1. The Washington Post reports a Showdown looms on use of ‘state secrets’. Despite promises by President Obama to limit the use of “state secrets”, the Department of Justice is being criticized by “a federal judge in California overseeing a case that has delved deeper than any other into one of the government’s most highly classified data-gathering programs.”

   The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping. Late Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a terse order that raised the prospect of “sanctions” for government lawyers who have not responded to his order for a plan for how the case should proceed. The sanctions may include awarding monetary damages to the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation…

   The Haramain case is one of the national security battles left over from George W. Bush’s presidency. Civil liberties groups and left-leaning members of Congress have used the matter to argue that Obama’s approach as president conflicts with his campaign promises of transparency.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, bombing deaths in Afghanistan, and a surge in Social Security claims.

1. The NY Times reports President Obama sends an additional wreath to mark Memorial Day. In addition to placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, Obama “sent a second wreath to a memorial honoring African-Americans who fought in the Civil War.”

   “Last week, a group of university professors petitioned the White House to end a longstanding practice of sending a wreath to a monument to Confederate soldiers on the cemetery grounds. Mr. Obama continued that tradition but started another, the White House said, by sending a second wreath across the Potomac River to the historically black neighborhood in Washington where the African-American Civil War Memorial commemorates more than 200,000 blacks who fought for the North in the Civil War.”

2. The Washington Post reports Threats to U.S. judges and prosecutors are soaring.

   Threats against the nation’s judges and prosecutors have sharply increased, prompting hundreds to get 24-hour protection from armed U.S. marshals. Many federal judges are altering their routes to work, installing security systems at home, shielding their addresses by paying bills at the courthouse or refraining from registering to vote. Some even pack weapons on the bench…

   The threats and other harassing communications against federal court personnel have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to 1,278, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Worried federal officials blame disgruntled defendants whose anger is fueled by the Internet; terrorism and gang cases that bring more violent offenders into federal court; frustration at the economic crisis; and the rise of the “sovereign citizen” movement — a loose collection of tax protesters, white supremacists and others who don’t respect federal authority.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan and tracking toxins in eaglets.

 

In “No More Mr. Nice Guy“, Jeffrey Toobin examines how Chief Justice John Roberts is “the Supreme Court’s stealth hard-liner” in a detailed and very readable 7,500-word essay in this week’s The New Yorker. The article is well worth reading.

Toobin traces Roberts’ career as a trustworthy conservative legal footsoldier from his law school years at Harvard to his clerkship to then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to his years in and out of public service to his first four years at the head of the nation’s highest court. Throughout his essay, Toobin reminds the reader that Roberts, born on January 27, 1955, is the youngest person on the Court veering to the right as the rest of the nation, largely, drifts to the left.

While many on the left saw through Roberts’ personable nature to see that he was the purest product of the conservative movement, unfortunately not enough Senators did. The conventional wisdom on Roberts is that he is a moderate.

But, Roberts’ moderation is his public relations front. “The Chief Justice talks the talk of moderation while walking the walk of extreme conservatism,” according to Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard.

1. The Washington Post reports a House panel passes a limit on greenhouse-gas emissions. The so-called ‘American Clean Energy and Security’ (ACES) “legislation would create a cap-and-trade system: Over the next decades, power plants, oil refineries and manufacturers would be required to obtain allowances for the pollution they emit.”

   The bill was weakened considerably by the Democrats to appease members of their own party from the South and Midwest and “to reassure manufacturers and utilities”.

   Adam Siegel at Get Energy Smart! has a round-up of reactions from President Obama and environmental groups to the news. Of his own reaction, Siegel writes:

   This bill is filled with good … and bad elements. It has strong provisions for improving energy efficiency in the United States, a weak renewable energy standard, and massive (MASSIVE) direct and indirect subsidies and payoffs for the fossil fuel industries.

   This is a challenging moment…

   Fiscal analysis of the 85% of carbon pollution permits that are to be given away results in, from 2012 through 2030, $1 trillion 61 billion dollars in direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels against $127.4 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

   Have to wonder why “Clean Energy” is in the title. Would it be more appropriate to entitle it Coal Subsidy Act? …

   Sadly, with all due respect to Chairman Waxman and Chairman Markey, ACES doesn’t merit that description.

Four at Four continues with proposed oil and gas lease changes, the governor of Washington state executive orders to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a war update from Pakistan, and the Pentagon reward KBR for killing U.S. soldiers.

1. The NY Times reports U.S. pullout is a condition in Afghan peace talks. “Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.”

   “The discussions have so far produced no agreements, since the insurgents appear to be insisting that any deal include an American promise to pull out – at the very time that the Obama administration is sending more combat troops to help reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield.”

2. McClatchy reports Wall Street speculators may be to blame for spike in gasoline prices. “Big Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they’re investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors, in part as a hedge against rising inflation.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, a deadly day in Iraq, and what happens if we do nothing about climate change.

1. Pesticides indicted in bee deaths writes Julia Scott at Salon. “The National Honeybee Advisory Board, which represents the two biggest beekeeper associations in the U.S., recently asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban” imidacloprid, the world’s best-selling insecticide created by Bayer CropScience Inc. with annual sales of $8.6 billion.

   “We believe imidacloprid kills bees — specifically, that it causes bee colonies to collapse,” says Clint Walker, co-chairman of the board.

   “Beekeepers have singled out imidacloprid and its chemical cousin clothianidin, also produced by Bayer CropScience, as a cause of bee die-offs around the world for over a decade.”

2. McClatchy reports America’s poor are its most generous givers. “The generosity of poor people isn’t so much rare as rarely noticed, however. In fact, America’s poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What’s more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.”

   “What makes poor people’s generosity even more impressive is that their giving generally isn’t tax-deductible, because they don’t earn enough to justify itemizing their charitable tax deductions. In effect, giving a dollar to charity costs poor people a dollar while it costs deduction itemizers 65 cents.”

Four at Four continues with the CIA on trial in Italy, Republicans to offer 400 amendments to Waxman’s cap-and-trade legislation, and an update from the Swat Valley.

1. The CS Monitor reports in order To meet the June deadline, the U.S. and Iraqis redraw city borders.

   On a map of Baghdad, the US Army’s Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits.

   Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it’s not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war.

   “We and the Iraqis decided it wasn’t in the city,” says a US military official.

   See problem solved! Just wait until 2011 when the U.S. and Iraqis redraw the borders of Iraq so American troops can remain. “If our long-term goal is strategic partnership in Iraq, I would suspect beyond 2011 we would have some kind of long-term presence here,” a senior US commander said.

2. The Washington Post reports Missile defense in Europe is ineffective a scam. A joint analysis done by a team of top U.S. and Russian scientists have found the planned missile shield in Europe “would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy”. Not only is Iran more than five years away from building any such missile and nuclear warhead that could threatten Europe, “if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.” Duh.

   “If Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States ‘could not engage that missile,’ the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan and an overhaul of federal emissions and fuel efficiency standards.

1. The NY Times reports Joint Chiefs chairman criticizes air strikes in Afghanistan. “The United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan if the American military keeps killing Afghan civilians, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday.”

   “We cannot succeed in Afghanistan or anywhere else, but let’s talk specifically about Afghanistan, by killing Afghan civilians,” Admiral Mullen said, adding that “we can’t keep going through incidents like this and expect the strategy to work.”

   Of course, but will the Obama adminstration actually stop the air strikes?

   According to the LA Times, “Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, say the tactic is overused in populated areas. But the Obama administration has rejected Karzai’s calls for an end to airstrikes, saying they are an essential part of the Western arsenal.”

   The LA Times investigates Who is to blame for Afghan civilian deaths? “Afghan officials say at least 140 civilians died, two-thirds of them children and teenagers, in what may prove the most lethal episode of civilian casualties since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.”

   At some point in the late afternoon or early evening, the decision was made to call in airstrikes, a measure most often taken when Western commanders believe an outpost or a field contingent is in danger of being overrun…

   The aircraft summoned to Garani, two F-18 fighter jets and a B-1 bomber that U.S. officials said were based outside Afghanistan, took aim at three targets. In strikes that came about 20 minutes apart, three village landmarks, the mosque and two large compounds, were hit, residents said…

   American officials have advanced the theory that the Taliban killed large numbers of villagers with grenades, infuriating local people who describe buildings clearly blown apart by far larger external blasts.

   “We blame America,” said Saeed Barakat, a father who has three girls in the burn unit as a result of the attack. “With all their technology, they don’t determine who is a fighter and who is an innocent. Now my house is gone. My wife is dead. My children are burned.“

   Spiegel reports the German Army can’t protect Afghan girls’ schools. “Six girls’ schools were closed in the northern province of Kunduz following” letters received by the schools that threatened more “acid and gas attacks” on the teachers and students. “The German army, which has led a reconstruction team in Kunduz since 2003, doesn’t feel able to protect the schools, and the German government doesn’t know how to respond to the threats.” If an army cannot protect people, then what good is it?

   Elsewhere, the NY Times reports Ahmed Wali Karzai, the corrupt younger brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, claims he narrowly escaped assassination by the Taliban fighters “laying in wait for his motorcade while traveling from the eastern city of Jalalabad to the capital.”

   It was likely a drug deal gone bad, in my opinion. According to McClatchy, Karzai “routinely manipulates judicial and police officials to facilitate shipments of opium and heroin… People who accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to the drug trade often don’t stay around very long.”

Four at Four continues with an update on Pakistan, news from Iraq, the Tamil Tiger leader claimed to be killed, and Alaska’s melting glaciers.

 

Sabrina De Sousa stands accused by Italian officials as being one of the chief American agents participating in the alleged extraordinary rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets of Italy and flying him to Egypt where he claims to have been tortured and imprisoned.

According to the Washington Post, De Sousa seeks diplomatic immunity from prosecution. “De Sousa, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in India, says she was ordered not to travel abroad because of the fear of arrest, preventing her from visiting her mother in India and siblings in Europe. De Sousa quit her job in the federal government in February.”

Italian prosecutors, according to the NY Times, claim that De Sousa “was a C.I.A. officer serving under diplomatic cover in the United States Consulate in Milan” at the time of Nasr’s abduction – an accusation that she denies. Rather, De Sousa “described herself as a diplomat”.

1. The NY Times reports Afghan villagers describe chaos of U.S. strikes. “The number of civilians killed by the American airstrikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.”

   “We were very nervous and afraid and my mother said, ‘Come quickly, we will go somewhere and we will be safe,’ ” said Tillah, 12, recounting from a hospital bed how women and children fled the bombing by taking refuge in a large compound, which was then hit.

   The bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. Several villagers said that they could not distinguish all of the dead and that they never found some of their relatives…

   Tillah, the 12-year-old girl, whose face bears the scars of a scorching blast, still twisted in pain from the burning in her leg at the provincial hospital in Herat, where she and other survivors were taken to a special burn unit. Her two sisters, Freshta, 5, and Nuria, 7, were barely visible under the bandages swathing their heads and limbs.

   The three girls were visiting their aunt’s house with their mother when a plane bombed the nearby mosque, around 8 p.m., Tillah said. That is when they fled to Said Naeem’s seven-room home.

   “When we reached there we felt safe and I fell asleep,” Tillah said. She said she heard the buzzing noise of a plane, but then only remembers coming to when someone pulled her from the rubble the next morning.

   A second girl, Nazo, 9, beside her in another hospital bed, said she saw two red flashes in the courtyard that kicked up dust seconds before the explosion.

   “I heard a loud explosion and the compound was burning and the roof fell in,” she said.

   The Obama administration “deeply, deeply regrets” the loss of life, but not enough to stop the bombings.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, a former ‘extraordinary rendition’ agent worried about arrest, and Hubert Van Es and the fall of Saigon.

1. The Guardian reports Barack Obama’s climate change bill is weakened, but still intact. The legislation was “weakened in a number of key areas by the compromises with the Democratic hold-outs” in oil and coal producing states.

   In its current form, the bill now calls for a 17% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020. That falls below the original target of 20%…

   The new version of the bill also lowers the bar for electricity companies to generate a portion of their power from renewable sources, such as wind or solar. The first version had set a standard of 25% by 2025.

   That has now been watered down to 15% by 2020, and as low as 12% for some parts of the country that have not developed renewable energy.

   Meanwhile, The Guardian adds Senate Republicans block Obama’s nominee for top environmental post. “David Hayes, an environmental lawyer, fell three votes short of the 60 needed for confirmation as the deputy interior secretary… It was the first time an Obama nominee has fallen on the Senate floor, in a defeat engineered by Republicans from oil-rich states.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, Obama’s pictures reversal, and Russia hints at an Arctic war.

1. The Sydney Morning Herald reports the U.S. hands over control of new drones to Pakistan. According to American officials, the “U.S. military has begun a program of armed Predator drone missions against militants in Pakistan that for the first time gives Pakistani officers significant control over routes, targets and decisions to fire weapons”.

   “Under the new partnership, a separate fleet of US drones operated by the Defence Department will be free for the first time to venture beyond the Afghan border under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working alongside American counterparts at a command centre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.”

   The Washington Post reports Pakistani commandos target Taliban bases. Pakistan army officials claimed “they were making a concerted effort to wipe out the hideouts and supply bases of Islamist guerrilla forces, mostly located in unpopulated hilly areas, but had not begun a ‘hard-core urban fight’ to dislodge the fighters from major towns in the region.”

   DAWN Media adds Fighter jets pound Taliban strongholds across Swat while “hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the punishing offensive”. People trapped in Mingora are terrified. They said the Talibann has “planted mines and were digging trenches.” One said, “Please, please, please, do not call me again, they will cut my throat and say that I was spying”. Elsewhere, the Daily Times reports the Taliban has destroyed two boys’ primary schools in Ali Masjid area of Jamrud tehsil in Khyber Agency.

   Meanwhile, AFP reports Taliban attacks NATO terminal in Pakistan. The attack by dozens of Taliban fighters destroyed eight vehicles in the northwest city of Peshawar. “Around 40-50 armed militants attacked the depot before dawn. They lobbed several petrol bombs and fled,” police officer Mohammad Ehsanullah said.

   The NY Times reports Pakistan says 1.3 million flee fight with Taliban. “The exodus, if it proves to be as large as the government says, would be one of the largest migrations of civilians in the region since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when as many as 14 million people left their homes for one of the newly independent countries. The Pakistani government and relief agencies have set up a string of camps and food distribution centers in the area, but not nearly enough to accommodate all the people who need them.”

   Meanwhile, The Guardian notes a Banned jihadi group is running aid programme for Swat refugees. “The Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district, where authorities are struggling to cope with an influx of more than 500,000 people. But the charity, according to experts, officials and some of its own members, is the renamed relief wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organisation.”

Four at Four continues with car free suburbia, stress test sham, and spying for China.