Editorial Observer: Turning Northeast Wyoming Upside Down in the Hunt for Coal-Bed Methane By VERLYN KLINKENBORG, NYTimes

The Powder River Basin is the most active region of coal-bed methane drilling in the nation, a place where in the next few years more than 50,000 wells will have been drilled to obtain, at most, a year’s supply of natural gas. …

In Wyoming, and in much of the country, mineral extraction is still considered the highest and best use of the land. … Extracting coal-bed methane means draining groundwater that is often charged with toxic salts. …

I’ve come to think of the coal-bed methane industry as a metaphor for something deeper that’s going on in our country. The methane play, as the industry likes to call it, is being sold on the grounds of energy security, as a way of ensuring that the American lifestyle can continue uninterrupted and undiminished. But what that means is turning everything upside down. All that drilling and scarring, all that animosity and moral erosion lead to one year’s supply of natural gas and the waste of billions of gallons of water.

Americans could essentially create that amount of energy through conservation, which is the true source of energy security. But conservation turns no profits, not to the owners of subterranean mineral rights or the gas companies or the pipelines or the lobbyists who drive this kind of extraction through the highest levels of government. No. The methane play is about short-term profits, not long-term security. A deal gets done, and soon you no longer recognize the country you live in.

Cooking Up a Storm An Interview with Former CIA Official Ray McGovern, By Steven Robert Allen,
alibi . november 27 – december 3, 2003

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern–co-founder of the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which seeks to heighten public awareness about the administration’s more blatant intelligence abuses–has been as vocal as anyone.

Right-wing Radicals

McGovern currently believes that the country is in the hands of right-wing radicals whose judgment has become clouded by their extremist geopolitical ideologies. According to McGovern, this has created a very dangerous situation for our nation.

”These guys were known in the ’80s, when I briefed the President’s father every morning, as The Crazies.’ If you referred to ‘The Crazies,’ everyone knew who you meant. So for us to watch these guys come back into power just a couple years ago is frightening. And this time, they’re not down in the bowels of the Pentagon, they’re running the country! Our worst fears were well-founded.” …

”I’ve been in this town watching things really, really closely for decades and never have I seen our country at such a perilous stage. And never have I been so frustrated by the American people’s lack of knowledge that this is the case, that their current government is a very dangerous one.”

by Walter Cronkite

There is an … issue that does go directly to Bush’s sincerity. That is his acknowledgement in the London speech of ”good-faith disagreements” over the war. How does that harmonize with the Republicans’ (and Bush’s) egregious use of such disagreements to bludgeon the Democrats prior to the 2002 midterm elections — a political mugging we can expect to see more of next year?

CNN.com – Reservist questions quick return to combat, faces charges – Nov. 28, 2003

Capt. Steve McAlpin, a 25-year Army reservist, spent most of last year deployed in Afghanistan and just returned home in January. Now his unit is about to ship out again, and he’s facing insubordination charges for criticizing the quick turnaround.

McAlpin questioned the legality of a waiver that his battalion was asked to sign that would put his unit back in a combat zone after just 11 months at home. Under federal law, he pointed out, troops are allowed a 12-month ”stabilization period.” …

“We signed up to fight our nation’s enemies and we are fully prepared to do that. But if they’re going to usurp the laws of this country at the expense of our most precious asset, our soldiers, then I will not stand for that, not for a minute.”

McAlpin served in Bosnia in 1996. Last year, [he was] stationed … in Afghanistan….

“I’m looking at something I love more than just about anything _ my service to the Army and my fellow soldiers — and they’re trying to stab me in the back,” McAlpin said.

No Escaping the Red Ink as Bush Pens ’04 Agenda By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and EDMUND L. ANDREWS, NYTimes

Howard Dean, issued a statement this week asserting that the White House’s fiscal policy would ultimately come back to haunt the country.

”This president’s approach,” Dr. Dean said, ”is the equivalent of mortgaging your house to get spending money for the weekend.”

At the same time, Mr. Bush is coming under intensifying pressure from conservatives in the Republican ranks who want him to do more to choke off what they see as an orgy of spending since he took office.

Op-Ed Columnist: The Promised Land by David Brooks, NYTimes

Republicans now speak in that calm, and to their opponents infuriating, manner of those who believe they were born to rule.

The Democrats, meanwhile, behave just as the Republicans did when they were stuck in the minority. They complain about their outrageous mistreatment by the majority. They are right to complain. The treatment is outrageous. But the complaints only communicate weakness. Democrats indulge in the joys of opposition.

Discussions with Dean, Edwards, Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, Kucinich, Moseley Braun, and Sharpton. washingtonpost.com

Between Nov. 3rd and Nov. 7th, washingtonpost.com and The Concord Monitor hosted a series of live discussions with each Democratic candidate in the presidential race.