ThinkFast: August 1, 2008

Bruce Ivins, a 62-year old highly-skilled biodefense researcher, “apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks” following 9/11. Glenn Greenwald has more.

Wal-Mart is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors “to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies.” Managers and department heads “have been summoned to mandatory meetings” stressing the downsides of a Democratic victory and unionization.

“Republicans want to drive attention away” from the one-year anniversary today of the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people because they don’t want to “dampen” their convention in Minneapolis next month by “revisiting an old tragedy” that “spotlighted the nation’s crumbling bridges.”

“Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.” DHS has “the ability to copy a lifetime of files from someone’s laptop, and then examine those files at the government’s leisure.” (Take action here.)

On the trail today: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will hold a town hall-style meeting on the economy at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, FL. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is speaking to the National Urban League in Orlando; then he’s appearing with country music star John Rich at a concert and rally in Panama City.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) faces growing pressure from within her Caucus” to bring off-shore drilling to the floor for a vote. “With the drilling issue paralyzing Congressional action on energy, freshman Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) said he and other Members have communicated to leadership that there needs to be a vote, and he predicted there would be one.”

President Bush’s new executive order revising rules for intelligence agencies expands the national intelligence director’s powers. “House Republicans on the intelligence committee walked out of a Thursday morning briefing” by DNI Mike McConnell to protest the White House’s pattern of disrespect for congressional oversight. “This president is making it impossible for Congress to do oversight of the intelligence community,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI).

“A former senior American official” tells Time that the “U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects” on the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean “in 2002 and possibly 2003.” Former Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said he had witnessed discussions about “the possibility of using Diego Garcia” and that the official’s claim is “entirely credible.”

“The American economy expanded more slowly than expected from April to June, the government reported Thursday, while numbers for the last three months of 2007 were revised downward to show a contraction — the first official slide backward since the last recession in 2001.” Many economists say “the data increased the likelihood that a recession began late last year.”

And finally: The House transportation committee approved a ban on the passenger use of cell phones on domestic airliners yesterday. Explaining the need for the bill, Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN) complained, “My wife had to listen to a female passenger talk about her sex life the night before. … Who wants to listen to that? Certainly not when you’re trapped on an airplane.” But Rep. John Mica (R-FL) countered, “There are rude people who do rude things.” To prove his point, Mica pulled out an iPod and began playing a rock song, “Dimension” by Wolfmother. The music filled the committee room as Mica strained to talk over it.

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