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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

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Congress Passes War Funds Bill, Ending Impasse
The measure does not set a date to withdraw troops but sets benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet.

Pablo on Politics

The World

Radical cleric al-Sadr arrives at mosque
BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months on Friday and delivered a fiery anti-American sermon in the holy Shiite city of Kufa.

Israeli air strike near Palestinian PM's home
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel carried out an air strike near the Gaza residence of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Friday but insisted he was not the target.

Israel grabs Hamas leaders in West Bank
NABLUS, West Bank - Israel rounded up a Palestinian Cabinet minister and 32 other Hamas leaders in the West Bank before dawn Thursday, trying a new tactic in its campaign to pressure the Islamic militant group into halting rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip.

Lebanese army gets foreign military aid
TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Military aid began arriving Friday after the United States said it will rush supplies to the Lebanese army fighting al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants barricaded inside a Palestinian refugee camp in the country's north.

Iran's president says nuclear work nearing "peak"
Iran's nuclear work is nearing a "peak," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday, while the U.N. atomic watchdog chief said Tehran was probably at least three years from making atom bombs even if it chose to do so.

North Korea fires short-range missiles: Kyodo
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea fired several short-range missiles on Friday morning, even as the United States sounded optimistic about getting six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme back on track.

The Nation

Dems: Fight over Iraq war has just begun
WASHINGTON - Democrats may have lost the first round with President Bush on ending the war in Iraq since taking over Congress in January, but they say their fight has just begun.

To End the Iraq War -- September Will Be Key
While we don't have the votes right now to change the president's policy, I believe that come September we will have the votes from both Democrats and Republicans to change policy and direction. In September, General Petraeus will report back on the progress of the surge, and Congress will take up both the $460 billion base defense appropriations bill and the $141 billion Iraq supplemental. The surge is not producing the results that were promised. And, based on my discussions with Iraqi Government officials, I don't believe they have the motivation to bring about the political and economic benchmarks agreed to. This is why September will be key.

Clinton, Obama vote 'no' on Iraq bill
WASHINGTON - Courting the anti-war constituency, Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted against legislation that pays for the Iraq war but lacks a timeline for troop withdrawal.

Bush opens the door to a troop withdrawal
WASHINGTON — President Bush said Thursday that once his troop buildup improved security in the Iraqi capital, he intended to follow the withdrawal plan proposed by a bipartisan study group, embracing recommendations previously spurned by the administration. Speaking at a White House news conference, Bush for the first time adopted the blueprint outlined in December by the Iraq Study Group, saying he envisioned U.S. troops gradually moving out of their combat role and into support and training functions.
I’ll believe it when I see it. —Caro

Marines fail to get gear to troops
WASHINGTON - The system for delivering badly needed gear to Marines in Iraq has failed to meet many urgent requests for equipment from troops in the field, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press.

Poll Shows View of Iraq War Is Most Negative Since Start
Sixty-one percent of Americans say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent say things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found. Still, the majority of Americans support continuing to finance the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals.

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

FYI: Political Preference Is Half Genetic
Whether you prefer Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann has to do with your genes and your psychology, according to a new study. People who are more conscientious and prefer order, structure and closure in their lives tend to be more conservative, whereas creative people who are open to new experiences tend to be more politically liberal, says John Jost, a psychologist at New York University.
But remember, we’re not slaves to our gut-level tendencies.—Caro

PROVING IT ALL WEEK LONG
It’s obvious how it’s going to go as the press corps pretends to discuss Al Gore’s book. Gore has said our discourse is broken—and our pundits are going to rush out to prove it… The scripts were all completely familiar. (Several had just done time in the Outlook section.) Gore is very, very angry—and he’s soooo ambitious. Not only that, he has “corrupted science,” the idiot Armey said (as he boo-hoo-hooed about the fact that Gore went to “Harvard or Yale or wherever”). And by the way: This was the full discussion of Gore’s new book. At no point did any one of these lads attempt to explain what the book actually says.

The Question of Right-Wing Terrorism
Pleading with corporate journalists to stop it, stop it right now. Stop pretending Islamicists—or environmentalists or animal rights activists (which are, ridiculously, federal law enforcement and non-governmental terrorism-watchers' next most obsessive concern)—are the only imminent terrorist threats to our nation. We now know that students at Liberty University were ready to napalm protesters at Jerry Falwell's funeral. One of the suspects is a soldier at Fort Benning.

Again ignoring U.S. attorney scandal, CBS Evening News did not report on Goodling's testimony
Continuing a pattern of ignoring developments in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys, the May 23 CBS Evening News with Katie Couric was the only network evening news broadcast that did not cover former Justice Department official Monica Goodling's May 23 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. During her testimony, Goodling stated that she may have "crossed the line" by taking "inappropriate political considerations into account" in hiring career Justice Department officials, potentially a violation of the law. Goodling, a former aide to Gonzales, also suggested that former Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty had lied under oath and that Gonzales may have done so as well during his testimony on the scandal.

CNN aired Bush assertion about Iraq three times in one hour without assessing its validity
President Bush's statement, "The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does," was aired three times in the 4 p.m. ET hour of the May 23 edition of CNN's The Situation Room. While host Wolf Blitzer invited Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards to respond to the statement at one point, at no point did he or other CNN personalities note that, as Media Matters for America has documented, the assertion that terrorists will "strike our homeland" following a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq is widely challenged by experts.

A Letter from Michael Moore: 'Sicko' is Socko in Cannes!
Friends, Well, as you may have read by now, our premiere of "Sicko" at the Cannes Film Festival has been an overwhelming success. The 2,000 people inside the Lumiere Theater were alternately in tears and laughing during the two-hour film -- and when it was over, they gave it a standing ovation that seemed to go on for nearly 15 minutes! Many came up to me and said (and critics seem to agree) that this is my best film yet.

Technology & Science

Traffic up on gasoline price Web sites
DENVER - The higher gasoline prices go, the more money business Web entrepreneur Jason Toews makes.

Sony develops film-thin display
TOKYO - In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.

A First: Brain Cell Seen While Developing
Using gene technology and a microscope to take time-lapse images over several days, the researchers watched as neural dendrites, the string-like extensions of the neuron that serve as points of contact and communication between neurons, developed in the olfactory bulb (an area that senses and discriminates among odors) of adult mice—something no other scientist has ever observed.

Infants Have 'Amazing Capabilities' That Adults Lack
Soon after birth, infants are keen and sophisticated generalists, capable of seeing details in the world that are visible to some other animals but invisible to adults, older children and even slightly older infants.

College Binge Drinking Related to Diminished Decision-Making Abilities
Adolescent brains particularly sensitive to alcohol's effects, study says

U.S. stops breeding chimps for research
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Institutes of Health, which supports a variety of biomedical studies using animals, will stop breeding government-owned chimpanzees for research -- a step animal rights advocates lauded on Thursday.

Environment

US carbon-dioxide emissions fell 1.3 percent in 2006
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels fell by 1.3 percent in 2006, the federal government said Wednesday, citing weather conditions and higher energy prices as factors.
Maybe, but the problem is that we can’t believe this administration any more. —Caro

Drought Lets Officials Remove Muck at Florida's Lake Okeechobee To Restore Habitat
State water and wildlife managers are taking advantage of an unprecedented drought by removing life-choking muck along Lake Okeechobee's shoreline. The 500,000 cubic yards of rotted, dead plant life and sediment -- enough to fill Dolphin Stadium from the field to its highest seat -- will be trucked from the lake starting Thursday.

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