OB Rag

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.

W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif.His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson. In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s.

The Department of Commerce on Thursday upheld the California Coastal Commission’s rejection of a proposed 16-mile toll road extension that would cut through San Onofre State Beach, one of the state’s most popular parks. Federal officials determined that lengthening state Route 241 is not essential to national security and mentioned at least one viable alternative path.

In D.C. yesterday morning, the Iraq Ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida’ie, paused during a presentation to address a handful of women from CODEPINK who were holding signs in the audience reading “Free al-Zaidi” and “al-Zaidi speaks for me.” The signs were to show support for the Iraqi journalist who was taken into police custody after throwing his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad press conference on Sunday.