After years of access to the highest levels of state government, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) has taken a blow to its power and prestige under Gov. Schwarzenegger. But, as it has done to many state senators, members of the State Assembly, and county district attorneys lacking sympathy for its agenda, the state’s […]
Posted inEnvironment
Electronics, unleaded
New European Union environmental legislation impacting the production of computers, video cameras, cellular phones, and other electrical items will force the global electronics industry to reduce the amount of toxic substance it uses and to take back and recycle its products. The laws are compelling U.S. companies to change they way they do business at […]
Posted inMoney and Politics
Big Biz Battles for Bush’s Bench
Last year the Senate rejected former mining and cattle lobbyist William Myers for the Court of Appeals. Now Bush is trying again — and this time Myers’ business pals are waging a multimillion-dollar campaign for him. Last year, when the Senate considered William G. Myers III for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th […]
Posted inAccountability
Al Qaeda’s New Front
FRONTLINE, the weekly PBS television series, investigates the new front in the war on terror: Europe. Now home to 18 million Muslims — which some call “Eurabia” — the continent is a challenge to intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, exacerbated by political divisions over the Iraq War. In this joint multimedia project […]
Posted inNational Security
In Age of Security, Firm Mines Wealth of Personal Data
This page 1 story, part of the “No Place to Hide” project, explains how a company collecting and selling person information about millions of Americans is transforming itself into a private intelligence service for the government.
Posted inNational Security
No Place to Hide (Book)
In No Place to Hide, award-winning Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., lays out in unnerving detail the post-9/11 marriage of private data and technology companies and government anti-terror initiatives to create something entirely new: a security-industrial complex. Drawing on his years of investigation, O’Harrow shows how the government now depends on burgeoning private reservoirs […]
Posted inEnvironment
Chronicle of a Flood Foretold
For many island states, the tsunami hit like a fast-action version of what they have long feared would be the result of global warming. CIR’s editorial director talks with the diplomatic mission from the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives, long at the forefront of the campaign against global warming, about the ominous parallels from […]
Posted inMoney and Politics
Courting Influence
President George W. Bush’s nominees to some of the most influential positions on the federal bench during his first term are notable for their close ties to corporate interests, especially the energy and mining industries, according to a new investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Many of the nominees have been appointed to judgeships […]
Posted inAccountability
Unsung Hero
With his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner, Frank McCulloch was one of the great journalists of the past 50 years. Unfortunately, far too few people know that. Over the past year, as the conflict in Iraq slid from […]
Posted inEnvironment
Bush Versus the Environment
During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush offered clues as to how he would deal with the environment. In his speeches he said nice things about cleaning up pollution and protecting wildlife and supporting parks, even going so far as to make some specific promises. But people who looked beneath his words and heeded […]