Seems there is far more to this than Cheney just being a butthead, and Waxman aims to get to the bottom of it.
Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney just hope to run out the clock. Unless formal impeachment hearings are begun, they are liley to get away with it.
I wonder if anyone in Washington remembers what happened to Gerald Ford when he pardoned Nixon and let him get away with behavior that wasn't much compared to what Cheney and Bush have done.
Chairman Waxman Writes to White House Counsel Fielding on Security Violations
June 26th, 2007 by Jesse Lee
Chairman Henry Waxman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who produced the initial report on Vice President Cheney’s disregard for rules governing the handling of classified information, has written has a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding indicating that contrary to the recent claims of White House spokesperson Dana Perino, there is evidence that the White House has repeatedly failed to investigate security violations, take corrective action following breaches, and appropriately protect classified information.
The full letter (pdf):
June 26, 2007
The Honorable Fred FieldingCounsel to the President
The White House1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Fielding:
Last week, I wrote the Vice President about evidence that he violated Executive Order 12958 by blocking the National Archives from conducting security inspections in his office. In response, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said: “The president and the vice president are complying with all the rules and regulations regarding the handling of classified material and making sure that it is safeguarded and protected.” She asserted that the only part of Executive Order 12958 that was not being followed by the White House and the Vice President’s office was the “small portion” giving oversight responsibilities to the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives.
I have received information that casts doubt on these assertions. There is evidence that both the White House and the Office of the Vice President have flaunted multiple requirements for protecting classified information, not just the section related to the responsibilities of the Information Security Oversight Office. According to current and former White House security personnel who have contacted my staff, White House practices have been dangerously inadequate with respect to investigating security violations, taking corrective action following breaches, and physically securing classified information.
I have received information that:
• White House security officials have been blocked from inspecting West Wing offices for compliance with procedures for handling classified information. The White House has its own security office that functions independently of the Information Security Oversight Office in the National Archives. According to several security officials who have worked in this White House office, the Bush White House blocked the White House security officers from conducting unannounced inspections of the West Wing. This is a departure from the practices of the prior administration, which allowed these inspections.
• The White House regularly ignored security breaches. The security officers described repeated instances in which security breaches were reported to the White House Security Office by Secret Service or CIA agents, but were never investigated. In one case, the White House Security Office took no action after receiving a report that a White House official left classified materials unattended in a hotel room. In numerous instances, reports that White House officials left classified information on their desks went uninvestigated.
• The President’s top political advisor received a renewal of his security clearance despite presidential directives calling for the denial of security clearances for officials who misrepresent their involvement in security leaks. Under guidelines issued by President Bush, security clearances should not be renewed for individuals who deny their role in the release of classified information, regardless of whether the disclosure was intentional or negligent. Contrary to this guidance, the White House Security Office renewed the security clearance for Karl Rove in late 2006.
• The White House has condoned widespread mismanagement at the White House Security Office. According to the White House security officers, the White House allowed the White House Security Office to be run by managers who ignored basic security procedures and allowed other White House officials to do so also.
The Oversight Committee has been seeking to interview or take the deposition of White House officials with knowledge of these security matters since I wrote to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about them in April. While I do not question your good faith in seeking to negotiate the terms of these interviews, further delay would not be in the interests of the nation. I am therefore writing to advise you that unless we are able to schedule these interviews promptly, I will bring before the Committee on Thursday, June 28, a motion to subpoena the relevant officials for depositions.
Background
I wrote to Vice President Cheney last week regarding his decision to exempt himself from the President’s executive order that establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified information. In response to my letter, White House spokesperson Dana Perino explained that the Vice President is complying with most sections of the executive order, stating: “There’s no question that he is in compliance, in terms of the meat of the issue, which is … the handling of classified documents. It’s just simply a matter of a small portion of an executive order regarding reporting requirements, of which he is not subject to, and the interpretation of the EO.”
Ms. Perino repeatedly reiterated this point, stating: “The President and the Vice President are complying with all the rules and regulations regarding the handling of classified material and are making sure that it is safeguarded and protected,” “the Vice President’s Office says that they are in compliance, and I can tell you on behalf of the President that we are in compliance, with all matters regarding classified information,” and “I don’t think there’s a question of the handling of the documents. There’s a question of the reporting. In the handling of the documents, we are confident that we are in full compliance.”
These statements do not appear to be accurate. After the Committee’s hearing in March into the disclosure of the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, several former and current employees of the White House Security Office informed my staff of multiple White House violations of the rules for safeguarding classified information. If their statements are true, the White House has repeatedly disregarded basic requirements for protecting our national security secrets.
Blocking Inspections by White House Security Officials
Last week, White House spokesperson Dana Perino asserted that the Information Security Oversight Office in the National Archives “is not the only agency that can check” whether White House offices are in compliance with the security procedures established by the President’s executive order. On this issue, Ms. Perino is right. Within the Executive Office of the President, there is a White House Security Office that is supposed to ensure that all White House officials comply with the requirements for protecting classified information.
What Ms. Perino did not mention is that former and current employees of the White House Security Office have informed my staff that they have been blocked from conducting inspections in the West Wing of the White House, where most of the President’s most senior advisors work.
Under Executive Order 12958, every entity in the executive branch that handles classified information is supposed to have a security office that administers the classified information program. The White House Security Office fills this role in the White House, overseeing White House compliance with the order. Its responsibilities under the executive order and implementing regulations and guidance include issuing security clearances, conducting security education and training programs, and maintaining an ongoing self-inspection program.
During the previous administration, security specialists working for the White House Security Office were given access to all White House offices, including those in the West Wing. According to the security officers, this access was revoked by the Bush Administration. As a result, only the senior management of the White House Security Office (such as the Director and Deputy Director) retained the authority to enter the West Wing without advance notice to and assistance from West Wing personnel. The security officers objected to the loss of access, but Security Office management denied their requests to restore access to the West Wing.
The denial of access to the West Wing has serious adverse effects, according to the security officers. The officers report that they and other security officers working in the White House Security Office do not have the ability to perform basic security functions, such as conducting unannounced inspections of West Wing offices. The result is that security violations are disclosed only when the incidents are self-reported by the violators or happen to be noticed and reported by Secret Service or other officials with access to the West Wing.
Ignoring Security Violations
The security officers also described a systemic breakdown in procedures for responding to reports of security violations in the West Wing. The officers identified multiple instances of security breaches that were reported to the White House Security Office by concerned officials, such as Secret Service agents, but ignored by the White House Security Office. According to the security officers, the practice within the White House Security Office was not to document or investigate violations occurring in the West Wing or to take corrective action.
This failure to respond to reports of security breaches would appear to be a direct violation of Executive Order 12958. Under the executive order, one of the fundamental responsibilities of security offices is to investigate reported security breaches and “take appropriate and prompt corrective action.”
The security officers provided several examples of White House security breaches that were never investigated by the White House Security Office. One high-profile example cited by the officials was the failure of the White House to initiate its own investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity. It took months before a criminal investigation into this breach was initiated by the Justice Department. Yet according to the security officers, no White House investigation into the breach was initiated during this critical period.
In another example described to my staff, a junior White House aide reported that a senior assistant to the President improperly disclosed “Sensitive Compartmented Information” to the junior aide, even though the aide had no security clearance. Although SCI is the highest level of security classification, the White House Security Office took no steps to investigate or take corrective action.
In a third example, a security officer reported that a White House official left classified material behind in a hotel room during a foreign trip with the President. Although the CIA recovered the material and reported the incident, the White House Security Office did not investigate, seek remedial action, or discipline the responsible official.
The security officers also described numerous examples of White House officials failing to physically secure classified information within the White House in accordance with applicable security requirements. The officers related that they had received numerous reports of White House officials leaving classified information out on their desks, rather than in secure locations. Yet according to the officers, the White House Security Office made no effort to investigate these violations or implement any remedial actions.
Renewal of Karl Rove’s Security Clearance
On March 16, 2007, I wrote to White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to ask about the renewal of Karl Rove’s security clearance. You wrote back on April 16, 2007, to say that Mr. Rove did undergo a review for the renewal of his security clearance last year. According to your letter:
My office has confirmed that these processes and security clearance renewals continued uninterrupted for all White House officials, including for Karl Rove. Although Mr. Knodell testified he had no “first-hand knowledge” of whether a reinvestigation of Mr. Rove’s security clearance was initiated, my office has confirmed that it was initiated. Upon conclusion of the reinvestigation process in late 2006, Mr. Rove’s security clearance was continued by the Office of Security and not altered in any respect.
This renewal of Mr. Rove’s security clearance would appear to be another example of a questionable White House security practice. Under guidelines approved by President Bush in 2005, the “deliberate or negligent disclosure” of classified information can be a “disqualifying” condition. Moreover, these guidelines provide that an individual’s response to a potential security breach may be just as important as the breach itself. Under the guidelines, a lack of candor, even about unintentional breaches, can be grounds for terminating access to classified information.
Under these standards, it is hard to see how Mr. Rove would qualify for a renewal of his security clearance. At a minimum, his disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s status as a CIA officer would appear to be a disqualifying “negligent” disclosure under the executive order. In addition, he told White House spokesman Scott McClellan in September 2003 that there was “no truth” to the allegations that he was involved in the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s identity. This misrepresentation would appear to be an independent ground under the President’s guidelines for denying his clearance renewal.
Mismanagement of the White House Security Office
Another area of concern involves the management of the White House Security Office itself. The current and former security officials reported that James Knodell, who until recently was the Director of the White House Security Office, and Ken Greeson, the Deputy Director, routinely violated basic security guidelines. They also said that these officials were poor managers who were loath to assert authority over White House security practices or to take actions that could embarrass White House officials.
One example cited by the officials involved security procedures in the White House sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF). The security officers said that Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson habitually brought their Blackberry devices and cell phones into the SCIF in the White House Security Office in violation of the rules. The officials said that Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson also allowed others, such as visiting White House personnel, to bring their Blackberries and cell phones into the SCIF. According to the officials, these improper practices were allowed to continue even after security officers repeatedly informed Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson that the practices violated security rules and set a poor example.
According to the security officers, the poor management and bad examples set by Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson caused extreme frustration and plummeting morale among White House security officers, resulting in the departure of more than half of the White House security officers within the last year.
Request for Interviews
I wrote to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about many of these issues on April 23, 2007, when I urged Mr. Card to appear voluntarily before the Committee to address inadequate White House security procedures. In your letter to me on April 24, 2007, and in subsequent meetings, you proposed that the Committee first interview lower-ranking White House officials. You expressed the hope that these interviews could “obviate the need to further consider your request for Mr. Card’s appearance.”
I do not doubt your good faith in proposing that the Committee consider interviews with other White House officials before seeking testimony from Mr. Card. But it has now been over two months and the Committee still has not been able to arrange an interview with Alan Swendiman, the Director of the Office of Administration; Mark Frownfelter, a former White House security officer; and Jeff Thompson, the former Director of the White House Security Office. This continued delay is impeding the Committee’s inquiry and is not in the nation’s interest.
I respectfully request that the interviews that the Committee has been seeking be scheduled without further delay. If this cannot be accomplished, I will recommend to the Committee the issuance of subpoenas at our next business meeting, which is currently scheduled for June 28.
If you have any questions regarding this letter, please contact me or ask your staff to contact Michael Gordon or David Rapallo of the Committee staff at (202) 225-5420.
Sincerely,
Henry A. WaxmanChairman
cc: Tom DavisRanking Minority Member
Footnotes and citations available here (pdf) >>
(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
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Protest Restrictions to be Lifted in G.B.
BROWN TO LIFT PROTEST RESTRICTIONS
Sunday June 24,2007
Gordon Brown is to hold out an olive branch to opponents of the Iraq war by reinstating the right to demonstrate and march outside the Houses of Parliament, it has been claimed.
Restrictive legislation introduced by Tony Blair will allegedly be reversed by the Chancellor soon after he enters Number 10 next week.It is understood to be one of a raft of initiatives planned for Mr Brown's first 100 days in office, which are designed to distance him from his predecessor's most unpopular policies.
Mr Brown is keen to take a more sympathetic attitude to critics of the military intervention, but the move will not satisfy those who have been calling for an immediate withdrawal of British troops.The relaxation of rules on peaceful protesting will also not mean that "permanent eyesores" can be set up in Parliament Square, or that policemen and passers-by can be "abused" through loudhailers, according to allies of the Premier-in-waiting.
MPs have expressed concern at the distraction caused by noisy demos outside the Commons, and last week Mr Brown's car was punched and kicked by an anti-war activist.The Sunday Times said it had seen a memo from Sir Richard Mottram, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, indicating that the change in the law was to be accompanied by plans to bolster defences at key Westminster sites with walls and bollards. The government introduced legislation in July 2005 banning unauthorised protests within half-a-mile of Parliament. The law makes a demo unlawful unless you have written police approval 24 hours, and provoked an outcry amongst anti-war protestors.A spokesman for Mr Brown said: "We're not going to comment on every piece of speculation."
(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
Sunday June 24,2007
Gordon Brown is to hold out an olive branch to opponents of the Iraq war by reinstating the right to demonstrate and march outside the Houses of Parliament, it has been claimed.
Restrictive legislation introduced by Tony Blair will allegedly be reversed by the Chancellor soon after he enters Number 10 next week.It is understood to be one of a raft of initiatives planned for Mr Brown's first 100 days in office, which are designed to distance him from his predecessor's most unpopular policies.
Mr Brown is keen to take a more sympathetic attitude to critics of the military intervention, but the move will not satisfy those who have been calling for an immediate withdrawal of British troops.The relaxation of rules on peaceful protesting will also not mean that "permanent eyesores" can be set up in Parliament Square, or that policemen and passers-by can be "abused" through loudhailers, according to allies of the Premier-in-waiting.
MPs have expressed concern at the distraction caused by noisy demos outside the Commons, and last week Mr Brown's car was punched and kicked by an anti-war activist.The Sunday Times said it had seen a memo from Sir Richard Mottram, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, indicating that the change in the law was to be accompanied by plans to bolster defences at key Westminster sites with walls and bollards. The government introduced legislation in July 2005 banning unauthorised protests within half-a-mile of Parliament. The law makes a demo unlawful unless you have written police approval 24 hours, and provoked an outcry amongst anti-war protestors.A spokesman for Mr Brown said: "We're not going to comment on every piece of speculation."
(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
How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future
AlterNet: Paul Hawken: How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future:
Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, discusses what he sees as the largest social movement in human history, and why that movement is so invisible to the media -- and itself.
Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, discusses what he sees as the largest social movement in human history, and why that movement is so invisible to the media -- and itself.
Sicko: Can Transform This Nation
But only if We, the people, want it badly enough to fight for it, and I do mean fight!
Critical Condition:
Call me non-intellectual but I've always believed that the power and intensity of a single piece of Art, properly timed, on rare occasions can transform a nation.
The right-wing rap sheet
The law and order party has morphed into the anything-goes Goopers.
The right-wing rap sheet | Campaign for America's Future:
By now most of the world should know that Rudolph Giuliani's South Carolina campaign chair is not a cocaine dealer. No, none of that. He's merely alleged to have given the stuff away.
One of our minor obsessions here at The Big Con is how, when it comes to conservative failure, obvious patterns - the sinkhole epidemic, right-wing terrorism - get reported, in our 'liberal media,' merely as isolated incidents, one after the other after the other.
The case of the Palmetto State Party Boy reminds me of another: that the Republican Party, and especially its presidential campaigns, is staffed stem to stern with alleged criminals.
Romney's got two. His director of operations is a loon with a habit of impersonating police officers for his own freakish purposes, a crime carrying a penalty of up to one year in prison. More gravely, the co-chairman of his Utah finance committee is being sued for alleged 'physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse' of the residential boarding schools he operated.
The right-wing rap sheet | Campaign for America's Future:
By now most of the world should know that Rudolph Giuliani's South Carolina campaign chair is not a cocaine dealer. No, none of that. He's merely alleged to have given the stuff away.
One of our minor obsessions here at The Big Con is how, when it comes to conservative failure, obvious patterns - the sinkhole epidemic, right-wing terrorism - get reported, in our 'liberal media,' merely as isolated incidents, one after the other after the other.
The case of the Palmetto State Party Boy reminds me of another: that the Republican Party, and especially its presidential campaigns, is staffed stem to stern with alleged criminals.
Romney's got two. His director of operations is a loon with a habit of impersonating police officers for his own freakish purposes, a crime carrying a penalty of up to one year in prison. More gravely, the co-chairman of his Utah finance committee is being sued for alleged 'physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse' of the residential boarding schools he operated.
What A Fool Believes
Americans will believe anything the TeeVee says, even when all evidence points to the contrary.
What A Fool Believes | Campaign for America's Future:
Big Con readers may enjoy my cover article in The Nation on how the notion that the nation is fundamentally conservative is, um, a big con. Don't miss the quote from the Campaign for America's Future/Media Matters joint report on 'Why a Conservative America Is a Myth' about how the stubborn oxen in the mainstream media botch the job: 'Democratic victories are understood as a product of the Democrats moving to the right, while Republican victories are the product of a conservative electorate.'
Here's an example that demonstrates the problem in spades: the inaccurate-beyond-words New York Times op-ed by Melinda Henneberger, 'Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats.' She tries to make an argument about how devotion to abortion rights is somehow losing Democrats voters by the boatloads.
What A Fool Believes | Campaign for America's Future:
Big Con readers may enjoy my cover article in The Nation on how the notion that the nation is fundamentally conservative is, um, a big con. Don't miss the quote from the Campaign for America's Future/Media Matters joint report on 'Why a Conservative America Is a Myth' about how the stubborn oxen in the mainstream media botch the job: 'Democratic victories are understood as a product of the Democrats moving to the right, while Republican victories are the product of a conservative electorate.'
Here's an example that demonstrates the problem in spades: the inaccurate-beyond-words New York Times op-ed by Melinda Henneberger, 'Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats.' She tries to make an argument about how devotion to abortion rights is somehow losing Democrats voters by the boatloads.
Remember Checks And Balances?
We do!
Whether or not the D.C. people do is doubtful.
TomPaine.com - Remember Checks And Balances?:
The executive branch has relied upon the state secrets privilege to claim that the disclosure of certain evidence in court would jeopardize national security, and therefore cannot be reviewed by private parties, the attorneys or even the judge. As one might expect, without this evidence cases are usually dismissed.
The Supreme Court first recognized this privilege in 1953 in United States v. Reynolds, when it denied the widows of three civilian Air Force contractors access to an accident report. The Air Force had claimed that the report was confidential, noting that the personnel aboard the plane “were engaged in a highly secret mission of the Air Force.” When the report surfaced decades later, it became clear that the only sensitive information therein was evidence of negligence by the Air Force that may have caused the men’s deaths. The lower courts in Reynolds had ordered that the government submit the accident report to the trial court, so it could assess whether the document in fact contained state secrets that could not be disclosed. But the Supreme Court overruled this determination. Sadly, this Supreme Court precedent permitting the executive branch to assert the state secrets privilege without any independent review of the evidence still stands, and judges continue to give the Executive an alarming degree of deference.
Whether or not the D.C. people do is doubtful.
TomPaine.com - Remember Checks And Balances?:
The executive branch has relied upon the state secrets privilege to claim that the disclosure of certain evidence in court would jeopardize national security, and therefore cannot be reviewed by private parties, the attorneys or even the judge. As one might expect, without this evidence cases are usually dismissed.
The Supreme Court first recognized this privilege in 1953 in United States v. Reynolds, when it denied the widows of three civilian Air Force contractors access to an accident report. The Air Force had claimed that the report was confidential, noting that the personnel aboard the plane “were engaged in a highly secret mission of the Air Force.” When the report surfaced decades later, it became clear that the only sensitive information therein was evidence of negligence by the Air Force that may have caused the men’s deaths. The lower courts in Reynolds had ordered that the government submit the accident report to the trial court, so it could assess whether the document in fact contained state secrets that could not be disclosed. But the Supreme Court overruled this determination. Sadly, this Supreme Court precedent permitting the executive branch to assert the state secrets privilege without any independent review of the evidence still stands, and judges continue to give the Executive an alarming degree of deference.
The Best Idea for Reducing Global Warming | The American Prospect
A little food for thought
The Best Idea for Reducing Global Warming | The American Prospect:
It's not a carbon tax and it's not a cap-and-trade system. It's a carbon auction.
The Best Idea for Reducing Global Warming | The American Prospect:
It's not a carbon tax and it's not a cap-and-trade system. It's a carbon auction.
Flirting With Liquid Coal
UhOh. The Dems had sure the hell better wise up in this age of information.
It is discouraging and a little scary when we constantly know more than they, apparently, do.
Flirting With Liquid Coal | The American Prospect:
Democratic primary voters want a clean break with the Bush administration's focus on subsidizing dirty energy. The party's two front-runners for president might want to listen up.
It is discouraging and a little scary when we constantly know more than they, apparently, do.
Flirting With Liquid Coal | The American Prospect:
Democratic primary voters want a clean break with the Bush administration's focus on subsidizing dirty energy. The party's two front-runners for president might want to listen up.
A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney
Oh Really?
Listen, Goopers! Let's not forget where the buck finally stops, and this time it is with all of you.
You are the ones who refused to do any effective oversight for 6 freaking years on this dastardly administration, even after Voldermort waddled up to Capitol Hill to demand the right to torture whoever the hell he wanted to, in our names.
Do you think we are just going to forget about that?
A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney - washingtonpost.com:
The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week's blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.
As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration's leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party -- including the presidential nominee -- in next year's elections.
Eugene Robinson - 'Angler' For Power - washingtonpost.com
I have never worried about a President Cheney for two reasons:
1) Like any other creature of darkness, Cheney would be far less effective, if able to function at all, in the daylight.
2) Bush could not be impeached without Cheney going down with him.
Eugene Robinson - 'Angler' For Power - washingtonpost.com:
I'm often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don't at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.
Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion -- if he's going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.
1) Like any other creature of darkness, Cheney would be far less effective, if able to function at all, in the daylight.
2) Bush could not be impeached without Cheney going down with him.
Eugene Robinson - 'Angler' For Power - washingtonpost.com:
I'm often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don't at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.
Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion -- if he's going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.
Hollywood Values Save America!
Stranger things have happened?
We have an incurious, buffoon. who knows zip about other nations and cultures, in the White House telling us that we're are anti-American, unpatriotic, traitors if we disagree with him about bombing the hell out of innocent, defenseless brown people just because we can.
We have a VP who says he is cannot be held accountable as a part of the executive branch of government, because he is really in the senate and the executive, which makes him...what....another branch of government, unaccountable to anyone other then himself or the afore mentioned buffoon?
Anything is possible and probable these days?
Hollywood Values Save America! | The American Prospect:
From Mel Gibson to Ann Coulter to Don Imus, the backlash against celebrity bigots has rolled eastward.
We have an incurious, buffoon. who knows zip about other nations and cultures, in the White House telling us that we're are anti-American, unpatriotic, traitors if we disagree with him about bombing the hell out of innocent, defenseless brown people just because we can.
We have a VP who says he is cannot be held accountable as a part of the executive branch of government, because he is really in the senate and the executive, which makes him...what....another branch of government, unaccountable to anyone other then himself or the afore mentioned buffoon?
Anything is possible and probable these days?
Hollywood Values Save America! | The American Prospect:
From Mel Gibson to Ann Coulter to Don Imus, the backlash against celebrity bigots has rolled eastward.
Beyond Fear
Glad I didn't shoot my TeeVee as planned.
This series sounds like it might be worth watching.
Beyond Fear | The American Prospect:
The NBC hit Heroes is the anti-24. Its emergency-powers president is the villian -- and viewers love it.
This series sounds like it might be worth watching.
Beyond Fear | The American Prospect:
The NBC hit Heroes is the anti-24. Its emergency-powers president is the villian -- and viewers love it.
Freakopolitics
I was just ranting about this two days ago!
Tax breaks and credits cannot be the answer to everything!
Freakopolitics | The American Prospect:
T@P How did tax credits become the answer to everything? Are there no other tools left in the box?"
Tax breaks and credits cannot be the answer to everything!
Freakopolitics | The American Prospect:
T@P How did tax credits become the answer to everything? Are there no other tools left in the box?"
The Thirty-Year Itch
Let's hope it's the dying of all Imperial ideas, both liberal and conservative, neo or otherwise.
The Thirty-Year Itch | The American Prospect:
Perhaps the Bush era was just the decadent late phase of the dying culture of post-1978 conservatism. Now we need a liberal agenda that's ambitious and confident enough to take over the next 30 years."
The Thirty-Year Itch | The American Prospect:
Perhaps the Bush era was just the decadent late phase of the dying culture of post-1978 conservatism. Now we need a liberal agenda that's ambitious and confident enough to take over the next 30 years."
What Hedge Funds Risk
This could be a more nightmarish disaster than the S&L debacle of the 80's.
We cannot let sociopaths and bottom-line feeder self-regulate.
What Hedge Funds Risk | The American Prospect:
Increasingly, everyone's money -- that's what. Nobody rides herd on these unregulated investment funds, which now manage a tidy $1.5 trillion."
We cannot let sociopaths and bottom-line feeder self-regulate.
What Hedge Funds Risk | The American Prospect:
Increasingly, everyone's money -- that's what. Nobody rides herd on these unregulated investment funds, which now manage a tidy $1.5 trillion."
Auditing the War
We want out money back, and we're pretty sure we know where it is.
Auditing the War | The American Prospect:
Claire McCaskill, the freshman senator from Missouri who sits in Harry Truman's desk in the Senate and who has earned her own reputation as a straight-talker, went to Baghdad last week. She wanted to get a look at how we were spending the $2 billion that is gushing out of the Treasury each and every week for the war in Iraq.
The former state auditor, who has been railing about the need for more congressional oversight since she got to Washington, returned from her visit lamenting the 'cost-plus' contracts that have enriched so many of the independent contractors doing business with the U.S. government in Iraq. Such contracts pay contractors a profit as a percentage of whatever the project costs.
She allowed that she had eaten in very nice mess halls, and wanted to assure her constituents that the troops were eating well. But 'cost-plus is a dangerous contracting device,' she insisted in a conference call with reporters from Kuwait, 'because what cost-plus says to someone is, 'The more you spend, the more you make.' And that's a dangerous thing to do around public dollars.'
Auditing the War | The American Prospect:
Claire McCaskill, the freshman senator from Missouri who sits in Harry Truman's desk in the Senate and who has earned her own reputation as a straight-talker, went to Baghdad last week. She wanted to get a look at how we were spending the $2 billion that is gushing out of the Treasury each and every week for the war in Iraq.
The former state auditor, who has been railing about the need for more congressional oversight since she got to Washington, returned from her visit lamenting the 'cost-plus' contracts that have enriched so many of the independent contractors doing business with the U.S. government in Iraq. Such contracts pay contractors a profit as a percentage of whatever the project costs.
She allowed that she had eaten in very nice mess halls, and wanted to assure her constituents that the troops were eating well. But 'cost-plus is a dangerous contracting device,' she insisted in a conference call with reporters from Kuwait, 'because what cost-plus says to someone is, 'The more you spend, the more you make.' And that's a dangerous thing to do around public dollars.'
'It's clear Bush could stop Cheney,' Post reporter says of his expose
Yes, but he hasn't and he wont.
So where does the buck stop? Just where it always has.
The Raw Story | 'It's clear Bush could stop Cheney,' Post reporter says of his expose:
CNN spoke on Monday to prize-winning Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, co-author of a current four-part series exposing Vice President Cheney's dominance of US policy decisions.
Gellman first described Cheney's leading role in approving of enhanced interrogation methods, saying that 'Dick Cheney decided early on, we're not going to win against al Qaeda unless we extract serious intelligence quickly from captured enemies, and he helped push through a fairly remarkable change in law, which was to establish a new distinction between 'torture,' which the United States government would not do, and 'cruelty.'
Shop 'Til the Earth Drops
I guess I've heard sillier things, but I can't remember when.
AlterNet: Environment: Shop 'Til the Earth Drops:
Once prescribed as the remedy for a bad day at work, shopping is now touted as the cure for global warming."
AlterNet: Environment: Shop 'Til the Earth Drops:
Once prescribed as the remedy for a bad day at work, shopping is now touted as the cure for global warming."
Environment: The Great Biofuel Hoax
Isn't there something beside food we can use to make biofuel?
AlterNet: Environment: The Great Biofuel Hoax:
Touted by politicians and industry as 'green' energy, biofuels come with a high price tag."
Waste Makes Biofuel
Good idea!
The Indypendent : Waste Makes Biofuel:
Brent Baker, a Brooklyn activist and ecoentrepreneur is taking on the challenge of using millions of gallons of local waste vegetable oil to make biodiesel, intercepting the material before it arrives in the landfill or clogs up local water lines. His company, Tri-State Biodiesel, plans to open up a biodiesel plant in Red Hook, that will produce approximately 300 million gallons of B20 biofuel (a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel). Baker says this would be enough to run all school buses in the five boroughs, with some left over. The New York City Parks Department’s fleet of vehicles runs mostly on B20 and the Department of Sanitation is starting to incorporate the biofuel as well.
The Indypendent : Waste Makes Biofuel:
Brent Baker, a Brooklyn activist and ecoentrepreneur is taking on the challenge of using millions of gallons of local waste vegetable oil to make biodiesel, intercepting the material before it arrives in the landfill or clogs up local water lines. His company, Tri-State Biodiesel, plans to open up a biodiesel plant in Red Hook, that will produce approximately 300 million gallons of B20 biofuel (a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel). Baker says this would be enough to run all school buses in the five boroughs, with some left over. The New York City Parks Department’s fleet of vehicles runs mostly on B20 and the Department of Sanitation is starting to incorporate the biofuel as well.
A Strong Push From Back Stage | Cheney | washingtonpost.com
Alas, Part Three: Voldermort.
A Strong Push From Back Stage | Cheney | washingtonpost.com:
Air Force Two touched down at the Greenbrier Valley Airport in West Virginia on Feb. 6, 2003, carrying Vice President Cheney to the annual retreat of Republican House and Senate leaders. He had come to sell them on the economic centerpiece of President Bush's first term: a $674 billion tax cut.
When the president announced his economic package the day after this Cabinet meeting in January 2003, Cheney had one more thing to add. Corbis
Cheney had spent months making sure the package contained everything he wanted. One thing was missing.
The president had accepted Cheney's diagnosis that the sluggish economy needed a jolt, overruling senior economic advisers who forecast dangerous budget deficits. But Bush rejected one of Cheney's remedies: deep reductions in the capital gains tax on investments.
A Strong Push From Back Stage | Cheney | washingtonpost.com:
Air Force Two touched down at the Greenbrier Valley Airport in West Virginia on Feb. 6, 2003, carrying Vice President Cheney to the annual retreat of Republican House and Senate leaders. He had come to sell them on the economic centerpiece of President Bush's first term: a $674 billion tax cut.
When the president announced his economic package the day after this Cabinet meeting in January 2003, Cheney had one more thing to add. Corbis
Cheney had spent months making sure the package contained everything he wanted. One thing was missing.
The president had accepted Cheney's diagnosis that the sluggish economy needed a jolt, overruling senior economic advisers who forecast dangerous budget deficits. But Bush rejected one of Cheney's remedies: deep reductions in the capital gains tax on investments.
Presidential scholars present Bush with letter urging a ban on torture
Way to go, young folks. Keep up the good work!
Presidential scholars present Bush with letter urging a ban on torture | www.azstarnet.com ®:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to 'violations of the human rights' of terror suspects held by the United States.
The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.
'The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights,' deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
Presidential scholars present Bush with letter urging a ban on torture | www.azstarnet.com ®:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to 'violations of the human rights' of terror suspects held by the United States.
The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.
'The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights,' deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
Voter deception bill passes House
It's about time!
Voter deception bill passes House - USATODAY.com:
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Those who knowingly convey false information with the intent to keep others from voting would face up to five years in prison under voter deception legislation that passed the House on Monday.
The legislation, passed by voice vote, was spearheaded by Democrats who cited alleged incidents during the 2006 elections of minorities, immigrants and other legal voters being misled about election dates, guided to the wrong polling sites or told they were ineligible to vote.
'This reform will put an end to campaign practices that disenfranchise thousands of American voters and will give citizens the right to cast a ballot free from intimidation and misinformation,' said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a chief sponsor of the bill.
White House opposes move to declassify report on Iraq's WMDs
Who cares what the W.H. thinks?
They can't even obey their own rules about classified information.
White House opposes move to declassify report on Iraq's WMDs - Examiner.com:
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The White House is resisting a move by both Republicans and Democrats to fully declassify a Senate report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Republicans say the public disclosure would help show that the CIA made honest mistakes in its 2002 assessment that Iraq owned stockpiles of WMDs, when in fact it no longer did.
But the White House believes the declassification would trigger another round of negative news media coverage and Democratic-led congressional hearings, said a Senate Republican, who asked to remain anonymous because of ongoing private discussions.
The dispute revolves around an obscure federal panel, the nine-member Public Interest Declassification Board.
They can't even obey their own rules about classified information.
White House opposes move to declassify report on Iraq's WMDs - Examiner.com:
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The White House is resisting a move by both Republicans and Democrats to fully declassify a Senate report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Republicans say the public disclosure would help show that the CIA made honest mistakes in its 2002 assessment that Iraq owned stockpiles of WMDs, when in fact it no longer did.
But the White House believes the declassification would trigger another round of negative news media coverage and Democratic-led congressional hearings, said a Senate Republican, who asked to remain anonymous because of ongoing private discussions.
The dispute revolves around an obscure federal panel, the nine-member Public Interest Declassification Board.
GOP senator says Iraq plan not working on Yahoo! News
The only thing about this thats is a surprise is that a Gooper finally had the guts to say it!
Print Story: GOP senator says Iraq plan not working on Yahoo! News:
Sen. Richard Lugar, a senior Republican and a reliable vote for President Bush on the war, said that Bush's Iraq strategy was not working and that the U.S. should downsize the military's role.
The unusually blunt assessment Monday deals a political blow to Bush, who has relied heavily on GOP support to stave off anti-war legislation.
It also comes as a surprise. Most Republicans have said they were willing to wait until September to see if Bush's recently ordered troop buildup in Iraq was working.
: Giuliani facing bad news at a bad time on Yahoo! News
It couldn't happen to a morer ghoulish, buffoon.
Print Story: Giuliani facing bad news at a bad time on Yahoo! News:
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has confronted a spate of bad news in recent days, from the drug indictment of his South Carolina chairman to criticism for skipping meetings of the Iraq Study Group.
Every campaign faces bad news at one time or another, but with a fundraising deadline looming Saturday, the timing couldn't be worse. Most voters are not tuned in, but for those who are giving and raising money for the former New York mayor, the heartburn-inducing headlines may make them think twice.
The string of events — some Giuliani's making, some out of his hands — comes as national polls continue to show him ahead of his rivals, but surveys in early voting states have him trailing or losing ground.
Unannounced candidate Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney outpace Giuliani in a Nevada poll released this week. Romney had the edge in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Defunding The Dick Gets Overwhelming Positive Response
Top Democrat claims 'overwhelmingly positive' response to move to defund the Vice President
Michael Roston
Published: Monday June 25, 2007
While some would argue that Dick Cheney has sought unlimited power for his office in President George W. Bush's White House, the Vice President could soon be facing some major limits on his government bank account. A top House Democrat has announced his intention to offer an amendment to strip funding from the yearly budget for the Office of the Vice President.
"On the Hill, there's an overwhelmingly positive reaction," a spokesman for Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) told RAW STORY Monday afternoon.
He went on, "This is an important amendment and question, and it's a choice that the Vice President should make. He cannot be allowed to accept executive branch funding and not adhere to executive branch rules. There is no fourth branch of government."
On Saturday, RAW STORY's Josh Catone first reported on Emanuel's planned amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008. Emanuel announced his plan in reaction to the House Oversight Committee's revelation last week that Cheney's office had argued that for the purposes of certain laws, the Vice President's office was not an agency in the executive branch.
Multiple Democratic Congressional staffers told RAW STORY that the bill will come up for a vote on Wednesday or Thursday. And staff for Rep. Emanuel, who is the chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives, believed he would have the votes to shrink the Vice President's budget to zero.
Emanuel's amendment could inject some excitement into a droll funding bill that normaly gets scant attention on an annual basis. The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, in addition to funding the White House, covers the budgets of the Supreme Court, the Treasury Department, the District of Columbia, and a variety of other independent government agencies.
In the FY 2008 budget, which was approved last week, the House Appropriations Committee stated without any controversy that it "recommends an appropriation of $4,432,000 for the Office of the Vice President, the same as fiscal year 2007 level and the amount requested by the President."
RAW STORY was awaiting reply from the office of Rep. Jose Serrano, who chairs the Financial Services Subcommittee and will likely direct the debate on the spending bill, to see if he would support Emanuel's effort. But there appeared to be no obvious procedural barrier to the Illinois Democrat's move.
The defunding of the Vice President's office could also get some support from Democrats in the Senate.
"That might not be a bad idea," Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said on Fox News Sunday, according to the New York Daily News, when asked if defunding the Vice President was an option that would be considered when the Senate receives the House's version of the budget bill.
How the White House will react if Cheney is defunded by Congress is still up for grabs. In Monday's Daily Press Briefing, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked "Does the White House then also believe he should get funding for the vice president's office from the legislative branch instead of from the executive branch?"
"I don't know," she responded before arguing it was a constitutional question she couldn't answer.
(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
Michael Roston
Published: Monday June 25, 2007
While some would argue that Dick Cheney has sought unlimited power for his office in President George W. Bush's White House, the Vice President could soon be facing some major limits on his government bank account. A top House Democrat has announced his intention to offer an amendment to strip funding from the yearly budget for the Office of the Vice President.
"On the Hill, there's an overwhelmingly positive reaction," a spokesman for Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) told RAW STORY Monday afternoon.
He went on, "This is an important amendment and question, and it's a choice that the Vice President should make. He cannot be allowed to accept executive branch funding and not adhere to executive branch rules. There is no fourth branch of government."
On Saturday, RAW STORY's Josh Catone first reported on Emanuel's planned amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008. Emanuel announced his plan in reaction to the House Oversight Committee's revelation last week that Cheney's office had argued that for the purposes of certain laws, the Vice President's office was not an agency in the executive branch.
Multiple Democratic Congressional staffers told RAW STORY that the bill will come up for a vote on Wednesday or Thursday. And staff for Rep. Emanuel, who is the chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives, believed he would have the votes to shrink the Vice President's budget to zero.
Emanuel's amendment could inject some excitement into a droll funding bill that normaly gets scant attention on an annual basis. The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, in addition to funding the White House, covers the budgets of the Supreme Court, the Treasury Department, the District of Columbia, and a variety of other independent government agencies.
In the FY 2008 budget, which was approved last week, the House Appropriations Committee stated without any controversy that it "recommends an appropriation of $4,432,000 for the Office of the Vice President, the same as fiscal year 2007 level and the amount requested by the President."
RAW STORY was awaiting reply from the office of Rep. Jose Serrano, who chairs the Financial Services Subcommittee and will likely direct the debate on the spending bill, to see if he would support Emanuel's effort. But there appeared to be no obvious procedural barrier to the Illinois Democrat's move.
The defunding of the Vice President's office could also get some support from Democrats in the Senate.
"That might not be a bad idea," Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said on Fox News Sunday, according to the New York Daily News, when asked if defunding the Vice President was an option that would be considered when the Senate receives the House's version of the budget bill.
How the White House will react if Cheney is defunded by Congress is still up for grabs. In Monday's Daily Press Briefing, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked "Does the White House then also believe he should get funding for the vice president's office from the legislative branch instead of from the executive branch?"
"I don't know," she responded before arguing it was a constitutional question she couldn't answer.
(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
Has McCain Jumped the shark?
Actually, I think that question was settled a long time ago. Yes he has.
He is a political coward.
McCain To Hold Fundraiser With Swift Boater
To what depths is John McCain willing to go to bring money into a presidential campaign that is to a large extent based on the perception of him as a man of honor and integrity?
On Tuesday, McCain will attend a $1,000-per-person fundraiser hosted by one of the solid citizens who participated in the despicable swift-boat smear campaign against his "good friend" John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign -- that's how low he's willing to go.
The Arizona Senator will be gobbling sausage and eggs tomorrow morning at a campaign breakfast hosted by none other than Paul Galanti, a Vietnam Veteran who never served with Kerry but didn’t hesitate to surface in 2004 to call the highly-decorated Veteran a "traitor" and appear in the television commercials of those who stooped to questioning the seriousness of Kerry's war wounds.
Despite having been discredited over and over again, the Swift Boat Liars kept coming and had a demonstrable impact on the last presidential election and, by extension, every lousy thing the Bush administration has done to our country since.
And the delusional Galanti even went so far as to say that the young Kerry was personally responsible for the extended length of the Vietnam war, saying on Hannity & Colmes in 2004 that Kerry's post-Vietnam statements against the war were "…for political reasons, but because of all the stuff he did, we stayed in North Vietnam for an extra couple of years."
But then, this was also the guy who favorably compared the service record of noted Chickenhawk George W. Bush with Kerry -- who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in combat -- saying that "…the only difference is President Bush didn't commit treason when he was serving."
And McCain, not wanting to anger his masters in the White House, spoke up only weakly in defense of Kerry in 2004, but said the following:
"I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam."
So, as is so often the case with John McCain, more and more questions arise about who he really is, what he really stands for and what the word 'integrity' actually means to him.Is John Kerry his friend or his enemy? Did the Massachusetts Senator serve as honorably as the record shows -- and as Senator McCain himself says Kerry did -- or was he a "traitor" who single-handedly extended the Vietnam war by coming home and telling the truth?
And finally, is there a shred of the courage and character that allowed him to survive those long years in a Vietnamese POW camp left in John McCain? Or is he just another cynical office-seeker, with no moral compass, who will do absolutely anything for a buck?
Or is he just nuts?
(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
He is a political coward.
McCain To Hold Fundraiser With Swift Boater
To what depths is John McCain willing to go to bring money into a presidential campaign that is to a large extent based on the perception of him as a man of honor and integrity?
On Tuesday, McCain will attend a $1,000-per-person fundraiser hosted by one of the solid citizens who participated in the despicable swift-boat smear campaign against his "good friend" John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign -- that's how low he's willing to go.
The Arizona Senator will be gobbling sausage and eggs tomorrow morning at a campaign breakfast hosted by none other than Paul Galanti, a Vietnam Veteran who never served with Kerry but didn’t hesitate to surface in 2004 to call the highly-decorated Veteran a "traitor" and appear in the television commercials of those who stooped to questioning the seriousness of Kerry's war wounds.
Despite having been discredited over and over again, the Swift Boat Liars kept coming and had a demonstrable impact on the last presidential election and, by extension, every lousy thing the Bush administration has done to our country since.
And the delusional Galanti even went so far as to say that the young Kerry was personally responsible for the extended length of the Vietnam war, saying on Hannity & Colmes in 2004 that Kerry's post-Vietnam statements against the war were "…for political reasons, but because of all the stuff he did, we stayed in North Vietnam for an extra couple of years."
But then, this was also the guy who favorably compared the service record of noted Chickenhawk George W. Bush with Kerry -- who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in combat -- saying that "…the only difference is President Bush didn't commit treason when he was serving."
And McCain, not wanting to anger his masters in the White House, spoke up only weakly in defense of Kerry in 2004, but said the following:
"I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is none of these individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam."
So, as is so often the case with John McCain, more and more questions arise about who he really is, what he really stands for and what the word 'integrity' actually means to him.Is John Kerry his friend or his enemy? Did the Massachusetts Senator serve as honorably as the record shows -- and as Senator McCain himself says Kerry did -- or was he a "traitor" who single-handedly extended the Vietnam war by coming home and telling the truth?
And finally, is there a shred of the courage and character that allowed him to survive those long years in a Vietnamese POW camp left in John McCain? Or is he just another cynical office-seeker, with no moral compass, who will do absolutely anything for a buck?
Or is he just nuts?
(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
Forget Impeachment: Waterboard Cheney!
....and Gozo!
July 2-9, 2007 issue - A new battle has erupted over Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to submit to an executive order requiring a government review of his handling of classified documents. But the dispute could also raise questions for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For the past four years, Cheney's office has failed to comply with an executive order requiring all federal offices—including those in the White House—to annually report to the National Archives on how they safeguard classified documents. Cheney's hard-line chief of staff, David Addington, has made the novel argument that the veep doesn't have to comply on the ground that, because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his office is not really part of the executive branch.
Cheney's position so frustrated J. William Leonard, the chief of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces the order, that he complained in January to Gonzales. In a letter, Leonard wrote that Cheney's position was inconsistent with the "plain text reading" of the executive order and asked the attorney general for an official ruling. But Gonzales never responded, thereby permitting Cheney to continue blocking Leonard from conducting even a routine inspection of how the veep's office was handling classified documents, according to correspondence released by House Government Reform Committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman.
Why didn't Gonzales act on Leonard's request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard's letter has been "under review" for the past five months—by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had "no documents" on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK.
Steve Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists researcher who filed the request, said he found the denial letter "puzzling and inexplicable"—especially since Leonard had copied OLC chief Steve Bradbury on his original letter to Gonzales. The FOIA response has piqued the interest of congressional investigators, who note Bradbury is the same official in charge of vetting all document requests from Congress about the U.S. attorneys flap. Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the OLC response "was and remains accurate" because Leonard's letter had generated no "substantive work product."
Related Content
Letter to Attorney Gen. Gonzales
Letter From Aftergood to Dept. of Justice
Oversight Committee Response
Waxman told NEWSWEEK he now plans to investigate the handling of the issue by Justice as well as Cheney's refusal to comply with the executive order, which he called part of a "pattern" of stonewalling by the veep. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "We're confident we are conducting the office properly under the law." She also pointed to comments by White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said that Bush, not the National Archives, was the "sole enforcer" of the executive order relating to classified information.
—Michael Isikoff
MSNBC
(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
July 2-9, 2007 issue - A new battle has erupted over Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to submit to an executive order requiring a government review of his handling of classified documents. But the dispute could also raise questions for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For the past four years, Cheney's office has failed to comply with an executive order requiring all federal offices—including those in the White House—to annually report to the National Archives on how they safeguard classified documents. Cheney's hard-line chief of staff, David Addington, has made the novel argument that the veep doesn't have to comply on the ground that, because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his office is not really part of the executive branch.
Cheney's position so frustrated J. William Leonard, the chief of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces the order, that he complained in January to Gonzales. In a letter, Leonard wrote that Cheney's position was inconsistent with the "plain text reading" of the executive order and asked the attorney general for an official ruling. But Gonzales never responded, thereby permitting Cheney to continue blocking Leonard from conducting even a routine inspection of how the veep's office was handling classified documents, according to correspondence released by House Government Reform Committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman.
Why didn't Gonzales act on Leonard's request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard's letter has been "under review" for the past five months—by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had "no documents" on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK.
Steve Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists researcher who filed the request, said he found the denial letter "puzzling and inexplicable"—especially since Leonard had copied OLC chief Steve Bradbury on his original letter to Gonzales. The FOIA response has piqued the interest of congressional investigators, who note Bradbury is the same official in charge of vetting all document requests from Congress about the U.S. attorneys flap. Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the OLC response "was and remains accurate" because Leonard's letter had generated no "substantive work product."
Related Content
Letter to Attorney Gen. Gonzales
Letter From Aftergood to Dept. of Justice
Oversight Committee Response
Waxman told NEWSWEEK he now plans to investigate the handling of the issue by Justice as well as Cheney's refusal to comply with the executive order, which he called part of a "pattern" of stonewalling by the veep. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "We're confident we are conducting the office properly under the law." She also pointed to comments by White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said that Bush, not the National Archives, was the "sole enforcer" of the executive order relating to classified information.
—Michael Isikoff
MSNBC
(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
Impeach Cheney Now!!!!!
Please Hit the Link Below and vote to impeach the most dangerous man in Washington!
WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT A LAW DEFYING, POWER GRABBING VICE PRESIDENT OUT OF CONTROL?
The descriptions are not ours. In the face of new revelations of the wholesale dismissal of the Constitution by the Vice President Cheney, "Power Grab" was the headline on the ABC New site. "Defiant" was the headline of the Washington Post. By now you could not have escaped hearing all the stories of the assertion by the vice president's office that he is a branch of government unto himself, and not beholden to any other. And if you have not read the stories, they are all linked in the "Arguments" section of this action page, where you can also cast your vote on whether Cheney should be impeached immediately.
NATIONAL CHENEY IMPEACHMENT POLL:
http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php
And if the situation were not extreme enough, it was also reported this week that Cheney is aggressively campaigning for Bush to pardon Scooter Libby, which is an act of obstruction of justice on its face, according to John Dean, who should know a little something about impeachment. Whether or not Bush has the Constitutional power to grant pardons without cause, it is still an abuse power for him to do so, and a Constitutional high CRIME for Cheney to campaign for him to do so. So now . . .
NOW will you vote in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll, just as more than 72,000 of your fellow democracy-loving citizens already have? Would you be surprised to learn that 99.22 percent of those votes were Yes to impeach?
Speaking on the Keith Olberman show tonight, Dana Milbank described the Vice President as a man "showing no restraint", and still . . . STILL Milbank could not bring himself to say the word "impeachment". Does he have a speech impediment?
Do WE the people have a speech impediment?
DO YOU THINK CHENEY SHOULD BE IMPEACHED OR NOT?
Now is the time to speak out. Maybe you think that the Vice President is doing a great job and that Scooter Libby deserves a medal of freedom for outing Valerie Plame, thereby trashing our best source of REAL intelligence on WMDs in the Middle East. If so, then vote No, please vote No and take responsibility, and tell us you like having our Constitution ripped into little shreds. By if you are as stunned as everyone else in the country about the increasingly brutal way that Cheney is abusing the power he has already grabbed, from the time he appointed HIMSELF as Bush's running mate, then please vote Yes to impeach. If you are as outraged as everyone else about a rogue executive operating as an imperial outlaw unto himself, please vote Yes to impeach.
NATIONAL CHENEY IMPEACHMENT POLL: http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php
It's OK in the personal message you send to Congress from the action page above to include a laundry list of all the other executive branch rogues who you think should be impeached at the same time, including Bush himself.
But the Cheney situation is already long past the tipping point. His impeachment will lead DIRECTLY to the exposure of all the others and their removal as well. Congress will NOT defy the voices of millions of us speaking out.
That's what it will take. We have over 72,000 votes already, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of the anger about what Cheney and his gang have done to our great country, sucking us into a ruinous, wrong-headed war on phony evidence they cooked themselves, criminal illegal wiretaps, torture as official U.S. policy, while they sell out our economy to foreign oil interests and crony war profiteers. Our democracy can be saved, but ONLY if you speak out now.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know. If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.usalone.com/in.htm Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function at http://www.usalone.com/out.htm
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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
We Have A Rogue Administration....
...in case you haven't noticed.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall June 23, 2007 10:53 AM:
For a White House that has offered a bountiful stream of substantive scandals for six years, the latest dust-up might be the most bizarre.
The background details are surprisingly straightforward. In 1995, the Clinton White House issued an executive order establishing uniform rules for protecting classified information. In 2003, the Bush White House revised it. The order plainly includes any executive-branch agency, any military department, and 'any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.' The entire branch of government, the order said, is subject to oversight.
This week, however, in light of revelations about the White House ignoring its own E.O., the Bush gang started spinning like a top.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall June 23, 2007 10:53 AM:
For a White House that has offered a bountiful stream of substantive scandals for six years, the latest dust-up might be the most bizarre.
The background details are surprisingly straightforward. In 1995, the Clinton White House issued an executive order establishing uniform rules for protecting classified information. In 2003, the Bush White House revised it. The order plainly includes any executive-branch agency, any military department, and 'any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.' The entire branch of government, the order said, is subject to oversight.
This week, however, in light of revelations about the White House ignoring its own E.O., the Bush gang started spinning like a top.
Bush's secret war on America
Bush's secret war on America - Opinion - smh.com.au:
Florian von Donnersmarck's haunting film The Lives of Others is a warning to us all. It shows how the East German secret police, the Stasi, went about their deadly work of spying on 17 million citizens.
It is a stretch, but not impossible, to see the US President, George Bush, as the new Erich Honecker, the dictator of East Germany from 1971 until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
Apart from lying, politicians tend to be overly fond of running other people's lives. There is a wickedly hilarious scene in Keating: The Musical in which the opposition leader, John Howard, clumps up and down the catwalk rasping: 'I want powerrr!'
Florian von Donnersmarck's haunting film The Lives of Others is a warning to us all. It shows how the East German secret police, the Stasi, went about their deadly work of spying on 17 million citizens.
It is a stretch, but not impossible, to see the US President, George Bush, as the new Erich Honecker, the dictator of East Germany from 1971 until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
Apart from lying, politicians tend to be overly fond of running other people's lives. There is a wickedly hilarious scene in Keating: The Musical in which the opposition leader, John Howard, clumps up and down the catwalk rasping: 'I want powerrr!'
Rudy Giuliani Is A Killer
Want to dispute that, Rudy, you jackass?
Well, as the saying goes, "Bring it on!"
Christie blasts Rudy on WTC air:
Former Environmental Protection Agency boss Christie Whitman says she urged Ground Zero workers to wear respirators, but then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts.
She also said city officials didn't want EPA workers wearing haz-mat suits because they 'didn't want this image of a city falling apart.'
In an interview scheduled to run the day before Whitman testifies in front of Congress on Monday, she told WNBC-TV she warned the city of the risks almost every day.
And she said she believes illnesses killing first responders can be blamed on the city's lack of action.
'I'm not a scientist ... but I do [believe that],' she told WNBC's Brian Thompson.
Well, as the saying goes, "Bring it on!"
Christie blasts Rudy on WTC air:
Former Environmental Protection Agency boss Christie Whitman says she urged Ground Zero workers to wear respirators, but then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts.
She also said city officials didn't want EPA workers wearing haz-mat suits because they 'didn't want this image of a city falling apart.'
In an interview scheduled to run the day before Whitman testifies in front of Congress on Monday, she told WNBC-TV she warned the city of the risks almost every day.
And she said she believes illnesses killing first responders can be blamed on the city's lack of action.
'I'm not a scientist ... but I do [believe that],' she told WNBC's Brian Thompson.
Cheney DID NOT say he is No Longer a Member of the Executive Branch: The Real Story is Much Worse
Daily Kos: Cheney DID NOT say he is No Longer a Member of the Executive Branch: The Real Story is Much Worse:
The story is making its way around the internet that Cheney has said he is not a part of the executive branch. Hard as it is to believe, the real story is much worse. His office is quoted as saying that because he is a member of the both executive and the legislative branches, he is therefore not required to reply to a request by the National Archives for it comply with record keeping laws regarding the executive branch. The quote from the letter in question is '...the OVB spokesperson indicated, 'This has been reviewed and it's been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to The Office of the Vice President, which has both legislative and executive functions.''
The story is making its way around the internet that Cheney has said he is not a part of the executive branch. Hard as it is to believe, the real story is much worse. His office is quoted as saying that because he is a member of the both executive and the legislative branches, he is therefore not required to reply to a request by the National Archives for it comply with record keeping laws regarding the executive branch. The quote from the letter in question is '...the OVB spokesperson indicated, 'This has been reviewed and it's been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to The Office of the Vice President, which has both legislative and executive functions.''
Has Cheney finally jumped the shark?
He jumped it a long time ago as far as we are concerned, but if something is not done now, we may jump the shark!
The Last Chance Democracy Cafe » Blog Archive » Has Cheney finally jumped the shark?:
If they gave out awards for audacity, Dick Cheney would long ago have scored a Nobel Prize. He’s championed executive powers so sweeping they’d have made Joseph Stalin blush (well, maybe not), claimed the right to resist virtually all congressional oversight, imposed unprecedented secrecy on the people’s business and almost certainly personally supervised the deliberate exposure of a covert CIA agent as an act of political revenge.
Yet, while he has long been dismally unpopular among the American public, he remains the most powerful vice president in history.
So, has Cheney finally jumped the shark? It’s actually a little hard to know, given that the man who will ultimately decide how much influence Cheney continues to hold as the Bush Administration slowly slides to its inglorious end seems to be hanging with him.
The Mother of All Scandals: Bandar Bush
informationliberation - The Mother of All Scandals:
Anyone who wants to understand what really goes on in the Mideast should have a look at the scandal that erupted earlier this month over the outsized character of Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
Bandar has long been a renowned mover, shaker, and charmer. As Saudi ambassador to the US, the influential Bandar schmoozed official Washington for two decades. He became an intimate of the Bush family. He invested a least $60 million in Saudi funds in the Carlyle Corp., in which the Bush family has important interests. Equally significant, Prince Bandar was a particular favorite at the CIA, where he was long considered one of its prime Mideast “assets.”
Bandar flew in his own personal Airbus A-340 painted in the colors of his favorite US football team, and threw lavish parties in his $135 million Aspen house and in Washington. He was Mr. SaudiAmerica. Congress, the media, and the rest of official Washington hailed Bandar as the kind of “good Arab” with whom the US was happy to do business.
After leaving Washington, Bandar returned home to become the highly influential head of national security and chief foreign policy advisor to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Bandar’s father, Crown Prince Sultan, is the nation’s powerful defense minister and next in line to the throne.
Anyone who wants to understand what really goes on in the Mideast should have a look at the scandal that erupted earlier this month over the outsized character of Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
Bandar has long been a renowned mover, shaker, and charmer. As Saudi ambassador to the US, the influential Bandar schmoozed official Washington for two decades. He became an intimate of the Bush family. He invested a least $60 million in Saudi funds in the Carlyle Corp., in which the Bush family has important interests. Equally significant, Prince Bandar was a particular favorite at the CIA, where he was long considered one of its prime Mideast “assets.”
Bandar flew in his own personal Airbus A-340 painted in the colors of his favorite US football team, and threw lavish parties in his $135 million Aspen house and in Washington. He was Mr. SaudiAmerica. Congress, the media, and the rest of official Washington hailed Bandar as the kind of “good Arab” with whom the US was happy to do business.
After leaving Washington, Bandar returned home to become the highly influential head of national security and chief foreign policy advisor to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Bandar’s father, Crown Prince Sultan, is the nation’s powerful defense minister and next in line to the throne.
New 9/11 Study Has Direct Links To Government, Pentagon Black Ops
Hummmm.
informationliberation - New 9/11 Study Has Direct Links To Government, Pentagon Black Ops:
A newly released Purdue University animation showing how fire caused the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 claims to be independent but in reality has been federally funded and was conducted by individuals with direct links to the Pentagon and the White House.
Earlier this week we covered the news that the new study roughly correlates with the findings of the 2005 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report and supports the official line that the airplanes stripped away crucial fireproofing material and that the weakened towers collapsed under their own weight.
While the New York Times today lauds the study as 'a counterpoint to the conspiracy theories promulgated by such outspoken figures as Rosie O’Donnell', Prisonplanet.com has actually done some research into the origins of the study.
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret
No surprise here. The government has been up to no good, like this, for years.
They are probably testing their chemicals on poor or transient people in America.
informationliberation - Corporate America's Deadliest Secret:
A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they are doing for the U.S. government.
Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research.
According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back information about their activities are:
Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc., Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.
In case you didn't know it, the White House since 9/11 has called for spending $44-billion on biological warfare research, a sum unprecedented in world history, and an obliging Congress has authorized it.
Mormon church obtained Vietnam draft deferrals for Romney
WTF?
Mormon church obtained Vietnam draft deferrals for Romney, other missionaries - The Boston Globe:
As the Vietnam War raged in the 1960s, Mitt Romney received a deferment from the draft as a Mormon 'minister of religion' for the duration of his missionary work in France, which lasted two and a half year.
Mormon church obtained Vietnam draft deferrals for Romney, other missionaries - The Boston Globe:
As the Vietnam War raged in the 1960s, Mitt Romney received a deferment from the draft as a Mormon 'minister of religion' for the duration of his missionary work in France, which lasted two and a half year.
High Noon for Justice and the Rule of Law
We are dangerously close to the point of no return.
Unless something is done and done quickly about this lawless administration, we may be giving up, for all time, our right to do anything.
I , for one, am quickly losing faith that Congress can or will do anything to bring sanity and the law back to America. Perhaps they are cowards or perhaps they are complicit. Whatever, if they don't do their jobs, the jobs they are bound to do by oath, they are the enemies of the people.
High Noon for Justice and the Rule of Law | BuzzFlash.org:
'High Noon' -- Sometimes You Can't Runaway from Upholding Justice
Murrow, in his historical March 9, 1954, broadcast that began the unraveling of the reign of rule by uncorroborated witch-hunting anti-Communist fear (and a watershed moment for broadcast journalism in America) said: 'Our working thesis tonight is this question: If this fight against Communism is made a fight against America’s two great political parties, the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one party system.We applaud that statement and we think Senator McCarthy ought to. He said it, seventeen months ago in Milwaukee.'
It was a brilliant maneuver to hoist the drunken master of intimidation by his own petard. Murrow, like Marshal Will Kane in 'High Noon,' was taking someone who had subdued a nation (as the Miller gang did in 'High Noon's Hadleyville) with the assertion of raw power not subject to the restraint of truth, due process, justice or the law.
Canada Should Steer Clear of US Agenda
Canada Should Steer Clear of US Agenda - CommonDreams.org:
The United States is spending $80 million to train and equip Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential Guard.
In Kabul, Hamid Karzai dare not move out of the cocoon of his elaborate American security. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must stay mostly in the American Green Zone.
That’s not the only common thread in West Bank/Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The occupying powers are presiding over civil wars among terrorized peoples in collapsing societies run by militias, some funded directly or indirectly by the occupiers.
In Iraq and West Bank/Gaza, the people who could leave have. Those left behind survive on handouts of two kinds: banned but smuggled foreign funds subject to confiscation, or official aid subject to cancellation should the subjects misbehave, such as voting for Hamas.
The United States is spending $80 million to train and equip Mahmoud Abbas’ Presidential Guard.
In Kabul, Hamid Karzai dare not move out of the cocoon of his elaborate American security. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must stay mostly in the American Green Zone.
That’s not the only common thread in West Bank/Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The occupying powers are presiding over civil wars among terrorized peoples in collapsing societies run by militias, some funded directly or indirectly by the occupiers.
In Iraq and West Bank/Gaza, the people who could leave have. Those left behind survive on handouts of two kinds: banned but smuggled foreign funds subject to confiscation, or official aid subject to cancellation should the subjects misbehave, such as voting for Hamas.
The Elephants of Missile Defense
The Elephants of Missile Defense - CommonDreams.org:
"In Albania, nearing the end of his six-nation tour of Europe, President George W. Bush hopped out of his limo to have his head rubbed and his cheeks kissed by an adoring crowd in what The New York Times called a “virtual mosh pit” of enthusiasm.
Surely, he was delighted and relieved to be warmly welcomed in the mostly Muslim nation. It was a tough week in Europe: the president endured long meetings, pointed criticisms, huge protests, and an upset stomach that took him out of some of the Group of Eight Summit meetings.
Toughest of all perhaps was the sharp war of words with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the weeks leading up to the G8 Summit. At issue: the Bush administration’s plan to put nuclear missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. President Putin had repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with encroachment into his territory. At one point he accused the United States of “filling eastern Europe with new weapons.” In a risky but very clear show of force, Russia also tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile at the end of May. Of Bush’s plans to use European territory to detect and intercept Iranian long-range missiles, Putin said: “we are being told the anti missile system is targeted against something that doesn’t exist.
Doesn’t it?
"In Albania, nearing the end of his six-nation tour of Europe, President George W. Bush hopped out of his limo to have his head rubbed and his cheeks kissed by an adoring crowd in what The New York Times called a “virtual mosh pit” of enthusiasm.
Surely, he was delighted and relieved to be warmly welcomed in the mostly Muslim nation. It was a tough week in Europe: the president endured long meetings, pointed criticisms, huge protests, and an upset stomach that took him out of some of the Group of Eight Summit meetings.
Toughest of all perhaps was the sharp war of words with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the weeks leading up to the G8 Summit. At issue: the Bush administration’s plan to put nuclear missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. President Putin had repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with encroachment into his territory. At one point he accused the United States of “filling eastern Europe with new weapons.” In a risky but very clear show of force, Russia also tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile at the end of May. Of Bush’s plans to use European territory to detect and intercept Iranian long-range missiles, Putin said: “we are being told the anti missile system is targeted against something that doesn’t exist.
Doesn’t it?
No Confidence in a Congress that Bends to Bush
Agreed!
No Confidence in a Congress that Bends to Bush - CommonDreams.org:
Confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low. A mere 14 percent of Americans tell Gallup pollsters that they have a great deal or quite a lot of faith in the US House and Senate.Since Gallup began using the current measure of confidence in Congress in 1973, the worst rating had been the 18 percent figure accorded it in the early years of the 1990s, when the House was being rocked by scandals that would eventually see a number of top Democratic lawmakers rejected in their own party primaries and the “Republican revolution” vote of 1994.
To give a sense of just how bad things are for Congress, consider this notion: Americans express more confidence in corporate HMOs–the most despised manifestation of a health-care industry that lends itself to all of the scorn heaped upon it by Michael Moore’s new film Sicko — than in their elected representatives at the federal level.
No Confidence in a Congress that Bends to Bush - CommonDreams.org:
Confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low. A mere 14 percent of Americans tell Gallup pollsters that they have a great deal or quite a lot of faith in the US House and Senate.Since Gallup began using the current measure of confidence in Congress in 1973, the worst rating had been the 18 percent figure accorded it in the early years of the 1990s, when the House was being rocked by scandals that would eventually see a number of top Democratic lawmakers rejected in their own party primaries and the “Republican revolution” vote of 1994.
To give a sense of just how bad things are for Congress, consider this notion: Americans express more confidence in corporate HMOs–the most despised manifestation of a health-care industry that lends itself to all of the scorn heaped upon it by Michael Moore’s new film Sicko — than in their elected representatives at the federal level.
Abu Ghraib: The Rest of The Story
What we already knew finally comes out.
Arrest Rumsfeld and all the rest who are responsible for this horror.
Abu Ghraib: The Rest of The Story - CommonDreams.org:
We were reminded again last week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.
The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.
Arrest Rumsfeld and all the rest who are responsible for this horror.
Abu Ghraib: The Rest of The Story - CommonDreams.org:
We were reminded again last week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.
The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.
Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.
Rethinking Patriotism
We should all be re-thinking it.
Patriotism isn't about illegal invasions and flag waving. Any damn fool can do that.
Patriotism is making, first, our own country a better place to live for all Americans and, then, sharing our prosperity and philosophy with the rest of the world, if, and only if, they want it.
I doubt there will be any takers for awhile, after the Bush/Cheney disaster.
Rethinking Patriotism - CommonDreams.org:
Several months ago when I wrote an essay questioning the appropriateness of military air shows as a form of community-sponsored family entertainment, I received a number of responses. The gist of most of the letters was that the military defends our freedom and without it, I could not write these words. Indeed, I was told that to criticize militarism is unpatriotic and how dare I impugn the honor and integrity of those who serve in the armed forces defending the American way of life.
But what precisely is this American way of life that our military purportedly defends? We live in the richest country in the world, yet unlike other developed countries that have universal health care, tens of millions of people in this country do not have health insurance and our medical care system comes in dead last behind comparable countries. Millions of children go to bed hungry every night and our educational system is leaving far too many children behind. The standard of living of all but the rich has fallen and people are losing their homes. Our energy use and wastefulness is a toxic disgrace.
OK! That's Enough! I Have Had it With This BULLSH__! Let's Do This!
Couldn't agree more!!
OK! That's Enough! I Have Had it With This BULLSH__! Let's Do This!:
I have been reading and watching this crap go on all my life and it just keeps getting worse. Who can afford wandering the streets holding a sign that those in power laugh at? We are lead to believe that the system is so corrupt that the only way to fix it is for the people to rise up in armed rebellion!
WRONG!
That is what they want you to believe because they know that most of us are peaceful people. We are so busy fighting against one another, for IDIOTIC reasons, that we have forgotten who runs things here! We don't even think about what we have the power to do anymore. We simply bitch and moan about the other guy or the other party while others of us stream an endless river of articles about government-sponsored atrocities.
No one is offering a solution!
We don't even know what awesome power we have so we have been letting it all slide.
OK! That's Enough! I Have Had it With This BULLSH__! Let's Do This!:
I have been reading and watching this crap go on all my life and it just keeps getting worse. Who can afford wandering the streets holding a sign that those in power laugh at? We are lead to believe that the system is so corrupt that the only way to fix it is for the people to rise up in armed rebellion!
WRONG!
That is what they want you to believe because they know that most of us are peaceful people. We are so busy fighting against one another, for IDIOTIC reasons, that we have forgotten who runs things here! We don't even think about what we have the power to do anymore. We simply bitch and moan about the other guy or the other party while others of us stream an endless river of articles about government-sponsored atrocities.
No one is offering a solution!
We don't even know what awesome power we have so we have been letting it all slide.
Get Ready For It..The Bad News
Not that we ever expected anything else.
They'll Break the Bad News on 9/11
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 24 June 2007
By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq - the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America - had officially begun.
America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.
In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.
Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.
Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.
Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.
General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.
Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.
For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.
Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.
As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."
Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.
(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
They'll Break the Bad News on 9/11
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 24 June 2007
By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq - the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America - had officially begun.
America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.
In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.
Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.
Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.
Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.
General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.
Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.
For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.
Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.
As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."
Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.
(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
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Bush Aides Scramble From Listing Ship (of fools)
Some might be leavbing due to a lack of direction or whatever. Others are leaving to avoid testifying on Capitol Hill.
Bush aides quit amid little sense of purpose
By Edward Luce and Andrew Ward
Published: June 21 2007 02:17 Last updated: June 21 2007 02:17
When asked whether he was quitting the Bush administration because it would be good for his political future, Rob Portman, the outgoing budget director, replied: “It would be good for my mental health.” Although Mr Portman was joking, a growing list of officials have already acted on that impulse.
At least 20 senior aides have left important posts in the White House, Pentagon or State Department over the past six months, as chaos has deepened in Iraq. “There’s a real sense of fatigue and very little sense of purpose,” said a senior official, who asked not to be named. “My guess is you’re going to see a lot more departures.”
Mr Portman, who had been Mr Bush’s budget director for little more than a year, could hardly have quit at a less convenient time for the administration. His resignation was particularly symbolic because he had taken the job as part of last year’s White House shake-up designed to breathe fresh life into Mr Bush’s second-term policy agenda.
As the Bush official with the most experience on Capitol Hill – having served six terms as a lawmaker in the 1990s – Mr Portman’s role has been critical to what little chances there are for the White House to push through its remaining domestic priorities.
These include the foundering bipartisan immigration bill for which Mr Portman has been lobbying sceptical Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill. It also includes this year’s $933bn (€695bn, £468bn) discretionary budget, which Mr Bush says is excessively spendthrift and portions of which he has threatened to veto.
On Wednesday Mr Bush exercised his veto for only the third time to strike down a bill that would have enabled state funding of human embryonic stem cells. Of Mr Bush’s previous two vetoes, the first also struck down a stem cell bill in September and the second axed a bill in May that would have imposed deadlines for US troops to start withdrawing from Iraq.
Few believe that Bill Nussle, the former lawmaker who will be the next White House budget director, can match Mr Portman’s ability to reach out to political rivals in Congress. Mr Nussle was viewed by opponents as an uncompromising ideologue in the 1990s when the Republicans took control of Capitol Hill.
“My immediate reaction is not one that I’m wise to articulate,” says Steny Hoyer, the normally mild-mannered Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, when told of Mr Nussle’s appointment.
Others say that Mr Portman, who plans to run as governor of Ohio in 2010, would not have quit if he believed the White House was capable of serious domestic reforms – particularly of the increasingly expensive Social Security and healthcare systems.
Following the “thumping” – in the words of Mr Bush – that was dealt to the Republicans in last November’s mid-term elections, the president highlighted entitlement reform as a priority for bipartisan co-operation.
But the administration’s efforts have been lacklustre. It has spent much of its dwindling political capital lobbying for an immigration bill that may never reach the statute books.
“What is the point of sticking around in an administration that isn’t going to accomplish anything significant?” said a former official. Meanwhile, the administration faces a growing cacophony of congressional hearings into its handling of the Iraq war, into its alleged politicisation of the Justice department and into its handling of military tribunals to try alleged terrorist detainees.
Mr Bush may also have to step in again to defend Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general facing an internal inquiry into whether he improperly coached a Justice department employee to give misleading testimony to Congress over the firing of eight federal attorneys.
Many believe that Mr Bush’s backing for Mr Gonzales is motivated by loyalty, since their relationship stretches back to before the president’s days as governor of Texas. Others believe Mr Bush is sticking by Mr Gonzales in order to stave off the appointment of an independent prosecutor, which Democratic leaders have hinted they would do as a price to confirm whomever Mr Bush nominated to become the new attorney-general.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 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
Arrest Cheney!
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_stephen__070624_hello_2c_911_3f_i_d_like.htm
June 24, 2007
Hello, 911? I'd Like to Report a Crime
By Stephen Pizzo
What's it take to get a guy impeached these days? I mean, less than ten years ago it was lying under oath in a civil case involving alleged sexual harassment. Since then someone has apparently raised the bar -- to someplace in low-earth orbit.
No, I'm not talking about impeaching George W. Bush – not that he doesn't richly deserve a thorough impeaching. I'm talking about his sidekick, Tricky Dick the Second.
We've all suspected for a long time that Dick was up to no good. And, while no one has yet been able to lift his finger prints from any of the many crime scenes that have turned up, and keep turning up, circumstantial evidence has pointed to him in almost every case. But as of yesterday we now have a firm, undeniable set of prints. We now not only have a preverbal, but the gun is still in Cheney's hand and he's waving it proudly around in a "you'll never take me alive, coppers," manner:
WASHINGTON — For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies' handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday....According to documents released Thursday by a House committee, Cheney's staff has blocked efforts by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office to enforce a key component of the presidential order: a mandatory on-site inspection of the vice president's office. At least one of those inspections would have come at a particularly delicate time — when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other aides were under criminal investigation for their suspected roles in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Full)
Hello Congress. (Anyone in there?)
We've got a guy in our executive branch who did something a lot worse than just lying under oath that he ever lusted after an homely Arkansas gal. This guy has openly violated a federal statute signed into law in 2002 by his own boss. And he is a serial violator too boot. He's broken this law, not just once, but four times already and is currently in the act of breaking it a fifth time. In other words, this time you've caught him in the act.. red handed. That would make five felonies and/or misdemeanors – on the record, staring you guys right in the face, mocking you.
Of course Dick has his defense. But it's a typical Dick Defense.
If you think Bill Clinton's defense was a twenty-ton pile of steaming BS ("depends what the meaning of 'is" is.) -- get a load of the Dick's defense. He says that, since the office of the Vice President serves a dual role, as VP and President of the Senate, he, as VP, is not subject to the law in question since that law only covers the executive branch.
"Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride confirmed the vice president's position Thursday but said she could not discuss the matter in detail, including whether Cheney or his aides tried to abolish the information security office. "We are confident that we are conducting this office properly under the law," McBride said."
Yep, you read that correctly. When the "cops" tried to enforce the law, Dick tried to "eliminate" them. That would leave the law on the books, but no one around to enforce it. Nice.
Anyway, back to Dick' defense. Cheney says he is not a member of the executive branch because he is also a member of the legislative branch. Hmmm. Let's see. If we extrapolate that logic to it's logical conclusion then that means he, Dick, can't claim he's covered by executive privilege.
If Dick is right then Congress would have the right to full and unimpeded access to all the VP's executive branch documents. You know, like who he met with during his energy task force meetings, etc. After all, Tricky Dick II, can't have it both ways. Of course, Dick -- being the Dick we've all come to know -- wants it both ways.
After all, if he were right about this, it would make him the most powerful person in government -- ever. If Congress lets Cheney get away with this, this time, then we will have to assume that either Congress has abdicated it's power to a single man, or is somehow in on the deal.
Well?
What other explanations fit the circumstances? You tell me.
But if we still have an independent, co-equal legislative branch that is willing and able to defend their perogatives and rights, and enforce the rule of law, then only one course of action fits the bill -- impeachment.
Forget the federal courts. That's a dodge. First, trying to get a federal court interpretation of the statue is a waste of time, and we don't have that kind of time left in this administration. Besides, we already know Cheney has broken a law, and we know which law he broke and how many times he broke it. Finally we know that Cheney's defense – that he is some kind of existential shape-shifter and therefore not a member of the executive branch -- is ridiculous on its face.
But that's Dick's defense and he is welcome to it. Let him put it forth during his impeachment trial and see how far he gets with it. Republicans should be as concerned about this as Democrats.
No, let's amend and extend that remark. Republicans should be more concerned about this than Democrats. Because the next President and VP of the United States are likely going to be Democrats. And the last thing Republicans should want is for Cheney -- a guy on his way out -- to set a precedent that would allow a Democratic administration to hide what they've been up to from Congress.
The American public does not want such a precedent established either.
Because here's what happens when that happens.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
(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
June 24, 2007
Hello, 911? I'd Like to Report a Crime
By Stephen Pizzo
What's it take to get a guy impeached these days? I mean, less than ten years ago it was lying under oath in a civil case involving alleged sexual harassment. Since then someone has apparently raised the bar -- to someplace in low-earth orbit.
No, I'm not talking about impeaching George W. Bush – not that he doesn't richly deserve a thorough impeaching. I'm talking about his sidekick, Tricky Dick the Second.
We've all suspected for a long time that Dick was up to no good. And, while no one has yet been able to lift his finger prints from any of the many crime scenes that have turned up, and keep turning up, circumstantial evidence has pointed to him in almost every case. But as of yesterday we now have a firm, undeniable set of prints. We now not only have a preverbal, but the gun is still in Cheney's hand and he's waving it proudly around in a "you'll never take me alive, coppers," manner:
WASHINGTON — For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies' handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday....According to documents released Thursday by a House committee, Cheney's staff has blocked efforts by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office to enforce a key component of the presidential order: a mandatory on-site inspection of the vice president's office. At least one of those inspections would have come at a particularly delicate time — when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other aides were under criminal investigation for their suspected roles in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Full)
Hello Congress. (Anyone in there?)
We've got a guy in our executive branch who did something a lot worse than just lying under oath that he ever lusted after an homely Arkansas gal. This guy has openly violated a federal statute signed into law in 2002 by his own boss. And he is a serial violator too boot. He's broken this law, not just once, but four times already and is currently in the act of breaking it a fifth time. In other words, this time you've caught him in the act.. red handed. That would make five felonies and/or misdemeanors – on the record, staring you guys right in the face, mocking you.
Of course Dick has his defense. But it's a typical Dick Defense.
If you think Bill Clinton's defense was a twenty-ton pile of steaming BS ("depends what the meaning of 'is" is.) -- get a load of the Dick's defense. He says that, since the office of the Vice President serves a dual role, as VP and President of the Senate, he, as VP, is not subject to the law in question since that law only covers the executive branch.
"Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride confirmed the vice president's position Thursday but said she could not discuss the matter in detail, including whether Cheney or his aides tried to abolish the information security office. "We are confident that we are conducting this office properly under the law," McBride said."
Yep, you read that correctly. When the "cops" tried to enforce the law, Dick tried to "eliminate" them. That would leave the law on the books, but no one around to enforce it. Nice.
Anyway, back to Dick' defense. Cheney says he is not a member of the executive branch because he is also a member of the legislative branch. Hmmm. Let's see. If we extrapolate that logic to it's logical conclusion then that means he, Dick, can't claim he's covered by executive privilege.
If Dick is right then Congress would have the right to full and unimpeded access to all the VP's executive branch documents. You know, like who he met with during his energy task force meetings, etc. After all, Tricky Dick II, can't have it both ways. Of course, Dick -- being the Dick we've all come to know -- wants it both ways.
After all, if he were right about this, it would make him the most powerful person in government -- ever. If Congress lets Cheney get away with this, this time, then we will have to assume that either Congress has abdicated it's power to a single man, or is somehow in on the deal.
Well?
What other explanations fit the circumstances? You tell me.
But if we still have an independent, co-equal legislative branch that is willing and able to defend their perogatives and rights, and enforce the rule of law, then only one course of action fits the bill -- impeachment.
Forget the federal courts. That's a dodge. First, trying to get a federal court interpretation of the statue is a waste of time, and we don't have that kind of time left in this administration. Besides, we already know Cheney has broken a law, and we know which law he broke and how many times he broke it. Finally we know that Cheney's defense – that he is some kind of existential shape-shifter and therefore not a member of the executive branch -- is ridiculous on its face.
But that's Dick's defense and he is welcome to it. Let him put it forth during his impeachment trial and see how far he gets with it. Republicans should be as concerned about this as Democrats.
No, let's amend and extend that remark. Republicans should be more concerned about this than Democrats. Because the next President and VP of the United States are likely going to be Democrats. And the last thing Republicans should want is for Cheney -- a guy on his way out -- to set a precedent that would allow a Democratic administration to hide what they've been up to from Congress.
The American public does not want such a precedent established either.
Because here's what happens when that happens.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
(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
What About The Moral Imperative?
The 'I' word
Why a growing grassroots movement on the left wants to impeach the president -- and why Democrats in Washington don't even want to talk about it.
By Drake Bennett June 24, 2007
FOR ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN it was the discovery, in late 2005, that the Bush administration had been monitoring Americans' phone and email conversations without warrants that convinced her that the President shouldn't be allowed to serve out the remainder of his term.
As a young congresswoman from New York, Holtzman, who now practices law in New York City, had served on the House Judiciary Committee that in 1974 adopted articles of impeachment against President Nixon. Among the charges, she points out, was that Nixon had overseen an illegal electronic surveillance program.
"Having participated in that," she says, "you don't forget it."
Today Holtzman is one of the leading voices in a small but energetic movement seeking to impeach not only President Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney. In March, the Massachusetts Democratic Party joined 13 others, in states like California, Nevada, and New Hampshire, in passing a resolution in support of impeachment. The legislatures of nearly 80 towns and cities (most in Massachusetts, Vermont, and California) have passed similar resolutions, and state legislators in 11 states have introduced impeachment bills.
But given how controversial and deeply unpopular the administration has become, it is surprising how little mainstream political traction the movement has gained. Polls show the public does not think impeachment should be a priority. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly declared impeachment to be "off the table," and even Congress's most liberal members oppose the idea. It is a sign, say many, that the nation's most vivid memories of impeachment are of the deeply divisive Clinton proceedings, not the Nixon drama that eventually allowed the country to heal.
"Somehow along the way in this country we have become really afraid of impeaching," says Darcy Sweeney, a Massachusetts coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and one of the activists who brought the impeachment resolution before the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
The only impeachment resolution currently before Congress, introduced by Ohio Congressman and presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich this spring, is directed solely at Cheney, and when asked, Kucinich refuses to say whether he'd support impeaching Bush. "I'm pretty much staying focused on the effort to impeach the Vice President," he says.
At a panel at last week's Take Back America conference, an annual gathering of progressive activists and politicians, three of the Senate's most liberal members -- Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar -- flatly declared themselves against impeachment. Even Rep. John Conyers, a fierce Bush critic who in 2005 filed a bill calling for possible impeachment proceedings, has backed away from the idea -- despite the fact that his wife sponsored the Detroit city council's own unanimously approved impeachment resolution.
Most Democratic politicians and strategists see impeachment as a loser. Right now, President Bush is one of the least popular presidents in American history, and Democratic leaders don't see any point in turning him into a political martyr. Just as important, they argue, the time-consuming, rancorous debates that the process would occasion would elbow any other business off the legislative agenda, leaving the Democratic Party little to show for its return to power on Capitol Hill.
To impeachment's champions, however, these tactical arguments are worth little. What's at stake, they argue, is the Constitution itself. "I'd like to see [Bush and Cheney] tried and convicted and put behind bars," says Washington's David Swanson, co-founder of After Downing Street, an organization dedicated to doing just that. "That would be a satisfactory outcome. Not because I dislike them or think they're unpleasant people, but I don't want future presidents to think they can do these things."
The case against Bush does echo certain elements of the case against Nixon. As articulated by organizations like PDA and After Downing Street -- and as laid out in a spate of recent books by lawyers like Holtzman; John Bonifaz, a former Massachusetts Secretary of State candidate and After Downing Street co-founder; and Barbara Olshansky, who represents several Guantanamo detainees -- Bush stands accused of overseeing illegal surveillance and of lying to Congress and withholding information.
In 1973, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment charging Nixon with similar crimes -- obstructing justice and spying on and harassing political opponents -- for personal political gain. Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.
"We felt that the Constitutional system had worked," Holtzman recalls.
But the brief the would-be impeachers bring against Bush and Cheney is more sweeping than the 1973 case against Nixon. A list of impeachable offenses listed on After Downing Street's website includes the President's "allowing his administration to condone torture," threatening the use of force against Iran, his use of presidential signing statements to revise laws passed by Congress, the dropping of cluster bombs in Iraq, and Bush's failure to take reasonable steps to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
Most mainstream legal scholars, including many who have been deeply critical of the Bush administration, would disagree that most of these alleged offenses fit the "high crimes and misdemeanors" requirement set out in the Constitution for impeachment. But on wiretapping in particular, some allow that there is an argument to be made.
"It's an allegation of serious criminal misconduct arising out of the exercise of the power of the presidency," says Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School. "If it turns out that the President was authorizing illegal activity, it's comparable to Nixon."
For Democratic strategists, though, legal arguments are beside the point. Their case against pursuing impeachment is straightforwardly political. While every poll shows deep dissatisfaction with Bush and some show a conditional support for impeachment, even registered Democrats don't tend to list impeachment among their top priorities.
Pursuing impeachment today, Democratic leaders argue, would galvanize a Republican Party that's currently quite discouraged with Bush.
"In an ironic way it does George Bush a favor," says Rep. Barney Frank, Democrat from Newton. "He is losing the national debate on most issues, he is losing support among Republicans, and impeachment would almost certainly allow him to rally lots of Republicans."
It would also, they argue, put an end to any hope of passing significant legislation in the remaining year and a half of the current Congress. Congressional politics, says Ruy Teixeira, a political analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, "is a zero-sum game: the resources and energy you put into trying to impeach Bush don't go into other things."
That legislative sclerosis, Frank argues, would only be worsened by the inevitable sharpening of partisan lines that impeachment would create. "The single most important thing for Congress to do is to get us out of Iraq," says Frank. "And especially in the Senate, that can't be done without Republican votes."
For impeachment proponents like Carpenter and Swanson -- who are optimistic that their cause will find broad support in the coming months -- gridlock would be a small price to pay to restore the Constitution's balance of powers. But they also dispute the zero-sum argument. Again, they look to Nixon.
"The overwhelming pressure of impeachment forced Nixon to back off, to not veto bills," says Swanson. "It put Nixon on the defensive."
According to Swanson, the impending threat of impeachment allowed the Democratic-controlled Congress to create the Endangered Species Act, to raise the minimum wage, and cut off funding for the Vietnam War.
"There's a grain of truth to that," concedes Stanley Kutler, a retired professor of law and history at the University of Wisconsin and the author of "The Wars of Watergate." Nixon was weakened, Kutler says, by the prospect of impeachment. But what truly cost Nixon, Kutler points out, was not Democratic support for impeachment, overwhelming though it was, but Republican support for it. "I can flat-out tell you there's not going to be any impeachment until and unless you have Republican votes," Kutler says.
And the difficulties that the impeachment movement is having convincing Democrats to sign on suggests that it's going to have even less luck with Republicans.
Ultimately, the decision is a political one. Even in Nixon's case, Kutler points out, some Republicans stood by the president until the bitter end. Among them was a first-term Mississippi congressman on the judiciary committee named Trent Lott, who declared himself opposed to impeaching presidents. A quarter-century later, as Senate majority leader, he helped lead the drive to impeach Clinton.
Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
'
(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
Why a growing grassroots movement on the left wants to impeach the president -- and why Democrats in Washington don't even want to talk about it.
By Drake Bennett June 24, 2007
FOR ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN it was the discovery, in late 2005, that the Bush administration had been monitoring Americans' phone and email conversations without warrants that convinced her that the President shouldn't be allowed to serve out the remainder of his term.
As a young congresswoman from New York, Holtzman, who now practices law in New York City, had served on the House Judiciary Committee that in 1974 adopted articles of impeachment against President Nixon. Among the charges, she points out, was that Nixon had overseen an illegal electronic surveillance program.
"Having participated in that," she says, "you don't forget it."
Today Holtzman is one of the leading voices in a small but energetic movement seeking to impeach not only President Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney. In March, the Massachusetts Democratic Party joined 13 others, in states like California, Nevada, and New Hampshire, in passing a resolution in support of impeachment. The legislatures of nearly 80 towns and cities (most in Massachusetts, Vermont, and California) have passed similar resolutions, and state legislators in 11 states have introduced impeachment bills.
But given how controversial and deeply unpopular the administration has become, it is surprising how little mainstream political traction the movement has gained. Polls show the public does not think impeachment should be a priority. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly declared impeachment to be "off the table," and even Congress's most liberal members oppose the idea. It is a sign, say many, that the nation's most vivid memories of impeachment are of the deeply divisive Clinton proceedings, not the Nixon drama that eventually allowed the country to heal.
"Somehow along the way in this country we have become really afraid of impeaching," says Darcy Sweeney, a Massachusetts coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and one of the activists who brought the impeachment resolution before the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
The only impeachment resolution currently before Congress, introduced by Ohio Congressman and presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich this spring, is directed solely at Cheney, and when asked, Kucinich refuses to say whether he'd support impeaching Bush. "I'm pretty much staying focused on the effort to impeach the Vice President," he says.
At a panel at last week's Take Back America conference, an annual gathering of progressive activists and politicians, three of the Senate's most liberal members -- Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar -- flatly declared themselves against impeachment. Even Rep. John Conyers, a fierce Bush critic who in 2005 filed a bill calling for possible impeachment proceedings, has backed away from the idea -- despite the fact that his wife sponsored the Detroit city council's own unanimously approved impeachment resolution.
Most Democratic politicians and strategists see impeachment as a loser. Right now, President Bush is one of the least popular presidents in American history, and Democratic leaders don't see any point in turning him into a political martyr. Just as important, they argue, the time-consuming, rancorous debates that the process would occasion would elbow any other business off the legislative agenda, leaving the Democratic Party little to show for its return to power on Capitol Hill.
To impeachment's champions, however, these tactical arguments are worth little. What's at stake, they argue, is the Constitution itself. "I'd like to see [Bush and Cheney] tried and convicted and put behind bars," says Washington's David Swanson, co-founder of After Downing Street, an organization dedicated to doing just that. "That would be a satisfactory outcome. Not because I dislike them or think they're unpleasant people, but I don't want future presidents to think they can do these things."
The case against Bush does echo certain elements of the case against Nixon. As articulated by organizations like PDA and After Downing Street -- and as laid out in a spate of recent books by lawyers like Holtzman; John Bonifaz, a former Massachusetts Secretary of State candidate and After Downing Street co-founder; and Barbara Olshansky, who represents several Guantanamo detainees -- Bush stands accused of overseeing illegal surveillance and of lying to Congress and withholding information.
In 1973, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment charging Nixon with similar crimes -- obstructing justice and spying on and harassing political opponents -- for personal political gain. Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.
"We felt that the Constitutional system had worked," Holtzman recalls.
But the brief the would-be impeachers bring against Bush and Cheney is more sweeping than the 1973 case against Nixon. A list of impeachable offenses listed on After Downing Street's website includes the President's "allowing his administration to condone torture," threatening the use of force against Iran, his use of presidential signing statements to revise laws passed by Congress, the dropping of cluster bombs in Iraq, and Bush's failure to take reasonable steps to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
Most mainstream legal scholars, including many who have been deeply critical of the Bush administration, would disagree that most of these alleged offenses fit the "high crimes and misdemeanors" requirement set out in the Constitution for impeachment. But on wiretapping in particular, some allow that there is an argument to be made.
"It's an allegation of serious criminal misconduct arising out of the exercise of the power of the presidency," says Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School. "If it turns out that the President was authorizing illegal activity, it's comparable to Nixon."
For Democratic strategists, though, legal arguments are beside the point. Their case against pursuing impeachment is straightforwardly political. While every poll shows deep dissatisfaction with Bush and some show a conditional support for impeachment, even registered Democrats don't tend to list impeachment among their top priorities.
Pursuing impeachment today, Democratic leaders argue, would galvanize a Republican Party that's currently quite discouraged with Bush.
"In an ironic way it does George Bush a favor," says Rep. Barney Frank, Democrat from Newton. "He is losing the national debate on most issues, he is losing support among Republicans, and impeachment would almost certainly allow him to rally lots of Republicans."
It would also, they argue, put an end to any hope of passing significant legislation in the remaining year and a half of the current Congress. Congressional politics, says Ruy Teixeira, a political analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, "is a zero-sum game: the resources and energy you put into trying to impeach Bush don't go into other things."
That legislative sclerosis, Frank argues, would only be worsened by the inevitable sharpening of partisan lines that impeachment would create. "The single most important thing for Congress to do is to get us out of Iraq," says Frank. "And especially in the Senate, that can't be done without Republican votes."
For impeachment proponents like Carpenter and Swanson -- who are optimistic that their cause will find broad support in the coming months -- gridlock would be a small price to pay to restore the Constitution's balance of powers. But they also dispute the zero-sum argument. Again, they look to Nixon.
"The overwhelming pressure of impeachment forced Nixon to back off, to not veto bills," says Swanson. "It put Nixon on the defensive."
According to Swanson, the impending threat of impeachment allowed the Democratic-controlled Congress to create the Endangered Species Act, to raise the minimum wage, and cut off funding for the Vietnam War.
"There's a grain of truth to that," concedes Stanley Kutler, a retired professor of law and history at the University of Wisconsin and the author of "The Wars of Watergate." Nixon was weakened, Kutler says, by the prospect of impeachment. But what truly cost Nixon, Kutler points out, was not Democratic support for impeachment, overwhelming though it was, but Republican support for it. "I can flat-out tell you there's not going to be any impeachment until and unless you have Republican votes," Kutler says.
And the difficulties that the impeachment movement is having convincing Democrats to sign on suggests that it's going to have even less luck with Republicans.
Ultimately, the decision is a political one. Even in Nixon's case, Kutler points out, some Republicans stood by the president until the bitter end. Among them was a first-term Mississippi congressman on the judiciary committee named Trent Lott, who declared himself opposed to impeaching presidents. A quarter-century later, as Senate majority leader, he helped lead the drive to impeach Clinton.
Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
'
(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
MoDo on Vice
Maureen Dowd,
The New York Times, June 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -
It's hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.
Harry’s cloak of invisibility would be no match for Vice’s culture of invisibility. I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House.
I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution.
Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he’s blowing off his own administration.
Henry Waxman, the California congressman who looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull, is making the most of Congress’s ability, at long last, to scrutinize Cheney’s chicanery.
On Thursday, Mr. Waxman revealed that after four years of refusing to cooperate with the government unit that oversees classified documents, the vice president tried to shut down the unit rather than comply with the law ensuring that sensitive data is protected. The National Archives appealed to the Justice Department, but who knows how much justice there is at Justice, now that the White House has so blatantly politicized it?
Cheney’s office denied doing anything wrong, but Cheney’s office is also denying it’s an office. Tricky Dick Deuce declared himself exempt from a rule that applies to everyone else in the executive branch, instructing the National Archives that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch” and therefore is not subject to presidential executive orders.“
It’s absurd, reflecting his view from the first day he got into office that laws don’t apply to him,” Representative Waxman told me. “The irony is, he’s taking the position that he’s not part of the executive branch.”Ah, if only that were true. Then maybe W. would be able to close Gitmo, which Vice has insisted he not do. And Condi wouldn’t have to worry every night that she’ll wake up to find crazy Dick bombing Iran, whispering to W. that they have to do it before that weak sister Hillary takes over.“Your decision to exempt your office from the president’s order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk,” Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Cheney.
Of course, it’s doubtful, now that Vice has done so much to put our national security at risk, that he’ll suddenly listen to reason. Cheney and Cheney’s Cheney, David Addington, his equally belligerent, ideological and shadowy lawyer and chief of staff, have no shame. After claiming executive privilege to withhold the energy task force names and protect Scooter Libby, they now act outraged that Vice should be seen as part of the executive branch.Cheney, they argue, is the president of the Senate, so he’s also part of the legislative branch. Vice is casting himself as a constitutional chimera, an extralegal creature with the body of a snake and the head of a sea monster. It’s a new level of gall, to avoid accountability by saying you’re part of a legislative branch that you’ve spent six years trying to weaken.
But gall is the specialty of Addington, who has done his best to give his boss the powers of a king. He was the main author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects, and he helped stonewall the 9/11 commission. He led the fights supporting holding terrorism suspects without access to courts and against giving Congress and environmentalists access to information about the energy industry big shots who secretly advised Cheney on energy policy.
Dana Perino, a White House press spokeswoman, had to go out on Friday and defend Cheney’s bizarre contention that he is his own government. “This is an interesting constitutional question that legal scholars can debate,” she said.
I love that Cheney was able to bully Colin Powell, Pentagon generals and George Tenet when drumming up his fake case for war, but when he tried to push around the little guys, the National Archive data collectors — I’m visualizing dedicated “We the People” wonky types with glasses and pocket protectors — they pushed back.
Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.
(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 New York Times, June 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -
It's hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.
Harry’s cloak of invisibility would be no match for Vice’s culture of invisibility. I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House.
I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution.
Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he’s blowing off his own administration.
Henry Waxman, the California congressman who looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull, is making the most of Congress’s ability, at long last, to scrutinize Cheney’s chicanery.
On Thursday, Mr. Waxman revealed that after four years of refusing to cooperate with the government unit that oversees classified documents, the vice president tried to shut down the unit rather than comply with the law ensuring that sensitive data is protected. The National Archives appealed to the Justice Department, but who knows how much justice there is at Justice, now that the White House has so blatantly politicized it?
Cheney’s office denied doing anything wrong, but Cheney’s office is also denying it’s an office. Tricky Dick Deuce declared himself exempt from a rule that applies to everyone else in the executive branch, instructing the National Archives that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch” and therefore is not subject to presidential executive orders.“
It’s absurd, reflecting his view from the first day he got into office that laws don’t apply to him,” Representative Waxman told me. “The irony is, he’s taking the position that he’s not part of the executive branch.”Ah, if only that were true. Then maybe W. would be able to close Gitmo, which Vice has insisted he not do. And Condi wouldn’t have to worry every night that she’ll wake up to find crazy Dick bombing Iran, whispering to W. that they have to do it before that weak sister Hillary takes over.“Your decision to exempt your office from the president’s order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk,” Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Cheney.
Of course, it’s doubtful, now that Vice has done so much to put our national security at risk, that he’ll suddenly listen to reason. Cheney and Cheney’s Cheney, David Addington, his equally belligerent, ideological and shadowy lawyer and chief of staff, have no shame. After claiming executive privilege to withhold the energy task force names and protect Scooter Libby, they now act outraged that Vice should be seen as part of the executive branch.Cheney, they argue, is the president of the Senate, so he’s also part of the legislative branch. Vice is casting himself as a constitutional chimera, an extralegal creature with the body of a snake and the head of a sea monster. It’s a new level of gall, to avoid accountability by saying you’re part of a legislative branch that you’ve spent six years trying to weaken.
But gall is the specialty of Addington, who has done his best to give his boss the powers of a king. He was the main author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects, and he helped stonewall the 9/11 commission. He led the fights supporting holding terrorism suspects without access to courts and against giving Congress and environmentalists access to information about the energy industry big shots who secretly advised Cheney on energy policy.
Dana Perino, a White House press spokeswoman, had to go out on Friday and defend Cheney’s bizarre contention that he is his own government. “This is an interesting constitutional question that legal scholars can debate,” she said.
I love that Cheney was able to bully Colin Powell, Pentagon generals and George Tenet when drumming up his fake case for war, but when he tried to push around the little guys, the National Archive data collectors — I’m visualizing dedicated “We the People” wonky types with glasses and pocket protectors — they pushed back.
Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.
(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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