The Florida Department of Law Enforcement hates you for your freedoms:

Authorities agreed to rewrite training guidelines for a program that would teach firefighters and workers who regularly go into homes to report signs of terrorist activity.  The decision to scrap 5,000 printed brochures came a week after civil rights advocates criticized the plan. The new guidelines will remove references to particular ethnic groups.   The brochure cautioned that “multiple adult males living together, usually of Middle Eastern appearance and between the ages of 18 and 45, with little or no furnishings” could signal international terrorism.  It also called for workers to report signs of drug trafficking and child sex abuse.   “You don’t want to focus, for a number of reasons, on any one group,” said Joyce Dawley, regional director for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and co-chairman of the task force overseeing the program. “A number of different groups out there are willing to hurt people.”

Authorities planned to present a list of revisions to Arab-American leaders on Friday, said Taleb Salhab, president of the Arab-American Community Center of Central Florida.  Sheriff’s Lt. Lee Massie, who helped design the program, said the brochure was a draft that was printed before it was ready.   The program probably cannot be fixed, said Scott Rost of the Orlando office of the American Civil Liberties Union.   “We think it should die a merciful death in the near future because of public outcry,” Rost said.

Looks like the Bush Administration decided to direct cash to fighting AIDS in Mozambique. Only it has to go to name-brand drugs rather than generics. And someone forgot to tell Mozambique:

The Bush administration did not consult with Mozambique last year before designating the country as a beneficiary of its emergency AIDS plan. Mozambique was simply informed that it would be one of 12 African nations, and 15 countries overall, awarded substantial financial assistance. The pledge of big money was certainly welcome, said Francisco Songane, the Mozambican health minister; AIDS has lowered life expectancy in Mozambique to 38. But the approach, perceived by many Mozambicans as arrogant and neocolonial, was not.

Mozambique, in southeastern Africa, had spent considerable time developing a national strategy to combat its high rate of H.I.V. infection. Other international donors had agreed to pool their contributions and let the Mozambicans control their own health programs. Thus, Mozambican officials recoiled when the Americans said earlier this year, “We want to move quickly, and we know that your government doesn’t have the capacity,” Mr. Songane said. The Bush administration wanted the bulk of its funding to go toward more costly brand-name antiretroviral drugs for treatment programs run by nongovernmental organizations. But Mozambique had already decided to treat its people with 3-in-1 generic pills, which were cheaper and simpler to take. Also, Mozambique did not want an American program dependent on costly foreign consultants, N.G.O.’s and the largesse of foreign political leaders, that would run parallel to its own.

What we don’t know can’t hurt us:

Attorney General John Ashcroft took yet another step last week to deep-six the Sibel Edmonds case by classifying the report of an investigation into her allegations of FBI wrongdoing so the public will never know what it says. Meanwhile, Justice Department officials met in secret with a federal judge in Washington, following which he dismissed her suit charging the FBI with wrongfully firing her. Edmonds is the translator hired by the FBI after 9-11 to help its woefully inadequate staff translate documents and wiretaps pertaining to the attacks in languages such as Farsi and Turkish. As she has told the Voice in past and recent interviews, she was given a top secret security clearance. She soon discovered that there were what she describes as two enemy moles with possible connections to 9-11 working both in the FBI and with the Air Force in weapons procurement for Central Asia, at one point. These were the Dickersons: Douglas with the Air Force and his Turkish-born wife, Melek Can Dickerson, with the FBI as a translator monitor. After they were subpoenaed for a court hearing, they left for Belgium in September 2002 and have not been heard from since. Among other things Edmonds told her FBI superiors, she had discovered that Melek Can Dickerson affixed Edmonds’s name to a printout of inaccurate translations. Properly translated, she says, these wiretaps revealed a Turkish intelligence operative in communication with his spies in both the Pentagon and the State Department.

When Edmonds tried to tell her FBI superiors what was going on, the bureau seized her home computer, gave her a lie detector test (which she later found she passed), and then fired her, warning her not to talk—backing that up by following her around in an open and intimidating surveillance. That didn’t stop her. She went to the Senate Judiciary Committee and told her story. The committee’s then chair, Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, and ranking minority member Charles Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter to Justice demanding to know what was going on. Subsequently the FBI confirmed some of Edmonds’s claims.

For those of us who might have missed this part of the report:

Days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was to present the case for war with Iraq to the United Nations, State Department analysts found dozens of factual problems in drafts of his speech, according to new documents contained in the Senate report on intelligence failures released last week. Two memos included with the Senate report listed objections that State Department experts lodged as they reviewed successive drafts of the Powell speech. Although many of the claims considered inflated or unsupported were removed through painstaking debate by Powell and intelligence officials, the speech he ultimately presented contained material that was in dispute among State Department experts.

Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council was crafted by the CIA at the behest of the White House. Intended to be the Bush administration’s most compelling case by one of its most credible spokesmen that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein was necessary, the speech has become a central moment in the lead-up to war. The speech also has become a point of reference in the failure of U.S. intelligence. Although Powell has said he struggled to ensure that all of his arguments were sound and backed by intelligence from several sources, it nonetheless became a key example of how the administration advanced false claims to justify war. Powell has expressed disappointment that, after working to remove dubious claims, the intelligence backing the remaining points of his U.N. speech has turned out to be flawed.

The Times plunges into the speculation on a GOP VP shake-up:

Asked in a C-Span interview if he could envision any circumstances under which he would step aside, Mr. Cheney replied: “Well, no, I can’t. If I thought that were appropriate, I certainly would.”…Mr. Cheney, who has suffered four heart attacks, has faced persistent questions about his powerful role in promoting the war in Iraq and insisting that Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons. But like Mr. Quayle, Mr. Cheney suffers from low approval ratings. Last month, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 21 percent of voters had a favorable impression of Mr. Cheney, compared with 39 percent for Mr. Bush.

…even some Republicans are now questioning whether Mr. Cheney should stay on the ticket. As one House Republican said, conspiratorially, outside the House chamber this week, “Watch Cheney.” Another Republican member of Congress said that Mr. Cheney was increasingly viewed as a political liability. “I don’t think you fix the problem by changing the No. 2 horse, but Bush is facing so much heavy baggage going into November, he’s going to have to throw some of that baggage off,” said the Republican, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

I still say it’s not going to happen – and that, given Cheney’s popularity as compared to that of, say, Condoleeza Rice, it’s probably better for those of us on the left that it doesn’t.

The DNC makes an honest-to-goodness smart move:

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Senate in Illinois, will deliver the keynote address at the convention, officials announced Wednesday. Obama, a law professor and state senator, will speak on July 27, the second night of the convention, with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Obama will talk about the future of America that a Democratic administration would provide, along with the need to make jobs, families and communities top priorities in the lives of Americans.

Looks like the Federal Marriage Ammendment is dead for now, failing not only to line up a two-thirds majority in its support, but also even to get fifty votes to bring it to a vote:

Backers of a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate today as opponents easily killed the initiative for the year in a procedural showdown. Senators voted 50 to 48 against a call to cut off debate, 12 votes short of the 60 required and even below a simple majority of 51. It would have taken 67 votes to approve the amendment itself. The loss effectively ended a drive to move the proposal through the Senate before the November elections. Six Republicans helped block the amendment, illustrating the divisions in the party ranks over the idea of inscribing such a ban into the Constitution. “The constitutional amendment we are debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed, and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.” Three Democrats sided with Republicans in trying to move to a vote on the language of the amendment itself. Under constitutional rules crafted by the Founding Fathers to make it difficult to alter the document, a supermajority of 67 votes is necessary to start the ratification process by the states. Today’s vote did not reflect the full level of opposition since some Senate Republicans who were opposed to the amendment sided with their leadership on the preliminary vote.

Good riddance.

The rift between Britain’s labor party and labor movement widens:

Civil servants are today set for a double showdown in Westminster over the ongoing pay dispute and the massive job cull announced by the chancellor, Gordon Brown, in Monday’s spending review. Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) will voice concerns over low pay, redundancies and service cuts when they protest at the House of Commons today. The workers are scheduled to tackle the long-running row over pay at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), but will also use the opportunity to convey their shock to politicians over Mr Brown’s announcement of cuts of up to 100,000 jobs in the civil service, as part of his efficiency drive. The PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said: “We are very disappointed and angry at the way this has been handled and we will use every opportunity to meet with ministers and officials to demand answers. “We will oppose mass job cuts and industrial action may form part of our campaign.”