For the first time in history, my faith’s most important figure is championing science over dogma. Pope Benedict “is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a “moral” cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following.”

The Pope’s commitment is the environment is apparently real, The Independent reports that Vatican City recently became “the first fully carbon-neutral state in the world.”

According to Drudge, President Bush predicted that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination for president. Bush told author Bill Sammon, “she’s got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary.”

And therefore the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated. I think our candidate can beat her, but it’s going to be a tough race. I will work to see to it that a Republican wins, and therefore don’t accept the premise that a Democrat will win. I truly think the Republicans will hold the White House.

Unfortunately for Bush, the top GOP candidates are ignoring him and his punditry. “President Bush isn’t welcome on the campaign trail…they rail against the status quo and promise to fix problems he hasn’t solved.”

The invasion of Iraq seems to have made the US more vulnerable to the horrors of nuclear weapons.  On August 29, US airmen accidentally flew nuclear warheads across the country for 36 hours, “the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.”  The incident “provoked new questions inside and outside the Pentagon about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military’s attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting that “more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.”

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change. When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their careers.

No word yet on whether John Boehner (R-OH) and his Republican colleagues will “wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.”

American officials have stepped up their rhetoric against Iran. Newsweek reported today that Vice President Dick Cheney considered a plan to allow Israel to conduct missile strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites “in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic.”

Today, on CNN’s Late Edition, former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned President Bush against over-hyping the Iranian threat.

If we want the Iranians to give up uranium enrichment, which they have a right to do, and which so far they’re only enriching up to 5%, which is permissible. Then if we want them to give that up, we have to be willing to give them something in return so that they’re not forced to make a unilateral concession even before the negotiations begin. […]

I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq. When the president flatly asserts they are seeking nuclear weapons, he is overstating the facts. We are suspicious, we have strong suspicions, but we don’t have facts that they are.

The Washington Post reports:

Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA’s alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Before that episode, U.S. officials were made aware in high-level meetings and formal memorandums of Blackwater’s alleged transgressions. They included six violent incidents this year allegedly involving the North Carolina firm that left a total of 10 Iraqis dead, the officials said.

“There were no concrete results,” Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister who oversees the private security industry on behalf of the Iraqi government, said in an interview Saturday.

The lack of a U.S. response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under U.S.-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Blackwater, which operates under State Department authority, protects nearly all senior U.S. politicians and civilian officials here.

Last week, the paper noted that “many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn.”

The State Department allowed Blackwater’s heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military’s restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield.

The LA Times reports, “President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure — totaling nearly $200 billion — to fund the war through next year, Pentagon officials said.”

Currently, the war in Iraq is costing the U.S. $720 million a day — an amount that could “could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children.”

After joining Rev. Al Sharpton for dinner in Harlem, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly remarked that “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City … even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”

Steven Benen writes further:

On the same program, O’Reilly was describing his experience to NPR’s Juan Williams. “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea,’” O’Reilly said, adding, “You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

The U.S. government is collecting detailed information “on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried.”

Zakariya Reed, a Muslim American who “has spent 20 years serving in the National Guard” has been detained at least seven times since fall 2006 by border officials on the Michigan border and questioned about “politically charged” opinion pieces “critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East.” Once, during a secondary interview, he said, “they had them printed out on the table in front of me.” You can read more about Reed here.

Responding to MoveOn’s ‘General Betrays Us?’ ad, Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani asserted that “to attack the man’s [General Petraues’] integrity, and honesty, and decency, is in my view indecent. It passed a line that we should not allow American political organizations to pass.”

But Republicans who accuse Democrats of siding with the terrorists and against America have gotten a pass from Giuliani’s newfound indignation for indecency. Brendan Nyhan has compiled a time line of the Republican war on dissent since 9/11. Here is a sampling:

- 2001 - Ashcroft suggests critics of anti-terror laws are helping terrorists: In response to Democratic plans to question parts of the USA Patriot Act, former Attorney General John Ashcroft said, “to those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists…”

- 2002 - Bartlett claims Democrats’ request for information is aiding the terrorists: After the disclosure that President Bush received a general warning about possible Al Qaeda hijackings prior to 9/11, Democrats demand to know what other information the administration had before the attacks. In response, White House communications director Dan Bartlett says that the Democratic statements “are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.”

-2004 - Bush suggests Kerry’s criticism of the Iraq war is helping the terrorists: “You can embolden an enemy by sending a mixed message… You send the wrong message to our troops by sending mixed messages.”

-2006 - Boehner wonders if Democrats are siding with terrorists: During a press conference the day after the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11th, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, “I wonder if they [Democrats] are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people,” adding, “They certainly do not want to take the terrorists on and defeat them.”

-2007 - Young suggests Democratic war critics should be hanged: Rep. Don Young (R-AK) twice repeated a quotation falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln on the House floor, which states that “Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”

UPDATE: Media Matters notes that Rush Limbaugh has referred to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as ‘Senator Betrayus‘