This could get ugly. Or fun. Probably a little of both:

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is financing a new Web site that will investigate stock fraud and corporate wrongdoing. The billionaire also said he'll buy and sell stocks based on information before the site publishes it.

Cuban said he has not been a direct victim of fraud but was motivated to start the site by his approach to investing.

"I'm a firm believer that out of (the more than 10,000) public companies the odds are that there are more than just a few crooks and frauds," Cuban said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. "Finding them can be rewarding and entertaining."

Indeed. You gotta love it when one of their own decides he's had enough. Hopefully it will be a bit like the Bush / Perot rivalry. It just goes to show that when you have enough clout you can pretty much piss off whoever you want.

Link via AmericaBlog (1.0)

Nice. So this is what it comes down to in Florida (and maybe the rest of the country?):

Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

Go.

A National Security Agency program that listens in on international communications involving people in the United States is both vital to national security and permitted by the Constitution, a government lawyer told a judge here today in the first major court argument on the program.

But, the lawyer went on, addressing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court, "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security."

The only solution to this impasse, the lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, said, was for Judge Taylor to dismiss the lawsuit before her, an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the eavesdropping program, under the state secrets privilege. The privilege can limit and even extinguish cases that would reveal national security information, and it is fast becoming one of the Justice Department's favorite tools in defending court challenges to its efforts to combat terrorism.

So yes, we are currently in the process of breaking the law and have done so on countless occasions prior. But since we refuse to defend ourselves (on the grounds that our defense would be incriminating) then the only solution is to drop all charges. Yeah. I think I’ll try that one next time I get a speeding ticket. Sorry officer, I had to speed because it was necessary to preserve my safety. But I can’t tell you why since that would get me in trouble. So you might as well just let me off with a warning.

The case boiled down to two legal questions, [Judge] Beeson said. The first is whether the plaintiffs have suffered the sort of direct injury necessary to establish that they have standing to bring suit. The second is whether President Bush was authorized by Congress or by the Constitution to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law that forbids surveillance of people inside the United States without a warrant.

Note, by the way, that the Judge’s parsing of the defense’s case makes no mention of whether or not they broke the law. In fact, the absence of such a consideration holds a de facto implication that a felony had been committed. The only question was whether or not Bush had some defensible authorization to violate this law or whether or not the plaintiff was personally affected by it. However, since the defense refuses to release details, such allegations are nearly impossible to ascertain.

The Bush administration has acknowledged that it has not complied with the law but has said that a Congressional authorization in 2001 to use military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent constitutional powers allowed him to violate it.

When Congress made that authorization, we all knew there would be trouble. A one line, broad authorization to pursue ‘terrorists’ basically gave Bush a blanket permission to do just about anything he wants as long as he can somehow say it was related to 9-11. Newsflash, 9-11 is part of our history and everything since then can be related to it in some form. Moreover, I’m not sure that the Congress had any legal standing with which to abdicate their constitutional obligation to be the sole body able to declare war.

Even portions of the government's brief that were said to demonstrate why further information about the program cannot be disclosed have not been filed in court. Instead, the government "lodged" the brief and other classified papers at the Justice Department in Washington, inviting Judge Taylor to make arrangements to see them. At today's hearing, she shook her head no when Mr. Coppolino asked her whether she had "had a chance to review our classified submission."

So this is how a totalitarian government complies with a supposedly independent judiciary – we’re not coming to you, you can come to us. It reminds me of Aurthur Dent being told that he should have known about Earth’s impending destruction since it was clearly posted in Alpha Centauri.

Calling the plaintiffs' position extreme, Mr. Coppolino said the 1978 law cannot constitutionally constrain the president when the nation's safety is at risk.

"The president's constitutional power doesn't simply disappear when Congress enacts a statute," Mr. Coppolino said. "Surveillance of an enemy is indeed a necessary incident of war."

Correction. We are not a country at war, we are a country whose military is at war. We have never been asked to make any sacrifices, nor have we ever been engaged on the details of this supposed war, who specifically it is targeting, and what the parameters are for defining victory.

Ms. Beeson said the 1978 law, often called FISA, gave the president all the flexibility he needed. "If FISA didn't work," she said, "the proper procedure under our constitutional system was for the president to go back to Congress and ask it to amend the law."

As the proverb goes, 'no shit, Sherlock.' To which the government replies, 'Keep trying, Watson.'

Not that I'm surprised, but according to Reid , everything (and I mean everything) is run through Cheney's office:

But I think we've come to learn that the intelligence community in America is run by one person -- one person -- and that's the vice president. [Sen. Pat] Roberts, who is the supposed chair of that committee -- I shouldn't say "supposed chair"; he is the chair -- he can't do anything without [Dick Cheney].

Kos also has a really good parsing of this interview.

Tell me how this isn't a coup d-Etat? We never elected the guy (most of us found him rather creepy) and yet he has been consistently the hands behind the face in this administration.

When Hillary took a first-hand role in select governmental affairs, the Right Wing sputtered till they were red in the face. So why are we not allowed to feel the same about a man who has a 30 year history of subverting the democratic process (i.e. Team B in the 70s).

In advertising, we call this a ‘bait and switch’

Just caught the news on the IHT's site that Fitzgerald has decided not to pursue charges against Karl Rove.

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.

In a statement, Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."

Obviously, this is a big disappointment. Since Fitz has been willing to indict key members of the White House, I can only assume that either Rove was not guilty of any wrongdoing, that he is guilty but covered his tracks, or that he has struck a deal for a bigger fish.

I would like to believe the latter, but Rove is not only legendary for being a loyal sycophant, but he was virtually guaranteed a presidential pardon if convicted, so I really see no reason for him to play ball. I find the former equally implausible - Rove is about as dirty and twisted a Golem as the White House has ever seen. Therefore, though disappointing, I can only imagine that any wrongdoing that pertained to this case was either fairly insignificant, or Fitzgerald just didn't feel that he had enough to secure a conviction.

Either way, when you live a dirty life, you will get a dirty end. Rove's time will come, if not today.

They have finally released the autopsy report (not sure what the delay was) on Zarqawi and are claiming that he lived for nearly an hour after having 1,000 lbs of explosives dropped on his head.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said U.S. forces arrived about 28 minutes after a fighter jet bombed al-Zarqawi's hideout outside Baqouba on Wednesday. Medics secured al-Zarqawi's airway but his breathing was shallow and labored, and he expelled blood from his mouth.

"It was very evident he had extremely massive internal injuries," Caldwell said.

Somehow I find it difficult to believe the claims that they heroically tried to save his life. Unfortunately, death from massive internal injuries does nothing to dispel claims that he ripped from an ambulance and beaten to death. Whether or not this was the case, I think some explanation is in order as to how Zarqawi's face was so pristine while everything around him (including metal appliances) was torn to shreds.

Canada's CBC wonders what made U.S. marines kill unarmed civilians. Of course, I think my previous post on the Milgram Experiment provides a good beginning in explaining how shellshock, propaganda and authority combine to form a deadly combination in even the most human of us. Especially when the authority is this guy:

Add to that the wholesale glamorization of warfare implicit in out understanding of masculinity, the fact that we manufacture enemies to vilify and dehumanize in order to achieve our selfish and predetermined imperial motives, we systematically condone and / or deny that barbarism is taking place at the hands of our soldiers, and then withhold evidence whenever investigations are coerced by the media. On top of that, with every small victory our administration makes grandiose and knowingly false claims of an end in sight, further messing with our soldiers' heads with the false hope that they might come home soon.  Is it any wonder that our conception of right and wrong is becoming blurred?

I found this post over at the Daily Kos calling for an immediate 50% reduction of military spending. While I am all in favor of reducing our propensity towards violence, I am a firm believer that our capacity to wage war is an extension of our peacetime politics, not a direct result of the existence of a large military (really they are one and the same).

So I disagree. Not that I think the budget should be reduced, but that the purpose of our military is to keep us safe from harm. In fact, I can think of at least two other reasons.:

The first is that our inflated economy depends critically upon our taxpayer subsidized defense contractors making tons of money for unnecessary weapons systems (e.g. missile defense that most agree won't work - even if it does). Without this stimulation of our economy, we would be in for some drastic changes (albeit positive in the long run).

The second reason is that we have so long been the top military spender that to suddenly pull back now would certainly leave us in a far less hegemonic position to dictate global policy. It's like that game "king of the hill" I used to play when I was a kid - the only person the other kids try to knock off is the one at the top. A sudden drawdown would certainly invite challenges from those that we’ve been kicking around and suppressing for so long.

I think a more sensible plan would be to change the nature through which we appropriate military funding, beginning with the creation of a department of peace at the DOD whose responsibilities would include humanitarian aid, proactive intervention in failing states, the support of pre-existing democratic uprisings, focus on human security (AIDS, poverty, clean water), etc.

Of course, I don't know that people with guns are in the best position to be running the show. Certainly a strong civilian oversight would be critical in preventing this from becoming just another arm of the military (i.e. invading and occupying Iraq in the name of promoting democracy), but it at least provides us with a first step towards a gradual reduction of military spending while simultaneously reducing the need for an active military defense.