Midday News Roundup (04 Apr)

Believe it or not, the world doesn't revolve around Tom DeLay (shhhhh... don't tell Tom that). Let's spin the globe and see what's shakin':

• Nine more American troops died in Iraq, the U.S. military reported Monday, five of them in a vehicle accident in a remote, rain-soaked western area. Their deaths brought the number of service members killed so far this month to 13 - nearly half the number who died in all of March. [CBC; hat tip to Juan Cole]
  
  
• Wary of the ability of police and soldiers to provide protection, Iraqi civilians are attempting to provide their own security, relying on neighbors and family or hiring armed guards. Almost every day bodies of civilians, many shot execution-style and dumped by the side of the road, are turning up.
  

  Convinced that Iraqi police and soldiers can do little to protect them, residents are arming and organizing, often in elaborate ways, to provide their own safety. Checkpoints and barricades are so common inside Baghdad that the city is like an obstacle course of blocked streets, blast walls and traffic jams. [USAToday]
  

• Iraq's interior ministry is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits who have been trained by the US and the UK and is hiring its own men and putting them on the streets, according to western security advisers. The disclosure highlights growing US and British concern about the role of militias in sectarian killings, and their links to senior Iraqi politicians. [Guardian]
  
  
• Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majeed, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in a gas attack that killed more than 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in 1988, will be prosecuted for genocide. [WaPo]
  
  
• Crude oil prices jumped to their highest level since Hurricane Katrina on Monday amid uncertainty about Nigerian supplies and as Iran announced it had tested new weapons during war games in the Strait of Hormuz. Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran’s deputy oil minister, yesterday hinted at Iran’s ability to influence the oil price when he said: “Any fall in oil prices this year is unlikely...A sum of factors show that prices will not fall in the next two or three years unless there is a conspiracy against oil.” [Financial Times]
  
  
• Hopeful signs: The six nations involved in talks with North Korean on its disarmament (US, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia... oh, and North Korea) will be meeting in Japan for the first time since last November. [WaPo]
  
  
• Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Labor Party leader, Amir Peretz, declared their intent to form a coalition government. [NYTimes]
  
  
• China and Australia signed a sensitive deal on nuclear fuel Monday that underscores how their relations are deepening despite sharp public misgivings by the United States. The deal calls for Australia, the world's second-largest uranium exporter, to provide nuclear fuel to China for power generation. Australia eventually may export 20,000 tons of radioactive uranium to China annually, double its current global exports, to supply the 40 to 50 nuclear reactors China plans to build in the next 20 years. [Knight Ridder]
  
  
• The WaPo's Dan Froomkin wonders: Is anyone paying attention to the president anymore? He asks this as the President embarks on two days of meetings and speeches on his heath care savings accounts (HSAs).
  

  But with war raging in Iraq and pandemonium breaking out in Congress, Bush is having a harder time than usual making himself heard. And in this particular case, even if people do pay attention, it doesn't mean they'll buy his argument. Much like Bush's failed attempt to restructure Social Security, the argument for health savings accounts is, on its face, problematic.

  And that's not even taking into account Hurricane DeLay affecting the news cycle.
  
  
• Yeah, right. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (and GOP gubernatorial hopeful) announced that he accidentally bought stock in Diebold Inc., a voting machine maker that benefited from decisions made by his office. [Cleveland Plain Dealer] John Gilliam over at the Gadflyer notes:
  

  In yet another example of a conservative Christian making quick flight from the ethic of personal responsibility, Blackwell's spin is that it was an "accident" to be blamed on his funds management staff. That will certainly stir up the sympathy of all those hard-working Buckeyes who know just what it's like to have a funds manager err or lose track of a ten thousand dollar stock buy.
  

OK, a few last Bug Man notes... Salon's War Room notes that Tom Delay will be able to use his reelection war chest to fund his legal defense. The legal fund had "collected $318,000 in the third quarter of last year, the Post says, but in the fourth quarter it collected only $181,500. As of the end of 2005, the defense fund contained $600,000. Meanwhile, DeLay's campaign account has $1,295,350, according to the most recent filing with the Federal Elections Commission."

ThinkProgress notes that King-maker might be gone, but his K-Street kingdom (full of lobbyists friendly to the GOP) remains.

And Daily Kos' Georgia10 (a front-page contributor who just won a Koufax award as best commenter for 2005) sums up the tragedy of Tom DeLay that we all have to face:

The tragedy of Tom DeLay is not then his political demise, but the demise of the American system of governance. For with or without Tom DeLay, that GOP theory that everything must be sacrificed in the quest for power lives on. Party over principle. It is the legacy of Tom DeLay, the legacy of this Republican Congress. It is a hideous stain upon our democracy that cannot be rubbed out, not with the resignation of one man, not with superficial ethics "reform". Only a Democratic majority in November can provide the catharsis necessary to cleanse Capitol Hill of its culture of corruption.

Speaking of Kos, it's looking like I'm going to be seeing him (aka, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga) with his writing partner, Jerome Armstrong, this Friday on their book tour for Crashing the Gate. Details developing...