Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday November 8 2006 - (813)

Wednesday November 8 2006 edition
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Analysis: A Voter Rebuke For Bush, Iraq War 2006-11-08 00:45:37 Intellpuke: The Democrats have gained a net four seats in the U.S. Senate and need a net gain of six seats to have the majority there. As I write this, the Senate races in Virginia and Montana are too close to call and, apparently, hold the key to whether the Republicans or Democrats will have the Senate  majority. The following news analysis is by Washington Post staff writers Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei. The political pendulum in American politics swung away from the right yesterday, putting an end to the 12-year Republican Revolution on Capitol Hill and delivering a sharp rebuke of President Bush and the Iraq war. The GOP reign in the House that began with Newt Gingrich in a burst of vision and confrontation in 1994 came crashing down amid voter disaffection with congressional corruption. The collapse of one-party rule in Washington will transform Bush's final two years in office and challenge Democrats to make the leap from angry opposition to partners in power. How far the balance shifts to the left remains to be seen. The passion of the antiwar movement helped propel party activists in this election year, and the House leadership under the likely new speaker, Nancy Pelosi  (D-California), hails from the party's liberal wing. But the Democrats' victory was built on the back of more centrist candidates seizing Republican-leaning districts, and Pelosi emphasized that she will try to lead without becoming the ideological mirror of Gingrich. "We have learned from watching the Republicans - they would not allow moderates a voice in their party," Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) said in an interview as he waited to see if Democrats would take control of the upper chamber as well. "We must work from the middle." Read The Full Story Al-Qaeda Terrorist Gets Life Sentence From British Court 2006-11-07 19:39:06 A terrorist who plotted carnage on a colossal and unprecedented scale on both sides of the Atlantic was jailed for at least 40 years yesterday by a judge who said his plans struck at the heart of democracy. Dhiren Barot, 34, regarded as one of the most senior al-Qaeda figures British security agencies have dealt with, wanted to kill thousands of people in a series of atrocities in the U.K. and U.S. He was arrested in August 2004 but only admitted conspiracy to murder last month. Barot, a convert to Islam, was sentenced to life imprisonment at Woolwich crown court in south-east London Tuesday, and will not even be considered for parole until he is 74. Justice Butterfield said Barot was a "determined and dedicated terrorist". "This was no noble cause," the judge said. "Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery, first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the U.K. on a colossal and unprecedented scale. "Your intention was not simply to cause damage, panic and fear. Your intention was to murder, but it went further. It was designed to strike at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state, and if successful, would have affected thousands personally, millions indirectly and ultimately the whole nation of the U.S. and the U.K." Read The Full Story Power Balance In Flux As Some Races Are Called 2006-11-07 19:04:29 Americans voted today in midterm elections that were widely seen as a gauge of public sentiment on national issues - including the war in Iraq and the leadership of President Bush - as Democrats mounted their strongest challenge to Republican control of Congress in a dozen years. Democrats needed to pick up 15 Republican seats to gain a majority in the House and six GOP seats in the Senate to take control in that chamber. By 9 p.m., Democrats had wrested two Senate seats from Republicans. In Pennsylvania, Democratic challenger Bob Casey knocked off Republican incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum in a closely watched race. In Ohio, Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown ousted two-term incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine. The first of the Republican House seats to fall into the Democratic column was in Indiana, where Rep. John N. Hostettler was beaten by challenger Brad Ellsworth. Read The Full Story L.A. Times Editor Baquet Fired Tribune Co. 2006-11-07 19:03:39 Embattled Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet has been forced out of his job by parent company Tribune Co. after refusing to cut further newsroom jobs, according to staffers at the paper. The departure comes one month after former Times publisher Jeff Johnson was fired by Tribune for siding with Baquet and refusing to make more cuts. The Times and Tribune, like all major newspaper companies, have watched ad revenue and circulation slide in recent years, as readers turn to television and the Internet for news and information. Tribune had demanded the Times cut its newsroom staff, which was close to 1,200 five years ago but is now about 940 people. "I can't imagine how you could ruin the reputation of a paper and kill morale more quickly in one fell swoop" than to fire Baquet, said one Times staffer in the paper's Washington bureau. "We're all just dumbstruck." Read The Full Story Exit Polls: Iraq War, Scandals Overshadow Election 2006-11-07 17:16:52 Democrats challenged Republicans for control of Congress during President Bush’s final two years in office Tuesday in elections shadowed by an unpopular war in Iraq and scandal at home. Thirty-six states elected governors, from Maine to California. All 435 House seats were on the ballot along with 33 Senate races, elections that Democrats sought to make a referendum on the president’s handling of the war, the economy and more. As polls started closing at 7 p.m. ET, NBC projected Republican incumbent Richard Lugar the winner in Indiana’s Senate race, and Independent candidate Bernie Sanders the winner in Vermont’s Senate race. Read The Full Story In Early Balloting Voter Turnout Brisk, Record Numbers Vote Absentee 2006-11-07 12:26:06 Polls opened around the nation today in midterm elections that have become a gauge of sentiment on the war in Iraq and could leave President Bush facing an opposition Congress for his final two years in office. Lines developed quickly at polls in Ohio, Maryland, Virginia and other states with competitive races, as Democrats pushed for gains across the board and Republicans hoped a last-minute campaign and turnout push will leave them in control of both chambers. Thirty-three Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives are on the ballot. Thirty-six states will choose a governor. Record numbers of absentee ballots were already in hand in some states, including Maryland, and election officials across the country were crossing their fingers that difficulty with electronic voting and other systems - recurrent since President Bush's first victory in 2000 - could be avoided this time. Read The Full Story Bush Facing Judgment Day 2006-11-07 00:10:23 America votes today in congressional elections that could turn George Bush into a "lame duck" President for his final two years of office, as well as having profound consequences for the future course of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and beyond. Democrats remain hopeful that they can seize control of the House of Representatives by making a net gain of 15 seats out of 435 being contested. Polls suggest that they have established clear leads in 13 districts, while a further 15 are judged as too close to call. Some pundits believe that the Democrats could gain as many as 40 to 50 seats as they ride a wave of voter angers against Bush and the Iraq war. Read The Full Story 1 Dead As Heavy Flooding Hits Washington State 2006-11-07 00:09:21 A windy Pacific storm dumped heavy rain Monday on western Washington, killing at least one person, prompting warnings of record flooding and forcing rescues by the National Guard. A 20-year-old elk hunter from Seattle died when his pickup truck was swept into the Cowlitz River in southwest Washington, said authorities. Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a state of emergency for 18 counties, authorizing the National Guard to activate and the state Emergency Management Division to coordinate assistance. More than a dozen Guardsmen were sent late Monday to eastern Skagit County near the Canadian border, with the Skagit River expected to reach record levels, to rescue an unknown number of people, said county spokesman Don McKeehen. Another 150 troops were expected Tuesday. Read The Full Story Cost Of Taking Fuel To Iraq Is Questioned 2006-11-07 00:07:58 A Halliburton subsidiary charged the Iraqi government as much as $25,000 per month for each of as many as 1,800 fuel trucks that were to deliver gasoline to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, but the trucks often spent days or weeks sitting idle on the border, says a report released Monday by an auditing agency sponsored by the United Nations. The agency said in a statement that the auditing firm it hired had found that some of the contract costs that had been questioned earlier seemed to be justified but, the agency said, the findings raised new questions about hundreds of millions of dollars billed by the company under a $2.4 billion contract that the Army awarded on the eve of the conflict to KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root. The new audit gives the first detailed picture of how the company incurred many of those costs. Read The Full Story	Democrats Win Majority In U.S. House, Senate Too Close To Call 2006-11-07 21:48:35 Democrats captured a majority of the House of Representatives tonight, as voters delivered a rebuke to the Bush administration and the governing Republicans amid an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq and a rash of scandals tainting GOP incumbents in several states. The Senate, however, remained up for grabs tonight, with Democrats winning half of the six Republican seats they needed for a majority there, but several other key races still too close to call. The victory in the House marked a fundamental power shift in Washington, where Republicans have held the chamber for the past dozen years. It put Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) in position to take over next year as the first woman speaker of the House in U.S. history, and it poses a new challenge for President Bush during his final two years in the White House. With returns trickling in from a number of hotly contested races, Democrats claimed the minimum of 15 victories they needed in Republican-held districts en route to what they hoped would be a larger majority in the House. Read The Full Story Australia Suffers Worst Dought In A Thousand Years 2006-11-07 19:38:43 Australia's blistering summer has only just begun but reservoir levels are dropping fast, crop forecasts have been slashed, and great swaths of the continent are entering what scientists Tuesday called a "one in a thousand years drought". With many regions in their fifth year of drought, the government Tuesday called an emergency water summit in Canberra. The meeting between the prime minister, John Howard, and the leaders of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland was told that more than half of Australia's farmland was experiencing drought. David Dreverman, head of the Murray-Darling river basin commission, said: "This is more typical of a one in a 1,000-year drought, or possibly even drier, than it is of a one in 100-year event." He added that the Murray-Darling river system, which receives 4% of Australia's water, but provides three-quarters of the water consumed nationally, was already 54% below the previous record minimum. Last month it recorded its lowest ever October flows. Inflow this year was just 5% of the average. Read The Full Story Essay: Britney Spears Files For Divorce 2006-11-07 19:04:02 Intellpuke: Some of you may be wondering why I posted this essay on Britney Spears filing for divorce when the political power of the U.S. Congress will be decided sometime tonight or tomorrow or the next day. Well, look at this way - at least it's a diversion from all the political stuff.  Here's the essay: Of course we're all shocked that Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, now duly christened "Fed-Ex" in the blogosphere, have split. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised: after all, they have been separated since, um, Monday, according to court papers filed in Los Angeles today. Then there's the little matter of Brit's first marriage, which lasted all of 55 hours - not exactly a good harbinger of an enduring union the second time around. The reason behind her parting from K-Fed? "Irreconcilable differences," according to Britney's petition for divorce. Neither side would comment further. But the marriage of the pop princess and alleged rapper has resembled a circus train wreck since about the time that the couple hooked up two years ago. They cranked out two kids in record time and there have been omens of divorce since at least May, when Spears famously tossed out her man's booze supply and set ground rules against his posse's partying in her Malibu palace. Read The Full Story Eight Senate Races Already Decided 2006-11-07 17:39:19 Intellpuke: In breaking news just as I was ready to post this article, NBC News projected that Democrat Bob Casey would oust incumbent Republican Senator Rick Santorum in today's election. Free Internet Press will post more on this race as it becomes available. Democrats mounted an aggressive bid Tuesday to wrest control of the Senate away from Republicans as they appealed to voter weariness with the Iraq war and the GOP White House. At 8 p.m. ET, these races had projected winners: VERMONT: Political independent Bernie Sanders won the seat now held by another independent, retiring Sen. James Jeffords, guaranteeing that the next Senate will have at least one independent. Read The Full Story Three Senate Races Already Decided 2006-11-07 17:16:15 Democrats mounted an aggressive bid Tuesday to wrest control of the Senate away from Republicans as they appealed to voter weariness with the Iraq war and the GOP White House. Political independent Bernie Sanders won the Vermont seat now held by another independent, retiring Sen. James Jeffords, guaranteeing that the next Senate will have at least one independent. In Indiana, Republican Sen. Dick Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, coasted to a sixth term. Re-elected in West Virginia to a ninth term was Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who at 88 is the oldest and longest serving senator in the nation’s history, 48 years. The Senate will have two independents if Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman wins his race. The 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate, who has supported the Iraq war, ran as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush's Bubble Trouble 2006-11-07 12:25:31 Intellpuke: The following column was written as a special to washingtonpost.com by Dan Froomkin, a frequent contributor to the Washington Post's website. Mr. Froomkin's column, which was posted with the headline "White House Briefing", follows: Has any American president ever been less disposed to work with the opposition than George W. Bush? Since 9/11, he has largely ignored people who don't agree with him. Inside the bubble his loyal staff so arduously maintains, just about everyone the president sees loves him and prays for him. The important issues of the day are boiled down to a simplistic binary: You're either with me or against me. And with the Republican Congress essentially serving as a White House annex, there's rarely been any need for Bush to doubt himself. But American voters today are poised to breach Bush's bubble, exposing him to the real world. Read The Full Story Commentary: Where Are Checks, Balances? 2006-11-07 00:10:01 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Keith Olbermann, anchor of MSNBC's "Countdown" program. In his column, Mr. Olbermann comes up with some very good reasons why you shouldn't stay at home Tuesday but, instead, should exercise your consitutional right, and duty, to vote. Mr. Olbermann's commentary begins here: We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time. Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope. But even accounting for our myopia, it’s hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years. Read The Full Story Arizona Housing Boom Turns To Bust 2006-11-07 00:08:50 Until recently, this fast-growing area was a paradise on earth for home builders. Fulton Homes’ developments, for example, were so popular last year that it was able to raise prices on its new homes by $1,000 to $10,000 almost every week. “People were standing in line for lotteries,” recalled Douglas S. Fulton, president of the company, one of the largest private builders in the Phoenix area. And they were “camping overnight begging to be the next number in the next lot in the next house.” No more. Today, it is the company’s sales agents that do most of the waiting. Not only are there few new customers to talk to, but many buyers who put down a deposit are not even bothering to come back for the walk-through. “All of a sudden, they just don’t show up,” said Fulton, noting that such cancellations often mean the buyers forfeit as much as 5 percent of the price. The reason? The prospective buyers got cold feet or simply could not sell their old home. Read The Full Story Probe Charges 57 Iraqi Officials With Human Rights Crimes 2006-11-07 00:07:13 Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged 57 employees, including high-ranking officers, with human rights crimes for their roles in the torture of hundreds of detainees once jailed in a notorious eastern Baghdad prison known as Site 4, officials announced Monday. The charges marked the first time the present Iraqi government has taken criminal action against members of its own security forces for operating torture chambers inside Interior Ministry prisons, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman. Sunni Arab detainees and human rights groups have long alleged that members of the ministry's police force, made up mostly of Shiite Muslims, took revenge on Sunni captives through beatings and other brutal methods. For months, Shiite officials have said such accusations are exaggerations, branding them attempts by Sunnis to discredit the Shiite-led government. Read The Full Story
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