Drawing the distinction even further between a liberal religious believer and the Religious Right, Yoffie continued, saying that the former believe that “’family values’ requires providing health care to every child and that God cares about the 12 million children without health insurance.

“It means valuing a child with diabetes over a frozen embryo in a fertility clinic, and seeing the teaching of science as a primary social good.

And it means reserving the right for each person to prayerfully make decisions for herself about when she dies.”

And, he said, “it means believing in legal protection for gay couples,” noting that there is room for disagreement about gay marriage, “but there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”

Yoffie accused the Religious Right of refusing to acknowledge that there are religious perspectives different from its own, and of misreading religious texts sacred to both Christians and Jews. He noted that “the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian, has far more to say about caring for the poor than about eradicating sexual sin.”

Union for Reform Judaism - Leader Criticizes Religious Right for Intolerance

The Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker of the GAO, writes:

The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but three seem particularly relevant for our times: (1) declining moral and ethical values and political comity at home, (2) overconfidence and overextension abroad, and (3) fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. All these are certainly matters of significant concern today. But it is the third area that is the focus of my responsibility and authority as Comptroller General, the nation's top auditor and chief accountability officer.

Unfortunately, there is no question that both U.S. government spending and tax cuts are spiraling out of control. Recent increases in federal budget deficits have far outpaced the cost of the global war on terrorism and incremental homeland security costs. Although the $319 billion fiscal 2005 deficit was considerably lower than the previous year's, it is still imprudently high -- especially given that federal spending is expected to increase dramatically when the baby boomers begin to retire later this decade.

Recommending this quote from DailyKos because I don't want to link to the registration-required BusinessWeek article.

Comptroller General draws 'Fall of Rome' analogy (from Daily Kos: Open thread)

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

Funny how news like this comes out when there's a ton of attention being brought to bear against the Office of the Veep... Who has been pushing to exclude the CIA from the McCain anti-torture legislation.
Almost sounds to me like there are still some old hands in the intel biz who aren't too keen on what they're seeing and are leaking in order to twist the dagger a little more...

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

1 Some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection.

2 It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate.

3 Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards.

4 Access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network.

5 Supervisory across to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords.

6 The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy.

7 One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail.

8 GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel.

Overshadowed by indictments and nominations, the GAO unveils an interesting report...

Daily Kos: Nonpartisan GAO Confirms Security Flaws in Voting Machines

In this part we get to one of the most whitewashed aspects of the Senate Report - the forged Niger documents and the CIA/Bush administration narrative about it. (Note that all bold/highlighted text is my emphasis). Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge some research done by reader Pat Conway (I cite his work in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 below). Also, because of the length of this post, I am providing soft-links to the different sections to make for easier reading. Please click on any of the links to start reading.

The Left Coaster: Uranium from Africa and the Senate (SSCI) Report: Part 3A-4 (Uraniumgate v2.0)

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Another piece of the puzzle in the case against the White House?

La Repubblica's Scoop, Confirmed via American Prospect

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

Lawrence Wilkerson spells it out for the American Public(tm) the way that his former boss (Colin Powell) never will. Must Read

The White House cabal - Los Angeles Times

An analysis of monies earned by copyright holders in the modern musical world. Not surprisingly, provides powerful ammunition against the RIAA arguement of the monetary loss to artists caused by file-sharing and digital music.

First Monday - Artists' earnings and copyright

] "Music," he explained, "is different" from other
] intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this
] isn't latent communism. But neither is it just "a piece
] of plastic or a loaf of bread." The artist controls just
] part of the music-making process; the audience adds the
] rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their
] participation makes it live. "We are just troubadours,"
] Tweedy told me. "The audience is our collaborator. We
] should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating
] them like thieves."

Wired 13.02: VIEW - Why Wilco is the Future of Music

] JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Nelson Mandela,
] one of Africa's most committed campaigners in the battle
] against AIDS (news - web sites), announced that his only
] surviving son had succumbed to the disease Thursday.

Yahoo! News - Breaking Taboo, Mandela Says Son Died of AIDS