Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Accidents, Misshandling of Deadly Germs at U.S. Labs

• We smell a sci-fi thriller: The Associated Press reports that “American laboratories handling the world’s deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing steadily as more labs across the country are approved to do the work.” [AP]
• Thankfully, no one has died. Yet. The accidents, however, display a glaring need for more oversight and infrastructure at the nation’s most advanced labs which are often handling poisons and diseases for which there are no cures. Need more details? The mishaps have involved anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states. More than two-dozen incidents were still under investigation.
• Still need more? Try this: In 2005, the FBI had to investigate the Public Health Research Institute in Newark, N.J. when the lab couldn’t account for three of 24 mice infected with plague bacteria
• Under the Bush administration, the network of labs handling such materials has expanded dramatically as part of the nation’s bio-warfare defense program. The number of labs approved by the government to handle the deadliest substances has nearly doubled to 409 since 2004.
• Coincidentally, the number of accidents has risen steadily. Through August, the most recent period covered in the reports obtained by the AP, labs reported 36 accidents and lost shipments during 2007 — nearly double the number reported during all of 2004.
• “It may be only a matter of time before our nation has a public health incident with potentially catastrophic results,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee. Stupak’s panel has been investigating the lab incidents and will conduct a hearing Thursday.

We’re officially terrified.

Judge Says White House Can’t Hide Papers

• Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly this week ruled a White House order designed to keep presidential papers secret was, in part, illegal. [AP]
• In 2001, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales drafted a presidential order which allowed sitting presidents and former presidents the right to hide their presidential papers from the public. [NY Times]
• The order was part of an ongoing White House campaign to hide decisions and potentially embarrassing or shady dealings from the public.
• This one was designed to block 68,000 pages of Reagan’s records from American eyes, but it went even further, allowing presidents to block any records they want, indefinitely. It also said any family members of former presidents also have the right to block public access to presidential records. [Reuters]
• According to the Presidential Records Act, the archivist of the United States is responsible for releasing historic presidential records. It guarantees that all relevant presidential papers will be available to the public within a specific time period after a president leaves office.
• Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the White House order was “arbitrary, capricious an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with the law.”

• More Kollar-Kotelly: “The Bush Order effectively eliminated the archivist’s discretion to release a former president’s documents while such documents are pending a former president’s review, which can be extended – presumably indefinitely.”

  It’s not over yet.

• The judge was only able to invalidate part of the law, sidestepping whether the entire order was unconstitutional.
• The House of Representatives voted to overturn the order back in March. The bill to overturn it is currently blocked in Congress; Sen. Jim Bunning was recently exposed putting a secret “hold” on the vote. [Think Progress]
• The White House recently got in trouble for trying to hide presidential documents, after top officials were busted using a “shadow” e-mail system to conduct secret business (like meetings with corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and emails about the political firing of U.S. attorneys.) These e-mails then went missing. [CREW]

Lehht the sun shine....let the sun-shine in!

New Poll: The Public’s Sick Of Writing Blank Checks

• Once again, President Bush and many Congressional Republicans have found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion. A new Washington Post — ABC poll shows that “[m]ost Americans oppose fully funding President Bush’s $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” [Washington Post]
• A full 70 percent of those polled want the proposed allocation reduced, with 46 percent wanting it cut sharply or entirely.
• And it doesn’t stop there: The poll also shows that a sizable majority support an expansion of a children’s health insurance bill — known as SCHIP — that the President has promised to veto. More than seven in 10 in the poll support the planned $35 billion spending increase, while only 25 percent are opposed to it.
• Bush’s approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his career low in Post-ABC polls. And just 29 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, its lowest approval rating in this poll since November 1995, when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate.
• Still, the public rates congressional Republicans (29 percent approve) lower than congressional Democrats (38 percent approve). When the parties are pitted directly against each other, the public broadly favors Democrats on Iraq, health care, the federal budget and the economy.

That’s gotta sting.

States Take Bush To The Mats Over Kids Health Insurance

• A group of 8 states will bring a lawsuit against Bush over his stingy approach to providing healthcare to children. [Washington Post]
• Bush has promised to veto a recently passed congressional measure that would expand the widely popular SCHIP program to cover 10 million children whose parents can’t afford to provide them with health insurance.
• If Bush vetoes, he’ll not only prevent 4 million additional children from getting coverage, but also force 1 million off the roles because the current funding can’t match rising health care costs. [Raw Story]
• President Bush recently approved new rules that would prevent states from using SCHIP money to cover children of middle income working families, but New Jersey and seven other states argue that Bush blindsided them by not going through proper rule making procedures.
• New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (D) says the new rule would jeapordize health insurance for 10,000 kids in New Jersey alone.
• Monday, officials from Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York and Washington promised to sue the Bush Administration if the President vetoes the SCHIP expansion, an expansion which Americans overwhelmingly support. [Washington Post]
• “SCHIP is an unqualified bipartisan success in New Jersey and in states across the nation, and the Bush Administration’s determination to pursue a course of action that will harm our children’s health is incomprehensible,” Governor Corzine said in a press release. [New Jersey]

Watch out, kids, the Bush Administration is coming.

Throwing Accountability Out With The Blackwater

The Story

• Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee (and known to us here at Mic Check as the Mustache of Justice), waded into the Blackwater mess yesterday with a hearing on capitol hill. [AP]
  
• Testifying? Erik Prince, founder and CEO of Blackwater, and three State Department Officials who are supposed to be overseeing the firm’s activities as a private security contractor in Iraq. [Salon]
• Blackwater has been under intense scrutiny since a convoy of their agents were involved in a shoot out in Baghdad that killed 20 Iraqi civilians two weeks ago. Blackwater insists that they were responding to an attack, but eyewitnesses and an Iraqi investigation found that “the contractors opened fire first, shooting at a small car driven by a couple with their child that did not get out of the convoy’s way as traffic slowed.”
• But the hearing yesterday did not directly address that incident (which is being investigated internally by the State Department and, now, the FBI). [AP]
  
• Instead, it focused on whether Blackwater and other military contractors are “a good deal for the American taxpayer” and whether the State Department acted as an “enabler” to Blackwater’s alleged reckless behavior. [AP]

Some facts about Blackwater:

• Blackwater employees have engaged in over 200 shootings since 2005, “in a vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded.” [NY Times]
• Blackwater has fired 122 employees — more than half for mishandling weapons, drug or alcohol violations, violent behavior and lying. This represents “one-seventh of the work force that Blackwater has in Iraq, a ratio that raises questions about the quality of the people working for the company.” [USA Today] [AP]
• Blackwater has earned more than $1 billion from federal contracts since 2001, when it had less than $1 million in government work. [AP]
• “Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day for the services of a private military contractor. This is equivalent to $445,000 per year, over six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier.” [House of Representatives]
• When faced with evidence of Blackwater employees causing civilian deaths, including one high profile case when an intoxicated Blackwater employee shot and killed an Iraqi guard, the State Department has not “restrained Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detain Blackwater contractors for investigation.” [House of Representatives]

The Audio

Eric Prince, CEO of Blackwater

• “Ever life, whether American or Iraqi, is precious. I stress to the committee and the American public, however, that I believe that we acted appropriately at all times.”
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• “If [the] government doesn’t want us to do this, we’ll go do something else.”
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Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA)

• “I can’t understand why a security officer that’s hired by Blackwater should be paid two or three times what our commander in Iraqi is paid.”
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• Hiring contractors is not saving us money: “...It’s costing us more money, and I believe it’s causing us problems with the Iraqi people.”
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• Waxman is sick of State Department stonewalling: “We’ve had a better response from Blackwater than we have from the State Department on getting information. Does that bother you as much as it bothers me?”
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Congressman John Tierney (D-MA)

• “Private contractors have allowed, essentially, this administration to add additional forces without paying any political capital.”
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Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

• On the Blackwater employee who was only fired and fined for drunkenly shooting a bodyguard for one of Iraq’s two vice presidents: “If he lived in America, he would’ve been arrested and he would be facing criminal charges. If he was a member of our military, he would be under a court marshal. But it appears to me, that Blackwater has special rules.”
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Time for some accountability. Mustache of Justice, do your thing.

Good News, Bad News

Remember that 90210 episode? That one where they get stuck in the mall? Turns out an artist in Rhode Island decided that life indeed imitated art and decided to take the gang from Beverley Hills jaunt to new lengths. Michael Townsend, 36, said he and seven other artists built a 750-square-foot apartment in a mall’s parking garage beginning in 2003 and lived there for up to three weeks at a time. He was just caught. Let’s check out the pros and cons. [ABC]

GOOD NEWS

Um, first dibs on sales, anyone?

BAD NEWS

Subsiding on Cinnabon for four years.

Quote Of The Day

Anita Hill responds to Justice Clarence Thomas’s new charges on ABC News.

• In the 16 years that have passedI’ve heard from so many people who say those hearings taught me, they allowed me to come forward, they allowed me to reconcile what happened in my life, and so with hindsight, I can’t think that I should have done anything differently.
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• When I testified in 1991, I was truthful. What I described happen actually did happen and what I’ve learned over the years is that it has happened to many people in the workplace. I don’t have the imagination to come up with the things that occurred to me. I wouldn’t even think of those things in talking about them and I certainly wouldn’t put myself in the position of testifying before the whole world about them.
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• I’m really concerned that the approach Clarence Thomas is taking now is really so typical of people who are accused of wrongdoing. They trash their accusers, they come up with characterizations that are as far from the truth as possible, and I don’t want this to become the model to how we react at workplace behavior.
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Speed Round

AUDIO: SMACKDOWN ON THE VIEW

The View’s Elizabeth Hasselbeck tries to tell Nancy Pelosi the surge is working, promptly meets the back of Pelosi’s hand.

AUDIO: TELL RUSH TO STOP TELLING LIES

In a new ad by Vote Vets, very real soldier Brian McGough tells Rush Limbaugh,"Until you have the guts to call me a “phony soldier” to my face, stop telling lies about my service.”

AUDIO: HATE RADIO

Conservative radio blowhard John DePetro, on why white people go to Harlem: “We’re talking about Harlem. And by and large — I lived in New York for years — white people don’t go to Harlem. If Dan Abrams and John DePetro, Bill O’Reilly, some white guys are sitting around a table, and Dan Abrams said, “Yeah, I was up in Harlem last night.” We would think you were either, a) looking for drugs, or, b) looking for a prostitute.”

[Media Matters]

AUDIO: BRITS BRINGING THEIR TROOPS HOME

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announces more British troops will be pulled out of Iraq, bringing the total from 5,500 in early September to 4,500 by the end of the year. [Reuters]

NICE TRY, CHERTY

Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has a wacky new rationale for a border fence: it’s good for the environment. “Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I’ve seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas. And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment.” [AP]

CLOSETED AND CORNERED

Local papers report that when Florida Rep. Bob Allen, he’ll find himself “shunned by colleagues and banished to a corner seat in the chamber near freshman Democrats.” His trial on charges of offering to give an undercover cop twenty bucks if he let him perform a sex act on him in a public park starts November 5. [Orlando Sentinel]

BUSH LEARNS AUSTRALIAN FOR “NO”

Australia, which still supports America’s war in Iraq, says they will refuse to participate in a war against Iran. [Xinhua]

VETOING CHILDREN

Dana Perino says Bush will veto the wildly popular expansion of children’s health insurance “quietly.” Ya think? [Think Progress]

3,500

Number of signatures, including those of 300 faculty, on a Stanford University petition protesting Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment to the university’s policy think tank. [CNN]

FAKE PROGRESS

Reuters reports that the minor drop in violence in Baghdad is more a result of “short-lived battlefield gains than progress resolving the country’s bitter conflicts.” [Reuters]

2

Number of hurricanes still expected this year, according to the Colorado State University hurricane research team. [Reuters]

LIFE STYLES OF THE RICH AND THE FEDERAL

A new GAO report shows that federal workers have been traveling in style...illegally. [USA Today]

30 PERCENT

A new UN report shows that violence in Afghanistan has spiked by 30 percent. [AP]

SPEAKING OF WHICH...

A suicide bomber has killed at least 12 in Kabul. [NY Times]

BLAME GLOBAL WARMING

More proof that, thanks to global warming, wildfires are just getting worse. [USA Today]