Looks like when it comes to those much-hyped test scores, those much-hyped charter schools aren’t all they’re cracked up to be:

The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools. The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration. The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

As Phoebe observes

Looks like we don’t need to invent new models that skirt regulations and dump teachers’ unions in order to improve public education.

Who is it that hates us for our freedoms again?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York. F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence…’The message I took from it,’ said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, ‘was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, ‘hey, we’re watching you.’ ”

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for help detailed tactics used by demonstrators – everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment. In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed. The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion – since disavowed – that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.’s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.

Errol asks the right questions:

Is anyone else appalled at how the Justice Department issues a legal opinion authorizing the harassment of citizens because of what they might do at the Republican Convention. Someone at the FBI feels like this is a little strange, and what is the institution that has the final say? The same Justice Department that came out with the original legal opinion, who, mysteriously decides to uphold it’s original reasoning. That doesn’t seem like a check on the power of the FBI at all, or the Justice Department. Where are the Federal Courts in the matter? Why does the Justice Department get to write its own legal opinions?

Israel’s public employees prepare to strike over the government’s budget cuts:

The Histadrut labor federation on Monday announced it will launch a strike in the local authorities due to unresolved financial crises within the councils and the fact that many public employees have not received salaries. The strike action is likely to start on September 1, the end of the 14-day cooling-off period mandated by law. The strike could affect the start of the school year; although teachers will not be involved in the strike, it may include auxiliary school staff such as secretaries, cleaners, drivers and teaching assistants. The labor federation decided earlier Monday to delay by several days any announcement on a strike over the 2005 budget, which was approved by the cabinet in the early hours of the morning and includes salary cuts and dismissals for public-sector workers. “I call on Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter into negotiations with us on the implications of the state budget for public sector workers,” said Trade Union leader Shlomo Shani on Monday. “A strike is our last resort.”

With 58% of the vote, Hugo Chavez triumphantly defeats the bid to recall him as President:

Venezuelans have voted to keep Hugo Chávez as their president, electoral authorities and international observers said today. But a vocal opposition movement refused to accept that a vast majority of the electorate sided with the firebrand leader in a recall election the day before. The National Electoral Council president, Francisco Carrasquero, announced at 4 a.m. that Mr. Chávez had won in a landslide after 18 hours of voting on Sunday, securing the backing of 58 percent of voters compared to 42 percent against him. “There is a clear difference in favor of the government of President Chávez,” former President Jimmy Carter said. Mr. Carter, who heads the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which monitored the election with the Organization of American States, held a joint press conference with the OAS’s secretary general, César Gaviria.

Looks like Chavez’s enemies will just have to go back to trying to take him out the old-fashioned way.

More on the man who would be CIA Director:

In language that until now has not gotten any public attention, the Goss bill would also redefine the authority of the DCI in such a way as to substantially alter—if not overturn—a 57-year-old ban on the CIA conducting operations inside the United States. The language contained in the Goss bill has alarmed civil-liberties advocates. It also today prompted one former top CIA official to describe it as a potentially “dramatic” change in the guidelines that have governed U.S. intelligence operations for more than a half century. “This language on its face would have allowed President Nixon to authorize the CIA to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters,” Jeffrey H. Smith, who served as general counsel of the CIA between 1995 and 1996, told Newsweek. “I can’t imagine what Porter had in mind.”

A bid to make Iraqi democracy that much less “messy”:

Iraqi police ordered all journalists to leave the holy city of Najaf on Sunday, just as a new U.S. offensive against militants hiding out in a revered shrine there began. Four police cars surrounded a hotel in the city where journalists were staying and presented the order signed by Najaf’s police chief, Brig. Ghalib al-Jazaari. Though the order did not spell out a punishment for those who did not comply, the police who delivered it said any reporters remaining would be arrested, according to journalists at the hotel. The police said any cameras and cellular phones they saw would be confiscated. In response to the threat, many journalists left the city. The order would mean that the only news coverage of the ongoing violence in Najaf, one of the most revered cities to Shiite Muslims, would be provided by reporters embedded with the U.S. military.

Venezuelans turn out in record numbers to cast their vote on the latest attempt by their country’s political establishment (and its international backers) to oust their President:

Venezuela’s election authorities struggled to retain control of the country’s controversial recall poll yesterday in the face of a massive turnout and delays caused by new technology and absent polling staff. Around 80% of the country’s 14 million registered voters took part in the referendum to decide whether to recall the president, Hugo Chávez. By midday both sides were privately claiming victory, but a decision to keep polling stations open for an extra four hours meant an official announcement was not expected until the morning. Mr Chávez will step down immediately and new elections will be held within 30 days if those who answer yes in the referendum gain more votes than he won when he was elected in 1998, and also win a majority on the day. If the no votes gain the majority, Mr Chávez has promised he will invite his opponents to lunch at the presidential palace. Shortly before 3pm the president of the national election council, Francisco Carrasquero, appeared on television to play a faked recording of his own voice announcing that Mr Chávez had been defeated and was stepping down with immediate effect. Calling the recording a “flagrant crime” which “pretends to make fun of the will of the people”, he announced the launch of an investigation. The investigation did not take long: it emerged that the recording is a popular spoof sold at street markets. The discovery did little for the credibility of the electoral council.

Hurricane recovery begins in Florida:

Hurricane Charley rumbled north on a treacherous path on Saturday, surging past the Carolinas and into Virginia as a weakening tropical storm after punishing Florida with some of the most widespread, wrenching devastation in its history. Emergency officials said the fearsome hurricane left thousands temporarily homeless and at least 13 people dead in Florida, including a man crushed by a banyan tree and an elderly couple found beneath an overturned dump truck. They said the toll was likely to mount as rescue workers pushed through mountains of soaked debris, and ordered dozens of body bags in anticipation. “We have met our Andrew,” said Wayne Sallade, the emergency services director in Charlotte County, referring to the mighty 1992 hurricane that inflicted $25 billion of damage on South Florida and killed 26 people. Hurricane Charley — one of the most powerful storms in the nation’s history — caused at least $20 billion in damage in Florida alone, according to early estimates, and prompted the largest mobilization by the Federal Emergency Management Agency since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

I was lucky to be able – after changing flights three times – to be able to get flight out a day early and to switch it to the last minute when the Tampa Airport closed, get driven by a friend’s uncle to Orlando, and fly out of there Friday morning before the county we were living in was evacuated.

Rwandan troops arrive in the Sudan:

Rwandan troops will intervene to protect civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said yesterday. Rwanda says the world’s slow response to the Darfur crisis echoes its own experience during its 1994 genocide.

The ILCA asks where the corporate media are on the NLRB’s threat to CCN organizing:

That the right to organize has come under a major new threat ought, in and of itself, to be a major story in the media. But this story is also closely connected to the current presidential campaign, itself the biggest media story at the moment…While a Nexis search for “Catherine Zeta-Jones” turns up 957 articles during the past 30 days, a search for NLRB and “card check” turns up 55 articles during the past 60 days. Of these, many address particular union organizing drives rather than the NLRB’s general review of card check, several are letters to editors, and several more are repeats of the same articles. The unique articles squarely addressing the issue are few and generally very short in length. This search found no articles at all from most major newspapers, and short articles on inside pages of business sections from a handful of others. While this search found nothing from the New York Times, the Times on July 4 did mention Kerry’s support for card check (without mentioning the NLRB) deep in an article claiming that the U.S. economy is doing well and that Kerry’s health care plan is expensive.

On the eve of Venezuela’s recount, Greg Palast sees another American product being outsourced – and it ain’t democracy:

Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation’s citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint’s menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?

What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates — presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela’s Chavez — have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush. The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint’s felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little ‘error’ cost Al Gore the White House. It looks like the Bush Administration is taking the Florida show for a tour south of the border. However, when Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it. But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela’s Chavez.

The Times on the human cost of the Sudanese genocide:

The children of Darfur have seen awful things: burning, looting, rape and death. They have been the targets of violence as well. Aid workers say that sex has been forced on girls as young as 8. Other children have been shot or otherwise brutalized, and many have gone without adequate nutrition for months. “A child is supposed to be growing up protected from the world,” said Francis M. Deng, the United Nations representative on internally displaced persons. “They should be playing and learning. If your life is interrupted so fundamentally, you are denied the basics needed to grow up healthy.”

Take the case of Mubarak, who had been a typical 15-year-old in this part of the world, which meant he worked the fields with his father during the planting and harvesting seasons but ran off with his friends whenever he could. Too poor to afford a real, inflatable ball, he and his pals improvised, tying old clothes together with twine to form a rounded clump. Barefoot and energetic, they would kick their ball back and forth in the sand for hours. His friends are gone now, as are his relatives. Some were killed and others were lost in the mass of more than a million people driven from their villages in Darfur, a region of western Sudan where the government has tried to crush a rebel movement by allowing Arab militias to attack local villagers. Playing is the furthest thing from his mind these days, says Mubarak, who looks young but speaks of things that make him seem far more like a man than a boy. Mubarak’s village, Kudum, a tiny place with 200 families in southern Darfur, was overrun last August by members of these militias, called Janjaweed. Mubarak recalls the chaos as the men, on horses and camels and shooting in the air, moved in fast, and he and his family and the other villagers ran for their lives. Behind him, he says, he remembers fire. Mubarak’s father and mother and his four siblings took refuge in a wooded area nearby. But when his father left to scout out their escape route, the Janjaweed reappeared. Mubarak watched as the militiamen told his mother to take off her clothes. Aid workers who have heard, and vouched for, Mubarak’s story said they believed that the men raped her.