Morning News Roundup (21 Feb)

• Last year, President Bush took the White House jam band out on tour with social security reform (aka, privatization). But this year, the tune's a bit different: alternative energy. Yesterday, he was in Milwaukee visiting Johnson Controls, a company that produces batteries for hybrid vehicles and energy-saving devices for buildings. As crude oil prices rose yesterday due to unrest in Nigeria (more on that in a minute), Jim VandeHei notes in his WaPo article:
  

  What government can control is the incentives it offers -- through tax breaks and direct investment -- to companies to produce new energy sources and energy-efficient products and to consumers who use them. The president's new budget calls for increased funding for research into new forms of ethanol production, hydrogen and hybrid technologies that reduce fuel consumption of automobiles by using electrical battery power to supplement gasoline

  Today, President Bush is visiting the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Two weeks ago, 32 workers including 8 researchers were laid off. Over the weekend, their jobs were reinstated when $5 million of the $28 million cut from the facility was restored--meaning the jobs return, but not funding for research (AP; via TomPaine).
  
  
• Speaking of Nigeria, the NYTimes reports that militants in that country from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta began attacks on oil industry targets and abducted nine foreign workers. Here's where the crude oil price rise comes in:
  

  Royal Dutch Shell suspended exports from the 380,000-barrel-a-day Forcados tanker terminal, and shut down the 115,000-barrel-a-day EA oilfield as a precaution. That cut 21 percent of the 2.4 million barrels of daily supply to world markets by Nigeria, the eighth-largest oil exporter.

• Buried in last week's $72.4 billion emergency supplemental appropriation bill for the war on terror is $485 million requested "to fund various military construction projects to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan"--that mean military bases (UPI; via TomPaine).
  
  
• The Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of banning a type of late-term abortion. The Bush administration has pressed the high court to reinstate the federal law, passed in 2003 but never put in effect because it was struck down by judges in California, Nebraska and New York (CNN).
  
  
• RawStory reports that "two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal, the general counsel of the U.S. Navy wrote a memo which tried to halt the "disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects," according to an article to be published in The New Yorker magazine."
  
  
• Scientists have found evidence that tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures may have once reached 107°F (42°C)-about 25°F (14°C) higher than ocean temperatures today and warmer than a hot tub (ENN).
  
  
• NYTimes columnist Nicholas Kristof has raised $727,568 to send Bill O'Reilly to Darfur, Sudan (Editor & Publisher). O'Reilly has called Kristof's pledge drive "simply a gimmick, a ploy, to bring my name to his passion."
  
  
• And finally, from HappyNews.com: Idaho museum honors black residents. "As the new director of the Idaho Black History Museum, Kimberly Moore's job starts with convincing people that such history actually exists."
  

[ADDENDUM 9:08am PST]

• At least 21 people have been killed and 27 injured in a car bomb at a market in southern Baghdad. The market was mostly Shia Muslim in an area torn by sectarian violence (BBC).
  
  
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) appears to be using campaign contributions for personal expenses: 66 trips to Starbucks, 11 meals at Arby’s and ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s (ThinkProgress).
  
  
• A 1,500-member Iraqi police force with close ties to Shiite militia groups has emerged as a focus of investigations into suspected death squads working within the country's Interior Ministry (LATimes).