This is an amazingly arrogant video in many senses. We're supposed to believe that former Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent of this WMD Prevention Commission, a government-funded group, put together this snazzy and misleading video about H1N1 vaccines? Or did a Big Pharma lobbying group do it for them? It's hard to say, based on the lack of information as to the actual creator. The basic question is, is there really anything wrong with creating flu vaccine with eggs?

Here's the thing - back in the day, pharmaceuticals making vaccines needed a living medium in which to grow cultures, something that was cheap because they needed to make a lot. Something like... eggs! The FDA not only approved this process for flu vaccines, but also vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and rabies. And the thing is, once the FDA approves a particular process and materials for a drug, if you want to update the process and/or materials, you have to start all over with the FDA approval process. That's expensive, especially if you have to pay off the research and development costs accrued.

Today the problem is that no large pharmaceutical firms want to get involved in vaccine production because of the time and cost involved. Many of our vaccines come from overseas plants today. That's part of the reason why the production of H1N1 vaccine was delayed, but to be clear, this is more about an overworked and underappreciated FDA than the need for new production facilities.

So why do these guys want to tell us about H1N1 vaccines? Do they really care about public health vaccines? Or do they really want some attention so that you'll listen to them talk about bioterrorism and their lobby friends can get some business to produce more BW agent vaccines? I'm thinking the latter. And then there's this part of the G-T comedy hour.

The consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire. For example, one recent study from the intelligence community projected that a one- to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II. Clean-up and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.

Now in what universe does a small release of anthrax cause more deaths than all those Americans who died in WW2, when bio weapons experts like Bill Patrick have told us that 50 kilos of anthrax would be needed to take out Washington DC? I don't think the intel community endorses this scenario; rather, the G-T team got a powerpoint slide from a certain senior bioterrorism adviser to the former administration that effectively makes an anthrax attack worse than a nuclear weapon.

A source tells me that this study uses a point source generator inside of a city to cause 1.9 to 3.4 million exposed, with 450,000 people becoming ill and 380,000 dead. City-wide decontamination is needed and the projected economic cost is greater than $1.6 trillion. This is just a brilliant case of fiction, designed to get the attention of people who usually wouldn't stop to talk about bioterrorism. I doubt that any intel community expert would give this scenario the time of day - but Senators Graham and Talent don't know that. They just repeat what they've been told.

It's just sad.

Really, it gets harder all the time to tell the Democrats from the Republicans, doesn't it?

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill Thursday that would renew portions of the USA Patriot Act in an effort to address administration concerns about protecting terrorism investigations.

But several Democrats and civil liberties advocates said the legislation would do little to strengthen privacy protections. And some Republicans said the bill, despite amendments worked out with the administration, would still unduly burden investigators.

By a vote of 11 to 8, the committee sent to the Senate floor a measure that would extend until 2013 three surveillance provisions set to expire Dec. 31. They would allow investigators to use roving wiretaps to monitor suspects who may switch cellphone numbers, to obtain business records of national security targets, and to track "lone wolves" who may be acting alone on behalf of foreign powers or terrorist groups.

The bill would also slightly tighten the legal standard for the FBI's issuing of administration subpoenas known as national security letters (NSLs), which allow the bureau to obtain phone, credit and other personal records, and which the Justice Department inspector general has said are subject to "serious misuse."

Oh, I feel much better now, knowing it will be "slightly" more difficult for the feds to abuse constitutional rights.

The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.

Glenn Greenwald

Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:

At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .

"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.

Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.

Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers

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I was in my then-doctor's office in Yardley, Pennsylvania, home to several of the pilots and crew members who died in the attacks. None of us knew that at the time, of course. We were just there to see the doctor.

When I walked in for my 9 a.m. appointment, they had the radio on. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center," the receptionist told me. Weird - that's an awfully big building to miss. I assumed it was a small plane, sat down and picked up a magazine. (I think I was there for a sinus infection.)

And as we sat there half-listening, a few minutes later the weirdness replayed itself: Another plane crashed into the other building.

At this point, dread set in and we knew something really, really bad was happening.

I remember the drive home, heading south on I-95. It was completely empty, except for one state trooper I'd passed. I'd never seen that. I remember thinking it looked like the end of the world.

On the ride home, I kept trying to call the people I cared about - not to see that they were physically safe, but as an emotional touchstone. The phone lines were busy everywhere and it was hard to get through. (I remember my then-boyfriend was not all that interested in hearing from me, so something else died that day.)

My grown son was staying with me while he looked for a job and was sleeping on the couch when I came home. I flipped on the TV and it woke him up. We watched as they showed the planes crashing into the building, again and again and again.

"Turn it off," he said after an hour or so. "This is pornography, war pornography. Turn it off."

So I did.

When we have our limbic brain punched over and over again by horrific images, and those images are then used to justify more horror, there is only one solution: Turn off your TV.

My son was right: The 9/11 images were war pornography, something watched over and over as we stroked ourselves into wargasm.

In honor of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, comments are closed to this post. We offer this opportunity for our readers to take a moment of silence in deep respect to those whose lives were lost, both here and in Iraq.

So apparently punishing terrorists (assuming we had the right people in the first place) isn't quite as important as U.S. and British officials make it seem. It's all about the oil, baby!

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.

Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “This is the strongest evidence yet that the British government has been involved for a long time in talks over al-Megrahi in which commercial considerations have been central to their thinking.”

Two letters dated five months apart show that Straw initially intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, under which British and Libyan prisoners could serve out their sentences in their home country.

Downing Street had also said Megrahi would not be included under the agreement.

Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included.

The exploration deal for oil and gas, potentially worth up to £15 billion, was announced in May 2007. Six months later the agreement was still waiting to be ratified.

In his new book, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge confirms what most long suspected: the Bush administration manipulated the terror threat level for the President's political advantage. But while his long overdue admission is welcome, his suggestion that he resigned over the matter is laughable.

As ThinkProgress and others have passed along, US News reported that:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Just days before the 2004 election, Ridge claimed to wonder "Is this about security or politics?" when Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft wanted to raise the threat level in response to the newly released Osama Bin laden videotape. But Ridge's own statements that summer hurt his portrayal of himself as an innocent bystander steamrolled by the Bush propaganda machine.

When the New York Times called into question the dated and dubious intelligence behind a new terror warning on August 3, 2004, Secretary Ridge famously responded:

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

Sadly for Ridge, that pathetic defense followed his cheerleading for President Bush just two days earlier:

"We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."

Ridge's resignation was announced on November 30, 2004, only after George W. Bush had been safely reelected. Upon leaving, Ridge announced, "The president has given me an extraordinary opportunity to serve my country in this incredible period since September 11th, 2001." And as the New York Times Eric Lichtblau later wrote in his book Bush's Law, Tom Ridge offered to take a lie detector test to prove no manipulation of terror alters had occurred on his watch:

“Wire me up. Not a chance. Politics played no part.”

And so it goes. On September 1st, you can read Tom Ridge's apparent revisionist history for yourself. In the meantime, here's a look back at the Conservative Threat Level.

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There's been a lot of talk on the teevee -- particularly Fox -- the past couple of days about domestic terrorism, sparked by the arrests of 7 men in North Carolina for supposedly planning acts of terrorism on the behest of Al Qaeda.

What strikes so many of them -- including the Fox "All Star" panel yesterday -- was that the suspects were so successful at blending in as regular American neighbors. But not once does it ever seem to cross their minds that this, indeed, has long been a feature of right-wing domestic terrorism in this country.

There's no doubt that the addition of Al Qaeda as a player on the domestic terrorism scene is cause for special concern. America has been fortunate in that, for the most part, its many would-be domestic terrorists have not typically been very competent. Adding a highly competent organization like Al Qaeda to the mix ratchets up the potential danger on this front significantly.

Attorney General Eric Holder was fairly thoughtful in his interview with ABC in addressing this:

"I mean, that's one of the things that's particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans," Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work. "Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern."

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CSPANjunkie's video highlights the outrage members of Congress felt after learning what Dick Cheney was up to with the CIA.

And there's a lot of speculation going on about what possible CIA program Dick Cheney was trying to hide from Congress. Trusting the WSJ when it comes to the Bush administration is like trusting the Yanks to win against the Angels in Anaheim. (I was due for a bad baseball analogy.)

TIME magazine has a few sources that make a case that's a bit more believable.

It is the biggest mystery in Washington at the moment. Here's what our colleague Bobby Ghosh says his sources are telling him:

Speculation abounds about the nature of the secret program Dick Cheney asked the CIA to keep from the Congressional oversight committees. The most sensational reports suggest it was plan to find and kill top Al Qaeda leaders – like the covert Israeli campaign to take out the perpetrators of the Munich killings.

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

“People may want this to be about hit squads bumping off shady Saudis in Geneva, but that's very unlikely,” says one official. “More likely, it was a plan to spy on some suspicious American citizens or organizations, without telling the FBI.”

A third CIA official who is familiar with details of the program says it was deemed unworkable and cancelled in 2004.

With Cheney's love of spying, this makes perfect sense since catching and killing terrorists just like Jack Bauer is something that any member of Congress would have signed off on in a heart beat. Spying and keeping secrets is Darth Cheney's MO and when he sends his daughter out to defend him only sends up more red flags.

Digby writes:

This is something so far off the charts that even the wingnuttiest wingnuts distanced themselves from it:

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

Does that sound like something about killing Al Qaeda or spying on Muslims in America? They did that anyway. This is something else.

In other words, the only way possible a program like this might have been contemplated was when Americans were utterly terrified. You can count on Cheney to be consistent when it comes to playing the fear card.

Spencer was at a Senate hearing and this is very disturbing.

Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, Johnson said that “as a matter of legal authority,” the administration’s powers to detain someone under the law of war don’t expire for a detainee after he’s acquitted in court. “If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone” under the Supreme Court’s Hamdi ruling, “that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.”

Martinez looked surprised. “So the prosecution is moot?” he asked.

“No, no, not in my judgment,” Johnson said. But the scenario he outlined strongly suggested it is. If an administration review panel “determines this person is a security threat” and “for some reason is not convicted of a lengthy prison sentence, I think we have the authority to continue to detain someone” under “law of war authority” as granted by the September 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, Johnson said. And beyond that source of authority “we have the authority in the first place.” I’m no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like Johnson is claiming inherent presidential authority from the Constitution to detain someone after he’s been acquitted in court if the president believes that person to be a security threat. [Update: I think I'm wrong about that. Johnson is claiming authority from the law-of-war construct for such detentions, and that doesn't stem from any constitutional interpretation of inherent power. Apologies.]

Oh, and Johnson also suggested that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay might remain open after January 2010, since “you can’t prosecute some significant subset of 220 people before January.” He said the administration will continue to detain some of those Guantanamo detainees, “whether at Guantanamo or somewhere else.”

Glenn Greenwald has much more about the "Unjustice system."

I'd love to tell you that I'm so erudite and cosmopolitan that I eagerly gobble up The New Yorker cover to cover every month. But it would be a lie. The honest truth is that I read The New Yorker occasionally when articles come up through keyword searches for research for the site and when other bloggers I respect recommend an article.

But this article on Leon Panetta at the CIA was sent to me by one of my Iranian friends (living abroad) who has been filling my inbox with reports of protests and the rumors flying around Tehran. This article has filled her with dread of American interference in Iran.

In fairness, it's a reasonably balanced article; it fairly states the delicate balance that Panetta must tread between the all-too-often opposing forces in the Agency and the Executive Branch. But this section, buried deep on page 6 of the 8 page article, hit me (like my friend) right in the gut:

No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as the result of mistreatment. In the first case, an unnamed detainee under C.I.A. supervision in Afghanistan froze to death after having been chained, naked, to a concrete floor overnight. The body was buried in an unmarked grave. In the second case, an Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad. A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide. A third prisoner died after an interrogation in which a C.I.A. officer participated, though the officer evidently did not cause the death. (Several other detainees have disappeared and remain unaccounted for, according to Human Rights Watch.)

During his tenure at the C.I.A., John Helgerson, the former inspector general, forwarded the crucifixion case, along with an estimated half-dozen other incidents, to the Justice Department, for possible prosecution. But the case files have languished. An official familiar with the cases told me that the agency has deflected inquiries by the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking information about any internal disciplinary action. (Helgerson told me, “Some individuals have been disciplined. And others no longer work at the agency.”)

Panetta acknowledges that there are some people still at the C.I.A. who may be tainted by the torture program. Nevertheless, he says, “I really respect the people who say we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the interrogation business but we had to do our jobs. I don’t think I should penalize people who were doing their duty. If you have a President who exercises bad judgment, the C.I.A. pays the price.”

Excuse me? We're literally crucifying detainees (who have not had the right to even know what they're charged with, much less any other legal right) and there's been NO accountability, NO investigation and Panetta's worried about the CIA paying the price?

Methinks they have the wrong priorities.

Maybe this sinking feeling in my gut would go away if anyone in the Obama administration bothered to explain the specifics of why they believe indefinite detention is necessary. How can you be so sure someone is too dangerous to release, and yet not have enough evidence to prosecute them?

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.

Big Tent Democrat and Glenn Greenwald reactions here.

Although I normally take everything the CIA says with a very large grain of salt, I just don't think Leon Panetta's all that far from the truth. I think Dick Cheney would rather be right than see the country safe from harm:

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney "smells some blood in the water" on the issue of national security.

Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the U.S. less safe. He has been critical of Obama for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the U.S.

Last month the former vice president offered a withering critique of Obama's policies and a defense of the Bush administration on the same day that Obama made a major speech about national security.

Panetta said of Cheney's remarks: "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

While I'm happy to see him called to account, I'd sure like to see Yoo's superiors get the credit for demanding the torture rationale:

A federal judge has ruled that John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner’s being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights.

The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, “at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller's clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I'm sure the murderer is very happy tonight.

The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it's succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.

In the aftermath of Tiller's death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were losing. The bottom line is that they're winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982. At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third.

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Why are politicians such damned cowards? So terrified someone will accuse them of not keeping the country safe! There has never been an escape from the Colorado super-maximum facility. In a country where we've already seen bank robbers with high-tech weapons and armor keep cops utterly helpless, why are we not panicking about that