The Best War Ever

Monday, October 30, 2006

Declaring Martial Law has never been easier

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.


Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."

Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.

Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequently, it will take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."

Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."

A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormous". "There is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."

The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.

The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."

In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)

It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Does anyone know what the term "Media Saturation" means

According to Dylan Stableford over at FishbowlNY, Rachael Ray announced to a magazine conference in Phoenix that she is going to open a "burger joint" in New York, where she will create a rotating menu based on 190 different burger recipies she's devised over the years. She won't just be making hamburgers, though; she'll put anything that can be made into a burger onto the menu, from turkey to swordfish. She also plans to make a fast-food version of the restaurant, which I'm sure will be franchised throughout the country.

So... she's got a magazine. Three Food TV shows. Cookbooks. A syndicated talk show. A soundtrack album. And now she's going to be a fast-food mogul. I think I know why I tune into her talk show every so often... I'm waiting to see her head explode.

............
Now, I know .. Rachel, shes a cutie, in fact my ex and I bonded over our collective drooling over Ms Ray and her cute shows, but come on now. Shes on FOUR hours a day on any given day. When will someone realize that TOO much of ANY thing is enough to just simply rot our collective brains. I guess thats why its TV though huh?

Friday, October 20, 2006

I dont believe in your voting machines

WASHINGTON - Count on close, contentious elections to stir up public distrust in the vote count.

That could be why people in the United States, Italy and Mexico had the lowest levels of confidence in the vote count among nine countries in AP-Ipsos polling taken just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections. Fewer than two-thirds in each of the three countries said they were confident the vote count would be accurate.

That's lower than in the other countries polled — Canada, France, Germany,
South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom, where three-fourths or more in each country felt the vote count is accurate.

"If we're going to have an effective democracy, we can't lose confidence in the institutions that deal with the votes," said Gabriel Nunez, a 39-year-old sales clerk in Mexico City.

In Mexico, Italy and the United States, recent contested elections left one side feeling cheated.

_In Mexico this past summer, ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon was proclaimed the winner after the country's top electoral court rejected claims by leftist candidate Andres Manual Lopez Obrador of widespread fraud. By the end of the year, Mexicans will have an elected president, and the man he beat will have been "inaugurated" president by his followers.

_In Italy's parliamentary elections last April, outgoing Premier Silvio Berlusconi alleged the vote was marred by irregularities and for weeks refused to accept the narrow-margin victory of Romano Prodi's center-left coalition.

_In the United States, the 2000 election was contested for more than a month before the Supreme Court ended the dispute, enabling Republican George W. Bush to be certified the winner over Democrat
Al Gore. The 2004 election had enough problems to bring back memories from four years earlier.

_Germans had a close election in 2005 but worked out a compromise and the German people accepted the count with little outcry.

The U.S. complaints in 2000 and again in 2004 left Charlotte Blum, an independent voter from Fairfax, Vt., with doubts about the accuracy of the vote count. "People were asking for recounts," she said of the 2004 voting. "It's a bad atmosphere for the country."

The doubts come at a time that voter turnout has been sliding in many different countries.

Only half in the United States said they always vote, the lowest level in any of the nine countries polled. More than seven in 10 in Canada, France and Germany say they always vote, with almost that many in Spain and Britain saying that.

Voter turnout is traditionally higher in many European democracies than in the United States, and some voting analysts blame U.S. voter registration laws that put much of the burden on the voter to register.

Voter turnout has been dropping in many democracies, however, and the lack of interest among young adults is frequently cited.

For example:

_In the United Kingdom's 2001 election, just 59 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, the lowest turnout since 1918. The 2005 national elections brought out 61 percent of voters, recording a slight upturn in a trend that has been moving down.

_Voter turnout in Canada has waned steadily over recent years, dropping from 75 percent of registered voters in 1988 to an all-time low of 60 percent in the June 2004 election.

_Turnout for German parliamentary elections usually hovers around 80 percent, matching a post-World War II low last year with about 78 percent of the electorate turning out — still high for most democracies.

_In France, voter turnout has been dropping, especially in parliamentary elections, but the 2002 results when right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen forced a runoff — eventually won by
President Jacques Chirac — were a shocker for many.

Margot Gillouard, a 19-year-old student in Paris who would be voting for the first time in 2007, is aware of the high stakes in the French elections. "When you see what happened the last time, I wouldn't miss it for anything," she said.

Turnout in the United States has been dropping over the last few decades, but was higher in 2004 when 122 million, or 62 percent of the voting age population, turned out in the presidential contest.

The drop in voting levels is widespread and often involves young people, said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at University of California-Berkeley.

"There seems to be a general wave of demobilization, a problem of disengagement," he said, noting that voting is marked by "peaks and valleys." "A major part of it in many countries is young people. They move a lot, they don't have a vested interest in the society."

Compulsory voting is one approach that scattered countries have tried over the years — though few enforce the law. That approach to improving voter turnout was backed by 63 percent in France, 59 percent in Mexico and 58 percent in Britain.

Only 33 percent in the United States favored that approach, according to the polling of about 1,000 people in each of the countries. The telephone polls, conducted between Sept. 8 and Oct. 1, have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points in each country.

Skeptical attitudes about how much an individual's vote counts runs high in European democracies — with totals ranging from 32 percent in Germany and 51 percent in Spain saying they feel their vote doesn't count.

But occasional election problems don't upset Giancarlo Rossi, a 60-year-old export manager in Rome, who agrees with six in 10 in his country that he's confident his vote counts.

"Little tricks can happen often," he said, "but they don't influence the overall result."

Top o' the mornin to ya!

So I've got two posts today about voting confidence/fraud so lets get started shall we:

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

A spokesman for Diebold, which manufactures the state's touch-screen voting machines, said the company is treating the software Kagan received as "stolen" and not as "picked up" at the State Board of Elections, as the anonymous note claimed. Lawyers for the company are seeking its return.

The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns nationwide about the security of the November elections and the ability of the state to keep tight controls on the thousands of machines that will be used next month.

Maryland's September primary - which used voting machines and electronic check-in equipment made by Diebold - suffered a series of mistakes, and the outcomes of some contests were not known for weeks.

In the wake of the problems, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and other politicians renewed their call to jettison the equipment. The governor has urged state voters to request absentee ballots, although use of the paper alternative raises different concerns about fraud.

A spokesman for the governor said the apparent distribution of the voting-machine software was troubling.

"This raises yet another unanswered question with regard to Diebold technology," said Henry Fawell, an Ehrlich spokesman.

The availability of the code - the written instructions that tell the machines what to do - is important because some computer scientists worry that the machines are vulnerable to malicious and virtually undetectable vote-switching software. An examination of the instructions would enable technology experts to identify flaws, but Diebold says the code is proprietary and does not allow public scrutiny of it.

Diebold has not confirmed that the code received by Kagan is authentic, said Mike Morrill, a spokesman for the company in Maryland. But Johns Hopkins University computer scientist Aviel Rubin reviewed one of the disks and said he believed it was genuine. If it wasn't, he said, "someone went to great lengths to make it look like it was."

"My feeling is that it may have come out of the testing labs, which means that if that's true, their procedures for protecting their clients' valuable proprietary information have failed," said Rubin, who in 2003 published a report on Diebold security flaws after discovering a copy of the code on the Internet.

"If it came out of Diebold, it's like Coca-Cola having their recipe exposed and then not learning their lesson," he said. "If it came out of the testing labs, then it's hard to blame the manufacturer."

Kagan, a former state Democratic delegate from Montgomery County who is now executive director of the Carl M. Freeman Foundation, said the disks were delivered to her office Wednesday.

An accompanying letter refers to the State Board of Elections and calls Kagan "the proud recipient of an 'abandoned baby Diebold source code' right from SBE accidentally picked up in this envelope, right in plain view at SBE. ... You have the software because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy."

Kagan called the attorney general's office, and word of the disks began to spread. Learning of the development, Linda H. Lamone, the state's elections chief, reported Kagan's possession of the code to the FBI yesterday.

Kagan said she had been contacted by an FBI investigator but had not met with him. "I intend to cooperate" with the inquiry, Kagan said, adding that she believed evidence of a serious security breach had to be revealed.

An FBI spokeswoman could not confirm yesterday the nature of the bureau's interest.

Morrill, the Diebold spokesman, said it was unlikely that the code was obtained in the manner outlined in the letter.

The codes, which were delivered to Kagan in three versions on separate disks, are proprietary - meaning there are restrictions on their use and duplication. Violators of those restrictions could be charged with crimes.

Based on their labels, the disks appear to be created by two companies that test the software - Wyle Laboratories and Ciber Inc., whose teams are based in Huntsville, Ala. Maryland law requires such independent testing before the equipment's use.

The disks have the testing authorities' names on them, as well as other identifying features. Anyone who had permission to handle these disks would have received passwords from Diebold, enabling investigators to trace those authorized to use them.

Morrill said two of three disks were never used and that the third was version 4.3.15c, which was used in Maryland during the 2004 primary.

Ross Goldstein, the state's deputy elections administrator, said Maryland now uses version 4.6 and that the public should be confident that their votes are secure.

The disks contain "nothing that's being used in this election," Goldstein said.

Diebold marketing director Mark Radke said the company is investigating the chain of custody of the disks and is asking its testing companies to pull their logs.

"These disks contain codes used for testing purposes," Radke said. "They were shipped from the testing authority. Diebold was never in the chain of custody."

Older versions of Diebold's computer code have long been in public circulation, including the copy discovered by Rubin.

This year, a team of Princeton University computer scientists obtained a slightly older version of the code than that sent to Kagan and found that a programmer with access to the voting machines and their passwords could install malicious software or viruses.

Some of the flaws could be remedied with quick fixes, the researchers said, but others were "architectural in nature" and could not be easily corrected without redesigning the machines.

"In any case, subsequent versions of the software should be assumed insecure until fully independent examination proves otherwise," the researchers wrote.

Diebold has consistently resisted pressures from computer and political scientists to make their software available to experts for critiques, a process called open-source software development.

Not doing that is "a mistake" on Diebold's part, said Donald F. Norris, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and director of the university's National Center for the Study of Elections.

(link to this story)

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Sinking to NEW lows

A little-known Republican group that claims to have swayed the 2004 presidential election with provocative radio advertising aimed at black and Hispanic audiences is spending nearly $1 million this year to boost the GOP's chances of holding on to a majority in Congress.

The group, America's Pac, began running ads last month in more than two dozen congressional districts.The campaign discusses issues ranging from warrantless wiretapping to school choice, but the most inflammatory spots pertain to abortion.

"Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies," a female announcer in one of the ads says, as rain, thunder, and a crying infant are heard in the background. "The Democratic Party supports these abortion laws that are decimating our people, but the individual's right to life is protected in the Republican platform. Democrats say they want our vote.Why don't they want our lives?"

Another ad features a dialogue between two men.

"If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," one of the men says.

"That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," the other replies.

"Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

Another spot attempts to link Democrats to a white supremacist who served as a Republican in the Louisiana Legislature, David Duke.The ad makes reference to Duke's trip to Syria last year, where he spoke at an anti-war rally.

"I can understand why a Ku Klux Klan cracker like David Duke makes nice with the terrorists,"a male voice in the ad says. "What I want to know is why so many of the Democrat politicians I helped elect are on the same side of the Iraq war as David Duke."

(read the rest of this story here)

10 Worst Congressman

Rolling Stone has a really great piece on the 10 Worst Congresspeople and guess what ... 9 of them are Republicans.

Eli Lilly learns self promotion

Drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. used questionable marketing practices to promote its drug to fight blood infections, according to several doctors. A whistleblower report in the New England Journal of Medicine accuses the company of initiating false reports of a shortage of the drug, Xigris.

The plan involved a public-relations firm hired by Eli Lilly, which then spread the word that its very expensive drug was being "rationed," the report says. It also included descriptions of physicians being "systematically forced" to decide who would live and who would die.

Xigris was designed to fight sepsis, a condition that kills more than 200,000 Americans annually. It is the only approved drug for sepsis, and it costs $8,000 to treat a single patient. Lilly hoped it would be a blockbuster, with sales of at least a billion dollars a year. But after five years on the market, sales are only $200 million.

That led the company to take unusual steps, according to Dr. Robert Danner, an infectious-disease expert at the National Institutes of Health. Danner emphasizes that in this case, he is speaking as a private citizen, not an NIH employee.

Danner says Lilly hired a P.R. firm that created the message that doctors were being forced to ration Xigris because of its high cost. That message was promoted by a newly formed task force on ethics. Lilly funded the task force with $2 million.

Next, a group of physicians, many with financial ties to Lilly, founded the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. Lilly provided the great majority of the funding. The campaign's first task was to formulate new practice guidelines for treating sepsis.

At least 11 medical groups endorsed the new guidelines. But the influential Infectious Diseases Society of America did not.

Dr. Naomi O'Grady chaired the panel of the Infectious Diseases Society that reviewed the guidelines.

"Let me choose my words carefully," said O'Grady, who is not involved with the current report. "This guideline really, I believe, was designed to promote a product."

O'Grady says her panel felt the guideline was developed hastily, and did not properly weigh the evidence for Xigris. The committee also didn't like the fact that Lilly funded the process.

Eli Lilly spokeswoman Judy Kay Moore insists that the company did not mastermind the ethics task force or steer the guideline-writing process.

And it was only a coincidence, Moore says, that the ethics task force and the Surviving Sepsis Campaign used the same P.R. firm, Belsito and Company.

We did not intend for or direct Belsito and Company to act on Lilly's behalf in this regard," Moore says. "Lilly did not recommend that they hire Belsito. And Lilly gave a grant to these groups and off they went to do their work."

But Lilly says that it is taking the criticism "very seriously."

Dr. Mitchell Levy, of Rhode Island Hospital, is a leader in the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. He says there's nothing wrong with a drug company funding the efforts, as long as everybody's open about it.

"In an ideal world, where there was enough NIH funding," Levy says, "for purity it would be great to not have to use industry funding."

Levy is working with a respected Massachusetts firm, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, to turn the complex treatment guidelines into a boiled-down version that hospitals pledge to implement.

Many believe the guidelines set the stage for how doctors ultimately will be paid -- that is, according to whether they adhere to treatment guidelines. Robert Danner, one of Eli Lilly's critics, says this gives drug companies an even greater motive to influence guideline-writing.

Keith Olbermann .. My Hero

I havent had a chance to watch this yet but I have read the transcript and again, Keith is right on the money.

Media Bias, Culture Warriors and Bush

Bush Meets To Keep Talk Radio Hosts In Line:

Yep thats the headline. Now our Glorious Leader is giving talking point tips to Talk Show Hosts to get them to get the "party line" message out. Wait, whos that there to the left of the Prez? Is that Sean Hannity? Doesnt he have both a radio talk show and a show on that little network Faux News? So the question begs to be asked, just how big of a sucker or idiot are you? I personally cant believe that anyone can watch Faux news, but I've seen the numbers, so I know that people do. What should be MORE frightening to anyone who reads this, is that the President is giving them TALKING POINTS for their shows. The so called "right wing" love to rant and rave about media bias and how the "leftist" agenda, gets propagated by the Main Stream Media. Just take a look at the article here and the picture and tell me if you think that that door doesnt swing BOTH ways.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Habeus Whatis?

This is from Wikipedia:

In common law countries, habeas corpus (/'heɪbiəs 'kɔɹpəs/), Latin for "you [should] have the body", is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

Now read this (even though its from the Washington Post)
White House national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Republican senators yesterday in an effort to reach final agreement on legislation that would govern the military trials of terrorism suspects, but they did not resolve a dispute over whether the captives should have access to U.S. courts.

The complex measure, which President Bush has called a top legislative priority, nonetheless appears likely to win approval by the time Congress adjourns at the end of this week. A vote is expected in the House today on a version of the legislation that the White House supports. It was unclear yesterday evening whether Republican leaders would allow any amendments to it.

The Senate-White House negotiations centered on what is known as a "court-stripping" provision that bars U.S. courts from considering habeas corpus filings by detainees over their confinement and treatment. It affirms the Bush administration's assertion that it has an incontestable right to hold persons detained as "unlawful enemy combatants" for the duration of the battle against terrorism.

"Habeas has to be resolved," and it will most likely be addressed on the Senate floor, John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters after meeting with Hadley. Senate Republican leadership aides said that the floor debate could begin today and that the legislation setting rules for military commissions, as they are known, might be combined with a bill to create a new fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Three foes of the habeas corpus provision -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) -- introduced yesterday an amendment to overturn the administration-backed provision by allowing foreign nationals in military or CIA custody to challenge the legality of their detentions after one year.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the suspension of the habeas corpus process, predicted that the Specter amendment "will be defeated, I think, in a bipartisan fashion, with a solid vote." But Graham said he has been exploring a different amendment on the matter, which he declined to describe.

Administration officials have said that the controversial provision is warranted because "unlawful enemy combatants" are not entitled to the same rights as regular soldiers or U.S. citizens; because isolation and the threat of indefinite detention aid U.S. interrogations; and because habeas corpus petitions could obstruct or delay the military trials of detainees.

But human rights groups and defense lawyers have condemned the provision as unconstitutional. They said it could leave detainees "to rot" in jail.

Thirty-one former ambassadors, including 20 who served in Republican administrations, jointly wrote Congress this week that "to eliminate habeas corpus relief for the citizens of other countries who have fallen into our hands cannot but make a mockery" of the administration's efforts to promote democracy. They also said that it would set a precedent that could jeopardize U.S. diplomats and military personnel overseas.

The negotiators also discussed yesterday a recent administration-backed change in the legislation to broaden the definition of potential unlawful enemy combatants in a way that would allow the government to detain and try a wider range of foreign nationals than envisioned earlier.

Other recent changes to the bill aroused controversy yesterday. In one, the administration and its House allies would give the defense secretary wide latitude to depart, without independent judicial scrutiny, from the rules and detainee protections the legislation would create. It would allow him to do so whenever he deems it "practicable or consistent with military or intelligence activities."

Georgetown University law professor Neal K. Katyal, who represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan in a case in which the Supreme Court overturned in June the administration's previous military-trial procedures, said the discretion, as written, is broad enough for the Defense Department to suspend a presumption of innocence for defendants. The new rules "themselves build in all the flexibility the secretary of defense needs to depart massively," Katyal said.

Other defense lawyers criticized yesterday recent changes that make it easier for prosecutors to introduce evidence without challenge and that eliminate defendants' right to examine all the evidence presented against them. The draft bill would, however, preserve defendants' right to respond to that evidence.


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Notice this one phrase if you notice nothing else:
to eliminate habeas corpus relief for the citizens of other countries who have fallen into our hands cannot but make a mockery of the administration's efforts to promote democracy.

Nuff Said.

Monday, October 09, 2006

New Holiday Proposal

As an American (and believe me thats not something I'm hugely proud of at this time,) I propose a new holiday. Its called Sense of Entitlement day. I mean why not. Check out my thoughts:

Christians and politicians would have a week a year to use however they wanted. Want your sense of entitlement all in one week? Sure why not. Want to use your sense of entitlement sparingly over the year? Go ahead its yours.
People that make over 30K a year would get a month a year. Hell what am I saying, they wouldnt listen anyway. Go nuts. Feel that sense of bloated ego ALL year long. Who am I to stop you?

(If your group isnt in here, contact me and I'll make a SPECIAL concession for you.)

What does anyone think? Good idea or not?

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Olbermann on Bush

Friday, October 06, 2006

Executive Power Grab Pt2

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it's appropriate for the administration to know what reports go to Congress and to review them beforehand.

"There can be a discussion on whether to accept a change or a nuance," she said. "It could be any number of things."

The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power.

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg said Bush is trying to subvert lawmakers' ability to accurately monitor activities of the executive branch of government.

"The Homeland Security Department has been setting up watch lists to determine who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed," said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

He said the Homeland Security Department has the most significant impact on citizens' privacy of any agency in the federal government.

Homeland Security agencies check airline passengers' names against terrorist watch lists and detain them if there's a match. They make sure transportation workers' backgrounds are investigated. They are working on several kinds of biometric ID cards that millions of people would have to carry.

The department's privacy office has put the brakes on some initiatives, such as using insecure radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, in travel documents. It also developed privacy policies after an uproar over the disclosure that airlines turned over their passengers' personal information to the government.

The last privacy report was submitted in February 2005.

Bush's signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."

His rationale was that it "rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

Executive Power Grab Free For All

WASHINGTON -- President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA's poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency's slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush's choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management.

To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency's director in last week's homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ``a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management" and ``not less than five years of executive leadership."

Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the Constitution, the FEMA provision interfered with his power to make personnel decisions.

The law, Bush wrote, ``purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the president may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

The homeland-security bill contained measures covering a range of topics, including terrorism, disaster preparedness, and illegal immigration. One provision calls for authorizing the construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border.

But Bush's signing statement challenged at least three-dozen laws specified in the bill. Among those he targeted is a provision that empowers the FEMA director to tell Congress about the nation's emergency management needs without White House permission. This law, Bush said, ``purports . . . to limit supervision of an executive branch official in the provision of advice to the Congress." Despite the law, he said, the FEMA director would be required to get clearance from the White House before telling lawmakers anything.

Bush said nothing of his objections when he signed the bill with a flourish in a ceremony Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. At the time, he proclaimed that the bill was ``an important piece of legislation that will highlight our government's highest responsibility, and that's to protect the American people."

The bill, he added, ``will also help our government better respond to emergencies and natural disasters by strengthening the capabilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Bush's remarks at the signing ceremony were quickly e-mailed to reporters, and the White House website highlighted the ceremony. By contrast, the White House minimized attention to the signing statement. When asked by the Globe on Wednesday afternoon if there would be a signing statement, the press office declined to comment, saying only that any such document, if it existed, would be issued in the ``usual way."

The press office posted the signing-statement document on its website around 8 p.m. Wednesday, after most reporters had gone home. The signing statement was not included in news reports yesterday on the bill-signing.

Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, who has been one of the harshest critics of FEMA's performance during Katrina, yesterday rejected Bush's suggestion that he can bypass the new FEMA laws.

Responding to questions from the Globe, Collins said there are numerous precedents for Congress establishing qualifications for executive branch positions, ranging from the solicitor general's post to the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

She also said that Congress has long authorized certain officials from a variety of departments ``to go directly to Congress with recommendations," pointing out that the FEMA director statute was modeled after a law that gives similar independence to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.

``I believe it is appropriate to extend this authority to the official tasked with leading the nation's response to disasters," she said.

Georgetown Law School professor Martin Lederman said Congress clearly has the power to set standards for positions such as the FEMA director, so long as the requirements leave a large enough pool of qualified candidates that the White House has ``ample room for choice."

``It's hard to imagine a more modest and reasonable congressional response to the Michael Brown fiasco," said Lederman, who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment about its signing statement.

In the past, the administration has defended the legality of its signing statements. It has also argued that because Congress often lumps many laws into a single package, it is sometimes impractical to veto a large bill on the basis of some parts being flawed .

At a June hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a Bush administration attorney, Michelle Boardman , noted that other US presidents have also used signing statements. She asserted that Bush's statements ``are not an abuse of power."

Bush's use of signing statements has attracted increasing attention over the past year. In December 2005, Bush asserted that he can bypass a statutory ban on torture. In March 2006, the president said he can disobey oversight provisions in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill.

In all, Bush has challenged more than 800 laws enacted since he took office, most of which he said intruded on his constitutional powers as president and commander in chief. By contrast, all previous presidents challenged a combined total of about 600 laws.

At the same time, Bush has virtually abandoned his veto power, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Bush has vetoed just one bill since taking office, the fewest of any president since the 19th century.

Earlier this year, the American Bar Association declared that Bush's use of signing statements was ``contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers."

Last month, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded that Bush's signing statements are ``an integral part" of his ``comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power" at the expense of the legislative branch.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Satan is a Democrat

Since the media has been saying both Denny Hastert and Mark Foley was, I can only assume then that both Satan AND (M)Anne Coulter are both now Dems too. Anyway, heres a great quote from Aristotle.

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
~~Aristotle

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Bashing Wal-Mart Yet Again

Simply because I love to ....... This article is from the Nation.

On September 11, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley used his veto power for the first time in seventeen years to block a measure that would have given Wal-Mart employees and workers at other "big box" stores at least $10 per hour plus benefits worth at least $3 per hour. The City Council had passed the bill by a 35-to-14 vote margin. Daley's brash act was a temporary victory for the chorus of conservative pundits and corporate flacks who have been singing Wal-Mart's virtues for the past year. Here's what they claim and why they are wrong:

1. Wal-Mart's low prices save American consumers $263 billion a year (cited by syndicated columnists Robert Samuelson, Sebastian Mallaby, John Tierney and George Will):

The Economic Policy Institute has ripped apart the methodology Wal-Mart's consultants used to come up with this most popular claim of the Wal-Mart pundits. The consultants based their finding on an analysis of the effect of Wal-Mart expansion in a locality on overall consumer prices in that area. The problem, as EPI points out, is that 60 percent of the consumer price index is made up of services like transportation and housing that Wal-Mart doesn't provide. Therefore, the $263 billion figure is wildly exaggerated.

Even Wal-Mart's recent announcement that it will sell generic drugs for $4 is mostly hype. According to the New York Times, the plan will only cover about 124 medicines (out of 11,000 generics on the market), and Wal-Mart was careful not to include relatively expensive but widely used drugs like the high-cholesterol treatment Zocor. In her forthcoming book Big-Box Swindle, Stacy Mitchell cites surveys in several states that have found it was independent pharmacies--not Wal-Mart--that had the lowest average prices on drugs.

While Wal-Mart's consumer benefits are clearly overrated, it's hard to dispute that the company sells a lot of cheap stuff. The question, then, is at what price? Slavery kept cotton prices low in the United States for centuries and saved consumers countless dollars. But it was wrong. Likewise, Wal-Mart's strategy of keeping costs down by exploiting sweatshop suppliers abroad while undermining unions and paying less than living wages in this country should be deemed unacceptable in the twenty-first century.

2. If Wal-Mart increases wages, it will have to increase prices (various pundits):

Wal-Mart knows, despite all the bluster to the contrary, that there is ample space in its profits ($11.2 billion in 2005) to increase wages without raising prices. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Wal-Mart could have raised the wages and benefits of each worker by more than $2,000 last year without raising prices--while still maintaining a profit margin substantially higher than Costco's. A key competitor, Costco pays its workers an average of $17 an hour. Wal-Mart claims it pays its full-time employees $10.11 per hour but refuses to reveal average pay for its part-time workers.

3. "When Wal-Mart opened a store in Glendale, Ariz., last year, it received 8,000 applications for 525 jobs, suggesting that not everyone believes the pay and benefits are unattractive" (Sebastian Mallaby):

In a global economy whose rules are rigged in favor of highly mobile global corporations, US workers have precious few choices in the job market. The country has hemorrhaged 3.4 million manufacturing jobs since 1998. Of the ten occupations projected to have the largest growth in coming years, five (retail sales, cashiers, food preparation, janitors and waiters) have median pay that is below the poverty line for a family of four. And even in this job market, more than half of Wal-Mart workers turn over every year, according to the group American Rights at Work.

4. If cities raise minimum wages, Wal-Mart and other big-box stores will go elsewhere:

This was Wal-Mart's top argument against the Chicago bill. In some instances, Wal-Mart has cut and run to escape pesky unions or regulations. In Quebec, where labor laws are stronger than in the United States, Wal-Mart closed down one store after workers dared to vote in a union, and the company has fought in the courts (albeit so far unsuccessfully) against unionization of a second store. In Germany, Wal-Mart withdrew completely, mostly because of low profits, but the firm had also chafed under the country's stringent labor and environmental regulations. And yet Wal-Mart has also demonstrated that it will bend when it deems the benefits outweigh the bottom line. For example, when British distribution center workers at Wal-Mart's Asda chain threatened to strike this spring, Wal-Mart chose not to bolt but to grant large concessions. Asda makes up 10 percent of the company's global sales.

In the United States, Wal-Mart has virtually saturated rural America. Thus, its future profits depend in good part on breaking into US urban markets. The only question is what standards will the world's largest retailer be asked to meet?

5. "Wal-Mart's health benefits are about as generous as those of comparable employers" (Sebastian Mallaby):

"Wal-mart doesn't pay high wages and benefits mainly because it's in an industry (retailing) where those are rare," notes economist Robert Samuelson. And Wal-Mart isn't the only employer with crummy wages and benefits. Pressure to compete with the Wal-Mart goliath makes it hard for everyone else to gain better wages and benefits. That was one of the tough lessons learned by the California grocery employees during the failed strike of 2003-04.

6. "Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates" (George Will):

Not so fast, George. Numerous studies indicate that Wal-Mart is a net job-killer. The Public Policy Institute of California found that Wal-Mart stores reduce employment in their local county's retail sector by 2 to 4 percent. A widely cited study by Iowa State University documented that rural communities (the focus of Wal-Mart's initial expansion) lost up to 47 percent of their retail trade ten years after the discount giant's arrival. A University of Illinois study forecast a likely net job decrease in Chicago's West Side if Wal-Mart came in.

7. "Wal-Mart has helped poor and middle class consumers--in fact, more than anybody else" (Richard Vedder):

This hyperbole comes from the American Enterprise Institute, one of four pro-Wal-Mart think tanks that have received grants from Wal-Mart's foundation. In fact, what Wal-Mart has helped to do is lower the earnings of poor and middle-class consumers. Studies by the University of California-Irvine and others show that when Wal-Mart enters a region, the area's overall wages tend to decline as competitors' higher-paying jobs are wiped out. This wage depression has been most severe in the southern United States, where Wal-Mart stores are most prevalent.

8. "The notion that a job is worthless without benefits is like saying a car is useless without a sunroof" (Tim Kane, Heritage Foundation):

Is healthcare really a frivolous "option"? According to an internal company memo, 46 percent of Wal-Mart workers' children either have no health insurance or are on Medicaid. The same memo reveals that less than half of Wal-Mart's associates are enrolled in the company health insurance plan, compared to the nearly 70 percent enrolled with most national employers.

Wal-Mart encourages its 1.3 million US employees to enroll in taxpayer-funded health programs. A number of studies have demonstrated the way Wal-Mart shifts its employee expenses onto taxpayers. A 2004 Congressional study estimated that taxpayers subsidize an average Wal-Mart store to the tune of more than $420,000 a year, or more than $2,000 per employee. This takes the form of government-funded food stamps, housing subsidies and health insurance programs. Another study found that the state of California spent a total of $86 million a year on public assistance for Wal-Mart workers, or more than $1,900 per worker. Wal-Mart employees were the largest users of state healthcare programs in eleven out of thirteen states that reported employer usage.

9. Wal-Mart is now "the green machine" (Fortune magazine):

In an apparent attempt to peel off some of its critics, Wal-Mart has announced a long list of environmental commitments. It has jumped into the organics market and set up a series of "sustainability" groups to get environmentalists' help on specific challenges, like reducing packaging and boosting truck fuel efficiency. The problem is that it's simply impossible for a business model so dependent on a fossil fuel-driven global supply chain to be sustainable. With more than 60,000 suppliers, Wal-Mart's supply chain emits 200 million metric tons of global warming pollution a year.

10. "Wal-Mart coming into a community expands the tax base and boosts overall community development" (various pundits):

It's just the opposite. Wal-Mart gets local and state taxpayers to provide substantial subsidies to Wal-Mart stores in the form of real estate development funds and reduced property taxes. One Good Jobs First study found that 90 percent of Wal-Mart distribution centers received tax breaks and other subsidies, valued at an average of $7.4 million per distribution center. Wal-Mart sought and received subsidies averaging about $2.8 million at 1,100 of their locations, about one-third of its US stores.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Stick A Ribbon On Your SUV

More Foley News

From ABC News:

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.

This message was dated April 2003, at approximately 7 p.m., according to the message time stamp.

Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft warned previous to 9/11 according to 9/11 Commission testimony

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

A new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post alleges that Rice failed to take the July 2001 warning seriously when it was delivered at a White House meeting by Tenet, Cofer Black, then the agency's chief of top counterterrorism, and a third CIA official whose identity remains protected.

Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, who became national security adviser after she became secretary of state, and Rice's top counterterrorism aide, Richard Clarke, also were present.

Woodward wrote that Tenet and Black considered the briefing the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. But, he wrote, the pair felt as if Rice gave them "the brush-off."

Speaking to reporters late Sunday en route to the Middle East, Rice said she had no recollection of what she called "the supposed meeting."

"What I'm quite certain of, is that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack and I refused to respond," she said.

Ashcroft, who resigned as attorney general on Nov. 9, 2004, told the Associated Press on Monday that it was "disappointing" that he never received the briefing, either.

But on Monday evening, Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack issued a statement confirming that she'd received the CIA briefing "on or around July 10" and had asked that it be given to Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

"The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks," McCormack said. "After this meeting, Dr. Rice asked that this same information be briefed to Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft. That briefing took place by July 17."

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no information "about what may or may not have been briefed" to Rumsfeld at Rice's request.

David Ayres, who was Ashcroft's chief of staff at the Justice Department, said that the former attorney general also has no recollection of a July 17, 2001, terrorist threat briefing. Later, Ayres said that Ashcroft could recall only a July 5 briefing on threats to U.S. interests abroad.

He said Ashcroft doesn't remember any briefing that summer that indicated that al-Qaida was planning to attack within the United States.

The CIA briefing didn't provide the exact timing or nature of a possible attack, nor did it predict whether it was likely to take place in the United States or overseas, said three former senior intelligence officials.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report remains highly classified.

The briefing "didn't say within the United States," said one former senior intelligence official. "It said on the United States, which could mean a ship, an embassy or inside the United States."

In the briefing, Tenet warned in very strong terms that intelligence from a variety of sources indicated that bin Laden's terrorist network was planning an attack on a U.S. target in the near future, said one of the officials.

"The briefing was intended to `connect the dots' contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden," said the official, who described the tone of the report as "scary."

It isn't clear what action, if any, the administration took in response, but officials said Rumsfeld was focused mostly on his plans to remake the Army into a smaller, high-tech force and deploy a national ballistic missile defense system.

Nor is it clear why the 9/11 commission never reported the briefing, which the intelligence officials said Tenet outlined to commission members Ben-Veniste and Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters. The State Department confirmed that the briefing materials were "made available to the 9/11 Commission, and Director Tenet was asked about this meeting when interviewed by the 9/11 Commission."

The three former senior intelligence officials, however, said Tenet raised the matter with the panel himself, displayed slides from the PowerPoint presentation and offered to testify on the matter in public.

Ben-Veniste confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004. He referred questions about why the commission omitted any mention of the briefing in its report to Zelikow, the report's main author. Zelikow didn't respond to e-mail and telephone queries from McClatchy Newspapers.

Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Ben-Veniste and the former senior intelligence officials all challenged some aspects of Woodward's account of the briefing given to Rice, including assertions that she failed to react to the warning and that it concerned an imminent attack inside the United States.

Clarke told McClatchy Newspapers that Rice focused in particular on the possible threat to President Bush at an upcoming summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, and promised to quickly schedule a high-level White House meeting on al-Qaida. That meeting took place on September 4, 2001.

Ben-Veniste said the commission was never told that Rice had brushed off the warning. According to Tenet, he said, Rice "understood the level of urgency he was communicating."

Can we NOW tell George to "Connect the Dots?" Really, why would anyone vote for a Republican now? Can anyone remember a few years ago when someone (and I wont mention names) talked about, in their stump speech, about returning dignity back to the White House. Is this their idea? Or maybe its the whole Foley/Hastert fiasco we currently are seeing unfold. When your own party turns against you, what does that say?

Monday, October 02, 2006

Reboot Democracy

Double Standard = dradnatS elbuoD

Gingrich: House GOP would have "been accused of gay bashing" if it "overly aggressively reacted" to Foley's emails in 2005

Discussing the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) with host Chris Wallace on the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Fox News political analyst and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that House Republicans would have "been accused of gay bashing" if they had "overly aggressively reacted" to Foley's allegedly inappropriate email communications with a 16-year-old male congressional page when House Republicans reportedly first learned of Foley's actions in late 2005. As Media Matters for America has noted, the House Republican leadership -- including House Majority Leader John Boehner (OH), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (NY), and a senior aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (IL) -- has reportedly known for months about Foley's emails. Wallace then asked: "How would it have been gay bashing?" Gingrich replied: "Because it was a male-male relationship," adding that "there was no proof" that Foley was a "predatory person."

Gingrich suggested that House Republican leaders would have been responding "overly aggressively" if they took action against Foley after reading his alleged emails because "the actual notes were relatively innocuous, there was nothing sexual in those notes." As the weblog Talking Points Memo has noted, House leaders have acknowledged that Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) had seen the emails; the blog also noted a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) said he and the clerk of the House had also seen the emails, while a Shimkus spokesman said Shimkus hadn't seen the emails. Boehner, Reynolds, and Hastert acknowledge being aware of the emails, but not having seen them directly. In the emails, Foley allegedly asked the page to "send me an email pic of you," remarked that a different page was "in really great shape," and asked the page "what do you want for your birthday" and "how old are you now?"

Further, if House leaders had investigated further, they might also have uncovered sexually explicit instant messages Foley reportedly sent to a House page in 2003.

From the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Before we get to the Clinton interview, let's start, as we always do, with the latest news. It now turns out that, as we said, top Republican House leaders knew for months that Congressman Mark Foley sent inappropriate emails to at least one 16-year-old male page. Speaker Gingrich, did House Republican leaders do all they should have?

GINGRICH: Well, I think if you look at what they actually knew, which was that the family did not want anyone involved and the actual notes were relatively innocuous, there was nothing sexual in those notes. They had him counseled. They had the head of the page program, Congressman Shimkus, talk to him very directly. And I think they thought that it was over. The newest incident only surfaced when ABC News interviewed Foley and he resigned within two hours, or I think the House leaders would have moved to expel him.

WALLACE: But during all those months they left Foley in the House Republican leadership. They left him as the head of the congressional caucus dealing with exploited children. No second thoughts about that?

GINGRICH: Well, you could have second thoughts about it, but I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would also have been accused of gay bashing. I mean, the original notes had no sexual innuendo and the parents did not want any action taken.

WALLACE: How would it have been gay bashing?

GINGRICH: Because it was a male-male relationship. And they had no -- there was no proof, there was nothing that I know of in that initial round that would have led you to say in a normal circumstance that this is a predatory person.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Your new constitution

As there have lately been so many changes to the basic functioning of the United States -- a shift of powers here, a whittling away of rights there, it seems a good time to issue a revised version of the basic operating document. This is the real Republican Contract with America.

We the Republicans of the United States, in Order to prevent any challenge to our continued Supremacy, free ourselves from the Confines of Justice, placate the Tranquil masses, degrade the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of War Profiteering for ourselves and our Friends, do ordain and establish Constitution 2.0 for the United States of America.

ARTICLE I
Section 1
All legislative Powers are hereby ceded to the Executive branch, though the Congress will still make a Grand Noise and wave their arms as if they give a Damn.

Section 2
The House of Representatives will consist of those best able to Lick the Boots of the Lobbyists and Corporations lining their pockets.

No one can be a Representative unless Fox News says that he is a Patriotic American,

Representation shall be apportioned based on numbers of people willing to Pay for the Privilege. The actual Enumeration shall be made whenever it is of benefit to Republicans.

Representatives will choose a Speaker and other Officers by how willing these Officers are to turn a blind eye to the Crimes of Republicans and how Loudly they will Declare the Daily Talking Points.

Section 3
The Senate shall... oh hell, just see Section 1.

The Vice President shall be President of the Senate and can use any Four Letter Word he wants in talking to Senators, so F-You, Leahy.

Section 4
Elections will be held whenever Diebold is prepared to provide the Right Results.

Section 5
Each House shall make a mockery of policing itself and shall be free to throw out all the Democrats they want, but Republicans who engage in Pederasty shall be protected.

Section 6
Republican Senators and Representatives will enjoy a Revolving Door of organizations who pay for votes, and give them jobs any time they are taking a break.

Section 7
The House and Senate shall apply a large Rubber Stamp to every suggestion issued by the President.

Section 8
The House shall raise all the taxes they want on the poor and middle-class so long as they leave the Rich alone.

The Congress will dodge all responsibility for decisions on War.

Section 9
The rules of Immigration shall be set in a way that protects Republican majorities.

Section 10
Any treaties are not worth the paper they are Written on.

ARTICLE II
Section 1
The President can do anything he wants, that's what's good about being President. Heh heh.

Section 2
The President can wear any uniform he wants and pretend to fly planes.

Section 3
The President and the Congress should split some beers now and then, but he doesn't have to invite any Democrats.

Section 4
Having sex is a good Reason to get rid of a President. Lying, being Incompetent, Wasting Billions, and getting Thousands of Americans Killed, is fine.

ARTICLE III
This Article was full of that Judge stuff, so we just took it out.

ARTICLE IV
We can declare any place we want part of the United States so they can call their stuff "Made in the USA," but don't go thinking they get representation.

ARTICLE V
Amendments to the Constitution will only be for Really Important Stuff, like how scared we are of Homos and Foreign People.

ARTICLE VI
You can ignore any part of this Constitution if it gets in the way of Profit or something that gets Republicans elected.

ARTICLE VII
People are supposed to be afraid all the Time, otherwise they do too damn much Thinking.

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