contributions

Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don’t We?
by Arianna Huffington
Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.
But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It’s July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson’s now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush (…)

State Dept. Now Says Bolton Interviewed
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON — John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, neglected to tell Congress he been interviewed in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa, the State Department said.
Democratic senators said the admission should forestall Bush from using his authority to give Bolton a temporary appointment to the U.N. post, without Senate confirmation, (…)

By JENNIFER LOVEN
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House seemed to inch closer on Friday to going around Congress to install embattled nominee John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
President Bush has the power to fill vacancies without Senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the Constitution, a recess appointment during the lawmakers’ August break would last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.
White House press secretary Scott (…)

Judge’s Reagan-Era Work Criticized
Papers Show Roberts’s Conservatism, Liberal Activists Say
By Michael A. Fletcher
After sitting mostly silent for more than a week after the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., liberal activist groups and their allies in the Senate yesterday expressed growing concern about the conservative positions Roberts advocated while working as a young Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration.
Memos and other documents from (…)

Security Costs Slow Iraq Reconstruction
Contract Excesses Also Hamper Progress
By Renae Merle and Griff Witte
Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks in Iraq are being shortchanged by higher-than-expected costs to provide security and by generous financial awards to contractors, according to a series of reports by government investigators released yesterday.
Taken together, the reports seem to run contrary to the Bush administration’s upbeat assessment that (…)

By William Fisher
Human Rights Watch is calling on Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to pardon three jailed advocates of peaceful reform and urging President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria to “show the world that he is serious about pursuing justice,” and “ensure that police torturers are held accountable for their crimes.”
In Saudi Arabia, an appellate court in Riyadh upheld harsh prison terms of between six and nine years for the three after they attempted to circulate a petition calling (…)

Energy Adviser Who Solicited Enron to Help Write Nat’l Energy Policy to Be Named Chair of FERC
By Jason Leopold
The audacity inside the Bush administration never ceases to amaze.
The latest example of chutzpah from Bush and co. is the announcement that Joseph Kelliher, a former policy adviser with the Department of Energy who currently serves as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that controls the country’s natural gas industry, hydroelectric (…)

The Transformation of the American Right by Murray N. Rothbard
First published in Continuum, Summer 1964, pp. 220-231.
In the spate of recent books and articles on the burgeoning conservative movement, little has been said of its governing ideas and its intellectual leadership. Instead, attention has been centered on the mass phenomena of the Right-wing: The Billy James Hargises, the Birchers, the various crusaders for God and country. And yet, the neglect of the ruling ideas of the (…)

The United States wants the FBI to interrogate the Israeli diplomat who headed the political department at its Washington embassy at the time classified information was allegedly transmitted from a Pentagon employee to Israel through two men who were senior staffers at AIPAC, the American lobby for Israel. According to the Hebrew daily Haaretz and Channel 10 television, FBI agents are traveling to Israel where they intend to question Naor Gilon and perhaps others as well.
The Israeli (…)

Marsha Walker’s son survived a suicide bomb in Iraq.
Her daughter spent a year in Kuwait last year, and her father is a former Marine reservist. She’s part of a military family; she and her sister went into criminal justice because their father dissuaded them from a military career. Marsha is a Blue Star mother, meaning a mother whose son is serving overseas.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when an email exchange with her local Blue Star chapter concluded with an expletive: "fuckoff." (…)