I had no idea how close the FBI came...

...to potentially preventing the 9/11 attacks. Here's an excerpt from The New York Times that captures some incredible details from the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. It's like the chance to avert 9/11 evaporated in a situation straight out of Office Space hell:

A Minnesota F.B.I. agent, Harry M. Samit, warned in a memorandum that Mr. Moussaoui was a dangerous Islamic extremist whose study of how to fly a Boeing 747-400 seemed to be part of a sinister plot...

Gripping testimony came from Mr. Samit, who arrested Mr. Moussaoui on Aug. 16 [2001] and quickly became convinced that he was a terrorist who knew about an imminent hijacking plot. Mr. Samit said that he sent about 70 warning messages about Mr. Moussaoui, but that they produced no results.

The agent said he was puzzled at the reluctance of Michael Maltbie, a supervisor with the Radical Fundamentalist Unit at bureau headquarters, to seek a search warrant for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings from a special intelligence court.

Mr. Samit seemed unable to satisfy Mr. Maltbie's demand that he provide a tangible link between Mr. Moussaoui and a foreign power, a requirement for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. He thought he had sufficient evidence from two French intelligence reports showing Mr. Moussaoui had recruited someone to fight in Chechnya for an Islamist group allied with Mr. bin Laden.

But on Aug. 24, 2001, a frustrated Mr. Samit sent an e-mail message to Charles Frahm, a friend and, at the time, an F.B.I. liaison to the C.I.A., asking for information to help make his case. "We're trying to close the wiggle room for F.B.I. headquarters to claim there is no connection to a foreign power," he wrote.

Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers asserted that Mr. Maltbie undermined the effort to obtain a search warrant by deleting some details from Mr. Samit's requests. Mr. Samit said Mr. Maltbie told him he was reluctant to press for a warrant because it would be risky for his career and "he was not about to let that happen to him."

Growth in the Corporate Suite...

...is the title The Wall Street Journal gave a recent news item that spoke to an important trend in income distribution across the United States. Here's an excerpt, along with a related chart with 1997 data from The Economist:

The economy is certainly doing well - for the corporate sector...Since the last business cycle peak - the first quarter of 2001 - "the share of GDI going to corporate profits has risen by 3.9 percentage points, while the share going to labor compensation has fallen by 1.4 percentage points."

Overall, the economy grew at a 1.7% pace in the fourth quarter [2005], but analysts estimate it picked up sharply in the first quarter to around a 5% growth rate. Whether this will translate to stronger growth in wages and benefits as the economic cycle continues is another story... "This strong productivity growth provides the potential to generate broad-based increases in American living standards, but, so far corporate profits have been the only clear winner."

This means that - unless your income is tied closely to corporate profits - the economic expansion is leaving you behind. It's precisely what should happen in a Republican era...tax burdens on big-money earners are lightened, services for low-earners are scaled back, and the scales do some tippin'.

Is the immigration debate a distraction...

...conjured up to sow contention among the American public, just as we seem to be reaching a consensus against the war in Iraq and against corruption in Washington, D.C.? I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but immigration reform sure seems hot and divisive, and sure has managed to ply its way into the national spotlight pretty quickly- just like the gay marriage debate did in 2004. Do our leaders and their strategists actually play us like that? Argh. I think I almost have to believe that they don't.

Anyway, from day one, our country's invasion of Iraq has struck me as clearly wrong, as unnecessary violence always will. The issue of immigration, however, is much more complex. I'm pretty sure that felonizing undocumented migrants is not the answer, but I'm not sure what is.

I do know that the free-markets-friendly finance major in me is very uncomfortable with the notion of a guest worker program. If an employer wants to fill an undesirable job, the employer should boost the job's pay until the job is no longer undesirable - end of story. A market in which some employers can skirt this fundamental rule of economics is not a free market at all.

ADDENDUM: I heard Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, discussing immigration reform on NPR this morning. He pointed out that, if U.S. employers stopped hiring "illegal" immigrants, most of these immigrants would no longer have a motive for sneaking in. This is the key to the whole issue, amigos. It means that one group of Americans, by simply deciding to follow the law, could pretty much solve the problem of illegal immigration on their own.

As 500,000 people rallied in LosAng...

...and thousands more did around the nation, including 300,000 in Chicago, I think the rest of us got an update on how the hispanic community feels about House Republicans' immigration reform plans. Here are a couple excerpts from a smart analysis in The New York Times:

"It's an entirely predictable example of the law of unintended consequences," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who helped organize the Chicago rally and who said he was shocked by the size of the turnout. "The Republican party made a decision to use illegal immigration as the wedge issue of 2006, and the Mexican community was profoundly offended."

...others, noting that foreign-born Latinos voted for President Bush in 2004 at a 40 percent greater rate than Latinos born in the United States, said that by pursuing the proposed legislation, Republican leaders might have squandered the party's inroads with an emerging bloc of voters and pushed them into the Democratic camp.

...The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are United States citizens. Under the House measure, family members of illegal immigrants — as well as clergy members, social workers and lawyers — would risk up to five years in prison if they helped an illegal immigrant remain in the United States.

Republicans: You are being ripped off

...just like the rest of us are, and this Bill Moyers article sums it all up. Moyers cites dollar values, names names, and takes you inside the culture of corruption that has tightened its grip on Washington since Bush was first "elected" in 2000.

You might call it The Dirty Details. Or It Really Is As Bad As You Think. Or This Is How They Screw Us. Moyers strikes a more optimistic tone: he calls the article Saving Democracy. Be warned, it will turn your stomach, whether you are Democrat or Republican. To be sure, both parties are knee-deep in funny money.

To read the article, take a deep breath and click here. If you want the lighter, fact-free version, see the post below.

How awesome is this...

...which I just received via email:

DON'T IMPEACH; IMPALE
By Will Durst, AlterNet
Posted on March 15, 2006, Printed on March 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/33598/

I don't know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired of these lying,
thieving, holier-than-thou, right-wing, cruel, crude, rude, gauche,
coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauched, degenerate,
dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn shouting,
infrastructure destroying, hysterical, history defying, finger-
pointing, puppy stomping, roommate appointing, pretzel choking,
collateral damaging, aspersion casting, wedding party bombing, clear
cutting, torturing, jobs outsourcing, torture outsourcing, "so-called"
compassionate-conservative, women's rights eradicating, Medicare
cutting, uncouth, spiteful, boorish, vengeful, noxious, homophobic,
xenophobic, xylophonic, racist, sexist, ageist, fascist, cashist,
audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish, lethally ignorant, journalist
purchasing, genocide ignoring, corporation kissing, poverty inducing...

the gospel continueth HERE

I've heard about boys falling behind girls...

...in U.S. education: the main crux of that argument is that more girls and fewer boys are attending American colleges and universities, which might be a legitimate problem. But when it comes to the battle of the sexes among the world's grown-ups, I think the gents' side is still doing pretty well. Assorted stats from an item in The Independent, a UK paper:

As of Wednesday, March 8, 2006...

• 1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women.
• 21% of the world's managers are female.
• 9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women.
• 85 million girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45 million boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.
• 700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men).
• 67% of all illiterate adults are women.
• In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms.
• 12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations).
• Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004.