Bush's new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, just quit.

My guess is he's balls-deep in a growing scandal -- a whole other animal than the CIA Leak or Abramoff business -- involving crooked defense contracts, congressional bribes, and even.... wait for it... hookers.

This scandal took down SoCal congressman Duke Cunningham a little while ago -- he's spending eight years in jail, longest sentence ever for a congresscritter -- and it's been building steam since then. Apparently this cat Brent Wilkes has been directiing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of defense contracts through traditional lobbying, straight-up bribery, and apparently gettin' hard-up representatives some poon.

In a lovely twist, the limousine company owner who supplied the pros to the WaterGate hotel "hospitality suites" (and who also has a lengthy rap sheet), got more than $20M in Homeland Security contracts. What a wonderful cycle!

All this is small potatoes profiteering compared to Haliburton or the billions that the Pentagon just doesn't know what it did with, but it's proably more politically explosive because there's snatch involved. With 45% of self-described conservatives already upset with Bush and the GOP, this is likely to hurt them further, as it's harder to run on "traditional values" when your colleagues are getting busted for sleeping with pros.

And you know how that town loves to have a freakout over sex. Gonna be a long hot summer.

A wrap of the trial of a 23-year-old kid in Lodi, California. Kinda creeps me out:

The government had no direct evidence. The confession was vague and even contradictory. And the statements about attacking American targets came only after heavy prompting from FBI interrogators.

But what the three federal prosecutors could — and did — show convincingly was that 23-year-old Hamid Hayat of Lodi, Calif., espoused strong anti-American sentiments, supported militant Muslim political parties in Pakistan and had a romantic attachment to the idea of jihad.

In his closing comments to the jury, Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Tice-Raskin summed it up: "Hamid Hayat had a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind."

That's what sold this kid out, possibly for 39 years in prison. There's no evidence he was going to do anything or had any plans or real connections. But that apparently doesn't matter now:

But McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in an interview Friday that the case against Hayat was short on the standard elements of proof because the crime had not yet happened.

"In the post-9/11 context," Scott said, "law enforcement has been given a mission by the president and the attorney general to prevent deadly acts before they occur. That is the new paradigm for law enforcement."

That's fucking awesome. Have you seen Minority Report? Dude, this is totally going to work out.

Bush believes he is above the law, and has been acting that way for a while. I'm sort of contemptuous of the law myself, but then again I'm not the President.

Glenn Greenwald provides some context. It's a problem. I'm less certain that anyone cares though. It fits in with the larger crisis of confidence.

Colbert dropped some bombs at the press corps dinner last night. Apparently his jokes didn't go over as well as back in '04 when Bush slayed 'em with his "Where's the WMD" routine.

John Robb thinks it's on with Iran. His commenters run through the fallout, and one mentions that gold is at a 25-year high.

It just reminded me that if this goes down -- and I'm less certain that it will -- that this would provide the kind of economic shock that would bring on the Big D. If the cost of oil were to go up by 100% (which happened in '79) that's the kind of thing that could shake loose all sorts of secondary effects. The impact would be global.

Well, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I don't dig the doomsayers. A big slowdown might not be the worst thing for us, you know?

Bush hires FoxNews talk-radio host to be his new press secretary as poll numbers approach record lows (he's treading into Nixon territory now).

Just some statistics I googled up:

• In 2005, Exxon/Moble posted the highest profit ever for a US corporation. That operating profit amounted to more than $700,000 per employee of the company.
• Wal*Mart, the worlds largest employer, had an operating profit of nearly $15,000 per employee. That's more than the average cashier pulls down in a year.

Why are people in the middle or working class going nowhere while debts pile up? Why are the most fantastically wealthy pulling away from the just regular rich? Because massive corporate profits are being reaped at the expense of real wages. That's one big reason why.

The NYT just quotes Scotty "out the door" McClellan:

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Bush's visit to Stanford was interrupted by protesters, who blocked the only road leading to the Hoover Institution, where Mr. Bush was to meet with fellows before dining with Mr. Shultz.

Apparently that was a lie.

Update: Daniel in the comments has links a collected media from the event:

Contrary to what the press is reporting, the road to Hoover Tower was not blocked by protesters. Law enforcement had set up barriers to ensure clear passage long before the protest began, and these barriers were respected by the crowd. However, around 4pm, police in riot gear appeared and attempted to move the crowd from its position on a side-street, East side of Hoover Tower. Strangely, they did not attempt to inform the crowd of the reason why.

Students resisted this move and sat down in the street. That’s when law enforcement pulled a very strange maneuver of questionable legality. They brought in a fire truck with sirens wailing and claimed (falsely) that there was a medical emergency at Hoover. After a lot of verbal abuse from police and firemen, only three protesters remained blocking the truck and these were dragged off (as shown prominently in the photo coverage), arrested, and taken away in a paddy wagon. They’ve since been released on misdemeanor charges. Absurdly, the fire truck then turned around and drove unhurriedly away, sirens off, and the protesters were allowed to fill the street again. Presumably, it had been during this confrontation that Bush’s meeting was re-located.

And people wonder why us kids don't have a lot of confidence in the g-man.

Found via The All Spin Zone:

“Blackwater seems to understand money. That's the only thing they understand,” she says. “They have no values, they have no morals. They're whores. They're the whores of war.”

This is a statement from the mother of a Blackwater employee who was killed in Falluja -- his body burned and hung from a brige. She is suing the private military corporation because they wouldn't give her any information on how or why her son had died.

After the killings, Katy Helvenston joined the families of Mike Teague, Jerko Zovko and Wesley Batalona in grieving and in seeking details about the incident. Blackwater founder Erik Prince personally delivered money to some of the families for funeral expenses, and the company moved to get the men's wives and children benefits under the government's Defense Base Act, which in some cases insures those on contract supporting US military operations abroad.

But then things started to get strange. Blackwater held a memorial service for the men at its compound. The families were gathered in a conference room, where they thought they would be told how the men had died. The Zovko family asked Blackwater to see the "After Action Report" detailing the incident. "We were actually told," recalls Zovko's mother, Danica, "that if we wanted to see the paperwork of how my son and his co-workers were killed that we'd have to sue them."

So they sued. And the lawsuit uncovered more than just an "After Action Report."

According to former Blackwater officials, Blackwater, Regency and ESS were engaged in a classic war-profiteering scheme. Blackwater was paying its men $600 a day but billing Regency $815, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. "In addition," the paper reports, "Blackwater billed Regency separately for all its overhead and costs in Iraq." Regency would then bill ESS an unknown amount for these services. Kathy Potter told the News and Observer that Regency would "quote ESS a price, say $1,500 per man per day, and then tell Blackwater that it had quoted ESS $1,200." ESS then contracted with Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which in turn billed the government an unknown amount of money for the same security services, according to the paper. KBR/Halliburton refuses to discuss the matter and will not confirm any relationship with ESS.

All this was shady enough--but the real danger for Helvenston and the others lay in Blackwater's decision to cut corners to make even more money.The original contract between Blackwater/Regency and ESS, obtained by The Nation, recognized that "the current threat in the Iraqi theater of operations" would remain "consistent and dangerous," and called for a minimum of three men in each vehicle on security missions "with a minimum of two armored vehicles to support ESS movements." [Emphasis added.]

But on March 12, 2004, Blackwater and Regency signed a subcontract, which specified security provisions identical to the original except for one word: "armored." Blackwater deleted it from the contract.

When they took that word 'armored' out, Blackwater was able to save $1.5 million in not buying armored vehicles, which they could then put in their pocket," says attorney Miles. "These men were told that they'd be operating in armored vehicles. Had they been, I sincerely believe that they'd be alive today. They were killed by insurgents literally walking up and shooting them with small-arms fire. This was not a roadside bomb, it was not any other explosive device. It was merely small-arms fire, which could have been repelled by armored vehicles."

There's more information including personality conflicts, background on the case and more in The Nation.

Privatized security is bad business. There's a reason we don't run the army as a for-profit entity (military industrial complexes aside, of course).

Some news relating to the possible upcoming war with Iran:

U.S. Wants Russia to Stop Iran Arms Sales

The United States pressed Russia on Friday to halt missile sales to Iran amid international efforts to defuse a standoff with Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

The U.S. wants other countries that are concerned about Iran's nuclear intentions to use their influence, be it cutoffs of trade ties or, in Russia's case, cancellation of a planned sale of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems.

Seems like something you'd want the Iranians not to have if you were going to be bombing them, but otherwise there's no real reason to prevent this kind of sale. These weapons systems are only useful for defense.

Russia is also setting up a deal to enrich Uranium for Iran, which will probably not diffuse the tensions. The problem here is that the Bush Administration demands a counterfactual: they want proof that Iran isn't working on nuclear weapons, but no matter how much evidence is provided there's always the possibility of a secret program of some sort. There's also the strong possibility that Iran is pursuing a homegrown nuclear program, and the truth is that in the long run we can't stop this.

There are really two options here. One is to learn how to deal with an increasing number of nations which possess their own Nuclear arms. The other is to massively strengthen international controls over nuclear technology, probably leading to a phase-out of nuclear power as a legitimate operation to remove "cover" activities for covert weapons programs. The latter isn't very likely, so really we're just going to have to learn to deal with more nuclear nations.

In real terms, I think countries like Iran want nuclear arms as a deterrent against outside powers (e.g. the US) coercing them with military force or attempting "regime change" through invasion/occupation. This is the most logical rationale -- and in spite of all the rhetoric, the Iranian leaders are at least as rational as ours. It's also an point of view any thoughtful person can understand.

Really, all of this is the natural outcome of a unipolar power dynamic (one in which a single party is dominant). Even under the best of circumstances and the most benign of rules, the people who are being ruled over will come to quarrel with the people doing the ruling. Empires don't last. Enduring power differentials are oppressive, and eventually the oppressed start pushing back. The fact that we've gone ahead and played the knave here has just accelerated the process, and cost us dearly in terms of our chances for setting up a better balance of power.

Too bad, you know? Shouldn'ta voted for Nader.

LETS BOMB IRAN!

It's the only thing to do, right?