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FRESNO, Calif. — Federal and state agents have arrested nearly 100 people in a sweep of marijuana-growing operations that’s netted more than $1.7 billion worth of pot in California’s Sierra Nevada range.

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims says several Mexican drug cartels are involved in the operations. She says most of the 97 people arrested are Mexican nationals.

Gil Kerlikowske, who directs the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, says agents have destroyed more than 432,000 marijuana plants during the three-week operation, which ends Friday.

Kerlikowske was in Fresno on Thursday to express support for the sweep, which involves 450 agents covering the remote stretches of Fresno, Madera and Tulare counties.

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1.7 BILLION Dollar Pot Bust In Central California

WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday sent President Barack Obama a major war-funding increase of $33 billion to pay for his troop surge in Afghanistan, unmoved by the leaking of classified documents that portray a military effort struggling between 2004 and 2009 against a strengthening insurgency.

The House voted, 308-114, to approve the spending boost for the additional 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Other non-war provisions brought the total bill to nearly $59 billion.

From Obama on down, the disclosure of the documents was condemned by administration officials and military leaders on Tuesday, but the material failed to stir new anti-war sentiment. The bad news for the White House: A pervasive weariness with the war was still there – and possibly growing.

Republicans in Congress still were strongly behind the boost in war spending, but there was unusually strong opposition from members of Obama’s own Democratic Party. All but 12 of the “no” votes in the House came from Democrats.

In debate before the vote, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the leaked documents revealed corruption and incompetence in the Afghanistan government.

“We’re told we can’t extend unemployment or pay to keep cops on the beat or teachers in the classroom but we’re asked to borrow another $33 billion for nation-building in Afghanistan,” McGovern said.

At a Senate hearing on prospects for a political settlement of the Afghan conflict, there was scant mention of the leaked material, posted on the website of the whistleblower group WikiLeaks, but there were repeated expressions of frustration over the direction of the fighting.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has questioned the realism of U.S. goals in Afghanistan though he supports the war, pointedly asked why the Taliban, with fewer resources and smaller numbers, can field fighters who are more committed to winning than are Afghan soldiers.

“What’s going on here?” Kerry asked with exasperation.

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal supporter of the war, took issue at a separate hearing with anyone who would argue that the leaked documents buttress arguments for withdrawing now from Afghanistan.

“In actuality, the emerging picture from these documents appears to be little more than what we knew already: that the war in Afghanistan was deteriorating over the past several years,” McCain said.

Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis told senators at a hearing on his nomination to lead the military’s Central Command that, whatever other lessons are drawn from the WikiLeaks documents, no one should doubt that the U.S. is committed to staying in Afghanistan until it wins.

“We are on the right track now,” Mattis said, while predicting that the U.S. casualty rate would increase in coming months as still more U.S. troops join the fight against the Taliban.

In his first public comments on the weekend leak of tens of thousands of documents, Obama said it could “potentially jeopardize individuals or operations” in Afghanistan. But he also said the papers did not reveal any concerns that were not already part of the war debate.

Obama said the shortcomings in Afghanistan as reflected in the leaked documents explain why, last year, he undertook an in-depth review of the war and developed a new strategy.

“We’ve substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work and put in place a team, including one of our finest generals, to execute that plan,” Obama said. “Now we have to see that strategy through.”

In the House, Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said he was torn between his obligation to bring the bill to the floor and his “profound skepticism” that the money would lead to a successful conclusion of the war.

Even if there were greater confidence, he said, “it would likely take so long it will obliterate our ability to make the kinds of long-term investments in our own country that are so desperately needed.”

The leaked documents are battlefield reports compiled by various military units in Afghanistan that provide an unflinching view of combat operations between 2004 and 2009, including U.S. displeasure over reports that Pakistan secretly aided insurgents fighting American and Afghan forces.

Even as the administration dismissed the leaked documents as outdated, U.S. military and intelligence analysts were caught up in a struggle to limit the damage contained in the once-secret files now scattered across the Internet.

In Baghdad, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he was “appalled” by the leak, which he said had the potential of putting troops’ lives at added risk.

Officials also are concerned about the impact the disclosures could have on the military’s human intelligence network built up over the past eight years inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. The people in that network range from Afghan village elders who have worked behind the scenes with U.S. troops to militants working as double agents.

Beyond expressions of disgust at the document dump, the political fallout in Washington appeared limited.

Advocates of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan said the leaks reinforced their argument for disengaging. War supporters said they illustrated why Obama was right to decide last December to send an additional 30,000 troops and step up pressure on the Afghan government to reform, while pressing Pakistan to go after insurgents on its side of the border.

At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley said efforts to explain to Afghanistan and other allies that the U.S. government played no role in leaking the documents seemed to have paid off.

“We’re very gratified that the response thus far internationally has been moderate, sober,” Crowley said.

In his only reference to the leak, Kerry called the new material “over-hyped,” said that it was released in violation of the law and that it largely involved raw intelligence reports from the field.

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Afghanistan War Funding Bill Clears Congress With Major Spending Increase

The National Organization for Women is asking whether President Barack Obama’s apparent reluctance to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head a new consumer agency is due to sexism, according to an email the group sent supporters Tuesday.

The noted consumer advocate, Wall Street bailout watchdog and Harvard Law professor is one of three candidates the White House has identified as leading contenders to head the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency, conceived by Warren in a 2007 article, was created as part of the financial reform bill Obama last week signed into law.

Bank lobbies fought to kill the agency while it was under consideration in Congress, and have expressed concern with a Warren nomination. The agency will regulate consumer credit products like mortgages and credit cards and some fear she could be too aggressive in protecting consumers from dubious lending practices, cutting off key sources of profitability for banks.

But while Obama administration officials, liberal Democrats and some Republicans are in near-universal agreement that Warren is well-qualified to run the agency, Obama, though praising Warren last week, has thus far declined to nominate her for the Senate-confirmed role. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has expressed opposition to her nomination, according to a source with knowledge of Geithner’s views, the Huffington Post reported July 15. Treasury Department and White House officials, while effusive in their praise of Warren, have not denied the report, despite repeated opportunities.

Now, the nation’s leading women’s organization alleges sexism may be at play.

“If confirmed, Warren would protect consumers from further economic meltdowns caused by shady loans and credit,” NOW wrote in its e-mail to supporters. “She would also demand accountability and consumer-friendly practices from Wall Street banks. But she’s not part of the old boys club, so NOW asks: Could sexism be at work in denying her this position?”

The group went on to say that it hopes Obama “doesn’t listen” to his top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, because of what NOW considers to be his allegedly sexist views.

“[S]ome of the president’s top financial advisors, like Larry Summers, have expressed biased and blatantly sexist views about women’s abilities,” NOW wrote. “In 2005, Summers said, concerning women’s aptitude for science and math, ‘It does appear that on many, many different human attributes — overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability — there is relatively clear evidence that … there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.’ Essentially, he claimed that men are innately inclined to be better at math and science than women.

“Let’s hope that Obama doesn’t listen to Summers on this decision!” the group wrote in its e-mail.

In an interview last week with ABC News, Obama called Warren a “wonderful voice making a very simple point, which is, if you’ve got a set of rules and standards in place to make sure your toaster doesn’t blow up in your face, you should have some rules and regulations to make sure your credit card or mortgage doesn’t blow up in your face.”

Obama said he has the “highest regard” for her, but that he has yet to make a decision regarding possible appointment.

“[B]ut here’s my guarantee,” Obama added. “Elizabeth is going to be working with me, working with Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, to help in thinking about how do we make this consumer agency as effective as possible looking out for consumers. She is going to be actively involved in that process.”

One consumer advocate involved in the effort to get the financial reform bill through Congress speculated that the “guarantee” could simply be a guarantee to keep Warren involved in consumer protection without actually nominating her for the role. Something similar was promised June 16 by David Axelrod, one of Obama’s top advisers.

“The President believes Elizabeth Warren is a champion for middle class families and consumers, and her work on consumer protection issues helped guide his original proposal and will continue to play an important role on this issue going forward,” Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. “Though the President has not named someone to this post less than a week after signing the bill, Elizabeth Warren will continue to play a vital role regardless in ensuring the consumer agency is as effective as possible.”

NOW’s sexism charge is a far cry from May 10 and May of 2009, when NOW praised Obama for his separate nominations of women — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — to the Supreme Court.

The organization’s accusation follows up a similar allegation from a member of Congress.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, wrote in a July 20 blog post on HuffPost that opposition to Warren may be due to sexism.

“The good old boy network of investors is uncomfortable around her,” Speier wrote. “Is this because she is a woman in a male-dominated ‘sport,’ or is it that she’s an advocate for middle-class families who sees nothing amusing about winning and losing with people’s life savings?”

Charges of sexism in financial regulation aren’t new.

In 2008, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank alleged sexism was partly at play when it came to the Wall Street bailout and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair’s role in the negotiations.

Bair allegedly “annoyed the Old Boys Club,” Frank said, likening the situation to several regulators “up in the treehouse with a ‘No Girls Allowed’ sign,” according to a Politico.

In 1998, critics allege that sexism also played a role when financial regulators in the Clinton administration — led in part by Summers — objected to a proposal regulating over-the-counter derivatives that was championed by Brooksley E. Born, then-chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. At the time the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all headed by men.

However, while financial regulation has traditionally been dominated by men, there are some women in important roles today. The FDIC and SEC are both currently headed by women — one of whom was appointed by Obama — and two of Obama’s three picks to join the Fed’s Board of Governors are women.

The Treasury Department, though, continues to be led by mostly men. Of the top 20 officials Treasury lists on its Web site, just five are women.

Men also lead the CFTC, the OCC and the Fed. Of the five current Fed governors, just one — Elizabeth Duke — is a woman.

READ the NOW e-mail:

Watchdog Not Lapdog Needed to Reform Wall Street, Tell Obama to Nominate Elizabeth Warren to Head Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

On July 23, President Obama signed into law a sweeping financial reform bill, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency that would closely monitor Wall Street practices concerning credit and loans. Such an agency was originally proposed by Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and expert on bankruptcy and credit. Warren is the most qualified and most obvious choice for head of this bureau, but she’s definitely not favored by Wall Street and its sympathizers in the government.

If confirmed, Warren would protect consumers from further economic meltdowns caused by shady loans and credit. She would also demand accountability and consumer-friendly practices from Wall Street banks. But she’s not part of the old boys club, so NOW asks: Could sexism be at work in denying her this position?

Write President Obama today and tell him that the people of the United States want a head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who will promote the interests of consumers, not the interests of big banks. Tell him we want Elizabeth Warren!

Background:

In 2007, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor, wrote an article in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas that proposed the creation of a government agency to protect consumers from duplicitous credit practices, much the same way that consumers are protected from faulty or dangerous products. Three years later, the government has taken Warren’s advice and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed on July 23.

The bureau would have the power to oversee, analyze, and regulate credit and loans, including credit cards and mortgages. It would protect consumers from any abusive banking practices and would also be able to monitor Wall Street to prevent another economic meltdown. Overall, the purpose of the bureau is consumer protection, and it needs a head who will be on the side of everyday people, not the rich and superrich.

Elizabeth Warren is more than qualified to head this bureau. She is an expert on bankruptcy, a distinguished researcher and the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitored the Wall Street bailouts. Her background, experience, and commitment to the welfare of consumers make her the most obvious choice for head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

However, those on Wall Street and government officials who support them do not want Warren to head the bureau, as they know that she would boldly stand up for consumers and crack down on the underhanded practices of big banks. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has voiced objections to Warren, and though he’s since described her as “an enormously effective leader,” he still has not said that he would recommend her nomination.

Some of the president’s top financial advisors, like Larry Summers, have expressed biased and blatantly sexist views about women’s abilities. In 2005, Summers said, concerning women’s aptitude for science and math, “It does appear that on many, many different human attributes–overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability–there is relatively clear evidence that …there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.” Essentially, he claimed that men are innately inclined to be better at math and science than women. Let’s hope that Obama doesn’t listen to Summers on this decision!

The consumers of the U.S. need a strong watchdog like Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not a Wall Street lapdog.

Shahien Nasiripour is the business reporter for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail; bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed; follow him on Twitter; friend him on Facebook; become a fan; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 646-274-2455.

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NOW Questions Obama’s Reluctance To Nominate Elizabeth Warren, Asks Whether Sexism At Play

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) – The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create deeper doubts about the war at home, cause new friction with Pakistan over allegations about its spy agency and raise questions around the world about Washington’s own ability to protect military secrets.

The White House called the disclosures “alarming.”

The torrent of more than 91,000 secret documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history, sent the Obama administration scrambling to assess and repair any damage to the war effort, either abroad or in the U.S. The material could reinforce the view put forth by the war’s opponents in Congress that one of the nation’s longest conflicts is hopelessly stalemated.

The leaks come at a time when President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan war strategy is under congressional scrutiny and with polls finding that a majority of Americans no longer think the war there is worth fighting. Still, the leaks are not expected to prevent passage of a $60 billion war funding bill. Despite strong opposition among liberals who see Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, House Democrats must either approve the bill before leaving at the end of this week for a six-week vacation, or commit political suicide by leaving troops in the lurch in war zones overseas.

The Pentagon also was looking at possible damage on the ground in Afghanistan.

“Someone inadvertently or on purpose gave the Taliban its new ‘enemies list,’” declared Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who said the White House indicated the disclosures compromised a number of Afghan sources.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs emphasized that the documents covered the period before Obama ordered a major increase in U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, and the administration denied they would cause any policy shift in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

Indeed, despite the furor over the publication of the reports on the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, the information did not reveal any fundamentally new problems in the war effort. Military officers, current and former, described the documents as mostly tactical spot reports, including hunches about possible suspects and bomb plots that couldn’t be verified. Some of the reports contain errors; others appear to be based on flimsy evidence.

Still, much of the material is anything but encouraging.

Underscoring the difficulties the U.S. faces, the documents include the first publicly released indication that the Taliban has used portable surface-to-air missiles against U.S. helicopters. One report on a June 2005 incident said a Black Hawk helicopter used evasive measures to avoid getting hit east of Kandahar by what its crew chief identified as a portable missile.

The documents also report potential Iranian support of an Afghan terrorist group.

They said that on Jan. 30, 2005, Iranian intelligence agencies brought the equivalent of $212,800 in Afghan currency across the Iranian border and transferred it to a 1990s-model white Toyota Corolla station wagon occupied by members of Hizb-i-Islami, a Taliban-allied insurgent group led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The money trail was lost.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need “days, if not weeks” to determine “the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the release of documents was just the beginning. He told reporters in London that some 15,000 more files on Afghanistan were still being vetted by his organization.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unflinching view of combat operations between 2004 and 2009, including U.S. frustration over reports that Pakistan secretly aided insurgents fighting U.S. and Afghan forces.

The material portrays Pakistan as playing a double game when it came to the struggle against Afghan militants, with security officials secretly providing insurgents with aid. Both the U.S. and Pakistan say that view is outdated, but one American analyst said it probably is correct.

“The Pakistan government gave up claiming that it could control its intelligence agencies around the time they invented them. I don’t think they even try,” said Paula R. Newberg, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the leaked documents “misplaced, skewed and contrary to the factual position on the ground.” And it said that U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation against “our common enemies” will continue.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley argued that there is a “new dynamic” in the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan since the period covered by the leaked documents. He acknowledged, however, that the U.S. remains concerned about weaknesses in the relationship, including the problem of corruption in the Afghan government.

“These documents highlight issues we’ve long known about,” Crowley said.

WikiLeaks, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted the reports to its website Sunday night. It did not say who provided the documents.

Crowley said it was unclear whether the leak was related to a U.S. military intelligence analyst who is being held in Kuwait, on charges of mishandling classified information on military computers in Baghdad.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the documents released so far “reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground.”

The Taliban’s resurgence led Obama to announce in December 2009 a major increase of forces to Afghanistan as part of a new civil-military strategy, Lieberman pointed out.

Shortly after the documents were posted on the Internet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they raised questions about whether the U.S. was pursuing a realistic policy with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said they showed the urgency of making the “calibrations” necessary “to get the policy right.”

Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the leak disturbing.

“The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won’t stop until we see more perpetrators in orange jump suits,” Bond said.

The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.

More on Afghanistan

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WikiLeaks Creates Fresh Doubt About Afghan War, Secrets

Will he be working at all this August? The White House denied reports from Spanish media that the Obamas would take a holiday early August in the posh southern Spanish resort city of Marbella, according to the Agence France Presse.

A White House official told AFP the report by Spanish newspaper El Pais and El Mundo was incorrect.

The Obamas already have two “vacations” planned for August: a weekend in the Gulf Coast followed by a week in Martha’s Vineyard.

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Obama Vacation: The First Family To Spain?

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) joined the effort to persuade President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Bureau in an interview with the Huffington Post on Saturday. Earlier that day, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) said he was endorsing Warren for the position and has made his position known to the White House, as has Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

More than 60 House members have called on the president to nominate Warren and more than 160,000 people have signed an online petition.

“I really like Elizabeth Warren,” said Franken, adding that he often had her on as a guest on his talk-radio show. “Her work on bankruptcy is what put her on our radar at the show in 2005.”

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has questioned whether she’d be able to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, though the statute would allow the president to appoint her on an indefinite basis until a nominee is confirmed.

Franken said he wasn’t sure whether the White House wanted the fight. “The White House has to decide if they want a confirmation fight. I don’t know what their considerations are. In my consideration, I think Elizabeth would be the best,” he said.

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Al Franken Endorses Elizabeth Warren For Consumer Protection Bureau

Apple says the white version of the iPhone 4 will not be available until later this year.

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Apple Delays White iPhone 4

Wanda Sykes is one of the greatest American comedian as well as a marvelous actress.

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Wanda Sykes

President Obama said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack erred in pushing out Shirley Sherrod over allegations of racism that later proved unsubstantiated, but the real culprit, he told ABC News, was the media.

“He jumped the gun,” Obama said of Vilsack, “partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.”

Obama’s charge was broadcast by ABC News Thursday night, excerpted from a longer interview scheduled to run Friday on “Good Morning America.”

“I’ve told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we’re focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment. We have to take our time and, and think these issues through,” Obama said.

“If there’s a lesson to be drawn from this episode,” the President continued, it’s to avoid “jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers at each other.”

For her part, Sherrod blamed the White House for overreacting to criticism, whether that criticism is honest or not. “This administration is definitely too sensitive to what the right is saying,” she told CBS News Thursday morning. “I definitely think the right has actually edited speeches that have been made to try and get their point over, when they know it’s a lie.”

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Obama Blames Media For His Administration’s Firing Of Shirley Sherrod

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has some advice for the White House about reacting to conservative media stories: “Believing conservative spin about what’s so wrong with you and then giving into that spin, is not an effective defense. In fact, it makes it worse.”

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Maddow to Obama: Don’t give in to conservative spin