The fate of Stanley Tookie Williams now rests in the hands of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't spare Williams's life. On the one hand, Schwarzenegger is under pressure from right-wing Republicans to refuse clemency. But there's also high-profile pressure on him in California to grant clemency and prove his campaign claims that he really is a moderate.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121205Z.shtml

Christian Science Monitor
by Daniel Schorr

12/10/05

Speaking to a group about politics in the spring of the year 2000 when the primaries had hardly gotten under way, I was challenged to predict who would be the next president. Not having the foggiest idea, I said, deadpan, that the Democratic convention would break up in chaos, unable to nominate anybody, the Republicans would nominate George W. Bush, who would run unopposed -- and lose. It was just a joke, mind you, but it is now happening that Americans, fed up with Republicans and not seeing much better among the Democrats, are more and more inclined to express their disillusionment with the political system by saying, 'a plague on both your houses'...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1209/p09s02-cods.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The American Prospect
by Robert Gordon & Josh Lynn

12/09/05

Progressive critics of the budget reconciliation bills now being melded together by a joint House-Senate conference committee usually attack the measures as tax breaks for the wealthy, paid for with budget cuts for the poor. That’s true, as far as it goes. Many of the cuts now being considered -- reductions in Medicaid, Food Stamps, and child support enforcement, together with increases in interest rates on student loans -- wouldn’t even finance one-seventh of the recent tax breaks for Americans making over $380,000. But progressives might get more traction by arguing a slightly different point: that conservatives are pushing to eliminate incentives for the work of poor Americans as a way to reduce taxes on the accumulated wealth of the most fortunate. In tax policy, many progressives already complain -- and rightly so -- that President Bush is shifting the tax burden away from capital and onto labor. But the argument equally applies to cuts in programs that provide work incentives by offering the working poor benefits like health care and child care...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10704


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Boston Globe
by Derrick Z. Jackson

12/10/05

' ... 'Twas two weeks before Christmas, and all through the House, $50 billion was cut for those considered a mouse. Tax breaks instead hung by the chimney with care, for investors and CEOs, hands already there. America's rich nestled all snug in their beds as $95 billion danced in their heads. It was expected, of course, that the House of Representatives would do the deed they promised to do before Thanksgiving. They cut $50 billion last month from programs serving low-income Americans. This week they passed the final part of what amounts to $95 billion in tax cuts. It represents a height of taking from the poor to give to the rich. Out went billions for student loans, Medicaid and food stamps. In came billions for stock dividends and capital gains. Regardless of political leanings, economists know where the money is going...

http://tinyurl.com/9f8fu


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Free fall

The American Prospect
by Terence Samuel

12/09/05

The holidays are coming, people are not broke and they are feeling pretty good about themselves, and that for the moment may have arrested George W. Bush’s downward spiral in the polls. It’ll be interesting to see how Democrats react to that piece of good news for the White House. In fact, the Democrats have one, simple job for the next 11 months: to not do anything stupid to get in the way of the GOP’s overall campaign of self-immolation. And to that end, the evidence suggests that, at least for a little while, they shouldn't say anything at all. For one thing, there is a credible argument to be made that no one is listening anyway. And there is an even larger fear that they will say the wrong thing. The recent attempts by President Bush to rescue his Iraq policy offer yet another example of why the biggest thing Democrats have in their favor is a White House that has lost its swagger. Their biggest problem may be a Democratic Party that can’t seem to find its own mojo...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10703


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

(2nd of 2 parts)

Boston Globe
by Jeff Jacoby
12/11/05

Last month, by a vote of 237-4, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a pastoral statement calling for an end to the death penalty. ... The bishops acknowledge in passing that Catholic teaching has never banned the death penalty outright or declared it 'intrinsically evil.' Nevertheless, they insist, since the modern state 'has other nonlethal means to protect its citizens, the state should not use the death penalty.' ... But the new document is shockingly blunt in brushing aside the suffering of the victims, or the viciousness of the murder, as irrelevant to the question of capital punishment. 'No matter how heinous the crime,' it says, 'if society can protect itself without ending a human life, it should do so.' Executing killers, in other words, has nothing to do with justice. No act of murder, however calculated or cruel or catastrophic, requires as a matter of sheer decency that the murderer forfeit his life...

http://tinyurl.com/bvqqf


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

CounterPunch
by Alexander Cockburn

12/11/05

The Bush era has brought a robust simplicity to the business of news management: where possible, buy journalists to turn out favorable stories and, as far as hostiles are concerned, if you think you can get away with it, shoot them or blow them up. As with much else in the Bush era, the novelty lies in the openness with which these strategies have been conducted.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12102005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AlterNet
by Global Exchange staff

12/12/05

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders. Several of the companies below are being sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to sue in US federal courts for violations of international rights or treaties. When corporations act like criminals, we have the right and the power to stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporations alike to the accords they have signed...

http://www.alternet.org/story/29337/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Rebirth of Reason
by Tibor R. Machan

12/12/05

Does President Bush believe that by his announcing that critics of the Iraqi war dampen morale among the troops he will have managed to prevent such criticism? Does he believe his words will silence critics and heighten troop morale? Ladies and gentlemen, this is America and if Americans share a common trait it is most likely rebellion at those who wield power over them too overtly. Well, they used to, anyway -- most of them. Because the country was born in revolution. Those who wage revolutions usually know what they are doing, why, how others ought to pay attention, and how pointless it is to try to still it...

http://tinyurl.com/7dbrj


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Joe Republican?

Slate
by John Dickerson

12/09/05

George Bush can't stop talking about Sen. Joe Lieberman. For the last two weeks, the president has been citing the Connecticut Democrat in his major speeches about the war in Iraq. Bush has quoted Lieberman as saying that we have made progress in Iraq and have a strategy for winning, then he declared: 'Sen. Lieberman is right.' Vice President Dick Cheney also quoted Lieberman approvingly this week. Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman and White House spokesman Scott McClellan name-checked Lieberman, too. Last January, George Bush gave Lieberman a kiss on the cheek before the State of the Union. The way things are going, this January Bush might give him a back rub. Why so much affection? Lieberman, a conservative Democrat, has credibility, and Bush is trying to regain his...

http://www.slate.com/id/2131900/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp