Deep Something

This is a news round up of brief news items from the week ending on August 26, 2007.

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Less than a week after a Washington Post story about the existence of the CIA’s secret prisons, Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) have called for an investigation into the leak of this information. “Such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences.”

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This guy fits right in with the current crop of Republicans. During his 1990 nomination as an appeals court judge, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito promised to recuse himself, to avoid potential conflicts of interest, in cases “involving Vanguard, in which he owned mutual fund shares; Smith Barney, his brokerage firm; First Federal Savings & Loan of Rochester, N.Y., which held his home mortgage; and his sister’s law firm.”

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While you and I are cringing with every stop at a filling station, the big oil companies are raking in the big bucks.

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In November 2002, the U.S. attorney in Guam, Frederick A. Black, notified Justice Department officials that he was opening an investigation into Jack Abramoff’s lobbying activities with Guam judges. Days later, Black was demoted and barred from pursuing public corruption cases, ending his investigation.

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Mike Brown may have resigned earlier this month as FEMA director amid intense public criticism, but taxpayers are still paying his salary. Brown remains on the FEMA payroll as a consultant so that the agency can receive a “proper download of his experience.”

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Bush’s allies in Congress are using high gas prices as another excuse for massive giveaways to the oil industry. The Los Angeles Times reports that conservative “leaders in Congress announced plans to introduce new legislation or amend existing measures to bestow more tax breaks on the industry and provide other incentives left out of the big energy bill Bush signed into law in August.”

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Not only did Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary serve U.S. troops in Iraq spoiled food (sometimes a year past the expiration date), but also contaminated water from Iraq’s Euphrates River, containing “numerous pathogenic organisms” at nearly two times the normal contamination levels of untreated water. “[R]aw sewage is routinely dumped less than two miles from the water intake location.”

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Stock prices for Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) fell 15 percent in late July, but not before Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist unloaded his family’s shares. HCA is the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, founded by Frist’s father and directed by Frist’s brother, who is also a leading stockholder.

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David Safavian, who until Friday headed the “obscure but extremely important” federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was arrested yesterday, accused by federal agents of “lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the federal government.”

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