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• WaPo - Bush Still Fundraiser in Chief

  His popularity rating in national polls is dismally low, and the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, is doing his best to avoid him, but Bush remains a formidable force on the GOP fundraising circuit during his final months in office. He has already clocked 31 political events this year, raising nearly $70 million for GOP candidates and the national and state parties, according to the Republican National Committee. The tally puts the president on track to meet or exceed the amount he raised before the midterm elections in 2006, according to GOP officials. To look at it another way: Since the start of 2007, Bush alone is responsible for raising more money than the entire Democratic National Committee.

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• Guardian - Iraqi MPs stall deals on Bush benchmarks

  Three key US-backed measures on oil, provincial elections and the future of US troops are mired in the Iraqi parliament, raising doubts as to whether they can come into effect before George Bush leaves office. Once listed as a crucial "benchmark" allowing the US president to claim success in Iraq, the provincial elections look likely to be delayed until next year. The oil law, which nationalist MPs blocked last summer over fears that foreign companies would take over Iraq's major resource, is facing the same problem again. The pact to permit US troops to remain in Iraq is equally sensitive, and was described by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, this month as being in stalemate... Many MPs complain that it will give the US excessive rights.

Corporate television is having a near total news blackout on Iraq and Afghanistan. Reporters covering the wars have gone on record saying the networks have put war on the back burner, according to the NY Times.

For example, take Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. She joked with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that she has to threaten to kill her bureau chief with an armor-piercing RPG in order to get her stories on the air. Sure, she was joking, but was she?

"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.

How little coverage of our nation's wars appear on the three network evening newscasts?

Only 2 minutes per week.

• NYT - Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises

  Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues -- all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month. But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand. Many of the long-distance trains are already sold out for some days this summer... "We're starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints," said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak. The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of "passenger miles" traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960, and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also shrunk, making it hard to expand... Today Amtrak has 632 usable rail cars, and dozens more are worn out or damaged but could be reconditioned and put into service at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars each. And it needs to buy new rail cars soon.

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• McClatchy - CIA advised military on questioning at Guantanamo

  The CIA, which had authority to use harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorist detainees, advised U.S. military officials at Guantanamo in 2002 on how far they could go in extracting information from captives there, documents released at a Senate hearing Tuesday show. "If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong," Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, told a meeting of officials on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes from the meeting... The CIA involvement clearly bothered some at Guantanamo. "This looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of," Mark Fallon, deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo, wrote in an Oct. 28, 2002 e-mail to his headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va. "Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this."

• NYT - Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir

  The Army official who managed the Pentagon's largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops. The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations. Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company... But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors -- after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR's claims -- approved most of the payments he had tried to block.

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• LA Times - Oglala Sioux could regain Badlands national parkland

  The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see. Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape. On a plateau, a solitary makeshift hut sits ringed by empty Coke cans and shaving cream canisters. It is the only remnant of a three-year occupation by militant tribal activists who had demanded that the land be returned. Now the National Park Service is contemplating doing just that: giving the 133,000-acre southern half of Badlands National Park back to the tribe. The northern half, which has a paved road and a visitor center, would remain with the park system.

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• CS Monitor - Cyclists form a first-of-its-kind union in Toronto

  Kathy Marks cocks her head, listening for the din of a thousand bicycle bells. For the Toronto grandmother, it’s a cue to hop on her three-speed bicycle and join a riding protest for more bike lanes in Canada’s largest city. But after several years of participating in this annual demonstration, she’s considering joining a new group of rabble-rousers to show her dissatisfaction with cycling conditions here: the Toronto Cyclists Union... Believed to be a global first, the union already has enrolled hundreds of card-carrying members since it formed in May. Modeled on auto programs like AAA, the union plans to offer members insurance, roadside assistance, and advocacy on their behalf – all for a $24 annual fee.

Mike Bernards is a farmer in McMinnville, Oregon and he just had installed a 120-foot tall wind turbine that is capable of supplying upward of 25 percent of the energy used by his family farm. The story about his 'planting' a wind turbine to yield a bumper crop of energy is in today's The Oregonian.

In Oregon, grants are available for wind turbine installation, but only for properties with 1 acre or more. Fortunately, Bernards' farm is 500 acres. So with the help of grants and Oregon Department of Energy tax credits, Bernards wound up paying only $12,000 for his $70,000 microgeneration set-up: a 10-kilowatt turbine is capable of generating 1,300 kilowatts of power a month.

This investment for the future will not only help lower energy bills for Bernards' farm, but also will help it keep growing produce — strawberries, beans, walnuts, filberts, artichokes, and zucchini — to feed hungry people in nearby Portland. This on-site microgeneration turbine is a small start to a more sustainable future, but more steps need to be taken.

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• Miami Herald - 9/11 trial sought during presidential campaign

  Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 conspirators on Thursday accused the Pentagon prosecutor of rushing to begin the complex Sept. 11, 2001, mass-murder trial in the height of the presidential campaign season... The document includes an e-mail from a civilian member of the prosecution team proposing to set the trial date for Sept. 15, the Monday after the seventh anniversary of the suicide attacks. "Not coincidentally," the defense attorneys say, "that would force the trial of this case in mid-September, some seven weeks before the general elections." The date, in fact, is 10 days after Sen. John McCain, an architect of Military Commissions law, is expected to be officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate at the GOP national convention in St. Paul, Minn.

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• WaPo - 111 Nations, Minus the U.S., Agree to Cluster-Bomb Ban

  More than 100 countries reached agreement Wednesday to ban cluster bombs, controversial weapons that human rights groups deplore but which the United States, which did not join the ban, calls an integral, legitimate part of its arsenal... In addition to the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan -- all of them major producers or users of the weapons -- did not sign the agreement or participate in the talks... Despite pleas from Washington, Britain endorsed the plan, along with other close U.S. allies and members of NATO. But the United States will no doubt welcome a provision that allows states that adopt the treaty to "engage in military cooperation and operations with States not parties to this Convention." That would let signatories partner with the Americans in military and humanitarian operations, despite U.S. use of cluster munitions, without penalty.

• NYT - The Media Equation: The Wars We Choose to Ignore

  Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There's plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September... The tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52 perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18 have died. Television network news coverage in particular has gone off a cliff.

The Los Angeles Times has an article about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's upcoming trial at Guantánamo Bay. In the article, "Defending KSM, 'the most hated man in the world', Josh Meyer writes about the lawyer who is assigned to be KSM's lead defense lawyer — Capt. Prescott L. Prince, a Navy Reserve judge advocate general. The significance of this trial, I think, cannot be understated as Capt. Prince explains:

"I think it's the constitutional case of our time," Prince, 53, said in a recent interview in his office, U.S. and Navy flags front and center on his desk. "Because in the 221st year of America, the question is whether the Constitution applies to the government."

Not only is KSM on trial at Guantánamo Bay, but also the question many of us have asked over the past seven years — do we still have a Constitution?

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• NYT - Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says

  A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received. The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash... When the results were compiled, they revealed a lack of accountability notable even by the shaky standards detailed in earlier examinations of contracting in Iraq... almost 95 percent of the payments had not been properly documented.

  
  Where did the cash really go?

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• WaPo - McCain Adviser Worked As Lobbyist For Notorious Rulers

  Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is... hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November. But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi's man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black's contacts in Congress and the White House... In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.

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• McClatchy - U.S. announces deployment of seven combat brigades to Iraq

  The Defense Department announced Monday that it will send seven combat brigades to Iraq by the end of the year, suggesting that the Pentagon is planning to maintain its troop levels in Iraq through next year. The military also alerted four National Guard Army brigades, or roughly 14,000 troops, to prepare for deployments to Iraq beginning next spring. A fifth National Guard brigade, Vermont's 86th Brigade Combat Team, is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in the spring of 2010, the Pentagon announced. Those National Guard brigades and the roughly 25,000 active-duty soldiers will replace brigades finishing their deployments in Iraq. In addition, the military said a headquarters division, the 25th Division, will deploy this fall. The deployments, which would indicate a plan to keep 15 combat brigades, or roughly 140,000 troops, in Iraq through 2009...

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• NYT - U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan

  The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come. The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan... But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

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• Guardian - World's wildlife and environment already hit by climate change

  Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems. Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity. Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found.