Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Abstinence-Only Vs. The Abortion Rate

• Abortion rates around the world have dropped, though the lives of millions of women remain at risk. [ABC News]
• According to two new reports from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization, the number of abortions around the globe fell from 46 million in 1995 to under 42 million in 2003.
• Interesting point: The total number of women seeking abortions in countries where it is legal and the number of women seeking abortions in countries where it is illegal is the same, “suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.”
• The difference? Whether or not women get safe procedures or dangerous, life-threatening ones.
• According to the World Health Organization, there were still 20 million unsafe abortions performed in 2003 which put the mother’s life at risk, “97 percent of them in developing regions and places where the procedure is banned.”
• Interesting point: “The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.”
• Check it out: Western Europe has the lowest rate of abortions, with 12 per 1,000 women. The reason? Broad access to birth control.
• Compare to Uganda, where the abortion rate is 54 per 1,000 women. Abortion in Uganda is illegal and sex ed programs focus exclusively on abstinence only.
• What this means for policy: The Bush White House has provided money in Africa to to “programs that promote abstinence before marriage, and to condoms only as a last resort.” The White House also bans the use of U.S. funds to family planning groups overseas that allow abortions. [NY Times]
• According to the new studies, this is the absolute worst way to drive down the abortion rate.

Both studies can be found in the journal Lancet.

Bush Was Tapping Phones Without A Warrant Before 9/11

• In May 2006, Bush admitted to a widespread system of warrantless wiretapping and phone record surveillance that he said was started “after September 11th” and was designed “to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.” One wrinkle: it looks like he may have started the program before 9/11. [Body Politik] [White House]
• The allegation surfaced as part of the trial of Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications, currently on trial for insider trading.
• Nacchio alleges that the NSA approached Qwest without a warrant to collect phone records of Americans six months before the September 11th attacks.
• When Qwest refused to comply, Nacchio says the National Security Agency punished the firm by refusing to renew a lucrative unrelated government contract.
• Turning over phone records to the government without a warrant is considered a violation of the privacy clause of the Telecommunications Act and the FISA law which governs surveillance. [MicCheck]
• Currently, Bush wants to give immunity to those companies, including AT&T and Verizon, who cooperated with the still-secretive NSA warrantless program. Congress is resisting, insisting that such an act would be giving “blind immunity” because Bush has not disclosed the full nature of the program. [MicCheck]
• This revelation, that the program began six months before the 9/11 attacks, suggests that ” the ‘administration’s’ domestic spying not only has little if anything to do with response to terrorism, but it also objectively failed to prevent 9/11.” [Daily Kos]

Tell Congress to refuse to give telecom companies immunity until we know exactly what’s going on.

Hey Rush, Is General Sanchez A Phony Soldier Too?

The Story

• Two weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh said that soldiers who returned from Iraq and opposed the war were “phony soldiers.” [Think Progress]
• Well, over the weekend a “phony general” spoke out. Wonder what Rush will say.
• In a speech, the former U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, slammed the war saying the Bush administration has created a “nightmare with no end in sight.” [NY Times]
• He continued: “After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism...There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders.”
• Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez served as the commander of coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004. His tenure saw the growth of the insurgency and the Abu Ghraib scandal, leaving him “vulnerable to criticism that that he is shifting the blame from himself and exacting revenge against an administration that replaced him as the top commander in the aftermath of the scandal and declined to nominate him for a fourth star, forcing his retirement.” Ouch.
• The deep ambivalence over the war has spread to the rank and file commanders.
• The New York Times reports that at the Fort Leavenworth, the “intellectual center of the U.S. Army,” experts are divided over “whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: sending in a small invasion force and failing to plan properly for the occupation.” [NY Times]

The Audio

• Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez speaks out.
  Please log in to download this clip.

Phony General? Give us a break.

New Hearings At Gitmo, Or Just More Smoke And Mirrors?

• Consider this: Many of the 330 men being held in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay are entering their sixth year of imprisonment. Turns out, they could be getting some good news. Justice Department lawyers have raised the possibility that the government may hold new hearings for some detainees to decide if they are being properly held. [New York Times]
• The New York Times reports: “The statement came in a filing made public late Friday in the federal appeals court in Washington. Detainees’ lawyers said that officials appeared to be considering what several of the lawyers called a “massive” repeat of the military’s combatant-status hearings originally held in 2004 and 2005.”
• Experts are saying that it’d be a huge shift for the administration to conduct new hearings. In the past, such trials have been tagged as arbitrary and illegitimate.
• The hearings have been the subject of withering attacks, including by two military hearing officers who have said commanders influenced their decisions and that evidence against the detainees was sometimes little more than anonymous accusations.
• But the detainees’ lawyers aren’t so sure about the news. They’re saying this may just be another round of smoke in mirrors, as the administration is just trying to buy time.
• Specifically, they’re claiming “a new round of hearings does not appear to reflect a change in the government’s view about their propriety but would be a way to fight off a recent court ruling in a case in which several detentions have been challenged based on the first round of status review hearings.”

Is that a white flag we see? Or are we just squinting.

Sunday Bloody Sunday: We Watch So You Don’t Have To

Fox News Sunday, With Brit Hume

The right wing is bihhh-tter about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize.

• Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, dissing the Nobel Peace Prize: “It’s a prize given by bloviators to a bloviator for nothing.”
  Please log in to download this clip.
• Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer: “Look, let’s remember what the prize is about. Al Gore now joins the ranks of Yassar Arafat, the father of modern terrorism, Le Duc Tho, who signed a treaty on behalf of a government that two years later invaded and extinguished the country it signed a treaty with, and the most disgraceful ex-President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who, forget about Iraq, I’ll remind you in the Gulf War actively lobbied other countries to oppose his country in helping it in going into war.”
  Please log in to download this clip.
• NPR’s Juan Williams: “The Nobel Peace Prize, I mean, Mother Teresa — whatever you want to say about it, there’s an effort made to acknowledge people who are making a difference in this world, and Al Gore, with the film An Inconvenient Truth, and by speaking out, bloviating, as you just said Bill, has helped to raise the profile of an issue. And when you look at the current administration, and the failure of this administration to do anything, even acknowledge for a long time that there was global warming, there’s a strong contrast.”
  Please log in to download this clip.

ABC This Week, with George Stephanopoulos

Nancy Pelosi talks about the President’s veto of SCHIP

• Nancy Pelosi, on staying firm to providing 10 million children health care: “The president says he’s the decider. I say, Mr. President, do you want to decide which child gets health care or not? Why don’t we just do the right thing?”
  Please log in to download this clip.
• Nancy Pelosi, on George Bush saying he wants compromise on SCHIP: Compromise to the president means, in all due respect to him and I have great, shall we say, respect for the president, but compromise to him means “do it my way.” I prefer to go the Congressional way, bipartisan, responsible, paid-for.
  Please log in to download this clip.

Good News, Bad News

Looking to get someone’s attention? You might want to consider giving them a horrified look. Smiles may take a while, but a horrified expression is a sure-fire attention getter, U.S. researchers said on Sunday, based on a study of how fast people process facial expressions. Let’s check out the pros and cons. [Reuters]

GOOD NEWS

You know how to get someone’s attention...

BAD NEWS

...by looking like a total freak.

Quote Of The Day

I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash. Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative. What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.

—Stephen Colbert, kind of announcing his run for president while hijacking Maureen Dowd’s op-ed column in the New York Times. [NY Times]

Speed Round

MUST READ

Like when chocolate met peanut butter, savor the two great tastes that taste great together when Maureen Dowd lets Stephen Colbert write her column. [NY Times]

ALZHEIMER’S TEST

A long-sought medical goal is finally at hand: a blood test that detects Alzheimer’s years before the onset of memory loss. [NY Times]

BLOOD FOR...WELL, YOU KNOW

Once the soon to be ratified Iraqi oil law goes through, “international oil companies will have a far better shot at Iraq reserves than ever before.” [Mother Jones]

PRIMARY POISON

Think this Presidential primary process is getting a little ridiculous? Consider this: “The whole stinking process was designed by dead men in smoky parlors and refined by faceless bureaucrats in hotel conference rooms. It is a nasty brew born of those caldrons of self-interest known as political parties. At every stage, advantage is parceled out like so much magic potion.” [Salon]

BLACKWATER

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince says the lawsuit brought against his company by the families of the Iraqi civilians they gunned down is “politically motivated.” Sort of like Blackwater’s entire existence. [Reuters]

A VERY INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Remember the British guy who sued his kids’ schools over the showing of “An Inconvenient Truth”? Turns out he was funded by a giant mining corporation and Scientific Alliance, a British group with links to Exxon Mobil. [CBS News]

WAR

Attacks on Shiite Muslims in Iraq leave 24 dead. [CNN]

WAR

A suicide bomber in a marketplace in Afghanistan kills 9, wounds 29. [CBS News]

I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?

“We’re happy for him, but suspect he’d trade places before we would.” – Anonymous senior White House official “congratulates” Al Gore on winning the Nobel Prize. Real mature, buddy. [Washington Post]

MUZZLE UNDONE

The CIA is trying to muzzle its top investigator, Inspector General John Helgerson, from exposing critical mistakes made at the Agency. Congress tells the CIA to back off. [USA Today]

JUST DOWNRIGHT LOW

U.S. Protection and Investigations, a U.S. private security firm, has been charged with overbilling the Afghanistan state department. [Think Progress]

TOUGH GIG

Secretary of State Rice opens a round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, only to be faced with obstacle after obstacle. [AP]

AUTO-PILOT

With only 15 months left in office, President Bush has left whole agencies of the executive branch to be run largely by acting or interim appointees. [NY Times]

TRAGEDY

21 people are killed when a Colombian mine collapses. [Washington Post]

TURKISH GENOCIDE

A Turkish general says with the passage of a U.S. House resolution accusing Turkey of genocide, “The U.S. has shot itself in the foot.” [NY Times]