Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday October 7 2006 - (813)

Saturday October 7 2006 edition
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Staffer Cites Earlier Role In Foley Matter By Hastert 2006-10-07 00:56:02 House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said Friday. The staff member said Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley's behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Illinois) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy. The staff member's account buttresses the position of Foley's onetime chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, who said earlier this week that he had appealed to Palmer in 2003 or earlier to intervene, after Fordham's own efforts to stop Foley's behavior had failed. Fordham said Foley and Palmer, one of the most powerful figures in the House of Representatives, met within days to discuss the allegations. Read The Full Story Google Willing To Spend $1.6 Billion To Acquire You Tube 2006-10-07 00:53:01 YouTube, the popular video-sharing Website that has yet to celebrate its first anniversary or its first profit, is quickly becoming the must-have prize for media and technology giants. Google is in discussions to acquire YouTube for $1.6 billion, people involved in the talks said Friday. While the talks are in the early stages, and may fall apart, the size of Google's offer may push YouTube closer to a deal. Other companies have also expressed interest and could swoop in with a higher offer. Microsoft, Yahoo, Viacom and the News Corporation, among others, have all visited YouTube's headquarters in San Mateo, California, in recent months to inquire about buying the company. Read The Full Story Investigators Believe Botulism Case Linked To Carrot Juice 2006-10-07 00:52:09 Investigators believe botulism toxin from bottled carrot juice paralyzed a woman, the fourth person thought to be poisoned by bacteria in the drink. The unidentified woman is unresponsive and has been hospitalized since mid-September, said Jylmarie Kintz, epidemiologist for the Hillsborough County Health Department. Three people in Georgia experienced respiratory failure and remain hospitalized on ventilators since drinking the bottled carrot juice a month ago, according to federal officials. Read The Full Story Opinion: A Special Commentary About Lying 2006-10-06 20:39:34 Intellpuke: The following special commentary on lying is by Countdown host Keith Olbermann. It aired on his MSNBC program Thursday, Oct. 5. In it, Mr. Olbermann said some things that needed saying, at least in my humble opinion, so I thought his commentary merited a broader readership. Some of you won't like what Mr. Olbermann had to say, some of you will say, "At last!" or words to that effect. As for me, I just want to thank Mr. Olbermann for exercising his right to free speech in a straightforward and intelligent manner. Mr. Olbermann's commentary follows: While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ... While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover ... The president of the United States - unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality - has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats. Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, "177 of the opposition party said, 'You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists'." The hell they did. One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president's seizure of another part of the Constitution. Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn't be listening to the conversations of terrorists. President Bush hears what he wants. Read The Full Story Florida Catholic Diocese, Victim Advocates Urge Foley To Name Alleged Abuser 2006-10-06 20:37:45 The Roman Catholic diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, and national advocacy groups for victims of sexual abuse called yesterday for former representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) to give police the name of the clergyman who allegedly abused him as a teenager. "He should absolutely report the perpetrator, living or dead," said David Clohessy, national director of the 7,000-member Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "He should do it now, not when his civil lawyer says it is convenient. Every day that a molester walks free is a day when he can hurt other kids." Foley's attorney, David Roth, told reporters Tuesday that the former congressman, who was raised as a Catholic, was molested by a clergyman when he was 13 to 15 years old, but Roth did not name the clergyman, and Palm Beach police said they have not received any report of the abuse. Alexis Walkenstein, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach diocese, said Foley has not reported the abuse to local Catholic Church officials, either. Read The Full Story 16,000 Asked To Evacuate U.S. Industrial Plant Fire Area 2006-10-06 00:22:51 Authorities asked about 16,000 residents to evacuate the Raleigh, North Carolina, suburb of Apex early Friday after a hazardous material fire at an industrial plant. No injuries were immediately reported, although a spokeswoman for Rex Hospital in Raleigh said the hospital expected to receive as many as 11 people needing oxygen. Officials said the fire started around 10 p.m. Thursday at EQ Industrial Services, a hazardous waste business that town manager Bruce Radford said contained a variety of volatile chemicals, including chlorine. Radford said that when he arrived at the plant, a chlorine cloud rose 50 feet in the air. He estimated that 20 to 30 explosions had occurred. Read The Full Story Appeals Court Blocks Arizona Voter I.D. Law 2006-10-06 00:21:46 A federal appellate court has blocked the enforcement of an Arizona law that requires voters to show identification before casting a ballot and submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday came a month before the Nov. 7 general election, and just before Monday's deadline to register. The law had already been used for the Sept. 12 primary and in some municipal elections. The 2004 law requires that voters at polling places produce government-issued picture I.D. or two pieces of other non-photo identification specified by the law. Other parts of the law dealt with ineligibility of illegal immigrants to receive some government services and benefits. Critics said that the law would disenfranchise voters, particularly minorities and the elderly, and that requiring voters to acquire and produce identification would be burdensome in time, money and effort. Read The Full Story Big Government Gets Bigger 2006-10-06 00:20:09 The federal government keeps getting bigger. The Republican Party's oft-stated affinity for smaller government has not applied during the Bush administration. According to a recent study, not only is the number of federal civil servants on the rise, but so are the numbers of employees working for government-funded contractors and for organizations that receive government grants. Roll all of those together - and mix in the numbers of postal workers and military personnel on the federal payroll - and the "true size" of the federal government stands at 14.6 million employees, said Paul C. Light, the study's author and a government professor at New York University. Read The Full Story	GAO: Thousands Wrongly On U.S. Terror List 2006-10-07 00:53:24 Thousands of people have been mistakenly linked to names on terror watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, a U.S. government report said Friday. More than 30,000 airline passengers have asked just one agency - the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - to have their names cleared from the lists, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Hundreds of millions of people each year are screened against the lists by Customs and Border Protection, the State Department and state and local law enforcement agencies. The lists include names of people suspected of terrorism or of possibly having links to terrorist activity. Read The Full Story Inquest Told ITN Reporter Was Shot By U.S. Soldiers 2006-10-07 00:52:34 British ITN reporter Terry Lloyd was shot in the head by American troops as he was being driven to the hospital, the inquest into his death was told Friday. An account by an Iraqi witness claimed Lloyd was still alive after the original attack on his car but was killed by U.S. troops as he was driven from the scene. The unnamed driver's account, which was read out by the deputy assistant coroner for Oxfordshire, Andrew Walker, at the inquest in Oxford, gave new details of the last moments of Mr. Lloyd's life. It also came to light that British forces witnessed the events of March 22, 2003, in which Lloyd and his interpreter, Hussein Osman, died and his French cameraman, Fred Nerac, went missing near Basra in southern Iraq. Read The Full Story Bush Balks At Criteria For FEMA Director 2006-10-06 20:40:07 President Bush reserved the right to ignore key changes in Congress's overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - including a requirement to appoint someone with experience handling disasters as the agency's head - in setting aside dozens of provisions contained in a major homeland security spending bill this week. Besides objecting to Congress's list of qualifications for FEMA's director, the White House also claimed the right to edit or withhold reports to Congress by a watchdog agency within the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for protecting Americans' personal privacy. The standards for the FEMA director were inspired by criticism of former FEMA chief Michael D. Brown's performance after Hurricane Katrina last year. Brown, a lawyer and judge of Arabian horses, had no experience in disaster response before joining FEMA. Read The Full Story Rove Aide Linked To Abramoff Resigns 2006-10-06 20:38:33 A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday after disclosures that she accepted gifts and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal. Susan B. Ralston submitted her resignation to avoid causing political damage for President Bush a month before the midterm elections, said officials. "She did not want to be a distraction to the White House at this important time," said White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino. A congressional report showed last week that Ralston accepted sometimes-pricey tickets to nine sports and entertainment events from Abramoff while she provided him with inside White House information. The bipartisan report said there was no evidence that Rove knew of or approved of Ralston's actions, and sources said Friday that the White House was surprised by the report's revelations. Read The Full Story Congress Adds Last-Minute Loopholes To Border Fence Plan 2006-10-06 00:23:18 No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts. GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections. But shortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects - not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of a "virtual fence." Read The Full Story Bush Environmental Policy Irks Judges In West 2006-10-06 00:22:25 Using language that suggests they are fed up with the Bush administration, federal judges across the West have issued a flurry of rulings in recent weeks, chastising the government for repeated and sometimes willful failure to enforce laws protecting fish, forests, wildlife and clean air. In decisions in Oregon, California, Montana and Wyoming, judges have criticized the judgment, expertise and, in some cases, integrity of the federal agencies that manage natural resources on public lands. The rulings come at a time when an emerging bipartisan coalition of western politicians, hunters, anglers and homeowners has joined conservation groups in objecting to the rapid pace and environmental consequences of President Bush's policies for energy extraction on federal land. Read The Full Story Thousands Nationwide Protest Bush 2006-10-06 00:20:40 Hundreds of people called the Bush administration's policies a crime and held up yellow police tape in front of the White House on Thursday amid a nationwide day of protest against the president. The 500 demonstrators were among many who gathered for similar events in more than 200 cities to protest Bush on issues ranging from global warming to the war in Iraq. "We are turning the corner in bringing forward a mass movement of resistance to drive out the Bush regime," said organizer Travis Morales with the activist group World Can't Wait. Read The Full Story Senator: U.S. Should Rethink Iraq Strategy 2006-10-06 00:17:43 The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq was "drifting sideways" and said that the United States should consider a "change of course" if violence did not diminish soon. The chairman, Senator John W. Warner, of Virginia, expressed particular concern that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had not moved decisively against sectarian militias. "In two or three months if this thing hasn't come to fruition and this level of violence is not under control, I think it's a responsibility of our government to determine: Is there a change of course we should take?" said Senator Warner. Read The Full Story
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