Morning News Roundup (14 Apr)

• The NYTimes is reporting that Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who led troops on the ground in Iraq as recently as 2004 as the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, has become the fifth retired senior general in recent days to call publicly for Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster. Salon's War Room notes this comment by Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste on last night's PBS News Hour:
  

  Batiste said that he "always asked for more troops, within our chain of command." When those requests were denied, he said, "we saluted and executed; I had to keep my soldiers alive and focused on the mission at hand."
  
  George W. Bush has always insisted that he has given commanders in Iraq whatever troop levels they've requested; Batiste's comments suggest either that Bush has been lying or that the military commanders between Bush and men at Batiste's level have failed to pass along the requests for more manpower, knowing that the answer would be no and saving Bush from having to give it.

  Scottie McC came to the defense of Rummy at the press briefing (from the WaPo):
  

  "The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said at a briefing. He went on to read long quotations from the nation's top military officer, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, praising Rumsfeld's dedication and patriotism.

• An estimated 10,000 Americans are refusing to pay their federal taxes this year in protest of US military power. Many of these conscientious objectors - some driven by personal politics, some by religious beliefs - plan to donate their tax obligation to charity instead. Of course, not paying taxes is against the law. Federal courts have rejected protesters' right to withhold taxes, regardless of the motive, says IRS spokesman Robert Marvin. Although few tax resisters ever face charges, the IRS has cracked down on some offenders. [CSM]
  
  
• Why do they hate America? 64 percent of Americans “want all or some of the U.S. troops in Iraq to come home now,” according to a new USA Today/Gallup Poll. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• In a precedent setting case the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday in favor of allowing a same-sex couple to be the joint parents of a child. In a split-decision the court overturned a Morgan County judge ruling that only married couples could be co-adoptive parents. [365Gay.com via Tom Paine]
  
  
• Forget inquiries into pre-Iraq War intelligence fixing, here's what the guv'ment needs to be focusing on: Barry Bonds is reportedly now the target of a federal government's month-long probe into whether or not the slugger committed perjury during his '03 grand jury testimony on steroid use. [ESPN via Crooks and Liars]
  
  
• Two explosions, occurring within 30 minutes of each other, struck New Delhi's main mosque shortly after several hundred people offered Friday prayers, and at least six people were injured. [WaPo]
  
  
• Wow! When you start to lose the hunters and outdoor sportsmen, that's trouble. Here are some tidbits from the latest Conservation column from Field and Stream:
  

  Rod and gun in hand, and backing the Second Amendment right to own firearms, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have won the hearts of America's sportsmen. Yet the two men have failed to protect outdoor sports on the nation's public lands. With deep ties to the oil and gas industry, Bush and Cheney have unleashed a national energy plan that has begun to destroy hunting and fishing on millions of federal acres throughout the West, setting back effective wildlife management for decades to come.
  [...]
  The results of these actions--billed as promoting national energy security--have begun to turn vast tracts of the western United States into industrial landscapes. The winners are the energy companies, which have been able to acquire their leases for as little as $2 per acre. The casualties are big game, upland birds, cold- and warmwater fisheries, the traditional interests of hunters and anglers, and the economic welfare of communities whose livelihoods are based on outdoor recreation and ranching.

• Finally, if you're a user of the Firefox web browser (I am, and I'm a big fan of it), take some time to download the latest version, which fixes some serious security flaws, "including at least five vulnerabilities that hackers could deploy on malicious Web sites to install malware if users visited the sites with vulnerable browsers." Brian Krebs over at the WaPo's Security Fix blog has the links you need to update from both version 1.5 and 1.08.