The Change Congress Project

A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project (change-congress.org) that aims to use collaborative software to harness the extraordinary levels of pent-up political energy and dissatisfaction that voters have shown over the past two years with their members of congress.

The Change Congress project's first mission is to diminish the influence of money in the legislative body by influencing the outcome of the 2008 election campaigns of 67 members of congress which are up for grabs. As the Change Congress project founder Larry Lessig noted in the project's launch Thursday afternoon, there haven't been so many seats open up for challenge in more than a decade.

Lessig, known for his decade-long role in trying to loosen the entertainment industry's vice-like grip on popular culture by shaping copyright law, is betting that the energy and dissatisfaction exhibited by voters against the status-quo in Washington DC, and the emergence of collaborative software that enables vast numbers of geographically-dispersed citizens to become politically active on their own schedule, will enable a new kind of transparency and accountability in political campaigns.

"The problem we face is ... the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government," he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. "The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can't be done, that process always win over substance."

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FBI Sets Up Fake Child Porn Links!!!

A new technique to catch people looking for child pornography online has been approved by the courts and has already been used in three states. It involves posting bogus links to illegal videos that automatically triggers an armed raid on the user.

Doctoral student Roderick Vosburgh was caught this way last year. Agents got him to come outside after asking him about his car. He faces 10 years behind bars, a lifetime ban on being a college instructor, and 15 years as a registered sex offender.

Vosburgh's lawyer said, "I thought it was scary that they could do this. This whole idea that the FBI can put a honeypot out there to attract people is kind of sad. It seems to me that they've brought a lot of cases without having to stoop to this."

With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids. The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements.

While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise.

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Experts Say President Is Wrong on Iran

President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to "destroy people," including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.

The president spoke in an interview intended to reach out to the Iranian public on the Persian new year and to express "moral support" for struggling freedom movements, particularly among youth and women. It was designed to stress U.S. support for Iran's quest for nuclear energy and the prospects that Washington and Tehran can "reconcile their differences" if Iran cooperates with the international community to ensure that the effort is not converted into a weapons program.

But most striking was Bush's accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003, a major reversal in the long-standing U.S. assessment.

"They've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people -- some in the Middle East. And that's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the world," Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi.

Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president's statement was wrong. "

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Antiwar Protesters Can Rally at 2009 Inaugural

A federal District court yesterday ruled that antiwar protesters can rally along Pennsylvania Avenue during the inauguration parade in January.

Members of the ANSWER Coalition won the judgement by saying the National Park Service violated their First Amendment rights by excluding them and other visitors from a major section of the route during President Bush's 2005 inaugural parade. The sections were reserved for guests who received tickets from the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

"It means thousands and thousands of people who want the war in Iraq to come to an end can line the parade route and let their views be known," said Brian Becker, the coalition's national coordinator. "Whoever is the next president will hear from people that they want the war in Iraq ended and there will be signs and banners saying that along the parade route."

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman said in his ruling the inauguration "is not a private event."

"Protesters are entitled to engage in political speech in a public forum during the inaugural parade," he said. "As the Supreme Court has observed, the government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views."

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Sexual Blackmail at U.S. Immigration Services!

No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.

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Investment Firms Tap Fed for Billions

Big Wall Street investment companies are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's unprecedented offer to secure emergency loans, the central bank reported Thursday.

The lending is part of a major effort by the Fed to help a financial system in danger of freezing.

Those large firms averaged $13.4 billion in daily borrowing over the past week from the new lending facility. The report does not identify the borrowers.

The Fed, in a bold move Sunday, agreed for the first time to let big investment houses get emergency loans directly from the central bank. This mechanism, similar to one available for commercial banks for years, got under way Monday and will continue for at least six months. It was the broadest use of the Fed's lending authority since the 1930s.

Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley said Wednesday they had begun to test the new lending mechanism.

On Wednesday alone, lending reached $28.8 billion, according to the Fed report.

The Fed created a way for investment firms to have regular access to a source of short-term cash.

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Wider U.S. Financial Bailout Could Fuel Inflation

If the U.S. government bails out the financial system by buying mortgage debt directly, the price might be surging inflation and a dollar crisis.

Calls are increasing for the federal government, either directly or through the Federal Reserve, to cut the knot of the credit crisis at a stroke by buying up mortgages that banks and investment banks are finding difficult to finance.

If the government bought mortgage debt at or near 100 cents on the dollar, even though much of it is trading well below that amount, it would allow banks to pay back loans used to finance these holdings.

If done in sufficient size, say $800 billion or $1 trillion, it would relieve the terrible pressure on bank balance sheets and allow other credit markets, like those for corporate loans, to return to something approaching equilibrium.

That, in turn, would make Fed monetary policy more effective in the sense that banks would be able to increase lending and pass on interest rate reductions.

Of course this would be a radical step, and way beyond the Fed's already extraordinary policy of swapping mortgages held by banks and some investment banks for easy-to-finance Treasuries.

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U.S. Slowdown Could Have Been Avoided Says Expert

 Congress and the Federal Reserve missed their chance to keep the country from falling into recession by acting too slowly, according to a well-respected economist.

Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said the economy has now fallen into what he calls "a recession of choice."

He argues that the economic stimulus package passed by Congress this year is too late to help many consumers and businesses and that the Federal Reserve was too timid when it started trimming interest rates last fall.

Since then the Fed has aggressively cut rates, most recently lowering them by three-quarters of a percentage point at its meeting Tuesday.

"If they had done all this in the fourth quarter, I think we'd be having a different discussion," he said. "We might not have had Bear," he added, referring to the fire sale purchase of brokerage firm Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) by JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) that the Fed helped arrange over the weekend to avoid a collapse of Bear Stearns.

The ECRI, which forecasts a number of key economic readings such as employment, inflation and production from various business sectors, had been reluctant to join the rising tide of economists arguing that the economy has fallen into a recession. But it changed its call Thursday.

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Hagel Slams Bush War 'Arrogance'

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel writes in a new book that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party, while suggesting the Iraq war might be remembered as one of the five biggest blunders in history.

"In the current impasse, an independent candidate for the presidency, or a bipartisan unity ticket ... could be appealing to Americans," Hagel writes in "America: Our Next Chapter," due in stores Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained an advance copy.

The Nebraska Republican, who announced last year he wouldn't seek a third term or the GOP presidential nomination, had been widely mentioned as a running mate on an independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg said last month he wouldn't run.

Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems "a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic context."

Hagel, who's been a harsh critic of the war since 2003, writes that the invasion of Iraq was "the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence."

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Ex-chief Weapons Inspector Slams Iraq War as 'Tragedy'

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts, in a comment piece published Thursday.

Writing in The Guardian on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy -- for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity."

In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago".

At the time of the Iraq war, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" -- traces of which have never been found.

In his comment piece, he said the war was a "setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states" and added that in 2003, "Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody."

Blix wrote that had coalition troops not deposed Saddam, "he would, in all likelihood, have become another Kadhafi or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world."

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How the GOP Will Benefit From Impending Economic Collapse

Republicans benefit from the fact that recessions are class conscious, affecting worse those who can least afford them. An era of highly leveraged US economic expansion and empire is about to come crashing down and swept away. Count on the GOP to make out like bandits.

It seems like ages ago, the US was at peace, there was a budget surplus, the economy was growing, and the unemployment rate was very low. But not everyone was happy. There was an entire group of people who harbor not good, but ill will; an entire class wished for bad times and got it.

An era of highly leveraged US economic expansion and empire is about to come crashing down and swept away. Until now, China had an interest in keeping the US ponzi scheme propped up --they sold billions to US citizens via Wal-Mart, the economic Kudzu that ate America. But since a Chinese sub popped up undetected in the middle of the US fifth fleet, it has been apparent that the honeymoon is over. China now leads the world in dumping dollars. Everywhere, it seems, it has become a habit.

If this were mere recession staring back at us from a fun house mirror, it might be shrugged off. After all, the GOP has always loved recessions and benefited from them.

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CIA Transfers Another Detainee From Secret Prison System

The US Defense department announced March 14 that the CIA had transferred a detainee held in secret for at least six months to the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. The transfer, the second since the Bush administration admitted the existence of the secret CIA prison network a year and a half ago, is further confirmation that the US continues to use secret prisons to illegally hold and torture prisoners.

The detainee, Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani, was captured in Pakistan last summer by local police and handed over to the CIA in August. US officials described Rahim as a “high-level member of al Qaeda and a close associate of Osama bin Laden,” who helped in the hiding and escape of al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan following the US invasion. Rahim allegedly worked as a translator and an assistant to bin Laden.

In a memo circulated to agency employees, CIA director Michael Hayden also alleged that Rahim was plotting to attack US troops in Afghanistan with chemical weapons, although no such attack took place and no evidence was provided for the allegation.

Like thousands of other detainees held by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, Rahim has not been charged with a crime, and has not had contact with legal or human rights groups.

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China Admits Shooting Tibet Protesters!

China today admitted for the first time that anti-government demonstrations had spread to other regions and that soldiers had shot rioters "in self-defense".

The state-run Xinhua news agency reported recent unrest in Sichuan and Gansu provinces, blaming supporters of the Dalai Lama.

It said Chinese forces had shot and wounded four rioters "in self defence" during unrest in Sichuan last weekend.

China has come under international pressure to act with restraint in Tibet.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was reported to have "strongly urged" her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, to tread carefully in the region during a 20-minute phone call.

Rice also pushed Beijing to open talks with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown said the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, had told him he was willing to meet the Dalai Lama if the Tibetan leader ruled out independence and renounced violence - conditions which have already been met.

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UN Says Israel Guilty of Gaza War Crimes

A United Nations official confirmed yesterday that the targeting of a Hamas government office by Israel which resulted in serious casualties at a wedding being held nearby was a war crime and that those responsible should be brought to justice.

UN human rights rapporteur , John Dugard said “Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.”

A UN Human Rights Commission statement slammed the Israeli attack saying “It violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military and civilian targets.”

Iraq Better Off Under Saddam Says U.S. Military Aide

Lutfi Saber, an aide to the military coalition in Iraq, has said that the country would be better off if it were still under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Saber slammed the current system in Iraq saying, "None of these people trust each other. Everything comes down to that. The whole system is set up to ensure that nobody does anything that somebody else thinks is wrong."

He went on to say that the country was "engulfed in chaos and nobody does anything because they all refuse to take responsibility". Meanwhile, US President George W Bush continues to insist that progress is being made.

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

Libby Is Disbarred in Washington

I. Lewis Libby’s career suffered another blow today as a result of the investigation into a C.I.A. leak in 2003, this one from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:

It is hereby ORDERED that I. Lewis Libby, Jr. is disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, and his name shall be stricken from the roll of attorneys authorized to practice before this court.

The former aide to Vice President Cheney was suspended from practicing law in the nation’s capital since his conviction on four counts, but that is not enough for disbarment. The key factor, the ruling said, was whether he was guilty of “moral turpitude” in any of those charges, all stemming from lies during the inquiry.

The judges decided that three of the four charges qualified. “This court has held that obstruction of justice and perjury are crimes of moral turpitude,” the ruling said. The fourth conviction — for lying to F.B.I. investigators asking about Mr. Libby’s conversations with Tim Russert of NBC — did not make the cut.

The ruling [pdf] was widely expected and not contested by Mr. Libby, who expected to lose his license, according to his lawyer. “This action is required by the rules following a conviction regardless of the merits of the case,” William Jeffress told The Associated Press.

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Fed Deal Done in Secret By Secret Central Banker!

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented bailout of Bear Stearns was crafted not at the White House or the Treasury but in secret by a New York central banker whose name is unknown to Washington power brokers and who was a Clinton administration presidential appointee.

"It's a new day," commented one investor and longtime Fed watcher. Around the world, that day's dawning is viewed with apprehension because of election-year rhetoric from America.

The plan pressed by Timothy F. Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, effectively substitutes the central bank for the market in determining financial outcomes. Nobody takes seriously the assertions by Fed spokesmen that the aid for Bear Stearns and its dictated bargain-price sale to J.P. Morgan was "extraordinary." In Washington and New York, the question is who will be next. Speculation turned to who else will qualify as "too big to fail."

One candidate was Lehman Brothers, whose stock dropped 19.1 percent the day after the bailout was announced. Government-backed lending agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also been seen as bailout candidates.

The central bank's bold new role relieves the pressure on American financiers who have committed serious errors, but it does not reassure investors around the world who are alarmed by what they perceive in the U.S. political process, where class warfare has gained traction.

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AP President: U.S. Arrests Journalist in Iraq to 'Control' Information

Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information.

"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.

Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."

Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

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Video of Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan spoke at the 9/11 Truth conference in Sydney

Editor's Note: Thank you for the link, Damien!

Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan (national legislature), spoke at the 9/11 Truth conference in Sydney.

Mr Fujita is the single most important person to step forward to ask hard questions about 9/11 and the “War on Terror” this year.

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Markets Down, Taxes Up

By Janet Novak / Forbes

Stocks are having a rotten year. Federal capital gains and dividend tax rates are at historic lows. Yet as they complete their 2007 1040s, individual investors are paying the biggest tax bill ever on distributions of capital gains and dividends from their mutual funds.

Lipper Senior Analyst Tom Roseen, who plans to release his widely watched annual tally of fund taxes on April 15th, told Forbes.com that his preliminary calculations show investors' 2007 tax tab will top the record $31.3 billion they paid for 2000. "It's going to be monstrous,'' he says. "This is the year people are going to wake up and go 'wow, taxes matter again,' '' he adds.

Roseen's report isn't about the taxes investors pay when they sell mutual fund shares for a profit. Rather, he tracks the tax burden from the unique--and some argue unfair--tax code treatment of mutual funds.

Funds don't pay taxes themselves, but must distribute at least 90% of their net gains annually to shareholders. When an investor holds fund shares in a taxable account--as opposed to a tax-deferred one, such as an IRA or 401(k)--he pays tax each year on those distributions. That's true even if he has all those payouts automatically reinvested in the fund. By contrast, an investor who owns individual stocks in a taxable account doesn't have to pay capital gains tax until he actually sells the shares, giving him a greater ability to minimize his tax bill.

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