Opinion
Karl Rove Escapes Prosecution David Corn
Tue Jun 13, 12:10 PM ET
The Nation -- Early this morning, Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer, told reporters that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had sent him a letter stating that Rove would not be indicted in the CIA leak case. In a statement, Luskin declared, "We believe that the Special Counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."
Bush administration (and Rove) advocates will spin this news as vindication for the mastermind of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns. But there is no need for baseless speculation to conclude that Rove was involved in the leak and that the White House misled the public about his participation and broke a pledge to fire anyone who had leaked information about Valerie Wilson, the CIA officer married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration.
Here is what is known about Rove and the leak.
On July 9, 2003--three days after Joe Wilson published a New York Times op-ed piece disclosing that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to check out the allegation that Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium there and had reported back that such a transaction was highly unlikely--Rove confirmed to columnist Robert Novak that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. By this point in time, the White House--particularly Dick Cheney's office and Scooter Libby--had been gathering information on Wilson, his wife, and his trip for weeks. (In May and June, stories had appeared in the media quoting an unnamed ambassador who had gone to Niger and found nothing to substantiate the uranium-buying charge, which Bush had alleged in his 2003 State of the Union address.) And when Rove spoke to Novak--who had first heard about Valerie Wilson from another administration official--the White House was engaged in an effort to discredit Wilson. Cheney and others believed that if Wilson's mission to Niger could be depicted as a junket or boondoggle arranged by Wilson's wife, Wilson and his findings would be undermined. Spending a week in one of the poorest countries in the world for no pay would hardly qualify as a junket, but the White House was trying to use whatever they could.
Two days after Rove spoke to Novak and gave the columnist the confirmation he needed to proceed with a piece that would out Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA officer working on weapons of mass destruction, Rove spoke to Matt Cooper of Time. According to an email Cooper wrote immediately after this conversation, Rove told him that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and had sent Wilson to Niger. This conversation occurred three days before the Novak article appeared
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060613/cm_thenation/391184
House OKs more aid for Iraq, Afghanistan
ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - As President Bush sought to bolster support for the Iraq government by appearing with its leaders in Baghdad, the House on Tuesday approved an additional $66 billion for military operations there and in Afghanistan.
When combined with earlier bills, the House-Senate compromise brings the tally for the three-year-old war in Iraq to about $320 billion. Operations in Afghanistan have now reached about $89 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The House Appropriations Committee approved another $50 billion for the war for the budget year starting Oct. 1. That should be enough to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year, when Bush is expected to request more funds.
The $94.5 billion measure also provides funds for hurricane relief, bird flu preparations and border security at home.
The bill, which passed by a 351-67 vote, had only minimal debate Monday night.
Democrats said the huge cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions is being handled on the installment plan, hiding the cost from the public.
"In 18 separate actions, we will now have spent $450 billion on this adventure," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "This is a huge expenditure for a misguided war."
"This bill ensures we give (U.S. troops) all of the equipment and resources necessary to successfully fight and win the Global War on Terror," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The bill contains almost $20 billion to further deal with the hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. Much of the money would go to Louisiana for housing aid, flood control projects and a new veterans hospital in New Orleans.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/breaking_news/14808346.htm
Murtha :
WASHINGTON Jun 13, 2006 (AP)— Rep. John Murtha, a candidate for House majority leader if the Democrats oust the Republicans from power in November, said Tuesday will not actively campaign for that post until after the elections.
"I've put a placeholder in place by making myself available as a candidate," the Pennsylvania Democrat said in an interview with AP Radio. "I've talked to a lot of people. I'm encouraged, but I'm willing to suspend it if it diverts from my major reason: that's winning the House back." Murtha gave no indication that he was considering withdrawing from the party race.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Murtha was suspending his campaign "in the spirit of unity to achieve our goal of winning a Democratic majority in November."
Murtha, a pro-military Democrat who has gained prominence in recent months by leading his party in demanding an early troop withdrawal from Iraq, last week said he would seek the majority leader post if the Democrats regain the majority they lost in 1994. The party must gain 15 seats in the election to accomplish that.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2072447
Coffee may help to protect liver
[Posted: Tue 13/06/2006]
Drinking coffee could help to protect against alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, the results of a new study indicate.
A team of US researchers followed the progress of over 125,000 people who had undergone a medical exam between 1978 and 1985. At the time of the exam, none had diagnosed liver disease.
The participants filled out a questionnaire detailing how much coffee, tea and alcohol they drank per day. By the end of 2001, 330 had been diagnosed with liver disease, including 199 with alcohol-related cirrhosis.
According to the researchers, the more coffee a person consumed, the less likely they were to develop alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver.
"Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis and the more coffee a person consumes, the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis. We did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic drinks", explained one of the researchers, Dr Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente's division of research.
However Dr Klatsky emphasised that this 'is not a recommendation to drink coffee'.
"Nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee. The value of this study is that it may offer us some clues as to the biochemical processes taking place inside liver cells that could help in finding new ways to protect the liver against injury", he said.
The research team found that people who drank one cup of coffee a day were, on average, 20% less likely to have alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two to three cups of coffee, the reduction was 40%, while for those drinking four or more cups, the reduction in risk was 80%.
"Even allowing for statistical variation, this shows there is a clear association between coffee consumption and protection against alcoholic cirrhosis", said Dr Klatsky.
The researchers added that as they did not see a similar protective effect among tea drinkers, there may be something in coffee other than just caffeine that helps protect against alcoholic cirrhosis.
Details of these findings are published in the Archives of Internal Medicin
http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=9684
Canadians fatter than previously thought
ANNE-MARIE TOBIN
Canadian Press
Ottawa — The expanding waistlines of Canadians are nothing new – obesity has been one of the country's biggest health problems for years now – but a new Statistics Canada survey indicates that the population is actually fatter than previously thought.
The reason? It seems that when a survey simply asks a respondent for their height and weight, the results are not the same as when people are actually weighed and measured.
Detailed data released Tuesday as part of the Canadian Community Health Survey of more than 130,000 people indicate that the national obesity rate in 2005 was 15.5 per cent. But that rate is based on people who volunteer their own weight and height.
The survey also did a smaller sample of 4,000 people who were put on a scale and had their height measured by a Statistics Canada interviewer.
The results are interesting not only to health-care officials, but may also be of interest to sociologists. Because men tended to overestimate their height and women generally underestimate their weight, Statistics Canada says an extrapolation of the people who were measured works out to a national obesity rate of 24.3 per cent.
Dr. Arya Sharma, scientific director of the newly established Canadian Obesity Network, said some people offering their own heights and weights "might be making true mistakes, not knowing."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060613.whealfat0613/BNStory/National/home
Mystery US mad cow cases
June 13, 2006
WASHINGTON: A mysterious strain of mad cow disease that can appear spontaneously in cattle appears to be responsible for two cases in Texas and Alabama.
Government officials are trying to play down differences between the two cases and the mad cow epidemic that has led to the slaughter of thousands of cattle in Britain since the 1980s.
But it is these differences that are complicating efforts to understand the brain-wasting disorder, properly known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
The cows in Texas and Alabama appear to have had an atypical strain that scientists are only now starting to identify. Such cases have been described in about a dozen cows in France, Italy and other European countries, as well as in Japan.
In the two US cases, researchers did not detect the telltale spongy lesions caused by prions, the misfolded proteins that deposit plaque on the brain and kill brain cells.
In addition, the prions in brain tissue samples from the Texas and Alabama cows seemed to be distributed differently from those that would be expected to be found in cows with the classic form.
French laboratory studies on mice showed that the classic and atypical strains could be spread from one animal to another. But scientists theorise the atypical strain might have infected cattle through an unusual way.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19453307-23289,00.html
Ontario to Investigate Torture Allegations
Josh Pringle
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Ontario's Correctional Services Minister says he's comfortable that guards are following normal procedures with accused terrorists.
Monte Kwinter says his ministry will look into accusations of mistreatment of 17 accused terrorists.
Lawyers for several of the suspects complain that confining their clients in small cells with the lights on 24 hours a day amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Kwinter denies lawyers claims the accused are awakened every half hour by guards and are only given five minutes to eat meals.
http://www.cfra.com/headlines/index.asp?cat=2&nid=40053
Karl Rove Escapes Prosecution David Corn
Tue Jun 13, 12:10 PM ET
The Nation -- Early this morning, Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer, told reporters that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had sent him a letter stating that Rove would not be indicted in the CIA leak case. In a statement, Luskin declared, "We believe that the Special Counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."
Bush administration (and Rove) advocates will spin this news as vindication for the mastermind of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns. But there is no need for baseless speculation to conclude that Rove was involved in the leak and that the White House misled the public about his participation and broke a pledge to fire anyone who had leaked information about Valerie Wilson, the CIA officer married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration.
Here is what is known about Rove and the leak.
On July 9, 2003--three days after Joe Wilson published a New York Times op-ed piece disclosing that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to check out the allegation that Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium there and had reported back that such a transaction was highly unlikely--Rove confirmed to columnist Robert Novak that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. By this point in time, the White House--particularly Dick Cheney's office and Scooter Libby--had been gathering information on Wilson, his wife, and his trip for weeks. (In May and June, stories had appeared in the media quoting an unnamed ambassador who had gone to Niger and found nothing to substantiate the uranium-buying charge, which Bush had alleged in his 2003 State of the Union address.) And when Rove spoke to Novak--who had first heard about Valerie Wilson from another administration official--the White House was engaged in an effort to discredit Wilson. Cheney and others believed that if Wilson's mission to Niger could be depicted as a junket or boondoggle arranged by Wilson's wife, Wilson and his findings would be undermined. Spending a week in one of the poorest countries in the world for no pay would hardly qualify as a junket, but the White House was trying to use whatever they could.
Two days after Rove spoke to Novak and gave the columnist the confirmation he needed to proceed with a piece that would out Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA officer working on weapons of mass destruction, Rove spoke to Matt Cooper of Time. According to an email Cooper wrote immediately after this conversation, Rove told him that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and had sent Wilson to Niger. This conversation occurred three days before the Novak article appeared
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060613/cm_thenation/391184
House OKs more aid for Iraq, Afghanistan
ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - As President Bush sought to bolster support for the Iraq government by appearing with its leaders in Baghdad, the House on Tuesday approved an additional $66 billion for military operations there and in Afghanistan.
When combined with earlier bills, the House-Senate compromise brings the tally for the three-year-old war in Iraq to about $320 billion. Operations in Afghanistan have now reached about $89 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The House Appropriations Committee approved another $50 billion for the war for the budget year starting Oct. 1. That should be enough to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year, when Bush is expected to request more funds.
The $94.5 billion measure also provides funds for hurricane relief, bird flu preparations and border security at home.
The bill, which passed by a 351-67 vote, had only minimal debate Monday night.
Democrats said the huge cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions is being handled on the installment plan, hiding the cost from the public.
"In 18 separate actions, we will now have spent $450 billion on this adventure," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "This is a huge expenditure for a misguided war."
"This bill ensures we give (U.S. troops) all of the equipment and resources necessary to successfully fight and win the Global War on Terror," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The bill contains almost $20 billion to further deal with the hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. Much of the money would go to Louisiana for housing aid, flood control projects and a new veterans hospital in New Orleans.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/breaking_news/14808346.htm
Murtha :
WASHINGTON Jun 13, 2006 (AP)— Rep. John Murtha, a candidate for House majority leader if the Democrats oust the Republicans from power in November, said Tuesday will not actively campaign for that post until after the elections.
"I've put a placeholder in place by making myself available as a candidate," the Pennsylvania Democrat said in an interview with AP Radio. "I've talked to a lot of people. I'm encouraged, but I'm willing to suspend it if it diverts from my major reason: that's winning the House back." Murtha gave no indication that he was considering withdrawing from the party race.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Murtha was suspending his campaign "in the spirit of unity to achieve our goal of winning a Democratic majority in November."
Murtha, a pro-military Democrat who has gained prominence in recent months by leading his party in demanding an early troop withdrawal from Iraq, last week said he would seek the majority leader post if the Democrats regain the majority they lost in 1994. The party must gain 15 seats in the election to accomplish that.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2072447
Coffee may help to protect liver
[Posted: Tue 13/06/2006]
Drinking coffee could help to protect against alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, the results of a new study indicate.
A team of US researchers followed the progress of over 125,000 people who had undergone a medical exam between 1978 and 1985. At the time of the exam, none had diagnosed liver disease.
The participants filled out a questionnaire detailing how much coffee, tea and alcohol they drank per day. By the end of 2001, 330 had been diagnosed with liver disease, including 199 with alcohol-related cirrhosis.
According to the researchers, the more coffee a person consumed, the less likely they were to develop alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver.
"Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis and the more coffee a person consumes, the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis. We did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic drinks", explained one of the researchers, Dr Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente's division of research.
However Dr Klatsky emphasised that this 'is not a recommendation to drink coffee'.
"Nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee. The value of this study is that it may offer us some clues as to the biochemical processes taking place inside liver cells that could help in finding new ways to protect the liver against injury", he said.
The research team found that people who drank one cup of coffee a day were, on average, 20% less likely to have alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two to three cups of coffee, the reduction was 40%, while for those drinking four or more cups, the reduction in risk was 80%.
"Even allowing for statistical variation, this shows there is a clear association between coffee consumption and protection against alcoholic cirrhosis", said Dr Klatsky.
The researchers added that as they did not see a similar protective effect among tea drinkers, there may be something in coffee other than just caffeine that helps protect against alcoholic cirrhosis.
Details of these findings are published in the Archives of Internal Medicin
http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=9684
Canadians fatter than previously thought
ANNE-MARIE TOBIN
Canadian Press
Ottawa — The expanding waistlines of Canadians are nothing new – obesity has been one of the country's biggest health problems for years now – but a new Statistics Canada survey indicates that the population is actually fatter than previously thought.
The reason? It seems that when a survey simply asks a respondent for their height and weight, the results are not the same as when people are actually weighed and measured.
Detailed data released Tuesday as part of the Canadian Community Health Survey of more than 130,000 people indicate that the national obesity rate in 2005 was 15.5 per cent. But that rate is based on people who volunteer their own weight and height.
The survey also did a smaller sample of 4,000 people who were put on a scale and had their height measured by a Statistics Canada interviewer.
The results are interesting not only to health-care officials, but may also be of interest to sociologists. Because men tended to overestimate their height and women generally underestimate their weight, Statistics Canada says an extrapolation of the people who were measured works out to a national obesity rate of 24.3 per cent.
Dr. Arya Sharma, scientific director of the newly established Canadian Obesity Network, said some people offering their own heights and weights "might be making true mistakes, not knowing."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060613.whealfat0613/BNStory/National/home
Mystery US mad cow cases
June 13, 2006
WASHINGTON: A mysterious strain of mad cow disease that can appear spontaneously in cattle appears to be responsible for two cases in Texas and Alabama.
Government officials are trying to play down differences between the two cases and the mad cow epidemic that has led to the slaughter of thousands of cattle in Britain since the 1980s.
But it is these differences that are complicating efforts to understand the brain-wasting disorder, properly known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.
The cows in Texas and Alabama appear to have had an atypical strain that scientists are only now starting to identify. Such cases have been described in about a dozen cows in France, Italy and other European countries, as well as in Japan.
In the two US cases, researchers did not detect the telltale spongy lesions caused by prions, the misfolded proteins that deposit plaque on the brain and kill brain cells.
In addition, the prions in brain tissue samples from the Texas and Alabama cows seemed to be distributed differently from those that would be expected to be found in cows with the classic form.
French laboratory studies on mice showed that the classic and atypical strains could be spread from one animal to another. But scientists theorise the atypical strain might have infected cattle through an unusual way.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19453307-23289,00.html
Ontario to Investigate Torture Allegations
Josh Pringle
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Ontario's Correctional Services Minister says he's comfortable that guards are following normal procedures with accused terrorists.
Monte Kwinter says his ministry will look into accusations of mistreatment of 17 accused terrorists.
Lawyers for several of the suspects complain that confining their clients in small cells with the lights on 24 hours a day amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Kwinter denies lawyers claims the accused are awakened every half hour by guards and are only given five minutes to eat meals.
http://www.cfra.com/headlines/index.asp?cat=2&nid=40053
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