notes from the front (reprinted without permission)

Media Challenges Ohio Exit Poll Rules By Julie Carr Smyth - The Associated Press - Tuesday 24 October 2006
Columbus, Ohio - Ohio's new guidelines on conducting exit polls on Election Day, written after a judge threw out the old rules, are vague and confusing and should be rejected, a coalition of national news organizations argues in a lawsuit.
In the suit, television networks ABC, CNN, CBS, Fox News and NBC and The Associated Press ask US District Judge Michael H. Watson to spell out the rules for county election boards in his own words and force Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to post them so the plaintiffs can interview voters leaving polling places on Nov. 7.
The judge last month had ordered the state to produce a new directive when he struck down Blackwell's 2004 order against exit polling within 100 feet of a voting place. Watson granted a temporary order suspending the 2004 order, allowing exit polling that year.
The lawsuit filed Monday says Blackwell's latest guidelines, issued Oct.13, begin by stating that loitering and delaying voters are prohibited and only later say that the judge specifically allowed exit polling.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102406T.shtml

Molly Ivins: It's Good to Be the Richest of the Rich
Posted on Oct 23, 2006
AUSTIN, Texas-Oh, goody. According to the White House press office, President Bush will spend much of the next two weeks discussing what a swell economy we have. Did you know that the Dow Jones industrial average is at its highest point EVER? And the NASDAQ, ditto. Wow, breathtaking, huh? But the Dow is not a good indicator of how thing are really going for the majority of Americans.
I just love listening to the Bushies play with numbers. When Bush took over in 2001, he predicted a surplus of $516 billion for fiscal year 2006. Last week, the administration announced a 2006 deficit of $248 billion, missing its projection for this year by $764 billion. Bush said the numbers are "proof that pro-growth economic policies work" and are "an example of sound fiscal policies here in Washington."
This is highly reminiscent of Dick Cheney's recent observation about the Iraqi government, "If you look at the general, overall situation, they're doing remarkably well."
http://www.truthdig.com/

Robert Scheer: Enron's Enablers Go Unpunished
No, I'm not thrilled over Jeffrey Skilling getting 24 years in prison for his role in the Enron scandal. While he and fellow Enron honcho Kenneth Lay were clearly guilty as charged, the handling of this case by the Bush Justice Department is a functional cover up of the Bush family's role in enabling these crimes.
The thousands of Enron employees who lost their jobs, as well as $2 billion in pension money and $60 billion in share value, deserve better. By focusing on narrowly drawn criminal charges and the public's wrath against Skilling and his late partner in crime-"Kenny Boy" Lay, as President Bush referred to his onetime chief campaign benefactor-the culpability of the president's family in this sordid saga is being whitewashed.
http://www.truthdig.com/

Newsweek Poll Shows Majority Supports Impeachment
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/17
By David Swanson
This Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15357623/site/newsweek/page/2/ article gives one hell of a spin to its effort not to report what it is reporting, namely that a Newsweek poll finds a majority of Americans wanting impeachment, and half of Democrats wanting it to be a top priority. Read this a few times until you figure out what it's saying:
"Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a "top priority," but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.)"
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14897

and in case the Newsweek Article link doesn't work:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15357623/site/newsweek/page/2/

George W. Bush v. The U.S. Constitution
By Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)
http://www.bookswelike.net/isbn/0897335503?bene=inthesetimes
George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying By John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, Joseph C. Wilson Academy Chicago Publishers . $16.95
In July 2005, 122 members of Congress, along with more than 500,000 Americans, sent a letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to verify whether the assertions set forth in the so-called "Downing Street Minutes" were accurate. The president never responded.
That lack of response prompted Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, to commission his staff to write a report examining the administration's manipulation and deception during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. When the New York Times reported in December 2005 that President Bush had approved widespread warrantless domestic surveillance of innocent Americans, (later corroborated in May 2006 by USA Today), Conyers asked his staff to document those abuses as well. The final report, "The Constitution In Crisis," released in August with little attention from the mainstream media, is a compelling indictment of the Bush administration.
Academy Chicago Publishers recently published the report as a book, titled George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution. Below, In These Times has excerpted the book's foreword by Rep. Conyers, who explains the dangers to the Constitution posed by the Bush administration's assertion of a "unitary executive."
Scandals such as Watergate and Iran-Contra are widely considered to be constitutional crises, in the sense that the executive branch was acting in violation of the law and in tension with the majority party in the Congress. But the system of checks and balances put in place by the Founding Fathers worked, the abuses were investigated, and actions were taken-even if presidential pardons ultimately prevented a full measure of justice.
The situation we find ourselves in today under the administration of George W. Bush is systemically different. The alleged acts of wrongdoing my staff has documented-which include making misleading statements about the decision to go to war; manipulating intelligence; facilitating and countenancing torture; using classified information to out a CIA agent; and violating federal surveillance and privacy laws-are quite serious. However, the current majority party has shown little inclination to engage in basic oversight, let alone question the administration directly. The media, though showing some signs of aggressiveness, is increasingly concentrated and all too often unwilling to risk the enmity or legal challenge from the party in charge. At the same time, unlike previous threats to civil liberties posed by the Civil War (suspension of habeas corpus and eviction of Jews from portions of the Southern States); World War I (anti-immigrant "Palmer Raids"); World War II (internment of Japanese-Americans); and the Vietnam War (COINTELPRO); the risks to our citizens' rights today are potentially more grave, as the war on terror has no specific end point.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2868/

Why War Fails -By Howard Zinn
10/23/06 " The Progressive"
-- - - I suggest there is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks are not only morally reprehensible but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.
In the three years of the Iraq War, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, the United States has failed utterly in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. American soldiers and civilians, fearful of going into the neighborhoods of Baghdad, are huddled inside the Green Zone, where the largest embassy in the world is being built, covering 104 acres and closed off from the world outside its walls.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15395.htm

Published on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 by http://www.reuters.com/ Reuters

Governments Say They Follow U.S. on Jail Treatment
by Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS - Some countries try to refute criticism over their treatment of prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terror suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said on Monday.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator on torture, told a news conference that "all too frequently" governments respond to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.
"The United States has been the pioneer of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world," Nowak said. "Today, other governments are kind of saying, 'But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.'"
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1024-03.htm

Rumsfeld and Saddam:
Partners in Crimes Against Humanity
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2006-10-24 23:29. Media http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/2
Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein: Partners in Crimes Against Humanity By David Swanson
The White House has arranged to announce two days before the November 7, 2006, elections a guilty verdict for Saddam Hussein and, no doubt, plans to finally murder him. Meanwhile an appeals process is delaying until at least five days after the elections release of photos of members of the U.S.military and its contractors raping and murdering children and adults at Abu Ghraib.
While use of the death penalty is one of many American practices that much of the world views as barbaric, there can be little doubt that Saddam Hussein is guilty of major crimes stretching far beyond those he's been tried for, and including many in which the United States has been complicit.
A famous image shows Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. There's nothing wrong with shaking hands with a dictator. It's potentially far more productive than slaughtering 650,000 of his nation's people. Bush should be shaking hands and talking with the leaders of Iran and North Korea rather than threatening to destroy their countries. The trouble is that Rumsfeld wasn't meeting with Hussein in order to promote democracy. Rumsfeld was there on December 20, 1983, as a special envoy for President Ronald Reagan to assist in Iraq's efforts to kill Iranians, including through the use of chemical weapons - an illegal practice that Rumsfeld has more recently used himself against civilians in Iraq, most notably in Fallujah
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14906

Total US Iraq casualties now 47,388
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2006-10-25 03:14. Activism
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/taxonomy/term/1
Military components of the US occupation of Iraq suffered 212 combat casualties in the week ending Oct. 24 (up from 206 last week), bringing the total since the invasion to 23,508. Casualties from hostile causes included 21,266 wounded and 2,242 killed in action.
US media choose to hide this total from the public by deviating from previous practice and ignoring troops wounded in action as well as all non-fatal casualties from "non hostile" causes. Instead, the public is made aware only of the much lower figure of 2,797 total deaths, which includes 555 (no change from last week) from what the Pentagon classifies as "non hostile " causes. The survivors of those victims do not receive the same benefits and support as KIAs.
Thanks to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count http://icasualties.org/oif/ we now have what appear to be official figures for casualties sustained from"non hostile" causes---the same causes it reports death from. Through September 30, 2006, the Defense Manpower Data Center reports 24,092 casualties from "non hostile" injuries and disease that required "medical air transportation."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14908

Patrick Cockburn: From 'mission accomplished' to mission impossible for the Iraqis
Published: 25 October 2006
"It sounds like a face-saving way of announcing a withdrawal," commented an Iraqi political leader yesterday on hearing that the US military commander in Iraq and the chief American envoy in Baghdad had said that Iraqi police and army should be able to take charge of security in a year or 18 months.
Yet the only real strength of the Iraqi government is the US army. In theory, it has 264,000 soldiers and police under its command. In practice they obey the orders of their communal leaders in so far as they obey anybody.
There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter. "This Mehdi Army militia group has to be brought under control," said the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday. But in the past few months most of the Shia districts in Baghdad - and Shia are the majority in the capital - have come under the control of the Mehdi Army, the militia of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is all so different from that moment of exuberant imperial hubris in May 2003 when President George Bush announced mission accomplished in Iraq.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1927098.ece

NY Times extract: 'No one wants to tell the bitter truth'
This is an edited extract from an editorial in yesterday's 'New York Times'
Published: 25 October 2006
No matter what President Bush says, the question is not whether America can win in Iraq. The only question is whether the United States can extricate itself without leaving behind an unending civil war that will spread more chaos and suffering throughout the Middle East, while spawning terrorism across the globe...
It is very clear that even with the best American efforts, Iraq will remain at war with itself for years to come, its government weak and deeply divided, and its economy battered and still dependent on outside aid. The most the United States can do now is to try to build up Iraq's security forces so they can contain the fighting... and give Iraq's leaders a start toward the political framework they would need if they chose to try to keep their country whole.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1927146.ece