Paul Craig Roberts writes that President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights. Now, Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands, when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106N.shtml

The Washington scandal over lobbyist Jack Abramoff may claim a casualty outside the nation's capital: Ralph Reed, a former presidential-campaign adviser who once headed one of the US's largest Christian activist groups.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106M.shtml

Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106J.shtml

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused President Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee of being far too deferential to executive power and invariably favouring the state over the rights of the individual.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106I.shtml

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was aggressively questioned Wednesday by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who accused him of inconsistencies on issues ranging from voting rights to ethics to his membership in a conservative organization.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011106Y.shtml

Village Voice
by James Ridgeway with Michael Roston

01/10/06

In the first hours of Samuel Alito's Senate confirmation hearings on Monday, Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, may very well have irreparably compromised himself. At the hearing, Graham told Alito, nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, that he had already decided in Alito's favor. 'I don't know what kind of vote you're going to get, but you'll make it through. It's possible you could talk me out of voting for you, but I doubt it. So I won't even try to challenge you along those lines.' That certainly ought to be the case. Graham is one of a group of Republicans who have been coaching Alito behind the scenes. ... The coaching session for Alito has raised a few eyebrows. 'Coaching a judicial nominee behind-the-scenes is not the proper role for a Judiciary Committee member who must subsequently sit in judgment on that nominee,' writes Think Progress, a project of the American Progress Action Fund. 'It could be a violation of the ethical duties of a senator'...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0602,roston,71634,6.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AlterNet
by James Howard Kunstler

01/11/06

High gasoline, heating oil and methane gas prices will absolutely kill the housing bubble for reasons I've already outlined. The production home builders will be idle, stuck with huge inventories in places that never should have been suburbanized in the first place. A lot of Americans holding 'creative' mortgages -- no money down, interest only, adjustable rate, what-have-you -- will be crushed by the expense of their obligations. Many of them will go bankrupt under new bankruptcy laws that leave no wiggle room for escaping partial repayment. Their houses will flood the real estate markets in an orgy of distress selling. ' ... With the cratering of the housing bubble, the U.S. economy has to fall on its a...

http://www.alternet.org/story/30640/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Another Day in the Empire
by Kurt Nimmo

01/10/06

Since when does an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, corresponding with a devout Catholic retired Filipino history professor, pose a threat to the national security of the United States? Of course, the answer is never. However, the fact the Ministry of Homeland Security opened Grant Goodman's mail has nothing to do with national security or 'al-Qaeda' and it has everything to do with sending a message -- we live in a police state here in America, a one-time constitutional republic where the authorities can and will snoop not only your mail but your telephone, email, web destinations, credit card statement, bank transaction records, library checkout information, etc., ad nauseam. In fact, the reason this story appeared on the MSNBC website is to let you know the corporate dominated government is watching...

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=182


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Free Market News Network
by Steve Trinward

01/10/06

Once again, the Fox News/Web MD headline is ambiguous at best, if not downright misleading: 'Bird Flu May Pass From Poultry to Human Easier Than Expected.' The story begins with accounts of new avian flu cases in humans, now spreading to parts of Turkey, where three children from the same family have died, with two of them so far confirmed with the H5N1 bird flu virus. ... However, deeper into the story, it is revealed that, with regard to the Turkish children, at least: 'According to news reports, a doctor who treated those children speculated that the kids had probably caught the virus by playing with dead chickens.' ... In other words, we are still dealing with a virus that only seems to pass from birds to humans if those humans physically handle dead or diseased birds. So the way to stop the avian flu from spreading is to stop people from picking up dead birds, or playing with diseased chickens, and to develop inoculations (or better yet, aerosol sprays) that can stop the spread of H5N1 among the birds themselves!

http://fmnn.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=5152


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Houston Chronicle

01/10/06

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tried to pressure the Bush administration into shutting down an Indian-owned casino that lobbyist Jack Abramoff wanted closed -- shortly after a tribal client of Abramoff's donated to a DeLay political action committee, The Associated Press has learned. The Texas Republican demanded closure of the casino, owned by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas, in a Dec. 11, 2001 letter to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The Associated Press obtained the letter from a source who did not want to be identified because of an ongoing federal investigation of Abramoff and members of Congress...

http://tinyurl.com/cs3zm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp