12 Days of Justice - Day 5

So far in the 12 Days of Justice daily series you have learned that:

• Judge Samuel Alito does not respect the primary role of the Legislative branch of our government.
  By Tampopo



• Judge Alito will threaten the fundamental rights and basic legal protections for working Americans of all ages.
  By AP



• Judge Alito has violated the laws and ethical codes that govern the conduct of federal judges and was a member of the radical and discriminatory group CAP.
  By Steven D



• Judge Alito's view of discrimination against persons with disability is so restrictive that "few if any...cases would survive summary judgment."
  By susanhu

Todays diary for Day 5 will be a short and to the point explanation of Judge Alito's views concerning women and abortion rights. It will deal with his radical and demeaning views from the perspective of his positions revealed in certain abortion cases, memos, applications, and discussions of Roe v Wade.

[Updated]: to reflect many edits! Please check the bottom to cross-post easily.

Join me in the back alley to get a clear view of Alito.

In 1985 Alito made crystal clear his position concerning Roe v Wade.

Alito's name does not appear on any briefs the Reagan Solicitor General's office filed in abortion-related cases. However, just a few months before Alito wrote his DOJ application letter touting his contribution to cases in which the government argued that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," the Solicitor General's office had filed a brief in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on that very subject. The brief urged that "this Court should overrule" Roe v. Wade. The Court rejected the Solicitor General's arguments, with only two justices agreeing that Roe should be overturned.

T. R. Goldman at law.com Offers this opinion of the upcoming battle:

If Alito's jurisprudential views match those on the Thornburgh brief -- and at least in 1985, Alito indicated that they do -- then the job application provides the Judiciary Committee with the type of window into a future justice's thinking that, since the failed nomination of Robert Bork, has become almost nonexistent.

This is a nomination demanding to be "Borked" into nonexistence. But this still does not give a clear picture of his views on women's rights. Please consider taking and using any or all parts of the following letter and using it to contact your Senators concerning this nomination. Feel free to adapt and edit this letter, or you can just say how you feel about this in your own words. All we ask is that you take action before it is too late.

What does Samuel Alito think about women and abortion rights?

In Judge Alito's 1992 dissent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito argued that a law requiring a woman in certain circumstances to notify her spouse before seeking an abortion did not pose an undue burden on a woman's right to choose. Alito asserted that if parental notification requirements were constitutional, as the Supreme Court had previously held, then spousal notification requirements must be permissible as well. (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 947 F.2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).)

Alito's colleagues on the Third Circuit and a 5-4 Supreme Court majority disagreed. Writing for that Supreme Court majority, Sandra Day O'Connor firmly rejected Alito's troubling logic:

"A State may not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that parents exercise over their children."

(Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) at 898.)

Sandra Day O'Connor was correct in rejecting Alito's view of women as subservient to men and less than equal in the eyes of the law.

In a 1985 memo Alito had advised the Reagan Administration that it should attempt to undermine Roe v. Wade. Alito urged the administration to file a friend-of-the-court brief in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and argued that this brief could promote "the goals of bringing about the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, and in the meantime, of mitigating its effects."

Alito wanted the administration to "make clear" that it "disagree[d] with Roe v. Wade," but argued that the most effective long-term strategy of persuading the Supreme Court to overturn this groundbreaking precedent was to chip away at it slowly through extremely restrictive state laws. Overturning Roe v Wade would most certainly result in a return to the days of dangerous "illegal" abortions.

Is this the kind of nomination that sounds like a moderate? This candidate is not representative of my views, nor of mainstream America.

Alito clearly has no problem with forcing his radical ideals on women.

I strongly urge you to vote against this horrible nomination because no woman should be forced by anyone to have to resort to using a coat hanger to perform a back alley abortion. When you consider that Alito's warped views would be replacing the moderate voice of Sandra Day O'Connor there should be no doubt that Alito's nomination must be stopped.

Signed,

Some suggested contacts and petitions:

Your senators

The Judiciary Committee

Your representatives

Congress.org

Campus Progress "Stop Alito's America"

PFAW "Save the Court"

Planned Parenthood Anti-Alito Petition

Naral Anti-Alito Petition

Rolling Justice

Plan B Petition

Sending a FAX via the Web (For those of us that don't have a fax machine at home.)

Again, feel free to copy and paste any and all of the information or images you will see put up over the next couple of weeks by the Anti-Alito Brigade into Blogs and letters as we hold Alito's feet to the fire. Even if you only participate on a few of the days it can help make a difference. There are so many issues where Samuel Alito's views and allegiances are just flat out wrong for a SCOTUS nomination.

Note: Tommorrow's actions and reason's are still being worked on today. Feel free to check it out at Booman Tribune  (Just look for the "Justice" diaries) and any help or participation of any kind you can provide will be greatly appreciated. This is another action brought to you by the group that brought you "Operation Yellow Feather" which was a very successful cross blog protest. These actions are designed to help bring the "Left Blogosphere Think Tank" together on our many shared issues.

Watch for Alice's diaries on the "separation of church and state/religious freedom" for days 6 and 7... On two different days because we want to keep them twice as separated!

Actions for: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

12 Days of Justice

There are many reasons to be wary of the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Over the next 12 days the Anti-Alito Brigade will be bringing you many of those reasons, and also some actions that you might consider to help stop this horrible nomination.

The main intention of this nomination is to try and tip the balance of power away from the legislative branch and towards the President.

Alito is an activist judge that will legislate from the bench on many of the issues that all progressives hold dear to their heart.

Our intention is that everyone across the Left Blogosphere participates in this any way that they can. Write a few letters, send Emails, send Faxes, and make some phonecalls to your Senators and Reps. (I know Reps don't vote on this, BUT they can provide more pressure on this issue to those that do vote on Alito! Besides, it is fun to piss them off... lol)

Taken from Tampopo's BooTrib diary:

December 12, 2005

You should be very wary of Judge Samuel Alito. Perhaps afraid is more accurate.

Judge Samuel Alito does not respect the primary role of the Legislative branch of our government. Therefore, he should not be considered acceptable to any member of Congress, particularly true Conservatives, regardless of his opinions on other matters held dear.

Judge Alito is a threat to your role in the structure of our government. You practice the art of politicking, balancing constituents' concerns and needs with those of our society as a whole. Legislation is challenged in court, as it should be when the interpretation of a law is in question. Judge Alito's record suggests he is not a "strict constructionist" of the Constitution.

Norm Ornstein, of the prestigious American Enterprise Institute, has recognized the danger Judge Alito represents. In his article, "Judge Alito Doesn't Show Congress Enough Deference," Ornstein states:

  [Supreme Court Justice John] Roberts respects Congress and its constitutional primacy; Alito shows serious signs that he does not...

  ...Roberts is a very conservative guy, and a strict constructionist -- one who means it. He understands that Congress is the branch the framers set up in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution. It is not coincidence that Article 1 is twice as long as Article II, which created the executive branch, and almost four times as long as Article III, which established the judiciary. Judges should bend over doubly and triply backward before overturning a Congressional statute, especially if it is clear that Congress acted carefully and deliberatively...

The court case that has Mr. Ornstein turning such a critical eye on Judge Alito is from 1996, "United States v Rybar." This case involved a challenge to Congress's right to regulate the possession or transfer of machine guns.

From Mr. Ornstein,

  Congress had passed the law in a reasonable and deliberate fashion. A genuine practitioner of judicial restraint would have allowed them a wide enough berth to do so. Alito's colleagues did just that. But Alito used his own logic to call for its overturn, arguing that the possession of machine guns by private individuals had no economic activity associated with it, and that no real evidence existed that private possession of guns increased crime in a way that affected commerce -- and thus Congress had no right to regulate it. That kind of judicial reasoning often is referred to as reflecting the "Constitution in Exile."

  Whatever it is, it's not judicial restraint.

In response to Alito's opinion, the majority said, "Nothing in Lopez (an earlier Supreme Court case) requires either Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute."

Mr. Ornstein's final sentence is a caution to you,

  Whatever else it does with Judge Alito at the confirmation hearings, the Senate needs to hold his feet to the fire on this larger issue of deference to the legislative branch.

Don't let Judge Alito's opinions on single issues distract you from the danger he presents to our nation's Constitutional foundation. Reject his nomination and encourage your colleagues to do the same.

Three groups to contact:

Your senators

The Judiciary Committee

And your representatives

Feel free to lift the image here or any of the others over at Booman Tribune, and feel free to copy and paste any and all of the information you will see put up over the next couple of weeks into Blogs and letters as we hold Alito's feet to the fire.

Even if you only participate on a few of the days it can help make a difference. There are so many issues where Samuel Alito's views and allegiances are just flat out wrong for a SCOTUS nomination.

Note: Tommorrow's actions and reason's are still being worked on today. Feel free to check it out at Booman Tribune (Just look for the "Justice" diaries) and any help or participation of any kind you can provide will be greatly appreciated. This is another action brought to you by the group that brought you "Operation Yellow Feather" which was a very successful cross blog protest. These actions are designed to help bring the "Left Blogosphere Think Tank" together on our many shared issues.


X-posted at My Left Wing, Booman Tribune , My Left Nutmeg, Political Cortex

And also Front Paged or posted by Cedwyn at: Dembloggers, ePluribus Media,   MyDD, and TPM Cafe reader Blogs as well as by shermanesqe at Street Prophets and C&J

Operation Flying Monkees

Crooks and Liars has the latest on the presidents speech to rally the flying monkees:


TDS on the Speech

Stewart started Monday off with a look back at President Bush's speech to our troops on V-Day.

Click to see video at C&L...

You knew there had to be a talking head montage thrown in for good measure. Jon offers President Bush a simpler name to call the radicals since he gets so tongue tied. The end clip that TDS uses highlights the fact that Bush really makes about as much sense as Bert Lahr.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words...

THAN THIS ONE SPEAKS VOLUMES!

CLICK ON THE PIC!

Cutting Military Benefits to Pay for Katrina?

It seems that this is exactly what the bush admin. and the republicans in congress would like to do.

Who do the bush admin. and republicans that love them want to screw more than anyone else on this earth? (Well, other than the people living in the lands with the oil neocons think they should own...)

Who else but the military that they send off to die in a war for oil.

Sirotablog:

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush and Republicans in Congress have refused to consider rolling back the $336 billion in new tax cuts that the richest 1 percent are slated to get over the next five years. They say we need to pay for reconstruction not by asking the wealthiest to sacrifice just a little bit, but by massive cuts to spending. And now we see what that means: The Navy Times today reports that those cuts "include trimming military quality-of-life programs, including health care." This, while troops are in battle.

The Republicans have put their cutting efforts in military terms, calling it "Operation Offset" - a further insult to the men and women in uniform they are now trying to screw over. The specifics are ugly. They are, for instance, asking troops to "accept reduced health care benefits for their families." Additionally, "the stateside system of elementary and secondary schools for military family members could be closed." In the past, this idea "has faced strong opposition from parents of children attending the schools because public schools [in and around bases] are seen as offering lower-quality education."

How can an honest republican that has any sense of morality look at what bush does everyday without gagging from what they see?

Pseudoconservative? Neocon? Same Idiots, Different "Phantom Enemy"

As you can see here, there is some doubt about bush's honesty amongst the Vets...


National Post:
"Bill Moyer, 73, wears a 'Bullshit Protector' flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
(AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)"

Then again... You could have just asked me. As a Vet myself, well, I think that the few soldiers that make it home alive will be lucky if there any benefits left for them the way bush is messing with VA benefits, nevermind the fact that we should never have been in Iraq in the first place, or the fact that since we have been in Iraq bush and his pseudoconservative policy makers have messed it up almost every single way possible.

I know... You said pseudocon what???? If you don't remember McCarthyism and their insisting "there is a commie hiding behind every tree!" well, there is the tie in to the kind of administration we have in the White House right now. The modern day pseudoconservative's (neocon's) "Fear, fear, fear!" campaign is no different than the pseudoconservative driven McCarthy witch hunts...

As an independent, I feel pretty safe saying "Better dead than red!" If you are talking about GOP red that is.

Thank God I live in a blue state where the Dems are moderate liberals, and the GOP are flaming liberals, or at least pretend to be with the way they tax and spend. Needless to say, the budgeting skills of the GOP do show a preference for red ink...

Sad but true...

Does it surprise anyone that polls show bush support has dropped to %36? Talk about an unpopular idiot in the White House...

A nod to the realities of the soldiers plight.

Drinking Liberally in New Milford:
"A nod to the realities of the soldiers plight."

THE BRAD BLOG:

"In a departure from the norm in Kentucky -- one of the reddest of red states -- some of Comley's relatives, including a few sitting in the front pews, have spoken out strongly against the Bush administration and the war that took the 21-year-old Marine's life.
...
On Friday, Comley's grandmother, 80-year-old Geraldine Comley of Versailles, described herself in an interview as a former Republican stalwart who is "on a rampage" against the president and the war.

She said she would like nothing better than to join Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier who has been holding a peace vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Texas.

"When someone gets up and says 'My son died for our freedom,' or I get a sympathy card that says that, I can hardly bear it," Geraldine Comley said.

She said her view, developed before her grandson's death, is that Bush pushed for war because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate the first President Bush, and to get control of Mideast oil.

"And it irritates me no small amount that Dick Cheney, in the Vietnam War, said he had 'other priorities,'" Geraldine Comley said. "He didn't mind sending my grandson over there" to Iraq.""
Written by: Winter Patriot

My deepest and sincerest condolences to the Comley family in the loss of their son, and my thanks to Cindy Sheehan for faithfully representing the many who demand better leadership in this country.

A nod to the realities of the soldiers plight.

Drinking Liberally in New Milford:
"A nod to the realities of the soldiers plight."

THE BRAD BLOG:

"In a departure from the norm in Kentucky -- one of the reddest of red states -- some of Comley's relatives, including a few sitting in the front pews, have spoken out strongly against the Bush administration and the war that took the 21-year-old Marine's life.
...
On Friday, Comley's grandmother, 80-year-old Geraldine Comley of Versailles, described herself in an interview as a former Republican stalwart who is "on a rampage" against the president and the war.

She said she would like nothing better than to join Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier who has been holding a peace vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Texas.

"When someone gets up and says 'My son died for our freedom,' or I get a sympathy card that says that, I can hardly bear it," Geraldine Comley said.

She said her view, developed before her grandson's death, is that Bush pushed for war because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate the first President Bush, and to get control of Mideast oil.

"And it irritates me no small amount that Dick Cheney, in the Vietnam War, said he had 'other priorities,'" Geraldine Comley said. "He didn't mind sending my grandson over there" to Iraq.""
Written by: Winter Patriot

My deepest and sincerest condolences to the Comley family in the loss of their son, and my thanks to Cindy Sheehan for faithfully representing the many who demand better leadership in this country.

Too late you stupid bushies...

Is there even one idiot on this earth that will believe this BS line coming from the pentagon and the White House?

Fearing backlash, Pentagon moves to block new Abu Ghraib photos - Yahoo! News:
Sat Aug 13, 3:50 PM ET

"WASHINGTON (AFP) - The
Pentagon has moved forcefully to block the release of new video evidence of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, arguing it would help recruit new Islamist insurgents and endanger American lives."

Too late morons... The insurgents already know the truth about the torture the corrupt bush administration and the incompetent Petagon officials sanctioned.

THEY HAD TO SUFFER THROUGH IT!

Just who is it you are trying to protect there?

He further states that should the pictures become public, they will "endanger the lives and physical safety of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in the United States Armed Forces presently serving in Iraq and
Afghanistan."

Americans aren't that stupid. We already know that the insurgents are quite aware of the torture.

WHEN IDIOTS LIKE BUSH, GONZALES, AND RUMSFELD, ETC., GAVE THE GREEN LIGHT ON TORTURE THEY ENDANGERED EVERY SOLDIER IN THE MILITARY AS WELL AS EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN AND ANY OTHER COUNTRY THAT IS IN IRAQ HELPING THE US.

We already know who you are trying to protect and who is really to blame.

Meanwhile, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero insists the real reason the Pentagon is fighting the release of the new evidence is because it demonstrates "the failure of American leaders who placed our young men and women in compromising situations and are now seeking to blame them for it."

Rep. Nancy Johnson's Scandal Plagued Legislation

It seems that Nancy Johnson's political career has a lot of junk in the trunk...

Deroy Murdock on Medicare on National Review Online:
"This fiscal malpractice has not bought the White House even political dividends. An August 25-26, 2003 Gallup poll found 40 percent of adults approved of the president's handling of Medicare while 48 percent disapproved. After the benefit's adoption, a March 26-28, 2004 Gallup survey saw 35 percent approve of Bush on Medicare, while disapproval climbed to 55 percent. What a bargain: Each one-point drop in Bush's Medicare approval rating cost Americans $44.5 billion.

The GOP Congress should dump the drug benefit. They should spare taxpayers this absurdly expensive new project whose true costs were concealed by an administration that sacrificed integrity and fiscal responsibility on an altar of blind ambition.

Instead, Republicans should develop a modest plan for poor seniors who lack coverage, rather than any American over 65, including multimillionaires and those who already have drug insurance.

The Medicare drug benefit has metastasized from bad policy to bad politics and now to scandal and possible criminality. This law begs to be euthanized. The GOP should pulls its plug. As for the perpetrators of this colossal public fraud, the Justice Department should fit them for orange jumpsuits."

And this is the legislation she was was so proud of and pinning her re-election hopes on? Well now, If that ain't an elephant passing some serious gas on to the voters?

Careful now!
Never stand behind an elephant that is full of it...
You never know when it is going to take its next dump on YOU!

Pigs on the Wing

While Juan Cole sets the record staright on the real issue of what is at the heart of the terror unleashed on London last week there is one very minor point he may have missed.

Salon.com News | "The time of revenge has come":

Blowback from Bush and Blair's incompetently pursued war on terror has hit London. When will the U.S. figure out how to fight smart?

By Juan Cole

July 8, 2005 | Credit for the horrific bombings of the London Underground and a double-decker bus on Thursday morning was immediately taken on a radical Muslim Web site by a 'secret group' of Qaida al-Jihad in Europe. By Thursday afternoon, as the casualty toll rose above 40 dead and 700 wounded, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw was saying, 'It has the hallmarks of an al-Qaida-related attack.' Although U.S. President George W. Bush maintains that al-Qaida strikes out at the industrialized democracies because of hatred for Western values, the statement said nothing of the sort. The attack, the terrorists proclaimed, was an act of sacred revenge for British 'massacres' in 'Afghanistan and Iraq,' and a punishment of the United Kingdom for its 'Zionism' (i.e., support of Israel). If they really are responsible, who is this group and what do they want?"

Don't you ever wonder where all of these web sites are coming from?

UK-based dissident denies link to website that carried al-Qaida claim

David Pallister - The Guardian
Saturday July 9, 2005

The claim of responsibility for the London attacks was first posted on one of the dozens of Islamic websites that are routinely monitored by western intelligence services.
The statement, under the name of the Secret Organisation of the al-Qaida Jihad in Europe, said: "The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern and western quarters."

...snip...

...two Israeli groups devoted to exposing the network of jihadist sites claim that it is connected to the London-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih. Mr Faqih, who is based in Willesden, north-west London, and runs the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (Mira), was designated by the US treasury last December as a supporter of al-Qaida. The UK Treasury followed suit by freezing Mr Faqih's assets.

Speaking in December 2004 before the assets were frozen, Mr Faqih ridiculed any idea that "millions of dollars" would be frozen. "I have no assets in the US and all I have in the UK is a current account with a few hundred pounds."

Well? At least someone out there is doing something about all of this by trying to freeze the assets of people that are involved...

But could we do more? Maybe...

It was posted on an Arabic website, al-qal3ah.com, which is registered by Qalaah Qalaah in Abu Dhabi and hosted by a server in Houston, Texas.

One would hope that they will deal with this Houston companies involvement in promoting terror? Maybe freezing all of their assets too...

Maybe?

When pigs can fly!

The server in Houston has intriguing connections. Everyone's Internet was founded by brothers Robert and Roy Marsh in 1998 and by 2002 had an income of more than $30m (now about £17m).

...snip...
Roy Marsh counts among his friends President George Bush's former sister-in-law, Sharon Bush, and the president's navy secretary.

Everyone's Internet, which also hosts a number of pornographic sites, states: "We support the uncensored flow of information and ideas over the internet and do not actively monitor subscriber activity under normal circumstances."

I am sure that investigators will clear Roy of any wrongdoing AFTER they have completely gone through all of the porn on those houston servers owned by another bush family porn pal.

If you didn't care what happened to me,
And I didn't care for you
We would zig zag our way
Through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain
Wondering which of the buggers to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing

Pink Floyd, Animals

Frist's Torturous Decision

If there was ever any question about who is supporting the soldiers, well, the Army Times had no problems figuring this out. They point out how alarmed Dems are that republicans would rather pander to special interest groups like the NRA instead of making the important decisions while we are supposed to be a nation at war.

Army Times - News - More News: "By Rick Maze
Times staff writer

Senate Republican leaders decided Tuesday that a gun manufacturers’ liability bill is more important than next year’s $441.6 billion defense authorization bill.

With Democrats expressing amazement that there could be any higher legislative priority in a time of war than the annual defense bill that includes money for pay and benefits, operations and maintenance, and weapons’ purchases and research, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate Republican leader, decided Tuesday that a bill protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits over the illegal use of firearms was a higher priority.

The decision came after Republican leaders failed to muster the 60 votes needed to prevent amendments not strictly related to the defense budget from being offered to the defense bill.

In a count of 50-48, seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting not to restrict debate, a move that Democratic leaders said would have prevented consideration of amendments to help veterans and survivors of deceased service members, along with other issues."

It is really important to understand that this effort to push back the bill is less about the funding for the war and more about getting more important rich elitist agendas to the floor quickly:

With Congress planning to leave town Friday for one-month break, debate on S 397, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, is expected to last two or three days, and then Senate leaders plan to take up an energy bill, an estate tax reform bill and an Interior Department funding bill

A hat tip to QWQ, who had this note about Frist's torturous decision to sidetrack this:

Also, several folks have noted in the comments that pandering to the NRA is not the only reason the Republicans wanted to delay the Defense Authorization bill -- the White House also wanted to avoid showdowns on detainee treatment and military base closings. The new AP story has that angle, as does this CBS edited version of the original AP story.

Oh, yeah... The bushies don't want to give up their right to torture innocent Iraqis that are held along with the few terrorists in captivity... Go figure, huh? Apparently the republican controlled Senate doesn't work any better in making us safer than torture does at getting useful intel.

Ronald Reagan on Outing Spies

It appears that Ronnie Raygun's words have come back to haunt the traitors that hero worship him:

Remarks on Signing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982

Excerpt from the speech delivered by Ronald Reagan:


Whether you work in Langley or a faraway nation, whether your tasks are in operations or analysis sections, it is upon your intellect and integrity, your wit and intuition that the fate of freedom rests for millions of your countrymen and for many millions more all around the globe.…

Like those who are part of any silent service, your sacrifices are sometimes unappreciated; your work is sometimes misunderstood. Because you’re professionals, you understand and accept this. But because you’re human and because you deal daily in the dangers that confront this nation, you must sometimes question whether some of your countrymen appreciate the value of your accomplishments, the sacrifices you make, the dangers you confront, the importance of the warnings that you issue.

And that’s why I have come here today; first, to sign an important piece of legislation that bears directly on your work, an act of Congress whose overwhelming passage by the representatives of the American people is a symbol of their support for the job that you do every day. But even more than this, I’ve come here today to say to you what the vast majority of Americans would say if they had this opportunity to stand here before you. We’re grateful to you. We thank you. We’re proud of you.

If you support the treachery of rove and libby than I hold nothing but contempt for you. The potential dangers that these leakers have exposed networks of agents to, and the security risks they have caused for our nation is nothing less than an act of treason.

Yep! Treason...
Reagan is calling y'all on it from his grave there bushies.

But is there more?
Well, yes there is... Here ya go:

The Congress has carefully drafted this bill so that it focuses only on those who would transgress the bounds of decency; not those who would exercise their legitimate right of dissent. This carefully drawn act recognizes that the revelation of the names of secret agents adds nothing to legitimate public debate over intelligence policy. It is also a signal to the world that while we in this democratic nation remain tolerant and flexible, we also retain our good sense and our resolve to protect our own security and that of the brave men and women who serve us in difficult and dangerous intelligence assignments.

During the debate over this bill, some have suggested that our focus should be not on protecting our own intelligence agencies, but on the real or imagined abuses of the past. Well, I'm glad that counsel was rejected, for the days of such abuses are behind us. The Congress now shares the responsibility of guarding against any transgression, and I have named a new Intelligence Oversight Board and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to assist me in ensuring that the rule of law is maintained in areas which must remain secret and out of the normal realm of public scrutiny.

Beyond this, I have full confidence that you'll do your job vigorously and imaginatively while making sure that your activity is lawful, constitutional, and in keeping with the traditions of our way of life. And while you're at your job and while I'm President and while these Congressmen stand at watch, we'll work together to see to it that this powerful tool of government is used to advance, not abuse, the rights of free people.

"The Great Accumulator" (you know? All of that debt Reagan ran up, silly!) must have had his astrologer working overtime that day...

A Must Read From BuzzFlash!

I am putting the begining of this Buzzlash interview on without any further comment EXCEPT that I suggest you read the article and check out IWT News.

Paul Jay, Creator of Independent World Television, Intends To Challenge Corporate Broadcasters at Their Own Game

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

What we think is, if you don't do it on TV, it doesn't break through. But if we break through with it on television, then it makes it much more difficult for the rest of the television media to simply ignore these stories.

What television is doing, and to some extent the big-media print press -- is they're treating propaganda as news. They're allowing political forces and corporate forces to create a façade of how the world looks. And they're reporting on the façade as if it's real. I liken it to professional wrestling, about which I made a film. Wrestling press can talk about wrestling theater as if it's something real, even though everybody knows it's theater. Well, the same thing's happening here. If you try to step outside that as a journalist, they call you partisan.

* * *

When we heard of Paul Jay's project to start an international television news network supported by viewer donations, we said to ourselves, "Now here is a guy who is truly BuzzFlashian!" After all, BuzzFlash was started in May of 2000 with sweat equity, and it has been supported ever since by its readers -- 5 million monthly, these days, although in the first month of our online existence, we only had 34 readers a day. When we met Paul Jay, we became convinced he's got the professional expertise and righteous indignation to maybe pull this idea off. After all, we did, on the Internet. So, we have joined his advisory committee, and BuzzFlash is fully supporting his efforts. After all, he's a kindred spirit who cherishes democracy, the free flow of ideas, and social justice. You can find out more about his vision and unfolding plans at the Independent World Television web site: http://www.iwtnews.com/

Fork You Rove!

Here is the text... Read it all... There is no exception for disclosing classified info even if you only confirm a previous source. It is illegal. And they are "trained" to know this before they to get any security clearance.



They are so detailed in this training that even confirming classified info to a news source is a part of that training, and it is definately a no-no.

REP. HENRY A. WAXMAN

RANKING MINORITY MEMBER

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JULY 15, 2005



Fact Sheet

Karl Rove’s Nondisclosure Agreement



Today, news reports revealed that Karl Rove, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and the President’s top political advisor, confirmed the identity of covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson with Robert Novak on July 8, 2003, six days before Mr. Novak published the information in a nationally syndicated column. These new disclosures have obvious relevance to the criminal investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Counsel who is investigating whether Mr. Rove violated a criminal statute by revealing Ms. Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA official.



Independent of the relevance these new disclosures have to Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation, they also have significant implications for: (1) whether Mr. Rove violated his obligations under his "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" and (2) whether the White House violated its obligations under Executive Order 12958. Under the nondisclosure agreement and the executive order, Mr. Rove would be subject to the loss of his security clearance or dismissal even for "negligently" disclosing Ms. Wilson’s identity.





KARL ROVE’S NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT



Executive Order 12958 governs how federal employees are awarded security clearances in order to obtain access to classified information. It was last updated by President George W. Bush on March 25, 2003, although it has existed in some form since the Truman era. The executive order applies to any entity within the executive branch that comes into possession of classified information, including the White House. It requires employees to undergo a criminal background check, obtain training on how to protect classified information, and sign a "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," also known as a SF-312, promising not to reveal classified information.1



The nondisclosure agreement signed by White House officials such as Mr. Rove states: "I will never divulge classified information to anyone" who is not authorized to receive it.2



THE PROHIBITION AGAINST "CONFIRMING" CLASSIFIED INFORMATION



Mr. Rove, through his attorney, has raised the implication that there is a distinction between classified information to someone not authorized to receive it and confirming classified information from someone not authorized to have it. In fact, there is no such distinction under the nondisclosure agreement Mr. Rove signed.

One of the most basic rules of safeguarding classified information is that an official who has signed a nondisclosure agreement cannot confirm classified information obtained by a reporter.



In fact, this obligation is highlighted in the "briefing booklet" that new security clearance recipients receive when they sign their nondisclosure agreements: Before … confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, … confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.3



THE INDEPENDENT DUTY TO VERIFY THE CLASSIFIED STATUS OF INFORMATION



Mr. Rove’s attorney has implied that if Mr. Rove learned Ms. Wilson’s identity and occupation from a reporter, this somehow makes a difference in what he can say about the information. This is inaccurate.



The executive order states: "Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information."4



Mr. Rove was not at liberty to repeat classified information he may have learned from a reporter Instead, he had an affirmative obligation to determine whether the information had been declassified before repeating it. The briefing booklet is explicit on this point: "before disseminating the information elsewhere … the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified."5



"NEGLIGENT" DISCLOSURE OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION



Mr. Rove’s attorney has also implied that Mr. Rove’s conduct should be at issue only if he intentionally or knowingly disclosed Ms. Wilson’s covert status. In fact, the nondisclosure agreement and the executive order require sanctions against security clearance holders who "knowingly, willfully, or negligently" disclose classified information.6 The sanctions for such a breach include "reprimand, suspension without pay, removal, termination of classification authority, loss or denial of access to classified information, or other sanctions."7



THE WHITE HOUSE OBLIGATIONS UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 12958



Under the executive order, the White House has an affirmative obligation to investigate and take remedial action separate and apart from any ongoing criminal investigation. The executive order specifically provides that when a breach occurs, each agency must "take appropriate and prompt corrective action."8



This includes a determination of whether individual employees improperly disseminated or obtained access to classified information The executive order further provides that sanctions for violations are not optional.



The executive order expressly provides: "Officers and employees of the United States Government … shall be subject to appropriate sanctions if they knowingly, willfully, or negligently … disclose to unauthorized persons information properly classified."9



There is no evidence that the White House complied with these requirements.

ENDNOTES



1 Executive Order No. 12958, Classified National Security Information (as amended), sec. 4.1(a) (Mar. 28, 2003) (online at Web Reference ).



2 Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, Standard Form 312 (Prescribed by NARA/ISOO) (32 C.F.R. 2003, E.O. 12958) (online at Web Reference).



3 Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives and Records Administration, Briefing Booklet: Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 312), at 73 (emphasis added) (online at Web Reference ).



4 Executive Order No. 12958, sec. 1.1(b).



5 Briefing Booklet, supra note 3, at 73.



6 Executive Order No. 12958, sec. 5.5(b) (emphasis added).



7 Id. at 5.5(c).



8 Id. at 5.5(e)(1).



9 Id. at 5.5(b).

Stick a fork in rove...
YEP,...
He is done.

Now what we need to know from cheney and bush?

What did you know? AND when did you know it?
And while I am at it...
How friendly were you with Jeff Gannon? Wink Wink
(Hey, Gannon had to be screwing some guy in the White House?)

ROVE'S TREASON?

This recent report shows a complete lack of uderstanding (or a lack of guts to report it honestly) for what is LIKELY really going on in Pfitz investigation of the Plame leaks...

MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case By E&P Staff

NEW YORK Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight,

...Snip...

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

A fucking perjury rap for a god-damned traitor to our country? I think not... A man who plays politics with the lives of people in our intelligence community, endangers potentially important covert contacts at a time of war, and they talk about perjury? This ain't no fucking BJ!!! This is treason! With all of the stuff coming from the Judge showing a likelyhood of a very real investigation of an espionage conspiracy AND a conspiracy of those that tried to cover it up.

I was reading a good write on the summary of everything circulating the various Blogs on this by kant and it seems pretty obvious what is going on and why bush, cheney, rove, and numerous members of the bush "all-star-fake-news-and-lies" team are lining up to speak to their lawyers. Of course they are just doing that as a precaution... They certainly wouldn't need these lawyers to cover their asses, would they?

It also explains why the media may be worried. Anyone of the media that received any information about the leaks and did not report it to the authorities as a potential crime could be found just as guilty in this conspiracy. Anyone that knew about the leak prior to it's publishing (Novak outing Plame in his editorial) face a very real prospect of becoming "collateral damage" as Joe Wilson put it when Miller was justly sentenced by the judge to sit in the thinking box to ponder whether or not she wants to considered part of these conspiracies.

If I were the judge I would have sentenced miller based on pretending to be a journalist... But I don't like liars like Judy Miller.

Judy Miller (You know, Chalabi's "mouthpiece" for "anonomous tips" he gave her about all of those fictitious WMDs she wrote about in her "Fear, fear, fear!" campaign leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq?) is part of the cover-up of the alleged espionage if she refuses to give up the names and therefore may become part of this espionage conspiracy. The cover-up part is a near certainty given Judge Tatels statements, and considering her as part of the original conspiracy to out a covert operative is a definite legal possibility. This no longer about keeping sources confidential to protect whistle-blowers for the good of the public. It is about a national securtiy leak and the sources of it that have hurt our country.

Yes... There is a lot of specualtion about "who may be charged with what?"... But it is becoming very clear that this is more than just a failed political smear by the bush regime... It is more likely about traitors getting charged under the Espionage Act.

Come on Miller, who is the other traitor you are protecting? Is it scooter? cheney? bolton? Powell? Maybe even bush? Perhaps all of them?

My gut instinct says it is cheney and bolton, since they already have shown a willingness to bypass the normal/legal means of getting Intel. It would also explain why the Whithouse refused to confirm or deny what Intel bolton had intercepted that upset the Senators so much in bolton's failed confirmation...

---------------------------



---------------------------

The News Network bush Will Hate!

This needs to be blasted into the Blogosphere!

IWT news
I don't really care if you want to miss out on this chance for truely independent news.

NO corporate backing, NO government funding, and NO commercials.

Just independent WORLD news, supported ONLY by the people.

http://www.iwtnews.com/

Watch the VIDEO, do the SURVEY, then you decide if they merit your support!

Now Click on the link and freep this survey! They desperately want everyone's input (and yes, they wouldn't mind your donation...)

http://www.iwtnews.com/survey

Independent World Television is building the world's first global independent news network. Online and on TV, IWTnews will deliver independent news and real debate from professional and citizen journalists -- without funding from governments, corporations or commercial advertising. Using the web to organize and raise funds across borders, IWTnews is building an international movement for democracy.

Sounds pretty fucking noble, huh?

A message from Jeff Cohen:

"Friends,

This is a project I've been working on since the election -- an effort to build the world's first indepedent global news channel...

independent of corporations and government... Sponsored only by its viewers...an alternative to Fox News and CNN.


Check out the new website

http://www.iwtnews.com/ and new video. Spread the word to your lists.

Let me know what you think.


-- jeff cohen, founder of FAIR"

Do yourself a favor... If you do anything today pass this link along on your Blog, in an email, on a message board. Anywhere!

If there is anyone that is sick of Micheal Jackson reports 24/7 doesn't believe in this than everything else they have been doing is a complete fucking waste of time!

You know I am right...

One day (perhaps right here and right now?) a formerly-ignorant person will thank you for this...

I thank you! ;)

Taking the Fight to Karl!

Take it to Karl

As a Vet, and one that does NOT support the stupidity they call policy coming out of the GOP controlled governments, I have a serious problem with recent statements made by Karl Rove, who is just another notable chickenhawk that refused to back up his dreams of empire with real support for the soldiers in the United States military. Here is a great place for other Vets to voice their opinions about Karl Rove, the chickenhawk elitist:

SOUND OFF, Soldiers!

Email to:
FightingLiberals@yahoo.com

Note: You must include NAME, STREET ADDRESS, RANK and UNIT INFO (OR OTHER VERIFIABLE MILITARY INFO) for verification purposes. I will not publish or disclose that information, but I also will not publish without seeing it. This is to keep this site honest as is possible in the "internets" age. The choice to publish your thoughts is yours.

---------------------------



---------------------------

The Duke of Hurl

We have all read the ongoing fish story (it keeps getting bigger and bigger!) of Republican Randy "The Duke" Cunningham getting a nice profit of $700,000 from Mitchell J. Wade, "the defense contractor whose firm, MZM Inc., saw its number of government contracts soar in the months immediately after the home sale."

Cunningham, obviously feeling a little seasick from the accusations, has hurled noxious reasoning at the situation in claiming that he is the most ethical human on the face of the earth:

signonsandiego.com
"My whole life I've lived aboveboard," Cunningham said. "I've never even smoked a marijuana cigarette. I don't cheat. If a contractor buys me lunch and we meet a second time, I buy the lunch. My whole life has been aboveboard and so this doesn't worry me."

Sure you buy them lunch, just like I am buying your story. Now the sharks are circling in a feeding frenzy around a deal that involves the "rental" of a 42 foot yacht, "The Duke-Stir", owned by Wade.

nctimes.com
Cunningham since April 2004 has been living on Wade's yacht in Washington. The congressman said that in lieu of rent, he paid more than $8,000 in dock fees and $5,000 for upkeep on Wade's boat.

We can set aside the dock fees, because Cunningham rented space for his own boat at the Potomac River marina for years before he moved into Wade's boat. According to Cunningham's accounting, that $5,000 over the last 14 months amounts to $357 a month.

Unless we are missing something, this looks like a sweetheart deal, with Cunningham paying far less than market rent, to say nothing of the true maintenance and depreciation costs of a fancy boat.

$357 dollars per month for a luxurious yacht? "Sweetheart deal"? You have got to be kidding right? Why even bother charging at that price? Around here that will get you a cardboard box in a park to live in.

Now, I am in a pretty generous mood today, so I will be nice enough to allow Cunningham the luxury of claiming the docking fees as a "legitimate" part of his rental fee. That would make $13,000 for 14 months of living on the "Duke-Stir". Being in a generous mood I will say that is about $930 per month. ($928.57 per month, to be precise)

Considering my wife and I pay about 2 grand per month on our mortgage that $930 per month seems a little bit skewerd for a luxury yacht charter?

Heck! My friends and I are looking at paying about a grand to charter a fishing boat for a day. It's a nice fishing boat, but it is not a yacht... So my mortgage really seems WAY too generous a comparison.

I found a nice charter service running out of Annapolis, Maryland, to try and do an honest comparison of how much a yacht would typically cost to charter. I chose only the yachts on the list that were within a few feet of the 42 foot Duke-Stir's length.

Name-------------Length---7 Days---14 Days
Llyric--------------------39------2532-----4561
Ray Sea Lady-------39------2745-----4886
Shenandoah----------41------2379-----4235
Engram-----------------43------3111-----5538
Wind Walker---------43------2196-----3909
Carolina----------------43------3111-----5538

To make this comparison as fair as possible I have also chosen the least expensive yacht on this list of comparable yachts, the Wind Walker, to base some (not so) fun calculations on.

At $3909 for a 2 week charter you would have to figure that it would come in at $7818 for 28 days... But continuing to be in a generous mood I will call that the full monthly charter cost. (Man! Am I ever generous today, huh?)

That means that to charter a yacht like the "Duke-Stir" it would cost $109,452 for 14 months, at the minimum by my more-than-generous calculations. Subtract the generous $13,000 that Cunningham claims to have paid in "rent" and you are looking at what is an extremely generous gift to Cunningham from Wade of...

$96,452

Keep in mind that this generously low calculation of Wades "Duke-Stir" gift is just tip of the iceberg when compared to the titanic $700,000 house warming gift that will sink Cunningham.

Kind of makes you want to hurl when Cunningham says, "My whole life I've lived aboveboard," eh? It is time to throw this ethically challenged Republican overboard. Feed him to the circling sharks. I am certainly being more than generous in that thought than he deserves...

Update: This is an excerpt from a signonsandiego.com news story where they do an indepth evaluation of the actual value of Cunningham's home:

Cunningham previously lived in the same slip aboard a 65-foot yacht called the Kelly C. Coast Guard records list Cunningham as the owner of the Kelly C.

In 1998, when Cunningham was living aboard the Kelly C, he used his position on the defense appropriations subcommittee, which oversees the District of Columbia's budget, to earmark $3 million to refurbish the waterfront where the yacht was docked.

Shortly after Congress approved the funding, Cunningham told Copley News Service he was fulfilling his duties as a member of the subcommittee.

It was not, he said then, because the beautification project would benefit an area he calls home when he is working in the nation's capital. It was, he said, because then-Speaker Newt Gingrich "said he wants to make D.C. a shining city, and so I said, 'OK, . . . I want to clean up the waterfront' . . . not for Duke Cunningham," he added. "I haven't got a nickel invested."

As Cunningham's office tries to deal with questions about Wade's yacht, a controversy continues to swirl around the sale of the congressman's Del Mar house. Real estate professionals in San Diego have questioned the sale's circumstances, saying their review of the comparable sales do not support the price that Wade paid Cunningham in November 2003.

Go read the entire story... It has a nice pic of the luxury yacht, Duke-Stir. It also makes a mockery of Cunningham's "aboveboard" life.

Watch the GOP eat their own alive!

Don't you just love it when the GOP eats it's own children?

If you had any doubts whatsoever about whether or not the GOP is interested in any kind of bi-partisan efforts look no further than the actions of their party when it comes to bi-partisan efforts.

NFRA: Arizona Republican Assembly Votes Unanimously to Censure Senator McCain: "The resolution reads as follows:

WHEREAS, Senator John McCain is presently co-sponsoring, together with his Democrat soul-mate, Senator Teddy Kennedy, a Bill to Reform the Immigration Policy of the United States promoting amnesty for illegal aliens and for their U.S. employers, thus ignoring the opinions of his constituents expressed in numerous polls and personal pleas; and

OMG! The horror! He is doing pretty much what bush has been doing and wanted to do all along... Did you think those little cards bush wanted to give illegal immigrants would have led to anything else?

WHEREAS, Senator McCain deserted the ranks of the Republican Party and the Leadership of the U.S. Senate on the issue of limiting the filibuster of judicial nominations, some of which have been on-hold for several years, thus stalling the President’s agenda for judicial reform; and

OMG! It's unthinkable! Can you believe that he supported a bi-partisan effort to keep the fillibuster in place when most Americans agree with the use of the fillibuster? Maybe most Americans really are not happy with the GOP, huh?

WHEREAS, Senator McCain led the Democrat Party in “reforming” campaign finance, providing for a clear usurpation of 1 st Amendment free speech rights during the last 60 days of an election campaign, and leading to an orgy of spending in the 2004 elections;

OMG! The unspeakable! 60 more days of swift boat lies... Ok, maybe they are right there. lol

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Arizona Republican Assembly (ARA) officially and publicly censures Senator John McCain for dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a representative of the citizens of Arizona; and "

Yep! The hypocritical GOP... The party that cries about a lack of bi-partisan effort from everyone else, but CENSURES their own members in a cannibalistic manner when they don't like the results of bi-partisan efforts! You are all a bunch of corrupt, lying, sleazy, pornographic, two-faced pieces of CRAP!

CRAP
(Christian Racist Armed Party)

Blue Note Bloggers: EFF: Homepage

Not sure if what you are doing is legal? Not sure if you could get harrased for excersizing your right to freedom of speech? Confusled about how all of the new laws may effect you and your Blog?

Have I got a link for you!

EFF: Homepage: "EFF Announces its New Legal Guide for Bloggers
We are pleased to release a document that informs bloggers of their legal rights. EFF's 'Legal Guide for Bloggers' is a collection of frequently asked questions (FAQs) designed to educate bloggers about their legal rights in a number of areas, including libel law, copyright law, and political advocacy.
Full story, Legal Guide for Bloggers, More on Blogging
June 13, 2005"

EFF.org has been nice enough to put together some simple straight forward answers to many questions that you may have concerning most types of Blogs.

Thanks EFF.org!

GOP SaysThey are Sorry for Coingate...

The sad truth is that they mean they are sorry they got caught. I know their apologies will make it all better. I think this sets a great example for kids everywhere.

The message the Ohio GOP is sending out about morality to kids across America:

It is Okay to take bribes if you return the money when, and only if, you get caught.

toledoblade.com:
Ohio GOP leaders vow to return funds given by coin dealer

Republican Sens. Mike DeWine, George Voinovich, and Gov. Bob Taft plan to refund money given to their campaigns by Tom Noe, who is under investigation.

By STEVE EDER, BLADE STAFF WRITER

COLUMBUS - President Bush's political advisers are 'looking into' what to do with more than $100,000 in campaign money raised by Tom Noe after Ohio's governor and U.S. senators announced yesterday that they would refund thousands of dollars contributed to their campaigns by the Toledo-area coin dealer.

'We are in the process of looking into the situation and we will take the appropriate legal action if the situation dictates that's what we need to do,' Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said last night.

The White House has deferred all Noe fund-raising questions to the RNC.

Gov. Bob Taft, as well as U.S. Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine, and a host of top Ohio Republican leaders, including three GOP gubernatorial candidates, yesterday said they would refund contributions from Mr. Noe, who is facing federal and state investigations.

The contributions likely will be donated to charitable organizations, which have not been announced - but the money will not be returned to Mr. Noe.

In a statement, Mr. Taft and Bob Bennett, chairman of the

Ohio Republican Party, said about $50,000 in contributions by Mr. Noe, mostly given to Republican leaders since the coin dealer started doing business with the state in 1998, would be placed in escrow - and then transferred to an 'appropriate entity.'

'We want to send a message loud and clear to the people of Ohio that Mr. Noe's actions will not be tolerated. Ohioans deserve bold and aggressive leadership in cleaning up this abuse of public trust, and we are committed to providing that leadership,' Mr. Taft and Mr. Bennett said.

Hey Taft, Bennet, and Voinovich:
"YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!"
What a great bunch of role model precedents the GOP is developing for our nation. The GOP is sending a message LOUD AND CLEAR that:

The GOP should never take responsibility for their actions.

Bribes and kickbacks are good, unless you get caught, BUT then returning the money is good enough to be forgiven. (Of course Awnold is still holding on to his $10,000 gift from Noe AND bush still has $100,000 that Noe gave him.)

War against the weak is good if there is oil involved.

Rich elitists need tax cuts, but the poor... What poor?

Torture is fine, but reporting the facts about it is taboo.

Killing a child is a horrible crime, until the child is old enough to have their parents let them enlist.

Soldiers need a pat on the back, not medical benefits and decent wages.

The list could go on and on...

The GOP sickens me. At every single level of government they are corrupt and have no moral values. I know this for a fact becuase I live in Corrupticut, (AKA: Connecticut), so named because it is the state with the second highest number of corrupt GOP members in the USA, as revealed over the last few years... We would be number one with a bullet except for Texans like Delay and, of course, bush and his oil cartel administration are the worst and most corrupt the USA has ever seen.

Perhaps, rather than vowing to return their corrupt fortunes, they would better serve America by quitting politics and taking a vow of chastity? It would mean, at the very least, one less child could be corrupted by their political schemes.

Blue Note Bloggers: Making fun of McClellan!

Is Newsweek making fun of Scott McClellan and the White House in their latest headline "Consider the Source"? If they aren't, then I am...

MSNBC - Consider the Source

Consider the Source

The State Department says MEK is a terror group. Human Rights Watch says it’s a cult. For the White House, MEK is a source of intelligence on Iran.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 4:35 p.m. ET May 19, 2005

May 18 - A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

In a document scheduled for public release this week, Human Rights Watch alleges that the Iranian exile group known as Mujahedine Khalq (MEK) has a history of cultlike practices that include forcing members to divorce their spouses and to engage in extended self-criticism sessions.

More dramatically, the report states, former MEK members told Human Rights Watch that when they protested MEK policies or tried to leave the organization, they were arrested, in some cases violently abused and in other instances imprisoned. Two former recruits told the human-rights group that they were held in solitary confinement for years in a camp operated by MEK in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein. MEK representatives in the United States and France, where MEK is headquartered, did not immediately respond to NEWSWEEK phone calls and an e-mail requesting comment.

MEK has long been controversial because of its history of violent attacks in Iran, its relationship with Saddam's regime and its background as a quasi-religious, quasi-Marxist radical resistance group founded in the era of the late Iranian shah. In 1997, the Clinton administration put MEK on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups. MEK's U.S. supporters, among whom at one point numbered dozens of members of Congress, charged that the Clinton administration only labeled MEK as a terrorist group as part of an ill-conceived attempt to improve relations with the ayatollahs who currently run Iran. However, the Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department's terrorist list in 2003.

Despite the group's notoriety, Bush himself cited purported intelligence gathered by MEK as evidence of the Iranian regime's rapidly accelerating nuclear ambitions. At a March 16 press conference, Bush said Iran's hidden nuclear program had been discovered not because of international inspections but "because a dissident group pointed it out to the world." White House aides acknowledged later that the dissident group cited by the president is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the MEK front groups added to the State Department list two years ago.

In an appearance before a House International Relations Subcommittee a year ago, John Bolton, the controversial State Department undersecretary who Bush has nominated to become US ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned by a Congressman sympathetic to MEK about whether it was appropriate for the U.S. government to pay attention to allegations about Iran supplied by the group. Bolton said he believed that MEK "qualifies as a terrorist organization according to our criteria." But he added that he did not think the official label had "prohibited us from getting information from them. And I certainly don't have any inhibition about getting information about what's going on in Iran from whatever source we can find that we deem reliable."

However, current and former senior U.S. national-security officials, who asked not to be named because they are not supposed to talk about intelligence-gathering activities, say that all the major revelations MEK publicly claims to have made regarding nuclear advances in Iran were reported in classified form—and from other sources—to U.S. policymakers before MEK made them public. A Western diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations component that has been monitoring Iran's nuclear program, said that while the MEK has occasionally come up with accurate information about Iran's nukes, the group has come up with a similar number of other tips that have not checked out.

According to Human Rights Watch, several members of Congress, including both Republicans and Democrats, only last month attended a Washington meeting of a legal "MKO-backed" group called the National Convention for a Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran. In February, the group says, a think tank co-chaired by retired U.S. military officers called for MEK to be dropped from the State Department terrorist list and recommended that the U.S. government actively support MEK in its campaign to bring down the Iranian theocracy.

According to administration officials, some Pentagon officials want to recruit former MEK members as U.S. secret agents who would infiltrate Iran on intelligence missions. The Pentagon has emphatically insisted that it has no plans to work with the MEK or any of the group's members.

The new Human Rights Watch report offers no insight into the validity or inaccuracy of MEK information about Iranian's nuclear program but it does allege strange and sometimes brutal behavior by the group’s leaders and internal security apparatus. According to the report, MEK, formed in 1965 by three political activists, originally was an "urban guerilla group" which participated in the struggle against the shah that resulted in the 1979 Iranian revolution and produced the current theocratic regime in Tehran.

In an early schism following the revolution, the MEK and Abolhassan Bani Sadr, briefly Iran's president during the 1980 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis, split away from the main revolutionary movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini and went into exile. Later, Bani Sadr in turn split from MEK after a disagreement with Massoud Rajavi, who, with his wife, Maryam, subsequently became the movement's unchallenged leader. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam allowed MEK to set up several military camps in Iraq—with a headquarters encampment near Baghdad known as Camp Ashraf—and the group proceeded to conduct paramilitary operations against the Tehran regime, the largest of which was mounted—unsuccessfully—shortly after Iran agreed to a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War. MEK reportedly lost more than 1,000 fighters in this attack.

According to Human Rights Watch, following this 1988 military defeat, the Rajavi's leadership of MEK became increasingly authoritarian and cultlike. According to an MEK defector's memoir, Rajavi claimed to have a mystical relationship with a prophet known as Imam Zaman, who is Shia Islam's version of the long-awaited Messiah. In order to better cement their relationship with their leader, and hence ultimately their Messiah, Rajavi then instructed his followers to divorce their spouses. The group had already established a practice of "self criticism," under which members were asked to undergo their own personal "ideological revolution" by confessing personal inadequacies in cultlike confession sessions.

Paranoid about defectors and possible infiltrators from the Tehran regime's intelligence apparatus, in the l990s, according to Human Rights Watch, MEK leadership ordered a series of stringent "security clearances" in which "many" members were arrested by group organizers and interrogated and even imprisoned in special buildings inside the boundaries of MEK camps in Saddam-ruled Iraq. Human Rights Watch says the testimony of former MEK prisoners paints "a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization."

Witnesses contacted by Human Rights Watch reported two deaths during the course of MEK internal interrogations and other cases of lengthy imprisonment. One MEK detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, claimed to have spent eight and a half years in solitary confinement in MEK detention facilities after he started raising questions about the leadership's policies. He said he was beaten on 11 occasions with wooden sticks and leather belts. Another former MEK member interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Farhad Javaheri-Yar, claimed to have been imprisoned in solitary confinement by the group for five years.

Other witnesses told Human Rights Watch claimed it was the practice of MEK interrogators to tie thick ropes around prisoners' necks and drag them along the ground. One witness told investigators: "Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks—their head and neck as big as a pillow." In a statement accompanying its investigative report, Joe Stork, a Human Rights Watch expert on the Middle East, commented: "The Iranian government has a dreadful record on human rights. But it would be a mistake to promote an opposition group that is responsible for serious human rights abuses.”
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7902719/site/newsweek/

"Straight-Speak"

There are many reasons why I am an Independent and likely will remain un-affiliated to any party all of my life. Jack Dalton sums up one of the most recent reasons that justifies my intelligent choice.

"Straight-Speak": "Monday, May 16, 2005
The 'Illusion' of Two 'Parties'

The “Illusion” of Two “Parties”
By: Jack Dalton

Thanks to the recently released “memos” between the BushCo camp and the Blair “brigade” there is no longer any doubt they “cooked the books” on the intelligence to fit their already in place plans to invade Iraq. For some of us, this is just icing on the cake as there was already a wide body of evidence in the public domain articulating how “intelligence”--and I use that term loosely-- was being deliberately distorted and made to fit pre-determined plans to invade Iraq. Former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, in “The Price of Loyalty” shows as early as February, 2002, a deliberate, concerted effort was being put forth to “justify”—also used loosely—invading Iraq.

On March 20, 2003, as you know, Iraq was invaded and is now occupied. Since then, tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqi’s have been killed, with an untold number wounded; with the number of Americans killed moving toward 1,700; and the actual number of total medical evacuations for all reasons, closer to 30,000 (that number includes the 17,000 that the Pentagon said were evacuated but not “wounded”—a great number of which were for psychological reasons). That is for another discussion, so on to the “illusion.”

The “smoking gun” memos were made public on March 5th, less than two weeks ago. 88 members of the House of Representatives signed a joint letter demanding the White House explain them. After all, everyone around Bush, and Bush included, stated over and over again that there were no plans in place to invade Iraq; and that they would make all decisions based on the “best available intelligence.”

If the members of the House were aware of the memos, it stands to reason the members of the Senate would also have been aware of the memos. I clearly remember, and not in the distant past, many voices of outrage coming from Senate Democrats over the manner in which this nation was lead into this BushCo war of choice.

A few days ago, these Democratic Party voices of opposition had the chance to, in part, show “what they are made of” and take a stand against the $82 billion supplemental earmarked for Iraq, and everything it represents. Not only would passage of the supplemental throw additional huge sums of “good money after bad,” but tucked away inside it is an amendment that will allow the Department of Homeland security the power to waive laws with no oversight what-so-ever.

“A stroke of the pen makes it final: President Bush signed into law the Iraq war supplemental, which includes a controversial provision giving the secretary of homeland security the power to waive all law when securing U.S. borders.” Now here’s the kicker—when the Senate votes were tallied up, the supplemental and all the tucked away provisions like the one above, the vote was unanimous--100 to 0.

If ever there existed a time the mandated a strong, determined and uncompromising voice of reason in our congress, especially the Senate, it is now—but they were nowhere to be found.

At the same time the Senate Democrats, in total, were joining their Republican comrades in passing this piece of “legislation”—again a term used loosely—it was simultaneously announced by the Pentagon they would be back in August for more.

I’ve said it many times and repeat it again, we only have one political party in this nation with two ends of the very same pole—the one that we, the people of this nation keep getting in the back. The silence of broadcast and print media on and about all of this especially the memos makes them, by the failure to bring this to the publics’ attention, guilty of deception by omission. The “media” has failed itself and has betrayed the people of this nation by its silence.

For those that find this unacceptable and would like to join me in letting the people in congress know just exactly how you feel and what you think of what they are doing in your name, here is the link to Congress.org. If you follow the link you will see how easy it is to contact those in congress. They need to hear from us and the more of us the better.

A few letters to editors of local as well as national newspapers wouldn’t hurt either.


posted by Jack Dalton at 9:43 PM

There is a blog that deserves to be cut and pasted... Or better yet! Follow Jack's advice and let your Senators, political parties, and the MSM, know that the government is one big corporate mess that deserves to be flushed.

Senate Fishing Expedition... Galloway leaves them all wet.

Well, I think I will let Galloway's words stand on their own other than adding that if you have read the senate committees report you would already know that they have nothing on Galloway unless they are hiding it, which would make absolutely no sense. If they could contradict him at all they would have right then and there after that onslaught of truth against the bush farce.

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

Can you say "fishing expedition"? I can't wait to hear the whoppers the GOP will tell tomorrow about "the one that got away!" LMAO