Monday, April 6, 2009
Wants case against NSA dismissed...........
President Barack Obama invoked "state secrets" to prevent a court from reviewing the legality of the National Security Agency's warantless wiretapping program, moving late Friday to have a lawsuit that challenged the program dismissed. The move -- which holds that information surrounding the massive eavesdropping program should be kept from the public because of its sensitivity -- follows an earlier decision in March to block handover of documents relating to the Bush Administration's decision to spy on a charity. The arguments also mirror the Bush Administration's efforts to dismiss an earlier suit against AT&T. The Friday brief involves a lawsuit filed by the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the NSA for the wiretapping program. The agency monitored the telephone calls and emails of thousands of people within the United States without a court's approval in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks....Link
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Estimated taxpayer cost for bailout jumps...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. congressional budget analysts have raised their estimate of the net cost to taxpayers for the government's financial rescue program to $356 billion, an increase of $167 billion from earlier estimates. The Congressional Budget Office had originally projected the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would cost taxpayers $189 billion. The additional cost, which applies to TARP spending for fiscal years 2009 and 2010, was included in the CBO's March projection of a $1.8 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009, which ends September 30. The TARP cost projection was raised due to changes in financial market conditions, new transactions and a shift in expected timing of payments, the CBO said.Link
Conyers Wants a Special Counsel...........
On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers quietly released the final draft of an extensive report he first unveiled in January documenting the Bush administration’s “unreviewable war powers” and the possible crimes committed in implementing those policies. In order to determine whether Bush officials broke laws, Conyers has recommended that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to launch a criminal inquiry to investigate, among other things, whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against alleged terrorist detainees violated international and federal laws against torture. “The Attorney General should appoint a Special Counsel to determine whether there were criminal violations committed pursuant to Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war powers, including enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance,” Conyers’s report says. “In this regard, the report firmly rejects the notion that we should move on from these matters.”....Link
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Bull Market in Government..............
American workers saw the disappearance of another 663,000 jobs in March, bringing the total since the start of the recession to 5.1 million. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.5%, up from 8.1%, and almost one in 12 adult males is now jobless. The numbers are even drearier when you notice that only the government seems to be hiring these days. Almost every private industry lost jobs last month. Construction (126,000), manufacturing (161,000), and business services (133,000) all contracted and even retail -- which is typically resilient -- shrank by 48,000 jobs. Only education and health care added positions, and both of those are financed in substantial part by government. Even the government dropped 5,000 jobs in March, thanks to state and local cuts, although since February 2008 government has added some 97,000 workers...Link
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
