SPB News for Saturday.

For Targeted GOP Senate Candidates, St. Paul Is Not A Choice Destination — Nine of 12 targeted Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this fall are either skipping the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., or have not decided whether to attend.

Cleveland radio station drops Michael Savage: ‘This guy’s a knucklehead.’ Last week, Media Matters caught right-wing radio talker Michael Savage claiming that autism is a “fraud” and “a racket” where “99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.” But Savage’s controversial remarks about autistic children have gotten him booted off Cleveland’s airwaves, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports:

WHK AM/1420, the only Cleveland-area station carrying Savage’s radio talk show, is breaking its contract with Savage’s syndicator, Talk Radio Network, said Mark Jaycox, who manages the Cleveland stations under the Salem Communications corporate umbrella.

“This guy’s a knucklehead, and I want to get rid of him,” Jaycox said. The radio station Super Talk Mississippi announced recently that they were canceling Savage’s show because of the autism comments.

McClellan: White House gave FOX commentators talking points
Matthews: “Did you see FOX television as a tool when you were in the White House? As a useful avenue to get your message out?”

McClellan: “I make a distinction between the journalists and the commentators. Certainly there were commentators and other, pundits at FOX News, that were useful to the White House.” […] That was something we at the White House, yes, were doing, getting them talkng points and making sure they knew where we were coming from.

Matthews: “So you were using these commentators as your spokespeople.”

McClellan: “Well, certainly.”

Driver told FBI agents U.S. could have killed bin Laden In his seventh of month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden's driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America's fault that the al Qaida leader was alive. The message was, ''You had these opportunities, America. You didn't do anything,'' FBI agent George Crouch Jr. testified Friday at Salim Hamdan's war crimes trial. The United States could have killed bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, before he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Hamdan told his interrogators. They could have killed him after al Qaida's 1998 twin bombings at the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Or after the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, at the port of Aden in Yemen, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead. Instead, ''Bin Laden was emboldened."

US missile alert crew falls asleep on the job It was 9.30 in the evening. The crew of three air force members decided to rest a little and within 15 minutes they were fast asleep. They awoke several hours later. The only problem was that the room in which they were snoozing was the missile alert facility at Minot air force base in North Dakota. Directly beneath them was the underground control centre containing the keys that can launch ballistic missiles, and in their care were metal boxes containing the secret codes that allow the nuclear button to be pressed. The incident is the latest in a series of foul-ups and poor ratings for the Minot air force base. Last summer a B-52 bomber was loaded with six air-launched nuclear missiles and flown, unbeknownst to its pilots or crew, across America.

Documents Reveals Labor Effort to Add More Hoops to Regulating Workplace Toxins A copy of a eleventh-hour proposed rule that would make it harder to set new safety rules limiting workers' exposure to chemicals on the job has been obtained by the Washington Post. The Labor Department has refused to discuss or disclose the proposal, which has spurred anger and condemnation from unions, Democrats in Congress and public health scientists. They claim the rule is a "midnight regulation" that will block the next administration's efforts to reduce workers illnesses and deaths.

Is Afghanistan a Narco-State? By Thomas Schweich Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade -- by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai’s Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people’s business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs -- and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.

Campaigners push for Bush impeachment Anti-war campaigners like Cindy Sheehan are increasing pressure on the House of Representatives to impeach the US President [sic] George Bush. "I am not only want him (Bush) impeached, I want him drag out of my White House," Sheehan said in Washington on Thursday at a press conference with Republican constitutional law scholar Bruce Fein. "I want him thrown in The Hague [because] he is clearly a war criminal. It is about time an American president paid for those kinds of crimes."

Congress Hears Ringing Call for Impeachment By David Swanson The House Judiciary Committee today, Friday, July 25th, will put impeachment squarely back "on the table" and restored to its prominent place in our Constitution. Elliott Adams, President of Veterans for Peace, and a descendant of American revolutionary Sam Adams, will deliver this prepared testimony... Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82, and Chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, will deliver this prepared testimony.