Weekly Review

By Sam Stark

Caught in the Web, 1860.

Congress continued its inquiry into the role of the Bush Administration in last year's firing of eight U.S attorneys. D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, resigned after claiming, in an apparent attempt to save Gonzalez from the charge of lying to Congress, that he did not tell his superiors at the Justice Department that the White House wanted to fire the prosecutors. The Justice Department released a March 2005 email from Sampson to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, in which he ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys on their loyalty to the Administration and made a “target list.” In other emails, he cited a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that authorizes the attorney general to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation and consulted with Miers about the possibility of replacing between 15 and 20 percent of U.S. attorneys, “the underperforming ones,” and leaving the “loyal Bushies.”^{1 2 3} Two Democratic Congressmen were calling for renewed inquiry into why Frank Black, the former U.S. attorney in Guam, was removed from his position after he began investigating Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2002.⁴ The Chiquita banana company reached a settlement with the Justice Department over payments that it made to right-wing and left-wing terrorists in Colombia,⁵ and Rudy Giuliani's law firm continued to lobby on behalf of Hugo Chavez's oil company. ⁶

At a military hearing in Guantánamo Bay Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks; he also claimed to have been “responsible” for: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of an airplane; the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia; and plots to assassinate several former presidents, including Jimmy Carter. “For sure,” he said, “I'm American enemies.” According to the released transcript, when asked whether his statement was the result of mistreatment by his interrogators, he said, “CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me [REDACTED].” ⁷ The Pentagon announced that another Guantánamo detainee, Walid Mohammad bin Attash, confessed to planning the 1998 bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the bombing of the American warship U.S.S. Cole in 2000.⁸ Eighty percent of Iraqis were reporting “attacks nearby,”⁹ and Kadhim al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifter who toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, said that Saddam “was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse.”¹⁰ Between 10,000 and 30,000 people marched in Washington to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anti-antiwar protesters, organized by a group called Gathering of Eagles, were angry that someone had put a pink tiara on a Navy memorial statue. “That was the real catalyst, right there,” said one Navy veteran. “They showed they were willing to desecrate something that's sacred to the American soul.”^{11 12} Dozens of Republican Congressmen were turning against the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act, ¹³ Mexico City was planning to legalize abortion, ¹⁴ and Rep. Nancy Boyda (D., Kan.) vomited into a trash can.¹⁵ Representative Pete Stark (D., Cal.) announced that he did not believe in God.¹⁶ Researchers were developing a computer program to help make end-of-life medical decisions, ¹⁷ and the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing the case of Morse v. Frederick, involving a student who held up a banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”¹⁸ Music producer Phil Spector, who orchestrated “You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling,” went on trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson, an actress who starred in “Amazon Women on the Moon.”¹⁹

It was estimated that 1.5 million homeowners will face foreclosure this year,²⁰ and that money sent home by migrant laborers now exceeds direct foreign investment and foreign aid to Latin America.²¹ Kentucky was plagued by thousands of starving and unwanted horses as a result of the prevalence of synthetic glues and public antipathy towards horseflesh. “I can't feed a horse,” said one man. “I can't even feed myself.” ²² Halliburton announced that it would add 13,000 jobs this year,²³ and the people of Trokavec in the Czech Republic voted overwhelmingly against allowing a U.S. radar station to be built there, with 71 of the town's 88 registered voters opposing and one vote in favor. ²⁴ Beverly Hills elected Jimmy Delshad as mayor, making Delshad the highest-ranking Iranian-American elected official in the United States. ²⁵ A Zogby poll found that 97 percent of Republicans believe that the media has a liberal bias, while two-thirds of Democrats believe there is a conservative bias.²⁶ Dan Rather said that the American people must come to understand that what they see happening on TV, or read about on the Internet, is real,²⁷ and scientists at New York University were deleting frightening experiences from the memories of rats. “This,” said neurophysiologist Greg Quirk, “is the future of psychiatry.” ²⁸