OB Rag

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) condemns Israel ‘s massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip which has left over 300 dead and 1,400 wounded, with the tolls mounting. The Israeli Air Force dropped more than 100 bombs in dozens of locations throughout the Gaza Strip as children left school on Saturday. The dead include men, women and children in school uniforms.

As the year winds down, I’d like to note what I consider to be the most politically courageous act of 2008: Attorney General Jerry Brown’s decision to reverse his position and urge the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop. 8.

Mike Connell was allegedly a linchpin in the biggest maze of White House scandal this country’s ever seen, yet the national news media is a no-show. What caused Connell’s crash is only one piece of this story.

At about the time lots of folks were sitting down to a Christmas breakfast or cleaning up the remnants of a gift exchange, Frank and I were headed east, hoping to get a break in the weather and take a drive in our local mountains. Here’s a few shots of what we found, a winter wonderland, right here in the southland.

Statewide and national media reported that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it would be increasing oversight at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) upon discovering that an emergency backup battery system had been inoperable for the past four years due to inadequate maintenance.

Early Monday morning a coal slurry impoundment at the TVA Kingston Power Plant near Harriman, TN burst, allowing approximately 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash to rush into the surrounding community. There were no serious injuries – perhaps the only victory in this ordeal. Monday’s spill is forty times larger than even the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, the most memorable of these unnatural disasters.

President-Elect Obama’s initial choices for his environmental team look promising in terms of their commitment to climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fund green jobs and develop renewable energy systems. They are certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the Lame Duck’s last minute pollution exemptions.

What Cheney has advanced is that the president has the right to dissolve the constitution permanently. That he has the right to commit war crimes with impunity. That there is no legal authority to which he is ever required to pay deference in a war that is his and his alone to declare and end. Now when you consider that, in Cheney’s view, these war-powers are limitless, and that war is declared not by the Congress but by the president, and can be defined against a broad, amorphous enemy such as “terrorism”, and never end, you begin to see what a dangerous man he is, and how much danger we have all been in since he seized control of the government seven years ago.

Late last Friday, December 19th, Republican tech “guru” Mike Connell was killed in a private plane crash in Lake Township, Ohio. He was reportedly the only one on board, and no one on the ground was injured when it went down in a residential neighborhood. Best known as the well-connected GOP computer operative who had been at the center of every Republican scandal over the past 8 years, Mike Connell was a key witness in the King-Lincoln v. Blackwell lawsuit regarding fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.

On Saturday, December 13th, the Union-Tribune ran an innocuous article entitled, “DA ends probe of land sale to college,” over on page B-3. Staff writer Jennifer Vigil described very matter-of-fact-ly how the District Attorney “had cleared everyone involved in a land sale to the San Diego Community College District that benefited two politically connected developers.” Does this bury the scandal? It’s such a small scandal and involved our former ‘ballpark czar’ Mike Madigan.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday cleared the way for construction of the Sunrise Powerlink, a contentious transmission line that promises to bring more reliable and renewable power from the Imperial Valley to San Diego. The 4-1 vote allows San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to move forward with the 123-mile, $1.9 billion power-line project, which could deliver enough electricity to serve 650,000 households. At the same time, it was a disappointment to for many environmentalists, who worry about the effects of 150-foot-tall towers on unspoiled deserts and mountains. “Corporate profit won out today,” said the Sierra Club’s Micah Mitrosky.

I’ll never know for sure, but it’s possible that I was once on, ahem, extremely intimate terms with W. Mark Felt, the leak artist formerly known as Deep Throat who has now passed away. Journalists and many others lionizing the former FBI official — rightly — for his contribution in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau’s notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign.