Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Busted! The CIA Destroyed Its Torture Evidence

• The CIA did naughty things, videotaped them, and then destroyed the tapes. [NY Times]
• In 2002, the CIA videotaped their interrogation of terror suspects, including Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s first detainee.
• These interrogations used “severe techniques” including water boarding.
• But in 2005, in the midst of “congressional and legal scrutiny” of the secret detention program, the CIA destroyed the videotapes.
• Why? Well, the CIA says they were destroyed to “protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.”
• Only trouble: In 2003 and 2005, the 9/11 Commission and a federal judge had asked for any “documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.” But the CIA said they “did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case.”
• Whoops.
• Says Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the 9/11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with al Qaeda leaders, “If tapes were destroyed it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal, because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.”
• All this comes as Congress plans to attach anti-waterboarding provisions to the 2008 intelligence appropriation bills. [Guardian]
• The Army field manual outlaws the practice, but Bush has authorized it for CIA interrogations.
• A brief history of waterboarding:
• “Waterboarding, which dates at least to the Spanish Inquisition, has been used by regimes such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In some versions, prisoners are strapped to a board, their faces covered with cloth or cellophane, and water is poured over their mouths to stimulate drowning; in others, they are dunked head-first into water.” [Guardian]

Very very bad things.

Climate Scientists Get Heated Over Global Warming Inaction

• They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. [AP]
• Over 200 climate scientists, frustrated with the lack of political progress, issued a rare warning to the gathered delegates at the Bali Climate Change Conference.
• Their demand? For the nations of the world to cut greenhouse gas emission in half by 2050.
• The stakes: the scientists say that even if the world takes dramatic action now, there is only an “even-money” chance that we can prevent catastrophic climate change.
• “We have to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as we possibly can,” said Australian climatologist Matthew England, a group spokesman. “It needs action. We’re talking about now.” [Telegraph]
• Climate scientists have typically left political advocacy to environmental groups, but as petition signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography says, “the stakes are way way too high to be playing around.”
• This comes on the tail of a petition signed by business leaders of 150 global companies urging action on global warming. [MicCheck]

The time is now.

Energy Bill Victory In The House!

The Story

• Victory! The House of Representatives yesterday “brushed aside a fresh White House veto threat and handily approved a sweeping energy bill that would raise automobile fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 32 years while mandating the generation of electricity from more renewable energy sources.” [Washington Post] [Detroit Free Press] [New York Times]
• The Vote: 235-181
• So what’s in the bill? It:
• Requires cars to boost their fuel efficiency by 40% to achieve an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. This is the first mandated fuel efficiency increase since 1975!
• Ends $13.5 billion worth of tax breaks given to the top five U.S. oil companies (who, we’d like to point out, have been enjoying insane, record-breaking profits for the past few years.)
• Instead puts that money toward the development of renewable energy, energy efficiency programs and conservation.
• Phase out incandescent light bulbs.
• Get 36 billion gallons of ethanol on the market by 2022.
• What comes next? According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Senate could vote on this as soon as this Saturday.
• The White House, natch, has announced it wants to veto the bill. They want to keep giving the rich oil companies $13 billion of taxpayer money.

The Audio

• Rep. Steny Hoyer (D., MD): “This provision alone would save American families an estimated $700 to $1,000 per year at the pump and reduce oil consumption by 1.1 million gallons a day.”
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• Rep. Tom Udall: “The renewables revolution, which we will be ushering in through this bill and the RES provision, is good for business, it’s good for the environment, and it’s good for the security of our nation.”
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We love the smell of ethanol in the morning...it smells like victory.

Help For Homeowners — No, Not You — That Guy Over There

• President Bush yesterday finally announced a plan to try to stem the housing foreclosure hemorrhage.
• Forgive us for saying it’s about time…but it’s about time. Until a month ago, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson was arguing the White House should do nothing and leave it for lenders to work out on a case-by-case basis. That didn’t work out so well. [NYTimes] [ABC News]
• What the agreement does: Potentially freezes interest rates for up to five years for up to 600,000 of the 2 million people who bought houses with or refinanced with subprime loans.
• (Subprime loan, NOUN: A risky loan with higher interest rates usually marketed to people with poor credit. Sometimes, these loans had artificially low “teaser” rates which then shot up dramatically after only six months.)
• Who Bush’s plan helps: People who took out loans between Jan. 1, 2005 and July 30, 2007 who were facing sharp increases after the first of the year.
• Who it doesn’t help: People whose owe *more* than the value of their house (for example, for some people, their property values tanked during this crisis through no fault of their own.)
• Stats You Can Use: For every foreclosure in 1/8 of a mile there’s a 0.9% drop in house prices, and it’s worse in low-income neighborhoods.)
• Who it doesn’t help: People whose introductory rates are set to increase (sharply) before Jan. 1, 2008.
• Who it doesn’t help: People who are already delinquent on their loans (about 22% of all subprime borrowers.)
• Who it doesn’t help: Borrowers who make enough to afford the higher monthly payments.
• President Bush: “We should not bail out lenders, real estate speculators or those who made the reckless decision to buy a home they knew they could not afford.”
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• For the millions of struggling homeowners who don’t qualify for help the White House plan, President Bush advised them to call the hotline 1-800-995-HOPE. His advisers put out a release later saying, whoops, wrong number. It’s actually 1-888-995-HOPE. [LA Times]
• Andrew Jakabovics, CAP resident economic smart guy: “As with other serious crises that have happened on Bush’s watch, the solution is to make it the next administration’s problem.”
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• Sen. Chris Dodd: “It shuts out hundreds of thousands of borrowers who are either in, or shortly will be facing, default in 2007 because of the abusive exploding ARM loans they were sold. These homeowners are no less deserving of a helping hand.”

What about 1-888-995-PLAN? Don’t you want a little more reassurance than just...hope?

Romney Addresses Religion

Yesterday, GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) addressed the white elephant in the campaign: His Mormon faith. We listened in so you didn’t have to. Here’s what he said.

• Romney, on the common cause of the President: A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.
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• Romney, on religion and freedom: Freedom requires religion. Just as religion requires freedom.
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• Romney, on the most important question to ask a President: Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office is this: Does he share these American values: the equality of human kind; the obligation to serve one another; and a steadfast commitment to liberty.
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• Romney, on his Mormon faith: I believe in my Mormon faith, and I endeavor to live by it.
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• Romney, on secularism: The notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God; religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It’s as if they’re intent on establishing a new religion in America. The religion of secularism. They are wrong.
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and finally...

• Mitt Romney loves the holidays: And during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places!
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Under the banner of Romney.

Good News, Bad News

Televangelist preacher Creflo Dollar announced he had no intention of complying with Sen. Charles Grassley’s Senate investigations into whether his money-oriented megachurch was complying with appropriate tax laws.[ABC News]

BAD NEWS: Rev. Dollar says his two Rolls-Royces are none of Sen. Grassley’s business. three private jets, million-dollar Georgia home, and $2.5 million Manhattan apartment are none of the Senator’s business.

GOOD NEWS: Yes. The greedy televangelist’s name really is “Dollar.”

Quote Of The Day

Leeland Eisenberg, the guy who held all those people hostage at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, spoke to CNN yesterday about why he did it and what he wanted.

• “I wanted to sacrifice myself for the sake of mental illness, and the discussion in this country about mental illness. Had I walked into a Dunkin Donuts, it wouldn’t have gotten the kind of national discussion and precedent it deserves.”
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and

• “My whole thing was, I wanted the police to kill me.”
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Speed Round

DEAR DICTATOR

President Bush writes a personal letter to North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il urging him to follow through on North Korea’s pledge to “dismantle all of its nuclear facilities and to disclose all of its past and present nuclear programs by the end of the year.” [NY Times]

PAGE BOARD

More trouble with those congressional pages as two members of Congress who helped oversee the program resign, “protesting that they were not informed of two pages caught shoplifting and two others busted for engaging in public oral sex.” [Washington Post]

BAD MAN

A North Carolina man is sentenced to 110 years in prison for hacking into under aged girls’ computers and blackmailing them into sending him naked pictures of themselves. [NY Times]

$3 million

The predicted auctioning price for Karl Rove’s memoir. [Think Progress]

A GROWING CRISIS

It’s just getting worse: The top U.N. aid official called on Thursday for big increases in assistance for refugees in Somalia and Sudan next year as security deteriorated for millions of people displaced by conflict. [Reuters]

TRAGEDY

70 people are killed when a mine in China explodes. [NY Times]

MON DIEU

A parcel bomb explodes in a Paris law office, killing one person. [Washington Post]

MAGNA CARTA

Four copies of the original Magna Carta which date from 1217 and 1225 will go on display at Oxford for the first time in 800 years…just in time, as the US Supreme Court decides whether or not to hang on to that pesky Human Right to Habeas Corpus. [Reuters]

SCOUTS DISHONOR

Note to the Boy Scouts: If you’re going to discriminate against gays and lesbians, “be prepared” to get kicked out of your Philadelphia headquarters. [NY Times]

TO YOUR HEALTH!

WIC, the program that gets food to more than 8-million low-income, hungry mothers and children, will start providing more fruits and veggies. [AP]

$1 Billion

The estimated value of all the U.S. military equipment gone missing in Iraq. [CBS]

DEATH PENALTY IN JERSEY

New Jersey is set to become the first state to scrap the death penalty since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. [NBC]

UNDER GOD

The Supreme Court hears arguments over whether “under god” in the pledge and “in god we trust” on our money violates the first amendment. [AP]

WHOOPS!

CNN decides maybe next week *isn’t* the best time for their scary “We Were Warned — Iran Goes Nuclear” special. Good thinking, guys. [Variety]

GONE MISSIN’

Up to a dozen Iraqis who came to the U.S. for intel and training courses have flown the coop, “on the lam after bolting for their classes.” [Fox News]