1. Now this is interesting. Viktor Bout, the arms dealer that was arrested in Thailand yesterday, had ties to the United States’ occupation of Iraq. The Los Angeles Times reports Long-sought arms dealer caught. “The long hunt for a man regarded as one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers climaxed Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, where an eight-month sting operation by a team of U.S. agents.”

   U.S. authorities said they would move quickly to secure Bout’s extradition. But his controversial role in supplying the American military effort in Iraq and possible Russian interest in returning him to Moscow could complicate efforts to put him on trial in New York…

   But Bout’s role in aiding the Bush administration’s reconstruction effort in Iraq poses thorny hurdles to any effort to construct a legal case against him. A public trial, which would most likely be held in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, could lead to uncomfortable revelations for the administration about Bout’s business relationships with U.S. military agencies and private contractors.

   “An American trial would be interesting because a lot of the Bush engagement with Bout will come out,” said Witney Schneidman, a former assistant secretary of State who pressed for foreign support in pursuing Bout at the end of the Clinton administration…

   Lee S. Wolosky, a former National Security Council deputy who led the effort against Bout for the Clinton and Bush administrations, warned that Bout “really needs to come into U.S. custody quickly. Otherwise, there’s ample opportunity for others to mess around.”

   It looks to me like Bout is going to be silenced by the Bush administration. Mother Jones has more and markthshark has more background in an August 2007 diary on Daily Kos.

2. Continuing on with my fascination this week with the Grand Canyon. The Washington Post reports the Grand Canyon nearly three times older than previously thought. The Grand Canyon “is more like 17 million years old, according to a study published today in the journal Science. And the Colorado River may not be the only river involved in its formation. The study contends that a smaller river cut the older, western part of the canyon. Gradually the canyon formed from west to east on westward-flowing river. Then something happened about 5 or 6 million years ago — what, exactly, is unclear — to accelerate dramatically the rate of the canyon-carving.” And while this is cutting edge science, there is still plenty of evidence to point to the 5-6 million year age of the canyon. It will be interesting to see if more scientific evidence will be discovered to support this new hypothesis.

3. According to NASA, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan suggests that Saturn’s moon Rhea also may have rings. “NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn’s second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon. A broad debris disk and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons. ‘Until now, only planets were known to have rings, but now Rhea seems to have some family ties to its ringed parent Saturn,’ said Geraint Jones, a Cassini scientist”.

   “This is an artist concept of the ring of debris that may orbit Saturn’s second-largest moon, Rhea. The suggested disk of solid material is exaggerated in density here for clarity.” — Source: NASA

Four at Four continues below the fold…

1. The Los Angeles Times reports Dean argues against new Florida and Michigan primaries. “The national Democratic Party won’t pay for two states to hold a second set of presidential primaries, National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said this morning. ‘We can’t afford to do that,’ Dean said on CBS’ ‘The Early Show,’ one of several media appearances he made this morning. ‘That’s not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race‘… Elected officials in Florida and Michigan have mentioned the prospect of holding new primaries, estimated to cost $25 million in Florida alone… ‘The rules were set a year and a half ago,’ Dean said. ‘Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn’t need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states.'”

2. The New York Times reports that the Torrent in the Colorado River is unleashed to aid fish.

   A torrent of water was released into the Colorado River from the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona on Tuesday, in a disputed effort to improve the environment for fish in the Grand Canyon…

   The water poured out of the dam as if pumped through a gigantic fire hose, at the rate of 41,500 cubic feet per second – enough to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes. This release, which engineers call “high flow,” was meant to scour the river bottom and deposit silt and sediment to rebuild and extend sandbars and create new, calm backwater areas where the fish can spawn.

   But the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Steve Martin, argued that if such high flows were not repeated several times in the next five years, the overall water management plan was very likely to impair rather than improve the fish environment.

Four at Four continues below the fold with an update on Wikileaks and a story on Big Brother.

1. On behalf of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Decider would like you to meet your next president.

   The New York Times reports McCain wins Bush’s endorsement. A triumphant Senator John McCain on Wednesday received the political blessing of a man with whom he once feuded bitterly, President Bush, and said he would welcome the president’s campaigning on his behalf. “I’m honored and humbled,” Mr. McCain said outside the White House, declaring that he felt both “respect and affection” for Mr. Bush. The senator emphasized that he would welcome Mr. Bush’s personal appearances by his side “in keeping with the president’s heavy schedule.” For the moment, at least, his comments dispelled any impression that Mr. McCain would prefer that Mr. Bush, whose ratings have been slumping, keep his distance.

   The Los Angeles Times adds that Bush gaves McCain veep advice. “When the two were asked about one of the crucial decisions facing McCain — the choice of a running mate — Bush referred to his own selection of Dick Cheney, who had run the search for qualified candidates after Bush had locked up the GOP nomination. He joked that McCain should ‘be careful who he names to be head of his selection committee.’ Regardless of the choice, the president said, ‘people don’t vote for vice presidents,’ but for the candidate who will sit in the Oval Office.”

2. The Associated Press is reporting that More FBI privacy violations have been confirmed. “The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller… told the Senate Judiciary Committee” today. Muller offered no additional details, but said that a forthcoming report “will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March”. That report found “the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.”

3. The Guardian reports Moses was stoned when he set Ten Commandments, researcher claims. “According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times. Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared. ‘The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness,’ writes Shanon. ‘In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings.'” Certainly would give a new meaning to burning bush.

4. The New York Times reports Gary Gygax, game pioneer, dies at 69. “Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69… As co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the seminal role-playing game introduced in 1974, Mr. Gygax wielded a cultural influence far broader than his relatively narrow fame among hard-core game enthusiasts.”

   The Pioneer Press reports that Gaming enthusiasts mourning a role model. “‘Another giant has fallen,’ murmured Nick Postiglione. It wasn’t a hill giant, fire giant or storm giant he was talking about. Nobody had whipped out their Hammer of Thunderbolts. ‘How many guys change the fundamental nature of gaming? Now he’s gone,’ said Postiglione, vice president of The Source Comics & Games in Falcon Heights.”

   Paul La Farge wrote a decent overview of Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and his career for Believer in September 2006 called “Destroy All Monsters“. It’s worth your time to read.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports that a Plan to ‘flush’ Grand Canyon stirs concerns.

   The Grand Canyon is about to take a bath, and National Park Service officials who oversee the natural wonder are worried.

   Federal flood control managers, led by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, this week plan to unleash millions of cubic feet of water from behind Glen Canyon Dam to “flush” the huge canyon bottom with a simulated springtime flood…

   The flows begin today, and a massive release is set for Wednesday in a media event with Kempthorne…

   National park officials said that 10 years of research at a cost of $80 million had shown that the flooding as planned could irreparably harm the national park’s ecology and resources.

   Grand Canyon National Park Supt. Steve Martin said he was given a day to formulate comments to a cursory environmental assessment of the project. In those comments, he wrote that statements by the Bureau of Reclamation used to justify the flows’ timing were “unsubstantiated.” Far from restoring crucial sand banks and other areas, the flows could destroy habitat, Martin said.

2. Okay, Bush is an idiot. Here’s more proof from Bush’s press conference today with King Abdullah of Jordan. When asked about OPEC not having plans of increasing oil output, Bush responded:

   I think it’s a mistake to have your biggest customer’s economy slow down, or your biggest customers’ economies slowing down as a result of high energy prices. It’s not the only result — our economy is slowing down. I mean, obviously we’ve got a housing issue and some credit issues. But no question, the high price of gasoline has hurt economic growth here in the United States. And if I were a member of OPEC, I’d be concerned about high energy prices causing people to buy less energy over time.

   And the other thing high energy prices of course does, which is stimulate alternative fuels, which we’re doing a lot here in America. We’re spending a lot of money on biofuels and ethanols and new ways to make ethanol. My advice to OPEC — of course they haven’t listened to it — but my advice to OPEC is to understand the consequences of high energy prices, because I do, and I understand this is affecting our American citizens. It’s making it harder for people to be able to drive, and it’s making it tough for families to save.

   And so not only is it — high energy prices having an effect on — a macro effect on our economy, it’s affecting a lot of our families, which troubles me, as well. And by the way, the higher energy prices stay, the more likely it is countries will quickly diversify. And that’s part of our strategy.

   Bush is concerned that America might be motivated to find an alternative to Middle Eastern oil.

A story of the coming salmon disaster this year and Oregon’s new, replacement weather buoys are in the waters below the fold.

The Guardian is reporting that the United States will deploy military advisers to Pakistan.

The United States will send dozens of military advisers to Pakistan to train soldiers who are fighting extremist groups in the country’s restive tribal areas, it emerged today, the first meaningful deployment of American troops in the country.

After weeks of negotiations between the US and Pakistan’s new army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, a squad of American trainers will arrive later this year to teach soldiers how to handle counter insurgency operations, rather than a conventional land war against India.

I do not see this ending well.

1. BBC News reports that the UN Security Council approves new sanctions on Iran. “Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of measures including asset freezes and travel bans for Iranian officials. Indonesia abstained.” It is the third UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

   Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news… The New York Times reports Oil prices pass record set during ’80s energy crisis. “Setting an all-time record, oil prices rose to nearly $104 a barrel on Monday morning, exceeding their inflation-adjusted high reached in the early 1980s during the second oil shock, before pulling back… That level tops the record set in April 1980 of $39.50 a barrel, which would translate to $103.76 a barrel in today’s money.” Why the jump? As AP reports Oil jumps to new record on dollar’s fall.

2. Here is yet another way Wall Street is stealing money from American tax payers. According to The New York Times, Wall Street underrates state and municipal bonds and some states and cities are starting to rebel. “Billions of taxpayers’ dollars – money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges – are being siphoned off in the financial markets… A complex system of credit ratings and insurance policies that Wall Street uses to set prices for municipal bonds makes borrowing needlessly expensive for many localities… Because of their relatively weak credit scores, more than half of all municipal borrowers buy insurance policies that safeguard their bonds in the unlikely event that they fail to pay the debt… Ratings agencies… are paid a second time to evaluate the insured bonds.” Need a school built, a bridge repaired, or any other kind of public investment in public infrastructure? Wall Street is going to drive up the costs. As long as we give private banks the ability create money, then the people will always be on the losing end of the class war.

3. The Defense War Department announced this morning that “American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia” and The New York Times dutifully reported that “residents reached by telephone said the only casualties were three wounded civilians, three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.” The attack came around 3:30 a.m. and “was not the first time that American forces have fired missiles into Somalia in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives in the country. They did it at least three times last year.” The Guardian has a slightly differing account. “The strike was carried out early this morning, destroying a home and seriously injuring eight people, including four children, residents and police said… A police officer who gave only his first name, Siyad, said the eight wounded were hit by shrapnel. An aid worker… said up to six people were still trapped in the rubble by midday… It was not clear if these victims were included in the police officer’s tally.”

4. I do not see this ending well. The Guardian reports US to train Pakistan troops hunting militants. “The United States will send dozens of military advisers to Pakistan to train soldiers who are fighting extremist groups in the country’s restive tribal areas, it emerged today, the first meaningful deployment of American troops in the country.”

   “A squad of American trainers will arrive later this year to teach soldiers how to handle counter insurgency operations… Although the original plan sees a deployment that stretches until 2015, the current forecast is that the trainers will be in Pakistan for up to two years. Initially the US military advisers would not be allowed out of their training camps. However, a widely discussed 40-page memo circulating in Washington eventually sees US troops accompanying Pakistani soldiers on missions against the militants.”

   For those historically minded — on November 1, 1955, President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the South Vietnamese Army. That date marks the official U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

A bonus story about beeswax is beneath the fold…

1. 

   Ruh-roh. The Financial Times reports Bernanke predicts bank failures. “Some small US banks are likely to fail as a result of the housing crisis, Ben Bernanke said yesterday, warning that his country faced a more difficult situation than in the aftermath of the dotcom bust in 2001. ‘There will probably be some bank failures,’ the Fed chairman told the Senate banking committee in his second day of biannual testimony to Congress. He said the banks at risk were ‘small and in many cases de novo [new] banks that are heavily invested in real estate in localities where prices have fallen’.”

   And seven years of conservative economic policies and governance has left the United States in a “weaker position to respond to the negative growth shock today than it was in 2001.” The U.S. had one war in Afghanistan in 2001, it has two today. The dollar was strong in 2001, it is weak today. The price of oil was $20 a barrel in 2001, it is is over $100 a barrel today. George W. Bush, the Republicans, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have destroyed the U.S. ecnonomy. Don’t worry about them though, they’re making out like bandits. Oh, and when those small banks fail, guess who will be doing the bailout? Yup, poor and middle class taxpayers.

2. Another result of conservative military policy under George W. Bush. The Guardian reports that the Afghanistan mission is close to failing.

   After six years of US-led military support and billions of [dollars] in aid, security in Afghanistan is ‘deteriorating’ and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.

   Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control…

   A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and – twice as many as in 2004 – while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

   Nato commanders paint the suicide bombs and ambushes as signs of a disheartened enemy… But analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well.

   Earlier in the week Sen. Joe Biden warned of failure in Afghanistan. Biden called on NATO to bail out the Bush administration’s failed policy in Afghanistan. “NATO must be ‘fully in the fight’ in Afghanistan – nothing less than the future of the alliance is at stake, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told a luncheon crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘Many of our NATO allies thought they were signing up for a peacekeeping mission, not counter-insurgency operations,’ said Biden, D-Del. ‘Many are fighting with incredible bravery in the south. But the so-called ‘national caveats’ are making a mockery of NATO – and the notion of a unified mission.'” If Bush didn’t have the military distracted in Iraq, things would have gone differently in Afghanistan.

3. The New York Times reports Turkey withdraws troops from Northern Iraq. “Turkey’s military announced it had withdrawn all of its troops from northern Iraq by Friday morning, bringing an eight-day ground offensive against Kurdish guerrillas to a close… Reports differed on the extent of the withdrawal, with an American military official in Iraq and a representative for the Kurdish fighters saying some troops were still in the country. The Turkish military… said that the ground campaign in which 24 Turkish soldiers and as many as 243 Kurdish fighters were killed had simply run its course as its goals had been met.”

There are bonus stories about space soot and Maya blue beneath the fold.

1. There is a Record-high ratio of Americans in prison reports the Washington Post. “More than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.”

2. The Los Angeles Times reports $4 gasoline? It’s news to Bush.

   President Bush said today he was unaware of predictions by some analysts that gasoline could reach $4 a gallon by this spring because of strong demand and reformulation.

   “That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that,” Bush said after a reporter asked about the prospect. “I know it’s high now.” …

   Bush again touted the benefits of alternative fuels and conservation. But he chastised Congress for talking about an $18-billion tax increase for large oil companies.

   “All that’s going to do is make the price even higher,” he said.

3. The Washington Post reports the ‘Virtual wall’ along U.S.-Mexican border fails and is to be delayed. The completion of the project’s first phase is delayed at least three years. “Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.” The project built by Boeing “did not work as planned” nor “meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol… Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.” The total cost of the project is unknown, because the DHS does “not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed, the materials to be used, or the cost to acquire the land.”

   Meanwhile, The New York Times reports a Border patrol agent’s trial in the killing of a migrant starts in Arizona. “In a patch of desert just north of Mexico, what began as a relatively routine interception a year ago ended when a Border Patrol agent shot and killed an illegal immigrant at close range… The agent, Nicholas W. Corbett, 40, was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide for a shooting that prosecutors say was unprovoked as the immigrant, Francisco Javiér Domínguez, 22, was surrendering… The prosecutor, Grant Woods, a former state attorney general, said Wednesday at the trial that Agent Corbett had lied to supervisors about what occurred… ‘We all respect the Border Patrol and law enforcement, but you don’t kill somebody who is trying to surrender,’ he told the jury.

4. The Guardian reports Adopt defence system or face disaster, warns US official.

   Failure by the European allies to adopt a missile defence system could lead to the break up of Nato, the top US official responsible for promoting the controversial project warned today.

   Lt Gen Henry Obering, director of the US Missile Defence Agency, painted almost apocalyptic scenarios at a conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London today. He said that Iran could simultaneously block the Straits of Hormuz and provoke terrorist attacks in Europe, and that al-Qaida could acquire nuclear weapons…

   “The decisions we make today, right now, will shape the future,” he said. Europe could not wait until Iran possessed long-range missiles.

   There remains widespread scepticism in Nato about Washington’s claims regarding the need and capability of a missile defence system and the intentions of the Iranians, alliance officials admitted today.

1. The Exxon Valdez oil spill has finally reached the Supreme Court. Bloomberg News reports The Damage award amount is questioned. “U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned the $2.5 billion punitive damage award assessed against Exxon Mobil Corp. for the 1989 Valdez oil spill, the largest in American history.” Not unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly Chief Justice John Roberts said “I don’t see what more a corporation can do,” indicating Exxon’s “prohibition on alcohol use by on-duty vessel officers.” Of course, I doubt it occurred to Roberts that Exxon could have used double-hulled oil tankers, for example.

   Exxon is arguing, according to Reuters, that “it should not be punished for the mistakes of the ship’s captain. But the lawyer for about 33,000 commercial fishermen and others harmed by the nation’s worst tanker spill replied that Exxon Mobil for three years had overlooked reports that Captain Joseph Hazelwood had a drinking problem. Attorney Walter Dellinger said the record award was necessary to punish the huge Texas-based oil company, which earlier this month reported the highest-ever quarterly profit for a U.S. company of $11.7 billion.” Obviously, at $11.7 billion a quarter, Exxon is about to go out of business.

   The Los Angeles Times reports the Exxon Valdez oil spill lingers in Alaska.

   When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in March 1989, the world saw images of blackened seabirds and otters and seals, of bloated whale carcasses and once-pristine beaches covered with crude. Hardly anything was said about the herring.

   No one at the time understood the fish’s central place in the ecosystem, nor did anyone know the herring’s demise would lead to years of hardship for the people here…

   The herring disappeared four years after the spill — long after intense public scrutiny had faded and the story line had devolved into squabbling between lawyers.

   Exxon claimed the region recovered quickly. Government scientists, however, said oil remained and was still working its way through the ecosystem in a process that would last decades. At the back of a local tavern, hand-scrawled graffiti expresses a common sentiment here: “Oil spills are forever.”

   In December, nearly 19 years after the spill, scientists published the most definitive study of its kind linking Exxon oil with the collapse of the herring population. Oil killed adult herring, but more significantly, it damaged eggs and larvae.

   Surviving fish developed lesions in their livers. Larvae hatched prematurely and never grew to their full 8 or 9 inches. They showed depressed immune systems, which made them susceptible to disease.

   The population, which used to be scooped up by the millions of tons, never recovered and, from indications, may never return.

   $2.5 billion in punitive damages is too small of a fine against this eco-terrorist company and environmental mass-murderer.

1. The Guardian reports The United Nations is unable to meet food aid needs. The United Nations warned “that it no longer has enough money to keep global malnutrition at bay this year in the face of a dramatic upward surge in world commodity prices… With annual food price increases around the world of up to 40% and dramatic hikes in fuel costs, that budget is no longer enough even to maintain current food deliveries. The shortfall is all the more worrying as it comes at a time when populations, many in urban areas, who had thought themselves secure in their food supply are now unable to afford basic foodstuffs… WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic foods were caused by a ‘perfect storm‘ of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural produce for biofuels, and climate change.”

2. The AP reports that Wholesale prices jumped in January. “The Labor Department said Tuesday that wholesale inflation jumped by 1 percent in January, more than double the increase that analysts had been expecting. Meanwhile, the New York-based Conference Board reported that its confidence index fell to 75.0 in February, down from a revised January reading of 87.3. The drop was far below the 83 reading that analysts had forecast and put the index at its lowest level since February 2003, a period that reflected anxiety in the leadup to the Iraq war. A third report Tuesday showed that home prices, measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller Index, dropped by 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the steepest drop in the 20-year history of the index… The January inflation surge left wholesale prices rising by 7.5 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest pace in more than 26 years.“

3. The Washington Post reports that South Africa is to resume elephant culling. “South Africa will lift a 13-year-old ban on using professional hunters to reduce burgeoning elephant populations, officials announced Monday, despite opposition from animal rights activists who call such killings barbaric and unnecessary… Across the [southern African] region there are an estimated 270,000 elephants, more than 120,000 of them in neighboring Botswana. Conservation officials in several African countries have struggled for years to strike a balance between the beloved animals, which have helped fuel a lucrative tourism boom, and other forms of wildlife whose habitats they devastate. In addition, elephants roaming beyond game parks sometimes trample villagers’ crops.” The moratorium will officially end May 1.

4. According to the Los Angeles Times, Water cuts are slicing into avocado groves.

   Deep in the green avocado groves, the winter quiet is shattered by the whine of chain saws. Workers wielding machetes slash leafy branches from the trees and spray-paint the tall stumps white to protect the bark from sunburn in the forced hibernation to come.

   Here, in the heart of the nation’s avocado industry, growers are beheading their avocado trees.

   Less than two months after a mandatory 30% cutback in agricultural water deliveries, some Southern California growers have begun “stumping” hundreds of healthy, well-nurtured avocado trees, putting them out of production for the next one to three years to leave more water for the rest of their trees.

Beneath the fold may lie the oldest urban site in the Americas… The find in Peru is older than the Great Pyramid of Giza

1. Well this is a promising letter to the Washington Post by Jay Rockefeller, Patrick Leahy, Silvestre Reyes and John Conyers. In Scare Tactics and Our Surveillance Bill, the two senators and two congressmen write:

   While the four of us may have our differences on what language a final bill should contain, we agree on several points…

   If President Bush truly believed that the expiration of the Protect America Act caused a danger, he would not have refused our offer of an extension…

   So what’s behind the president’s “sky is falling” rhetoric?

   It is clear that he and his Republican allies, desperate to distract attention from the economy and other policy failures, are trying to use this issue to scare the American people into believing that congressional Democrats have left America vulnerable to terrorist attack.

   But if our nation were to suddenly become vulnerable, it would not be because we don’t have sufficient domestic surveillance powers. It would be because the Bush administration has done too little to defeat al-Qaeda, which has reconstituted itself in Pakistan and gained strength throughout the world. Many of our intelligence assets are being used to fight in Iraq instead of taking on Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization that attacked us on Sept. 11 and that wants to attack us again.

   The president may try to change the topic by talking about surveillance laws, but we aren’t buying it…

   Unfortunately it seems the four powerful chairmen are agreeing to disagree on telecom immunity for right now, but the pushing back on the Bush administration scaremongering.

2. The Guardian reports Guantánamo guards suffer psychological trauma. “The guards at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp are the “overlooked victims” of America’s controversial detention facility in Cuba, according to a psychiatrist who has treated some of them. In some cases, a tour of duty at the camp has made guards suicidal and prompted a variety of psychiatric symptoms, from depression and insomnia to flashbacks. The guards’ testimony also provides a harrowing insight into the treatment of prisoners…”

3. The Washington Post reports in A chance to be heard for Katrina evacuees that they’re eager to vote in the Texas primary. “For the nearly quarter-million people… who were evacuated to Texas after the hurricane and its floodwaters left New Orleans devastated in 2005, powerlessness has been a constant theme, exacerbated by their reliance on goodwill and the government for help in starting over again. Angry at the Bush administration for failing them both before and after Katrina, many view the March 4 Democratic presidential primary as a chance to exert some control over their futures… No one knows how many evacuees have registered to vote in Texas or how many will show up at the state’s odd mix of primary and caucuses next week, but in interviews across this sprawling city almost everyone indicated an enormous desire to participate — adding an unknown and potentially pivotal element in a race that polls show is deadlocked…”

4. The housing market continues to fall. News today that existing house sales have now declined to a nine-year low. The AFP reports “The National Association of Realtors reported January US existing-home sales dropped 0.4 percent from December to an annualized sales pace of 4.89 million units, above the consensus economist forecast of 4.80 million… At the January sales pace, it would take 10.3 months to exhaust the supply of homes on the market, up from the 9.7 months supply in December… The median price of an existing home fell 4.6 percent from the year before to 201,100 dollars. That was the fourth-largest price drop on record, and the other three came in 2007.”

There’s a bonus story today about TPM.