Think Progress

Under the Radar

ENVIRONMENT -- BUSH URGES AMERICANS TO 'SET ASIDE' GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE: President Bush was asked yesterday if he will watch former Vice President Al Gore's new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. "Doubt it," the President answered. He went on to argue that we need to "set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects." Bush's response attempts to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activity. "Why should we set aside the global scientific consensus," Gore responded. "Is it because Exxon Mobil wants us to set it aside? Why should we set aside the conclusion of scientists in the United States, including the National Academy of Sciences, and around the world including the 11 most important national academies of science on the globe and substitute for their view the view of Exxon Mobil. Why? I'm a grandfather and he's a father and this should not be a political issue," Gore said. "And he should ask the National Academy of Sciences...whether or not human beings are contributing to global warming."

GOVERNMENT -- 26.5 MILLION VETERANS AT RISK OF IDENTITY THEFT: Yesterday, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that as many as 26.5 million veterans were at risk of identity theft "after an intruder stole an electronic data file this month containing their names, birth dates and Social Security numbers from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee." Any veteran discharged after 1975 and some spouses, "as well as some veterans discharged before then who submitted a claim for VA benefits," may be affected by the theft. "In terms of Social Security numbers, it's the biggest breach," said Evan Hendricks, publisher of the Privacy Times newsletter. The burglary occurred on May 3, but the government waited two weeks to notify the public of the stolen records, hoping to catch the thieves without tipping them off to the valuable information. In Nov. 2005, the VA Inspector General criticized the department for its lax security: "VA has not been able to effectively address its significant information security vulnerabilities and reverse the impact of its historically decentralized management approach." Yesterday, in "one of those perfect Washington ironies," President Bush's Identity Theft Task Force met for the first time. Created by a May 10 executive order, one of the task force's missions was to increase "safeguards that Federal departments, agencies, and instrumentalities can implement to better secure government-held personal data." The VA's announcement shows the task force needs to look at vulnerabilities in other government agencies. As the Washington Post notes, "How many other government departments treat sensitive information this casually?" For more information on whether you may be affected by the theft, go here.

CIVIL RIGHTS -- NEW ORLEANS' CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM REMAINS 'IN LIMBO': "New Orleans plans to hold its first criminal trial since Hurricane Katrina" next week, "the first step in solving a judicial crisis in which thousands of suspects have been jailed for months without trial." Criminal District Court Chief Judge Calvin Johnson said "3,000 jury summonses have been mailed, and criminal trials could resume soon after Memorial Day weekend." The city's criminal courts have been "in limbo" since Katrina. "Thirty-one of the 39 public defenders have been laid off," and "2,100 of those awaiting trial are in jails, many without adequate legal representation." Funding for the public defenders' office ran dry because Louisiana "relies mainly on local court fees - mostly surcharges on traffic tickets - to finance its public defenders." Once traffic disappeared in New Orleans, so did the money. Earlier this month, the Justice Department recommended scrapping the entire pre-Katrina system and recommended the city spend $10 million on 70 full-time public defenders as part of a "major overhaul" of its criminal justice system.

Think Fast

Writing in this weekend’s Washington Post, prominent conservative fundraiser Richard Viguerie criticized “Bush’s base betrayal.” Yesterday, the White House responded by emailing around previous quotes of Viguerie’s criticisms of Ronald Reagan. Viguerie responds, “That is standard operating procedure for this White House: Put the spotlight on the president's critic, rather than respond to the critic's arguments.”

Despite Condoleezza Rice’s insistence that "No one would like to shut down Guantanamo more than this administration," Bloomberg reports, "They're settling in for the long haul at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Work is almost complete on a new $30 million state-of-the-art detention facility.

A story written by prominent neo-con Amir Taheri regarding new legislation in Iran "allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive-colored badges circulated around the world last weekend before it was exposed as extremely dubious." University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole described the article as "typical of black psychological operations campaigns," particularly in its origin in an "out-of-the-way newspaper that is then picked up by the mainstream press."

"Railroad to Nowhere" off the tracks? A wasteful $700 million earmark to relocate a railroad line in Mississippi "will not be included in the conference report for the emergency supplemental bill..., a Frist budget aide said Monday," though "a spokeswoman for the author of the provision, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) said it was still on the table."

Public Citizen yesterday released a report, “The Bankrollers: Lobbyists’ Payments to the Lawmakers They Court,” which provides “more proof of the symbiotic relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill.” The report found lobbyists and their political action committees have given members of Congress $103 million since 1998.

President Bush once again labeled a political milestone in Iraq as the crucial “turning point.” “We can expect the violence to continue, but something fundamental changed this weekend,” Bush said.

"U.S. anti-terror policies worldwide undermined human rights in 2005," according to Amnesty International's newest annual report. "The US relentlessly pursued its 'war on terror' under a shroud of secrecy, unlawfully transferring terror suspects around the world, ignoring allegations of torture and ill-treatment refusing to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay."

The last reporter in Iraq for the federally-funded Voice of America news service is leaving, and VOA's Baghdad bureau is closing. But the reporter "isn't leaving because of the general violence. She's leaving because ever since she reported on a Shiite-run government torture center, she's been threatened, had her phone tapped, and had two apparent assassination attempts against her."

Corruption in Iraq "has worsened dramatically since the war began," ranging from "epic schemes involving hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts [to] smaller-scale cases such as the purchase of better grades by university students."

And finally: The Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature recommended that “Oregon legislators and staff members should not be drunk while performing their official duties.” “The new policy was suggested by Steve Doell, president of Crime Victims United, who said he and another member of the group noticed alcohol on the breath of at least one legislator at the end of the 2005 session while they were advocating tougher drunken-driving penalties.”