The US has one great freedom that Britain lacks: freedom of the press. In the UK, the press must work under the heel of the Office Secrets Act. And now the Bush Administration wants that:

In June, a case is slated to go to trial in Northern Virginia that will mark a first step in a plan to silence press coverage of essential national security issues. The plan was hatched by Alberto Gonzales and his deputy, Paul J. McNulty—the two figures at the center of a growing scandal over the politicization of the prosecutorial process. This may in fact be the most audacious act of political prosecution yet. But so far, it has gained little attention and is poorly understood.

In the summer of 2005, Alberto Gonzales paid a visit to British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. A British civil servant who attended told me “it was quite amazing really. Gonzales was obsessed with the Official Secrets Act. In particular, he wanted to know exactly how it was used to block newspapers and broadcasters from running news stories derived from official secrets and how it could be used to criminalise persons who had no formal duty to maintain secrets. He saw it as a panacea for his problems: silence the press. Then you can torture and abuse prisoners and what you will—without fear of political repercussions. It was the easy route to dealing with the Guantánamo dilemma. Don’t close down Guantánamo. Close down the press. We were appalled by it.” Appalled, he added, “but not surprised.”

Britain has of course never had a media with the freedom of the American press. John Milton railed against the abusive requirements of licensing without making headway. Britain had the tradition of Royal Prerogative, a tradition of branding political rabble rousers with the mark “SL” for “seditious libeler.” Of course, many of those seditious libelers emigrated to America, which helps explain why this was an issue contributing to a revolution that broke out in 1776. The erstwhile colonists heard Milton’s appeal and followed it, producing a decisive parting of the ways in the English-speaking world. But that’s all very inconvenient history, which is certain soon to be expunged from the history books. After all, those who control the present, control the past. And Gonzales had come down with a very bad case of Official Secrets envy.

By May 2006, Gonzales was on ABC’s “This Week” program, convinced he had found the link. Could the United States gag the media to prevent its publication of classified information? “It depends on the circumstances.” Gonzales explained, “There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility. That’s a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation. We have an obligation to enforce those laws.” This, to be sure, is the same Alberto Gonzales who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and insisted in the face of an incredulous Senator Arlen Specter that the Constitution incorporated no guarantee of habeas corpus. He is an attorney general possessed of a copy of the Constitution which is strangely different from that ratified by the states in 1789 and amended to include the Bill of Rights in 1791. And he is the attorney general who felt that the limitations of FISA with respect to surveillance without warrants didn’t matter, though he couldn’t coherently articulate a reason why. (That, after all, is why you have John Yoo.) When he says “we have an obligation to enforce those laws,” he means of course to enforce the laws the way he and the president secretly understand them.

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Not a title I thought I’d have occasion to type, but just read this:

It was here in Kansas City, at the 2005 food aid conference, that the Bush administration pushed for a fundamental change in food aid that would have diminished profits to domestic agribusiness and shipping companies. It proposed allowing a quarter of the Food for Peace budget to be used to buy food in poor countries near hunger crises, rather than buying only American-grown food that had to be shipped across oceans.

And Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns spoke at the conference on Wednesday to again make the administration’s case for the same idea, contending that such a policy would speed delivery, improve efficiency and save many lives.

Congress in each of the past two years killed the proposal, which was opposed by agribusiness and shipping interests who stood to lose business, even as it won support from liberal Democrats like Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon — generally not a subset of lawmakers found in the president’s corner.

But there are signs that the frozen politics of the issue are beginning to thaw, especially as evidence of flaws in the current aid system mounts.

More at the link, and a previous article here.

The Younger Grandson is getting into gardening. I thought he might like square-foot gardening:

When Kris and I bought our first home, we both wanted a vegetable garden, but we didn’t want the drudgery that came with it. Besides, we didn’t have a big space in the country — we had an average city lot. Fortunately, we discovered Mel Bartholomew’s Square-Foot Gardening.

The square-foot gardening concept is simple: Build a raised bed, divide the space into sections of one square-foot each, and then plant vegetables (and/or flowers) in just the amount of space they need. The advantages of this system include reduced workload, less watering, easy weeding (and not much of it), and easy access to your crops. This is a great way to learn to grow some of your own food.

More at the link.

Excellent talk from TED:

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: “If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, please stop whatever you’re doing and watch it now.”

Take a look. “The easier, smarter way to organize special events, from conferences and workshops to parties, gigs, and receptions.”

Joe Conason is right:

After his disastrous appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — the clueless, hapless figurehead aptly nicknamed “Fredo” by President Bush — may soon be gone. Or the president may stubbornly cling to Gonzales, despite his manifest incompetence and dishonesty, which are plainly no obstacle to service in the Bush administration.

Whether the Decider turns thumbs up or down on his pal, however, this must become an accountability moment not only for the attorney general but for all of the ranking Justice Department officials who apparently lied to Congress about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. For senators of both parties, many of whom have already expressed their disgust with the misconduct of Gonzales and his aides, there could be no greater insult to the integrity of their institution.

The only way to redress that insult — and to uphold the constitutional balance of powers — is to demand the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes that may have been committed in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys and the coverup that followed.

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From the Political Animal:

Back in 2002 the Bush administration accused North Korea of starting up a uranium enrichment program, which it then used as an excuse to withdraw from the Agreed Framework and halt bilateral negotiations. Today the administration says there was no uranium program after all. It was just an intelligence screwup.

Well, stuff like that happens to the best of us, doesn’t it? Still, with this administration, when there’s an “intelligence screwup,” that usually means that some actual person took ambiguous intelligence and decided to go to town with it. So who was it in this case?

Commenting privately…a concerned observer, then and now, said “the [HEU] evidence was very ambiguous. Wolfowitz took it and ran with it as hard as he could, and the upshot was that we shut down everything we planned to do with the DPRK. It was after that [Jan., 2003] they threw out the IAEA and began [what became] the run-up to the bomb test [last fall].”

Paul Wolfowitz! What a surprise. If we ever find evidence that he also trumped up intelligence against Iran, he’ll have an Axis of Evil trifecta.

Via Balloon Juice.

From the Washington Note:

Secretary of the Treasury “Hank Paulson can easily control his enthusiasm for Paul Wolfowitz,” according to a source close to Paulson, “but he does not have enough yet to stick the final knife in.”

Next week, a special subcommittee will further investigate and advise the Board of the World Bank on what to do with the embattled World Bank President who has shaken the confidence and trust of his own employees as well as client and stakeholder governments of the Bank.

Graeme Wheeler, a Managing Director of the World Bank of one of two of Wolfowitz’s top deputies, has publicly called for Wolfowitz to resign. Bank staffers are now wearing blue ribbons inside the bank, in the same manner as red AIDS awareness ribbons or yellow ribbons commemorating soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, to protest Wolfowitz’s nepotism and support the World Bank Staff Committee. (This morning I ran with a group of about 50 runners and one prominent former World Bank official was wearing his blue ribbon on his running shirt.)

Sidney Blumenthal has written a devastating indictment of Paul Wolfowitz’s earlier misjudgments involving girlfriend Shaha Riza, who is Libyan and raised in Saudi Arabia. According to Blumenthal, Riza was hired by defense contractor SAIC at the instruction and through a contract issued by Douglas Feith’s office. She would have needed a security clearance for this work and according to State Department officials, that clearance would have been provided by the Department of Defense and then recognized by State. Again according to Blumenthal, details of that clearance — in required correspondence between the two departments — cannot now be found. Nonetheless, State Department officials have confirmed to Blumenthal — and additionally to me — that Shaha Riza had “unescorted access” at the State Department when then working with Elizabeth Cheney.

Contrast the potential national security breaches by those at the top of the ladder to those further down the food chain.

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Frank Rich’s column recounts a series of scandals with Alberto Gonzales or Paul Wolfowitz at the center. Though a long list, it’s a fraction of the dishonesty, sleaze, and corruption that we owe to this Administration. It’s a fine column, which begins:

President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he’ll take six weeks to show his face — and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldn’t inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the “surge” was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg’s. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.

At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer’s metastasis — the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.

Yet each man’s latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What’s being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.

Later in the column:

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I told The Wife that I had fallen asleep for a nap, but it was because Megs had climbed into my lap for a nap. She said, “You always blame Megs—she’s a scape-kitty.”

Controlling the news has always been a priority of the Bush Administration. How they must envy their Russian colleagues:

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.

How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

This month alone, a bank loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin tightened its control of an independent television station, Parliament passed a measure banning “extremism” in politics and prosecutors have gone after individuals who post critical comments on Web chat rooms.

Parliament is also considering extending state control to Internet sites that report news, reflecting the growing importance of Web news as the country becomes more affluent and growing numbers of middle-class Russians acquire computers.

More at the link.

A talking thermometer for roasting seems like overkill or a pointlessly enhanced gadget, but in practice it turns out to be extremely useful. I got one as a gift from The Son, and I love it. The advantage is that you don’t have to check the roast at all: the thermometer announces when it’s done (to whatever temperature you have set), and will also announce “30 minutes till done,” “20 minutes till done,” “5 minutes till done,” etc. The more distant times are imprecise, and it may announce those more than once and even backtrack, but after about “10 minutes till done” it’s quite accurate. Think about it: no having to hover around the oven.

Our digital thermometer ensures perfectly cooked meats and poultry. It precisely monitors cooking temperatures and counts down cooking times, automatically adjusting itself if the cooking process is faster or slower than anticipated and alerting you with a voice or beep alert when your meat is almost done. Reminder intervals can be set from 30 minutes to one minute from completion. Use preset doneness ranges from rare to well-done for beef, pork, poultry and veal, or program your own preferences. Includes three AAA batteries. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive.

This is cute: a little calculator that estimates the CO2 emissions you produce through you lifestyle (house, car, etc.). It includes steps to reduce the CO2 emissions and shows the impact they will have. You can also download the calculator as an Excel spreadsheet.

Play with cloth.

If you like Hobbits, you’ll like this. Amazingly detailed.

See.

Via Alert Reader, a BBC story on how much better things are in Baghdad, what with the Surge and all:

We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb. US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out. While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.

You won’t have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.

One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people. It was placed at the entrance to a set of barriers put up around another part of the market where a previous single bomb, in February, claimed more than 130 lives.

The market blast “did not penetrate the emplaced barriers” a later US military press release helpfully pointed out, ignoring the fact that the bombers had yet again adapted their tactics with vicious perfection - setting off their device at the point where crowds congregated outside and at the very moment when they were busiest.

As we drove into the city, we counted six blast holes left by recent roadside bombs along just one 100-metre stretch or road. A large patch of damaged, blackened Tarmac on a bridge spoke of another attempt to destroy a key crossing.

The Sunni extremists held to be responsible for these attacks seem to be making a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan, which is now into its third month. So far, their surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.

Last month alone there were more than 100 car bombings, and the number of attacks has continued at a similar rate so far this month. This indicates a high level of organisation. This despite the fact that there are many extra US and Iraqi troops in the city now. There are more raids and patrols.

On our drive into the city, we encountered several Iraqi army checkpoints. But almost every vehicle - including ours - was being waved through. Many new checkpoints have been set up across Baghdad. But what is their purpose, many Iraqis ask, when they seem to stop so few people?

It is not always encouraging when they do - a couple of times we have been pulled over by Iraqi soldiers who ask us if we have any bullets to give them.

Just a month ago there was a cautious - very cautious, but still real - sense of optimism among many Baghdadis that the plan was starting to work. The daily count of bodies found around the city - mostly Sunni victims of targeted sectarian killings - had dropped off significantly.

The Shia militia of Moqtada Sadr, which was blamed for most of these murders, was largely obeying orders to put away its weapons and co-operate with the security plan.

Continue reading.

In particular, a spiral of prime numbers—which oddly seem to fall more densely along certain curves. Look.

From the front page of the Wall Street Journal:

As they dig for nickel, copper and other commodities in the far corners of the earth, the world’s largest mining companies, Rio Tinto PLC and BHP Billiton Ltd., are used to solving geological problems. Here, though, the problems they encountered were political.

North America’s largest copper lode is believed to be buried more than a mile beneath Apache Leap, the stark red cliffs that loom above this storied Old West town about an hour east of Phoenix. Resolution Copper Co., a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, wants to mine it. But first it needs Congress to approve a federal land exchange, under which Resolution would swap 5,000 acres of private land for 3,000 acres of public land near its planned mine.

In exchange for supporting the bill, the local congressman, Rick Renzi, a Republican, insisted on something in return: He wanted Resolution to buy, as part of the land swap, a 480-acre alfalfa field near his hometown of Sierra Vista, according to documents and people involved in the deal.

Resolution executives refused. For starters, they thought the land was overpriced, people close to the deal say. More troubling, they discovered it was owned by Mr. Renzi’s former business partner, these people say.

Resolution wasn’t the only party troubled by the congressman’s demands. His chief of staff resigned and began cooperating secretly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to witnesses and others close to the case. The FBI began a preliminary inquiry that was first reported in October, just before Mr. Renzi was elected to a third term.

That investigation has now become a formal public-corruption probe by a federal grand jury in Tucson. On Thursday, the grand jury authorized a search warrant of a Renzi family business. Investigators have uncovered evidence that Mr. Renzi received a cash payment from his former business partner, funneled through a family wine company, after a second investor group pursuing an unrelated land swap agreed to pay $4 million for the alfalfa field, according to people contacted in the course of the two-year investigation.

Mr. Renzi denies any wrongdoing and says that he intends to cooperate with the investigation. The search of the family business, he said in a statement Friday, is “the first step toward getting the truth out.” His lawyer says the cash payment he received was to settle an unrelated debt.

The case could add fuel to the firestorm over the Bush administration’s firing of federal prosecutors late last year. Paul Charlton, the U.S. Attorney who had been overseeing the case, was among those dismissed at the behest of the White House. A spokesman for Mr. Renzi dismissed as “a political hatchet job” the suggestion that Mr. Charlton’s firing was connected to the probe of Mr. Renzi. On Thursday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress that none of the dismissals were politically motivated, and said the Justice Department is committed to battling corruption.

Continue reading.

This looks as though no punches were pulled:

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored “obvious” signs of “serious misconduct” in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general’s investigation.

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s 104-page report on Haditha is scathing in its criticism of the Marines’ actions, from the enlisted men who were involved in the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005, to the two-star general who commanded the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq at the time. Bargewell’s previously undisclosed report, obtained by The Washington Post, found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame. Though Bargewell found no specific coverup, he concluded that there also was no interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre.

“All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,” Bargewell wrote. He condemned that approach because it could desensitize Marines to the welfare of noncombatants. “Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.”

Read more. The story contains much more.