The Lantern Brigade

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2009-10-21T13:25:00.001-05:00

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Blogging Elsewhere

2007-08-01T12:09:00.002-05:00

One of our main posters has been diagnosed with Stage Three Lung Cancer, so a few of us are busy with other forms of activism and a few more will be posting at:

http://www.independentsunbound.blogspot.com

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Will There Ever Be Accountability For The Bush Regime?

2007-07-29T08:26:00.000-05:00

And that includes everyone who has helped them cover-up their crimes as well as those who are complicit in them.

How Many Other Crimes Have Been Covered Up?

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 07/27/2007 - 4:15pm. Shirley Smith

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

BuzzFlash,

This won't go away, but it says a whole lot for our military, doesn't it? They have really ruined their reputations along with this criminal Bush GOP regime. How many other people have been killed by their own military service members? We know that many Iraqi people have been killed for no reason other than they were just there in front of a US gun. Rather than pursue a killer, the military just covers it up, as if they don't owe this family a thing, and if he hadn't been so well known, would the US military have ever been questioned? How far up did those orders to cover up come from, I wonder? But US military can go to jail promptly for being against Bush's invasion, and for just speaking out. Now they are after the protesters, too. Talk about morality. When are these treasonous dictatorial actions going to be challenged?

Well, this cover up of a murder shouldn't be as strange a scenario as it sounds, since Bush is still occupying the Oval Office. He's responsible for close to A million deaths, thousands of wounded due to lies ... and we don't know anything yet, because this has been such a secretive Bush GOP administration ... and, that's another crime gone unattended.

Who in the hell do they think they are, this treasonous Bush regime? Someone should tell them in such a way that they will remember for a long, long time. Prosecution and justice would probably do just that.

AP: New details on Tillman's death - Yahoo! News

When the carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq is finally over, which will take some strong leadership, certainly not Republican, watch out for the lawsuits from all around the world. Which, brings to mind, that it could be the last thing that this Bush/Cheney GOP group want, is to be stuck with the aftermath of this crime scene that has been allowed to go on for six to seven years. It's becoming so bad, it's not like Bush to want to stick around. However, the world is not going to turn their backs and let this Bush GOP regime off the hook. And, that includes the American people, too.

That's why they need to be stopped. We have no idea what all they've done to this country. They have stripped US government bare. Robbed Americans blind, and haven't slowed down. Accountability, a word Bush has never heard.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

2007-07-25T17:50:00.000-05:00

A man walked up to Dick Cheney, calmly told him he thought his Iraq policy was reprehensible, and walked away. A few minutes later he was arrested by the Secret Service, in front of his 8-year-old son, for "assault".

When he asked what would happen to his child, the Secret Service said, "He can be sent to Child Services." Luckily, the boy found his mother and was safe.

But the citizen who practiced his free speech spent a few hours in jail before he was released.

This is a story that was just told by Matthew Rothschild on Thom Hartmann's radio show.

Increasingly, we are being intimidated into suppressing any attempt at dissent. Rothschild wrote a book about it, documenting the above incident and more.

Add that to your mental list of infringements on our freedoms. You know, the ones that are disappearing on a sickeningly regular basis.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Voter Registration Drives: Targeted by stupid laws in some states

2007-07-25T17:23:00.000-05:00

By the GOP no doubt, who would rather that no one voted except idol worshipers of corporate America and the crusading crack-pots of the so called Christian-right.

Actually it isn't just the GOP. Some Blue States have joined in.

If this is happening it is very bad news and the Senate should do whatever it can to stop it.

Are Voter Registration Drives Being Put Out of Business?
By Steven Rosenfeld
AlterNet

Wednesday 25 July 2007

After the wave of successes in 2004 voter registration drives by groups like ACORN, a half-dozen states passed severe laws that scared off voting activists - and now the Senate is weighing in.

In 2004, Floridians overwhelmingly voted to raise their state minimum wage after low-income advocates collected ballot petition signatures, registered thousands of new voters and turned out the vote. The following spring, Florida's Republican-majority Legislature reacted. It passed a law that so severely regulated voter registration drives that before the 2006 primary, Florida's League of Women Voters stopped registering voters for the first time in its history. The League feared mistakes on just 14 voter registration forms could result in penalties equal to its entire $70,000 budget.

Florida's actions were not unique. In Ohio, where the 2004 presidential election lingered as its Electoral College votes were challenged in Congress, Ohio's Republican-majority Legislature passed a series of election reforms including tough new rules and penalties for voter registration drives. In 2006, that law stopped the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, and community and church groups from registering voters in the state.

"In Florida, it absolutely shut down voter registration by all groups going up through the primary election of 2006," said Wendy Weiser, Deputy Director of the Brennan Center, a New York-based public-interest law firm that challenged the Florida and Ohio laws. "In Ohio, before there was an injunction in the case, voter registration was halted."

Both Florida's and Ohio's voter registration laws were challenged in court and were enjoined, or suspended, before the 2006 election allowing voter registration to resume. Federal judges found they violated First Amendment rights and were hurting efforts to sign up new voters. But the trend of regulating voter registration drives did not end there. Between the 2004 election and today, six other states adopted similar laws - Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, Missouri and Washington - and like-minded bills have been proposed in New Jersey, Arizona and elsewhere, according to the Brennan Center.

Not all of these laws were passed by Republican partisans seeking political revenge. But the line between ensuring an accurate registration process and intentionally suppressing voters is very thin, according to academics, opponents and supporters of these laws. On Wednesday, July 23, the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on sections of an election reform bill (The Ballot Integrity Act of 2007 or S. 1487) that would ban states from passing laws that would negatively impact voter registration drives.

"I think it is a real serious concern," said Dan Tokaji, Assistant Professor of Law at Ohio State University and an election law expert. "There are constitutional rights, free speech rights and petition rights at issue. What has a lot of voting rights activists concerned is states with GOP-dominated legislatures are going to put a lot of voter registration groups out of business."

American democracy depends on private groups more than the government to register voters. As a result, registration efforts have always been sources of political friction.

"The attempts to restrict registration and attempts to smear groups that attempt to register voters comes from people who don't think those voters are likely to support them," said Kevin Whelan, ACORN communications director. "I think there is another response to people who don't like to see a lot of minority voters coming onto the rolls. They could campaign for those votes."

"It was done to address real needs," said William Todd, president of the Ohio chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association, speaking of his state's voter registration reforms that were since found to be unconstitutional. "Ohio was not alone in not having an updated election code. People hadn't looked at some of those laws in 50 years."

"There were two stories that stuck in my mind," he said, recalling lobbying for the laws. "Certainly there were a handful of fraudulent registrations here and there. The other thing was the state organization of election officials was complaining that there were certain groups that would save registration cards of months and then dump them on the boards of election at the last minute. Because they were brought in in such an untidy manner, the boards couldn't verify them and process them and people lost the opportunity to vote."

ACORN's voter registration efforts have been criticized in more severe tones by the GOP and their allies - especially in the heat of a close election. Between 2005 and 2006, the group registered 1.6 million voters in 23 states, Whelan said. In Ohio in 2005, ACORN and other voter registration groups working in Ohio were sued by "The Free Enterprise Coalition," a GOP-funded group that promoted voter fraud concerns and disappeared after litigation began, causing the suit to be dismissed. However, in other states some problems were found with some of ACORN's voter registration forms, although the politics surrounding the most high-profile example is murky at best.

In Kansas City, Missouri, four ACORN temporary workers were indicted on felony charges of falsifying seven voter registration forms just days before the 2006 midterm election. ACORN had alerted state authorities and had been cooperating with the FBI, Whelan said, but the interim U.S. Attorney, Bradley Schlozman, went against established Justice Department procedure and announced the indictments. While the ACORN workers later pleaded guilty, Whelan said the number of voter registrations affected was "less than a fraction of a fraction of one percent" of all its registrations nationwide. Still, that did not stop the Republican Party from accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election, the very political meddling the Justice Department policy was intended to prevent.

Republicans, for their part, also had problems with submitting fraudulent voter registrations. In late October 2006, just before Election Day, 11 volunteers working for the Republican Party of Orange County, California, were charged with registration fraud after they submitted registration forms where Democratic voters were misidentified up as members of the Republican Party. And in Nevada, a firm that the Republican National Committee hired to register voters, Voters Outreach of America, was found to be throwing out registrations for Democrats while turning in forms for Republicans.

But election law experts say problems like these, whether in Kansas City, Orange County or Las Vegas are by far the exception - not the rule. Moreover, they say new state laws passed since 2004 that have already impeded hundreds of thousands of voters from registering are a much bigger concern and of an entirely different magnitude.

"The numbers are enormous," said the Brennan Center's Wendy Wieser, speaking of the voter registration restrictions that were in effect in Florida and Ohio in 2006. "But they weren't as effective as they were intended to be. They were thrown out. They were effective when they were in place."

"They got into a huge fight in Ohio on whether the regulations were onerous and punitive," the Republican National Lawyers Association's Todd said. "But if you register a person to vote, you have an obligation to turn the registration in, and make sure they are registered and can vote."

Ohio State's Dan Tokaji said the Senate Rule Committee's hearing was timely, because both political parties are now jockeying for position before the next presidential election.

"It is a perfect time to be talking about this," he said. "I expect there would be all kinds of efforts by other states and GOP-dominated legislatures to regulate voter registration between now and 2008."

----------

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

....and may he have the unlimited power of Ken Starr

2007-07-25T12:10:00.001-05:00

Like this is gonna happen? Puleeze, get a damn grip.

The Bushites are some of the worst criminals ever to inhabit the White House.

Everyone in DC is either in on the crime or scared witless of the criminals.

That leaves the rest of us......

Special Prosecutor Weighed for Gonzales
By Lara Jakes Jordan
The Associated Press

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Angry senators suggested a special prosecutor should investigate misconduct at the Justice Department, accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday of deceit on the prosecutor firings and President Bush's eavesdropping program.

Democrats and Republicans alike hammered Gonzales in four hours of testimony as he denied trying, as White House counsel in 2004, to push a hospitalized attorney general into approving a counterterror program that the Justice Department then viewed as illegal.

Gonzales, alternately appearing wearied and seething, vowed anew to remain in his job even as senators told him outright they believe he is unqualified to stay.

He would not answer numerous questions, including whether the Bush administration would bar its U.S. attorneys from pursuing contempt charges against current and former White House officials who have defied congressional subpoenas for their testimony.

"It's hard to see anything but a pattern of intentionally misleading Congress again and again," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Gonzales during the often-bitter Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Shouldn't the attorney general of the United States meet a higher standard?"

"Obviously, there have been instances where I have not met that standard, and I've tried to correct that," Gonzales answered.

The hearing rekindled a political furor that began with last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys and led to disclosure of a Justice Department hiring process that favored Republican loyalists. Gonzales has soldiered on with Bush's support, despite repeated calls for his resignation and questions about his role in a hospital room confrontation with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft over whether to renew a classified but potentially illegal national security program.

"Of course the president continues to have full confidence in the attorney general," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said after the hearing ended. "We have every reason to believe that the attorney general testified truthfully."

In one withering exchange, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., noted a potential need for a special prosecutor to bring contempt citations against two White House officials who have refused to testify about the U.S. attorney firings. The House Judiciary Committee will vote Wednesday on the citations against Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers.

Normally, the U.S. attorney in Washington would bring such criminal contempt cases to a federal grand jury for possible indictment and prosecution. But the Justice Department, in a letter sent to lawmakers Tuesday, said criminal contempt of Congress law "does not apply" to the president or his aides when they invoke executive privilege.

Despite repeated questions, Gonzales refused to say whether he would allow a presidentially appointed prosecutor to investigate White House aides who Bush has said are covered by executive privilege and therefore exempt from talking.

That leaves open the door for presidents to shut down the checks-and-balances of congressional oversight, Specter said.

"You're asking me a question that's related to an ongoing controversy," Gonzales protested.

Specter, top Republican on the panel, said he was merely asking if Gonzales recognized the constitutional problem at hand.

"Would you focus on my question for just a minute, please?" Specter asked.

He added: "I'm not going to pursue that question, Mr. Attorney General, because I see it's hopeless.... You're the attorney general, and you're also a lawyer. And we're dealing with a very fundamental controversy."

In another flashpoint, Gonzales denied he tried to pressure the ailing Ashcroft into renewing the counterterror program in March 2004, as recounted in testimony earlier this year by former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey. At the time, Ashcroft refused to give his OK to Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andy Card, saying he had delegated authority to make that decision to Comey, who questioned the program's legality.

Gonzales described the encounter at Ashcroft's hospital bedside as having come at the bidding of congressional leaders who urged the administration to continue the program. He said he and Card "didn't press him. We said, 'Thank you,' and we left."

"We went there because we thought it was important for him to know where the congressional leadership was on this," Gonzales said.

Later, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gonzales was "untruthful" Tuesday in describing the White House meeting where the congressional leaders supposedly approved continuing the program. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who also would have been included, said in a statement he has "no recollection of such a meeting and believe that it didn't occur."

"I am quite certain that at no time did we encourage the AG or anyone else to take such actions," Daschle said in the statement in response to reporters' questions.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Gonzales stands by his testimony.

Senators furiously accused Gonzales of misleading them a year ago when he testified there were no internal objections to the eavesdropping program that targeted suspected terrorists in the United States. Gonzales, however, said the hospital confrontation dealt with a different intelligence program that he would not identify.

"The disagreement that occurred, and the reason for the visit to the hospital, senator, was about other intelligence activities," Gonzales said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Gonzales' refusal to answer direct questions about the program demonstrated deceit.

"How can you say you should stay on as attorney general when we go through exercises like this?" Schumer asked. "You want to be attorney general, you should be able to clarify it yourself."

"There's a discrepancy here in sworn testimony," added committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "We're going to have to ask who's telling the truth, who's not."

After numerous apologies and promises to repair the Justice Department, the normally placid Gonzales was visibly frustrated and at times angered at senators unwillingness to move past the controversy. He flinched as the hearing ended and protesters loudly heckled him as he shook lawmakers' hands.

Yet Gonzales also tried to appease senators who asked why he hasn't resigned.

"Would you please explain to us why the administration of justice and the American people would not be better served by somebody sitting in the office who does not have all of the problems that you possess with respect to believability, credibility, confidence, trust?" asked Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis.

"Ultimately I have to decide whether or not it would be better for me to leave or just stay and try to fix the problems," Gonzales said with a rueful smile. "I've decided to stay and fix the problems."

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

The Debate

2007-07-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

What Americans Want -- A Response to the CNN/YouTube Candidate Q&A

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 07/24/2007 - 5:07pm. Analysis

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

First, kudos to CNN for its groundbreaking presentation of presidential candidates responding to citizens' questions. It was a breath of fresh air compared to most television treatment of politics.

Now, to the candidates ...

Most Americans have rejected the Bush/Cheney approach to leading our country. We are looking to the Democrats for a dramatic change, and change now, not just in 2008.

Real leadership from the Democratic presidential "hopefuls" requires a coalition and unity against the Bush administration -- real action -- whether it be to move forward on impeachment, or to stop war funding, or to find other ways to effectively block the Bush administration's efforts to extend and consolidate their grasp on power. But such positions must be taken in consultation and as a group. The Democrats must join together to choose a way forward, and not leave each other out to twist in the wind if the right-wing attacks start.

We need the top tier of Democratic leadership, in Congress and in the presidential primary race, to stop competing with each other and to effect change now. Taking action against Bush and Cheney can also include bipartisan action to preserve and reaffirm the American values that the Bush administration has trashed. Americans really do believe in due process and checks and balances. Republicans, too, understand that Bush and Cheney do not represent them.

The Democratic leadership must not be distracted by the primary season, because Bush and Cheney are not. The Executive Branch is out of control. As lame ducks, Bush and Cheney see themselves as beyond the reach of traditional checks and balances. Certainly they've shown contempt for ordinary citizens and for Congress and the Judiciary. Meanwhile, with them still in charge, America's Constitution and our international standing continue to deteriorate. Precious lives continue to be sacrificed for ill-defined reasons.

Those calling themselves Democrats must come together and show their ability to change America's course now. Our political leaders need to really hear, through YouTube and other interactions with grassroots America, that business as usual won't cut it. It simply plays into the hands of those currently in control. And if the Democratic leadership does its most important job now, the 2008 presidential election will reflect that.

Let's also hope that CNN and all the mass media corporations will come to recognize that controlled, scripted, sanitized interactions between the presidential candidates and the people they seek to represent are unacceptable.

A democracy is government by the people, is it not? The media's role is to enable the people to do a good job of governing. They can do that by digging up serious information and asking hard questions, and also by getting out of the way.

Don't give us more pundits. Don't give us critiques of dress and hairstyle. Give us investigative, probing journalism -- and continue to involve citizens, as you have done with this groundbreaking YouTube format. It's good democracy and good television.

Resources:

YouTube: The Debates

CNN: Your voice to be heard in historic debates

Most Americans see President Bush as intransigent on Iraq and prefer that the Democratic-controlled Congress make decisions about a possible withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Gonzo is in "deep doo-doo," as Poppy would say.

2007-07-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

But is anything going to be done about any if it?

That is the $64 Billion questions.

Capitol Hill's leading daily seems to have it in for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Today's headline from yesterday's hearings? "Gonzales Digs Deeper Hole."

After finishing up his latest round of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales may have more than his credibility to lose. Wednesday's (paid-restricted) Roll Call reports the AG "may have put himself in legal jeopardy" as senators from both parties cast doubt on the veracity of his testimony.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) put it bluntly: "I do not find your testimony credible." He reminded Gonzales that the entire committee would review his testimony, in an apparent threat of legal consequences for lying to Congress.

Gonzales clashed with other senators over the many conflicting and shifting elements of his and others' testimony surrounding a 2004 trip Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andy Card took to visit then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the hospital to gain approval for the President's warrantless wiretapping program.

In his testimony, Gonzales revealed for the first time a meeting with the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- the two top Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers' Intelligence committees -- on the same day as the Ashcroft hospital visit, where the members of Congress were supposedly briefed on "vitally important intelligence activities."

In revealing this meeting, Gonzales may have undercut his previous testimony in which he claimed the disagreement at the Justice Department was "not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

One "Gang of Eight" member, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who was present at this classified briefing took issue with Gonzales even speaking about the meeting, "'The attorney general is selectively declassifying material from a classified briefing, which I find improper.'"

Meanwhile, Harman questioned the appropriateness of Gonzales even revealing that there had been a classified Gang of Eight meeting.

"He doesn’t have the authority to do that," she added.

Another "gang member," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), when asked if he believed Gonzales had perjured himself, responded, ""Based upon what I know about it, I'd have to say yes."

Leahy Draws Obvious Conclsuions

2007-07-25T11:02:00.002-05:00

They are gonna get Rover yet.... or we will.

The DOJ is in a state of crisis. I don't trust a damn thing they do, and no American should until the Bushites are gone and in prison.

Senator Leahy Accuses Rove of Firings

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com

Senator Patrick Leahy kicked off an oversight hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by accusing top White House adviser Karl Rove of playing a key role in the firing of 8 US Attorneys. "The accumulated and essentially uncontroverted evidence is that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year," the committee's chairman said. "The evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House. ." Leahy also described a Justice Department in a state of 'crisis.' He worried that most of the senior leadership in the department had resigned. -Raw Story

Click Here For The Full Story

Leahy Draws Obvious Conclsuions

2007-07-25T11:02:00.001-05:00

They are gonna get Rover yet.... or we will.

The DOJ is in a state of crisis. I don't trust a damn thing they do, and no American should until the Bushites are gone and in prison.

Senator Leahy Accuses Rove of Firings

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com

We, the people, have had it too easy for too long.

2007-07-25T10:41:00.000-05:00

Its about to get really rough.

Are we up to it?

Are we ready for what will follow?

Time to Take Action; Depending on Congress is Not Enough

by Rob Kall

http://www.opednews.com

Alcoholics living the 12 steps face the fact that there are things they can't change. We progressives must face the fact that there are things the Democratic congress WON'T change. We're going to have to do it some other way.

Our faith in America's resilience is certainly being tested and has been since Bush took office. The extreme actions, policies and strategies Bush has been taking-- abusing executive privilege, the signing statements, along with the support of the judges he appointed without senate confirmation suggest that faith in the constitution is not enough. We must fight to protect it, because the congress-- our elected officials are failing to do so.

That can start NOW. It can be a people/grassroots initiated process. YOU can start. Instead of writing about what's wrong with America TODAY, with all your heart, in all your articles, you can put a half or a third or quarter of your energy into writing about your visions of what the next phase of a free, just, democratic America looks like. You can write about what it looks like at a national, international or local level. You can write about the media, about elections, about the environment, about the workplace, about rights, about research... anything. Become a futurist for democracy and the constitution. Become a warrior for the future of peace and freedom. Forget about just depending upon our legislators. Ultimately, we may be able to persuade them, but if we don't do it first, now, and if we don't get tough and determined, strong and dedicated and courageous about it, like our children's futures depend upon it, IT won't happen.

Another reason the USA is in such deep doo doo, at such great risk of losing so much, is because the media we have depended upon to play an essential role in the protection of our democracy have failed us. They have, as they've morphed from mainstream media to megacorporation controlled lamestream media, betrayed the people and the nation who provide them with their license to operate on the airways.

It has become clear, since the November '06 elections and the resultant unable and unwilling to get anything done congress-- that it is not enough to just sit back and depend upon elected legislators to fix the problems, to fight the fights that must be fought.

We-- you and I and the people you and I recruit must take on the job.

WE must build the organizational structures.

WE must recruit the warriors who take on the corporations and the weak, election money blinded and impaired members of congress who are doing nothing or getting in the way of getting done what must be done to rescue America.

WE must reach out to other nations and the people in other nations to find help-- allies, funding, advisors who will help us take our fight against the breakdown of freedoms, the encroaching fascism that is growing in America.

I am not, at least not at this time, talking about violence, armed revolution or even breaking any laws. I AM talking about getting much tougher working within the law-- using all the tools that activists and revolutionaries throughout the world have already used. We do need to support the leaders we already do have who have been willing to engage in acts of civil disobedience for the sake of our freedoms. We need to build funds for bailing them out and defending them.

The challenge, when the fight is ramped up to the next level, is leaders will be at greater risk for being attacked and picked off-- probably by many-- the power holders on the right, the weak lefties, like the DLC, the Democrat supporters who don't get it that the Democrats are also part of the problem, as long as money plays as big a role as it does in elections.

We need to learn from people who have gone all the way to full revolution and beyond, to successful change in government. Again, I'm not advocating for revolution, but that we learn about all the tools and learn about what to do when your political group wins. Currently, if we on the left did "WIN" and take back America, we'd probably lose it, almost immediately, to the centrist lefties who watched we on the further left who did the heavy lifting. We'd lose it to them because we don't have well laid out, formulated and expressed plans for what to DO when we win. It is essential that if progressives are going to ever take back America-- from the right wingers- republican and democrat alike-- we must have a lot more intellectual, visionary infrastructure already built and in place-- leaders and thinkers who are envisioning what a Renaissance constitutional America will look like and how it will operate, what changes will be made-- beyond getting rid of the bad guys and revoking and reversing the worst of the rules they've put into place or suspended.

I must confess that I wrote this after writing a review of Giocondo Belli's autobiography. Read the review, then read her book.

Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.

BTW, the book Rob's holding in his photo is "HISTORY OF THE REBELLION" volume 3. by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, published 1816, describing the rebellion among the Irish and Scots, around 1656. This was a religious war between the Church of England, Catholics and Presbyterians. The Earl, writing for the Queen, calls the Irish far worse than terrorists.

The Showdown Begins!

2007-07-25T09:57:00.001-05:00

No big deal, just the future of this country and her people.

Report Suggests Laws Broken in Attorney Firings

By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; A03

House Democrats, preparing for a vote today on contempt citations against President Bush's chief of staff and former counsel, produced a report yesterday that for the first time alleges specific ways that several administration officials may have broken the law during the multiple firings of U.S. attorneys.

The report says that Congress's seven-month investigation into the firings raises "serious concerns" that senior White House and Justice Department aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year may have obstructed justice and violated federal statutes that protect civil service employees, prohibit political retaliation against government officials and cover presidential records.

The 52-page memorandum, from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), seeks to explain why Democrats are trying to overcome an effort by the White House to shield officials and documents from the congressional inquiry through a claim of executive privilege. The report also provides the first written account of the Democrats' interpretation of the firings and the administration's response to the controversy.

The investigation "has uncovered serious evidence of wrongdoing by the department and White House staff," Conyers says.

The memorandum says the probe has turned up evidence that some of the U.S. attorneys were improperly selected for firing because of their handling of vote fraud allegations, public corruption cases or other cases that could affect close elections. It also says that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior Justice aides "appear to have made false or misleading statements to Congress, many of which sought to minimize the role of White House personnel."

In addition, the memorandum asserts repeatedly that the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was the first administration official to broach the idea of firing U.S. attorneys shortly after the 2004 election -- an assertion the White House has said is not true.

In one of more than 300 footnotes, the Democrats point to a Jan. 6, 2005, e-mail from an assistant White House counsel that says that Rove "stopped by to ask . . . how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. attorneys, whether we were going to allow them to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc."

The memorandum says that lawmakers need access to White House information to determine whether laws were broken and to rewrite laws regarding U.S. attorneys.

Yesterday evening, White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto responded to the Democrats' contentions by saying: "Repeating unsubstantiated assertions over and over again won't make them come true. After months of hearings and thousands of pages of documents, the committee appears to have now shown what little they have to show for it."

Conyers released the memorandum to Judiciary Committee members, who are set to vote on two contempt-of-Congress resolutions. One is against White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who is the custodian of the e-mails and other documents related to the firings that lawmakers have been seeking. The other is against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, who was subpoenaed to testify before the panel two weeks ago but did not appear.

Last week, White House officials vowed that if the full House holds the two officials in contempt, they would block lawmakers' ability to bring the charges before a federal judge by preventing any U.S. attorney from pursuing such a case. The administration cited a 1984 Justice Department legal opinion, never adjudicated in the courts, that said that a federal prosecutor cannot be compelled to bring a case seeking to override a president's executive privilege claim.

In the memorandum, the Democrats provide the first legal justification for countering the White House's view, saying that the 1984 legal opinion "does not apply here." For one thing, the Democrats contend, Bush has not invoked the privilege properly because he has not furnished a signed statement or "privilege logs" specifying the documents being withheld. In addition, the memo says, "there is not the slightest indication" the 1984 opinion would apply to a former executive branch official, such as Miers.

Have you met Karl Rove? (LOL)

2007-07-25T09:18:00.001-05:00

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings tells us what we already know: Karl Rove has no game.

HuffPo:

The secretary of education was ready to talk student loans and No Child Left Behind when interviewed by Washington Post editors and reporters last week. So maybe she was taken aback when asked why she turned down Karl Rove when he asked her out in the early ’80s.

(Rove later joked it took his ego “decades to recover.”)

Spellings paused, then said: “Have you met Karl Rove?

“He was so inept and so inartful,” she added. “I mean, I couldn’t even understand.”

Ouch.

So, Why Are Tourists Avoiding the U.S.?

2007-07-25T09:07:00.001-05:00

The travel and tourist industry is one of the United State’s biggest money-makers, generating $103 billion in tax revenue every year. Without this tax revenue, every American household would pay nearly $1,000 more in taxes every a year. But while the travel business is flourishing internationally, tourism to America has been on a steep decline, dropping 36 percent between 1992 and 2005, with a loss of $43 billion in 2005 alone. The nation’s international tourism balance of trade declined more than 70 percent over the past 10 years - from $26.3 billion in 1996 to $7.4 billion in 2005.

People are simply choosing to go elsewhere. But as a follow-on to Logan Murphy’s excellent post on the increasing invasion of privacy by the soon-to-be approved Passenger Name Record for passengers entering international airports, allow me to present a personal view into why tourists are deciding not to spend their money visiting the States.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

Or maybe they are just trying to avoid the coming lock-down, maybe they don't want to be in the same country with the evil ones in the White House or maybe everyone really does hate us. After the last 6 1/2 years, that is a distinct possibility.

Lil' Alberto Is In Dire Need of....

2007-07-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

...a neurologist and/or a good lawyer, because he either has Alzheimer's Disease or he is a criminal.

Either way, he must not remain in office.

His performance today at a hearing on the Hill leaves no doubt that he had been and is involved in the continuing crimes of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and perjury before congress. These are crimes against our constitution and against the American people.

Let the record show that the government of the USA continues to be run by criminals who have nothing but contempt for the majority of the Americans people.

Their interest is and always has been the amassing of unconstitutionally broad powers for the executive, while treating Congress as if they, and the decent press and news media, are simply obstacles to their agendas, to be removed at any cost.

When this White House, or any White House, shows nothing but contempt for our elected officials in congress, who are charged with oversight of the executive, and plays silly games with what honest news media we still have and who are charged with informing the American people, that White House is showing it's contempt for us.

Leahy, Specter Lay Into Gonzales
By Paul Kiel
TPM Muckraker

Tuesday 24 July 2007

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) failed to disguise their contempt for Alberto Gonzales in their opening statements. Leahy, after running down the laundry list of Gonzales' failures and instances of questionable testimony, said that the administration's stance on their surveillance programs was "just trust us." Well, "I don't trust you," said Leahy.

Specter was no more sparing in his criticism. Pointing out that the Justice Department suffered from a "lack of credibility, candidly, your credibility," Specter went on a tear of his own ("the list goes on and on"). On Gonzales' infamous visit to John Ashcroft's hospital bed in order to get the ill attorney general to sign off on the president's surveillance program, Specter said "It's just decimating, Mr. attorney general, to your judgment and your credibility."

Below is Leahy's opening statement as prepared.

From Leahy's written opening statement:

Three months ago, when Attorney General Gonzales last appeared before this Committee, I said that the Department of Justice was experiencing a crisis of leadership perhaps unrivaled during its history. Unfortunately, that crisis has not abated. Until there is independence, transparency and accountability, it will continue. The Attorney General has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people. Through oversight we hope to restore balance and accountability to the Executive Branch. The Department of Justice must be restored to be worthy of its name. It should not be reduced to another political arm of the White House. The trust and confidence of the American people in federal law enforcement must be restored. With the Department shrouded in scandal, the Deputy Attorney General has announced his resignation. The nominee to become Associate Attorney General requested that his nomination be withdrawn rather than testify under oath at a confirmation hearing. The Attorney General's chief of staff, the Deputy Attorney General's chief of staff, the Department's White House liaison and the White House Political Director have all resigned, as have others. I would joke that the last one out the door should turn out the lights, but the Department of Justice is too important for that - we need to shine more light there, not less. The investigation into the firing for partisan purposes of United States Attorneys, who had been appointed by this President, along with an ever-growing series of controversies and scandals have revealed an Administration driven by a vision of an all-powerful Executive over our constitutional system of checks and balances, that values loyalty over judgment, secrecy over openness, and ideology over competence. The accumulated and essentially uncontroverted evidence is that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year. Testimony and documents show that the list was compiled based on input from the highest political ranks in the White House, that senior officials were apparently focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions, on whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases, and that the reasons given for these firings were contrived as part of a cover up. What the White House stonewalling is preventing is conclusive evidence of who made the decisions to fire these federal prosecutors. We know from the testimony that it was not the President. Everyone who has testified has said that he was not involved. None of the senior officials at the Department of Justice could testify how people were added to the list or the real reasons that people were included among the federal prosecutors to be replaced. Indeed, the evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House. The stonewalling by the White House raises the question: What is it that the White House is so desperate to hide? The White House has asserted blanket claims of executive privilege, despite officials' contentions that the President was not involved. They refuse to provide a factual basis for their blanket claims, have instructed former White House officials not to testify about what they know, and then instructed Harriet Miers to refuse even to appear as required by a House Judiciary Committee subpoena. Now, anonymous officials are claiming that the statutory mechanism to test White House assertions of Executive privilege no longer governs. In essence this White House asserts that its claim of privilege is the final word, that Congress may not review it, and that no court can review it. Here, again, this White House claims to be above the law. My oath, unlike those who have apparently sworn their allegiance to this President, is to the United States Constitution. I believe in checks and balances and in the rule of law. Despite the stonewalling and obstruction, we have learned that Todd Graves, U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Missouri was fired after he expressed reservations about a lawsuit that would have stripped many African-American voters from the rolls in Missouri. When the Attorney General replaced Mr. Graves with Bradley Schlozman, the person pushing the lawsuit, that case was filed and ultimately thrown out of court. Once in place in Missouri though, Mr. Schlozman also brought indictments on the eve of a closely contested election, despite the Justice Department policy not to do so. This is what happens when a responsible prosecutor is replaced by a "loyal Bushie" for partisan, political purposes. Mr. Schlozman also bragged about hiring ideological soulmates. Monica Goodling likewise admitted "crossing the line" when she used a political litmus test for career prosecutors and immigration judges. Rather than keep federal law enforcement above politics, this Administration is more intent on placing its actions above the law. The Attorney General admitted recently in a video for Justice employees that injecting politics into the Department's hiring is unacceptable. But is he committed to corrective action and routing out the partisanship in federal law enforcement? His lack of independence and tendency to act as if he were the President's lawyer rather than the Attorney General of the United States makes that doubtful. From the infamous torture memo, to Mr. Gonzales' attempt to prevail on a hospitalized Attorney General Ashcroft to certify an illegal eavesdropping program, to the recent opinion seeking to justify Harriet Miers' contemptuous refusal to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department has been reduced to the role of enabler for this Administration. What we need instead is genuine accountability and real independence. We learned earlier this year of systematic misuse and abuse of National Security Letters, a powerful tool for the Government to obtain personal information without the approval of a court or prosecutor. The Attorney General has said he had no inkling of these or other problems with vastly expanded investigative powers. Now we know otherwise. Recent documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and reported in The Washington Post indicate that the Attorney General was receiving reports in 2005 and 2006 of violations in connection with the PATRIOT Act and abuses of National Security Letters. Yet, when the Attorney General testified under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in April 2005, he said that "[t]he track record established over the past three years has demonstrated the effectiveness of the safeguards of civil liberties put in place when the Act was passed." Earlier this month, in responses to written questions I sent to the Attorney General about when he first learned of problems with National Security Letters, he once again failed to mention these reports of problems. Only with the openness and honesty that brings true accountability will the Department begin to move forward and correct the problems of the last few years. Instead, we have leadership at the Department of Justice whose expressions of concern and admissions that mistakes were made only follow public revelations and amount to regrets that their excesses were uncovered. In the wake of growing reports of abuses of National Security Letters, the Attorney General announced a new internal program. This supposed self-examination, with no involvement by the courts, no report to Congress, and no other outside check, essentially translates to "trust us." With a history of civil liberties abuses and cover-ups, this Administration has squandered our trust. Earlier internal reviews, like the Intelligence Oversight Board and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have been ineffective and inactive, failing to take action on the violations reported to them. Only with a real check from outside of the Executive branch can we have any confidence that abuses will be curbed and balance restored. A tragic dimension of the ongoing crisis of leadership at the Justice Department is the undermining of good people and the crucial work that it does. Thousands of honest, hard-working prosecutors, agents, and other civil servants labor every day to detect and prevent crime, uncover corruption, promote equality and justice, and keep us safe from terrorism. Sadly, prosecutions will now be questioned as politically-motivated and evidence will be suspected of having been obtained in violation of laws and civil liberties. Once the government shows a disregard for the independence of the justice system and the rule of law, it is very hard to restore the people's faith. This Committee will do its best to try to restore independence, accountability, and commitment to the rule of law to the operations of the Justice Department.

Mitt Romney Is acting like a heathen

2007-07-24T13:12:00.000-05:00

This is truly disgusting to anyone with any sense of decency in them!

Of course it isn't the first time democrats have been compared to people like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

Remember Max Clelland in Georgia and the very nauseating Senator Chambliss back in 2002? Same thing, but not on a national scale.

As my grandpa used to say, "some people should be taken out-back and horse-whipped.

Mitt Catches S**t Over Hillary-Bashing Sign

Posted Jul 21st 2007 8:02AM by TMZ Staff
Filed under: Wacky and Weird

Not everyone is a fan of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but comparing them to one of the most dastardly pieces of human excrement of all time -- that might be bit much. Especially for a presidential candidate.

TMZ obtained photos of presidential candidate Mitt Romney trying to win over grammatically challenged South Carolinians Thursday by holding a sign that said, "No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea's Moma."

Maybe he just doesn't like modern art?

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

No Damned Confidence!!!!

2007-07-24T11:02:00.001-05:00

After even the last week, let alone what has gone before, can anyone have any confidence in this administration or the GOP in general.

These people are power-drunk madmen who do not seem to know the difference between right and wrong.

It's one thing for a person to say, hey I know it's against the law, but I'm going to do it anyway because I think the law is silly to begin with and/or by breaking it, I'm not going to be hurting anyone else; like the cancer patient who smokes Cannabis so they can endure chemotherapy or live with horrid diseases like MS or the man who is driving his wife to the hospital late at night, on an empty highway, and decides he is going to break the speed limit, while continuing to drive carefully and with alertness.

It is quite another for someone to argue that what they are doing is right no matter what the law says and no matter whom it hurts and says to hell with anyone who disagrees. This kind of person believes he is the law, is so superior to other human beings that he, alone, can and must be must be entrusted with knowing when and where to toss the Constitution, Habeas Corpus and every other law upon which our society is dependent for relative order, safety and freedom to pursue that which makes us happy, or at least not quite as miserable as we could be.

The Bushites do not seem to understand why every department in the executive should not be politicized and made into an extension of the Republican party.

Well, here's why?

There are many of us out here who do not wish to contribute one red cent to the GOP, or any other party for that matter, because we see the whole damn system as corrupted, probably beyond repair. But when the Bush White House, in the persons of Karl Rove, Sara Taylor, for example, gives regular political briefings to the heads of agencies, including the names of targeted democrats in 2008, tax-payers are being forced to contribute to the GOP. If that isn't against the law it sure as hell ought to be. Tax payers should not be supporting any party with their tax dollars. That's about the most anti-American idea I've heard yet.

And Ambassadors are being briefed?

WTF ?

I hate to even speculate on why Ambassadors are being briefed on political targets in 2008. What are they going to do with the information?

What's next? I don't want to think.

The head of the Peace Corps?

Well, that borders on blasphemy.

Diplomats Received Political Briefings
Bush Aides Listed Election Targets

By Paul Kane
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 24, 2007; A01

White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.

The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The documents show for the first time how the White House sought to ensure that even its appointees involved in foreign policy were kept attuned to the administration's election goals. Such briefings occurred semi-regularly over the past six years for staffers dealing with domestic policy, White House officials have previously acknowledged.

In one instance, State Department aides attended a White House meeting at which political officials examined the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004, according to documents the department provided to the Senate committee.

On Jan. 4, just after the 2006 elections tossed the Republicans out of congressional power, Rove met at the White House with six U.S. ambassadors to key European missions and the consul general to Bermuda while the diplomats were in Washington for a State Department conference.

According to a department letter to the Senate panel, Rove explained the White House views on the electoral disaster while Sara M. Taylor, then the director of White House political affairs, showed a PowerPoint presentation that pinned most of the electoral blame on "corrupt" GOP lawmakers and "complacent incumbents." One chart in Taylor's presentation highlighted the GOP's top 36 targets among House Democrats for the 2008 election.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, asked whether the briefings inappropriately politicized the diplomatic agencies or violated prohibitions against political work by most federal employees.

"I do not understand why ambassadors, in Washington on official duty, would be briefed by White House officials on which Democratic House members are considered top targets by the Republican party for defeat in 2008. Nor do I understand why department employees would need to be briefed on 'key media markets' in states that are 'competitive' for the president," Biden wrote.

His aides said Biden plans to raise the matter at a confirmation hearing today for Henrietta Holsman Fore to be administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose political appointees received at least two White House briefings in the past 10 months, as well as at an oversight hearing tomorrow on the Peace Corps.

Several months ago, White House aides said that about 20 private briefings were held in 15 agencies before the 2006 midterms and that other briefings were held irregularly throughout Bush's first term.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel found, in a May report, that General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan violated the Hatch Act when she allegedly asked GSA political appointees how they could "help our candidates" win the next election at a January briefing by White House officials. The Hatch Act insulates virtually all federal workers from partisan politics and bars the use of federal resources -- including office buildings, phones and computers -- for partisan purposes.

Doan has denied any wrongdoing.

Spokesmen for the State Department, the Peace Corps and USAID said that only political appointees were invited to the briefings and that attendance was not compulsory. They also said that no specific actions were subsequently taken to boost political campaigns.

"We believe that these briefings were entirely appropriate," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "They conformed with all the applicable regulations."

The ambassadors included in the Rove briefing were Eduardo Aguirre Jr. of Spain, James P. Cain of Denmark, Alfred Hoffman Jr. of Portugal, Ronald Spogli of Italy, Craig Stapleton of France and Robert Tuttle of Britain. Gregory Slayton, the consul general to Bermuda, also attended.

In total, the seven diplomats donated more than $1.6 million to Republican causes from 2000 through 2006, according to a Center for Responsive Politics report on large Bush donors who were named ambassadors. The State Department, in a letter to Biden, said that Cain -- one of Bush's top fundraisers in North Carolina -- requested the meeting with Rove and did not notify department officials in advance.

The briefings struck some former ambassadors as highly unusual.

"That just didn't happen. Frankly, I am shocked to hear it," said former senator James Sasser (D-Tenn.), who served as President Bill Clinton's ambassador to China in the late 1990s. "I'm one who strongly believes that politics ought to end at the water's edge."

James Dobbins, who was an ambassador in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said that some senior diplomats and State Department officials come from political backgrounds and stay informed through back channels.

But Dobbins, who rose through the Foreign Service ranks, said that he never attended an organized meeting for political appointees.

"I don't know of any methodical effort to inform presidential appointees of the state of play in the domestic political arena," he said.

The Peace Corps briefing occurred in 2003 with about 15 political appointees, said Amanda Beck, a spokeswoman for the agency. The central mission of the Peace Corps is sending volunteers into Third World nations to help with development.

Beck, who said she attended the March 2003 "recap" of the 2002 elections, said the appointees who attended the briefing "did it on our free time during the day." She added: "It was a courtesy to political appointees," offered by the White House, and "there was no suggestion of getting involved in anything" campaign related.

J. Scott Jennings, the White House political director, separately led two briefings for USAID officials, one last fall before the midterm elections and another in February, with 20 to 30 aides on hand for each. One was held at the agency's headquarters, and the second was held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, according to an agency letter to Biden.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel dismissed Biden's notion that ambassadors and political appointees from agencies such as the Peace Corps should be walled off from partisan politics. "Why shouldn't the president's appointees have our understanding of the political landscape?" he asked.

Biden sent letters in early May to Rice and the heads of six other agencies under his committee's jurisdiction after an April 26 report in The Washington Post about briefings from Taylor and Jennings. Four of the agencies -- the Overseas Private Investment Corp., the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the Millennium Challenge Corp. -- reported that no political briefings were held for their top officials.

Poll: In Lowest Blow Yet, People favor Democrats in Congress on Iraq

2007-07-23T23:22:00.001-05:00

Poll Finds Democrats Favored On War
But Bush, Congress Both Get Low Ratings on Iraq

By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 24, 2007; A01

As the president and Congress spar over war policy, both receive negative marks from the public for their handling of the situation in Iraq. But by a large margin, Americans trust Democrats rather than the president to find a solution to a conflict that remains enormously unpopular. And more than six in 10 in the new poll said Congress should have the final say on when to bring the troops home.

The president has steadfastly asserted his power as commander in chief to make decisions about the war, but his posture is now viewed by majorities of Democrats, independents and even Republicans as too inflexible. Asked whether Bush is willing enough to change policies on Iraq, nearly eight in 10 Americans said no.

Since December, the percentage seeing Bush as too rigid has increased 12 points, with the most significant change among Republicans. Just after the 2006 midterm elections and the release of the 79-point plan from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, 55 percent of Republicans thought Bush was willing enough to change course in Iraq; in this poll, 55 percent of Republicans said he is not.

Bush's overall approval rating equals its all-time low in Post-ABC News polls at 33 percent, with 65 percent disapproving. Fifty-two percent said they "strongly" disapprove of his job performance, the highest figure of his presidency and more than three times the 16 percent who strongly approve.

Three-quarters of Republicans approve of the way he is handling his job, but just one in 10 Democrats and three in 10 independents give him positive marks.

The war has been the single biggest drag on the president's approval ratings.

Thirty-one percent give him positive marks on handling the situation in Iraq, which is near his career low on the issue. The last time a majority approved of the president's handling of the war was in January 2004.

Even among those Americans who said they had served or had a close friend or relative who served in Iraq, 38 percent approve of Bush's handling of the conflict.

At the same time, Congress fares little better with the public on the war. Just 35 percent said they approve of the way congressional Democrats are handling the situation in Iraq, with 63 percent disapproving. Two-thirds of independents give the Democrats negative marks on the war.

The latest poll was conducted July 18 to 21 among a random sample of 1,125 adults, just after Senate Democrats failed to pass legislation that would set a timetable for the start of troop withdrawals from the war zone. The results have a three-percentage-point margin of sampling error.

Overall approval of Congress stands at 37 percent in the new poll, with the 60 percent disapproval rating equal to public dissatisfaction with the Republican-controlled Congress late last year. Congress's approval rating has declined over the past three months because self-identified Democrats have soured in their assessment.

Congressional Democrats still receive higher marks than their Republican counterparts for their performance, but independents give both parties equally negative reviews.

But when it comes to judging the president versus congressional Democrats on the issue of Iraq, the public stands with Congress. Fifty-five percent said they trust congressional Democrats on the war, compared with 32 percent who said they trust Bush. (Eleven percent of all respondents and 17 percent of independents said they trust "neither.") And by 2 to 1, Americans said Congress, rather than the president, should make the final decision about when to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. Nearly three in 10 Republicans side with Congress over the president on this question.

Many would like Congress to assert itself on Iraq, and about half of poll respondents said congressional Democrats have done "too little" to get Bush to change his war policy. Democrats are especially eager for more action from their party's lawmakers: 61 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of liberal Democrats said not enough has been done to prod Bush on the issue.

The central challenge for legislators from both parties is that the deep schism in Congress over Iraq war policy mirrors a wide partisan divide on many questions about the situation there.

Overall attitudes about the conflict continue to be decidedly negative, with more than six in 10 saying that given the costs, the war was not worth fighting. Most Democrats and independents in the poll said the war was not worth fighting, but most Republicans continue to say it has been worth the costs.

And the broad disagreements between partisans are not isolated to previous decisions.

A narrow majority -- 55 percent -- support legislation that would set a deadline of next spring for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, but while that measure is backed by 72 percent of Democrats and six in 10 independents, only a quarter of Republicans are on board.

A Senate effort to append such a timeline to a defense authorization bill failed to get the requisite 60 votes in the Senate; it was defeated 52 to 47.

There is also no agreement across party lines on the timing of U.S. troop withdrawals. About six in 10 said forces should be withdrawn to avoid further casualties, even if civil order is not restored, and 56 percent want to decrease the forces in Iraq. Both figures are at new highs, but few Republicans agree with either position.

Even among Democrats, there is no consensus about the timing of any troop withdrawal. While three-quarters want to decrease the number of troops in Iraq, only a third advocate a complete, immediate withdrawal. There is even less support for that option among independents (15 percent) and Republicans (6 percent).

There is, however, more universal, bipartisan backing for several other proposals that have been floated, including changing the strategic mission from direct combat to training and support, instituting new rules on troop rest time, and reducing aid to the Iraqi government if it fails to meet certain benchmarks. Majorities across party lines support each of these potential policy shifts.

Few are confident that the Iraqi government has the ability to meet its commitments to restore civil order. But again partisan views diverge: 55 percent of Republicans are at least somewhat confident that the Iraqis will meet their benchmarks, an outlook shared by about three in 10 Democrats and independents.

And as for the new U.S. efforts to restore security in Iraq, most in the poll said the "surge" has not made much difference, and nearly two-thirds said that the additional troops will not improve the situation over the next few months.

This broad pessimism provides an early read that the public may not be as willing as some in Congress to suspend judgment about the strategy until Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, delivers his much-anticipated assessment in mid-September.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Bush executive privilege claim is an impeachable offense

2007-07-23T23:12:00.000-05:00

What ARE we waiting for?

Elizabeth De La Vega Says Attempt to use Executive Privilege to Stymie Contempt Proceedings by U.S. Attorney Would Be 'Grounds for Impeachment'

Conyers Asks 'What Are We Waiting For?' at Event in San Diego According to Caller on Peter B. Collins Show...

Heat for Impeachment continues to build as a former U.S. Prosecutor told me yesterday that she feels "it's almost as if the Bush administration is asking to be impeached," and as Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) reportedly opened an appearance with a crowd of supporters on Friday by proclaiming, "What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out!"

While discussing the extraordinary claim reported Friday from an anonymous senior administration official in the Washington Post, charging that George W. Bush has the power to order his Dept. of Justice to not pursue criminal contempt charges as brought by the House against his own administration, former Asst. U.S. Attorney Elizabeth de la Vega made a rather notable point of her own.

Calling it "shocking" and noting that the claim was made only by an anonymous source --- not actually announced as official policy by Bush --- de la Vega, the author of United States V. George W. Bush et al., told me that, should such an extraordinary legal argument be made as official policy, that action in and of itself would be an impeachable offense as she sees it.

She made the point during our on-air discussion about Impeachment during Friday's Peter B. Collins radio show which I am Guest Hosting weekdays through July 27. (An audio clip of the exchange is posted at the end of this article)

"Congress really needs to get serious, at this point, because [the administration is] just being completely defiant and have absolutely no grounds for taking this position," she told me.

"I really think, it's almost as if the Bush administration is asking to be impeached," she said. "It is not true that the President can instruct the Department of Justice not to charge his own people. Especially when he's implicated in this as well."

In reference to the administration's claims of Executive Privilege to block the Congressional subpoenas for testimony and documents from former Bush attorney Harriet Miers and current Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, de la Vega advised Congress to ignore the claims made by the unnamed official and proceed with contempt charges.

If Bush should make that legal argument officially, that in itself would be grounds for impeachment, according to the former federal prosecutor...

"They should just proceed and completely ignore what the President has said right now --- because he actually hasn't said it in any formal way, in fact, no one has even ascribed a name to the person who is saying it."

"They should proceed. Find these two [Miers and Bolton] in contempt and refer the matter to the D.C. U.S. Attorney. At that point, if the President says to the U.S. Attorney in a formal way, 'You can't proceed' that is a grounds for impeachment."

She noted that the entire matter is "very similar to...Article 3 in the Impeachment Articles against Nixon which was for defying Congressional subpoenas."

Later during the same hour of the show, a caller who was present at an event where Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the Chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee where Impeachment proceedings would need to be launched, said the Congressman stunned the crowd with his opening statement.

"What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out," Conyers reportedly told the enthusiastic crowd at a Progressive Democrats of America event in San Diego. He later repeated the same line according to the caller, "KPete," who wrote more about the event at Democratic Underground yesterday. She reported that the comment was met by "huge cheers."

A similar account of Conyers's statement was offered by progressive talk show host Bree Walker who also attended the same event.

Conyers reportedly urged patience in the process, and asked for everyone's support as things moved forward first with Cheney, and then with Bush.

The entire hour on Impeachment from Friday's show with de la Vega can be heard as archived on this previous post.

Brad Freidman

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Christopher Shays' Troubling Outburst

2007-07-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

It's nice to know that congressmen are having the same kind of meltdowns we see on a regular basis in the hinterlands. So far they are mostly directed at some poor schmuck who has the misfortune to work at a gas station/convenience store.

People are stressed, and with very good reason.

My Left Nutmeg:

According to sources familiar with the event, the outburst began after Officer Randy Cooper informed a staff member that he could not bring a tour through a lower west front door that has restricted access. One source said that after Cooper informed the staffer that the family could not enter through the door, the staffer called Shays and tried to have the officer speak with him. When the officer refused, Shays himself came down to the post and proceeded to “scream obscenities” at Cooper before touching his nametag to read it in the rain and storming away.

Update: Other recent acts that might have caused a neutral observer to question Shays’ mental state have included attacking NASA scientist James Hansen in a committee hearing, literally screaming at the widows of Blackwater contractors who had died in Iraq in a committee hearing, and dismissing Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” and not torture, among others.

How much you want to bet this won’t get nearly the airtime as Cynthia McKinney’s outburst last year?

UPDATE: It looks like Shays has apologized. According to the Guardian, Shays was trying to meet with a family of constituents, not give them a tour.

Americans Get The Government They Deserve

2007-07-23T09:50:00.003-05:00

Democracy really isn't a spectator sport, no matter what CNN, MSNBC and Faux Noise would have us believe, with their nightly yell-a-thons, loaded questions from so-called Journalists like Tucker Carlson and Billo and nauseating cheerleading for the most corrupt administration in American history.

It's really no wonder that Americans don't pay attention to what's going on, but they had damned well better start.

A good first step? Shoot your TeeVee, or use it for video viewing only.

The Assault on Due Process and Civil Liberties
By Ian Welsh
Firedoglake

Saturday 21 July 2007

One event that caused a lot of discussion and concern this week (with Paul Craig Roberts going so far as to say it was the last necessary piece being put in place before a possible coup) was the release of a Presidential order giving the administration the power to freeze assets of any person or entity considered to be "undermining" efforts to stabilize Iraq. The order is very broad, but according to a couple of lawyers I consulted, probably not illegal, and may not be unconstitutional (unless you really do read the Constitution with strict attention to original intent, which despite their claims, few Supreme Court judges do.)

To me what was interesting about the order, aside from the apocalyptic possibilities (which I don't, frankly, rule out as "unthinkable") was both that it's probably legal and that it's really nothing very extraordinary.

No, not extraordinary. The US has been allowing assets to be frozen and to be seized; has been allowing punishments to be inflicted for decades. This is just taking the refusal to follow due process to its logical extreme.

Now I'm neither a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, and the last time I took a course in the law was over 20 years ago. But here's my layman's understanding of what's supposed to happen before someone can be punished severely in countries with due process protections.

Be charged with a crime;

Have their day in court;

Have competent counsel of their choicel

Being able to face their accuser and see the evidence against them; and,

Have the judge able to take into consideration the circumstances of the crime in sentencing after a Jury (for serious crimes) has determined guilt

Let's run through those one at a time:

Being Charged With a Crime

The joke about the "War on Terror" is that it's the "War on Drugs ... on crack". As with most good jokes, it hurts and it's funny, because it's true - the "War on Drugs" is where America lost a lot of its civil liberties and due process. Under a series of laws passed starting in 1970 with the "Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention Act" and codifying horrible incentives in the "1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act" law enforcement received the ability to seize goods under civil forfeiture procedures. Unlike criminal forfeiture in civil there is no need that the owner of the property ever be convicted of the crime, only that the piece of property itself be convicted, under the less civil burden of proof of "probable cause" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt". Since the property is seized, then the owner has to go to court and in effect "prove" it wasn't used in a drug crime, and since court time is expensive, one study (Blumenson and Nilsen 1998) found that 90% are uncontested More damningly, another (Schneider and Flaherty 1991), found that in 80% of cases the owner was never convicted of a crime.(pdf)

But the worst thing about these forfeiture laws is that the majority of the money (usually 80%) stays with the law enforcement agency that performed the seizure. I trust I don't have to go into great detail about the perverse incentives this creates.

The freezing of "terrorist" assets done at the beginning of the "war on terror" was in this tradition - where "war" against an ill-defined enemy (drugs, terror) is used to justify taking people's possessions away without every proving they've committed a crime. So is this week's order.

The no-fly list is another case of "punishment without being charged or convicted". You get on it, you don't know why, you can't find out why, and you can't appeal to a court to get yourself off. Not being able to fly is a pretty significant penalty, and with talk of extended the no-fly list to ships; with the extension of a no-fly list to Canada, it's bordering on becoming an exit visa requirement. Pretty soon you'll have to drive to Mexico and take a flight from there if you want to leave the US. Refusal to allow citizens to leave the state is practically the definition of an un-free nation, and while the US isn't there yet, step by step, it's walking the path.

Having Their Day in Court

Ninety percent of all court cases are settled through a plea bargain. Plea bargaining is relatively recent - it didn't exist at the time of the founders, and didn't really start occurring until the very late 19th century, though even then it appears to have been less common than today. The poorer you are the more likely you are to take a plea bargain. If your black, or Latino, odds are you'll get a worse bargain for the exact same crime. According to the sentencing project:

In the United States, more than 90 percent of all cases in the justice system are settled by plea bargaining rather than exercising the right to trial. The rate of felony convictions of nonviolent crimes in communities of color is over-whelming: African Americans constitute 13 percent of all drug users, yet they represent 35 percent of arrests, 55 percent of convictions and 74 percent of prison sentences, according to a 2000 study by the Sentencing Project.

Incarceration Rates by Country


(Photo: firedoglake.com)

The assumption in the system as it stands today is that you won't have a trial. In fact, as the chart to the side here shows, the US system probably couldn't function if everyone got their day in court - there aren't enough courts, prosecutors, judges and so on to handle the flood. If pleading out was made illegal, the majority of cases would have to be thrown out (since they couldn't be tried quickly enough to meet requirements for a speedy trial.) One might argue that pleading is necessary, but one might equally note that not all countries use it (it's illegal in Scandinavian countries, for example).

Again, the War on (some) Drugs bears a lot of responsibility for this.

... increased incarceration of drug offenders has done little to decrease the number of people participating in illicit drug activities. 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 can be attributed to drug convictions (USDOJ 1997). At the state level, the number of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses showed an almost three-fold increase from 1986 to 1995 (9% to 23%) (Haney and Zimbardo 1998).

All of this might be considered "worth it", except for the fact that there's little evidence that the "War on Drugs" has done anything to decrease the amount of drugs on the market or reduce the number of addicts. It has, however, acted nicely as a price support for drugs, supported many rural communities through the construction of prisons (where rural whites lock up urban blacks, pretty much) and increased the budgets of many law enforcement agents greatly (and as any ex-bureaucrat knows, all organizations exist to grow, if not kept carefully under control.)

All of this is before you even get to Padilla, the case against whom should simply have been thrown out because of gross due process concerns.

It's also before you get to government spying on its own citizens, which operates in the sweet catch-22 of "it's a secret who we're spying on and because you can't prove we're spying on you in particular, you have no standing to sue, so the courts can't overturn it." Maybe, maybe not - it still hasn't made its way to the Supremes, but I think it's safe to say that the court as currently constituted can't be counted on not to adopt such reasoning.

How many people a nation locks up is largely a policy choice. America locks up a ton of people because America chooses to do so. Locking up too many people is a direct assault on justice, because it requires an assembly line process for dealing with those accused of crimes. Justice requires taking individual circumstances into account and dies when people are treated as just backlogs to be cleared.

There is a march towards making as much law as possible administrative - towards restricting the right to use the courts. The most recent (and thankfully unsuccessful) was in the late Immigration bill. One of the nastier provisions, which few commented on, was that everyone in the country, to get a job, had to be checked against a national database. If the database said you weren't legal - no job. But Congress, in writing it up, restricted the right of appeal to the courts. Restricting people's ability to use the courts to get redress again concentrates power in the executive and makes bureaucrats unaccountable.

Competent Counsel of the Accused's Choice

This isn't a modern problem, this is as old as our system. The rich get good counsel, the poor, if they're lucky, get an overworked public defender who, even if he gives a damn, simply doesn't have the time and resources to give them the best defense. And so the richer you are, for the same crime, the more likely you are to get off. If you're white you're more likely to get off than Latinos or blacks; if your Latino, more likely to get off than a black.

Under Bush, as usually, this has reached ludicrous levels - with counsel to prisoners denied both denied access and spied on regularly (violating client-lawyer confidentiality). To be fair, in Guantanmo the American legal community has had perhaps its finest hour - with lawyers from the most prestigious white shoe firms taking on case after case, while the firms eat its cost. It's things like this - the willingness of lawyers to see the bright line has been crossed that gives me hope for America. But it's the steady creep of individuals like Roberts and Scalia, vetted by the Federalist Society, who make me worry that even this right will continue to be chipped away.

Being Able to Face Their Accuser and See the Evidence Against Them

We've been faced with a barrage of assaults on this since Bush took charge. The torture act made it legal to use coerced testimony (read - what will you say to make the pain stop?) and to use secret evidence in trials. If you can't see the evidence against you, if you can't be told where it was received from, how can you possibly defend yourself? The answer is simple - you can't. There's no need to write a long discourse on this - any nation which does this sort of thing no longer has a justice system, it only has a legal system. But it should be understood that this sort of thing follows logically from laws which allow the seizure of property first, determination of guilt later - it follows logically from the sort of reasoning that says its okay to take away a person's rights or their property, without ever letting them have a day in court, or face their accuser, or see the evidence. This stuff didn't come out of nowhere, it came out of a legal tradition, a way of doing things, set up for the War on Drugs, to make law "efficient" and "effective" and to hell with the accused's rights. I mean, seriously, they're almost all guilty anyway, right?

A long ways from Blackstone's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

Have the Judge Able to Take into Consideration the Circumstances of the Crime in Sentencing After a Jury (for serious crimes) Has Determined Guilt

Now since 90% of all cases are plead out, we already know that most people never get a jury trial. The important thing about jury trials is mostly the right (which they are not informed of ) to "jury nullification". In jury nullification, a jury refused to convict an obviously guilty person, because they believe the penalty is too harsh, or the law is wrong. Quite a number of capital crimes in England, for example, were overturned for this reason. (Stealing a chicken shouldn't be a capital crime.) Because juries routinely refused to convict, the laws had to be revised.

In the US because most cases are plead out, most people don't have to serve on juries as much as they would otherwise have to do. People hate jury duty, but that's the point - people hate it, but they should be forced to see how the legal system operates. If people were called up more often they would be forced to take responsibility in a personal way for locking someone up under 3 strikes laws, when their third strike was, say, stealing a bike. When government functions as important as justice are performed too much by civil servants (police, prosecutors and judges) and not enough by the public itself the full consequences of what is being done in their name is not made apparent to them. Perhaps, indeed, citizens would still approve. Good enough - but perhaps they wouldn't. In either case, the responsibility for locking people up under draconian 3 strikes laws, mandatory sentencing laws and so on needs to be put directly in the hands of citizens and they need to be given the ability to nullify such laws if they choose. (Trivia: Canada's last abortion law was repealed after repeated jury nullification. Juries knew the abortionist was guilty and refused to return guilty verdicts.)

Which leads us to mandatory sentencing laws and three strike laws. Yes, there will always be cases where judges use their discretion in ways we don't like. But for every outrage of a judge "letting someone off light" there's a case where, indeed, someone's third strike is stealing a bike, and for that he's going away for 20 years.

The War on Terror Is Just the War on Drugs, on Crack

Civil liberties and due process have been under relentless assault for nearly 40 years now in the US. The War on Terror, for all that it has had horrible human rights and civil liberties abuses enacted in its name, would not have been possible without the preceding War on Drugs. What many seem to not realize is that the rights lost by one person are lost by everyone When some "terrorist" or "trafficker" loses his or her rights, so do you.

Asset forfeiture didn't begin under Bush. The No Fly list didn't begin under Bush. Punishing people for crimes they had never been convicted of, didn't begin under Bush.

Of course, many things did start under Bush - torture, repeal of habeas corpus and so on. But it's worth remembering, at the end of the day, that what has happened in the last 6 years did not happen in a vacuum - it was an acceleration of a trend that already existed towards the land of liberty becoming a land where due process was only something that some people, the right sort of people, had access to.

Americans Get The Government They Deserve

2007-07-23T09:50:00.002-05:00

Democracy really isn't a spectator sport, no matter what CNN, MSNBC and Faux Noise would have us believe, with their nightly yell-a-thons, loaded questions from so-called Journalists like Tucker Carlson and Billo. It's really no wonder that Americans don't pay attention to what's going on, but they had damned well better start.

A good first step? Shoot your TeeVee, or use it for videos.

The Assault on Due Process and Civil Liberties
By Ian Welsh
Firedoglake

Saturday 21 July 2007

Be charged with a crime;

Have their day in court;

Have competent counsel of their choicel

Being able to face their accuser and see the evidence against them; and,

Have the judge able to take into consideration the circumstances of the crime in sentencing after a Jury (for serious crimes) has determined guilt

Let's run through those one at a time:

Being Charged With a Crime

Having Their Day in Court

Incarceration Rates by Country


(Photo: firedoglake.com)

Again, the War on (some) Drugs bears a lot of responsibility for this.

All of this is before you even get to Padilla, the case against whom should simply have been thrown out because of gross due process concerns.

Competent Counsel of the Accused's Choice

Being Able to Face Their Accuser and See the Evidence Against Them

A long ways from Blackstone's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

Have the Judge Able to Take into Consideration the Circumstances of the Crime in Sentencing After a Jury (for serious crimes) Has Determined Guilt

The War on Terror Is Just the War on Drugs, on Crack

Asset forfeiture didn't begin under Bush. The No Fly list didn't begin under Bush. Punishing people for crimes they had never been convicted of, didn't begin under Bush.

Corporate Lawyers Stealing From 9/11 Responders

2007-07-23T09:22:00.000-05:00

I honestly don't understand how some people can sleep at night!

WTC LAWYER THE 'DEVIL'S ADVOCATE'

By SUSAN EDELMAN

July 22, 2007 -- One of the high-priced lawyers who have sucked $47 million out of the $1 billion World Trade Center insurance fund is infamous for defending companies that manufactured Agent Orange, a pregnancy drug linked to cancer, and defective breast implants.

James Tyrrell, a partner in the law firm Patton Boggs, is hailed in legal circles as the "master of disaster" and the "devil's advocate."

Another lawyer, Thomas Jones, serves simultaneously as secretary of the WTC Captive Insurance Co., which manages the $1 billion FEMA fund, and as partner in the Chicago-based McDermott Will & Emery, the fund's legal counsel.

In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan last week, 9/11 responders blasted the Captive's mounting expenses - $75 million so far, including $47 million on law firms - and Jones' alleged "conflict of interest."

They charged the city-run WTC Captive is a cash cow for its employees, consultants and lawyers, and has "squandered" money that should go to 10,000 cops, firefighters and other workers with illnesses blamed on toxic exposure at Ground Zero. It has paid just $45,000 to a carpenter who fell off a ladder.

Patton Boggs, based in Washington, D.C., commands up to $850-an-hour - one of the highest billing rates in the country, according to a National Law Journal survey.

Tyrell, who works out of the firm's Newark office, would not discuss what he charges to lead the battle against Ground Zero responders, saying his firm's contract with the WTC Captive has a "confidentiality clause."

The city Law Department also refused to divulge the fees paid to the hired guns. Neither Tyrrell nor Patton Boggs has done work for the city before, officials said.

Documents obtained by The Post show that eight senior partners at McDermott, Will & Emery, including Thomas, can each bill the insurance fund $618 an hour. The partners first billed a "discounted" $550 an hour, but that fee was raised 6 percent in 2005, and 6 percent again last year.

Under the same agreement, junior partners in the firm can bill $389 to $484 an hour; associates $223 to $242 an hour, and paralegals $150 to $200 an hour.

In addition, the firm gets reimbursed for a wide variety of expenses, including secretarial work, computer research, travel and some meals.

Thomas' dual role as both an executive of the Captive and its lawyer, "in no way represents a conflict," McDermott, Will & Emery said in a statement to The Post.

Tyrrell called his bills a bargain because he represents the city and about 100 of its WTC contractors. He also said the firm's lesser-paid lawyers do much of the work.

The firm has focused on a bid to dismiss all the 9/11 suits on the grounds the city should have immunity because it was responding to a terror attack. An appeals court is considering the issue.

"If that is upheld, the city would have no liability and no obligation to pay," Tyrrell told The Post. "The money should then be returned to the government."

Tyrrell, 57, began his toxic-tort career defending Monsanto Company, the Agent Orange manufacturer, against thousands of ailing Vietnam vets. The case settled for $180 million.

Later, he represented pharmaceuticals that made a drug, DES, given to prevent miscarriages, but found to cause cancer.

He successfully defended booze companies accused of causing alcoholism. He defended General Electric, a silicone maker, in a class action by women with health problems from ruptured breast implants.

Tyrrell says it's not easy.

"How would you like to come to court and be on the other side of the heroes, the firefighters and policemen who went in on 9/11?" he told Super Lawyers magazine, which highlights top-rated attorneys.

David Worby, a lawyer for the 9/11 workers, said Tyrrell "does what he pleases and eats up the taxpayer dollars intended for the sick heroes. Each one of his bills deprives a hero of a full recovery."

But Tyrrell took a swipe at lawyers for the 9/11 responders, saying they could also get rich.

"They stand to take one-third or more of whatever is paid to any of their clients who allege injuries," he said.

Paul Napoli, a lawyer for the 10,000 responders, said he won't make a dime unless his clients win.

"Nobody would take these cases because it was so hard to prove in the beginning. Nobody believed these people. We front all the costs. We've been fighting for them tooth and nail."

susan.edelman@nypost.com

Disband the DOJ

2007-07-23T09:00:00.001-05:00

It's more dangerous for ordinary Americans to have a dysfunctional DOJ, which has been corrupted to the core for political purposes, than to have none at all. At least, all Americans will realize that there really is no law left for them to count on.

U.S. dropped Enron-like fraud probe

Prosecutor who built case against Virginia insurer was replaced.

By Marisa Taylor - Mcclatchy Washington Bureau

Last Updated 12:14 am PDT Monday, July 23, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Two years into a fraud investigation, veteran federal prosecutor David Maguire told colleagues he'd uncovered one of the biggest cases of his career.

Maguire described crimes "far worse" than those of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant that collapsed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Among those in his sights: executives from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment empire overseen by billionaire Warren Buffett.

In May 2006, he felt strongly enough about his case that he prepared a draft indictment accusing executives from a Virginia insurer, Reciprocal of America, of concocting a series of secret deals to hide its losses from regulators. Although he didn't name anyone from Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiary, he described the company as a participant in the scheme.

But Maguire never brought those charges.

Months after preparing the draft, he was removed as the lead prosecutor on the case and reassigned.

His replacement, a prosecutor who hadn't been involved in the case until then, soon announced that the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, General Reinsurance, would not be indicted. By April of this year, the entire investigation, which the Justice Department once hailed as one of the largest insurance-fraud cases in Virginia history, had fizzled.

Former employees and policyholders of the Richmond-based insurer were astounded. Why had the Justice Department spent upward of $2 million to investigate the case only to decline to prosecute? Maguire and his team of investigators had secured two related guilty pleas, interviewed dozens of witnesses and gathered 7,000 boxes of documents.

At the Justice Department, some whispered that Maguire and his team had overreached and had been knocked down. Others heard that the government needed resources for terrorism investigations.

Lawyers for the two companies had another explanation: Prosecutors realized they didn't have evidence of a crime.

"It was a black and white decision," said Stanley Twardy Jr., one of General Reinsurance's attorneys and a former U.S. attorney. "They just called it like they saw it."

But Tom Gober, a certified fraud examiner who worked on the case, thought investigators had gathered plenty of evidence.

Gober, a government-contracted investigator, concluded that the Justice Department had buckled under pressure from defense lawyers. Shortly before Maguire was removed, his supervisors were urging him to drop the case against General Reinsurance, Gober said.

Gober's suspicions were fanned by allegations of politicization in the Justice Department after nine U.S. attorneys were fired. He took his complaints to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates Justice Department misconduct. That investigation is under way.

"It just stinks," he said. "You don't come in out of nowhere and in no time kill three years of sophisticated effort."

Maguire and officials with the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI in Virginia declined to respond to questions about the decision.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said he wouldn't comment, either.

Internal documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers show that Justice Department lawyers in Washington had become locked in an intense debate with Maguire over the case until he was removed from it.

Five years after Enron collapsed and tough measures aimed at white-collar crime were enacted, federal officials struggled with questions of corporate accountability: Who should be held responsible when fraud leads to a company's demise? How far should federal prosecutors go in pursuing corporate suspects? In the Reciprocal of America case, the fallout was clear.

More than 80,000 lawyers, doctors and hospitals in 30 states lost their malpractice coverage. As they couldn't expect new insurers to cover them for past cases, some who were sued have claimed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A company under siege

A team of state insurance auditors arrived at Reciprocal of America's headquarters in January 2003 to launch their investigation. They shepherded the company's 300 employees into a conference room and locked the doors.

Continue reading on next page

Destroying the DOJ, For Fun and Prorfit

2007-07-23T01:54:00.000-05:00

DOJ All But "Operating on Autopilot"
By Brooke Masters
The Financial Times UK

Thursday 19 July 2007

Resignations and the ongoing furor over allegedly politicised hiring and firing at the US justice department have left so many top positions vacant that the department is all but operating on autopilot, the Financial Times has learnt.

Six top DoJ officials have quit since February, when the sackings of at least nine US attorneys prompted an outcry in Congress. Outside Washington, 23 of the 93 US attorneys' offices, which investigate and try most cases, are devoid of permanent political leadership.

The remaining top officials, including Alberto Gonzales, attorney-general, are the subject of multiple investigations by Congress and the DoJ's inspector-general.

That has forced lawyers in the field to make decisions with much less input from Washington than in the previous six years, often on contentious topics such as whether to seek the death penalty in states where it is unpopular. The practical result has been to depoliticise many field offices, giving thousands of career DoJ attorneys freedom to resolve cases the way they see fit.

"There's open contempt between the field and main justice [DoJ headquarters]," said one career prosecutor, who like others did not want to be named lest they attract attention from Washington. "The field is fine. We just do what we do. The department [in Washington] is crippled."

Underscoring the turmoil, Mr Gonzales this week named Craig Morford, a career prosecutor serving as temporary US attorney in Tennessee, as acting deputy attorney-general to replace Paul McNulty, who leaves this month. No permanent replacement for the DoJ's number two job has been nominated.

Democrats in Congress, who want Mr Gonzales to resign, decry the situation. "It's clear that the justice department can't function as long as Gonzales is in charge," said Senator Chuck Schumer, who has spearheaded the Democratic investigations of the DoJ. "US attorney vacancies are at an all time high and, on any issue where there's an element of trust, the attorney-general has no credibility."

Most offices are pushing forward without difficulty and have passed some high-profile milestones, including the indictment of a sitting congressman for corruption; the arrest of plotters alleged to be targeting New York's John F. Kennedy airport and the Fort Dix military base; and record settlements for overseas bribery and exporting military technology.

"The chaos to some degree has been good for us," said one senior attorney in the field. "The big city offices are happy to have Washington chase its tail for a while and leave us alone."

Some DoJ attorneys also worry they might face more scepticism from juries because of the repeated congressional hearings into whether DoJ officials improperly took politics into account in hiring and firing.

Washington officials downplayed the importance of the resignations and the decision by William Mercer, US Attorney for Montana, to withdraw his nomination as the DoJ's number three.

The DoJ has a vacancy rate of less than 3 per cent, which covers law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"The vast majority of the department's roughly 106,000 employees remain in their positions, carrying out duties every day that are vital to the safety of the nation," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman. The DoJ, he added, is "working diligently to identify nominees".

But Patrick Leahy, the Democrat who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, pointed out that the White House has submitted nominees for only four of the 23 open US attorney positions. "The current status is unacceptable," he said. The crisis of leadership at the justice department has allowed the White House to play politics with law enforcement."

Bad Reality: Brought to You By The Bush Empire

2007-07-23T00:36:00.000-05:00

Go to Original

A Really Bad Case of "Reality"
Rosa Brooks
The Los Angeles Times

Friday 20 July 2007

Once just an administration fantasy, a powerful Al Qaeda in Iraq fueled by Islamic extremism has become the world's nightmare.

Reality mugs us all, in the end.

In those heady post-9/11 days when the nation's stunned acquiescence made the neoconservative dream of limitless executive and U.S. power seem eminently attainable, the gang running the White House grew fond of quoting pundit Irving Kristol's aphorism: "A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."

In this smug formulation, "reality" was understood to mean violence and power - epitomized both by the terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in a hail of falling bodies and burning rubble, and by the planned U.S. response in Afghanistan and (later) Iraq. To the neocons, "reality" was bombs, blood and fire; the transformative effects of shock and awe.

In a much-quoted 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind described a 2002 conversation with a senior Bush advisor - widely assumed to be Karl Rove - who added an extra gloss to Kristol's aphorism, making it clear that "reality" can mean different things to different people.

As Suskind relates the story: "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

Those comments have been widely mocked by critics of the administration. What hubris, to imagine that your vision and actions can reshape the world according to your wishes! And for many people, recent events, in Iraq and elsewhere, have only validated this early scorn for the neoconservative understanding of "reality."

This week, for instance, saw the release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus views of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies. The document offers a chilling account of the world we now live in: a resurgent Al Qaeda, a rapidly growing extremist Islamic movement, a rise in global terrorist threats and out-of-control violence in Iraq.

So it's understandable that many administration critics now conclude, with some satisfaction, that the neocon conception of how "reality" works has been permanently discredited. If empires can choose to create their own realities, why hasn't Bush's American Empire created a stable, more peaceful world? Why aren't we safer than we were before 9/11? The neocons deluded themselves into imagining they could control reality, but in the end, aren't they the ones who've just been mugged? But it's not that simple.

In a very real sense, Suskind's "senior Bush advisor" has been proved more right than wrong. The administration did create realities to match its darkest visions, reshaping the world with remarkable speed and thoroughness.

In 2001, administration stalwarts suggested that Osama bin Laden rivaled Hitler in the danger he posed to U.S. security and insisted that Al Qaeda's power was so great that nothing short of a "global war on terror" was required.

At that time, most experts say, this description of Al Qaeda simply wasn't true. It was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky - but despite the unexpected success of their attack on the U.S., they did not pose an imminent mortal threat to the nation.

Today, things are different. Thanks to U.S. policies, Al Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001. Our ham-handed detention and interrogation tactics and our ill-advised invasion of Iraq have alienated vast swathes of the Islamic world, fueling extremism and anti-Americanism. Today, Al Qaeda is no longer a single organization. Now it's a franchise, with new gangs of terrorists around the world proudly seizing the "Al Qaeda" affiliation.

Other neocon fantasies have also come true. In 2003, there was no alliance between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and no Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in Iraq. Today, thanks to the administration's actions, Iraq has become a prime training and recruiting ground for Al Qaeda, and the NIE has declared Al Qaeda in Iraq one of the greatest threats to U.S. peace and security.

Welcome to the neocons' reality.

Suskind's senior Bush aide was right all along. When an empire acts, it creates new realities - for better or for worse - and all the rest us are left to study those new realities. And, unfortunately, to live with them.

Why Bush is A Loser (and Bill Kristol is a dangerous Idiot)

2007-07-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Redemption opportunity

My grandfather believed that the most horrible happening on earth can be redeemed if something good comes out of it. He also believed that redemption, of this kind, was clearly a human endeavor, not something mystical or mysterious.

Take the Iraq war, for example:

If, because of Bush's disastrous foreign policy, the brain-child of the neocons, the very word "neoconservative" becomes despised, as it should, like the words Nazi or "Librul," have come to be four-letter words, it will be a step toward redemption.

The people will be the judges, finally, because near universal disapproval/condemnation of an ideological movement always falls to the people.

If the Bush administration manages to destroy the GOP, and they are well on their way to doing just that, that will be a step toward redemption.

If the destruction of the GOP leads to a multi-party system in this country, all the better.

Why Bush Is A Loser

By David Corn
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; 7:45 PM

Who knew Bill Kristol had such a flair for satire?

How else to read his piece for Outlook on Sunday, in which he declared, "George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one"? Surely Kristol, the No. 1 cheerleader for the Iraq war, was mocking himself (and his neoconservative pals) for having been so mistaken about so much. But just in case his article was meant to be a serious stab at commentary, let's review Kristol's record as a prognosticator.

On Sept. 18, 2002, he declared that a war in Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." A day later, he said Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. On Feb. 20, 2003, he said of Saddam: "He's got weapons of mass destruction.... Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world." On March 1, 2003 -- 18 days before the invasion of Iraq -- Kristol dismissed the possibility of sectarian conflict afterward. He also said, "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." He maintained that the war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. (The running tab is now about half a trillion dollars.) On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, "We'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction."

After a performance like this -- and the above is only a partial review; for more details, click here -- Kristol, a likeable fellow, ought to have his pundit's license yanked. But he's back again with a sequel: W. will be seen as a wonderful president. His latest efforts should be laughed off op-ed pages. But in the commentariat, he's still taken seriously. So assuming the joke is indeed unintended, I'll examine Kristol's most recent fantasy as if it's real.

Iraq: Kristol says "we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome." The war has been a mess from the start, and these days even leading Republican senators no longer buy the argument that Bush's so-called "surge" is succeeding or can succeed as promised. Kristol contends that with the recent escalation "we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population." Many in Iraq would find little comfort in his assurances. Despite the "surge," Iraqi civilian deaths are still running at 2,500 to 3,000 a month. And since the "surge" began, according to the Pentagon's own numbers, the number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians has marginally increased.

Still, Kristol advises, stick with the "surge," train more Iraqi troops, and all will be well. The United States has already spent $19 billion training 346,500 or so Iraqi troops and police officers, and now merely six battalions -- down from 10, according to Gen. Peter Pace -- can function independently. That is, only 3,000 Iraqi troops are operating on their own after all this time and money.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is making little, if any, progress on key political matters that must be resolved, and the parliament is taking off August -- while American GIs continue to fight and die. What are they dying for? Kristol and Bush argue the war is a vital part of the battle against al Qaeda and international jihadism, and Kristol claims the U.S. military is "routing al Qaeda in Iraq." But, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, of the 19,000 insurgents held by the U.S. military in Iraq, only 135 are foreigners. The United States is not fighting al Qaeda in Iraq; it's fighting Iraqis. Kristol is whistling past a graveyard -- filled with the bodies of thousands of American soldiers and probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- when he insists the United States is heading toward a "messy" victory.

And Kristol keeps arguing the past. The problems that have arisen in Iraq since the invasion, he maintains, have to be judged against what would have occurred had there been no invasion: a nuclear-armed Saddam conspiring with al Qaeda. To justify the war, Kristol is pushing the myth (debunked by U.S. intelligence) that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, and he's ignoring the fact that WMD inspectors were present in Iraq right before the invasion and (as we now know) doing a good job in determining Saddam had no unconventional weapons or nuclear bomb program. Such a policy could have been maintained.

Afghanistan: Steady as she goes, says Kristol. Well, not if you're one of those dozens of civilians who seem to be killed every few days in an errant attack from NATO and western forces. (Even Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is fed up.) And shouldn't this war have been over years ago? Reconstruction is at a crawl The Taliban is resurgent. Opium production is setting new records. And the Bush administration (last time I checked) had no high-level official solely responsible for Afghanistan policy. Afghanistan has been a job neglected and unfinished.

Terrorism: Yes -- thankfully -- there have been no attacks here since 9/11. But recent intelligence reports say that al Qaeda (the real al Qaeda, not al Qaeda in Iraq) is becoming stronger. The man responsible for the worst act of terrorism ever visited upon the United States remains free. And the Bush administration's excesses in combating terrorism -- Guantanamo, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and more -- have undermined the cause at home and abroad.

Foreign policy: Kristol does not mention that, thanks to Bush's misadventure in Iraq and other missteps, the United States' image abroad is in the sub-basement. He does note that we now have decent relations with Brazil. But he forgets about the worsening conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (and the other Palestinians) -- a conflict arguably exacerbated by Bush administration blunders.

The economy: All is fine, Kristol claims, pointing to conventional indicators and hailing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. But most Americans tell pollsters the country is not on the right track. Are they stupid? No, they are coping with various forms of insecurity and stress that Kristol does not recognize. Since 2000, the median income of working-age household has fallen each year. The economy has been growing, corporate profits are up, and the stock market is on the rise, but this recovery has handed working Americans weak growth in wages and salaries. The share of national income going to salaries and wages is at the lowest level since such stats were first compiled in 1929.

Moreover, the high costs of health care and education also worry many Americans. Kristol praises Bush's Medicare drug plan -- which routinely is assailed by critics on the left and right -- but Bush has done nothing to make health care more affordable and more available for most Americans. Forty-five million or so Americans remain uninsured. And while Kristol cheers globalization -- which is causing employment instability for Americans -- we can celebrate by eating tainted shrimp from China.

The Supreme Court: In Kristol's world, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Bush's contributions to the court, are titans of jurisprudence respected throughout the land. Yet the Roberts court's recent decisions have sparked (justifiably) much controversy and rancor. In two separate decisions, Roberts protected corporate speech but trampled on the free speech rights of students. Roberts was also slammed by Justice Antonin Scalia for not having the guts to admit he was overturning precedent when he was. Bush's Supreme Court has become another battlefront in the partisan wars--not a symbol of accomplishment.

It's remarkable what Kristol leaves out of his bizarro-world view of Bush the Great: Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the Justice Department, global warming, and much else. An American city was practically destroyed on Bush's watch, but that merits no consideration in Kristol's case for Bush. The Justice Department -- run by Bush cronies accused of corruption, incompetence, or both -- is in tatters. (A former department official tells me the administration is having a hard time finding people willing to fill the vacancies at the top.) And though Bush begrudgingly conceded that global warming is underway and human-induced, he has taken no significant steps to redress this pressing problem. If one wants to peer into the future, it could well be that Bush will be judged a failure more for his inaction on global warming than for his action in Iraq. Vetoing stem cell research legislation, commuting Scooter Libby's prison sentence, rewriting clean air rules to benefit industry, pushing tax breaks for oil companies, suppressing the work of scientists, enhancing government secrecy -- Bush has repeatedly placed parochial interests over the public interest.

The Bush-Cheney years have been marked by ineptitude, miscalculation, and scandal. A successful presidency? Bush will be lucky if he gets a public elementary school in his adopted hometown of Crawford, Tex., named after him. He has placed this country in a hole. Yet Kristol, with shovel in hand, points to that hole and says, Trust me -- we're about to strike oil!

If it's true that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce, Kristol has short-circuited the process and gone straight to parody. His Bush boosterism -- an act of self-justification -- would be amusing were it not for all the damage he has helped Bush to cause.

David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, is coauthor of "Hubris; The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War." He blogs at www.davidcorn.com.

Feingold To Offer Resloution of Censure

2007-07-22T13:08:00.000-05:00

Caught Russ on Russert's Sunday gaggle of gasbags earlier today.

Russert asked if attempts to censure, impeach, etc., would make the Rethugs stand together when it comes time to vote on Military funding ans, hey, maybe this isn't the best strategy for Democrats?

Is he nuts? If the Democrats only care about political strategy, which I hope to God isn't the case entirely, finding a way to make the Rethugs stick by Bush and Cheney is about the best one of which I could conceive.

The longer the Rethugs stand with Bush the more horrendous damage will be done, not only to the GOP, but to the two-party system in general. In the long run, the death of the two-party system might be the beginning steps toward the salvation of this country, politically speaking.

Nevertheless, I believe that Feingold is honest when he says that an historical record of this appalling administration needs to be created and that censure of Bush and others is a step in that direction.

I wonder, do the Democrats really believe that Congress' poll numbers are in the basement because they are doing their jobs of over-sight? If they really believe that, they are too stupid to govern.

FEINGOLD CALLS FOR CENSURE OF PRESIDENT, ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS OVER IRAQ & ATTACK ON RULE OF LAW
Feingold to Introduce Resolutions Censuring President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Other Administration Officials

July 22, 2007

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold announced today that he will introduce two censure resolutions condemning the President, Vice President and other administration officials for misconduct relating to the war in Iraq and for their repeated assaults on the rule of law. Feingold called the resolutions appropriate and necessary steps for Congress to rebuke an administration that is responsible for some of the worst misconduct and the worst abuses of the law in American history.

“Censure is about holding the administration accountable,” Feingold said. “Congress needs to formally condemn the President and members of the administration for misconduct before and during the Iraq war, and for undermining the rule of law at home. Censure is not a cure for the devastating toll this administration’s actions have taken on this country. But when future generations look back at the terrible misconduct of this administration, they need to see that a co-equal branch of government stood up and held to account those who violated the principles on which this nation was founded.”

Feingold will work with his colleagues, as well as seek input from his constituents and the American people, as he crafts the final language of the resolutions. The first resolution will condemn the President and others for misconduct relating to the war in Iraq including:

Overstating the case that Saddam Hussein had WMD, particularly nuclear weapons, and falsely implying a relationship with al Qaeda and links to 9/11.

Failing to plan for the civil conflict and humanitarian problems that the intelligence community predicted.

Over-stretching the Army, Marine Corps and Guard with prolonged deployments.

Justifying our military involvement in Iraq by repeatedly distorting the situation on the ground there.

The second resolution will focus on the administration’s attack on the rule of law with respect to, among other things:

The illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Extreme policies on torture, the Geneva Conventions, and detainees at Guantanamo.

The refusal to recognize legitimate congressional oversight into the improper firings of U.S. Attorneys.

In March 2006, Feingold introduced a resolution censuring the President for authorizing and misleading Congress and the public about the illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping program. In January 2007, the administration finally brought its wiretapping program within the FISA statute.

“At my town hall meetings, online, and everywhere I go, I hear the American people demanding that the President and his administration be held accountable for their misconduct, both with regard to the disastrous war in Iraq and their flagrant abuse of the rule of law. Censure is a relatively modest response, but one that puts Congress on record condemning their actions, both for the American people today and for future generations,” Feingold said.

Feingold is encouraging people to email suggestions of what to include in the censure resolution. People can email Senator Feingold at Russell_Feingold@feingold.senate.gov or visit his webpage at http://feingold.senate.gov.

Sununu wants no part of Bush

2007-07-21T22:53:00.001-05:00

For those of us who have forgotten or are too young to remember, Junior got old man Sununu fired from the Bush I adminsitration

Sen. Sununu: I Don’t Want President Bush To Campaign With Me

The New York Times writes this morning that conservatives are trying to walk a fine line between supporting and distancing themselves from President Bush:

There is little question that the winds of discontent are stirring among Republicans on Capitol Hill over the direction of the Iraq war. A majority, of course, continued to support President Bush with their votes this week during the latest Iraq debate. But several Republicans no longer whisper, or walk away, when asked about their skepticism.

One of those conservative trying to strike this delicate balance is Sen. John Sununu (R-NH). “Sununu has faced criticism for his stance on Iraq, with critics charging he is too close to President Bush on war policy.” This week, he voted to filibuster the Levin-Reed amendment.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Sununu said that, despite standing with Bush on the war, he would not want the President to campaign with him. Asked if Bush would be an effective campaigner, Sununu said, “No, I think the President’s popularity unfortunately is at a fairly low level.” Sununu added that he’d be better off campaigning alone than with President Bush.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/21/sununu-campaign-bush/

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Rudy G is a Fraud and a Filthy Opportunist....

2007-07-21T22:28:00.002-05:00

....just what rank and file Goopers love!

If this "character" is elected to the highly esteemed office of dog-catcher in bumfuck Arkansas it will be time to shut the nation down and start all over.

I generally like characters. Every town and village has at least one. Cities have many.

But they do not run for president and, if they do, they are no taken seriously.

NYC mayors have frequently been what I would call characters.

To elect one of these characters to be president would be the height of stupidity.

Nevertheless, I do hope he wins the Rethug nomination, simply because his candidacy will keep 9/11 in the headlines, right where it needs to be for our plan to work.

Giuliani's Mayoral Record Is Complicated
By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer

Saturday, July 21, 2007

(07-21) 18:36 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Rudy Giuliani boasts that he reined in crime, welfare and taxes in a city once considered ungovernable.

Those claims are intrinsic to the former New York mayor's pitch to Republican voters that he has the combination of competence and toughness they want in a president. Whether his record supports those claims, however, is a matter upon which admirers and critics differ markedly.

Most benchmarks during Giuliani's eight years as mayor, from the start of 1994 to Jan. 1, 2002, suggest dramatic success. The crime rate tumbled by 60 percent. Welfare rolls decreased by 52 percent. Taxes fell by at least 25 percent. While city spending grew, it lagged behind the booming economy of the 1990s.

His record, however, is more complicated than the numbers indicate.

Giuliani was a pugnacious leader. He picked fights with political foes as well as his own police chief and schools superintendent. Any critic — squeegee men, artists, callers to his weekly radio show — was fair game.

In his wake, Giuliani left a trail of detractors who insist he does not deserve all the credit for the good things that happened on his watch.

The city was primed for success as Giuliani took office in 1994.

Thousands of new police officers hired by his predecessor, Democrat David Dinkins, were coming on duty. Thousands of mentally ill homeless people were provided housing and treatment under a program begun by Dinkins and former Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo.

The economy was growing, pumping billions of dollars into the city treasury. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 3,754.09 on the day Giuliani arrived at City Hall and opened at 10,136.99 the day he left.

"He did some things in the first couple of years in particular that he should get some credit for, particularly the continuing reduction in crime, but I don't think he was an unusually good mayor," said Steven Cohen, a public affairs professor at Columbia University.

"He was actually a capable guy and did a good job," Cohen said. "But I think he had a tendency to see himself as the only person who was smart in the room."

Giuliani's signature issue, crime, is especially important to law-and-order Republican voters. Before winning the mayor's office, Giuliani was a federal prosecutor who put away drug pushers, mob figures and white-collar crooks.

Giuliani was mayor during a period of declining crime rates nationwide. Crime in New York peaked in 1990 and had been dropping for three years before Giuliani took office, according to FBI data. Nationally, violent crime declined 38 percent and property crime declined 33 percent from a modern peak in 1991 through 2005.

The drop was more dramatic in New York. Crime overall decreased by 60 percent between 1993, the year before Giuliani took office, and 2002, when he left. The national crime rate dropped by 24 percent during the same period.

The steep reductions in New York, Giuliani contends, came from a system developed by his police department to map crime patterns and make local police commanders responsible for reducing crime.

"New York City was the only one (of big cities) that had a decline in crime every single year" during that period, Giuliani told Iowa voters recently.

Other big cities copied New York's program — Compstat, short for computerized, or compare, statistics. Giuliani wrote in his 2002 book, "Leadership," that he considered it his crown jewel.

But there was debate, even early on, over who deserved more credit for the drop in crime — Giuliani or William Bratton, the charismatic police chief from 1994 to 1996. Giuliani abruptly fired Bratton after he appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the man responsible for the crime reduction.

Eli Silverman, a professor emeritus at City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, thinks Giuliani takes too much credit for the program. "He calls it the crown jewel of his leadership, the implication being it was his baby. There were other parents," Silverman said.

Today, Giuliani has defused the conflict by reconciling with Bratton, now the Los Angeles police chief, and making a point of mentioning Bratton and his aides in speeches.

Under Giuliani, police also cracked down on small-time "quality of life" offenders such as squeegee men and subway turnstile jumpers who often turned out to be responsible for more serious crimes.

Some experts say the new tactics — combined with 12,000 more police officers hired under Dinkins and a merger with transit and housing police — were instrumental in reducing crime.

"So more money was being put into policing, no question," said Silverman, who wrote a book on Compstat. "But money itself is not enough. You need not only more cops, but you need to allocate and deploy them more intelligently, and that's what Compstat was able to do."

Sociology professor Andrew Karmen, who also teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, does not think Compstat deserves as much credit. He cites other factors, such as an improved economy, an influx of immigrants who were generally law-abiding, a shrinking population of young people and more criminals serving jail time. Karmen also cited open admissions at New York City's public colleges, which provided an education to more young people.

Detractors also question whether police abused their power to achieve crime reductions, noting that civilian complaints against police rose 41 percent under Giuliani.

In two high-profile abuse cases, police shot and killed unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo, and Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was beaten and sodomized in a Brooklyn station house.

Officials from Giuliani's administration point out the city made it easier for people to file complaints. In "Leadership," Giuliani notes that police shootings declined — from 81 in 1992 to 26 in 2002.

Giuliani expanded the Compstat approach throughout city government. For example, his administration applied it to job programs, measuring how many people were moved off welfare and into private sector jobs and reporting the numbers to the public.

Welfare rolls under Giuliani shrank by more than half, from more than 1 million to 516,000, according to city and federal records. Unemployment fell from 10 percent to 6 percent.

Giuliani helped tie public assistance to work, requiring people to work in community service jobs in exchange for welfare benefits. Giuliani renamed the city's welfare offices, calling them job centers.

Some welfare recipients, though, compared the community service jobs to indentured servitude and said they did not lead to real jobs.

Advocates for the poor point out that even though poverty rates fell under Giuliani, nearly one in five New Yorkers remained below the poverty line, well above the national rate.

Yet the rest of city residents saw fatter paychecks as the economy continued to expand. Personal income rose by an average of 5.8 percent annually while Giuliani was mayor, according to city and federal data.

Personal income is a good way to measure economic growth, said Chuck Brescher, research director of the independent Citizens Budget Commission.

By that and several other measures, city spending grew more slowly than the economy, at about 4.1 percent, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that monitors New York City and New York state government.

At the same time, Giuliani cut taxes on commercial rent, personal and business income and general sales. The cuts grew steadily as the economy grew, from 0.2 percent in 1995 to 6.7 percent, or $1.6 billion, when he left office, CBC said.

For managing that in liberal New York, he gets good grades from the anti-tax group Club for Growth.

"He has his blemishes, but we thought his constructive policies in the face of such vigorous opposition was really noteworthy," said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who heads that group.

One way Giuliani kept spending in check was to cut city employees by an estimated 8 percent, not counting teachers.

Giuliani hired thousands more teachers, although the four-year high school graduation rate remained stubbornly unchanged at 52 percent during his tenure. Officials from Giuliani's administration point out Giuliani attempted to take control of the city school system, calling it "dysfunctional" and saying it should be "blown up."

As one of the top GOP contenders for the White House, Giuliani is drawing increased scrutiny for his mayoral record.

"The question is, how much does New York help him and how much does New York hurt him?" said Scott Huffman, political science professor at South Carolina's Winthrop University. "Remember, he's running in a Republican primary, and a lot of so-called red-staters don't have a fondness for that great city."

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

The Sin Of Silence

2007-07-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men: Abraham Lincoln: 16th U.S. president, 1809-1865
We are one incident away from a police state and its all been built on lies . Lies and abuses of power which started with 9/11, and have steadily gained momentum through Iraq, Katrina, plamegate and now the failed occupation of Iraq.
The Cheney/Bush administration has so much blood on their hands that they have no choice but to continue their mad dash towards armageddon ~ the final climactic battle between God, and Satan the Devil, written in the Book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament, or more generally, an apocalyptic catastrophe, which his far right base long for.
Watch this six minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgfzqulvhlQ ~ which is introduced by Jon Stewart, with a moving end piece by Sean Penn, and then get rightfully angry for we have been blatantly lied to by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales and then watch the most hypocritical liar of them all, George W Bush ~ who not only openly lied but made jokes about his lies while thousands of Americans and Iraqis died.
Then watch an angry national Newscaster rightfully tell Bush to go to Iraq and fight his war, himself ~ watch Keith Olbermann Go to Iraq and fight, Mr. President
We are the ones we have been waiting for and our continued silence and passivity will surely lead to the death of the Republic ~ unless we take action now !
Tell the House Judiciary Committee and Speaker Pelosi to hold Impeachment hearings on H.Res. 333:
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/07/20.html
Freelance columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments , interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

www.allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Let Fitz Go After All Of Them

2007-07-21T12:58:00.000-05:00
The former top deputy to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that Special Prosecutor and US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald should be Attorney General of the United States, according to a report in Bloomberg News.
"I think he would make a spectacular attorney general," former Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey told the news service's Patricia Hurtado and David Voreacos in a Friday article. "He certainly is one of the very best federal prosecutors in America."

Comey, who served as Deputy Attorney General from 2003-2005 under both Gonzales and John Ashcroft now works in the private sector with the Lockheed Martin Corproation. He recently re-emerged into public view when the Senate and House Judiciary Committees subpoenaed him to receive testimony about a hospital bed confrontation between Gonzales, then White House Counsel, and Ashcroft over a domestic spying program that Comey refused to certify as legal.

Fitzgerald, US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, gained national prominence when he was appointed Special Counsel in the investigation of the leaking of the identity of covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson. He successfully prosecuted Vice President Cheney's former top aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for obstruction, perjury, and making false statements before Bush commuted Libby's 30 month jail sentence.

The profile piece on the Chicago-based prosecutor goes on to note that he does not consider his current position a springboard to higher political office.

In a taped appearance on a jointly-produced National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio show, Fitzgerald reportedly will say, "I'm not doing that," when asked if he will run for public office.

Fitzgerald is slated to appear on the "Wait, wait...don't tell me" quiz show. The Bloomberg article described the humorous questions he was subjected to.

"'We are so not going to ask you any questions about Scooter Libby,' NPR news anchor Carl Kasell told Fitzgerald during the taping," Hurtado and Voreacos report. "Instead, he was peppered with questions about other scooters: the two-wheeled scooter made by Segway Inc., Scooter the stagehand from television's Muppet Show and former New York Yankee Phil Rizzuto, also nicknamed 'The Scooter.'"

An AP report of the show also detailed a gift that the show's hosts gave Fitzgerald.

"At the end of the show, Sagal gave Fitzgerald a child's scooter. It was engraved with: 'To Patrick Fitzgerald, USA, This one will stay where you put it,' according to the news wire article.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

The Witch Hunt....

2007-07-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

....that started all the rest.

No wonder our country is going down the tubes.

The Worst Internal Scandal in NSA History Was Blamed on Cold War Defectors’ Homosexuality

But what if they weren’t gay?

By Rick Anderson

Dung Huang

Extra Info
— Click here for a look at the NSA study into the defection of Mitchell and Martin.
— Click here for excerpts of NSA's investigation documents in the case.
— Click here for State Department documents on Martin's death and U.S. burial.

To some of his detractors, William Hamilton Martin was something of an amusing figure on the streets of Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, a bookish mathematician with a crew cut who walked with a Groucho Marx–like waddle. But what others remembered most was that lean, blue-eyed "Ham" Martin, a University of Washington graduate and the son of an Ellensburg meatpacker, was a meticulous dresser, spoke "slightly effeminately," and may have had a thing for a Stanford grad named Bernon Mitchell. Furthermore, the belief among some officials, politicians, and the press was that because Martin and Mitchell might be homosexual, they did the unthinkable: In the midst of the Cold War, the two National Security Agency code breakers defected to Russia and went to work for the Soviet government.

On June 25, 1960, after four years as trusted employees of America's largest spy agency, Martin, then 29, and Mitchell, then 31, flew out of Washington, D.C., with one-way tickets to Mexico City. From there, they quietly slipped off to Havana and took a Russian freighter to the Soviet Union, following a plan that had evolved over a year. The case stunned politicians and intelligence officials alike. Looking back, some of the defectors' neighbors and co-workers told investigators that if they'd been more vigilant about the pair's sexual proclivities, maybe they'd have been more suspicious of their patriotism.

In the eyes of many Americans, sexual deviants—then the commonly used term for homosexual men—were potential traitors, a belief that's been perpetuated in more modern times. A 1991 Pentagon study of paraphilia (kinky or bizarre sexual behaviors) issued by the Defense Security Service and used today in military circles counts Martin and Mitchell among a group of "publicly known homosexuals" who betrayed their country. Political, counterintelligence, and religious Internet sites currently refer to Martin "and his gay friend," and a 1997 book, The Homosexual Revolution, informs readers that the two "were homosexuals who had been permitted access to classified information."

But according to the NSA's own investigative files, obtained exclusively by Seattle Weekly, there's one major problem with the flaming traitor theory: Martin and Mitchell weren't gay. The formerly classified Pentagon and NSA documents, which reveal previously unpublished details of the historic spy-agency saga, appear to clear Martin and Mitchell of the sexual charges that rocked the country 47 years ago this summer and led to landmark NSA policy changes.

"Beyond any doubt," the unnamed author of a then-secret NSA study on the defection wrote in 1963, according to the recently released documents, "no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency's security program." Screening methods used today at NSA, with a work force estimated at 30,000, evolved from Internal Security Act legislation passed in the wake of the pair's defection.

After interviewing more than 450 individuals about the twosome's character, habits, and sex lives—right down to the skin rash on Martin's stomach—the NSA, in a 1961 report, could find no conclusive evidence the two men were gay. "Martin and Mitchell were known to be close friends and somewhat anti-social, but no one had any knowledge of a homosexual relationship between them," investigators reported. Both, in fact, had American girlfriends, and Martin married a Russian woman four months after his arrival there. Mitchell also wed later.

The recently declassified documents—about 85 pages of lightly redacted records that include information from the FBI, CIA, and State Department, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request that took four years to fulfill—reveal that both men, now reported dead, quickly soured on Soviet life, felt their defection was a mistake, and tried repeatedly to return to the U.S. Mitchell never made it, having been buried in St. Petersburg, Russia, in November 2001 at the age of 72. But Martin, the Ellensburg defector, returned to American soil in 1987—literally. A diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico that year states: "William H. Martin died of cancer at Hospital Del Mar in Tijuana on January 17, 1987." He was three months short of his 56th birthday. "Burial," the cable noted, "took place in the United States." No location or details were provided.

Revelations of a witch-hunt gone astray don't surprise former Washington National Guard Col. Grethe Cammermeyer, a lesbian and the military's highest-ranking officer to be discharged because of sexual orientation. "[It is] my understanding that there had never been a homosexual blackmail [in which silence was] traded for state secrets," she says.

Author and historian David K. Johnson, an expert on the Cold War history of gays in the government, agrees with Cammermeyer, adding that desertion to Russia "was literally unthinkable for most American officials. So to make sense of the defection, they turned to the alleged sexual perversion. That was already associated in the popular imagination with subversion and communism." Among the gay bashers was then–FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who, after his death, was rumored to have been an avid cross-dresser.

James Bamford, an expert on the NSA and author of the best-selling agency exposé The Puzzle Palace, was surprised to hear that old lefty defector Martin was interred in the country he betrayed. That's "new and very interesting," he observed. Bamford, who labeled the defection the worst internal scandal in NSA history, says lack of proof the two were gay confirms his belief the public was misled about Martin and Mitchell. "I think the NSA was looking for any straw to grasp when the defections occurred," he says, "and homosexuality was the perfect excuse."

Growing up among conservative Central Washington's fields of grain, Martin seemed an unlikely traitor. His father, John, was then president of the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce, and young Martin was a gifted student at Ellensburg High, where he finished school in two years. He then studied at Central Washington College of Education (now Central Washington University) and, in 1947, earned a degree in mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Martin was raised among sunburned farm kids who believed in the flag and didn't question their government. World War II and the atomic bomb, made from plutonium produced at Hanford 100 miles southeast, were major influences on their 1940s environment. Like a lot of landlocked youth across the mountains from Seattle, Martin longed to join the Navy and serve his country, as he later did.

Assigned to a post in Japan with the Naval Security Group from 1951 to 1954, he met Mitchell, a budding weight lifter, pistol enthusiast, and pianist born in San Francisco, the NSA notes in its files. (The agency meticulously recorded that he hated lettuce but liked raw chicken.) After their Navy service, Martin and Mitchell kept in touch when both returned to college, and met again after they were recruited by the NSA. Both pursued further studies in science and mathematics.

Martin, a serious chess player who collected Japanese sword handles, was seen by some as introverted and troubled. His file includes details of sessions at the University of Washington Counseling Center in the late 1940s, where he sought assistance for "certain personality aberrations."

"[Tests] disclosed that Martin was a brilliant but emotionally immature individual who did not respect his father, who pitied his younger brother and who expressed his antipathy toward his mother," reads the file. "Martin's condition was diagnosed as a beginning character neurosis with schizoid tendencies. It was also believed that Martin was sadistic." Martin reportedly had two brothers, but no surviving family members could be reached for this story.

Their years at the National Security Agency, the Pentagon's now 55-year-old semiautonomous espionage branch, were seemingly uneventful, the files indicate. Using their exceptional calculation and pattern-recognition skills, Martin and Mitchell helped decipher and possibly encode secret communiqués at the then-young agency. Today, the NSA's top-secret network of supercomputers, headquartered at Fort Meade, Md., and its global listening posts—including an international intercept station hidden among the dunes at the Yakima Army Firing Range and a vast antenna farm on a mesa above Brewster in Okanogan County—scan the daily gusher of world communications. Experts pore over the missives of friendly and enemy nations alike, utilizing an intelligence-gathering discipline known as Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, that allows them to electronically collect, process, and analyze content. Esoteric as it is, the system traps the everyday conversations of U.S. citizens as well. Congress recently subpoenaed the Bush White House to determine if the administration ordered the illegal use of SIGINT to eavesdrop on those private conversations after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Aug. 1, 1960, the Pentagon guardedly announced that Martin and Mitchell had failed to return from a summer vacation together, leading to anxious speculation they'd defected. Four days later, officials stated that there was "the likelihood" that Martin and Mitchell "have gone behind the Iron Curtain." Supposedly privy to some of America's most sensitive secrets, including knowledge of broken foreign military and diplomatic codes, the duo appeared to have handed Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev an edge in the two superpowers' psychological Cold War and arms race.

A little more than a month later, Martin and Mitchell confirmed their betrayal at an elaborate Sept. 6 press conference in Moscow, where they had been granted asylum and became instant Soviet citizens. Nattily clad in shirt and tie before 200 reporters at the theater-style House of Journalists, Mitchell announced that he and Martin were disgusted with the deceptive nature of a supposed democracy. The pair also felt they were suited for Soviet life, where they would be "better accepted socially."

A banner New York Times headline the next day noted that President Dwight D. Eisenhower "Calls Pair Traitorous." Furthermore, said Ike, they were "self-confessed" traitors. The reliably blunt former President Harry Truman suggested they be shot.

John F. Kennedy, who would go on to defeat Vice President Richard Nixon for the White House that year, coincidentally was campaigning in Seattle that day. He didn't refer directly to local defector Martin, but said, "I cannot believe that there is any person in this state or nation who would not like to see the arms race ended....[Yet] we can prepare for peace only by preparing for war." Martin's bewildered father, John, told reporters that as far as he knew, his son had no interest in politics. Ham must be in Moscow "under duress," the elder Martin theorized. In California, Mitchell's father, Emery, a Eureka attorney and community leader, expressed similar sentiments.

Besides the intelligence breach, the defection would mark a historical turning point in employment protocol at Fort Meade. The NSA immediately began searching for other sexual deviants in its ranks, eventually purging 26 employees suspected of being security risks because of their alleged "perversions." The agency also revamped employment-screening and in-house security practices, among other things permanently allowing investigators to access confidential employee polygraph tests.

Department of Defense officials at first publicly denied having allowed the two men to slip through their trusty screening process and obtain high-level security clearances. Upon further review, officials discovered that while Mitchell had been granted clearance after originally refusing to answer intake queries about his sex life, he eventually admitted to sexually experimenting with chickens and dogs as a teenager.

A 1962 report on the defection, issued by the subversive-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee, went further: Besides being agnostic and having associated with Communists, Martin was "sexually abnormal; in fact, a masochist," while Mitchell, who had once posed for nude color slides perched on a velvet-covered stool, had supposedly been outed by his psychiatrist. The HUAC report claimed the doctor secretly testified "to the effect" that Mitchell had admitted he "has had homosexual problems."

In his book on the NSA, author Bamford concludes that the HUAC report "seemed to indicate the primary reason for the defection was homosexuality. Never once did the committee bother to look into what might have been the deeper reasons for the defection, the political or ideological motivations."

At the Moscow press conference, Martin and Mitchell tried to explain their motives, citing U.S. "policies dangerous to world peace," as Mitchell put it. He pointed to a 1960 speech by the U.S. Strategic Air Command chief, Gen. Thomas Power, who—on a topic that echoes today in America—spoke of the "tremendous advantages that accrue to the man who starts a war" and the necessity of having first-strike nuclear capabilities.

"Gen. Powers' statement involves the dangerous presumption," Mitchell told his Soviet audience, "that the United States owns the world." He called the first-strike policy suicidal and accused the U.S. of deliberately violating the airspace of other nations before "lying about such violations in a manner intended to mislead public opinion."

Only months earlier—May Day 1960—international tensions had escalated with the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. Pilot Francis Gary Powers, who invaded Soviet airspace on a surveillance flight, was captured, tried, and imprisoned (then swapped in a prisoner exchange for KGB colonel and spy Rudolf Abel 21 months later). Eisenhower refused to apologize, and, under Kennedy, the Cold War relentlessly grew into a potential nuclear war with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis—an apocalypse ultimately aborted through back-channel talks between the Kennedy and Khrushchev administrations.

Still unknown are what sort of details Martin and Mitchell provided to the Russians. But their public statements—describing reconnaissance flights both countries likely knew about, and giving general details of how NSA intercepts airborne communications worldwide—weren't especially damaging, some press observers noted. The defectors evidently did not publicly disclose any high-level secrets and, by some accounts, had never worked inside the NSA's most sensitive intelligence loop anyway, with U.S. officials alternately describing them as "junior mathematicians" and "clerks." (Even today, so little is known about the mysterious NSA that it is referred to jokingly as No Such Agency.)

Either way, Martin and Mitchell seemed naive about the consequences of their choice and the harm they could bring to America. They could have made their statement in the U.S., albeit not quite as dramatically, without betraying their country. "What originally got the two angry at NSA and the U.S. government were the spy flights near and over Soviet territory," says author Bamford, whose latest book, A Pretext for War, is about the government's manipulation of intelligence to justify invading Iraq."They did try to go through the proper procedure originally, by telling a congressman about it. But when nothing was done, they made their decision to defect." (The Congressman, Rep. Wayne Hays of Ohio, later departed Congress after scandalously hiring his mistress, Elizabeth Ray, as a secretary, even though she couldn't type.)

Speaking out in the U.S. likely would have gotten Martin and Mitchell fired and left them facing charges for revealing secrets, which could have entailed federal prison time. In Moscow, laying out their reasons for defecting, Mitchell indicated that he and Martin weighed the alternatives of Russian freedom vs. American persecution. They preferred the former, said Mitchell: In the U.S., people with unpopular political convictions "are frequently hailed before investigating committees, harassed, fined, imprisoned, and denied jobs" (something likewise possible, of course, in the gulag-controlled U.S.S.R.).

Mitchell likely was referring in part to the Red Scare bred by Sen. Joe McCarthy, who recklessly questioned the loyalty of government workers and others he suspected were Communists or sympathizers during the 1950s. But there was a kind of civil service McCarthyism going on as well, in which real or suspected gay government workers were perceived as national security risks and often fired. Johnson, author of the 2004 book The Lavender Scare, says that once the Red Scare faded in the 1950s, the Martin and Mitchell defection "breathed new life into the Lavender Scare." The Los Angeles Times reported the two might be part of a ring of homosexuals who "recruit other sex deviates for federal jobs." Hearst papers (including the P-I) referred to "the two defecting blackmailed homosexual specialists" as a "love team." The lavender stage had already been set by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer in their 1951 exposé, Washington Confidential. That best seller called D.C. "a garden of pansies" with 6,000 homosexuals on the government payroll, stating that "if you're wondering where your wandering semi-boy is tonight, he's probably in Washington."

The Pentagon and HUAC (which disbanded in 1975) effectively wrote off Martin and Mitchell as aberrant turncoats, too limp-wristed to wave a flag. "The Martin and Mitchell case," says Johnson, "demonstrates that when it comes to gay people and public policy, fantasy has historically played a stronger role than the facts. There was no rational basis for the argument that gay people posed a threat to national security in the 1950s, just as there is no rational basis for our exclusion from the military today.It's pure animus and unthinking stereotyping that drove the Martin case and continues to drive public policy today."

According to the newly obtained Pentagon and NSA documents, Martin and Mitchell defected for ideological reasons. Acquaintances said Martin and Mitchell often spoke of their disenchantment with government policies, and hinted at someday deserting. They also vacationed in Cuba and Mexico in 1959, something the NSA never knew about. They may have tried to flee then, but the Russians initially "did not show too much interest in them," sources told the NSA.

That they held such beliefs seems to have surprised the NSA, which wasn't keeping a close watch on the pair. Martin's and Mitchell's families, who spoke little to reporters, cooperated with the ensuing investigation. Martin's family said it was "absolutely impossible" that Ham went willingly to the Soviet Union and that their parting statement had to be a forgery. (Martin and Mitchell left a hard copy of the statement they read aloud in a safe deposit box in Maryland.) Similarly, the declassified files state, "The Mitchell family advised that their son had mentioned psychiatric treatment; that all through his life he has been influenced by others...[he always] tagged along."

In a way, the NSA agreed. "The most plausible explanations for the defection attributed it to personal abnormalities," the agency's documents state. The multiagency U.S. probe "revealed that the two were egotistical, arrogant and insecure young men whose place in society was much lower than they believed they deserved. Both had greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents, and both reportedly expressed bitter resentment that they had not yet received the recognition they were sure they deserved as up-and-coming young scientists."

As for their alleged homosexuality, the files make clear that the two men were enamored by both American and Russian women. "Personal associates also deny any knowledge of homosexuality on the part of Martin and Mitchell and state that both men engaged in social and sexual activity with women," the NSA reports. "One [U.S.] female associate of Mitchell acknowledges frequent and normal sexual activity with him during the entire period of their acquaintance." Some American friends and neighbors thought they were "odd young men who kept to themselves."

But then they apparently did have personal secrets to protect, NSA investigators found. One of Martin's regular companions was a Baltimore stripper known as Lady Zorro; she told investigators she had as many as 40 "dates" with the mathematician, who always paid in large amounts of cash.

A source described Martin as "totally devoted to his all-controlling sadomasochism," and an Ellensburg man said Martin had "perverted sexual relations with Japanese females [while in the Navy] and with women in the State of Washington." The acts apparently involved watching, or joining in with, two women having sex. After Martin's arrival in Russia, the NSA reported, he "denied emphatically that either he or Mitchell were homosexuals. He said he had some sex problems, but that he was certainly not a homosexual." His "sex problems," it appeared, always involved women.

As for their love of communism, once they got a whiff of Russian life in the hardscrabble Red society of the 1960s, the duo quickly longed for home. Martin asked about the possibility of returning as early as 1961, records show.

The NSA papers, which include intelligence reports on their life in Russia as late as 1975, indicate both men tried to arrange for their return to the States, on the condition that they wouldn't be imprisoned. They also attempted to meet with their families, possibly in Mexico or Canada, but reunions apparently were never held. In the following years, Martin, Mitchell, and their families asked U.S. officials if the two would face trial if they returned voluntarily. Officials would say only that no charges had been filed, and suggested they might be allowed back. The defectors suspected this was a trick to lure them to the States, where, if charged with treason, they'd face the death penalty.

In Russia, Martin and Mitchell worked and studied in Leningrad and, for at least the first year, were intensely debriefed by the Soviet government—with the KGB always nearby. Each man initially earned, in equivalent U.S. dollars, about $500 a month from the government. Martin, who was fluent in Russian, studied at Leningrad University, and used the name Vladimir Sokolodsky.

"Both married Soviet citizens," says one government report, "but Martin divorced his wife [Inessa] in about July 1963 after moving to Moscow." Meanwhile, Mitchell married a woman named Galina, dean of the piano faculty at Leningrad Conservatory. Reportedly, neither fathered any children.

The documents also reveal that Martin and Mitchell repeatedly introduced themselves to visiting Americans, seeking their help to return to their native soil. Among the visitors was Bernard Oliver, chief researcher at Hewlett-Packard. Mitchell reportedly told Oliver that he and Martin helped the Soviets make their code system less susceptible to U.S. cracking, but were "of no help to the U.S.S.R. in breaking U.S. codes." Martin, meanwhile, showed up at a restaurant where Donald Duffy, vice president of the Kaiser Foundation, was having dinner. Martin told Duffy that he wasn't "a homosexual or a spy" and was doing laser beam research.

Martin also sought out touring American bandleader Benny Goodman for a chat in Leningrad, saying he needed help getting a lawyer to leave Russia. Nothing apparently came of the encounters. (Mike Roetto, a Virginia-based blogger who works in the security field, recently obtained State Department documents reflecting efforts the two defectors undertook to regain their citizenship. Roetto says he wanted to study the "dark corner" of risk created in this case, assessing whether the re-entry process contained loopholes that could be exploited today. Based on the documents posted at roetto.org/blog, which include Martin's death notice from Mexico, there's no indication either defector was repatriated. But in at least one message, the State Department advised the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that it should "mail to Martin the forms to apply for registration as a U.S. citizen by mail.")

In a newspaper interview in Russia, Martin called his defection "foolhardy," but said he wasn't ashamed. He told another person the Russians actually didn't trust him, "for he is under constant surveillance by them and given work only of the lowest order of priority." His friend Mitchell, who spoke little Russian, had become morose and a heavy drinker, some sources said, willing to divorce his wife and do whatever it took to get out of the country. But by all accounts, he remained in Russia even after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, dying there 10 years later.

Meanwhile, by 1975, "Martin was described by one source as being 'totally on the skids,' an incurable alcoholic, and surrounded by degenerates and devoted to the practice of sexual perversions," according to reports. Once a fit 5 foot 11 and 175 pounds, Martin had become a "sweaty...seedy" man of over 200 pounds. Within two years, he'd get his wish to leave Russia (possibly via an Australian passport he'd applied for), apparently spending his final days just south of the U.S. border, and eternity deep within American soil.

In the 1963 NSA study, a summary of the "secret findings" reveals that government investigators found "some of the worst fears aroused by the case were groundless [and] established no clear motive for the defection." The Russians hadn't enticed the duo, and the two were not part of any foreign espionage effort. The study concludes that "the accumulated evidence indicated that the defection was an impulsive, self-generated act, conceived and initiated without outside prompting or assistance."

Ultimately, the queerest things about Martin and Mitchell were their political, not sexual, acts. "Were they living today," quips author Bamford, "[they] would probably defect all over again."

randerson@seattleweekly.com

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Tyranny Is Here!

2007-07-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death
Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:
Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:
(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or
(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;
(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.
Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:
(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;
(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and
(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.
Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.
Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 17, 2007.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

We really are living in the Theater of the Absurd

2007-07-21T11:02:00.000-05:00

This has got to be one of the silliest things I have ever heard in my lifetime.

Bomb people 'til hell won't have it, occupy their country for over 4 years while committing one heinous crime after another against their citizenry, do little or nothing to repair the damage you've done and then tell them you are "there to help them."

"We will help you"

What kind of idiot would believe such a thing.

Iraqis aren't stupid.

But we are, apparently, because there will be a whole bunch of wing-nuts who will be pushing and believing this silly mantra.

What is it going to take to get it though the thick skulls of the D.C. Dumb-asses that the Iraqis don't want us there, period. They don't want our help. They have had quite enough of our "help" as it is.

How is it possible that anyone can be so stupid as to believe a word of this blather?

The Pentagon Gets a Lesson From Madison Avenue

U.S. Needs to Devise a Different 'Brand' to Win Over the Iraqi People, Study Advises
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A01
In the advertising world, brand identity is everything. Volvo means safety. Colgate means clean. IPod means cool. But since the U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003, its "show of force" brand has proved to have limited appeal to Iraqi consumers, according to a recent study commissioned by the U.S. military.
The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves "shaping" both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd C. Helmus, the author of "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation." The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released this week.
Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you." That is what President Bush's new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq's security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.
Many of the study's conclusions may seem as obvious as they are hard to implement amid combat operations and terrorist attacks, and Helmus acknowledged that it could be too late for extensive rebranding of the U.S. effort in Iraq. But Duane Schattle, whose urban operations office at the Joint Forces Command ordered the study, said that "cities are the battlegrounds of the future" and what has happened in Baghdad provides lessons for the future. "This isn't just about going in and blowing things up," Schattle said. "This is about working in a very complex environment."
In an urban insurgency, for example, civilians can help identify enemy infiltrators and otherwise assist U.S. forces. They are less likely to help, the study says, when they become "collateral damage" in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English. Cultural connections -- seeking out the local head man when entering a neighborhood, looking someone in the eye when offering a friendly wave -- are key.
The most successful companies, the Rand study notes, are those that study their clientele and shape their workplace and product in ways that incorporate their brand into every interaction with consumers.
Wal-Mart's desired identity as a friendly shop where working-class customers can feel comfortable and find good value, for example, would be undercut if telephone operators and sales personnel had rude attitudes, or if the stores offered too much high-end merchandise. For the U.S. military and U.S. officials, understanding the target customer culture is equally critical.
Helmus recommends expanding military training to include shaping and branding concepts such as cultural awareness, and the study underscores the perils of failing to understand your consumer.
"Certain things do not translate well," the study warned. "Danger lies behind assumptions of similarity." A gesture Bush made during his 2005 inaugural parade -- the University of Texas "hook 'em horns" salute with raised index and pinkie fingers -- stands for the "sign of the devil" in some cultures and an indication of marital infidelity in others. A leaflet dropped to intimidate Iraqi insurgents, the study noted, "also reached noncombatants" and "gave everyone who picked it up the 'evil eye.' "
"Words cause similar cultural confusion," it said. The Arabic word "jihad," for example, has religious connotations for Muslims; its repeated use to connote terrorism is insulting and also perversely lends legitimacy to violent acts.
Schattle acknowledged that much of what works for consumer advertising in the United States might not translate well in Baghdad. But urban ops, he said, is all about experimenting and adapting to new realities.
"We want to look at new concepts, new business practices, to see if there are things that we can learn," he said. Since his office was established after the U.S. military issued a new doctrine for urban warfare in 2002, "we've been collecting lessons learned from all over the world," he said. "Not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but places like the Philippines and South America. Wherever there have been fights, we went out and looked at them."
The challenge for the advertising study, he said, was to find "something we can learn from Madison Avenue or from the marketers, the best in the world, that might help us when we're trying to deliver a message about what democracy is." In Iraq, Schattle said, the "urban population is the center of gravity" and the problem is "how we influence them to be on our side, or at least not be an enemy" when "what they see is armor." The goal of such studies, Schattle said, is to distill what works and incorporate it into future training.
Adversaries are doing their own shaping on Iraq's urban battlefields. While intimidation, coercion and assassination might not make them beloved, such techniques effectively limit public outreach to U.S. forces, the Rand study notes. Enemy forces have also learned that "doing good works is a classic approach to winning friends and influencing people" and frequently provide basic services that the U.S. military is unable to match.
At the same time, Helmus said, U.S. military and civilian authorities must stop thinking of themselves as a "good-idea factory" whose every thought has greater merit than those of their customers. "Procter & Gamble doesn't even do that," he said.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

More On Executive Order 51

2007-07-21T10:12:00.000-05:00
It's a little like Area 51, from what I can tell.

Scary crap happenin'; nobody is sure just what.

Whatever it is, it cannot be good, as nothing good has ever come out of this administration for the vast majority of us.

Heads up, America!

by Virginia Simson
http://www.opednews.com

The ACLU is combing through Bush's most recent Executive Order and some of us are scratching our head and letting our imaginations run wild ...

As announced on Fox News ..

HUME: The Bush administration today announced a new tool in its effort to bring stability to Iraq. President Bush issued an Executive Order that will allow the administration to freeze bank accounts and other financial assets belonging to people or groups that undermine progress, such as reconstruction efforts and political reform in Iraq..

As we know, there are plenty of provisions covering money being sent via "terrrorist cells" dating WAY Back. And needless to say there are plenty of people (moi) who wonder at the scratchy legal pantsuits' put out by Bush, but certain of us are wondering . what does this MEAN? Are we to assume the worst . that we can now have all our ca$h seized by the US Treasury therefore breaking the 5th Amendment OR is this just another attempt to make us anxious and nervous ..?

Fifth Amendment – Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property.
... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Quite rightly the flak is flying .. the comments section on tpmuckracker are riveting, and I invite the reader to visit them. Speculation is raised that this is a way at getting at Hilary Clinton, that it is a way to get to Dennis Kucinich, that this is a way to stop every single anti-Iraq protestor. Of course, the ever word twisting US Administration says it is "just filling in the financial cracks ..."

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003726.php

As reported by Sorcha Faal, a known unreliable news source, this is the death knell of liberty. One email I received says that this is creeping fascism. I just don't know, but my distrust is so high after seven years of Orwellian doubletalk; illegal, now legal wiretaps: White House Protocol on handling demonstrators; impeachment proceedings on tap . that I am certainly very CONcerned ...

How about YOU? Perhaps a call to the ACLU is in order, eh?

www.ladybroadoak.blogspot.com

Virginia Simson is a spiritual journalista/activist who runs a visionary planetary tutorial blogspot.
She invites you to join Earthlings_Anonymous@yahoogroups.com with submission of your ISP email address and a statement explaining how it feels to to you to be an EARTHLING right NOW and what your personal and planetary goals are. We would like to know what our members can do to assist you.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Step Right Up, Mr Bolton, You're next for comtempt charges

2007-07-21T09:14:00.000-05:00
Has everyone forgotten that executive privilege doesn't amount to a hill of beans, if a crime is being investigated?

That idiot, Bush judge at District Court probably has forgotten, if he ever knew. Let's face it, Junior's appointees aren't known for their brains, just their loyalty
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House chief of staff faced possible contempt charges after a congressional panel on Thursday ruled as invalid President George W. Bush's bid to limit the probe of the firing of federal prosecutors.

On a party-line vote of 7-3, a Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee rejected Bush's contention that his claim of executive privilege shields the top aide, Joshua Bolten, from having to turn over subpoenaed documents.

"Those claims are not legally valid," said panel Chairwoman Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat.

Sanchez said she hoped the White House would yield and produce the documents, but the administration accused Congress of pushing for a courtroom showdown.

The administration says its firing of nine of the 93 U.S. attorneys last year were justified. But critics say the ousters were politically motivated, perhaps even to influence ongoing criminal probes of Democratic or Republican lawmakers.

"We are hopeful that the White House will come to the conclusion that it is better for them to cooperate than continue this confrontation," Sanchez said.

Last week the panel moved toward contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers after she declined to appear at a hearing. It rejected Bush's claim that Miers did not have to show up.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "It's unfortunate that the committee continues down this path, rather than accepting our offer of accommodation."

"It's no wonder that the committee is less successful at getting facts than headlines," Fratto added. "That a president should be able to receive candid and confidential advice from his aides rests on solid legal ground." Continued...

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

We are Going To Be Hit; A Police State Will Ensue

2007-07-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen. "If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied. However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."

Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. "It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."

Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, "the only constraints on what's going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

NBC: GOP Candidates Can't Ride Our This War

2007-07-20T17:23:00.000-05:00

NBC considered on Friday how the Iraq War and President Bush's 29% approval rating might "affect his party's prospects in the upcoming elections." White House correspondent David Gregory pointed out that, if historical trends hold true, a president as unpopular as Bush is unlikely to be succeeded by another Republican. However, the dilemma for potential candidates is that the president remains popular among Republican primary voters, making it difficult for them to distance themselves from him.

Tim Russert said there was nothing the president could do to improve Republican prospects in 2008 short of "a dramatic turnaround" in Iraq, politically as well as militarily, because the Democrats are not allowing the Republicans any middle ground. "You see what's happening in the Senate," Russert explained. "While those Republicans have broken publicly with the president, saying we need a change of policy, the Democrats aren't having anything of the sort. They're forcing them to vote simply 'withdraw' or 'not withdraw.'"

Russert concluded that although the president just wants to run out the clock, Congressional Republicans will have to face the voters in 2008. "They cannot wait and ride this war out," he said.
(Can't help but wonder, when Bush and Cheney set out to destroy The New Deal the Great Society and grab power like rabid bulldogs, did they know they would destroy the GOP as well? The entire country?)

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Latest Claim of Executive Privilege is Astounding

2007-07-20T16:24:00.000-05:00
Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings

White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases
By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 20, 2007; A01
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.
Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."
But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.
"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."
Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."
"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."
The administration's statement is a dramatic attempt to seize the upper hand in an escalating constitutional battle with Congress, which has been trying for months, without success, to compel White House officials to testify and to turn over documents about their roles in the prosecutor firings last year. The Justice Department and White House in recent weeks have been discussing when and how to disclose the stance, and the official said he decided yesterday that it was time to highlight it.
Yesterday, a House Judiciary subcommittee voted to lay the groundwork for contempt proceedings against White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, following a similar decision last week against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers.
The administration has not directly informed Congress of its view. A spokeswoman for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee's chairman, declined to comment . But other leading Democrats attacked the argument.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called it "an outrageous abuse of executive privilege" and said: "The White House must stop stonewalling and start being accountable to Congress and the American people. No one, including the president, is above the law."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said the administration is "hastening a constitutional crisis," and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the position "makes a mockery of the ideal that no one is above the law."
Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."
Under long-established procedures and laws, the House and Senate can each pursue two kinds of criminal contempt proceedings, and the Senate also has a civil contempt option. The first, called statutory contempt, has been the avenue most frequently pursued in modern times, and is the one that requires a referral to the U.S. attorney in the District.
Both chambers also have an "inherent contempt" power, allowing either body to hold its own trials and even jail those found in defiance of Congress. Although widely used during the 19th century, the power has not been invoked since 1934 and Democratic lawmakers have not displayed an appetite for reviving the practice.
In defending its argument, administration officials point to a 1984 opinion by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, headed at the time by Theodore B. Olson, a prominent conservative lawyer who was solicitor general from 2001 to 2004. The opinion centered on a contempt citation issued by the House for Anne Gorsuch Burford, then administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
It concluded: "The President, through a United States Attorney, need not, indeed may not, prosecute criminally a subordinate for asserting on his behalf a claim of executive privilege. Nor could the Legislative Branch or the courts require or implement the prosecution of such an individual."
In the Burford case, which involved spending on the Superfund program, the White House filed a federal lawsuit to block Congress's contempt action. The conflict subsided when Burford turned over documents to Congress.
The Bush administration has not previously signaled it would forbid a U.S. attorney from pursuing a contempt case in relation to the prosecutor firings. But officials at Justice and elsewhere say it has long held that Congress cannot force such action.
David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel's office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a "unitary executive." In practical terms, he said, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will." And in constitutional terms, he said, "the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch."
But Stanley Brand, who was the Democratic House counsel during the Burford case, said the administration's legal view "turns the constitutional enforcement process on its head. They are saying they will always place a claim of presidential privilege without any judicial determination above a congressional demand for evidence -- without any basis in law." Brand said the position is essentially telling Congress: "Because we control the enforcement process, we are going to thumb our nose at you."
Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers."
Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Light Blogging Today

2007-07-20T09:23:00.001-05:00

Have to go find out if I have cancer or not.

More thoughts on that later.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sawyer Apologizes For False Statements

2007-07-20T06:38:00.001-05:00
Statements she had to know were false, if she is paying attention at all.....Isn't paying attention what she's paid to do?

She's been around Washington too long not to have known that it wasn't the Democrats who were threatening to filibuster their own Bill. Good Grief!
Media Matters:

On the July 19 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, co-host Diane Sawyer apologized for her false assertion — documented by Media Matters for America — regarding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) plan to hold an all-night Senate debate prior to the July 18 cloture vote on a Democratic proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq.

On the July 17 edition of the program, Sawyer said that Reid “vows to filibuster, talking all night to close out all topics besides a vote on Iraqi troop withdrawals.” In fact, by extending the Senate session throughout the night, Reid did not “vow to filibuster,” as Sawyer reported; rather, he highlighted the Republicans’ blocking of an up-or-down vote on the proposal. Indeed, it was the Republicans who opposed the Democrats’ effort to end debate on the legislation and move to a simple majority vote. In her on-air statement, Sawyer clarified that Reid had actually “held the all-night debate to protest the threat of a filibuster from the Republicans. … You wrote me. You were right. I was wrong. I apologize.”

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

David Corn : On Kristol's latest looniness

2007-07-20T06:33:00.000-05:00

The Nation’s David Corn’s response was particularly good.

On Sept. 18, 2002, he declared that a war in Iraq “could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East.” A day later, he said Saddam Hussein was “past the finish line” in developing nuclear weapons. On Feb. 20, 2003, he said of Saddam: “He’s got weapons of mass destruction…. Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world.” On March 1, 2003 — 18 days before the invasion of Iraq — Kristol dismissed the possibility of sectarian conflict afterward. He also said, “Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president.” He maintained that the war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. (The running tab is now about half a trillion dollars.) On March 5, 2003, Kristol said, “We’ll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction.”

After a performance like this — and the above is only a partial review; for more details, click here — Kristol, a likeable fellow, ought to have his pundit’s license yanked. But he’s back again with a sequel: W. will be seen as a wonderful president. His latest efforts should be laughed off op-ed pages. But in the commentariat, he’s still taken seriously.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

The Bush Judge: Mr. Bates

2007-07-20T06:19:00.000-05:00

This judge also threw out Plame-Wilson's case against Darth, Rover and others.

Sounds like a loyal member-in-good-standing of the BFEE, eh?

August 12, 2006

Suit to Block Deficit-Reduction Bill Is Ended

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (AP) — A federal judge Friday threw out a private group’s effort to block a $39 billion deficit-reduction bill that was passed in different versions by the House and Senate.

The lawsuit, filed by Public Citizen, argued that because the two chambers passed slightly different bills, the version signed by President Bush on Feb. 8 was unconstitutional.

The judge, John D. Bates of Federal District Court, disagreed, citing an 1892 Supreme Court ruling that says the signatures of Senate and House leaders are enough to affirm a bill’s legitimacy.

The lawsuit was one of four that challenged the law over a clerical error that listed different rental periods for medical equipment that would be covered by Medicare. The Senate voted to authorize 13 months, but a clerk wrote 36 months into the bill before sending it to the House, where it was passed with the longer interval. Adina Rosenbaum, a lawyer for Public Citizen, said the group planned to appeal. Three other cases, including one filed by Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, are pending.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Pentagon Extends Marine Tours Of Duty in Iraq, Again

2007-07-20T06:14:00.000-05:00
WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has extended the combat tours of 2,200 Marines in Iraq for 30 days, keeping the troops on the ground to help stabilize Anbar province, a Marine Corps spokesman said on Thursday. The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is conducting counterinsurgency operations in Iraq's western province, will stay until at least the end of September, under the extension. "It's to contribute to stability operations," said Maj. Jay Delarosa, who called the extension typical. "The bottom line is if they're extended another month, that's when you kind of have to be concerned," Delarosa said. The United States has boosted force levels to about 158,000 troops under a plan aimed at establishing enough security to allow progress on political benchmarks seen by Washington as critical to long-term stability in Iraq. The Pentagon is due to provide a progress report on the so-called surge in September. While an increasing number of lawmakers are calling for a strategy shift in Iraq, some commanders have urged for more time beyond the September assessment.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Cheadle and Condi

2007-07-20T06:01:00.000-05:00
Don Cheadle Goes Off on Condi

CONDI-SCENDING Cheadle
(Photo: Getty Images)

Ubiquitous actor Don Cheadle shared an insider's view of the State Department Tuesday evening, while taking questions at a New York screening of his new film Talk to Me (out Thursday), presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Asked about his reported disappointment in George W. Bush's Sudan policy, the actor quipped: "Can you turn that camera off?! ... I didn't say it. She did!"
Cheadle, co-author of Not On Our Watch, about the genocide in Darfur, was recently called in to talk to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the issue. And he wasn't impressed.

"She wanted to tell me what the U.S. was doing," Cheadle said. "First she said, 'We're doing all we can, but it's not us, it's the United Nations. They're bogged down with red tape, and trying to push anything through just takes forever. The bureaucracy is almost insurmountable, and it's the United Nations, not the U.S.' And then she said, 'It's like when we had this crisis in Lebanon, I had to send someone down specifically to push through all of our legislation and make sure that everything moved through efficiently.' I'm thinking, I thought you had no control over the United Nations. But I didn't say that, 'cause I wanted to leave!"

The audience erupted in laughter.

"And then she basically said, 'And I've heard a lot of you activists talking about George Bush needs to do more to stop the crisis in Darfur, and George Bush can't stop this crisis in Darfur. You guys need to back off of that.'"

The actor did eventually return to the subject of Bush. "Look, he's been hoisted on his own petard. I don't have to say anything about him. Everybody knows what's up with him."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

American Politics Just get Goofier by the Mimute

2007-07-20T05:54:00.000-05:00

Republicans flip out over lawyer flap

Philadelphia man isn't only GOP member switching sides in 2008

July 19, 2007

BY JENNIFER HUNTER Sun-Times Columnist

Ever been harassed by a group of irate Republicans?
For the past few days, since a news story of mine was published on Monday, I have been bombarded with dozens of daily e-mails from Republicans calling me a liar, demanding I be fired, and insisting on a retraction.
The grumbling arose partially because my editor took a small part of my story and made it into a headline: "GOP lawyer sold on Dems." Reporters don't write headlines, editors do. And they want to write something catchy so readers will read the darned story.
The story was not about the GOP lawyer; it was about the speeches five Democratic presidential candidates gave to a convention of trial lawyers (those two words "trial lawyers" also make Republicans crazy) last Sunday. As reporters usually do, I asked two attendees after the session what they thought about the speeches.
One of the men I interviewed, Jim Ronca, identified himself as a disgruntled Republican, fed up with the Bush White House, who was going to give his vote and money to Democrats. In my story I called him a "staunch Republican." His wife was standing by his side, and so was a friend, a Democrat from New York, Ted Oshman, neither of whom disputed Ronca's description of himself as a Republican.
Oshman added during our interview that he could "not eliminate one of" the Democrats, they all spoke so well. That line ended up in a subhead on the story.
After the story was published, some Republicans posted to right-wing Web sites the two headlines and the two paragraphs quoting Ronca.
And so the madness began.
Industrious partisans, upset that anyone calling himself a Republican could possibly think of supporting the Democrats, decided to "investigate" Ronca, an attorney from Philadelphia. And what they found, they told me, was a long history of Ronca giving more money to Democrats than Republicans. (In fact, much of the money he donated to Democrats was after George W. Bush was elected.)
Richard Rentfrow sent a "notice" each day demanding I give him "Jim Ronca's GOP credentials" or he would "out" me to other papers and Web sites. After he sent me what he described as his "5th notice" he posted an e-mail decrying me as "a lying liberal Democrat girl reporter." Thank you Richard, at my age it's nice to be thought of as a girl.
"Is this a story or an editorial?" wrote Reg Fennell. "You know your "staunch Republican" is NOTHING OF THE SORT! You know he has a history of not supporting Republicans. Did you really believe this would go unnoticed or are you simply comfortable with intellectual dishonesty to your readers? Maybe you're just lazy and careless." Oh, Reg, calm down.
Here's another from Jeffery Cernekee: "It seems that you must be on the demorats [sic] payroll. Your claim that a prominent republican is changing his ways. Too bad the truth will come out and of course it did that he gave most of his money to the demorats [sic]. Will you please get you [sic] facts straight or quit reporting on things you do not have a clue about. . . . Do you have to lie to give the impression that people are leaving the republicans to vote for the demorats [sic]? How bush of you."
Karen Mango wrote: "Have you been fired yet for your lie about your trial lawyer/staunch republican turned democrat? Are you shamefaced for believing a TRIAL LAWYER??? I hope you finally did the research that the bloggers did with a google entry -- your Ronca has given to democrats all his life. He lied to you, and you printed it. You didn't research, you were salivating over going to print with an anti-republican story, and the truth never mattered. Don't fall back on the ''he said he was a staunch republican,'' because your article does not attribute his political stance as a quote, but as fact.
"I can't wait for your next article: All Trial Lawyers are Lying Jerks."
The final kicker for all you Republicans who read my column with a magnifying glass is a press release issued Wednesday: "One of Chicago's key Republican fund-raisers, CME Group Executive Chairman Terry Duffy today announced that he is endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election."
Duffy says he intends to remain a registered Republican.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

This Would Be LOL Funny, If It Weren't So Damned Serious.

2007-07-19T21:57:00.000-05:00
Anyone who still believes that we have a democratic nation is a pure fool.

I seem to remember an old saying: no taxation without representation. Until every American can be reasonably sure that their vote has been counted, they should not pay taxes.

It's high time (no pun intended) that Americans insist on their right to have honest elections, if not campaigns, and commit serious civil disobedience until that right is honored by our state and federal governments, which are supposed to be answerable to us.

What if the whole damn thing collapses, you might ask?

What whole damn thing and who cares, I would ask in return.

When public institutions can no longer be trusted, it's time for them to go. Replace them with new institutions that can be trusted, at least for awhile. Nothing can be trusted forever, in the political world, because corruption is everywhere one finds great sums of money flowing hither, thither and yon.'

Thomas Jefferson once opined that in order to have a healthy Democratic Republic, there should be a new revolution every 20 years or so. No wonder we are in such a mess. We are a couple hundred years behind schedule.

It's sure hell time for a revolution when we can't even vote and be sure that our vote is counted as cast! Seems to me that is kinda basic to a Democracy of any kind.

Just how stupid can we get?

by Rebecca Mercuri
http://www.opednews.com

This article was guest blogged by Rebecca Mercuri on July 19, 2007 at http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4823

Anyone who has been anywhere in the blogosphere in the months since Rush Holt's HR 811 Election Reform bill was introduced, knows that a schism appears to have developed in the voting advocacy community. I say "appears" because it's not terribly clear to me at this point whether this schism existed all along and now the fires are being stoked by rogue insiders in order to fuel a "divide and conquer" effort that benefits voting system vendors who can rise like Phoenixes out of the ashes of the activists, or whether Congressman Holt's bill is a litmus test being used to decide who'll continue to get a seat at the table (to testify at hearings) and a chunk of the grant money and other set-asides for election "research" projects. Maybe both of these actions (and others) are in play.

This has been reminding me a lot lately of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, riding on the hippie bus to the 1964 New York World's Fair. Tom Wolfe quoted Kesey saying: "There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place -- then it won't make a damn." Wolfe went on to explain "And nobody had to have it spelled out for them. Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: You're either on the bus ... or off the bus."

That dividing line between where the bus ends and the rest of the world begins, right where Wolfe was sitting, is the only place to get some decent perspective on the whole situation. So I'm perched at that vantage point, and inside the voting bus I'm seeing Brad Friedman, Bev Harris, Lynn Landes, Rob Kall, Teresa Hommel, Ellen Theisen, Mark Crispin Miller, Greg Palast, Ion Sancho, Doug Kelner, David Chaum and Dennis Kucinich all arguing about something, but the vibe is upbeat. And outside the bus there's Doug Lewis, Wally O'Dell, Tom Wilkey, Theresa LePore, Linda Lamone, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Hans von Spakovsky, Jim Dickson, and Matt Damschroeder just milling around. These are not comprehensive lists (since I'm somewhat myopic and have never been very good with names or faces), and I'm certainly not saying that any of these folks have affiliations with each other, though maybe some do.

What's bugging me is that I can't tell whether Rush Holt and HR 811 are on the bus, or not, right now. Though the bill's predecessor versions (from the prior two Congresses) seemed to be on the bus, none of Holt's bills have ever made it totally clear that the voter verified papers would actually be the real ballots, by ensuring that 100% of them would be counted (preferably by hand, in public, and before the election night returns are reported).

The folks who are truly on the bus all seem to grasp this reality. Holt's latest bill, especially the revised version, comes with Avi Rubin, David Dill, Barbara Simons, and maybe even Ron Rivest, each of whom have wandered on and off the bus before. Plus now there's the Microsoft attorneys too, and Holt's backyard buddy Avante, who hopped on when the bus passed through their adjacent parking lots. We just know this whole crowd is probably not going to get along terribly well with Brad and Mark and Lynn. So if HR 811 gets off the bus, the Microsoft team will certainly be a lot happier, although I don't know how well Avi and Wally will fare together. Of course, there's a lot more room (as well as money) off the bus than there is on it, so maybe they'll be OK outside since they don't have to sit together (unless they want to).

Speaking of money, there's always been some friction between those who get on the bus just to grab some of it, and those who are there to groove and make the world a better place. Heck, it was the Corporations who turned The Summer of Love into a marketing opportunity, back then as well as now. And the cash never seems to wind up in the hands of the folks who came up with the original out-of-the-box ideas. Often the payola (especially if it's coming from the Government) is used to cut the independent watchdogs and truly creative folks out or make them appear to look stupid. We've certainly seen that happening with some of the foundation funded voting projects, such as those out of Caltech/MIT, whose results always seem to miss the mark or inevitably reinforce the status quo.

But the creativity was one of the things that differentiated Kesey and the Pranksters from the world outside. They were always building something that nobody had seen before, or trying to push the limits just to find out what would happen. One day, at their encampment in La Honda, Kesey's gang put up a huge sign "The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Hell's Angels" and after a short while, the motorcyclists showed up. Some weeks later, they tried the welcome sign idea again with the Beatles when they were in town, but the Fab Four never wandered by. It's like the way these new balloting systems like Punchscan and VotePad and Open Voting Solutions would like to "Welcome the EAC Voluntary Voting System Guidelines" but because they're so totally incompatible, they're just not going to be spending time together getting to know each other, even though they should. Of course this means that everyone off the bus is going to be stuck with whatever Wally and Rush and the Microsoft attorneys can agree on, but at least some folks will know these aren't the only voting metaphors in town.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you need to have it spelled out for you, then you were off the bus in the first place. This is just one of those times where we can't wait, so if you were on the bus and got left behind, well, you'll find it again. There's some exciting things happening on the bus and it seems like Democracy is due for a change. Come on, hop on for a while and enjoy the ride.

===

Rebecca Mercuri has been riling folks on and off the voting bus since 1989. She is constantly amazed at the ease by which voting system vendors and presumably well-intentioned legislators can turn simple functional concepts into distorted nightmarish implementations, even without the assistance of hallucinogenics.

http://www.notablesoftware.com

Rebecca Mercuri has been in the forefront of the voting integrity movement since 1989. She provides expert witness services for elections and other forensic computing matters.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

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FEINGOLD CALLS FOR CENSURE OF PRESIDENT, ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS OVER IRAQ & ATTACK ON RULE OF LAW
Feingold to Introduce Resolutions Censuring President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Other Administration Officials