Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

In honor of the holy month of Ramadan, here is a piece by the late master of Qawwali (Sufi devotional music), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The clip runs 8:20. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is best known in the Western world for his work with Peter Gabriel, most notably on Passion, the score for Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ. He can also be heard on the soundtracks for Dead Man Walking and (believe it or not) Natural Born Killers. Apparently, he recorded 125 albums. His Wikipedia page provides some nice links, including to this fan site, which features English translations of some of his lyrics and a nice article on him here.

Video of Jack Cafferty’s special program, Broken Government.
It makes you wonder if what we’re doing to ourselves is worse a whole lot worse than what the terrorists are trying to do to us. What’s worse, then what the President has done, is the fact that congress and the public…..all of us……stood around, sat on our hands and allowed this to happen.

This ought to be good……..

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election’season debate over lobbyists’ White House access.

While researching the access lobbyists and others had on the White House, The Washington Post asked in June for two years of White House visitor logs. The Secret Service refused to process the request, which government attorneys called “a fishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency.”

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld.

Read more at Guardian Unlimited

Just an FYI for you Cafferty fans……his special series, Broken Government, starts tonight at 7pm Eastern time.

Here are today’s Battleground Dispatches - a roundup of what is going on right now in the year’s hottest races, based on reports from local and national media, with 19 days remaining until Election Day.

Indiana 2: Research 2000 poll shows Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly leading GOP Rep. Chris Chocola, 50 percent to 45 percent, giving Donnelly an edge equal to the survey’s margin of error, according to the AP.

• New Jersey Senate: Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean makes first major campaign appearance on behalf of his son, Tom Kean Jr., the Republican challenger to Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.

• Idaho 1: The National Republican Congressional Committee spent $135,442 for ads against Democrat Larry Grant, says the AP.

• Montana Senate: Montana State University-Billings poll shows Democratic challenger Jon Tester leading Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, 46 percent to 35 percent, says the AP.

• Maryland Senate: SurveyUSA poll shows Democrat Benjamin Cardin and Republican Michael Steele tied at 46 percent, according to the Washington Times.

• Connecticut 4: GOP Rep. Christopher Shays and Democratic challenger Diane Farrell debated Wednesday in Stamford, the Stamford Advocate reports.

• Missouri Senate: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on Wednesday’s final debate between GOP Sen. Jim Talent and Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill.

• Connecticut Senate: The New London Day reports on Wednesday’s debate between Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, staging an independent bid, Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, Republican Alan Schlesinger, Green Party candidate Ralph Ferrucci and Concerned Citizens Party candidate Timothy Knibbs.

• Colorado 7: The Denver Post reports on Wednesday’s debate between Republican Rick O’Donnell and Democrat Ed Perlmutter.

• Virginia Senate: Former President George Bush will headline a fundrasier today for GOP Sen. George Allen, the same day that former President Bill Clintion attends a fundraiser for Democratic challenger Jim Webb, according to the Washington Post.

• California 50: SurveyUSA poll shows Republican Rep. Brian P. Bilbray leading Democratic challenger Francine Busby, 49 percent to 46 percent, putting Busby within the margin of error

• Pennsylvania Senate: Rasmussen Reports poll shows Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. leading GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, 54 percent to 41 percent.

• Iowa Governor: The Des Moines Register reports that a poll conducted for TV station KCCI showed Democrat Chet Culver with a slim lead over Republican Jim Nussle. Culver was supported by 49 percent of respondents, compared to 44 percent for Nussle.

• Next on the Calendar: The deadline for House and Senate candidates to file pre-election fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission on Oct. 26, according to CQPolitics.com’s Political Calendar.

Source here

People have been looking for Keith Olbermann’s special commentary from last night, so here it is.

the site here

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers’ online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year.

“Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms,” Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.

“All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,” Mueller said. “We must find a balance between the legitimate need for privacy and law enforcement’s clear need for access.”

The speech to the law enforcement group, which approved a resolution on the topic earlier in the day, echoes other calls from Bush administration officials to force private firms to record information about customers. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for instance, told Congress last month that “this is a national problem that requires federal legislation.”

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Can the so-called “ticking bomb” defence - the argument that using some degree of torture may save lives - ever be a justification for mistreating suspects?

The findings of the opinion poll for the BBC World Service indicate that 59% of the world’s citizens say “no”: they are unwilling to compromise on the protection of human rights.

A sizeable majority of people around the world are opposed to torture even if its purpose is to elicit information that could save innocent lives from terrorist attack.

Nonetheless, almost as striking, is that almost one-third of those questioned - 29% - think that governments should be allowed to use some degree of torture in certain cases.

Overall, more than 27,000 people were questioned in 25 countries.

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TEL AVIV, Oct. 18

For decades it was widely accepted that some of Israel’s top military officers and government ministers considered sexual encounters with female employees a seigneurial right.

A society built partly on the conscious effort to project an image of strength tended to overlook such harassment. In fact, a certain amount of male rakishness often added to a prominent man’s allure. The alleged womanizing by national legends like Moshe Dayan, for example, was considered part of their mystique.

But the ground is shifting rapidly under the feet of the current crop of leaders as a result of legal and societal changes. This week, the police recommended charging President Moshe Katsav with the rape of two former employees, the most serious criminal allegations ever made against an Israeli leader. And on Tuesday, Justice Minister Haim Ramon went on trial, accused of kissing a soldier against her will.

“When I was in the army it was assumed that the office of every senior officer was essentially a harem for him,” said Michael Oren, an historian and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, who served in the military 30 years ago. “Israel is emerging from adolescence into adulthood.”

In 1998 a sweeping sexual harassment law, inspired in part by American legislation, was passed by the Israeli Parliament, making such behavior illegal anywhere, whether in the street or the workplace.

Soon afterward, a major turning point came: the trial of Yitzhak Mordechai, a former general who was Israel’s defense minister and a prime ministerial hopeful. He was forced to resign after being convicted of sexual assault and harassment.

His very public trial followed charges filed by several women who had worked for him in the government and during his long, highly decorated career in the army.

For years trying Israeli leaders for such crimes was unheard-of. The founders of Zionism sought to create “the new Jew” - aiming to transform Jews who lived in the Diaspora, perceived as bookish and weak, into men of muscle and power.

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From Radaronline.com

Congress, as any CSPAN viewer can attest, has never been a bastion of intelligence. As far back as two centuries ago, Samuel Johnson was demeaning the nation’s legislators as a “circus of rogues and fools.” But when it comes to sheer stupidity, the men and women of the 109th have distinguished themselves as a breed apart.
Despite a notoriously compliant president and Republican majorities in both houses, they’ve spent over 600 days in session without conducting a shred of productive business, which is not to say they’ve just sat around. As the war in Iraq raged out of control, they futilely postured over an unconstitutional flag-burning amendment that was clearly destined to go up in flames. They rallied around the brain-dead Terry Schiavo after the Senate majority leader, watching her on television, claimed to detect signs of life. And their hijinks culminated this month with l’affaire Mark Foley, which raised the question of just who a guy needs to blow on the Hill to get the attention of the brain-dead House leadership.

Go here to see the list. You can guess who numero uno is.

Mr. Ney, despite a criminal record, will be able to begin collecting a Congressional pension of about $30,000 a year in a decade, when he turns 62.
This has always bugged me. Ney and others convicted of crimes while holding office are still able to collect a pension. I say there needs to be some kind of legislation passed to stop this. They deserve NOTHING.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - Representative Bob Ney is headed to prison early next year after pleading guilty to charges of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts from lobbyists. Until then, Mr. Ney, a six-term Republican from Ohio, has a comfortable place to bide his time.

Mr. Ney’s brass nameplate remained Wednesday on the wall outside his office in the Rayburn building just across the street from the Capitol.
His Congressional office - the one that he has effectively acknowledged selling to the highest bidder - is open for business.

“The office of Congressman Bob Ney,” his telephone receptionist said in a cheery voice Tuesday morning, as if nothing had happened to her boss, the first member of Congress to confess to crimes involving the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Mr. Ney’s brass nameplate still hangs on the wall next to the heavy wooden doors of Room 2438 in the Rayburn House office building, just across the street from the Capitol, and it is likely to remain there for at least a few more weeks.

Full article here

If you shop at Walmart…..think twice before doing so. It’s not enough Walmart support candidates who will screw their workers……now they want to tell workers to vote for the people who will screw them.

By MARCUS KABEL, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 19, 5:21 AM ET

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - The voting power of Wal-Mart’s huge U.S. work force has become the latest target in the retailer’s battle with union critics as labor activists launch a drive to reach Wal-Mart workers ahead of midterm elections next month.

The union campaign, to be announced Thursday, comes after Wal-Mart entered the political fray this summer with a letter to workers in Iowa naming politicians who had attacked the company. It says it will
issue similar letters in the future.

Wal-Mart also launched a first company-wide effort last month to get its more than 1.3 million workers to register to vote.

Both sides are not endorsing any specific candidates and both say they are being nonpartisan.

Analysts said Wal-Mart is making a public point of encouraging workers to vote and of naming critical politicians to dissuade candidates, mainly Democrats, from backing an increasingly organized union campaign for changes including better wages and benefits.

“Wal-Mart is signaling to all their enemies, ‘We have almost 1.5 million workers who like us,’” said Gary N. Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Read full article at Yahoo News

A missing notebook clutched by a Shropshire lad who circumnavigated the globe, returned to Britain, and demolished the Victorian hubris that humans stood alone as the pinnacle of creation is published for the first time today.
The original notebook, which documents Charles Darwin’s observations throughout his five-year voyage to the Amazon, Patagonia and the Pacific aboard HMS Beagle, is presumed stolen, but using a microfilm copy, Cambridge University scientists today make it available free online, along with the entire works of the scientist credited with the most important advance in science of the past 300 years.

The collection brings Darwin’s breathtaking range of writing together for the first time, with 50,000 pages of searchable text, and tens of thousands of images, many from previously unpublished manuscripts, together with notebooks, diaries and original publications such as The Origin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle (the Journal of Researches) and The Descent of Man. Audio versions of key works will be free to download at the project website, darwin-online.org.uk.

Read more at Guardian Unlimited