Consortiumblog: Dirty linen gets Intel Chief fired

Progressive Democrats of America: How Bush's DOJ killed a criminal probe into BP that threatened to net top officials

Economics of Contempt: And on to conference we go...

Nieman Watchdog: Has Obama created a Social Security 'death panel'?

The Reaction: How health care reform is already improving the lives of Americans

The Inverse Square Blog: Return of the Demon Sheep

Via Neiman Watchdog, I was trying to explain this to someone the other day: that the Obama administration has handed the decision-making power over Social Security and Medicare to a group of well-connected, wealthy men who know exactly what's best for them all of us.

And if you're a sucker - if you continue to buy the line that it must be okay if a Democrat does it, you and generations to come are just plain screwed:

President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year’s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation.

Who are these powerful people and what are their views?

They are the members of President Obama’s newly-formed National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. They lack racial and gender diversity, and more importantly, they lack diversity of opinion. Their mantra is that “everything is on the table,” but their one member who has any expertise with respect to defense spending, for instance, is the CEO of a major defense contractor that devotes millions of dollars each year to lobby Congress for more defense spending.

“Everything is on the table,” they say, but the members appointed by the minority leaders in the House and Senate have made clear that they do not believe that the problems in this country stem from under-taxing, rather from overspending. The one area that they seem to be in agreement on -- and which they are in fact, focusing on like a laser -- involves programs that help the middle class and those Americans who are the most vulnerable. Even liberal Senator Richard Durbin has stated, “the bleeding-heart liberals… have to…make real sacrifices to strengthen our nation.”

The co-chairs, in particular, seem to have a clear agenda. Even before the commission held its first meeting, Erskine Bowles went on record before the North Carolina Bankers' Association saying that if the Commission doesn't "mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security ... America is going to be a second-rate power" in his lifetime. (And he is already 64!) Alan Simpson, known for giving ugly voice to harsh, ageist stereotypes, described the future of the fiscal commission: "It'll be a bloodbath. Let me tell you, everything that Bush and Clinton or Obama have suggested with regard to Social Security doesn't affect anyone over 60, and who are the people howling and bitching the most? The people over 60. This makes no sense. You've got to scrub out [of] the equation the AARP, the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, the Gray Panthers, the Pink Panther, the whatever. Those people are lying... [They] don't care a whit about their grandchildren...not a whit." (For more about Alan Simpson, see Trudy Lieberman in CRJ: More Words of Wisdom from Alan Simpson.)

We write to raise questions and encourage press inquiry now, before the commission reports, at which point its recommendations could be on track and moving fast. Here are a few angles to explore:

Q. Have the members of the Commission made up their minds, at least with respect to the broad outlines, making the whole exercise simply an effort by elected officials to escape political accountability?

Q. Why is the Commission apparently working so closely with billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who served in the Nixon administration and who has a clear ideological agenda?

Q. Mr. Peterson has been on a decades-long crusade against Social Security. The day after the first meeting of the commission, which focused heavily on the need to cut Social Security, the co-chairs and two other members of the commission participated in a Peterson event that reinforced the same message. A Peterson-funded foundation is supplying commission staff. And Peterson’s foundation is funding America Speaks to develop a series of high-profile town halls across the country to host “a national discussion to find common ground on tough choices about our federal budget.” (For more background about Mr. Peterson, see William Greider in the Nation on Looting Social Security -- Part 2.)

There's more. Go read the rest.

Wired is one of the few publications that acts as a watchdog on civil liberties and freedom of information issues, and I'm glad they do. The federal government far too often overreaches - and this looks like it's one of those times. Go read the whole thing:

(WIRED) -- An anarchist social worker raided by the feds wants his computers, manuscripts and pick axes back. He argues that authorities violated the U.S. Constitution and the rights of his mentally ill clients while searching for evidence that he broke an anti-rioting law on Twitter.

In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious "evidence" from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.

Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September's G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.

A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison's house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters -- all purportedly evidence that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.

But a closer look at the court documents leaves the unmistakable impression that Elliott Madison is yet another casualty of the government's nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.

Madison, his wife and his lawyer Martin Stolar say the search violates the Constitution's protections against general searches and prosecution for political speech. The police also seized mobile phones, citizen emergency kits, manuscripts, posters and even the couple's marriage license.

In a motion to throw out the search, Stolar called the search unconstitutional:

In this day and age, federally authorized agents entered the private home of a writer and urban planner and seized their books and writings. The warrant's vagueness and lack of specificity encouraged the agents to use their own discretion and their own views of the political universe to seize, or not to seize, items which they thought were evidence of a violation of the federal anti-riot statute. The law and the Constitution do not allow this. If there really is a grand jury investigation with possible future prosecution under [a federal anti-rioting law], the use of this statute as applied to demonstrations, demonstrators, and their supporters has profound 1st Amendment implications.

If Madison were an Iranian using Twitter to coordinate government protests, he'd likely be considered a hero in the West. Instead, the self-identified anarchist -- who volunteered in Louisiana after Katrina -- is now facing up to five years in prison for each count a grand jury cares to indict him on.

Oops, just kidding! Just think, if they'd actually admitted the banks were in deep trouble, and that their assets weren't worth a dime, the crisis might have bottomed out a lot sooner - and the banks wouldn't have been able to use TARP funds to buy up their competitors!

Senior U.S. officials deliberately misled the American people about the health of banks receiving huge government cash infusions last year, according to a report released today from the Treasury Department TARP watchdog.

The officials believed they were telling noble lies. The idea was that confidence needed to be restored and panic stemmed, even if this meant misleading the public about the actual health of our financial institutions.

Of course, this backfired. The government and the bailout lost public credibility when the financial crisis deepened, according to TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky's report.

Worse, the lies may have made the crisis worse by creating false expectations that the bailed out banks would be able to increase lending. Businesses and individuals planning to borrow would have discovered that their projects were impossible and their savings inadequate as banking lending continued to fall.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the $125 billion injection into nine banks in October 2008 was a program for "healthy" institutions. But privately senior officials believed several of those firms were less than healthy. Hank Paulson himself believed one of those institutions might fail.

"By stating that healthy' institutions would be able to increase overall lending, Treasury may have created unrealistic expectations about the institutions' condition and their ability to increase lending," the report said.

The Real News Network: When John McCain took the podium Monday on the first day of the national conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, his rhetoric was all-too familiar. Like George W. Bush, he ignored facts and opted for the kind of spurious charges that were made against Iraq in the run-up to that invasion. He's not called McSame for nothin'. On the other hand, Obama will apparently just continue the tradition of telling this most powerful of lobbies whatever they want to hear.

Bitch Ph.D.: Phony feminist

The Brad Blog: The most vigilant watchdog of our broken, illegal, corrupt voting system checks in with more on what has been an endless series of outrages against the electorate and democracy itself.

Fishbowl DC: How the world sees Obama's win

Balloon Juice: Rethug Dana Rohrabacher says Gitmo torture is more like "fraternity pranks."

Jon Swift: He's back!

All Spin Zone: The economic outlook is so bleak, some economists are looking for a bunker to hide in. But what do economists know? Chimpy is is upbeat about the economy, though I'm sure he'd be amenable to more tax cuts...and he's not the only one living in a fool's paradise.

Wall Street Jackass: Sage advice

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Iowa shows how Iraq war support remains toxic for candidates, though apparently, the "surging" St. McCain doesn't think so.

Blorgable: Year of the web: 10 strangest political moments of 2007

CQ Politics: Voter ID court challenges expected to have a big impact on the 2008 elections.

Watchdog Blog: The House Ethics Committee parties on

FaBlog:  A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Sensen no sen:  Save your outrage for those who need it....

DC's:  Don't tell the manager of the Whole Foods on the Bowery that we used to sleep where the olive bar is now....

Words of Power:  The long hot summer of reason or madness?

Holy Crap!  Didja know there's a sleezy side to the abstinence industry?  h/t to the amazing writers at The Revealer.  God, Gays, and the sanctity of marriage . 

Between 20 March 2007 and 20 March 2008 (the fifth year of the war)  this group will work to sign up One Million Blogs for Peace.

Guest round up by Blue Gal, bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com.

Campaign for America's Future:

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

And on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.

There are some good questions up already as well as contact information to send your questions to the networks.

Last night Keith interviewed Lanny Davis, the only Democratic member of the president’s civil liberties watchdog board, who recently resigned after the Bush administration made “substantial” edits to the board’s annual report to Congress.

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John Amato: What was he expecting? Did he think being ole Lieberman's pal would make the WH act in a different way on our civil liberties? And of course---he sticks up for the President and blames Congress.

CorrenteWire: The Beltway aristocracy, in the person of Sally Quinn, are demanding Obama's "references." These are the same people who were impressed by an AWOL/counterfeit cowboy being advised by a group of recycled wingnuts.

theWatchdogBlog: The FDA is hooked on drug money

The Reality-Based Community: The NRA is defending the Second Amendment rights of people on the terrorist watch list

Undercover Black Man: David Horowitz publishes--again--an unrepentant bigot. Anybody surprised?

Intrepid Liberal Journal: A podcast interview with international best-selling author, author Riane Eisler. Eisler is primarily known for her book The Chalice and the Blade. Her most recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations promotes an economic model based on "partnerships" and "caring" and challenging the "hiearchical/domination" model of most countries and corporations.

earthfamilyalpha:Foolish Wise Men