull out of Iraq now. We’ve done the dirty work of getting rid of Saddam Hussein & Sons and creating a state that can be controlled from the outside and which needs security. Those pesky Islamic extremists were an unexpected problem, but Iraq is now so divided that they will need our presence for some time. Our military has no plans to leave Iraq even if everyone wants them out. Saddam’s crew were beastly cruel in dealing with their opposition and keeping order. They weren’t sharing their oil money with the Iraqi people either. Under democratic principles, Saddam should have been deposed by their own people long ago. President Clinton wanted to go in and take him out. This was not just a Bush plan, but Bush had 9/11 under his belt to persuade the American people to go to war, propaganda as it was. Bill Clinton didn’t have a good reason to rally the U.S. to do the same but he wanted to and tried to taunt Saddam and his military to escalate a war.

Royal Berglee teaches Cultural Geography at Morehead State University in Kentucky.  This is Royal’s response to Mike’s post Walls Tumble and Crumble.