1. According to the Washington Post, al-Qaeda still is impervious to spies after a decade at war with west.

   A decade after al-Qaeda issued a global declaration of war against America, U.S. spy agencies have had little luck recruiting well-placed informants and are finding the upper reaches of the network tougher to penetrate than the Kremlin during the Cold War, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials.

   Some counterterrorism officials say their agencies missed early opportunities to attack the network from within. Relying on Cold War tactics such as cash rewards for tips failed to take into account the religious motivations of Islamist radicals and produced few results.

   Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said, al-Qaeda has tightened its internal security at the top, placing an even greater emphasis on personal and tribal loyalties to determine who can gain access to its leaders.

   Alain Chouet, former chief of the security intelligence service of the DGSE, France’s foreign spy agency, said it can take years for informants to burrow their way into radical Islamist networks. Even if they’re successful at first, he said, new al-Qaeda members are often “highly disposable” — prime candidates for suicide missions.

   He said it might be too late for Western intelligence agencies, having missed earlier chances, to redouble efforts to infiltrate the network. “I think you cannot penetrate such a movement now,” he said.

   At the same time, those agencies have made their task harder by blowing the cover of some promising informants and mishandling others.

   One name: Valerie Plame. So, it’s fitting that today, according to The Hill, Scooter Libby was disbarred in District of Columbia. “Libby, whose presidential pardon last year was a touchstone for Bush administration critics, was ejected from practicing law by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The D.C. court cited Libby’s 2007 conviction for lying to a grand jury and federal officials investigating the identity leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.”

2. The Los Angeles Times examines if A new Great Depression is possible. “There are vast differences between the 1930s and today. U.S. unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%. The international industrial economy was a shambles in the ’30s. Today it is coming off a global boom.”

   

   “I’ve been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression,” said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of Freedom From Fear, a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. “My standard answer is that we won’t have that one again — I’d be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have a catastrophe we haven’t seen before.” …

   The Fed’s recent actions were “a temporary palliative” to the fundamental problem in the economy, which is the rapid fall in home prices and its ripple effect on mortgage bonds and other securities, said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at UC Berkeley. “You have to reorganize the system, but the discussion about that has only begun.”

   The Huntington Herald-Dispatch reports that Obama links war and economy. At the University of Charleston, West Virginia, Sen. Barack Obama spoke to a standing room only crowd of 600. “Obama said it is crucial citizens do not overlook the war’s impact on the American economy. ‘At a time when we’re on the brink of recession, when neighborhoods have ‘For Sale’ signs outside every home and working families are struggling to keep up with rising costs, ordinary Americans are paying a price for this war,’ he said. ‘When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war.'”

   Reuters adds Obama says Iraq war drag on economy. “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Thursday said the $500 billion cost of the Iraq war is a drag on the U.S. economy and attempted to lay some of the blame for it on Republican rival John McCain. ‘How much longer are we going to ask our families and our communities to bear the cost of this war?’ the Illinois senator asked in a speech… ‘No matter what the costs, no matter what the consequences, John McCain seems determined to carry out a third Bush term,’ Obama said.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories on the Pentagon’s divisions over Iraq, China’s suppression of protesters in Tibet, methane detected outside our solar system, global coal shortages, and wind-powered computers.

Today’s Four at Four will be long, but worth your time to read.

1. What is the real death toll in Iraq?
   By Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

   Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, “We don’t do body counts.” This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush’s wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the “body count” concept sounded callous – and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.

   Iraq was going to be different. The US would count its own dead (now close to 4,000), but the toll the war was taking on Iraqis was not a matter the Pentagon or any other US government department intended to quantify. Especially once Bush had declared “mission accomplished” on May 1 2003 – after that, every new Iraqi who died by violence would be a signal that the president was wrong, and would show that a war conducted in the name of humanitarian intervention was exacting a mounting humanitarian toll of its own.

   But even though the Americans were not counting, people were dying, and every victim had a name and a family. Wedding parties were bombed by US planes, couples driving home at night were shot at checkpoints because they missed a flashlight warning them to stop, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were killed for no legitimate cause. In just the last three weeks of April 2003, after Saddam’s statue and his regime were toppled, US forces killed at least 266 civilians – a pattern of overeager resort to fire which has continued to this day.

   So five years after Bush and Tony Blair launched the invasion of Iraq against the wishes of a majority of UN members, no one knows how many Iraqis have died. We do know that more than two million have fled abroad. Another 1.5 million have sought safety elsewhere in Iraq. We know that the combined horror of car bombs, suicide attacks, sectarian killing and disproportionate US counter-insurgency tactics and air strikes have produced the worst humanitarian catastrophe in today’s world. But the exact death toll remains a mystery.

   The article examines the various estimates that range from “100,000 dead to well over a million”. It is well worth the time to read.

Four at Four continues below the fold looking at the five year anniversary of the war in Iraq and its occupation.

1. The New York Times reports Bush backs Fed’s actions, but critics quickly find fault. George W. “Bush on Monday welcomed the Federal Reserve’s sweeping intervention in the nation’s financial markets as his administration faced accusations that it had supported the bailout of a prestigious investment bank while doing little to address the hardships of Americans facing foreclosures on their homes… Mr. Bush singled out Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. for praise, saying he had shown ‘the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation,’ an assertion that was broadly disputed by the president’s critics.”

   Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, George W. Bush, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yuck it up as their policies steer the United States into a deep recession and a worthless dollar.

   The Wall Street Jornal reports Street Cheers Goldman, Lehman. “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the two big U.S. investment banks least wounded thus far by the credit crunch, gave markets a shot in the arm Tuesday by reporting first-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations and were free of nasty surprises. To be sure, the results were damaged by the turmoil of the past few months, in which key markets froze up as banks became increasingly wary of trading with each other. Each bank’s earnings fell by more than 50% from the year before, and each booked roughly $2 billion in credit-related losses.” And this was the “good” news today? Put me down as unimpressed.

   Meanwhile over in Russia, Prava, yeah Pravda, runs with an opinion-analysis of the U.S. economic fallout by Abbas Bakhtiar, When the US sneezes the world catches cold.

   The world’s economy will experience the negative effects from the US economic downturn. The most affected areas will be China and other Asian “emerging” economies and European Union… The full picture of financial crisis is still hidden and full cost of the coming bailouts will not be known till autumn.

   Of course this is not written in stone. The US government may come to its senses and decides to act responsibly and allow many companies and banks to go under. It may try to support dollar. It may try to cut the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It may even decide that its war in Iraq was not and is not such a good idea and withdraw its troops. It may even try to get friendly with Venezuela and Iran, thereby reduce both the price of oil and pressure on the dollar. The truth is that it is the US president that can do these things and not the Federal Reserves. We just have to wait for the elections and see who is elected as the next president.

   It is my opinion that no other US president has ever damaged United States as much as George Bush, and he will be remembered by both the Americans and others as one of the most unpopular US presidents ever. But he is at the end of his second term and has only a year to destroy the rest of the economy. Let us hope that he will be busy with other things and doesn’t do more damage. Let us also hope that the American people will not fall for promises of further tax cuts and glories in battle fields abroad. Neither brings peace and prosperity.

   And, just to underscore how “on top of the situation” Bernake is, the Federal Reserve cuts key interest rate by 3/4 of a point, according to the NY Times. The cut “to 2.25 percent… was less than investors had been hoping for even though it was one of the deepest in Fed history.” Don’t Panic. Don’t Panic.

2. The Associated Press reports Mortars near U.S. embassy in Yemen kill 1. “Two mortar shells exploded Tuesday by a high school next to the U.S. embassy, killing a Yemeni guard and wounding three students and three other guards, an Interior Ministry official said. Troops sealed off roads and prevented journalists from coming closer to the school, which is attended mostly by Yemeni students… It was unclear if the embassy or the school was the target.”

3. The Guardian reports Kosovo clashes force UN to withdraw. “Serbs went on the warpath against western peacekeepers in northern Kosovo yesterday in the worst unrest since the small Albanian-dominated Balkan province declared independence a month ago. As UN riot police backed by Nato helicopters and armoured vehicles used stun grenades and teargas to restore control of a court building occupied by Serb activists last week in the northern Serb-controlled town of Mitrovica, Serbian rioters clashed with the international forces and used automatic weapons against Nato troops. Dozens of police, Nato troops, and Serb civilians were hurt in explosions and clashes after riot police stormed the building at dawn.”

4. The Independent reports China prepares for crackdown by clearing Tibetan capital of witnesses. “After days of street fighting and protests by Tibetans seeking independence, Chinese authorities have moved to clear Lhasa of the last independent witnesses ahead of a deadline for demonstrators to surrender. Beijing’s governor in Tibet promised leniency to demonstrators prepared to give themselves up, but Tibet independence groups said scores of people had already been killed during the protests. Yesterday, sources in Lhasa said NGOs and the few remaining foreign journalists were taken out of the city, leaving no one to inform the world of how Beijing would reinforce order. Some reports said handcuffed Tibetan prisoners were paraded through the city earlier yesterday.”

News of Obama’s speech this morning is below the fold.

1. When rats slink in and out of buildings, they don’t announce their arrivals. And, so it comes as no surprise that, McClatchy Newspapers reports Cheney, in surprise Iraq visit, praises “phenomenal” progress.

   Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Monday and credited Iraqi leaders and a massive U.S. troop build-up with security improvements he described as phenomenal” after meetings with U.S. military commanders and Iraqi politicians.

   But violence continued against civilians. At sunset Monday, a female suicide bomber killed at least 36 people and injured more than 40 when she blew herself up among Iranian pilgrims just outside a crowded Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, said Raheem Mishawi, a spokesman of Karbala’s provincial government. Local police said many Iranians were among the victims.

   Cheney’s trip coincided with that of another high-profile visitor, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who arrived Sunday for a two-day fact-finding mission for the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee. Cheney was a chief architect of the U.S.-led invasion that began five years ago this week; McCain was an early supporter of the war.

   Despite the Bush administration’s lies they tell to their American audience, the Iraqis know the reality in their country. McClatchy reports, 5 years after Iraq’s ‘liberation,’ there are worms in the water. “To them, the real crime is that five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, they still swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter because of a lack of electricity. Government rations are inevitably late, incomplete or expired. Garbage piles up for days, sometimes weeks, emanating toxic fumes. The list goes on: black-market fuel, phone bills for land lines that haven’t worked in years, education and health-care systems degraded by the flight of thousands of Iraq’s best teachers and doctors… Increasingly, Iraqis are relying on militias and other armed groups to fill the services void.“

   Meanwhile the CS Monitor wonders Is the Mahdi Army’s ‘cease-fire’ over? “Over the past 10 days, violence has tested the militia’s period of quiet, which many say has contributed to a drop in US and Iraqi casualties, and seems to indicate deepening fissures within Sadr’s powerful organization… Clashes between militiamen and the police in the city of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, since Tuesday have left at least 13 people dead including two policemen”.

2. The Washington Post reports that 4 FBI agents were hurt in Islamabad blast. “Four FBI agents were among 12 people wounded in a weekend bomb blast at a popular Italian restaurant in Pakistan’s capital, U.S. law enforcement officials said Sunday… The explosion killed a Turkish woman and injured several other people, including another American. The four FBI agents who were wounded included a legal attache, an assistant legal attache and an agency supervisor, according to one law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record. The job title of the fourth agent could not be determined… The U.S.-led task force was called in to assist with an investigation into two coordinated bombings Tuesday in Lahore.”

Below the fold, stories on the Pacific salmon collapse, Europe’s next green energy source, and sand dimes.

1. Ozone Rules Weakened at Bush’s Behest

   The Washington Post is reporting that “The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.”

   EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA’s scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

   “It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA’s expert scientific judgment,” said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

   The president’s order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone…

   When asked about Clement’s role, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: “The White House sought legal advice from the Justice Department and made its decision based on that advice.”

   Glad to see science and the health of the American people taking such a big role in Bush’s decision.

2. FBI Misuses Security Letters

   Click to enlarge.

   The Washington Post reports, “the FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released yesterday. The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented ‘national security letters’ from 2003 to 2006, after which changes were put in place that the report called sound….”

   “Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied.”

3. The Associated Press reports Bush a clueless idiot and economic moron. “Trying to calm jitters about the economy, President Bush conceded on Friday that the country “obviously is going through a tough time” but expressed confidence about a rebound. In a speech to The Economic Club of New York, Bush said this was not the first time the economy has been rattled and that he is certain that it will ride out its troubles. ‘These are uncertain times,’ he said.” Bush also blamed Bill Clinton and 9/11 for America’s economic problems. In his remarks, Bush said:

   And I want to spend a little time talking about that, but I want to remind you, this is not the first time since I’ve been the President that we have faced economic challenges. We inherited a recession. And then there was the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, which many of you saw firsthand, and you know full well how that affected our economy…

   Fortunately, we recognized the slowdown early and took action. And it was decisive action, in the form of policies that will spur growth…

   The Federal Reserve has taken action to bolster the economy. I respect Ben Bernanke. I think he’s doing a good job under tough circumstances…

   I believe strongly that NAFTA has been positive for the United States of America, like it’s been positive for our trading partners in Mexico and Canada…

   A confident nation accepts capital from overseas. We can protect our people against investments that jeopardize our national security, but it makes no sense to deny capital, including sovereign wealth funds, from access to the U.S. markets. It’s our money to begin with. It seems like we ought to let it back.

4. The Oregonian reports Coastal areas brace for salmon shutdown. “Fishery managers have shut down salmon fishing off Oregon’s coast through April to protect collapsing fish stocks, presaging what could become the largest West Coast closure in history. The biggest factor is the plummeting returns of normally robust chinook salmon to the Sacramento River in California, although salmon numbers in many Oregon rivers are down sharply, too… While past years have seen poor salmon numbers in certain regions, this year the decline seems to extend along almost the entire West Coast…”

   Next month, federal fishery managers may close ocean salmon fishing from May through its typical end-date in mid-November from northern Oregon to the Mexican border. At a minimum, the key fishery will be severely restricted, Oregon officials said… Biologists are stunned by the failing returns to the Sacramento River, typically one of the healthiest and most abundant stocks on the West Coast.”

1. The Washington Post reports the EPA allowing more polllution-forming ozone than advised. “The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday limited the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency’s scientific advisers had urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution.”

   “Administrator Stephen L. Johnson also said he would push Congress to rewrite the nearly 37-year-old Clean Air Act to allow regulators to take into consideration the cost and feasibility of controlling pollution when making decisions about air quality, something that is currently prohibited by the law. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to base the ozone standard strictly on protecting public health, with no regard to cost.”

2. According to The Independent, Disillusioned with the US, Navratilova defects again. “Martina Navratilova has regained Czech nationality more than 30 years after fleeing a Communist regime she now compares favourably to that of her adopted country America under… George Bush.” And The Guardian asks Can the US today really compare with Czechoslovakia in 1975? Here are some of their comparisons:

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Free healthcare available to all citizens.

   US, 2008: 47 million Americans (16% of the population) have no health insurance. Another 16 million are “underinsured”.

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Despite an increased standard of living and the widespread availability of material goods, consumerism is failing to placate a population fed up with draconian political controls.

   US, 2008: Despite a rise in the cost of living, consumerism continues to placate a population largely oblivious to the curtailment of its freedoms…

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Torture, though not officially sanctioned, has become a covert tool of state policy.

   US, 2008: Torture officially sanctioned.

3. The Christian Science Monitor reports China’s human rights rating is upgraded by the U.S. State Department. China is no longer on the State Department’s list of the world worst countries for human rights violations.

   The State Department did not wipe China’s slate clean, saying in the report that “China’s overall human rights record remains poor.” But instead of placing it among the world’s worst offenders, it shifted China’s listing to: “authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform [and] have experienced rapid social change but have not undertaken democratic political reform and continue to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

   Ironic, eh? When “asked at a press conference Tuesday to explain why China was no longer on the list of worst offenders, Jonathan Farrar, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, skirted the question.”

4. Finally, McClatchy Newspapers reports that it isn’t just running up the cost of food to make biodiesel and ethanol, but Energy and water demands are on collision course.

   It takes a lot of water to produce energy. It takes a lot of energy to provide water. The two are inextricably linked, and claims on each are rising.

   “The water supply is as critical as oil,” said Charles Groat, a geologist and expert on the problem at the University of Texas in Austin.

   In return, “water use requires a tremendous amount of energy,” said Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, Calif.

   As the United States tries to lower its dependence on foreign oil by producing more energy from domestic sources such as ethanol, however, it’s running low on fresh water.

   Water is needed for mining coal, drilling for oil, refining gasoline, generating and distributing electricity, and disposing waste, Gleick said.

   “The largest use of water is to cool power plants,” he said at a panel of experts on “The Global Nexus of Energy and Water” in Boston last month.

1. USA Today reports Saddam’s spies are back at work in Iraq.

   “Iraq’s government has been quietly bringing back into service Saddam-era intelligence agents who have experience spying on Iranians. The effort is aimed at improving Iraq’s ability to gather intelligence about Iranian-supported networks operating in Iraq, said Dan Maguire, the top U.S. adviser on intelligence.”

   “The practice of hiring former intelligence agents seems to conflict with a new law designed to come to terms with people who worked in Saddam’s ruling Baath Party. The “Accountability and Justice” law, passed this year, bans members of Saddam-era security services from government work because of their brutal reputation… U.S. officials have approved of the practice of bringing back some former agents. Maguire said the hiring of former agents had ‘a lot of logic to it.'” Occupied Iraq just like with Saddam, but now with added DEMOCRACY™!

2. The Los Angeles Times reports some Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be allowed family phone calls.

   The change in a policy that has kept the 275 foreign men still held here in isolation for as long as six years remains in the early planning phase, said Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush, a spokesman for the Joint Task Force that runs the prison and interrogation compound…

   The decision to allow the prisoners to speak with relatives — most for the first time since they were arrested abroad and moved here — was the result of pressure from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside humanitarian observation of the prisoners allowed by the Pentagon…

   In New York, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights that represents most Guantanamo prisoners in their U.S. court challenges to their detention called the disclosure “a public relations stunt.”

   “I am frankly skeptical and won’t believe it until I see it,” said Dixon Wells. “This is an attempt to draw attention away from conditions of confinement designed to destroy these men physically and mentally.”

   This is an actual picture of the phone the Guantanamo Bay inmates will be allowed to use.

3. Well according to Threat Level blog at Wired, House Democrats are proposing a commission to investigate warrantless spying and still reject telecom amnesty. “Not only shouldn’t companies that helped the government’s warrantless spying on American citizens be given retroactive amnesty, the government should establish a national commission — similar to the 9/11 Commission — to subpoena documents and testimony in order to find out — and publish — what exactly the nation’s spies were up to during their five year warrantless, domestic surveillance program.

   “In other words, House Democrats aren’t planning a compromise on telecom amnesty and are actually going on offense to find a way to learn more about President Bush’s five-year secret ‘Total Information Awareness’ program. At least that’s what’s suggested by a 119-page draft bill being circulated by the leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees as answer to the Administration-backed Senate spying bill.” If it’s similar to the 9/11 Commission, then it’ll be just another… ahh what’s the use? However, TPMmuckraker reports, Senate intelligence committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-Telecom) isn’t keen on the House bill.

   Well this will surely uncover something… not. TPMmuckraker also reports CREW asks FBI to probe missing White House emails. “It’s the burning question of the Bush Administration: malfeasance or incompetence? … CREW, which has been pursuing a lawsuit over the lost emails, wants to know. And today the group wrote (pdf) FBI Director Robert Mueller to request that he investigate whether White House officials deleted emails relevant to the Valerie Plame investigation.”

4. Finally, maybe our houses are just too damned big? In his column for the Seattle Times, Danny Westneat asks Who says tiny house cramps our style?

   Renting for $800 a month, it may not be the cheapest house in Seattle. But I bet it’s the tiniest.

   At 230 square feet, it’s no bigger than some tool sheds. In fact, that’s what it was before someone converted the wedge-shaped shack into a stand-alone home, complete with amenities of houses 10 times the size. It has a bathroom with a shower, a dishwasher, a four-burner stove, a pantry, built-in dressers. Even a closet…

   The house I live in now is 2,500 square feet – the U.S. average, but 11 times larger than Seattle’s Smallest. Yes, I’m now married with two kids. But it’s also true we have rooms nearly 230 square feet that we scarcely use.

   When I was peeking in at Seattle’s Smallest and its 3-foot-wide bathroom, I wondered: What if I moved back here, family in tow? Would we go crazy? Or could we fit?

   I guess I’d go crazy. But there’s a guy in California, Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., who sells and lives in 100-square-foot houses. He says that while micro is not exactly the new mega, the space you need truly is a state of mind.

   According to a 2006 story on NPR, Behind the Ever-Expanding American Dream House. “The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s; it now stands at 2,349 square feet. Whether it’s a McMansion in a wealthy neighborhood, or a bigger, cheaper house in the exurbs, the move toward ever large homes has been accelerating for years.” How much is enough and not too much?

   According to Housing: Then, Now, and in the Future by Moya K. Mason, the first houses built by Europeans in America “had less than 450 square feet of space”. “At the beginning of the last century, the average home was 700 to 1,200 square feet. In 1950 the average home was 1,000 square feet growing to an average size of 2,000 square feet in 2000.”

1. While it will come as no surprise to anyone who doesn’t watch Fox News, McClatchy Newspapers reports that an Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida. “An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network. The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.” But, then we knew that back before Bush decided to invade. The report officially comes out tomorrow.

2. The Washington Post reports that Blackwater is under investigation. “House oversight committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman expanded his effort yesterday to investigate private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, calling for a wide-ranging federal inquiry into the company’s employment practices. In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration and the Labor Department, Waxman (D-Calif.) questioned Blackwater’s classification of its workers as ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees. That designation, which the government has questioned in the past, has allowed the company to obtain $144 million in contracts set aside for small businesses and to avoid paying as much as $50 million in withholding taxes under State Department contracts, he said.” Blackwater, of course, claims the allegations are “completely without merit”.

3. The New York Times reports Pollution is called a byproduct of a ‘clean’ fuel. People living in Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, began to notice “an oily, fetid substance… fouling the Black Warrior River”. The source of the pollution “turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.” “The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams… According to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, but scientists say that position understates its potential environmental impact.”

4. Rob Shaw writing for Time magazine, tells How Google Earth ate our town.

   When they hear the telltale sirens of a fire truck bursting out of the station in Nanaimo, the locals don’t need to look out of the window or tune in to newscasts to find out where the action is. Instead, they can simply log on to Google Maps or Google Earth and track the firefighters in real time as they tear down the streets of this Vancouver Island port community. The Google-enabling of Nanaimo’s fire service, launched just weeks ago, is the latest venture in a British Columbia town that has been dubbed the capital of Google Earth…

   [This] is a big deal for an old coal mining city of only around 78,000 people, nestled about an hour north of Victoria. What Nanaimo lacks for in size, it has tried to make up in sheer volume of raw electronic data.

   The city’s planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearing house of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program.

   Sad that my first reaction to reading this was not ‘how cool!’, but ‘how could this be used by terrorists?’

1. The Guardian reports that the U.S. warned any economic ray of hope unlikely to brighten sluggish trend. “America’s economic downturn is likely to be “W-shaped” with the occasional ray of hope failing to shift a sluggish trend lasting throughout 2009, according to a gloomy forecast by HSBC. The bank’s economists say that a loss of confidence in the financial system is diminishing the impact of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve – and that US interest rates may fall as low as 1%… As the credit crunch bites into the banking system and consumer spending weakens, HSBC predicts that US growth will slow from last year’s 2.2% to 1.5% in 2008 and to 1.2% in 2009.”

   The Boston Globe adds Surging costs of groceries hit home. “American families, already pinched by soaring energy costs, are taking another big hit to household budgets as food prices increase at the fastest rate since 1990… Wholesale food prices, an indicator of where supermarket prices are headed, rose last month at the fastest rate since 2003, with egg prices jumping 60 percent from a year ago, pasta products 30 percent, and fruits and vegetables 20 percent, according to the Labor Department… Several factors contribute to higher food prices, analysts say, but none more than record prices for oil, which last week closed above $105 a barrel. Oil is not only driving up production and transportation costs, but also adding to demand for corn and soybeans, used to make alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel… Meanwhile, with poor harvests in major wheat-producing regions, wheat prices have more than tripled.”

2. The Los Angeles Times reports Senate panel critiques prewar claims by White House. “The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration’s claims in the buildup to war with Iraq… The findings are likely to be a source of political discomfort for the White House by reviving the controversy over the Bush administration’s case for war… The report could also become political fodder for the presidential race, which has focused on the differing positions of the remaining candidates on the decision to invade Iraq… Dissatisfied with the scope of the report, Republicans on the panel are expected to attach a section outlining their objections and calling attention to prewar claims by prominent Democrats, including [Sen. Hillary] Clinton.”

   And while Congress squabbles, The New York Times reports that Five American soldiers were killed in Baghdad and three others wounded by a bomb on Monday at about 3 p.m. in the Mansour neighnorhood. “The soldiers were on a dismounted patrol when they were attacked… Earlier Monday, one of the most important leaders of local Sunni Arab forces in Diyala Province, just north of Baghdad, who are working with the Americans against insurgents in Iraq, was killed by a female suicide bomber who blew herself up at his home. The leader of the neighborhood forces, Sheik Thaer al-Ghadhban al-Karkhy , was killed in the province, along with a child and a police guard, according to a police official.”

News about U.S. troops deployed to South Korea, polar bears, and CO₂ is beneath the fold.