Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told a Congressional committee on Wednesday that the military has the authority to target US citizens in other countries if it believes that they 'have been radicalized' and are 'involved with a group that is trying to harm the US.'
The term he used for the permission to kill was 'direct action.' Others call it 'assassination.'
At the Groundhog Day Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the current Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen gave a full-throated endorsement to the President's appeal to Congress to reverse that policy. He knocked it out of the park.
He did think it might take a year to 'study the implementation' and work out details, but this is huge. Secretary Gates' testimony supported it, but IMO, without the same verve.
Thank you, President Obama, for including this issue in the State of the Union.
The Hatian government is asking for a minimum of 200,000 more tents for temporary housing, which might mean from now until half-of-forever. I found an NGO based in the UK called Shelterbox, which has branches in a number of countries, including the US. They have been pretty successful in getting tents delivered, given the circuitous routes containers travel to get to the island. The small NGOs seem to have the edge on actually getting supplies to the people in need.
There's an excess of suffering in this country and around the globe right now, and maybe in your lives, or the lives of your friends and relatives. It's hard, and harder still to feel powerless in the face of most of it. I know we are all mindful of helping those in our communities in the small ways we can, and many here remind us how important loving and sharing can be to offset some of the misery.
Simon Johnson, British-American economist, former Chief economist of the International Monetary Fund blogs at Huffpo this morning, announcing a Wall Street Journal report that today the President will announce a plan to be presented to Congress to restrict Mega-bank size, restrict complexity, and restrict risk-taking. Johnson dubs his column "Paul Volker Prevails."
Volker, legendary Fed Chief under Carter, was re-appointed by Reagan, and according to Joseph Stiglitz was fired by Reagan for not being enough of a fan of de-regulation. Volker has gotten more of the reform bug recently, and has called for the re-instatement of Glass-Steagal as a bare minimum starting point to re-regulate Wall Street. He was appointed to Obama's Economic Recovery Board, but has been marginalized so acutely by the White House that he stopped coming into his White House office; he said his portfolio of tasks was so small he could work from home. (And presumably save car fare.)
How many of us called for a modern-day Pecora Commission (whose report led to the passage of Glass-Steagal ) to suss out the true causes of the financial meltdown, and make recommendations toward re-regulation. Given Congressional and White House love for Big Banking and endless guarantees into the future (some mention numbers as high as $13 trillion, high hopes for the present commission would have seemed out of place, but hell, miracles happen, don't they? And maybe some hopes that since We Reg'lar Amurricans are getting a mite peeved about financial conditions might influence the committee just a little bit weren't ridiculous, were they?
Yes. They were absurd hopes. Ridiculous hopes. Sham hopes. The FCIC hearings weren't even good theater; they were boring. No heat, no tension, no surprises; no nothing.
There have been so many blogs and comments about health care, food, healthy eating, pharmaceuticals, and so forth lately, I thought I'd add my two cents about common kitchen ingredients (and below that section some supplements) that can have beneficial effects for us generally, and heal certain maladies.
If a product is foreign to you, even a spice, google it to see if you might have a condition or be taking a drug that might mean it's not right for you. These suggestions are only a starting point; I'm not a doctor, and I also know that doctors don't know everything. ;-)
Over half the health care dollars in this country go to alternative medicine and choices; there must be a reason for that.
Life is fraught with anxiety for a lot of us right now; mild depression seems widespread. We might be worried for ourselves, or for the hardships and suffering of our friends. Our nation seems to be in meltdown in many ways, and we're pissed at our relative powerlessness. We may be having trouble sleeping, or remembering our dreams...
Some Masters tell us that our suffering is an illusion, or that our faith in God isn't strong enough. I don't know that any of that matters for right now for us. We may need some respite, though. Relaxation can help, and that's the first step of meditation. Ten or fifteen minutes a day can help slow down our heart rates, relax our bellies for better digestion, and get our muscle tension eased, both internally and externally.
The Congressional Research Service report on military contractors came out last week, as well as Senator Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight Subcommittee's hearings report on Afghanistan contractors. Her committee reports that contractors make up an astounding 69% of the total Pentagon workforce.
I just saw this at Jeremy Scahill's website.
This is about the 14 Iraqi civilians Blackwater guards accused of gunning down in Nisour Square in Bagdad in September 2007.
The Judge's reasoning:
In a memo defending his opinion, Urbina cited a similar rationale used in the dismissal of charges against Iran-Contra figure Oliver North--namely that the government violated the rights of the Blackwater men by using statements they made to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to build a case against the guards, which Urbina said qualified for "derivative use immunity." Urbina wrote that he agreed that "the government violated [the Blackwater guards'] constitutional rights by utilizing statements they made to Department of State investigators, which were compelled under a threat of job loss." He added that the "government is prohibited from using such compelled statements or any evidence obtained as a result of those statements" to bring indictments.
Read more here. I can't comment right now, except to say that Mercenaries are above the law.
Good grief; this doesn't need recommends. I just posted the news to let you know the decision, and maybe promote discussion.
Sadly, the prizes will need to be changed out.
I got an ominous email late last night from Karl Rove warning me off the Mitch McConnell prize date. He did not specify as to his interest in the matter, but it did ring as rather personal; we are only left with speculation. As I was completely cowed by his implied threats, I emailed him back that I am pulling that prize. (So sorry to those of you who had hoped to win him.)
Early this morning I got a group email from the Obama for Change folks, reiterating the President's complete support for, and confidence in, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano. As we all know, this is code for "Right before I fire her ass, and she resigns due to a burning need to spend more time with her family." The email tried to spin her early remarks just after the Undie Bomber was arrested off the plane, saying, "The system worked just as it was designed to work," or something. She obviously had been watching and studying tapes of FEMA Director Brownie for a role model.
At any rate, I am forced to act "preemptively" here and pull the date with Janet; again, sorry about that.
Lots of modern decades have been named, as in: The Roaring '20s, The Fabulous '50s, The '60s, The '80s ME decade, The Dotcom '90s...
Time Magazine is calling the almost-past one: The Decade from Hell.
This week Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner talked with Bill Moyers about health care reform and the President. Both were dismayed by the hands-off approach of Obama, and discussed at length the ways that he has disappointed too many of his supporters in terms of his chosen economic team, kow-towing to Big Banks, making the early deals with Big Pharma and the insurance lobby before handing the writing of HCR bills to Congress.
They expounded on the great number of Corporate Democrats who chair influencial House and Senate committees, and the ways that big-donor lobbyists are able to offer amendments to their liking, and have them included and passed, just like the Republicans we have railed against for years.
Newsweek reports that this week John McCain and firebrand Maria Cantwell will join forces to offer a bill in the Senate to restore Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that forced a firewall between Commercial and Investment Banking. It was repealed in a bill sponsored by Phil Gramm and signed by Bill Clinton, and allowed commercial banks to deal in over-the-counter derivatives that were not regulated by federal agencies, and allowed incredibly large leverage ratios by commercial banks. That law's repeal plus the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which effectively banned even state regulatory agencies from monitoring derivatives are the two laws many feel led to the insolvency of the Big Banks, and the meltdown of the stock market leading to the Mega-bailout of the Financial Industry.
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