.
"Five hundred people gathered at one of Obama's preliminary meetings..."
THAT is impressive...
John Edwards has had similar roots-up "revivals," campaign events that fill book stores and high school gyms with adoring supporters, acting more like fans at a rock concert than voters on the campaign trail.
It's fairly simple to gather a crowd to listen to stump speeches if they get to watch a local band play, but when people show up en masse just to volunteer for the event, it speaks volumes about the depth of the commitment of the candidate's supporters.
The question remains, will all that grassroots enthusiasm be converted into a more-universal vote? We've seen before how enthusaism for a candidate can so overwhelm the undecideds that they are actually turned off by the wave.
Will it all translate into more support, or like the Dean campaign, will it become an overwhelming inundation by those volunteers of the early voting states, that inevitably turned so many people away from Dean, particularly in Iowa?
Back in the madhouse of the pre-Iowa-caucus Dean daze, Joe Trippi saw this wave forming, and also recognized, quite presciently, that there were potential negative consequences to such a sweeping enthusiasm, if it was unbridled. Joe posted this entry to his blog back before the Iowa caucuses, and it still holds so very true today:
"The other thing that is needed, is a campaign organization that 'gets it' or at least tries to get it. One of the other reasons I think this has not happened before is that every political campaign I have ever been in is built on a top-down military structure, there is a general at the top of the campaign, and all orders flow down, with almost no interaction. This is a disaster. This kind of structure will suffocate the storm, not fuel it. Campaigns abhor chaos, and to most campaigns built on the old top-down model, that is what the net represents, chaos. And the more the campaign tries to control the chaos, the more it stiffles its growth. As someone who is at least trying to understand the right mix, I admit its hard to get it right. But I think the important thing is to provide the tools and some of the direction, stay in as constant communication as you can with the grassroots , two way/multi-way communication, and get the hell out of the way when a big wave is building on its own."
In this post, Trippi recognized there would be both positive and negative aspects to a campaign rising up from a popular firestorm. While it burned hot, and spread quickly on the internet, it would also become a nuisance factor to those slower-moving voters who take their time to make their political choices. The constant, pleading calls into Iowa from those thousands of outside supporters, the door to door armies of determined, sometimes over-passionate advocates, and the unending, identical emails circulating in a furious swirl of last-minute reporting-cycle desperation, turned many Iowa voters to other candidates.
Obama's house parties will establish his nationwide base. What they eventually do with that base will determine their future success.
The Edwards campaign, too, has tapped this roots-up model, one more wave in a sea-change in the very nature of politics. As volunteers reach out for volunteers, these new, roots-driven open-source campaigns, with their homemade YouTube ads and extensive email trees, may well transplant big-money and the MSM as the political fuel and venue of the future. In this age of instant information and internet access, some future candidate will eventually figure out how to build a support base from the ground up, instead of from the top down.
But in the end, how that core group of supporters presents itself to the rest of the voting public will determine any candidate's future support, even more than ads or stump speeches. This is the new challenge in the age of 21st Century online politics, and open source campaigning: to make the myriad members act as one.
Dean learned the hard way, as Joe prophetically noted in his post, that a maelstrom of chaos is at the core of every populist campaign.
Managing that chaos may well be the key to future political campaigns, even more than managing mainstream media advertising.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
All in all its just... another week in the brawl
Join me each morning to dissect the mainstream media's slanted news coverage, and search out the hidden headlines, buried in the daily news. Using articles taken from major newspapers and publications across the nation and world, and mixing them with commentary, articles, posts and comments from some notable Blogs, Between the Lines is a study in the deception and subterfuge our current media is perpetrating on our democracy.We search for Truth hiding between the lies.
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
BLOG QUOTE OF THE DAY (From CHS at Firedoglake)
"The laws of this nation are not meant to be enforced for political expediency and to win elections. The courts do not exist to serve "Rove's shop" and "the math," and yet that is exactly how the Bush Administration has seen them from the time they entered office. A commitment to the "Rule of Bush, And Bush Alone" is not the same as advancing the interests of justice and honoring the rule of law...."
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/30/politics-the-rule-of-law-and-you/
THIS just in from TPM'S Muckraker pages, on VOTER FRAUD
Straight from the horse's mouth.
Joseph D. Rich was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. Today he penned an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times, and he didnt' mince words:
"Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections. It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent. "
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rich29mar29,0,3371050.story
ANY POLITICAL PARTY THAT ABUSES IT'S TIME IN POWER TO SUPRESS THE POPULAR VOTE IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUION!
ROVE WATCH
(his frogmarch is the one dance we really want to see)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional candidates in the next election. In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-Dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901962.html
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
BLOG QUOTE OF THE DAY (From CHS at Firedoglake)
"The laws of this nation are not meant to be enforced for political expediency and to win elections. The courts do not exist to serve "Rove's shop" and "the math," and yet that is exactly how the Bush Administration has seen them from the time they entered office. A commitment to the "Rule of Bush, And Bush Alone" is not the same as advancing the interests of justice and honoring the rule of law...."
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/30/politics-the-rule-of-law-and-you/
THIS just in from TPM'S Muckraker pages, on VOTER FRAUD
Straight from the horse's mouth.
Joseph D. Rich was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. Today he penned an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times, and he didnt' mince words:
"Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections. It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent. "
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rich29mar29,0,3371050.story
ANY POLITICAL PARTY THAT ABUSES IT'S TIME IN POWER TO SUPRESS THE POPULAR VOTE IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUION!
ROVE WATCH
(his frogmarch is the one dance we really want to see)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional candidates in the next election. In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-Dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901962.html
Waxman Reveals White House Political E-mail (you can see Karl's fingerprints are all over that blackberry) U.S. News reported recently that several White House aides “said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence. … ‘We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed,’” said one aide. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/29/white-house-email-archives/
Rove + New Hampshire = Voter Fraud
Rove + New Hampshire = "enough rope to hang himself" My theory of the nature of those phone calls to and from the WH is that Rove had fake Democrats planted in NH, who had caller ID on their phone lines so they could get the phone numbers of the Democratic Party phone banks as they called to organize their GOTV drive.When one of these Rovian operatives got a call from the Dems, they would call the phone number in to Karl, who relayed it to the perpetrators in NH, who then called and jammed those lines.Rove was too arrogant to believe he would ever face scrutiny for this, his hubris is classical.But now that the Dems have a gavel or two, I suspect they will use it to hammer out a case against Karl, there has already been one FALL-GUY to go to prison for this crime, seems like the mastermind should be held responsible before its over.
...AND OTHER CROOKED POLITICIANS (Thanks once again for this scoop from TPMmuckraker)
The Wall Street Journal continues (sub. req.) to make life miserable for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons. The paper first reported a month ago that Gibbons was under federal investigation for improper gifts (possible bribes) from a defense contractor.
Now the paper reports that Gibbons' business as a legislator was intertwined with a second defense contractor:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002925.php
THE MSM, THE BLOGS, AND "THE INTERNETS"
(Did Stevens actually do something worthwhile?)
Two senators think it's time for more federal employees to be telecommuting. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) have introduced a bill that would make nearly all government employees eligible to telecommute. The bill covers employees in the executive, legislative and judicial branches. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032902043.html
The Burkle-Broad proposal would give the two investors 40 percent of the company, transferring 60 percent to the employees, according to someone with knowledge of the proposal. The ownership ratio involved in Mr. Zell’s proposal is sketchy, although his plans would also make the employees the majority owners. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/media/30tribune.html
THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICTS
Not all Bloggers agree that this profane war-for-profit is getting any better.
A devastating series of bombings in a crowded market in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad and in a predominantly Shiite town north of the capital killed more than 130 Iraqis on Thursday, the same day a new U.S. envoy asserted at his swearing-in that the American mission in Iraq was not an "impossible" one. The bombings, part of a pattern of attacks in predominantly Shiite areas, threatened to further inflame sectarian tensions that are at the boiling point across much of Iraq. U.S. officials believe the attacks are part of a systematic effort by Al Qaeda militants to foment violence by Shiite militias and scuttle the latest security effort.http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBL4P0RvPwf0G2B0ISxz0EB
The task of preventing or reversing the sectarian displacement is daunting. The United Nations estimates that at least 727,000 people have been displaced within Iraq since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February 2006 set off waves of sectarian violence. About two million people have fled the country. After the new security plan began on Feb. 14, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, said the government would crack down on sectarian evictions and help families return to their homes, but the displacement is continuing all the same. “The forced evictions started up again this month,” said Capt. Benjamin Morales, 28, a Bronx native who commands a company of the 82nd Airborne Division that oversees a swath of western Baghdad taken over by Shiite militias last year. “In my area, that’s the biggest thing that’s going on.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/world/middleeast/30sectarian.html
Fresh from passing the first timelines to bring home U.S. troops from Iraq, congressional Democrats now face the daunting task of reconciling critical differences between a Senate withdrawal plan passed Thursday and one approved by the House last week. The Senate's timeline — part of the $123-billion war spending bill that passed 51 to 47, largely along party lines — would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops within 120 days of enactment and would set March 31, 2008, as a nonbinding "goal" to have most combat forces out of Iraq.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warvote30mar30,0,3586406.story
Arab leaders urged Israel to accept a 5-year-old peace plan that they say could end the decades-old Middle East conflict, calling for negotiations with the Jewish state as the annual Arab League summit drew to a close here Thursday. But key elements of the plan raise doubts about its chances for success. It calls for the creation of a Palestinian state and for Israel to relinquish lands captured in the 1967 Middle East War, a point Israel flatly rejected when the proposal was unveiled by Saudi Arabia in 2002.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-arabs30mar30,0,3993402.story
Hicks' passage through this sham process affords us all an opportunity to demand the closure of Guantanamo and an end to such heinous policies. Conditions may soon exist to shutter the prison, with George W. Bush's lame-duck status, the Democratic takeover of Congress, the possible departure of Guantanamo's archdefender and architect, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and, if recent reports are true, a desire to close the prison on the part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The bogus military commission trials amplify global contempt for the Guantanamo prison. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309583_amy30.html
DOJ ATTORNEY FIRINGS
(more proof of high crimes and misdemeanors from BushCo)
The witness fessed up to an expanding list of sins. He admitted that the Justice Department was trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. He confessed that he proposed firing Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case. "I regretted it," he explained. "I knew that it was the wrong thing to do." But the self-sacrificing witness still managed -- inadvertently, perhaps -- to implicate Gonzales and Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Sampson, who resigned from the Justice Department earlier this month, admitted that Gonzales "had received a complaint from Karl Rove about U.S. attorneys in three jurisdictions." Asked about the accuracy of Gonzales's claim of non-involvement, Sampson confessed: "I don't think it's entirely accurate what he said."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901366.html
The Wages of Spin:
Part of a generation of young religious conservatives who swept into the federal government after the election of President Bush in 2000, Goodling displayed unblinking devotion to the administration and expected others to do the same. When she started at Justice, "no job was too small for her," and as she moved rapidly up the ranks, none "was too large," Corallo said. "She was the embodiment of a hardworking young conservative who believed strongly in the president and his mission," said David Ayres, former chief of staff to Bush's first attorney general, John D. Ashcroft. This week, Goodling, 33, became the most prominent federal official to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress since Lt. Col. Oliver L. North refused to answer questions -- until he received immunity -- during the 1986 Iran-contra hearings
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901964.html
In his Senate testimony yesterday, Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, tried to be a “loyal Bushie,” a term Mr. Sampson used in his infamous e-mail message to describe what he was looking for in United States attorneys. But if Mr. Sampson was trying to fall on his sword, he had horrible aim. In testimony that got so embarrassing for the White House that the Republicans tried to cut it off, Mr. Sampson simply ended up making it clearer than ever that the eight prosecutors were fired for political reasons. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/opinion/30fri1.html
HEALTHCARE AND INSURANCE ISSUES
Every American with health insurance faces this question at some point in any odyssey through the healthcare system. When it comes to contraception, the question has special relevance for women. Many health plans do cover prescription contraceptives for women. Earlier this month, however, a federal appeals court ruled that if they don't, it's not discrimination. The decision flies in the face of both the law and logic, and it should give Congress added incentive to pass a bill that would ensure that health insurers provide the same level of coverage for prescription drugs and services for men and women.The decision, issued by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, relied on an odd interpretation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. An amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the law prohibits discrimination "on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions." The court ruled that contraception was not a "related medical condition" to pregnancy and that no discrimination existed if an employer denied contraception coverage to men as well as women.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-contraception30mar30,0,2250477.story
Some analysts are scratching their heads at the move Merck & Co. is planning : The drug maker wants to sell a new painkiller that is just like Vioxx , the blockbuster drug it pulled from the market in 2004 because the treatment doubled heart risks. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/03/30/analysts_puzzle_over_plan_to_sell_a_vioxx_like_drug/
In a second round of bidding earlier this year, monthly premiums for the four low-cost health insurance plans to be offered in the Boston area were cut by an average of 8 percent, according to records the Globe obtained from the Connector in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The new insurance plans, called Commonwealth Choice, go on sale May 1, and become effective July 1. Residents are expected to buy insurance starting July 1, or potentially face penalties.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/03/30/state_got_insurers_to_trim_health_rates/
THE ENVIRONMENT
The Interior Department is trying to weaken the Endangered Species Act, a law that protects plants and animals nearing extinction. It's a hassle, it seems, to continue to protect areas historically inhabited by an endangered species, and the new proposal pushes protecting only areas where the endangered species are actually found. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309586_esaed.html
Global warming will redraw Earth's climate map by the end of the century, causing some of today's climates to disappear and creating other climates unlike anything known today, according to a new study. Specifically, brand-new climates will appear in the tropical and subtropical regions, while some climates of the tropical mountains and the regions around the Poles will be entirely replaced by 2100. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070327-climate-maps.htmlraphic.com/news/2007/03/070327-climate-maps.html
TODAY'S MOST OUTRAGEOUS STORY
Everyone knows Saturn's rings, but what about the planet's hexagon? A new image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft offers the first direct view of a six-sided feature that encircles Saturn's north pole. The 15,000-mile-wide (25,000-kilometer-wide) cloud formation was initially spied during the Voyager missions in the 1980s. But scientists remain baffled by the atmospheric forces driving the unusual feature.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070328-saturn-hexagon.html
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
All in all its just... another week in the brawl
Join me each morning to dissect the mainstream media's slanted news coverage, and search out the hidden headlines, buried in the daily news. Using articles taken from major newspapers and publications across the nation and world, and mixing them with commentary, articles, posts and comments from some notable Blogs, Between the Lines is a study in the deception and subterfuge our current media is perpetrating on our democracy.We search for Truth hiding between the lies.
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
AARP plans to spend millions of dollars to push presidential candidates on health-care and retirement-savings issues in Iowa and other early-primary states, the group’s national leader said Wednesday.“I think we’re going to do a good job of pinning these guys down,” said Bill Novelli, AARP’s chief executive officer.The group, which has 38 million members, is training squads of volunteers to press candidates on specific plans to cover the uninsured, control medical costs and stabilize retirement financing. “We’re training these people not to take fluff for an answer,” Novelli told reporters and editors of The Des Moines Register.
FULL STORY
ELECTION FRAUD
Undervote Rate Plummets in Minority Precincts
A new report, based on official 2004 and 2006 New Mexico election data, shows a dramatic difference in undervotes in Native American and Hispanic precincts, depending on whether they voted on paper ballots or on Direct Record Electronic (DRE — often known as touch screen) voting machines. The report explains: "Undervotes represent ballots on which no vote was registered for a specific contest. Undervote rates higher than 0.5% in the major contest on a ballot, especially in presidential elections, suggest that votes may not have been counted, either through a mistake of the voter or a mistake in tabulation."
http://www.voteraction.org/News/02-26-07_1.html
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND FINANCE
Just as the Enron scandal has faded into the back of the financial pages, the conservative movement has score a major victory in its push to make it harder for people victimized by the Enrons of the world and their enablers to obtain justice. Thanks to two Reagan appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, investment banks now have a way to legally profit from showing their clients how to defraud investors, without fear of those investors banding together to fight back.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/28/a_license_to_commit_fraud.php
United Commercial Bank plans to make history by purchasing a Shanghai financial institution and becoming the first Chinese American community bank to offer a wide range of services in China.With Business Development Bank Ltd., which United Commercial said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy for $205 million, the San Francisco-based bank could offer its customers a one-stop shop in the U.S. and China. Analysts said the purchase, which must be approved by regulators in both countries, would put pressure on United Commercial's chief competitors, East West Bancorp Inc. and Cathay General Bancorp, to step up their activities in China. East West and Cathay have been more focused on expansion in California and in cities elsewhere in the U.S. with large Chinese American communities.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bank28mar28,0,6011950.story
The Small Business Administration is cracking down on the not-so-small. Starting this summer, small businesses with federal contracts will — for the first time — have to alert the government whenever they are acquired, merged or buy a company if they want a share of the $80 billion in annual federal procurement money awarded to small firms.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-crackdown28mar28,0,2882482.story
THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Shiite militants and police enraged by massive truck bombings in the northwestern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there Wednesday, killing as many as 60 people, officials said. The gunmen began roaming Sunni neighborhoods in the city, shooting at residents and homes, according to police and a local Sunni politician.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq.html
Hundreds of Iraqis detained in the Baghdad security crackdown have been crammed into two detention centers run by the Defense Ministry (we've heard about these places before)that were designed to hold only dozens of people, a government monitoring group said Tuesday. The numbers suggested that the security plan’s emphasis on aggressive block-by-block sweeps of troubled neighborhoods in the capital had flooded Iraq’s frail detention system, and appeared to confirm the fears of some human rights advocates who have been predicting that the new plan would aggravate already poor conditions. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
An influential retired Army general released a dire assessment of the situation in Iraq, based on a recent round of meetings there with Gen. David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. "The population is in despair," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in an eight-page document compiled in his capacity as a professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701923.html
The current round of meetings in the Middle East intended to revive peace talks, coming on the heels of the formation of a Palestinian unity government, offer the possibility to change the course of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Those events provide the United States with a unique opportunity to become, once again, a peace broker (see red letter headline below) in the region and to help end a war that has caused tremendous suffering for Palestinians and Israelis. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309202_mideast28.html
That means -- if the story has legs, which it probably does -- that Cheney is out there working hard to sabotage Condoleezza Rice's efforts in the Middle East, particularly her Middle East Super Summit idea which I think has merit.President Bush needs to shut Cheney down -- sideline him -- and send an unambiguous message to all of his staff that Condi Rice has the helm and the others should swab the deck.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/cheney-lurks-as-threat-to_b_44336.html
The Pentagon’s investigation of the “friendly fire” death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger who became an administration icon for its war on terror, has left the corporal’s family doubtful that the truth has really come out. Even as the Army reaffirmed its belief that Corporal Tillman deserved a Silver Star for valor, the family denounced the award as “part of a cynical design to conceal the real events from the family and the public, while exploiting the death of our beloved Pat as a recruitment poster.” The circumstances of this byzantine case cry out for Congressional hearings to get an independent evaluation of just who pulled the strings to sugar-coat a terrible battlefield accident as an instance of heroism under hostile fire. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/opinion/28wed2.html
IMPEACHMENT AND INJUSTICES
We must press on with renewed energy, commitment, unity and focus to Bring Our Troops Home Now, to proceed to impeachment and to bring about a desperately needed social agenda that is good for children everywhere. We have seen that the Congress can be moved. Chance, which, as Herman Melville said in Moby Dick, has with necessity and free will "the last featuring blow at events," is with us. The Bush Administration is reeling from its own wrongdoing. The horror its war of aggression has wreaked on the people of Iraq must trouble the sleep of every sentient American. The Surge is only adding to the death and destruction. The tide is turning in Afghanistan because human nature resists foreign occupation. Pakistan is rebelling because human nature resists foreign-supported military dictatorship. Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and many others nations are resisting because nations, like people, were not born to be forced. http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage
And here’s where the impeachment process hits a snag. The law which provides for a Special Prosecutor would have to be re-enacted. Right after President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Congress outlawed the role of the Special Prosecutor to investigate presidential crimes. There’s an exception to this rule. Congress can ask the US Attorney General’s Office to look into a case of wrongdoing, and determine if a Special Prosecutor should be appointed. However, it’s unlikely that the current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, would comply with this request. http://www.mytown.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=118945&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
Which brings us to the Judiciary, where even with that Republican majority and timid minority, the Bushies have been unable to confirm all of the right-wing ideologues they've nominated, yet still managed to push through a passel of awful hard-right judges like Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and the ethically-challenged Samuel Alito… with a little help from the "Gang Of Fourteen" and the until-recently-ever-present threat of the Nuclear Option. And this is what bothers me. Federal judges are appointed for life. Why? So they will be independent of politics. Yet between the absurd belief (held only by Democrats but frequently endorsed by Republicans) that the president is entitled to extreme deference on his judicial nominees, and the requirement of a simple majority to confirm, it's really not that difficult for a President to stack the courts with like-minded political extremists, provided his party controls the Senate, and the opposition believes that keeping its powder dry is an end unto itself. (Dry powder apparently brims with even more untapped potential than stem cells.) http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/27/the-other-justice-problem
The bottom line: though powerful Republicans were upset with the decisions not to indict Democrats for voter fraud, the investigators on the ground were not. Mueller said that regional offices do customarily pass complaints about U.S. attorneys up the chain for "serious cases." http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002890.php
Disturbing allegations have come to light that Peter Keisler—a co-founder of the Federalist Society and currently a nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—was involved in applying inappropriate political influence in the government's case against the tobacco industry.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23422
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
AARP plans to spend millions of dollars to push presidential candidates on health-care and retirement-savings issues in Iowa and other early-primary states, the group’s national leader said Wednesday.“I think we’re going to do a good job of pinning these guys down,” said Bill Novelli, AARP’s chief executive officer.The group, which has 38 million members, is training squads of volunteers to press candidates on specific plans to cover the uninsured, control medical costs and stabilize retirement financing. “We’re training these people not to take fluff for an answer,” Novelli told reporters and editors of The Des Moines Register.
FULL STORY
ELECTION FRAUD
Undervote Rate Plummets in Minority Precincts
A new report, based on official 2004 and 2006 New Mexico election data, shows a dramatic difference in undervotes in Native American and Hispanic precincts, depending on whether they voted on paper ballots or on Direct Record Electronic (DRE — often known as touch screen) voting machines. The report explains: "Undervotes represent ballots on which no vote was registered for a specific contest. Undervote rates higher than 0.5% in the major contest on a ballot, especially in presidential elections, suggest that votes may not have been counted, either through a mistake of the voter or a mistake in tabulation."
http://www.voteraction.org/News/02-26-07_1.html
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND FINANCE
Just as the Enron scandal has faded into the back of the financial pages, the conservative movement has score a major victory in its push to make it harder for people victimized by the Enrons of the world and their enablers to obtain justice. Thanks to two Reagan appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, investment banks now have a way to legally profit from showing their clients how to defraud investors, without fear of those investors banding together to fight back.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/28/a_license_to_commit_fraud.php
United Commercial Bank plans to make history by purchasing a Shanghai financial institution and becoming the first Chinese American community bank to offer a wide range of services in China.With Business Development Bank Ltd., which United Commercial said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy for $205 million, the San Francisco-based bank could offer its customers a one-stop shop in the U.S. and China. Analysts said the purchase, which must be approved by regulators in both countries, would put pressure on United Commercial's chief competitors, East West Bancorp Inc. and Cathay General Bancorp, to step up their activities in China. East West and Cathay have been more focused on expansion in California and in cities elsewhere in the U.S. with large Chinese American communities.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bank28mar28,0,6011950.story
The Small Business Administration is cracking down on the not-so-small. Starting this summer, small businesses with federal contracts will — for the first time — have to alert the government whenever they are acquired, merged or buy a company if they want a share of the $80 billion in annual federal procurement money awarded to small firms.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-crackdown28mar28,0,2882482.story
THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Shiite militants and police enraged by massive truck bombings in the northwestern town of Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents there Wednesday, killing as many as 60 people, officials said. The gunmen began roaming Sunni neighborhoods in the city, shooting at residents and homes, according to police and a local Sunni politician.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq.html
Hundreds of Iraqis detained in the Baghdad security crackdown have been crammed into two detention centers run by the Defense Ministry (we've heard about these places before)that were designed to hold only dozens of people, a government monitoring group said Tuesday. The numbers suggested that the security plan’s emphasis on aggressive block-by-block sweeps of troubled neighborhoods in the capital had flooded Iraq’s frail detention system, and appeared to confirm the fears of some human rights advocates who have been predicting that the new plan would aggravate already poor conditions. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
An influential retired Army general released a dire assessment of the situation in Iraq, based on a recent round of meetings there with Gen. David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. "The population is in despair," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey wrote in an eight-page document compiled in his capacity as a professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701923.html
The current round of meetings in the Middle East intended to revive peace talks, coming on the heels of the formation of a Palestinian unity government, offer the possibility to change the course of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Those events provide the United States with a unique opportunity to become, once again, a peace broker (see red letter headline below) in the region and to help end a war that has caused tremendous suffering for Palestinians and Israelis. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309202_mideast28.html
That means -- if the story has legs, which it probably does -- that Cheney is out there working hard to sabotage Condoleezza Rice's efforts in the Middle East, particularly her Middle East Super Summit idea which I think has merit.President Bush needs to shut Cheney down -- sideline him -- and send an unambiguous message to all of his staff that Condi Rice has the helm and the others should swab the deck.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/cheney-lurks-as-threat-to_b_44336.html
The Pentagon’s investigation of the “friendly fire” death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger who became an administration icon for its war on terror, has left the corporal’s family doubtful that the truth has really come out. Even as the Army reaffirmed its belief that Corporal Tillman deserved a Silver Star for valor, the family denounced the award as “part of a cynical design to conceal the real events from the family and the public, while exploiting the death of our beloved Pat as a recruitment poster.” The circumstances of this byzantine case cry out for Congressional hearings to get an independent evaluation of just who pulled the strings to sugar-coat a terrible battlefield accident as an instance of heroism under hostile fire. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/opinion/28wed2.html
IMPEACHMENT AND INJUSTICES
We must press on with renewed energy, commitment, unity and focus to Bring Our Troops Home Now, to proceed to impeachment and to bring about a desperately needed social agenda that is good for children everywhere. We have seen that the Congress can be moved. Chance, which, as Herman Melville said in Moby Dick, has with necessity and free will "the last featuring blow at events," is with us. The Bush Administration is reeling from its own wrongdoing. The horror its war of aggression has wreaked on the people of Iraq must trouble the sleep of every sentient American. The Surge is only adding to the death and destruction. The tide is turning in Afghanistan because human nature resists foreign occupation. Pakistan is rebelling because human nature resists foreign-supported military dictatorship. Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and many others nations are resisting because nations, like people, were not born to be forced. http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage
And here’s where the impeachment process hits a snag. The law which provides for a Special Prosecutor would have to be re-enacted. Right after President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Congress outlawed the role of the Special Prosecutor to investigate presidential crimes. There’s an exception to this rule. Congress can ask the US Attorney General’s Office to look into a case of wrongdoing, and determine if a Special Prosecutor should be appointed. However, it’s unlikely that the current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, would comply with this request. http://www.mytown.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=118945&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
Which brings us to the Judiciary, where even with that Republican majority and timid minority, the Bushies have been unable to confirm all of the right-wing ideologues they've nominated, yet still managed to push through a passel of awful hard-right judges like Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, and the ethically-challenged Samuel Alito… with a little help from the "Gang Of Fourteen" and the until-recently-ever-present threat of the Nuclear Option. And this is what bothers me. Federal judges are appointed for life. Why? So they will be independent of politics. Yet between the absurd belief (held only by Democrats but frequently endorsed by Republicans) that the president is entitled to extreme deference on his judicial nominees, and the requirement of a simple majority to confirm, it's really not that difficult for a President to stack the courts with like-minded political extremists, provided his party controls the Senate, and the opposition believes that keeping its powder dry is an end unto itself. (Dry powder apparently brims with even more untapped potential than stem cells.) http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/27/the-other-justice-problem
The bottom line: though powerful Republicans were upset with the decisions not to indict Democrats for voter fraud, the investigators on the ground were not. Mueller said that regional offices do customarily pass complaints about U.S. attorneys up the chain for "serious cases." http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002890.php
Disturbing allegations have come to light that Peter Keisler—a co-founder of the Federalist Society and currently a nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—was involved in applying inappropriate political influence in the government's case against the tobacco industry.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23422
Monday, March 26, 2007
All in all it's just... another week in the brawl
Join me each morning to dissect the mainstream media's slanted news coverage, and search out the hidden headlines, buried in the daily news. Using articles taken from major newspapers and publications across the nation and world, and mixing them with commentary, articles, posts and comments from some notable Blogs, Between the Lines is a study in the deception and subterfuge our current media is perpetrating on our democracy.
We search for Truth hiding between the lies.
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
The Texas-sized Revenge of Tom Delay's minions?
Court reform bill gets chilly reception; No vote taken on controversial plan
By Mark Lisheron, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF, Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Legislators, trial lawyers and judges bristled Monday at the scope of a bill that would, among other things, abolish many of the state's county courts and give a judicial panel authority to appoint judges to hear cases deemed too complex for the local judiciary. Before hearing more than four hours of testimony before the Senate State Affairs Committee, committee Chairman Robert Duncan, author of Senate Bill 1204, said the time was long overdue for Texas to streamline courts from the local level to the state Supreme Court. Duncan, R-Lubbock, left the bill pending in his committee. He said he intended to work hard to accommodate other points of view but admitted to some frustration with the opposition to the changes that he characterized as "fears of black helicopters." Critics of the bill focused on a proposal to develop specific guidelines for "complex cases" and to remove those cases from local judges deemed unqualified to handle them.
Witnesses told the committee such a system would create two tiers of judges: those who can handled complex cases and those who cannot. In a state where judges are elected, opponents of those who have had cases taken from them would have a potent campaign issue, said Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas."If somebody came to me and told me that they were going to introduce my legislation because I wasn't qualified to draft it, I'd be ready to kill somebody," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "Nobody's going to take away my piece of legislation, and I can't imagine a judge would want somebody to take away their case." Representatives of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and Texans for Lawsuit Reform said the changes would disenfranchise local judges.
"We're not seeing cases where the courts are overloaded. We do not believe this is necessary at all," said Jay Harvey of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/03/27/27courts.html
DOJ Attorney Firings
Saying he wanted to be "more precise" about what he had done, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged Monday that he had a role in approving an aide's recommendation to dismiss several U.S. attorneys last year, but he denied that he was involved in the process of identifying which individual prosecutors should be replaced. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gonzales27mar27,0,1230579.story
"And The Truth Shall Scare Us Silly?" no doubt Rove advised her to make this back-door confession of guilt... as follows:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's senior counselor ...refused to testify in the Senate about her involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Monica M. Goodling, who has taken an indefinite leave of absence, said in a sworn affidavit to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she will "decline to answer any and all questions" about the firings because she faces "a perilous environment in which to testify." ...it could only be perilous if she is planning to lie about something!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Others agree that this is tantamount to an admission of impending guilt..
As the liaison between the White House and the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling seems to have been squarely in the middle of what appears to have been improper directions from the White House to politicize the hiring and firing of United States attorneys. Mr. Gonzales has insisted the eight prosecutors were let go for poor performance, and that the dismissals are an "overblown personnel matter." But Ms. Goodling’s decision to exercise her Fifth Amendment rights suggests that she, at least, believes crimes may have been committed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27tue1.html
and this from NYTimes Op-Ed Contributor NEAL KATYAL
IN 1999, when the Independent Counsel Act (the law that gave Kenneth Starr and Lawrence Walsh their mandates) was expiring, I was given the job of writing the new Justice Department rules for the appointment of a special prosecutor since the department would once again be responsible for overseeing such investigations. There was one hypothetical to worry about once the Independent Counsel Act lapsed: a case in which the attorney general...(is)...suspected of possible misconduct. The rules were therefore written to vest the decision about whether to appoint a special prosecutor in the top Justice Department official not embroiled in the controversy. Today, the only way to get to the bottom of the United States attorney scandal — which involved the administration’s firing of nearly 10 percent of America’s top prosecutors — is to use these rules and appoint a special prosecutor.
The nightmare has now come true.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27katyal.html
A Democratic House committee chairman yesterday told the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to retain copies of all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under their control, raising the political stakes in the congressional inquiry into U.S. attorneys' firings. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said his broadly written request was based on evidence that White House officials -- particularly aides to top political adviser Karl Rove -- have used their politically related e-mail accounts to hide the conduct of official business regarding the prosecutor firings and other matters being investigated by Congress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601979.html
But don't expect the simple truth from "you can't handle the truth" Karl Rove!
Whether Rove chats or testifies, Congress will surely be frustrated. Asking Rove questions is simply not an effective method of ascertaining facts. Reporters who, like me, have dogged the presidential advisor from Texas to Washington quickly learn how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations. Few intellects are as adept at framing, positioning and spinning ideas. That's a great talent for politics. But it's dangerous when dealing with the law. Rove has testified under oath before investigative bodies twice, and in neither case was the truth well served. In 1991, he was sworn in before the Texas state Senate as a nominee to East Texas State University's board of regents. The state Senate's nominations committee, chaired by Democrat Bob Glasgow, was eager to have Rove explain his relationship with FBI agent Greg Rampton. Rampton was a controversial figure in Texas, and Democrats suspected that he'd been consorting with Rove for years. During the 1986 gubernatorial race, when a listening device was discovered in Rove's office, it was Rampton who investigated. No one was ever charged — and Democrats suspected that Rove planted the bug himself to distract reporters from the faltering campaign of his client, Bill Clements (who won the election). Then, in 1989, Rampton launched a series of devastating investigations into every statewide Democratic officeholder in Texas, including Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Rove (at the time running Republican Rick Perry's campaign for that job) often leaked things to reporters, such as whose names were on subpoenas before they were issued. So when the Texas state Senate committee found nominee Rove before it in 1991, members thought they had the power to get at the truth. "How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg Rampton?" Glasgow asked. Rove paused for a breath. "Ah, senator, it depends — would you define 'know' for me?" maybe Karl was thinking about the Old Testament meaning for "know"???
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-moore23mar23,0,3813754.story
More on Rove
(you won't find his name in this story, but he is the inevitable target of these New Hampshire investigations.)
All Things Considered, March 26, 2007 · Questions about political pressure in the Justice Department are spilling over into the New Hampshire phone-jamming case. Five years ago, New Hampshire Republicans jammed the phones of Democratic offices on Election Day, disrupting the Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts and blocking phone calls from voters seeking rides to the polls. More than two years later, the New England coordinator for the Republican National Committee — who green-lighted the scheme — was charged with a felony and convicted. But last week, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction. Democrats allege that Justice Department officials in Washington interfered in the case, and they want Congress to investigate.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9145439
"The Internets" and the blogs;
YOUTUBE Awards! 2006 was a pioneering year for online video, user-created content and the YouTube community. You let us into your bedrooms, created new forms of entertainment, and radicalized popular culture. Now it's time to reflect on what a tremendous year it was and recognize the best of the best during the first YouTube Video Awards. http://www.youtube.com/ytawards...
If I were a network programmer today, I'd be popping Nexium left and right. Thanks to the Web, TV fans can now make their own judgments about whether a network chief's decision to ax a show was a smart move or sheer idiocy. Gregory and Huyck have no harsh words for Comedy Central — "The whole process was absolutely great," says Huyck, "until the show got killed." But they are fascinated by the game-changing nature of the Internet, which can provide a second hearing for pilots that would have previously been consigned to the video graveyard.
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-goldstein27mar27,0,4613205.story
Life is dead. Again. Time Inc. pulled the plug on its venerable nameplate yesterday for the third time in 35 years, saying it no longer makes sense to print the publication as a magazine. Instead, the company said it will launch a "major portal" online to host its millions of award-winning photographs. ...sounds more like a rebirth than a death..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601779.html
Politics of War and Peace;
BELFAST, March 26 -- Two men who represent both extremes in Northern Ireland's deep sectarian divide sat down together for the first time on Monday, and their once-unthinkable meeting produced a landmark deal to form a local government in which Protestants and Catholics will share power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600343.htm
Washington DC; MARCH 26 Unwilling to do the White House's heavy lifting on Iraq, Senate Republicans are prepared to step aside to allow language requiring troop withdrawals to reach President Bush, forcing him to face down Democratic adversaries with his veto pen. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601923.html
EUROPEAN UNION leaders spoke out strongly on Darfur at a summit in Berlin on Sunday. "The situation," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "is intolerable. . . . The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable." "The suffering is unbearable," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I want to state frankly that we have to consider stronger sanctions."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601687.html
Healthcare and National Insurance;
A major source of health insurance for people who work for themselves is disappearing, casting thousands of contractors, freelancers and solo practitioners into the ranks of the uninsured with little hope of obtaining new coverage. Health plans offered by professional associations were once havens for millions of people who couldn't get coverage anywhere else. But as medical costs have soared, groups representing professions as varied as law and golf have been forced to stop offering the benefit or been dropped by insurers.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure27mar27,0,4490954.story
From the "It's About Time" files
Last week, the FDA proposed to do a better job of preventing physicians who have a substantial financial interest in a company introducing a new drug or device from serving on the committees that make advisory recommendations on such products. Any doctor with a stake of $50,000 or more in a company backing a new drug (or in one of the company's competitors) would be disqualified from serving on an FDA advisory committee. Doctors whose stake is less than $50,000 could participate in panel discussions but not vote.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/27/preventing_cures_that_also_kill/Today's
"Most outrageous tale" award goes to...
Hong Kong, March 26 — It was a device worthy of Rube Goldberg, or perhaps Wile E. Coyote. A remote-controlled mechanism with a dozen launching tubes was found buried in the turf at Hong Kong’s most famous horse racing track last week; it was rigged with compressed air to fire tiny, liquid-filled darts into the bellies of horses at the starting gate. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/sports/othersports/27horses.html
We search for Truth hiding between the lies.
Red text is the "real" headline in these stories and articles.
Blue text is my own personal commentary.
The Texas-sized Revenge of Tom Delay's minions?
Court reform bill gets chilly reception; No vote taken on controversial plan
By Mark Lisheron, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF, Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Legislators, trial lawyers and judges bristled Monday at the scope of a bill that would, among other things, abolish many of the state's county courts and give a judicial panel authority to appoint judges to hear cases deemed too complex for the local judiciary. Before hearing more than four hours of testimony before the Senate State Affairs Committee, committee Chairman Robert Duncan, author of Senate Bill 1204, said the time was long overdue for Texas to streamline courts from the local level to the state Supreme Court. Duncan, R-Lubbock, left the bill pending in his committee. He said he intended to work hard to accommodate other points of view but admitted to some frustration with the opposition to the changes that he characterized as "fears of black helicopters." Critics of the bill focused on a proposal to develop specific guidelines for "complex cases" and to remove those cases from local judges deemed unqualified to handle them.
Witnesses told the committee such a system would create two tiers of judges: those who can handled complex cases and those who cannot. In a state where judges are elected, opponents of those who have had cases taken from them would have a potent campaign issue, said Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas."If somebody came to me and told me that they were going to introduce my legislation because I wasn't qualified to draft it, I'd be ready to kill somebody," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "Nobody's going to take away my piece of legislation, and I can't imagine a judge would want somebody to take away their case." Representatives of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and Texans for Lawsuit Reform said the changes would disenfranchise local judges.
"We're not seeing cases where the courts are overloaded. We do not believe this is necessary at all," said Jay Harvey of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/03/27/27courts.html
DOJ Attorney Firings
Saying he wanted to be "more precise" about what he had done, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged Monday that he had a role in approving an aide's recommendation to dismiss several U.S. attorneys last year, but he denied that he was involved in the process of identifying which individual prosecutors should be replaced. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gonzales27mar27,0,1230579.story
"And The Truth Shall Scare Us Silly?" no doubt Rove advised her to make this back-door confession of guilt... as follows:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's senior counselor ...refused to testify in the Senate about her involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Monica M. Goodling, who has taken an indefinite leave of absence, said in a sworn affidavit to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she will "decline to answer any and all questions" about the firings because she faces "a perilous environment in which to testify." ...it could only be perilous if she is planning to lie about something!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Others agree that this is tantamount to an admission of impending guilt..
As the liaison between the White House and the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling seems to have been squarely in the middle of what appears to have been improper directions from the White House to politicize the hiring and firing of United States attorneys. Mr. Gonzales has insisted the eight prosecutors were let go for poor performance, and that the dismissals are an "overblown personnel matter." But Ms. Goodling’s decision to exercise her Fifth Amendment rights suggests that she, at least, believes crimes may have been committed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27tue1.html
and this from NYTimes Op-Ed Contributor NEAL KATYAL
IN 1999, when the Independent Counsel Act (the law that gave Kenneth Starr and Lawrence Walsh their mandates) was expiring, I was given the job of writing the new Justice Department rules for the appointment of a special prosecutor since the department would once again be responsible for overseeing such investigations. There was one hypothetical to worry about once the Independent Counsel Act lapsed: a case in which the attorney general...(is)...suspected of possible misconduct. The rules were therefore written to vest the decision about whether to appoint a special prosecutor in the top Justice Department official not embroiled in the controversy. Today, the only way to get to the bottom of the United States attorney scandal — which involved the administration’s firing of nearly 10 percent of America’s top prosecutors — is to use these rules and appoint a special prosecutor.
The nightmare has now come true.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27katyal.html
A Democratic House committee chairman yesterday told the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to retain copies of all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under their control, raising the political stakes in the congressional inquiry into U.S. attorneys' firings. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said his broadly written request was based on evidence that White House officials -- particularly aides to top political adviser Karl Rove -- have used their politically related e-mail accounts to hide the conduct of official business regarding the prosecutor firings and other matters being investigated by Congress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601979.html
But don't expect the simple truth from "you can't handle the truth" Karl Rove!
Whether Rove chats or testifies, Congress will surely be frustrated. Asking Rove questions is simply not an effective method of ascertaining facts. Reporters who, like me, have dogged the presidential advisor from Texas to Washington quickly learn how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations. Few intellects are as adept at framing, positioning and spinning ideas. That's a great talent for politics. But it's dangerous when dealing with the law. Rove has testified under oath before investigative bodies twice, and in neither case was the truth well served. In 1991, he was sworn in before the Texas state Senate as a nominee to East Texas State University's board of regents. The state Senate's nominations committee, chaired by Democrat Bob Glasgow, was eager to have Rove explain his relationship with FBI agent Greg Rampton. Rampton was a controversial figure in Texas, and Democrats suspected that he'd been consorting with Rove for years. During the 1986 gubernatorial race, when a listening device was discovered in Rove's office, it was Rampton who investigated. No one was ever charged — and Democrats suspected that Rove planted the bug himself to distract reporters from the faltering campaign of his client, Bill Clements (who won the election). Then, in 1989, Rampton launched a series of devastating investigations into every statewide Democratic officeholder in Texas, including Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Rove (at the time running Republican Rick Perry's campaign for that job) often leaked things to reporters, such as whose names were on subpoenas before they were issued. So when the Texas state Senate committee found nominee Rove before it in 1991, members thought they had the power to get at the truth. "How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg Rampton?" Glasgow asked. Rove paused for a breath. "Ah, senator, it depends — would you define 'know' for me?" maybe Karl was thinking about the Old Testament meaning for "know"???
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-moore23mar23,0,3813754.story
More on Rove
(you won't find his name in this story, but he is the inevitable target of these New Hampshire investigations.)
All Things Considered, March 26, 2007 · Questions about political pressure in the Justice Department are spilling over into the New Hampshire phone-jamming case. Five years ago, New Hampshire Republicans jammed the phones of Democratic offices on Election Day, disrupting the Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts and blocking phone calls from voters seeking rides to the polls. More than two years later, the New England coordinator for the Republican National Committee — who green-lighted the scheme — was charged with a felony and convicted. But last week, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction. Democrats allege that Justice Department officials in Washington interfered in the case, and they want Congress to investigate.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9145439
"The Internets" and the blogs;
YOUTUBE Awards! 2006 was a pioneering year for online video, user-created content and the YouTube community. You let us into your bedrooms, created new forms of entertainment, and radicalized popular culture. Now it's time to reflect on what a tremendous year it was and recognize the best of the best during the first YouTube Video Awards. http://www.youtube.com/ytawards...
If I were a network programmer today, I'd be popping Nexium left and right. Thanks to the Web, TV fans can now make their own judgments about whether a network chief's decision to ax a show was a smart move or sheer idiocy. Gregory and Huyck have no harsh words for Comedy Central — "The whole process was absolutely great," says Huyck, "until the show got killed." But they are fascinated by the game-changing nature of the Internet, which can provide a second hearing for pilots that would have previously been consigned to the video graveyard.
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-goldstein27mar27,0,4613205.story
Life is dead. Again. Time Inc. pulled the plug on its venerable nameplate yesterday for the third time in 35 years, saying it no longer makes sense to print the publication as a magazine. Instead, the company said it will launch a "major portal" online to host its millions of award-winning photographs. ...sounds more like a rebirth than a death..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601779.html
Politics of War and Peace;
BELFAST, March 26 -- Two men who represent both extremes in Northern Ireland's deep sectarian divide sat down together for the first time on Monday, and their once-unthinkable meeting produced a landmark deal to form a local government in which Protestants and Catholics will share power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600343.htm
Washington DC; MARCH 26 Unwilling to do the White House's heavy lifting on Iraq, Senate Republicans are prepared to step aside to allow language requiring troop withdrawals to reach President Bush, forcing him to face down Democratic adversaries with his veto pen. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601923.html
EUROPEAN UNION leaders spoke out strongly on Darfur at a summit in Berlin on Sunday. "The situation," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "is intolerable. . . . The actions of the Sudanese government are completely unacceptable." "The suffering is unbearable," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I want to state frankly that we have to consider stronger sanctions."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601687.html
Healthcare and National Insurance;
A major source of health insurance for people who work for themselves is disappearing, casting thousands of contractors, freelancers and solo practitioners into the ranks of the uninsured with little hope of obtaining new coverage. Health plans offered by professional associations were once havens for millions of people who couldn't get coverage anywhere else. But as medical costs have soared, groups representing professions as varied as law and golf have been forced to stop offering the benefit or been dropped by insurers.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure27mar27,0,4490954.story
From the "It's About Time" files
Last week, the FDA proposed to do a better job of preventing physicians who have a substantial financial interest in a company introducing a new drug or device from serving on the committees that make advisory recommendations on such products. Any doctor with a stake of $50,000 or more in a company backing a new drug (or in one of the company's competitors) would be disqualified from serving on an FDA advisory committee. Doctors whose stake is less than $50,000 could participate in panel discussions but not vote.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/27/preventing_cures_that_also_kill/Today's
"Most outrageous tale" award goes to...
Hong Kong, March 26 — It was a device worthy of Rube Goldberg, or perhaps Wile E. Coyote. A remote-controlled mechanism with a dozen launching tubes was found buried in the turf at Hong Kong’s most famous horse racing track last week; it was rigged with compressed air to fire tiny, liquid-filled darts into the bellies of horses at the starting gate. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/sports/othersports/27horses.html
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
BUSH SHOULD BE IMPEACHED ALONG WITH CHENEY!
*note to readers; this particular piece is a work-in-progress, and until I feel it is complete, it will continue to change. It is intended as a speech, and anyone who might wish to use all or part of it is welcome to it, this is all I have to give right now.
The first draft was written in the heat of a common citizen's righteous rage, in the half-hour after Bush made his recent speech calling this DOJ investigation a political witch-hunt. I used terminology and framing that I have edited out of the published version, in order to maintain a modicum of civility on my own blog. But the truth is, we really are faced with the degradation of our democratic system of government, and a constitutional crisis is not impending, it is full-blown, and nearly 7 tears old...it has been upon us since the Supreme Court made its Gore V. Bush decision and declared it could not be used as future precedent.
Since that moment, we have been operating under a cloud of failed Constitutional authority, authority that was usurped by a corporate cabal that personifies what Eisenhower warned us about, the congressional-military-industrial complex.
New posts again, starting tomorrow morning...
IMPEACH BUSH!
We have no alternative, he is UTTERLY beneath the law, and made that choice quite publicly, TODAY, by claiming this inquiry into the attorney firings is partisan politics. And for obvious reasons, we need to impeach Cheney right along with Bush.
I'm one of those who has always considered Bush a hand-puppet, much like Rush Limbaugh, just one more ignorant, impotent player in a game managed by smarter people who feed them their lines. I have little doubt that Rove is and always has been the author of both those puppet's lines, while Cheney helped foment thier strategy of deception and divisiveness.
So I have been much more forgiving towards Bush, because he always seemed like a goofy dupe, much more of a victim than a leader.
But this latest escapade is so shameful, it proves beyond any doubt Bush is just as guilty as the managers around him, and cares nothing for the rule of law, especially any law that applies to him and limitations to his power. He has become THE LAW UNTO HIMSELF and in that arrogance, constantly changing the rules of the game to match his handlers' pernicious necessity.
The consequences of this lawlessness go well beyond this US Attorney scandal, it encompasses a raging, worthless war, that has taken the lives and diminished the physical and psychological health of so many of our most precious young members, and countless other innocents, Iraqis and Americans, who deserved a better life, and a better death, than the awful fate they were given, in the name of war and its profit machine. And I may have been much too unforgiving towards Bush, his culpability is onlymatched by his desperate denials and obfuscations.
Bush, or ANY president for that matter, is just a man, an elected official, and should consdier himself nothing more than a devoted public servant, and not some royal ruler his delusions of grandeur and his minions apparently have convinced him of. Bush forgot long ago that "The President" is not a king. He habitually fails to realize that in this nation of peers, honor and glory are earned, not inherited. In this new era of universal equality, those virtues belong only to people who stand forth and do what is right, regardless of the consequences.
That is the true meaning of nobility in this age of reason, freedom, and equality. If the man behind the office were a truly noble person, none of this would have ever happened in the first place. He has proven today he is, at best, history's most mediocre president, totally bereft of the real "excellency" of truth and honor.
His nobility is imaginery, and his glory is vain.
And his loyalties are to his cronies, not to the taxpayers OR the citizen/voters, or to the constitution he swore to protect.
It is time to hang the impeachment sword over his head, and give him an historic asterisk as big as his arrogance. It is time to start the impeachment process to hold him accountable for his hubris and deviousness, and his deference to lesser officials, handing over his precious authority to profane manipulators like Cheney and Rove.
All I have is my keyboard, a computer and a list of people who seem to tolerate my vociferous political emails. And a bunch of blogs I inhabit now and then. It may not be much, compared to the apparent power and wealth of our adversaries, but it might well be enough, if there are many of us who will make the same commitment.
Call it the liberal blogosphere, call it grassroots, call it a popular groundswell, whatever label it takes, it is really a new revolution.
We do not need to resort to violence or insurrection, for our guns are keyboards and our bullets are words of truth, that can not be denied without another lie. If we will simply seek out and nurture a resurrection of our democratic spirit, we can and will affect an historic change, simply by our mutual will.
I hope many of you will join me in making a pledge to redouble the effort to remove these despots from our highest office, well before the next election. The speech I just watched made me ashamed of our government, and that shame has turned to slow, deliberate rage, the kind that keeps me up at nights, searching the news for one more tiny piece of evidence that might be used to topple these arrogant rogues. And it is there every day, hidden between the lines of the daily news.
The Truth shall set us free.
So I'm making this personal commitment, as John Brown did when he stepped forth and made his pledge to help free the slaves.
In the name of Voltaire, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy and King, and for the sake of my children and grandchildren, I am committed to peacefully casting these dark angels from our highest office, before their time is due. And I don't suggest we do this out of hatred or vindictiveness, it should be done as a rock-hard history lesson for future dishonorable despots-in-Republican- clothing, who would assume their no-bid, book-cooking ways can go on forever, at the expense of our free and equal nation, "the last, best hope of mankind on Earth."
Ohio election fraud perpetrators asked to resign from rogue county election board:
from the blogosphere
(just out from the AP, thanx to Brad Blog for the scoop)
Ohio Secretary of State demands resignations across the board in rogue district;
All four election board members for Cuyahoga County, troubled by recount rigging charges and voting machine problems, have been told to resign or face being fired, a state official said Monday. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she called the four board members of Ohio's most populous county late Sunday, asking them to leave by close of business Wednesday
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4292://
A very suspicious connection; numbers never lie, only people do..
Was Carol Lam Targeting The White House Prior To Her Firing?
From the folks at "Think Progress"
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/19/carol-lam-white-house/
"To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated."Blogger's note: PLEASE, if ever there was a story you needed to check, this is the one. This may be the political mushroom cloud we've all been expecting as the corruption scandals begin to melt into one big Cheney/Bush tale of intrigue, greed and the profane sellout of our government, in a pay-for-play travesty that may well prove to be even worse than everything we ever suspected.
DOJ ATTORNEY FIRINGS;
Justice Dept. worked to contain U.S. attorney fallout
Documents show that officials scrambled to curb bad publicity over the widening scandal. As the scandal over the firing of a select group of U.S. attorneys was building two weeks ago, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department tried to persuade one of those being removed that Washington was not out to ruin their reputations.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRJv0Ed
Fitzgerald Ranked During Leak Case: Justice Dept. Fired 2 With Same Rating
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH022191851E0C6446D304CA2D40
SMITHSONIAN CHIEF LUXURIATES AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE; IG'S GET SAME TREATMENT AS US-ATTORNEYS
Former IG Says Small Asked Her To Drop Audit
The former Smithsonian inspector general who launched an audit of high-ranking officials and their business practices said yesterday that Secretary Lawrence M. Small tried to pressure her to drop the inquiry shortly after she announced it last year.Debra S. Ritt said Small called her before the audit was widened to include his own compensation, but she still found it highly inappropriate. Ritt reported to Small at the time.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219D5E0E0C6446D304C3A920
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Police Yield to Sunni Insurgents' Ultimatum
In Town North of Baghdad, Five of Eight Stations Are Destroyed. Apparently content, the insurgents stole the officers' decrepit weapons and the station's communications equipment, blew up the building and released the officers. A similar scene played out simultaneously at another police station in the town, said police Capt. Hussein al-Jaburi. It was the fifth police station in the town to be destroyed by Sunni extremists in two weeks, he said, leaving just three standing.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219D7E8E0C6446D304C3A920
Army Brigade Finds Itself Stretched Thin
The war in Iraq has taken a toll on the military’s ability to train, equip and deploy soldiers in an emergency. In effect, the Army has become a "just in time" organization: every combat brigade that finishes training is sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan almost immediately. Equipment vital for protecting troops, like armored vehicles, roadside bomb jammers and night vision goggles, is rushed to Iraq as quickly as it is made, officials say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/us/20army.html?th&emc=th
Iraq hangs Hussein's ex-vice president
Human rights groups and some government organizations, including an arm of the United Nations, have said that the conviction was the result of guilt by association and that the evidence supported conviction only on lesser crimes, such as unlawful imprisonment and inhumane acts. http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRKB0Em
Iraq War: Still wrong course
Seattle P-I Editorial: The Bush administration produced bogus evidence to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. With the horror of the 9/11 attacks fresh in American minds, the majority of the country swallowed the fabrications. It supported the war, fearing another gruesome terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Never mind that there were no links between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists. Never mind that Bush & Co.'s claims (backed by Britain's Tony Blair) were contrary to those of Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Unhappy that ElBaradei wasn't playing along, the White House then tried to oust him from the agency, even though he was right. "We believe (Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong," said Vice President Dick Cheney.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/pimail.asp?uid=38863&url=opinion/308091_anniversaryed.html
GITMO
Detainee Says He Was Abused While in U.S. Custody Since his capture, David Hicks, an Australian detainee now seeking British citizenship, says he has been stripped, beaten and given injections. In an affidavit supporting his request for British citizenship, Mr. Hicks contends that before he arrived at Guantánamo, his American captors threw him and other detainees on the ground, walked on them, stripped him naked, shaved all his body hair and inserted a plastic object in his rectum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/world/europe/20hicks.html?th&emc=th
WALL STREET'S INSIDER INJUSTICES
Investors Defeated In Enron Decision A federal appeals court yesterday thwarted attempts by a group of Enron investors to sue investment banks over their role in the Houston energy trader's collapse, giving Wall Street a powerful weapon to defend itself against future claims.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219C113E0C6446D304C3A920
From the Highlander Independence files:
Scotland's 300-year itch ON A winter’s' day in 1707, this old, stone town saw the Scottish Parliament sign itself and the independence of Scotland out of existence by voting for a treaty of union with England that created Great Britain. Today, 300 years later, polls suggest that Scots who would undo all that seem poised for a significant victory in a restored Scottish Parliament during elections in May.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/20/scotlands_300_year_itch/
From the "Most outrageous stories of the day" files
Watergate plotter may have a last tale Two of E. Howard Hunt's sons say he knew of rogue CIA agents' plan to kill President Kennedy in 1963... before his death at age 88 in January, E. Howard Hunt had reconciled with his children and left the sons one last tantalizing story, they say. The story, which he planned to detail in a memoir and could be worth big money — was that rogue CIA agents plotted to kill President Kennedy in 1963, and that they approached Hunt to join the plot but he declined.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRKA0El
Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior
Dr. Frans de Waal argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies. Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days. Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?th&emc=th
The first draft was written in the heat of a common citizen's righteous rage, in the half-hour after Bush made his recent speech calling this DOJ investigation a political witch-hunt. I used terminology and framing that I have edited out of the published version, in order to maintain a modicum of civility on my own blog. But the truth is, we really are faced with the degradation of our democratic system of government, and a constitutional crisis is not impending, it is full-blown, and nearly 7 tears old...it has been upon us since the Supreme Court made its Gore V. Bush decision and declared it could not be used as future precedent.
Since that moment, we have been operating under a cloud of failed Constitutional authority, authority that was usurped by a corporate cabal that personifies what Eisenhower warned us about, the congressional-military-industrial complex.
New posts again, starting tomorrow morning...
IMPEACH BUSH!
We have no alternative, he is UTTERLY beneath the law, and made that choice quite publicly, TODAY, by claiming this inquiry into the attorney firings is partisan politics. And for obvious reasons, we need to impeach Cheney right along with Bush.
I'm one of those who has always considered Bush a hand-puppet, much like Rush Limbaugh, just one more ignorant, impotent player in a game managed by smarter people who feed them their lines. I have little doubt that Rove is and always has been the author of both those puppet's lines, while Cheney helped foment thier strategy of deception and divisiveness.
So I have been much more forgiving towards Bush, because he always seemed like a goofy dupe, much more of a victim than a leader.
But this latest escapade is so shameful, it proves beyond any doubt Bush is just as guilty as the managers around him, and cares nothing for the rule of law, especially any law that applies to him and limitations to his power. He has become THE LAW UNTO HIMSELF and in that arrogance, constantly changing the rules of the game to match his handlers' pernicious necessity.
The consequences of this lawlessness go well beyond this US Attorney scandal, it encompasses a raging, worthless war, that has taken the lives and diminished the physical and psychological health of so many of our most precious young members, and countless other innocents, Iraqis and Americans, who deserved a better life, and a better death, than the awful fate they were given, in the name of war and its profit machine. And I may have been much too unforgiving towards Bush, his culpability is onlymatched by his desperate denials and obfuscations.
Bush, or ANY president for that matter, is just a man, an elected official, and should consdier himself nothing more than a devoted public servant, and not some royal ruler his delusions of grandeur and his minions apparently have convinced him of. Bush forgot long ago that "The President" is not a king. He habitually fails to realize that in this nation of peers, honor and glory are earned, not inherited. In this new era of universal equality, those virtues belong only to people who stand forth and do what is right, regardless of the consequences.
That is the true meaning of nobility in this age of reason, freedom, and equality. If the man behind the office were a truly noble person, none of this would have ever happened in the first place. He has proven today he is, at best, history's most mediocre president, totally bereft of the real "excellency" of truth and honor.
His nobility is imaginery, and his glory is vain.
And his loyalties are to his cronies, not to the taxpayers OR the citizen/voters, or to the constitution he swore to protect.
It is time to hang the impeachment sword over his head, and give him an historic asterisk as big as his arrogance. It is time to start the impeachment process to hold him accountable for his hubris and deviousness, and his deference to lesser officials, handing over his precious authority to profane manipulators like Cheney and Rove.
All I have is my keyboard, a computer and a list of people who seem to tolerate my vociferous political emails. And a bunch of blogs I inhabit now and then. It may not be much, compared to the apparent power and wealth of our adversaries, but it might well be enough, if there are many of us who will make the same commitment.
Call it the liberal blogosphere, call it grassroots, call it a popular groundswell, whatever label it takes, it is really a new revolution.
We do not need to resort to violence or insurrection, for our guns are keyboards and our bullets are words of truth, that can not be denied without another lie. If we will simply seek out and nurture a resurrection of our democratic spirit, we can and will affect an historic change, simply by our mutual will.
I hope many of you will join me in making a pledge to redouble the effort to remove these despots from our highest office, well before the next election. The speech I just watched made me ashamed of our government, and that shame has turned to slow, deliberate rage, the kind that keeps me up at nights, searching the news for one more tiny piece of evidence that might be used to topple these arrogant rogues. And it is there every day, hidden between the lines of the daily news.
The Truth shall set us free.
So I'm making this personal commitment, as John Brown did when he stepped forth and made his pledge to help free the slaves.
In the name of Voltaire, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy and King, and for the sake of my children and grandchildren, I am committed to peacefully casting these dark angels from our highest office, before their time is due. And I don't suggest we do this out of hatred or vindictiveness, it should be done as a rock-hard history lesson for future dishonorable despots-in-Republican- clothing, who would assume their no-bid, book-cooking ways can go on forever, at the expense of our free and equal nation, "the last, best hope of mankind on Earth."
Ohio election fraud perpetrators asked to resign from rogue county election board:
from the blogosphere
(just out from the AP, thanx to Brad Blog for the scoop)
Ohio Secretary of State demands resignations across the board in rogue district;
All four election board members for Cuyahoga County, troubled by recount rigging charges and voting machine problems, have been told to resign or face being fired, a state official said Monday. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she called the four board members of Ohio's most populous county late Sunday, asking them to leave by close of business Wednesday
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4292://
A very suspicious connection; numbers never lie, only people do..
Was Carol Lam Targeting The White House Prior To Her Firing?
From the folks at "Think Progress"
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/19/carol-lam-white-house/
"To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated."Blogger's note: PLEASE, if ever there was a story you needed to check, this is the one. This may be the political mushroom cloud we've all been expecting as the corruption scandals begin to melt into one big Cheney/Bush tale of intrigue, greed and the profane sellout of our government, in a pay-for-play travesty that may well prove to be even worse than everything we ever suspected.
DOJ ATTORNEY FIRINGS;
Justice Dept. worked to contain U.S. attorney fallout
Documents show that officials scrambled to curb bad publicity over the widening scandal. As the scandal over the firing of a select group of U.S. attorneys was building two weeks ago, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department tried to persuade one of those being removed that Washington was not out to ruin their reputations.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRJv0Ed
Fitzgerald Ranked During Leak Case: Justice Dept. Fired 2 With Same Rating
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH022191851E0C6446D304CA2D40
SMITHSONIAN CHIEF LUXURIATES AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE; IG'S GET SAME TREATMENT AS US-ATTORNEYS
Former IG Says Small Asked Her To Drop Audit
The former Smithsonian inspector general who launched an audit of high-ranking officials and their business practices said yesterday that Secretary Lawrence M. Small tried to pressure her to drop the inquiry shortly after she announced it last year.Debra S. Ritt said Small called her before the audit was widened to include his own compensation, but she still found it highly inappropriate. Ritt reported to Small at the time.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219D5E0E0C6446D304C3A920
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Police Yield to Sunni Insurgents' Ultimatum
In Town North of Baghdad, Five of Eight Stations Are Destroyed. Apparently content, the insurgents stole the officers' decrepit weapons and the station's communications equipment, blew up the building and released the officers. A similar scene played out simultaneously at another police station in the town, said police Capt. Hussein al-Jaburi. It was the fifth police station in the town to be destroyed by Sunni extremists in two weeks, he said, leaving just three standing.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219D7E8E0C6446D304C3A920
Army Brigade Finds Itself Stretched Thin
The war in Iraq has taken a toll on the military’s ability to train, equip and deploy soldiers in an emergency. In effect, the Army has become a "just in time" organization: every combat brigade that finishes training is sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan almost immediately. Equipment vital for protecting troops, like armored vehicles, roadside bomb jammers and night vision goggles, is rushed to Iraq as quickly as it is made, officials say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/us/20army.html?th&emc=th
Iraq hangs Hussein's ex-vice president
Human rights groups and some government organizations, including an arm of the United Nations, have said that the conviction was the result of guilt by association and that the evidence supported conviction only on lesser crimes, such as unlawful imprisonment and inhumane acts. http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRKB0Em
Iraq War: Still wrong course
Seattle P-I Editorial: The Bush administration produced bogus evidence to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. With the horror of the 9/11 attacks fresh in American minds, the majority of the country swallowed the fabrications. It supported the war, fearing another gruesome terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Never mind that there were no links between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists. Never mind that Bush & Co.'s claims (backed by Britain's Tony Blair) were contrary to those of Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Unhappy that ElBaradei wasn't playing along, the White House then tried to oust him from the agency, even though he was right. "We believe (Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong," said Vice President Dick Cheney.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/pimail.asp?uid=38863&url=opinion/308091_anniversaryed.html
GITMO
Detainee Says He Was Abused While in U.S. Custody Since his capture, David Hicks, an Australian detainee now seeking British citizenship, says he has been stripped, beaten and given injections. In an affidavit supporting his request for British citizenship, Mr. Hicks contends that before he arrived at Guantánamo, his American captors threw him and other detainees on the ground, walked on them, stripped him naked, shaved all his body hair and inserted a plastic object in his rectum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/world/europe/20hicks.html?th&emc=th
WALL STREET'S INSIDER INJUSTICES
Investors Defeated In Enron Decision A federal appeals court yesterday thwarted attempts by a group of Enron investors to sue investment banks over their role in the Houston energy trader's collapse, giving Wall Street a powerful weapon to defend itself against future claims.
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/W2RH02219C113E0C6446D304C3A920
From the Highlander Independence files:
Scotland's 300-year itch ON A winter’s' day in 1707, this old, stone town saw the Scottish Parliament sign itself and the independence of Scotland out of existence by voting for a treaty of union with England that created Great Britain. Today, 300 years later, polls suggest that Scots who would undo all that seem poised for a significant victory in a restored Scottish Parliament during elections in May.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/20/scotlands_300_year_itch/
From the "Most outrageous stories of the day" files
Watergate plotter may have a last tale Two of E. Howard Hunt's sons say he knew of rogue CIA agents' plan to kill President Kennedy in 1963... before his death at age 88 in January, E. Howard Hunt had reconciled with his children and left the sons one last tantalizing story, they say. The story, which he planned to detail in a memoir and could be worth big money — was that rogue CIA agents plotted to kill President Kennedy in 1963, and that they approached Hunt to join the plot but he declined.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/hBLHO0RvPwf0G2B0IRKA0El
Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior
Dr. Frans de Waal argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies. Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days. Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?th&emc=th
Monday, March 19, 2007
A very suspicious connection; numbers never lie, only people do..
Was Carol Lam Targeting The White House Prior To Her Firing?
From the folks at "Think Progress"
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/19/carol-lam-white-house/
"To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated."
Blogger's note: PLEASE, if ever there was a story you needed to check, this is the one.
This may be the political mushrooom cloud we've all been expecting as the corruption scandals begin to melt into one big Cheney/Bush tale of intrigue, greed and the profane sellout of our government, in a pay-for-play travesty that may well prove to be even worse than everything we ever suspected.
From the folks at "Think Progress"
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/19/carol-lam-white-house/
"To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated."
Blogger's note: PLEASE, if ever there was a story you needed to check, this is the one.
This may be the political mushrooom cloud we've all been expecting as the corruption scandals begin to melt into one big Cheney/Bush tale of intrigue, greed and the profane sellout of our government, in a pay-for-play travesty that may well prove to be even worse than everything we ever suspected.
Biofuels; Tomorrow is upon us...
With the increase in funding that new legislation promises to provide for research and development of alternative energy sources, this is an appropriate time to evaluate the existing alternatives, and consider a localized community-sized model that would expedite the development and the transition time.
Alternative energy ideas are popping up everywhere. Even in the face of industrial-strength suppression to prevent competition to the fossil-fuel monopolies, All-American ingenuity has been churning out ideas in response to the laws of supply and demand that the oil industry ignores. Therefore, there is already a willing public, a receptive market and a multiple-choice list of alternatives, that can ALL be developed to accommodate this 21st Century energy revolution.
I have created a "local loop" flow chart, intended to provide both a simple visual guide and an information link. The diagram outlines what I believe represents the best potential future for alternative biofuel energy, with the emphasis on a local loop. It gives you direct internet links to the latest information about each of the separate layers in this multi-layered system.
I have not included wind and PV power, this post is devoted to biofuels, but both those natural resources promise to be an integral part of the whole energy independence story.
Keep in mind, always, it is not any one of these products, but the UNION of all these alternatives that forms one idea, a unified construct that addresses a big percentage of our energy needs.
These innovations, along with some meaningful revisions in our power usage cycles, bring us ever closer to total energy independence. Unfortunately, while we have some good reference resources for these fuels, there are few websites or plans that put them all together into the "team concept" of energy independence.
No single alternative energy source will stand alone to replace foreign oil and coal, and other traditional, environmentally-hazardous energy sources. But the answer will be found in the application of multiple, compatible, and complimentary alternatives, in a gear-up system that generates LOCAL community and agricultural electricity needs.
I don't imagine everyone who reads these will learn something new, some of you and your staff people know a lot more than I do about these issues. But there are many people on this email list that have, at best, a transparently superficial knowledge of the energy alternative story. All the while, "biowatts" are just waiting to be harvested from our renewable resources.
These links and diagrams are intended to help increase your alternative-energy fluency and to help you visualize how these resources can become immediately functional, this is not just more talk or speculation or experimentation. Although in essence, this will all be a very grand experiment, one that immediately produces "biowatts" from purely local resources, and gets more efficient as it develops.
What I propose is that somewhere in the process of allocating all this new research money for these alternatives, we need to put together, in every state, one town-sized model of what I have proposed here. It would prove to be the most efficient way to de-centralize our use of power, and create REAL American jobs and energy independence, on a very local basis. Each of the plants described would bring more than one high-tech job to the community, those wages and the cost of the raw materials for energy production (paid directly to local farmers) come from the utility bills of the community, along with a payment towards the federal and state loans that financed construction of the facility. And all of those funds remain in the local loop, too, instead of financing indoor ski slopes in Dubai.
As you look over the diagram, click the links below to help you become much more familiar with each resource at its most basic level. I've linked to websites that provide much more comprehensive information and extended linkage about each of these alternative fuel sources.
You will see three liquid-fuel alternatives on my chart . One is biobutanol, another ethanol, and the third is biodiesel. Any one of these three fuels could be a stand-alone power product, but by developing all three together, time would eventually determine the most efficient alternative.
This would create a model for other communities to emulate, once the most efficient form was established.
So what I am to lobbying for is a bill that would , at both at the federal level and at the state level, subsidize the construction of a multi-fuel facility similar to what I have diagramed, and help provide the expertise to start it up and get at least one alternative, preferably all three, into the production loop, generating electricity for the local grid.
If we are going to spend billions on alternative energy research, lets start with a local version. Click the links below to get more info about:
Biomass
Biobutanol
Bioethanol
Biodiesel
Biomass Options
Butanol Review
Ethanol Plant
Willie Nelson's Biodiesel
Alternative energy ideas are popping up everywhere. Even in the face of industrial-strength suppression to prevent competition to the fossil-fuel monopolies, All-American ingenuity has been churning out ideas in response to the laws of supply and demand that the oil industry ignores. Therefore, there is already a willing public, a receptive market and a multiple-choice list of alternatives, that can ALL be developed to accommodate this 21st Century energy revolution.
I have created a "local loop" flow chart, intended to provide both a simple visual guide and an information link. The diagram outlines what I believe represents the best potential future for alternative biofuel energy, with the emphasis on a local loop. It gives you direct internet links to the latest information about each of the separate layers in this multi-layered system.
I have not included wind and PV power, this post is devoted to biofuels, but both those natural resources promise to be an integral part of the whole energy independence story.
Keep in mind, always, it is not any one of these products, but the UNION of all these alternatives that forms one idea, a unified construct that addresses a big percentage of our energy needs.
These innovations, along with some meaningful revisions in our power usage cycles, bring us ever closer to total energy independence. Unfortunately, while we have some good reference resources for these fuels, there are few websites or plans that put them all together into the "team concept" of energy independence.
No single alternative energy source will stand alone to replace foreign oil and coal, and other traditional, environmentally-hazardous energy sources. But the answer will be found in the application of multiple, compatible, and complimentary alternatives, in a gear-up system that generates LOCAL community and agricultural electricity needs.
I don't imagine everyone who reads these will learn something new, some of you and your staff people know a lot more than I do about these issues. But there are many people on this email list that have, at best, a transparently superficial knowledge of the energy alternative story. All the while, "biowatts" are just waiting to be harvested from our renewable resources.
These links and diagrams are intended to help increase your alternative-energy fluency and to help you visualize how these resources can become immediately functional, this is not just more talk or speculation or experimentation. Although in essence, this will all be a very grand experiment, one that immediately produces "biowatts" from purely local resources, and gets more efficient as it develops.
What I propose is that somewhere in the process of allocating all this new research money for these alternatives, we need to put together, in every state, one town-sized model of what I have proposed here. It would prove to be the most efficient way to de-centralize our use of power, and create REAL American jobs and energy independence, on a very local basis. Each of the plants described would bring more than one high-tech job to the community, those wages and the cost of the raw materials for energy production (paid directly to local farmers) come from the utility bills of the community, along with a payment towards the federal and state loans that financed construction of the facility. And all of those funds remain in the local loop, too, instead of financing indoor ski slopes in Dubai.
As you look over the diagram, click the links below to help you become much more familiar with each resource at its most basic level. I've linked to websites that provide much more comprehensive information and extended linkage about each of these alternative fuel sources.
You will see three liquid-fuel alternatives on my chart . One is biobutanol, another ethanol, and the third is biodiesel. Any one of these three fuels could be a stand-alone power product, but by developing all three together, time would eventually determine the most efficient alternative.
This would create a model for other communities to emulate, once the most efficient form was established.
So what I am to lobbying for is a bill that would , at both at the federal level and at the state level, subsidize the construction of a multi-fuel facility similar to what I have diagramed, and help provide the expertise to start it up and get at least one alternative, preferably all three, into the production loop, generating electricity for the local grid.
If we are going to spend billions on alternative energy research, lets start with a local version. Click the links below to get more info about:
Biomass
Biobutanol
Bioethanol
Biodiesel
Biomass Options
Butanol Review
Ethanol Plant
Willie Nelson's Biodiesel
"just another week in the brawl'''
DARFUR FINALLY GETS SOME WELL-DESERVED SCRUTINY
Boston Globe editorial
a report this week prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Council by a "High-Level Mission on the Situation of Human Rights in Darfur" should be welcome as a beam of bright light pointed into this 21st-century heart of darkness. Basing its recommendations on the 2005 UN affirmation of a "responsibility to protect" civilians not protected by their own governments, the mission's report tells some hard truths -- free of jargon or obfuscation.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/19/light_on_the_darfur_darkness
US ATTORNEY FIRINGS ILLEGAL?
NYTimes Editorial-
"It Wasn’t Just a Bad Idea. It May Have Been Against the Law."
1. Misrepresentations to Congress.
2. Calling the Prosecutors.
3. Witness Tampering.
4. Firing the Attorneys.
But based on what is known — and with some help from Congressional staff members and Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University — it was not hard to spot that White House and Justice Department officials, and members of Congress, may have violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1520, the federal obstruction of justice statute.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon4.html
MORE EVIDENCE OF POLITICAL AGENDA IN DOJ?
WashingtonPost article
By Dan Eggen
"Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel's office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801263.html
IGLESIAS ROLE ALREADY PLAYED BY TOM CRUZ IN MOVIE?
NYTimes article
Mr. Iglesias was Hispanic, a conservative former state prosecutor and he had pizazz. As a Navy lawyer, he had been involved in a marine hazing case that became the basis for the blockbuster movie "A Few Good Men."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18attorneys.html?
IGLESIAS TAUGHT OTHER JUSTICES ON ELECTION FRAUD
By Amy Goldstein
One of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration after Republican complaints that he neglected to prosecute voter fraud had been heralded for his expertise in that area by the Justice Department, which twice selected him to train other federal prosecutors to pursue election crimes.
David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a "voting integrity symposium" in October 2005.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801077.html
more on the same story from Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo Muckraker pages
By Paul Kiel - March 19, 2007, 8:47 AM
It's becoming one of the central rules of the U.S. attorney purge scandal: whatever "performance related" complaint the administration claims as the justification for a U.S. attorney's firing, it's actually an area of performance for which that U.S. attorney was lauded.
also, just in from TPMMuckraker
ASHCROFT AIDE SOUGHT TO ID WEAK US ATTORNEYS
The quest by the Justice Department to replace weak U.S. attorneys long preceded Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Early in 2004, David Ayres, chief of staff to John Ashcroft, began the process of evaluating U.S. attorneys, with the hopes of determining who were the "poorest" ones, "should we have an opportunity to make changes," according to a former Justice Department official. (U.S. News and World Report)
GONZALES QUIETLY FILLED TWO LONG-VACANT JOBS
With no public announcement, the attorney general named permanent chiefs last week for the Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes government corruption cases and oversees Abramoff-related investigations, and for the Fraud Section. (WSJ)
LEAHY JUST SAYS 'NO!'
New York Times article
Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar over the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement.
But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to rule out such a move on Sunday. He said his committee would vote Thursday on whether to issue subpoenas for Mr. Rove as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William K. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/washington/19attorneys.html
THE BLOGS; ATTORNEY FIRINGS
Firedog Lake
Last night's FDL line of the day..."Yeah, don't cry with your mouth full."
"according to Republican attorney Victoria Toensing, who claims she is responsible for drafting the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Valerie Wilson and other covert agents like her are not covered by the IIPA, even though protecting the identities of our covert agents would seem the obvious purpose of this statute."
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/19/how-to-betray-americas-spies
No Quarter
"Larry Johnson's blog"
Toensing's willful, compulsive deceptions:
"On all three counts of her whimsical indictment, Ms. Toensing is simply wrong."
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/victorias_secre.html
HALLIBURTON FLIES AWAY
Austin Statesman Article;
COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO
Is Halliburton trying to escape the mosquitoes or the scrutiny?
You say Dubai, I say hello.(LOL)
"Some cynics will say Halliburton is moving because it wants people to forget about Iraq. This is the company that was given a $2.4 billion no-bid contract to supply the U.S. military, and what has it done so far?
Does the Green Zone have a Starbucks yet? I think they should have given Disney the contract. If they had, you know there'd be a theme park up by now.
Then again, maybe Halliburton is moving because of the disappearing money.
Last month, the feds said the company was responsible for $2.7 billion in contractor waste and excess billing in Iraq. And did I mention that Dick Cheney used to be chief executive at Halliburton?" http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/18/18kelso.html
Other Publications;
FEAR AND LOATHING AS A RIGHT WING TOOL?
from NYSalon
"To what extent today does it seem as though politicians are more likely to advise the public to fear everything and not simply fear itself? Has fear assumed the character of a ‘natural’ problem that is detached from any specific experience? In this form, does this become a perspective on life rather than a response to any particular threat?"
http://www.nysalon.org/salonevents/livinginstateoffear.html
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Letter to the editor, Seattle Post Intelligerncer
"Any serious insurgent with half a brain would not wait around for Iraqi and US troops to arrive at his door, to be detained and have his weapons confiscated. The men with black hoods, AK-47s, RPGs, and IEDs just move their destructive operations elsewhere."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/307860_webltrs19.html
BUSH ASKS FOR MORE "PATIENTS"
The war has stretched longer, with higher costs, than the White House ever predicted. On the fourth anniversary of the day Bush directed the invasion to begin, the president made a televised statement from the White House Roosevelt Room to defend continued U.S. involvement.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ
"IRAQI POLICE TRAINING HAS QUESTION MARKS"
WashingtonPost article
"The Iraqi forces still suffer from deficiencies of leadership, logistics, intelligence and, in some cases, loyalty," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the U.S. military's spokesman in Baghdad, said in a news conference last month."
"The company says 21 trainers have been killed in the two countries since the program began in 2003. Although the company tries to hire law enforcement officers and others who understand dangerous situations, said recruiting manager Lynn Holland, the reality in Iraq or Afghanistan is outside the experience of almost any American police officer."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801284_2.html
Middle East at large;
ISRAELI MAJORITY FAVORS COMMUNICATION WITH PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT
via Tom Paine's link to Globeandmail.com
"More than half of all Israelis disagree with their government's decision to boycott the Palestinians' new governing alliance, which doesn't explicitly recognize the Jewish state's right to exist, a poll showed on Monday..."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070319.wisrael0319/BNStory/International/home
Boston Globe editorial
a report this week prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Council by a "High-Level Mission on the Situation of Human Rights in Darfur" should be welcome as a beam of bright light pointed into this 21st-century heart of darkness. Basing its recommendations on the 2005 UN affirmation of a "responsibility to protect" civilians not protected by their own governments, the mission's report tells some hard truths -- free of jargon or obfuscation.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/19/light_on_the_darfur_darkness
US ATTORNEY FIRINGS ILLEGAL?
NYTimes Editorial-
"It Wasn’t Just a Bad Idea. It May Have Been Against the Law."
1. Misrepresentations to Congress.
2. Calling the Prosecutors.
3. Witness Tampering.
4. Firing the Attorneys.
But based on what is known — and with some help from Congressional staff members and Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University — it was not hard to spot that White House and Justice Department officials, and members of Congress, may have violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1501-1520, the federal obstruction of justice statute.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon4.html
MORE EVIDENCE OF POLITICAL AGENDA IN DOJ?
WashingtonPost article
By Dan Eggen
"Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel's office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801263.html
IGLESIAS ROLE ALREADY PLAYED BY TOM CRUZ IN MOVIE?
NYTimes article
Mr. Iglesias was Hispanic, a conservative former state prosecutor and he had pizazz. As a Navy lawyer, he had been involved in a marine hazing case that became the basis for the blockbuster movie "A Few Good Men."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18attorneys.html?
IGLESIAS TAUGHT OTHER JUSTICES ON ELECTION FRAUD
By Amy Goldstein
One of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration after Republican complaints that he neglected to prosecute voter fraud had been heralded for his expertise in that area by the Justice Department, which twice selected him to train other federal prosecutors to pursue election crimes.
David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a "voting integrity symposium" in October 2005.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801077.html
more on the same story from Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo Muckraker pages
By Paul Kiel - March 19, 2007, 8:47 AM
It's becoming one of the central rules of the U.S. attorney purge scandal: whatever "performance related" complaint the administration claims as the justification for a U.S. attorney's firing, it's actually an area of performance for which that U.S. attorney was lauded.
also, just in from TPMMuckraker
ASHCROFT AIDE SOUGHT TO ID WEAK US ATTORNEYS
The quest by the Justice Department to replace weak U.S. attorneys long preceded Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Early in 2004, David Ayres, chief of staff to John Ashcroft, began the process of evaluating U.S. attorneys, with the hopes of determining who were the "poorest" ones, "should we have an opportunity to make changes," according to a former Justice Department official. (U.S. News and World Report)
GONZALES QUIETLY FILLED TWO LONG-VACANT JOBS
With no public announcement, the attorney general named permanent chiefs last week for the Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes government corruption cases and oversees Abramoff-related investigations, and for the Fraud Section. (WSJ)
LEAHY JUST SAYS 'NO!'
New York Times article
Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar over the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement.
But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to rule out such a move on Sunday. He said his committee would vote Thursday on whether to issue subpoenas for Mr. Rove as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William K. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/washington/19attorneys.html
THE BLOGS; ATTORNEY FIRINGS
Firedog Lake
Last night's FDL line of the day..."Yeah, don't cry with your mouth full."
"according to Republican attorney Victoria Toensing, who claims she is responsible for drafting the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Valerie Wilson and other covert agents like her are not covered by the IIPA, even though protecting the identities of our covert agents would seem the obvious purpose of this statute."
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03/19/how-to-betray-americas-spies
No Quarter
"Larry Johnson's blog"
Toensing's willful, compulsive deceptions:
"On all three counts of her whimsical indictment, Ms. Toensing is simply wrong."
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/victorias_secre.html
HALLIBURTON FLIES AWAY
Austin Statesman Article;
COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO
Is Halliburton trying to escape the mosquitoes or the scrutiny?
You say Dubai, I say hello.(LOL)
"Some cynics will say Halliburton is moving because it wants people to forget about Iraq. This is the company that was given a $2.4 billion no-bid contract to supply the U.S. military, and what has it done so far?
Does the Green Zone have a Starbucks yet? I think they should have given Disney the contract. If they had, you know there'd be a theme park up by now.
Then again, maybe Halliburton is moving because of the disappearing money.
Last month, the feds said the company was responsible for $2.7 billion in contractor waste and excess billing in Iraq. And did I mention that Dick Cheney used to be chief executive at Halliburton?" http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/18/18kelso.html
Other Publications;
FEAR AND LOATHING AS A RIGHT WING TOOL?
from NYSalon
"To what extent today does it seem as though politicians are more likely to advise the public to fear everything and not simply fear itself? Has fear assumed the character of a ‘natural’ problem that is detached from any specific experience? In this form, does this become a perspective on life rather than a response to any particular threat?"
http://www.nysalon.org/salonevents/livinginstateoffear.html
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Letter to the editor, Seattle Post Intelligerncer
"Any serious insurgent with half a brain would not wait around for Iraqi and US troops to arrive at his door, to be detained and have his weapons confiscated. The men with black hoods, AK-47s, RPGs, and IEDs just move their destructive operations elsewhere."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/307860_webltrs19.html
BUSH ASKS FOR MORE "PATIENTS"
The war has stretched longer, with higher costs, than the White House ever predicted. On the fourth anniversary of the day Bush directed the invasion to begin, the president made a televised statement from the White House Roosevelt Room to defend continued U.S. involvement.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ
"IRAQI POLICE TRAINING HAS QUESTION MARKS"
WashingtonPost article
"The Iraqi forces still suffer from deficiencies of leadership, logistics, intelligence and, in some cases, loyalty," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the U.S. military's spokesman in Baghdad, said in a news conference last month."
"The company says 21 trainers have been killed in the two countries since the program began in 2003. Although the company tries to hire law enforcement officers and others who understand dangerous situations, said recruiting manager Lynn Holland, the reality in Iraq or Afghanistan is outside the experience of almost any American police officer."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801284_2.html
Middle East at large;
ISRAELI MAJORITY FAVORS COMMUNICATION WITH PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT
via Tom Paine's link to Globeandmail.com
"More than half of all Israelis disagree with their government's decision to boycott the Palestinians' new governing alliance, which doesn't explicitly recognize the Jewish state's right to exist, a poll showed on Monday..."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070319.wisrael0319/BNStory/International/home
Sunday, March 18, 2007
85 US Attorneys as co-conspirators?
Let me press the issue of the SURVIVING US-A's, if Iowa is any indicator, there is an ongoing conspiracy against Democrats, by Republican planted US-A's, and it may have actually accelerated since this exposure of their colleagues questionable removal and replacements.
Matt McCoy, the Democratic state senator from Des Moines' south side, is being persecuted in a classic case of entrapment, by the US-A that was appointed to that district.
If there's a provable passel of politics in this process, wouldn't these US-A's themselves be subject to some serious scrutiny from Congress? One thing is for certain, it immediately opens the door for McCoy's defense attorney to demand charges be dropped.
This political hackery makes our US-A's impotent.
When they can't be trusted to keep politics out of the legal process, they surrender their legal credibility and provide a very good case for the defense to use against all of them, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the defendant. And when 85 of them agree to it, nationwide, does that constitute a conspiracy?
But am I using the term "conspiracy" too loosely here?
Or is it really quite accurate?
If there is clear evidence (8 to 1 prosecutions against Dems vs. Reps should be proof enough) of a mutual agreement between these Loyalists, to "go after" Dems, and more than one of them agreed to this plan, isn't that, essentially, a conspiracy?
From what I've read about "bushies" in these emails, it would appear there are about 85 co-conspirators we can be sure were involved (93-8), and at least two DOJ administrators, AND old TBlossom hissef', it all seems to be in those emails.
Matt McCoy, the Democratic state senator from Des Moines' south side, is being persecuted in a classic case of entrapment, by the US-A that was appointed to that district.
If there's a provable passel of politics in this process, wouldn't these US-A's themselves be subject to some serious scrutiny from Congress? One thing is for certain, it immediately opens the door for McCoy's defense attorney to demand charges be dropped.
This political hackery makes our US-A's impotent.
When they can't be trusted to keep politics out of the legal process, they surrender their legal credibility and provide a very good case for the defense to use against all of them, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the defendant. And when 85 of them agree to it, nationwide, does that constitute a conspiracy?
But am I using the term "conspiracy" too loosely here?
Or is it really quite accurate?
If there is clear evidence (8 to 1 prosecutions against Dems vs. Reps should be proof enough) of a mutual agreement between these Loyalists, to "go after" Dems, and more than one of them agreed to this plan, isn't that, essentially, a conspiracy?
From what I've read about "bushies" in these emails, it would appear there are about 85 co-conspirators we can be sure were involved (93-8), and at least two DOJ administrators, AND old TBlossom hissef', it all seems to be in those emails.
Rove + New Hampshire = Voter Fraud
Rove + New Hampshire = "enough rope to hang himself"
My theory of the nature of those phone calls to and from the WH is that Rove had fake Democrats planted in NH, who had caller ID on their phone lines so they could get the phone numbers of the Democratic Party phone banks as they called to organize their GOTV drive.
When one of these Rovian operatives got a call from the Dems, they would call the phone number in to Karl, who relayed it to the perpetrators in NH, who then called and jammed those lines.
Rove was too arrogant to believe he would ever face scrutiny for this, his hubris is classical.
But now that the Dems have a gavel or two, I suspect they will use it to hammer out a case against Karl, there has already been one lacky of the guilty parties to go to prison for this crime, seems like the mastermind might be held responsible before its over.
My theory of the nature of those phone calls to and from the WH is that Rove had fake Democrats planted in NH, who had caller ID on their phone lines so they could get the phone numbers of the Democratic Party phone banks as they called to organize their GOTV drive.
When one of these Rovian operatives got a call from the Dems, they would call the phone number in to Karl, who relayed it to the perpetrators in NH, who then called and jammed those lines.
Rove was too arrogant to believe he would ever face scrutiny for this, his hubris is classical.
But now that the Dems have a gavel or two, I suspect they will use it to hammer out a case against Karl, there has already been one lacky of the guilty parties to go to prison for this crime, seems like the mastermind might be held responsible before its over.
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