ThinkFast: August 16, 2007

The ongoing mortgage crisis has caused global markets to continue in a downward spiral. Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed below the 13,000 mark for the first time since April. “And markets in the United States were expected to open lower again today.”

The White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to a private congressional briefing, “suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said he would “indefinitely block” the nomination of John Rizzo to become the CIA’s top lawyer because Rizzo “did not object” to a 2002 memo authorizing torture techniques “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure.”

Rudy Giuliani expressed his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state at this time. Giuliani said “too much emphasis” has been placed on brokering negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. “It is not in the interest of the United States…to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism,” he said.

Many of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s associates have profited from Hurricane Katrina. $15 billion or more in federal aid has flowed into the state. “Among the beneficiaries are Barbour’s own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business.”

Katrina-related mental illness is double pre-storm levels today. “About 14% have symptoms of severe mental illness. An additional 20% have mild to moderate mental illness. … The big surprise: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which typically goes away in a year for most disaster survivors, has increased: 21% have the symptoms vs. 16% in 2006.”

Three federal appeals court judges hearing challenges to the NSA’s surveillance programs yesterday “appeared skeptical of and sometimes hostile to the Bush administration’s central argument[s].” “Is it the government’s position that when our country is engaged in a war that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?” Judge Harry Pregerson asked a government lawyer.

Center for American Progress President John Podesta said Bush is “running into a brick wall in Congress.” “The places where he could find common ground, he’s in a ‘just say no mode,’” he said. “I find that kind of surprising given the place he’s at in his presidency.” Podesta also pens a Washington Post op-ed encouraging the Bush White House to take a few lessons from the Clinton White House.

The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in Northern Iraq reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded on Tuesday evening, local officials said, “making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.”

And finally: Graham packin’ heat. Yesterday, a military correspondent for the conservative National Review spotted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “dressed in his desert khaki uniform” and “armed with 9mm Beretta pistol in a shoulder holster” at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Graham, who is an Air Force Reserve JAG officer, was carrying a weapon just as “every servicemember in and out of uniform does” in Iraq.

What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.