1. The Associated Press reports on the Widespread lack of attention on Department of Defense nukes. “The nation’s nuclear mission is suffering from a widespread, distressing lack of attention and interest from the Defense Department, a failing that worries allies who depend on America’s nuclear protection, an independent panel has concluded.”

   The report, “Phase II: Review of the DoD Nuclear Mission“, written by a task force led by James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary.

   Schlesinger said the panel noted that many of the gaps found in the Air Force oversight of its nuclear arsenal were also evident across the Defense Department. He said there has been a downgrading in the personnel, a dilution of authority, a lack of training and a failure to understand the unique role deterrence must play in the world.

   Maybe because the Air Force is too busy trying to convert airmen into evangelical Christians?

2. The NY Times reports China is losing its taste for U.S. debt. Despite owning more than $1 trillion of American debt, China has hinted that enough is enough. Rather than continuing to spend “as much as one-seventh of its entire economic output buying foreign debt”, Beijing now plans to pay for its own $600 billion economic stimulus plan.

   That means there likely will be a reduced demand for dollars and U.S. Treasury bonds in 2009 and following years, which may mean, among other things, interest rate increases to attract buyers.

3. The bubble is closing in around the president-elect, but Obama is trying to hold on to his last independent lifeline to the outside world.

   “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

   Obama’s email is “his last form of direct communication with friends and other advisers”. He “is being advised for security reasons and his own legal protection to refrain from sending e-mail during his presidency.”

   “I don’t know that I’ll win,” Mr. Obama said. But, he added, “I’m still fighting it.”

   If they succeed in cutting off the outside world from Obama, then they effectively will succeed in controlling him.

4. The LA Times reports Black holes sprout galaxies. “New research suggests that black holes grow the galaxies surrounding them,” according to astronomers who presented their findings at the American Astronomical Society. The problem is that “nobody has come up with an explanation for how a black hole could sprout a galaxy.” Maybe they don’t sprout galaxies, but concentrates (forms) them?

1. Five former Blackwater mercenaries plead not guilty in the Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007 reports the Washington Post. The men are charged with “14 counts of voluntary manslaughter, 20 counts of attempting to commit manslaughter and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. They will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years if convicted of the firearms charge.” A sixth former Blackwater mercenary “pleaded guilty last month to voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with the government”.

   Also, the Seattle Times reports of another Blackwater mercenary to be charged with Iraqi bodyguard killing. The Department of Justice plans to charge former Blackwater mercenary Andrew Moonen for fatally shooting Raheem Khalif, the bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, outside the vice president’s quarters after a drunken Christmas party in Baghdad’s secure “Green Zone” in 2006.

2. The Washington Post reports Military judge’s order could keep public from hearing details of 9/11 trials.

   The protective order, which was signed on Dec. 18 by Judge Stephen R. Henley, an Army colonel, not only protects documents and information that have been classified by intelligence agencies, it also presumptively classifies any information “referring” to a host of agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the State Department. The order also allows the court in certain circumstances to classify information already in the public domain and presumptively classifies “any statements made by the accused.”

   The ruling will, for example, prevent public scrutiny of the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Four at Four continues with nearly $2 trillion U.S. budget deficit and eating gray squirrels in Britain.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report Obama’s Justice nominees signal end of Bush terror tactics. By appointing Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, David Ogden as deputy attorney general, Elena Kagan as solicitor general, and Tom Perelli as the associate attorney general overseeing civil matters, “President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counterterrorism policies authorizing harsh interrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects.”

   In addition, McClatchy reports Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta to lead CIA suggests shake-up is coming. “I think he’s an inspired choice,” said William Perry, former defense secretary during the Clinton administration. “What the CIA needs is strong, steady management at the top, and he can provide that.”

   Meanwhile, guess who’s objecting loudly to Panetta? Co-conspiratorial Democrats. The Washington Post reports Some question Panetta’s intelligence experience.

   “I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who in her new post will oversee his confirmation hearings, said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

   And “the need for the CIA director to be completely apolitical and Panetta’s lack of experience in intelligence concerns me,” Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV) added.

   With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

2. The NY Times reports a Former detainee of the U.S. describes his 6-Year ordeal.

   When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants…

   Mr. Iqbal was never convicted of any crime, or even charged with one. He was quietly released from Guantánamo with a routine explanation that he was no longer considered an enemy combatant, part of an effort by the Bush administration to reduce the prison’s population.

   Iqbal was caught up in Bush’s extraordinary rendition program and, according to the NY Times, much of his account “could not be independently corroborated.” He says he was tortured and his lawyers will sue the U.S. government.

Four at Four continues with India giving Pakistan a dossier of the Mumbai attacks, three new marine national monuments, and a follow-up on the forest road story from yesterday.

1. From the Washington Post comes news of Obama’s idea of economic stimulus. “Obama officials are advocating that Congress direct about $300 billion of the stimulus package, or about 40 percent, toward tax breaks.”

2. Meanwhile, the CS Monitor reports Obama is likely to retool Bush’s faith-based initiative. “Tackling the church-state issue head on, the Obama transition team has engaged a large advisory committee – involving people with differing perspectives on the most contentious issues – to help it design a government-neighborhood partnership.” That darn Constitution.

3. Another sign of no progress from Iraq. A Female suicide bomber kills 38 in Baghdad reports the LA Times. During a Shiite pilgrimage, a woman “detonated her explosives at a crowded checkpoint, killing as many as 38 people and wounding 72”. And as always: “it was one of the capital’s worst attacks in months”. It always is one of the worst.

   Oh and the NY Times reports the new, built by slave-labor, U.S. embassy opens in Baghdad.

4. What would the waning days of the Bush administration be without last minute regulation changes to destroy the environment? The Washington Post reports the Policy will allow paving roads on U.S. Forest Service land. The change will “make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.”

1. Nine Muslim passengers were removed from a AirTran jet, including three young children, because two other paranoid passengers thought a remark was “suspicious” reports the Washington Post.

   Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

   Their ‘crime’? One of the women asked another in their party about airplane safety and airport security.

2. The Green Zone in Baghdad is now under Iraqi control reports the LA Times. The transfer of control is “a first major step in the American withdrawal from Iraq.”

   2009 also brought other changes to Iraq including: Iraqi control of its airspace, the U.S. is to conduct raids only alongside the Iraqi army, arrest warrants and detention decisions are to be made by Iraqis, 15,000 prisoners to be transfered to Iraqi control, and private security mercenaries no longer have immunity.

3. According to the NY Times, the Manufacturing reports show depth of global downturn. “In the United States on Friday, a crucial measure of manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level in 28 years in December.” Reports were similar from Australia to Asia to Europe.

4. Lastly, the Star Tribune reports Minnesota’s NFL team owner pushes for a new football stadium to be built as “economic stimulus”. Zygi Wilf, a wealthy New Jersey businessman, wants the public to pay for two-thirds the cost ($635 million) of a new stadium for his Minnesota Vikings.

1. The Washington Post reports Obama and Pelosi to discuss scope of economic package. This Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet in person to “discuss the scope and timing of the economic recovery package, which Obama has said will be his first priority upon being sworn into office. Pelosi has said her goal is to have the legislation on the new president’s desk and ready to be signed on Jan. 20.”

   However after approving billions for unnecessary wars and favors for the wealthy that contributed to the downfall of the U.S. economy, now “Republicans and conservative Democrats are raising concerns about the impact on the federal deficit of spending hundreds of billions on an array of projects with little vetting by Congress. Lawmakers now expect a spending package of between $675 billion and $775 billion.”

2. The LA Times asks Will the stocks’ slide get even worse?

   With the current recession already a year old, most economists expect a turnaround in the second half of 2009. If the market follows the usual script, stocks should show a significant pickup beginning in the first quarter of the new year…

   However, “some investment professionals caution against putting too much faith in historical trends. This recession has been different from most, rooted in the bursting of the housing bubble and magnified by a credit crunch unlike anything the world has experienced in modern times…

   One key issue is that there still is little confidence that the housing market is bottoming… Economists at Goldman Sachs & Co … [project] that U.S. home prices, on average, will drop 15% more over the next year…

   Demographics also may be a weight on the market: Many aging baby boomers are likely to be selling stocks to fund their retirement or to shift to less volatile investments such as bonds…

   With the dive in share prices in 2008, the bull market gains of this entire decade already are gone: The Dow is down 24% since Dec. 31, 1999.

3. The NY Times reports Iraq plans to open more oil fields to bidding. “Iraq announced on Wednesday that it would begin a second round of bids to license international oil companies to develop 11 oil and gas fields or groups of fields. Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, said at a news conference that he hoped that these fields could be producing 2 to 2.5 million barrels of oil a day in three or four years. The goal, he said, is to produce 6 million barrels a day in four or five years, up from the current 2.4 million.”

4. The Guardian reports NASA scientist James Hansen warns Obama that Climate change policies are failing. “Current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual, one of the world’s top climate scientists said today in a personal new year appeal to Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the urgent need to tackle global warming.”

   Hansen wrote that there is a “profound disconnect” between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem as described by the science. He praised Obama’s campaign rhetoric about “a planet in peril”, but said that how the new president responds in office will be crucial. The letter contains a wish list of three policy measures to tackle global warming.

   Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets to be met through “cap and trade” schemes as not up to the task…

   First, he wants a moratorium and phase-out of coal-fired power stations – which he calls “factories of death” – that do not incorporate carbon capture and storage…

   Second, he proposes a “carbon tax and 100% dividend”: a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers…

   Finally, Hansen wants a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report Helping those who need it: Congress gets a raise Thursday. Members of Congress have given themselves a $4,700-a-year raise starting tomorrow.

   With the economy in a recession and millions of Americans losing their jobs, however, members are under fire to rescind the pay hike, which will increase their base salaries to $174,000, roughly a 2.8 percent raise.

   Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California will get a larger raise of about $6,100, though it’s about the same percent increase. Her salary will rise to nearly $223,500. Pelosi’s office declined to comment on the raise…

   Critics say that Congress has done nothing to deserve a raise.

   And those critics are right.

2. The Washington Post reports Treasury’s bailout promises now exceed $350 billion Congress has allocated so far.

   With the announcement of its $6 billion investment to stabilize GMAC, the Treasury Department has now spent or committed more money than Congress has allocated to its financial rescue program, effectively making more promises than it can afford to keep.

   The scorecard: Congress gave Treasury $350 billion; Treasury has allocated $354.4 billion.

   The department acknowledges that it needs Congress to approve the second half of the $700 billion rescue package simply to meet its commitments, let alone to address new emergencies. If Congress blocks the additional funding, as some members say they want to do, Treasury could be forced to break promises.

3. The end of the year marks a recap of news we already know. For instance, the NY Times reports 6 years of market gains were lost in 2008. “It was a very bad year to own stocks, any stocks – indeed, one of the worst ever. The Dow Jones industrial average will end the year down more than 34 percent, the worst year for the index since 1931, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index more than 38 percent.”

   “All told, about $7 trillion of shareholders’ wealth – the gains of the last six years – will be wiped out in a year marked by violent market swings.”

4. Another such analysis comes from the LA Times which reports Bush never recovered from response to Katrina, former aides say.

   Three years ago, Hurricane Katrina and its chaotic aftermath produced a collage of indelible images. Among them was a photo of President Bush, viewing the devastation from the comfort of Air Force One as he jetted to Washington.

   Now, some of Bush’s closest advisors say his administration’s response to the disaster marked a turning point in what has become the most unpopular presidency in modern history. From then on, they say … his tenure entered a downward spiral from which he could never recover.

   To read more about the worst presidency in living memory, see Vanity Fair story, “Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House“.

1. The LA Times reports U.S. home prices drop 18% in October. “The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas was down 18% in October from the same month a year ago, the 22nd straight month of decline.”

2. Bloomberg News reports Yellowstone National Park hit by hundreds of small earthquakes.

   Hundreds of small earthquakes have struck Yellowstone National Park in the western U.S. during the past four days, the “most intense” series of tremors in the area in “some years,” the University of Utah reported.

   Earthquakes are common in Yellowstone, which averages 1,000 to 2,000 tremors a year, and its 10,000 geysers and hot springs are the result of geologic activity…

   Seismologists are trying to determine if the tremors are being caused by fault movements, the university said. The biggest quake was a magnitude 3.9 recorded at 10:15 p.m. local time on Dec. 27, when the largest number of tremors of magnitude 3.0 or more was recorded.

   And U.S. News & World Report adds Yellowstone earthquakes are under the supervolcano caldera. “And what if the supervolcano blew? Kind of like if a giant rock hit the Earth. A planet killer. An extinction-level event.”

3. The NY Times reports the U.S. and NATO plan an alternate supply route to Afghanistan.

   The plan to open new paths through Central Asia reflects an American-led effort to seek out a more reliable alternative to the route from Pakistan through the strategic Khyber Pass, which was closed by Pakistani security forces on Tuesday as they launched an offensive against militants in the region…

   More than 80 percent of the supplies for American and allied forces in Afghanistan now flow through Pakistan.

   But the new arrangements could leave the United States more reliant on cooperation from authoritarian countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have poor records when it comes to democracy and human rights.

4. And lastly, the AP reports Lake Superior State University’s annual banned word list cites “maverick” as the top overused word of 2008.

1. The NY Times reports from Central Falls, Rhode Island with a City of immigrants fills jail cells with its own.

   Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.

   Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.

   After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt – only blocks from home, but in a separate world.

   In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime – people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.

   If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.

   A Growing Detention Network Click the map for larger, interactive map.

Four at Four continues with wind versus coal and the national power grid, dismal economic news, and the silver lining.

1. The NY Times reports the Roane County, Tennessee Coal ash spill is much larger than initially estimated.

   A coal ash spill that blanketed residential neighborhoods and contaminated nearby rivers in Roane County, Tenn., earlier this week is more than three times larger than initially estimated, the Tennessee Valley Authority said on Thursday.

   Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium that can cause cancer and neurological problems.

   Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards…

   The spill occurred at the Kingston Fossil Plant, one of the authority’s largest electrical generating sites, located on the banks of the Emory River about 40 miles west of Knoxville.

Four at Four continues with a prison revolt in Iraq, CIA’s drug dealing in Afghanistan, and escalating tensions in Pakistan and India.

1. The CS Monitor reports Survivalist businesses surge in uncertain times. “Once seen as a radical and paranoid ideology, survivalism is expanding as a business, and growing fast.”

   “The number of businesses marketing survival products is hard to pin down, in part because many are smaller, family-owned operations. The market for survival goods like agricultural tools, seeds, and emergency food, moreover, blends with growing consumer demand for homesteading products. Still, the emergence of preparedness-specific businesses and marketing suggests that survivalism is going strong.”

2. McClatchy Newspapers report ‘Tis the season for making whoopee.

   The Christmas-New Year’s period produces a year-high spike in sexual activity and conceptions in the United States, according to biorhythm researchers and makers of sex-related products.

   They attribute the increase to holiday leisure and New Year’s resolutions to have children. New Year’s irresolution fueled by alcohol and partying is another contributing factor…

   As expected, the holiday urge surge also expresses itself as a peak in U.S. births in September, according to David Lam of the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center in Ann Arbor.

Four at Four continues with a look at the Bush legacy, Afghanistan is an untenable situation, and a sharp drop in stock fraud prosecution.