Action Point with Cynthia Black 02-24-2008: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• POLITICS: NATIONAL: CAMPAIGN 2008: After this past Wednesday's debate and you thought she was giving up (or making nice) comes this:

  "Shame on you," Clinton tells Obama: Hillary Clinton slammed rival Barack Obama on Saturday for campaign leaflets on her health-care plan that she called "blatantly false" and accused him of using Republican tactics in their contest for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination. In a bitter exchange, Obama defended the leaflet as accurate and campaign spokesman Bill Burton decried Clinton's "negative campaign."

  AND A Hole in McCain’s Defense? A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

• ENVIRONMENT: Climate of Denial: Recently I was reminded of this older Mother Jones piece describing just how it is that Global Heating deniers have so successfully managed to push us ever-further to the brink of environmental collapse:

  In short, the deniers have done their job, and done it better than the environmentalists have done theirs. They've delayed action for 15 years now, and their power seems to grow with each year. How, even as the science grew ever firmer and the evidence mounted ever higher, did the climate deniers manage to muddy the issue?

• NATIONAL SECURITY (IRAN): From my favorite blog Iran Nuclear Watch:

  What Would it Take to Launch a War With Iran? I believe that media missed some of the more valuable key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, including: Iran is a rational actor that makes decisions regarding its nuclear program on a cost-benefit analysis; and Iran could halt its nuclear program if it was given opportunities perceived as credible by its leaders to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways. Much work must be done to create the conditions where an offer is perceived as credible. First, the U.S. should determine which elements of the offer made by Iran in 2003 to settle outstanding disputes might remain a feasible basis for talks. Dropping preconditions for talks on the nuclear program is absolutely necessary as it would signal to both Iran and European allies that the US is sincere in its repeated expressions of preference for real diplomacy.