One more attempt to stop that buck:

U.S. soldiers running the Abu Ghraib prison are mainly to blame for the inmate abuses there, but fault also lies with the Pentagon’s most senior civilian and military officials, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent panel of civilian defense experts. Senior leaders did not establish clear guidelines on permissible techniques for interrogating various categories of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, the report said. High-level commanders failed to shift resources to an understaffed and ill-trained prison detention unit once it became apparent that the system was out of control, the report said. The findings were presented at a Pentagon news conference by James Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense who headed a four-person commission created last May by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Phoebe reports from the front lines of FOCUS, Yale’s pre- orientation program for sophomores interested in New Haven, where tonight was the traditional very expensive dinner with the Office of New Haven and State Affairs.  The debate started early with a discussion at her table between her and Alyssa and a few of your favorite ONHSA-ers of this summer’s Community Benefits Agreement legislation:

it’s back and forth about the agreement not being specific enough or tied to specific instances (as, according to m., the ones in LA were) or discouraging development or whatnot. and carol inserts herself very unhelpfully to everyone (i’d say even to herself, in terms of her likeability, if she has any) at various points. the final line is m. talking about the benefits agreement as a mechanism (after its purpose as a “mechanism” has been established by alyssa) that induces friction and we respond that it’s just bringing already existent friction/tension/whatever to the surface, might even be a mechanism by which some of that might be resolved. and then, oops, time to start the presentation; we’re behind schedule; m. has to go, tells r. to “take over,” or i guess he says “handle it” or something, but r. runs off too–something about some key box not working–and it ends on that friction-surfacing note. score.

a couple of rockstar need-to-be-organized focusites ask great questions about the university gentrifying the area around yale and moving out the problems and displacing residents for student housing and such. near the end, alyssa brings the community benefits conversation to the whole group, and m. lies, completely misrepresenting the agreement as required rather than voluntary, and exceedingly frustratingly completely ignores us saying that it is, in fact, voluntary, so his declaration that he doesn’t support a required benefits agreement is really irrelevant. he’s just “out of time,” can take one more question, and then the thing is basically over. the best thing is to see the extent to which most people here appear not to be very taken in–everyone in my discussion group basically left as frustrated with m. as i was. well, maybe not quite, everyone, but significantly frustrated. but i think we completely won and that was just great.

Mike: If you’re back at this site and want to take issue with this account, this may be yet another reason for you to start an ONHSA blog of your own…

The Center for American Progress compares Bush’s rhetorical gestures towards benefits for members of the Reserves and National Guard with his record:

Under the headline “An Act of Betrayal,” the Army Times reported that the Bush administration notified local military bases the Pentagon considering “closing or transfer control of the 58 schools it operates on 14 military installations.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made no secret of his desire to cut education: As soon as he arrived at the Pentagon three years ago, commanders report Rumsfeld began asking: “Why am I in education?” And military families are outraged: “Betrayal – write that down and put it in your report,” said Col. John Kidd, garrison commander of Fort Stewart, Ga., testifying at Tafoya’s forum on the need to keep military-run schools on his post. A top Quantico base commander said he never has seen his community more united than it is over the schools issue. “The very fact that this transfer study is being conducted at this time when Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen and their families are increasingly required to give more of themselves and to go in harm’s way is taken by many as a personal affront,” he said. “It raises serious questions about DoD’s commitment to all quality-of-life issues.”

President Bush’s new, watered-down overtime system takes effect today:

Urging President Bush to scrap the rules, the Kerry campaign and organized labor say the regulations will exempt up to six million additional workers from receiving overtime pay by redefining which workers qualify for time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours. But the administration asserts that no more than 107,000 workers will lose their eligibility, while 1.3 million workers will gain the right to overtime. In essence, the hundreds of pages of new rules redefine the criteria for which administrative, professional and managerial workers qualify for overtime, among them nurses, chefs, pharmacists, funeral directors, claims adjusters and restaurant managers. Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, devoted his political party’s weekly radio address on Saturday to assailing the new rules, making clear that the Democrats view them as an issue to exploit when many Americans are worried about the economy and stagnating wages.
“Why would anyone want to take overtime pay away from as many as six million Americans at a time when they need that money the most?” Mr. Edwards said. “And why would anyone support this new rule which could mean a pay cut for millions of Americans who have already seen their real wages drop again this year?” That follows attacks by Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, who said last month, “The new overtime regulations represent a shameful assault on the paychecks of hard-working Americans at a time when they are already putting in more hours, paying more for everyday costs and saving less than ever before.”

Critics of the new rules say they are another example of the Bush administration’s taking regulatory steps that please businesses, which have lobbied for years to revamp the overtime regulations. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, has issued a report, which many Democrats have relied on, concluding that the rules will exempt about six million workers from overtime coverage. Among those, the institute said, are 1.4 million low-level salaried supervisors, 130,000 chefs and sous-chefs and 900,000 workers with graduate or college degrees who will now be considered professional employees. The administration has accused the institute and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. of engaging in a partisan campaign of misinformation on the issue. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has failed in repeated attempts to win passage of a bill to roll back the rules, said he would introduce new legislation to try again.

Read the AFL-CIO’s factsheet here.

So much for buying them off with buttons and discounts:

At a moment when city officials and the protest’s organizers, United for Peace and Justice, should be polishing the final details over the event next Sunday, they are instead locked in a court battle over the route of the march, which organizers say could draw 250,000 people. The group itself is fractured over how to proceed, and many protesters are vowing to use Central Park despite the vehement opposition of the city, which wants the rally to take place on the West Side Highway. Adding to the uncertainty are the boiling tensions between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and officials and members of the police and firefighter unions, many of whom have been trailing him at his public events for weeks demanding a new contract and threatening illegal strikes or other job actions just as the city struggles to deal with the protests and the convention…the potential for embarrassing or explosive confrontations between protesters and the administration is increasing as the start of the convention looms closer without final arrangements being set. Some officials and protest organizers fear a repeat of the rally against the Iraq war in February 2003, when demonstrators and the police clashed, leading to hundreds of arrests, in large part because plans for the event were not completed until the last minute. The situation has created a headache for Mr. Bloomberg, who is counting on a convention that will be good for the city’s image and show the world how it has recovered from the Sept. 11 attack. Further, Mr. Bloomberg has to find a careful political balance between the tough labor stance he has taken with the uniformed officers and his desire to not inflame this group of city workers, who were lauded for their role after the terror attack.

You can’t blame them:

Obamania is sweeping Kenya. The Kenyan press, rapturous after Mr. Obama’s keynote address at the Democratic convention, speculates on a future presidential bid. Parents are naming their newborns Obama, following a tradition to honor great Africans that produced an earlier generation of Kenyans named Lumumba and Nkrumah. Bar patrons in Nairobi reportedly ask for “Obamas” when ordering the barley beer called “Senator,” while tribal elders are planning to slaughter bulls for a celebratory feast after the election.

Governor Jim McGreevey responds to calls for him to resign immediately rather than waiting for November:

My initial inclination was to accept responsibility, apologize and move on quickly. The more I reflected, however, the more I realized that leaving office abruptly would be an abandonment of responsibility. I fully believe in the importance of elections within a participatory democracy. There can be no greater instrument for ensuring the strength and foundation of our system of government than the electoral process. Recognizing that principle, nonetheless, I can identify two specific reasons for choosing to remain governor until Nov. 15.

The second major reason is that our 1947 state constitution establishes the Senate president as the official who would succeed a governor in an unexpired term. I acknowledge that the constitution would permit a special election to occur if I were to resign at or about the first week of September. But the constitution does not outline provisions or state requirements for the timing of a resignation. While the constitution does provide the mechanism for an election, the decision of when to make that resignation effective is a personal one. I made this decision in the context of what I thought was in the best interest of the state. I truly believe that an orderly transition is important for continuity and stability. An acting governor is more inclined by title to finish the good work that has been started. Moreover, in this case, there will still be an election next year as called for in the constitution. There is a great cost to staging an election hastily; even a statewide race could get lost in a national election year and the momentum and investment made in still developing initiatives would most likely be diminished.

The ACLU calls for transparency in the government’s defense of the PATRIOT Act:

The government is using gag orders and secret evidence to keep the public in the dark about its use of the Patriot Act to investigate Americans, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. In two legal challenges to controversial provisions of the Patriot Act brought by the ACLU and other groups, the government has filed secret evidence that it is refusing to disclose to the public and even to the attorneys in the case. “Our system of justice does not and should not tolerate the use of secret evidence in deciding important constitutional questions, which is why this tactic has been repeatedly rejected by the courts,” said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson.

Today, in its challenge to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the ACLU filed a motion to exclude classified portions of a government affidavit that were provided only to the court. The government has asked the court to consider this secret evidence in deciding whether to dismiss the ACLU’s constitutional challenge to the law. The lawsuit, filed in Detroit in July 2003, challenges the FBI’s unprecedented power under Section 215 to access medical, library and other private records without a subpoena or a warrant based on probable cause. The judge has not yet ruled on the government’s pending motion to dismiss the case. In the second case, filed in New York in April of this year, the ACLU is challenging the FBI’s authority to use National Security Letters to demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Here, the government has submitted a secret affidavit without providing any justification for the secrecy or any indication of the nature or scope of the evidence. 

A tangled web indeed:

On Saturday, retired Col. Kenneth Cordier, a Vietnam veteran and a member of Mr. Bush’s steering committee to help reach out to veterans, resigned from the committee over his appearance in one of the commercials. Mr. Cordier was also a Bush supporter in the 2000 election. In his television interview today Mr. Odell was asked about apparently contradictory statements by a member of the group, George Elliott. Mr. Odell was shown an advertisement in which Mr. Elliott says that Mr. Kerry has not been truthful about what happened in Vietnam. Mr. Odell was then shown an October 1996 campaign video for Mr. Kerry in which Mr. Elliott praises him. “The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is not something to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage,” Mr. Elliott says in the earlier video. Mr. Odell was also shown statements by another member of the group, Adrian L. Lonsdale, who in an advertisement says Mr. Kerry “lacks the capacity to lead.” In a 1996 news conference, Mr. Lonsdale spoke of the “bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats,” and said that “Senator Kerry was no exception.” “He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers,” Mr. Lonsdale said. When asked to explain the apparent contradictions, Mr. Odell said that Mr. Elliott and Mr. Lonsdale were defending Mr. Kerry “against lies that he was a war criminal.” Mr. Odell did not elaborate on the tapes, saying that he did not want to speak for the other veterans. But he did say that the members of veterans group all have the same opinion when it comes to John Kerry..Support for Mr. Kerry recently arrived in the form of a 1,750 first-person article by William B. Rood, a Chicago Tribune editor who served in Vietnam alongside Mr. Kerry. The article, which was published on the Tribune’s Web site on Saturday in its newspaper today, disputes the attacks on Mr. Kerry’s war record and breaks Mr. Rood’s 35-year silence about his experience in Vietnam.

Yale – New Haven Hospital comes under investigation for overcharging Medicare:

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating whether Yale-New Haven Hospital and other state nonprofit hospitals are overcharging Medicare and other government agencies for medical supplies. Blumenthal’s investigation centers on the practices of a Texas company that coordinates purchasing of medical supplies for Yale-New Haven Hospital and other nonprofit hospitals in the state. The company, Novation, negotiates contracts that hospitals use to buy everything from sutures and rubber gloves to X-ray machines. The company is also under investigation by the federal Justice Department, which is also trying to determine whether hospitals who do business with Novation are overcharging Medicare and other government agencies for medical supplies. The overcharging centers on whether hospitals are failing to report rebates, discounts or other payments given to them if they meet certain purchasing targets, meaning that Medicare and Medicaid would be charged higher prices for the products than the hospitals are actually spending. In Connecticut, Novation sells to hospitals that account for 67 percent of the state’s hospital beds, Blumenthal said.

Got up at 10 AM this morning to try to order tickets to Bruce Springsteen and REM’s performance here in Philly on the Vote for Change tour as soon as they went on-line – and it was already too late. Which is bad news for me but good news for America Coming Together, and so for all of us.

Arianna Huffington on undecided voters:

GOP pollster Frank Luntz told me that he’s finding it next to impossible to pull together focus groups of these elusive undecideds: “I’ve got to go through 700 or 800 people in order to find a couple of dozen people who haven’t made up their minds yet,” says Luntz…But no matter how few undecided voters remain, they continue to be the focus of an inordinate amount of attention. I mean, has an object of affection (or at least attention) ever been wooed more ardently — to say nothing of studied, analyzed, evaluated, and scrutinized? We now know more about undecided voters than we do about almost anyone else involved in the 2004 campaign — including the candidates.