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Christianists on the March

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After two years reporting on the movement for his new book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School and worked for many years as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, warns that the Christian Right is the most dangerous mass movement in American history:

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age – he was then close to 80 – we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.”

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

[Truthdig]

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Related [from Harper's Magazine]:

Gore in ’08?

In a recent speech, former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile “strongly implied” that her former boss could be “waiting to make a dramatic entrance into the 2008 presidential race, especially if he wins an Oscar next month. Said Brazile: “‘I believe he is ready for this moment. He is a good leader. I think he can be one of the few leaders who can bring this country together.”

She acknowledged it will be a tough decision for Gore, noting Kerry’s announcement last week to bow out of the race. Gore believes he is now doing his life’s work, Brazile said. However, she conceded that Gore might be able to do more about global climate change from inside the Oval Office.

[RawStory/PoliticalWire]

Iraq at Risk of Further Strife, Intelligence Report Warns

A new National Intelligence Estimate depicts an Iraq involved in a multi-faceted struggle among religious groups and sects and says that without a sharp reversal in the violence and changes among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurd leadership, the situation could further deteriorate.

The estimate, which represents the views of all elements of the intelligence community, presents a much grimmer picture of the situation in Iraq than the Bush administration has acknowledged in the past.

[WashingtonPost]
Click to read the full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (pdf)

WashPo columnists sound off on the Libby case

Cheney’s Fingerprint?

The revelation yesterday that Scooter Libby acknowledged in November 2003 that he and Vice President Cheney may have talked in July about whether to tell reporters that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA further bolsters the theory that Cheney may be the prime force behind this whole sordid tale.  According to multiple reports, Cheney was talking about how to discredit Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, who was making trouble with his suggestion that the administration manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.

A Failed Coverup

Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA’s reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA.

Biden comes out swinging (and gets himself in trouble)

To hear him tell it, Hillary Clinton’s position is calibrated, confusing and “a very bad idea.” John Edwards doesn’t know what he’s talking about and is pushing a recipe for Armageddon in the Middle East. Barack Obama is offering charming but insubstantial fluff. And all of them are playing politics…

The result of Mrs. Clinton’s position on Iraq, Mr. Biden says, would be “nothing but disaster.”

Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
“I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about,” Mr. Biden said, when asked about Mr. Edwards’ advocacy of the immediate withdrawal of about 40,000 American troops from Iraq.

[NewYorkObserver]

Watch Biden attempt to explain himself on last night’s Daily Show.

This is not Biden’s first ‘gaffe’ – You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent.” (youtube) and don’t forget his apology…

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.

[NYTimes]

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI’s Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what’s legally permissible.

[CNET News]

You are now under x-ray surveillance (well, in the UK)

OFFICIALS are bracing themselves for a storm of public outrage over their controversial X-ray cameras scheme.

As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects.

The proposal is contained in leaked documents drawn up by the Home Office and presented to PM Tony Blair’s working group on Security, Crime and Justice.

[The Sun (UK)]

US furious over Moscow’s sale of antiaircraft missile system to Tehran

Iranian officials said Wednesday that they had received a delivery of advanced Russian air defense systems that are designed to protect its nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Bushehr, Tehran, and eastern Iran from attack, primarily from Israeli or American aircraft. The Associated Press reports that the arrival of the sophisticated systems came just before Iran began three days of military war gaming.

The response from the United States was almost immediate in the wake of the transaction. MosNews reports that Wednesday afternoon US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the delivery of the Tor-M1 missile system may cause the US to impose new sanctions against Russia, especially since the US had already harshly criticized the contract and “had urged the Kremlin to terminate it.”

[CSMonitor]

U.S. warns Iran to back down, Deploys second carrier group

Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was “not possible” until Iran halts uranium enrichment.

“The Middle East isn’t a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn’t a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That’s why we’ve seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region,” Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.

“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us,” Burns continued.

via::AP/Yahoo!

US comptroller says taxes would have to double to pay for Bush budget in 2040

“The picture I will lay out for you today is not a pretty one and it’s getting worse with the passage of time,” said David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, in a Thursday morning hearing of the Senate’s Budget Committee. “Continuing on our current fiscal path would gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately even our domestic tranquility and our national security,” he warned.

The head of the GAO also warned that if no action is taken now to control government spending, severe tax hikes could be necessary. He stated that, “balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as cutting total federal spending by 60 percent or raising federal taxes to 2 times today’s level.”

Article via RawStory

Iraq Punditry: Getting Rich by being Wrong vs. Right but Poor

“Surely those who warned us not to invade Iraq have been recognized and rewarded, and those who pushed for this disaster face tattered credibility and waning career prospects. Could it be any other way in America?

So we selected the four pundits who were in our judgment the most influentially and disturbingly misguided in their pro-war arguments and the four who were most prescient and forceful in their opposition.  Then we did a career check … and found that something is rotten in the fourth estate.”

A long overdue look at the pre-war statements of:

Tom Friedman
Peter Beinart
Fareed Zakaria
Jeffrey Goldberg
Robert Scheer
William S. Lind
Jonathan Schell
Scott Ritter

Article via RadarOnline.com