When the feds raided the Alaska home of Sen. Ted Stevens, perhaps no one was more surprised than the U.S. senator himself. Fifteen federal agents showed up.

            Not cool at all, given all Stevens has done for Big Oil and Bush-Cheney Inc.

            The Republican lawmaker's coziness with energy execs is exceeded only by the vice president's. To be caught in a federal criminal probe involving Alaska lawmakers and VECO Corp., must have caught Stevens off guard. In the Senate, Stevens is the patron saint of Big Oil.

            Remember when Dick Cheney made a big executive-privilege stink to protect his oil industry cronies from public scrutiny? Cheney believes the public doesn't have a right to know who is helping to shape U.S. energy policy.

            Stevens would agree, although he never really hid his chumminess with Big Oil. He walked the walk and talked the talk.

Destroying and Losing Ohio's 2004 Election Records is a CRIME. It is a felony. Spilling coffee on… and then destroying records is an outrage and a crime. It is also a very lame excuse for Holmes County to use to have destroyed most of their 2004 election records. Here is what Director Lisa Welch, the Director of the Holmes County Board of Elections… "Respectfully" signed her name to in her letter of explanation for Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, as to why she and her board no longer had their records,

Holmes County Board of Elections

"A shelving unit collapsed in the Board of Election storeroom on the morning of Friday, April 7, 2006. That shelving unit held the voted ballots, stubs, soiled and defaced ballots envelopes, and the ballot accounting charts fromt he 2004 General Election. The shelves and stored items collapsed onto a side table holding a working coffee maker. The carafe on the coffee maker was full at the time of the incident. Many of the stored items had to be destroyed due to the broken glass and hot coffee. The ballot pages and unused ballots were stored on a neighboring shelf and were not damaged".

As early as this Friday, Congress may approve legislation allowing the Department of Energy to approve $50 billion and more in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants.

We ask that you call your US Representative to make sure this does not happen.

The nuclear industry itself has made it clear that this astonishing taxpayer give-away is the only way new atomic reactors will be built in this country. After fifty years of proven failure, neither Wall Street nor the utility industry wants to finance new atomic construction without your taxpayer dollars to guarantee their investments.

You might think that after half a century, technology once sold on the promise of being "too cheap to meter" would be able to raise its own funding. But it can't.

By contrast, no federal guarantees are needed for the billions of dollars being invested in building new wind farms all over the world.

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D., Wisconsin) and Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) have signed on as cosponsors of H. Res. 333, a bill proposing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, according to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's office. Kucinich is the original sponsor of the bill. Baldwin is the fourth member of the House Judiciary Committee to have added her name to the bill. A fifth Judiciary Committee member, Steve Cohen, has thus far signed on only to a bill proposing the impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

H Res 333 cosponsors include, in addition to Baldwin, Payne, and Kucinich: Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Keith Ellison, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Albert Wynn, William Lacy Clay, Yvette Clarke, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Bob Filner, Sam Farr, Robert Brady.

That bill, H. Res. 589 sponsored by Congressman Jay Inslee, has 15 cosponsors in addition to Inslee: Xavier Becerra, Michael Arcuri, Ben Chandler, Dennis Moore, Bruce Braley, Tom Udall, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Keith Ellison, David Wu, Yvette Clarke, Darlene Hooley, Betty McCollum.

The U.S. media establishment is mainlining another fix for the Iraq war: It isn’t so bad after all, American military power could turn wrong into right, chronic misleaders now serve as truth-tellers. The hit is that the war must go on.

     When the White House chief of staff Andrew Card said five years ago that “you don’t introduce new products in August,” he was explaining the need to defer an all-out PR campaign for invading Iraq until early fall. But this year, August isn’t a bad month to launch a sales pitch for a new and improved Iraq war. Bad products must be re-marketed to counteract buyers’ remorse.

     “War critics” who have concentrated on decrying the lack of U.S. military progress in Iraq are now feeling the hoist from their own petards. But that’s to be expected. Those who complain that the war machine is ineffective are asking for more effective warfare even when they think they’re demanding peace.