Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/post-m03.shtml

The US Postal Service (USPS), moving to stem large operating losses, has demanded greater “flexibility” to control labor costs and has proposed ending delivery of most mail on Saturdays. US Postmaster General John Potter and other officials outlined the cuts at a Tuesday news conference. USPS has already shrunk its workforce by 200,000 in the last decade, even as the number of postal addresses in the US has increased by 18 million, Potter said. Last year it reduced its staff by 40,000. It will target job cuts of 30,000 in 2010, along with reductions in overtime payment to workers that would be equivalent to another 20,000 job cuts.

Link: http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m63827&hd=&size=1&l=e

Frankly anyone who believes that -- the about to take place elections is an exercise in Democracy, is a bloody lunatic... This is no democracy, this is a friggin circus. Notice how polite I've become...am not using the F word no more. If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Including that Iraq is a democracy today. Democracy - my foot!

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/03-9

If going head to head with bankers alone is too scary for Warren Buffett, why are the rest of us being thrown to the financial wolves? Warren Buffett's annual letter to his shareholders came out this weekend. The gist of it is “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut."

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/03-0

Even as many Americans still struggle to recover from the country's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, another crisis -- one that will be even worse than the current one -- is looming, according to a new report from a group of leading economists, financiers, and former federal regulators.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/03/eu-approves-gm-food-potato

Critics say the decision to approve the cultivation of a genetically modified potato and the use of three types of GM maize 'puts profit before people' The EU has approved the cultivation of a genetically modified potato and the use of three types of altered maize, saying they don't pose a health risk. The go-ahead for the Amflora potato – developed by BASF SE, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany – was the first green light in 12 years to grow a genetically modified food in the EU. Critics accused the European commission of pandering to corporate interests at the expense of public health.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/how-john-yoo-and-his-young-apprentice-tortured-health-care57334

While it may seem like a stretch to talk about health care benefits and torture in the same breath, there is a direct link between the two issues. Indeed, it was a Medicare benefits statute and other health care provisions that were used to form the basis for one of two August 2002 torture memos.

Link: http://rawstory.com/2010/03/935-documented-lies-rove-book-insists-iraq-war-justified/

Republican strategist Karl Rove says in a new memoir that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq badly damaged the Bush administration's credibility and led to dwindling public support for the war.

Link: http://rawstory.com/2010/03/maddow-calls-out-hatch-for-lying/

Now that the Democrats appear ready to pass health care reform without Republican support, the arguments being used by Congressional Republicans in a last-ditch attempt to prevent its passage are coming in for increased scrutiny.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/145872/how_the_dea_scrubbed_thomas_jefferson%27s_monticello_poppy_garden_from_public_memory

Visitors to Monticello don't learn how Jefferson cultivated poppies, and his personal opium use may as well never have happened. Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson's famous estate.

Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/03/03/BA471C9UVR.DTL

Newsom's controversial plan to help reduce the city's $522 million budget deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year would shift the majority of the city's 26,000 workers from a 40-hour week to 37 1/2 hours, cutting their paychecks by 6.25 percent.

Link: http://www.paltelegraph.com/hot-topic/4542-new-birth-defect-in-gaza

An increase in birth defects among newborns in the Gaza Strip - first documented in the Palestine Telegraph - has become apparent, despite claims to the contrary by some doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital. Pregnant women say they are living in constant fear.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein03032010.html

By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN Editors' Note: This article is excerpted from Norman Finkelstein’s important new book about the Gaza conflict, “This Time We Went Too Far” published this month by OR Books. To purchase a copy of the complete book please visit OR Books. This book is not available from bookstores or other online retailers.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7047309.ece

Argentina was celebrating a diplomatic coup yesterday in its attempt to force Britain to accept talks on the future of the Falkland Islands, after a two-hour meeting in Buenos Aires between Hillary Clinton and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8971528

Dozens of U.S. veterans, now in their 80s and 90s, returned to the remote volcanic island of Iwo Jima on Wednesday to mark the 65th anniversary of one of World War II's fiercest battles. The veterans, some in wheelchairs, flew to the island on a chartered airliner and fanned out across its famous black-sand beaches, where the U.S. invasion began on Feb. 19, 1945, and lasted 36 days. All told, nearly 28,000 troops were killed.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8971507

Associated Press Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday passed a $10 billion measure to maintain unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and provide stopgap funding for highway programs after a holdout Republican dropped stalling tactics that had generated a Washington firestorm.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/03/20103224742185727.html

The US supreme court has refused to rule on whether judges have the power to order the government to release Guantanamo prisoners to live in the US, when no other country will take them.