Glowing squirrel: Bad

Squirrel is off the menu. New Jersey officials are warning residents near a toxic waste dump in the northern part of the state to restrict how much squirrel they eat, two months after a lead-contaminated animal was found in the area.
A letter sent to Ringwood residents, many of whom hunt, advised them that children should not eat squirrel more than once a month, pregnant women should limit their intake to twice a month, and adults should not eat squirrel more than twice a week.
“We’ve known for a long time something was wrong here, we just didn’t know what it was,” resident Myrtle Van Dunk told The Record of Bergen County for Thursday’s newspapers.
Residents and many environmental activists believe the lead comes from toxic waste, including paint sludge, dumped in the area by the Ford Motor Co. during the 1960s and early 1970s, from its now-closed car manufacturing plant in Mahwah.
Ford is removing thousands of tons of waste from a 500-acre former mining property in the Ringwood area. The site was recently relisted on the federal Superfund list, a ranking of the country’s worst environmental dump sites, after multiple cleanups failed to remove all of the sludge.
This is the first time the state has issued warnings on how much squirrel people should eat, Tom Slater, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Senior Services told the newspaper; the department, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection, issued the warning. Lead, which is harmful even in small amounts, can damage the nervous system, red blood cell production and the kidneys.
The Ringwood area is home to many members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe who hunt and fish in the area.

Libby: I was sacrificed!

WASHINGTON (Jan. 23) - White House officials tried to sacrifice vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to protect strategist Karl Rove from blame for leaking a CIA operative's identity during a political storm over the Iraq war, Libby's lawyer said Tuesday.
After Libby complained "they want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Vice President Dick Cheney personally intervened to get the White House press secretary to publicly clear Libby in the leak, defense attorney Theodore Wells said in his opening statement at Libby's perjury trial.
The new details of behind-the-scenes conflict at top levels of the Bush White House, along with some previously unseen blunt language from Cheney, were the high points of a dramatic day in which the prosecutor and the defense dueled in multimedia statements to the jury.
Wells also disclosed that Libby was preoccupied with many national security issues in July 2003, including possible al-Qaida threats to assassinate President Bush on a trip to Africa and the possibility al-Qaida had brought anthrax into the United States. Wells read about these threats from a court-approved summary of classified information to argue that Libby could honestly have forgotten what he told reporters about the CIA operative.
Earlier in the day, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told the jury Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his contacts with reporters concerning CIA officer Valerie Plame to save his job and avoid political embarrassment. In a rarely seen move, Fitzgerald played four short tape recordings of Libby's statements to the grand jury that he said were lies.
The grand jury was investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's name and CIA employment, which came shortly after her husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, had become one of the most prominent critics of the months-old war. On July 6, 2003, Wilson alleged in a New York Times article and on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" that Bush had told the nation Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons although the administration had known for some time that story was untrue.
Both sides agreed the Bush White House was consumed with responding to the allegation it had lied to push the nation into war. Wells said Cheney also was concerned that Wilson indicated Cheney was responsible for sending Wilson to Africa to check the uranium story and that his office surely had seen Wilson's report. He said Cheney ordered Libby to rebut that allegation to reporters.
The leak of Wilson's wife's name came in a Robert Novak column July 14, 2003, that said she had arranged for her husband to go on the Africa trip.
When the White House press secretary publicly absolved Rove in the leak but later refused to clear Libby, Libby sought Cheney's help in defending himself, Wells said.
"They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Wells said, recalling Libby's end of the conversation. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."
And why wouldn't they, Wells asked the jury, because Rove was Bush's chief political adviser, "the man most responsible for making sure the Republican Party stayed in office. He had to be protected."
"Libby was an important staffer," Wells thundered. "But Karl Rove was the lifeblood of the Republican Party."
Cheney shared Libby's fears and came to his aid, Wells told the jury. He promised to introduce a blunt handwritten note that Cheney took at the meeting with Libby.
"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others," Cheney's note said, according to Wells.
The note's heading suggested Cheney intended to relay this message to Bush, Wells said. Shortly thereafter, the White House publicly absolved Libby in the leak.
Wells patiently explained that Rove was the one Cheney thought was being protected and Libby was the one being sacrificed. He added that the request to stick his head in a meat grinder was Cheney's request that Libby call reporters to rebut Wilson's allegations.
And Wells said that by the "incompetence of others," Cheney meant the CIA, which he blamed for letting Bush use the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union speech. Wells noted that Cheney, Libby and White House aides devoted considerable time after Wilson's New York Times article on July 6 to persuading CIA Director George Tenet to issue a public statement taking the blame for the reference.
Large portions of Wells' two-hour, 15-minute opening were devoted to suggesting that reporters, including Judith Miller of The New York Times, Tim Russert of NBC and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, could be honestly mistaken when they testify later about their conversations with Libby in 2003. Miller and Cooper have said Libby confirmed that Wilson's wife worked at CIA. Russert says her name never came up, but Libby told investigators he thought Russert said many reporters knew she worked for CIA and he responded he couldn't confirm her CIA employment.
Wells ended with new drama about Libby's national security job. His court-approved list of issues and briefings Libby got in the week after Wilson's column also included negotiations with Turkey over the U.S. capture of Turkish troops in Iraq, possible plans by an Iraq-based terror group to work with al-Qaida on developing a U.S. presence, possible al-Qaida plots to assassinate Bush and his top aides, possible al-Qaida airplane, car bomb and tank truck attacks on U.S. targets.
Libby's talk with Russert came near the end of this week.
"He is an innocent man and he has been wrongly and unjustly and unfairly accused," Wells concluded.
Fitzgerald displayed a computerized video calendar to illustrate his claim that Libby learned from five people _ including Cheney and CIA and State Department officials _ that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and then discussed that fact with reporters and others in the White House. He said it was implausible that Libby would have forgotten this by the time he talked with Russert as Libby had claimed to investigators.
The government's first witness, former State Department No. 3 official Marc Grossman, testified that he was the first to tell Libby that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA _ on June 11, 2003, or June 12, 2003. Grossman acknowledged that the night before he spoke to the FBI, he was visited by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who confessed he had been the first to leak Plame's CIA employment to a reporter. Wells told the judge he would try to suggest that Armitage may have improperly influenced Grossman's account.
Wells' assault on Grossman's credibility foreshadowed future attacks on government witnesses, including former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. Wells brought out in his opening that Fleischer, who also talked to reporters about Valerie Plame, refused to testify to the grand jury until he received immunity from prosecution.

NEXT...!BAGHDAD, Iraq (Jan. 2) - Iraq's prime minister ordered an investigation Tuesday into Saddam Hussein's execution to try to uncover who taunted the former dictator in the last minutes of his life, and who leaked inflammatory footage taken by camera phone of the hanging. The unofficial video, on which at least one person is heard shouting "To hell!" at the deposed president and Saddam is heard exchanging insults with his executioners, dealt a blow to Iraq's efforts to prove it was a neutral enforcer of the law. Instead, the emotional, politicized spectacle raised tensions between the Shiite majority and Sunni Arabs who ran the country until their benefactor, Saddam, was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. A prosecutor who saw the hanging said some of the taunting came from guards outside the execution chamber, not the masked ones who put the noose around Saddam's neck. The Iraqi government did not say what, if any, punishment would await anyone uncovered in its probe of guards and 14 selected witnesses who attended the execution at a Baghdad prison before dawn Saturday. Some were high-ranking officials or people affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a political ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had wanted to speed up the timing of the execution after an appeals court upheld the death sentence. The grainy video appeared on the Internet late Saturday. Al-Jazeera television also showed the footage at that time, saying it was exclusive. The footage contained audio of people taunting Saddam with chants of "Muqtada," a reference to al-Sadr. Also on the video, Saddam accuses his tormentors of being unmanly in scenes that stop just short of pandemonium. The video was inflammatory not only because the chanting was clearly audible, but also for showing the ghastly spectacle of Saddam plummeting through the gallows trapdoor and dangling in death, his vacant eyes open and his snapped neck almost at a right angle to the line of his shoulders. In contrast, the official video showed masked executioners placing a heavy noose around Saddam's neck, without a soundtrack. Another official video shows Saddam wrapped in a burial shroud after his death, though his head and neck are exposed as proof of his identity. Munqith al-Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor who helped convict and sentence Saddam to death for the killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail in 1982, said he was a witness to the hanging. He said two top officials had their mobile phones with them - even though the government-approved witnesses had been searched before boarding U.S. helicopter that carried them from the Green Zone to the site of the execution, their cell phones placed in a box for safekeeping. Al-Faroon did not name the officials who had their phones and said he did not know whether the Iraqi government had approved the mobile phone video. "It might be for money. Maybe he decided from the start to film it and to sell it to the satellite TV channels," al-Faroon said in an interview with TV2, a Danish television network. "I do not think that an investigation is necessary if they only filmed it for money. The execution was not a secret. The filming was not against the law." Still, the prime minister "ordered the formation of an investigative committee in the Interior Ministry to identify who chanted slogans inside the execution chamber and who filmed the execution and sent it to the media," said Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to the Iraqi leader. Al-Faroon said he vigorously protested when people began to shout just before Saddam was executed, and that shouts of "Muqtada" came from guards outside the execution chamber. "I am certain that the chanting at the moment of the execution was not organized, and that those chanting were not being ordered to do so," al-Faroon told TV2. "The guards made a decision to do so by themselves. This is the truth. I shouted at them and ordered them to keep silent. My voice is very clear in the recording." In the leaked video, one voice called: "Allah, bless those who pray for Muhammad and his descendants. Allah, pray for Muhammad and his descendants and may they bring us their help soon and curse their enemies and back their son Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada." At that point Saddam asked, "Is this manly?" A voice responded, "To hell." Another voice called out, "Long live Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr" - a reference to the Dawa Party founder and Shiite cleric who was executed along with his sister by Saddam in 1980. Then, a voice purportedly belonging to al-Faroon said: "Please no, this man is being executed, please no, I beg you no." After Saddam was dropped through the trapdoor, a voice is heard shouting, "Don't rush, come back!" That suggests people were moving toward the body. However, the leader of Saddam's clan has said the body showed no signs of mistreatment after it was returned to Saddam's hometown Sunday. It was unclear how many guards attended the execution. On the official video, seven people were on the gallows platform with Saddam. They included five guards in masks, a man without a mask whose face was blurred over, and a photographer. Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told the U.S.-financed Al-Hurra television that he does not know who leaked the video and that such an act "is wrong and should be investigated, and I agree that cellular telephones were taken from witnesses before they boarded the helicopter" that headed to the execution site. "I am full of hope that the results of the investigation will be announced, and the person who did this act should pay a price," al-Rikabi said. Still, the results of some Iraqi government probes in the past have not been released. The Vatican's official newspaper on Tuesday decried media images of the hanging as a "spectacle" violating human rights and harming efforts to promote reconciliation in Iraq. Within the country, Saddam's execution and the way it was conducted have provoked anger among Sunni Muslims, who have taken to the streets in mainly peaceful demonstrations across the country. On Monday, a crowd of Sunni mourners in Samarra marched to a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine and were allowed by guards and police to enter the holy place carrying a mock coffin and photos of the former dictator. The protest took place at the Golden Dome, a Shiite shrine bombed by Sunni extremists 10 months ago. That attack triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites. On Tuesday, police in Baghdad said they had found 45 bodies scattered around the city. Many had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot, apparent victims of sectarian violence.