Good Morning! - Morning Headlines

[Caro]

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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Top Story

Dems abandon war authority provision
WASHINGTON - Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.
Wrong move, Democrats. Bush will take this as a mandate to wage war on Iran. —Caro

The Illustrated Daily Scribble

The World

700 more U.S. soldiers arrive in troubled Diyala province
More than 700 additional U.S. troops arrived in Iraq's increasingly volatile Diyala province on Tuesday to try to quell burgeoning violence northeast of Baghdad during a security crackdown in the capital.

U.S., Iran hold direct talks on Iraq
In their first direct talks since the Iraq war began, U.S. and Iranian envoys traded harsh words and blamed each other for the country s crisis Saturday at a one-day international conference that some hoped would help end their 27-year diplomatic freeze.

Iraq Strains Under U.S. Deadlines
Iraq's fragile government is struggling to meet U.S.-imposed deadlines for political action, which are tied to crucial American military assistance. And the violence ? both a symptom and an impediment ? shows no signs of decreasing.

Syria says it wants talks with the U.S.
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria told a visiting U.S. State Department official Monday that it is willing to engage in "serious" dialogue with Washington on all Middle East issues, just days after both countries attended a conference in Baghdad on restoring security to Iraq.

The Nation

U.S. military plans Iraq fallback strategy: report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military planners have begun work on a fallback strategy in case the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq fails, including a gradual pullout of U.S. forces and more emphasis on training and advising Iraqi forces, the Los Angeles Times reported in Monday's editions.

White House mulled firing all prosecutors
WASHINGTON - The White House considered firing all 93 federal prosecutors at the start of President Bush's second term, but yielded to Justice Department objections and eventually agreed to a smaller list of dismissals compiled by Justice officials, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Maybe, but this assertion neatly fits the right-wing talking point that Clinton had all prosecutors resign when he took office. All presidents do that, but none so far has done the kind of purge for political reasons that this one has done. But it never matters to right wingers that their arguments make no sense. —Caro

Top general: Homosexuality is immoral
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Well, Gen. Pace, I think it’s immoral to send our troops to die for someone else’s enrichment. But I don’t see you objecting to that. —Caro

Ex-chief urges FDA to mine databases
WASHINGTON - Safety problems with Vioxx could have been detected in months rather than years if the Food and Drug Administration had been able to sift through health-care information already compiled privately on one in three Americans.
There’s always a good-sounding reason for destroying more of our civil liberties. —Caro

Economy & Business

Japan aims to raise minimum wage to boost economy
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's cabinet on Tuesday approved an updated minimum wage bill, the first major revision in nearly 40 years, as part of the government's efforts to close the gap between between (sic) rich and poor and boost economic growth.
That’s odd. Right wingers here say that increasing the minimum wage puts a drag on the economy. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. —Caro

Study Says Computers Give Big Boosts to Productivity
Money spent on computing technology delivers gains in worker productivity that are three to five times those of other investments, a new study said.

Media

The Libby Verdict, And Its Fallout, Lead the News: March 4 - 9, 2007
The battle in Iraq is still dominating the nation’s news coverage, but in different ways than it used to. While media attention on the political debate over troop strength has waned, a high-profile criminal trial and a riveting newspaper investigation have focused attention on different aspects of the controversial war.

If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative
In a new report by Media Matters for America -- If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative: How the Right Continues to Dominate the Sunday Talk Shows, we show that the Sunday shows -- Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- have consistently given Republicans and conservatives an edge over their Democratic and progressive counterparts in the last two years, the period of the 109th Congress. And, as our analysis shows, the recent shift in power in Washington has yielded mixed results, at best.

Lancing The Boil
If the (Libby) trial did nothing else it showed the sickeningly parasitic relationship between many in the press and the Republicans… A reporter's privilege should not be used to help powerful people in government lie to the public about what it's doing or punish its enemies for speaking out against it. It exists to protect people who are risking their livlihoods by speaking out against those same powerful people. This is not hard for rational people to understand and yet in Washington they are so confused by their relationships with the powerful that they seem to be speaking in tongues on this issue.

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial
"What happens? One blog puts more boots on the ground than any commercial news operation. The writers bring more background, savvy and commitment to the case. And they dominate in coverage of a big news event. Journalists themselves use it to keep up and get their bearings."

Technology & Science

Few woes mark computers' daylight shift
This weekend's early switch to daylight-saving time was billed as a little re-enactment of the Y2K computer problem at the turn of the millennium. And as it happened, the daylight bug appeared to have equally minor results.

U.S. Sets Rules for Digital TV Payments
The government will offer households as much as $80 to convert TVs to receive digital broadcasts before the end of analog broadcasts in 2009.

Environment

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype
Some scientists argue that a number of central points in Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” are exaggerated and erroneous.
And would those scientists be paid by ExxonMobil? —Caro

Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds
Solar activity can affect Earth's climate, but the idea that the current global warming trend is fueled by the sun is "nuts," one researcher says.

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