Drinking Liberally®

Will Durst
WorkingForChange.com

The George W Bush 2006 State of the Union drinking game
Step-by-step instructions for surviving the smirk

What you need:

A group of four taxpayers: one white guy wearing a suit, two people wearing jeans -- one in a work shirt, the other in a dark shirt -- and one person wearing rags. (Stitched-together washcloths are nice.) All four taxpayers are grouped around a cocktail table within sight of the television. Newspapers on floor in front of television.

One shot glass per person. Everyone brings their own and places it on the table. Suit picks one first. Then Work Shirt. Then Dark Shirt. Suit takes the last one as well, and Rags gets a Dixie Cup with the top scissored off.

5 bucks apiece, everybody antes.

One fondue pot with two packages of Li'l Smokies stewing in barbecue sauce on table. Preferably a sauce from Texas. Surrounded by:

100 cocktail toothpicks. The kind with the little American flags wrapped around the top.

A large stash of beer. Rags gets the cheapest stuff you can find, like Old Milwaukee Light; Suit gets to drink whatever import he asks for; the jeans get to pick their favorite domestic brand, but they are required to pay for all the beer and the Li'l Smokies.
Rules of the Game.

1. Whenever George W uses the phrases: "national security," "tax relief," "activist judges," or "affordable health care," drink two shots of beer.

2. Whenever George W mentions the tragic events of 9/11, the last person to grab a toothpick, stand, and salute must drink three shots of beer. If you stab yourself in forehead with the toothpick, drink two more shots.

3. If George W actually says, "If Al Qaeda is calling you, we want to know why." first person to finish a whole beer gets to toss Li'l Smokies at any of the others until they finish their beer. Use the toothpicks.

4. If George W makes up a word like "strategerie" or "deteriorize," drink four shots of beer.

5. If George W speaks of Hamas and repeats his earlier statement that "it's good to see people are demanding honest leadership," the first person to stop laughing gets to drink one shot of beer then pummel Suit with empty shot glass. No head shots.

6. Whenever George W talks about bi-partisanship, the last person to grab his throat in a choking motion has to eat 4 Li'l Smokies.

7. If either the Vice President Dick Cheney or First Lady Laura Bush are caught napping, last person to sing "Wake Up Little Susie, Wake Up," has to drink three shots of beer.

8. Predict the number of applause breaks. Person closest to correct number may then force the other three to drink that number of shots of beer in whatever ratio they wish.

9. Three shots of beer if he mentions New Orleans. Five shots of beer if he mentions Brownie. Two full beers if he mentions Abramoff.

10. Every time Tom DeLay is shown in the audience, take turns throwing Li'l Smokies at the TV. Suit sits out. First face hit doesn't have to drink two shots of beer. Every time Hillary Clinton is shown in the audience, Suit throws Li'l Smokies at the TV. If he hits her face, everyone else drinks two shots of beer. Use the toothpicks.

11. Whenever George W quotes the Bible, last person to fall to their knees and cry "Hallelujah!" drinks two shots of beer.

12. Whenever George W smirks during a standing ovation, take turns drinking shots of beer until the audience sits down. Do it double time if his shoulders shake with silent laughter.

EXTRAS:

Whoever can correctly identify in advance the person giving the Democratic Response doesn't have to watch it.

Suit gets to kick Rags hard, once, if George W uses a heartfelt story of a pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to illustrate a point. Twice if the regulation of large cardboard boxes is mentioned as a security precaution. Rags gets 15 seconds to kick the Suit if Bush reveals the subject of the anecdote is in the audience. 30 seconds if he or she is sitting next to Harriet Miers. 1 full minute if she's sitting next to an astronaut.

Suit takes home $20.

Leftover beer, Li'l Smokies and fondue pot go home with Rags.
Political Comic Will Durst needs a volunteer to wear the suit.

To read more Will Durst satire, see the Will Durst archive

Posted by vicki at 10:58 AM | Comments (2)

The New York Times gets it.

Editorial
Wanted: A Wary Audience

Published: January 31, 2006

When President Bush gives his State of the Union address tonight, expect to hear a renewed call for setting the administration's first-term tax cuts in concrete, combined with warnings that letting the cuts expire would retard economic growth. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As proof of tax cuts' ability to spur the economy, Mr. Bush generally cites productivity growth, job creation and the rise in personal income. Productivity has indeed been stellar, and supply-siders claim that is because tax cuts have led to investment, which led to higher productivity. But business investment has been flat for five years. Meanwhile, the benefits of productivity growth have been concentrated among the wealthy. So tax cuts haven't unleashed investment, but they have contributed to inequality.

Job growth during the Bush-era recovery has been worse, by far, than in any comparable economic upturn since the 1960's. It would take some 500,000 new jobs a month every month this year just to equal the second worst job-creation record in the modern era. And while working Americans are laboring harder, hourly wages and weekly salaries — the financial lifeblood of most Americans — have been flat or falling, after inflation, since the middle of 2003.

That last inconvenient fact isn't likely to stop Mr. Bush from bragging about rising "real after-tax income." Besides paychecks, that much-cited statistic includes things like bonuses, stock dividends and health insurance.

Dividends flow mainly to the top 5 percent of the income ladder, and health benefits, while valuable, are increasingly provided in lieu of salary. So the fact that personal income, writ large, is up "by 7 percent since I've been your president," as Mr. Bush boasted recently, isn't a measure of what is in most Americans' pockets. (Besides, a 7 percent gain is hardly worth bragging about, since the average from other comparable recoveries is 12.5 percent.)

Mr. Bush bristles at the oft-repeated criticism that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains mainly benefits the wealthy. That's odd, because the criticism is simply a statement of the obvious, given the facts: almost half of all dividends are earned by people making more than $200,000, and more than half of all capital gains are earned by people with incomes over $1 million.

Of late, the president has taken to saying that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains helps "workers in the automobile plant" and the other millions of Americans who own stock through their 401(k) plans. But in truth, when taxes on dividends and capital gains are cut, investing in a 401(k) plan becomes less attractive. That's because tax- deferred buildup in a 401(k) is a big part of its allure, but the lower the tax rate, the less valuable the deferral. Investors in 401(k)'s also lose out when wages and salaries are taxed at higher rates than investments, as they are now and as Mr. Bush wants to ensure they remain. That's because money that's withdrawn from a 401(k) is taxed like salary, not like investments.

In his State of the Union speech, the president will also undoubtedly return to his promise to do something about the deficit, which he often vows to halve by 2009. His audience should remember that this claim assumes minimal spending going forward for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a continuation of the voracious alternative minimum tax, which everyone in government knows must be reformed. This month Congress's budget agency forecast that if the tax cuts are made permanent and the alternative tax fixed, the United States will face large and growing deficits over the next decade, with red ink of between $3.5 trillion and $4 trillion over that time.

Tonight is Mr. Bush's night to speak. But it's the job of all of us to be critical listeners.

Posted by vicki at 09:42 AM

God bless Hank. Here is the map for getting us to Rich O's in IN for our field trip on Weds. to welcome Rich and New Albany to DL. Please come out and show New Albany the love!

Can't wait to see you there.

REALLY easy!
Just go south on Interstate 265 and take the Grant Line Road exit and take a right. From there look for the neon lights on your left.

Rich O's and Sportstime Pizza are just south of I-265 at the Grant Line Road exit. That's the second exit north from I-64 or the second exit west from I-65.

When you reach the second street south of I-265 (a Kroger is on the corner), take a left and go east one block and then turn right into Rich O's parking lot, where you will see the neon lights. The entrance to the Red Room will be your far right. Heh. Feel free to ask the fine folks at RICH O's for directions if you get lost. There are 3 bars there.

Have I told you how much I heart Hank? Well, I do!

Rich O's Public House
3312 Plaza Drive
New Albany, IN 47150
(812) 949-2804
info@richos.com

Peace!

Dear Leader, Vicki

Posted by vicki at 08:48 PM

We need your help at Horne's new headquarters! Please help.

I just got this email from DFA as a request for volunteers. See you there:

"Spread the word...it's official folks....we have a headquarters, that with
your help will be FABULOUS!! It's got great "bones" but needs some TLC (and a
good scrubbing) to get up and running. Soooo....

Tomorrow [Saturday 1/28] is the day...10:00AM to ????? Bring cleaning
supplies, paper towels, vacuums, painting supplies (brushes, rollers etc) and
rubber gloves and we'll get 'er done!! Feel free to bring a friend too, many
hands make light work!

Also, if you have anything that you think we can use, we would love the
donation. Extra coffee pot, toaster or other kitchen items...desks, chairs or
other office furniture...table and chairs for the kitchen, or if you just want
to bring along some TP and paper towels, that would be great. Any and all
donations will be gratefully accepted.

The address is 640 Barret Ave. in the parking lot behind Jillian's. Hope to
see you there!

Brooke"

Click Horne's website here

Posted by vicki at 04:18 PM

Cool new article about how Anne is about to have her ass handed to her to her by a Marine! Andrew Horne actually fought in the war Northup supports so strongly. I can't wait to hear these two debate.
Horne For Congress!

Posted by vicki at 05:52 PM

Thanks, Kirk!

Congress Shut Down Surveillance Program in 2003
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 26 January 2006

Back in 2002, with the country still reeling from the 9/11 attacks, fear that terrorists would again wreak havoc in the US led the White House to develop a sophisticated system aimed at identifying terrorists associated with al-Qaeda who lived in the United States undetected, and stopping them before they could strike again.

To take advantage of this system, the Bush administration unveiled a new intelligence program that granted traditional law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct what was then called "suspicionless surveillance" of American citizens.

This "suspicionless surveillance" program was developed by the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Admiral John Poindexter, the former national security adviser who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.

The program was somewhat different from the warrantless wiretaps President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct in 2002, giving them permission to eavesdrop on phone calls and monitor emails of known al-Qaeda suspects and terrorist sympathizers inside the United States. "Suspicionless surveillance" - unveiled in a Pentagon press release, also in 2002 - was broader in scope: It gave law enforcement the authority to mine commercial and other private data on American citizens, listening in on phone calls, monitoring emails, inspecting credit-card and bank transactions of thousands of individuals on the off-chance that one might be a terrorist - and all without any judicial oversight.

While the programs were different in scope, the goals were essentially the same: to quickly unmask terrorists operating inside the United States. But protests by civil liberty and privacy groups, as well as apprehension by Republican and Democratic lawmakers over what amounted to domestic spying, led Congress to shut down the surveillance program in 2003.

It now appears that shortly after the federal government told the White House it was trampling on individual privacy rights with its "suspicionless surveillance," several current and former NSA officials said, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to secretly eavesdrop on American citizens' email and international phone calls, thereby continuing, in effect, a domestic spying program that Congress had objected to.

Given the fact that "suspicionless surveillance" was under way in 2002, it's hard to comprehend why the New York Times, the publication credited with first exposing Bush's secret domestic spying program last month, felt the need to hold the story for a year.

The Times's top editors said they held the story at the request of the Bush administration on grounds that it would threaten national security. President Bush criticized the Times when the story broke in December, saying that terrorists are now aware they are under surveillance. But that sort of criticism by the president doesn't make much sense considering the very public domestic surveillance program that took place in 2002 - albeit under a different name - which would also have alerted suspected terrorists that they were being watched.

To some of the current and former NSA officials it appears that the president's criticism of Times's report has more to do with the fact that he did not reveal to Congress that he authorized such a plan, especially since Congress shut down the virtually identical "suspicionless surveillance" program four years ago.

Back in the summer of 2002, a public outcry over the revelation that JetBlue Airways turned over the names and addresses of 1.5 million passengers to the Pentagon so the agency could create a database about Americans' travel patterns, and allowed intelligence officials to monitor credit card transactions, forced Congress to withhold tens of millions of dollars in funding for the project.

Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, came out swinging, saying the Bush administration was violating the privacy rights of average American citizens. Like the current domestic surveillance program under way, administration officials insisted at the time that their goal was to carry out targeted surveillance.

In a resignation letter in September 2003, Admiral Poindexter, the originator of the Total Information Awareness program, said his goal in monitoring individuals was to identify "patterns of transactions that are indicative of terrorist planning and preparations."

"We never contemplated spying and saving data on Americans," Poindexter wrote in his resignation letter.

But that's exactly what happened during the early stages of the program. The administration acknowledged that its aggressive campaign to unmask terrorists living in the US would be hindered if it were required to avoid spying on average American citizens.

Poindexter's plan, which barely got off the ground before Congress stepped in and dismantled the project, proposed to use state-of-the-art computer systems at the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to secretly monitor emails, credit-card transactions, phone records and bank statements of hundreds of thousands of American citizens on the chance that they might be associated with, or sympathetic to, terrorists.

Poindexter came up with the idea after 9/11 and discussed it over lunch with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, news reports said at the time.

Despite assurances that the federal government would not misuse the program, the JetBlue revelation proved that the administration was willing to sacrifice individual privacy rights in the name of national security. JetBlue officials said the airline was pressured by the Pentagon to hand over its private customer data to a Pentagon contractor named Torch Concepts. The contractor then bought demographic information on nearly half of the passengers from Acxicom, a marketing company. Torch then put together a study and posted it on the Internet.

In its report, Torch said that the government would have to monitor an unknown number of passengers to "find a needle in a haystack without knowing what the needle looks like."

At least one lawmaker raised concerns at the time that implementing such a program could be illegal.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, told Rumsfeld during a public hearing in 2003 that the Total Information Awareness program "not only raises serious privacy concerns [but] might also be illegal and possibly unconstitutional," an issue Congress is expected to debate at next month's hearings on the secret NSA surveillance program that Bush authorized.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

Posted by vicki at 02:10 PM

There is a training session for DFA in E-Town coming up in February.

"The DFA training was very comprehensive, informational, and inspirational. There was no fluff... just reality about running an effective campaign." --Mayor Val Keehn, Saratoga, NY
With Sam Alito moving one step closer to the Supreme Court today, it is even more clear that our country is moving in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, this is an election year. We have a chance to elect Democratic majorities in Congress and win governerships, state legislatures and local offices across the country. With lots of shoe leather and hope for a better future, we can win the elections we need to take our country back -- but it takes skills.

Most of these campaigns will be tough battles that will take smart, well-trained activists executing sound strategies to win. That's why the DFA Training Academy is gearing up for its most ambitious year ever -- with 13 trainings planned for the first half of 2006.

Feb. 11-12: Elizabethtown, KY

Click here for more.

Check it out.

Posted by vicki at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)

We all know that BILLIONS of tax dollars and Iraqi oil money has gone missing in the wasteland of the Iraq invasion, but read this withering account of just how blithely the money was pissed away and weep. People die from Bu$hCo's corrupt incompetence. From today's New York Times:

Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: January 25, 2006

A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe.

The audit, released yesterday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004. The audit uncovers problems in an area that includes half the land mass in Iraq, with new findings in the southern and central provinces of Anbar, Karbala, Najaf, Wasit, Babil, and Qadisiya. The special inspector reports to the secretary of defense and the secretary of state.

Agents from the inspector general's office found that the living and working quarters of American occupation officials were awash in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills, colloquially known as bricks.

One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker. One contractor received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps; even so, local American officials certified the work as completed. More than 2,000 contracts ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million, some $88 million in all, were examined by agents from the inspector general's office. The report says that in some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations into those cases are continuing.

Some of those cases are expected to intersect with the investigations of four Americans who have been arrested on bribery, theft, weapons and conspiracy charges for what federal prosecutors say was a scheme to steer reconstruction projects to an American contractor working out of the southern city of Hilla, which served as a kind of provincial capital for a vast swath of Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority.

But much of the material in the latest audit is new, and the portrait it paints of abandoned rebuilding projects, nonexistent paperwork and cash routinely taken from the main vault in Hilla without even a log to keep track of the transactions is likely to raise major new questions about how the provisional authority did its business and accounted for huge expenditures of Iraqi and American money.

"What's sad about it is that, considering the destruction in the country, with looting and so on, we needed every dollar for reconstruction," said Wayne White, a former State Department official whose responsibilities included Iraq from 2003 to 2005...

Read the rest here and prepare to have your head explode. My head hurts.

Posted by vicki at 08:26 AM | Comments (1)

Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: January 24, 2006

The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.

The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction [my emphasis] and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.

A person at the forum provided a copy of the document, dated December 2005, to The New York Times. The inspector general's office, whose agents and auditors have been examining and reporting on various aspects of the rebuilding since early 2004, declined to comment on the report other than to say it was highly preliminary.

"It's incomplete," said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. "It could change significantly before it is finally published."

In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.

The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the "ambiguous legal status" of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.

Seemingly odd decisions on dividing the responsibility for various sectors of the reconstruction crop up repeatedly in the document. At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which would go to the Navy. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding.
{/end snip]

Makes sense. Navy/ water=contract. Jeepers H. Christmas.
Read the whole sorry tale here.

Posted by vicki at 05:42 AM

Go to Lt. Col. Horne's site here and make a difference.

Thanks. Check with the site for ways to volunteer. We gotta dump DeLay, ummmm, Northup.

Posted by vicki at 08:58 PM | Comments (1)

Below is her entry. The BOLD text is mine, not Jane's. Blog address is Http://firedoglake.blogspot.com

Jane, author of the great Firedoglake Blog, hits another home run. The MSM is defensive about criticism of their ridiculous asertions that the lobbying scandal is a bipartisan affair. It. Is. Not. It is a republican scandal.

Ooooh, lookie. An example of real, honest factual reporting. With follow-up. And numbers to back things up. Good on ya, Bloomberg. First, there's this:

U.S. President George W. Bush calls indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff "an equal money dispenser" who helped politicians of both parties. Campaign donation records show Republicans were a lot more equal than Democrats.

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees and nothing to Democrats, federal records show. At the same time, his Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors in the U.S. to donate more money to Republicans than Democrats.

The article goes on to say this:

"Abramoff's big connections were with the Republicans," said Larry Noble, the former top lawyer for the Federal Election Commission, who directs the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

"It is somewhat unusual in that most lobbyists try to work with both Republicans and Democrats, but we're already seeing that Jack Abramoff doesn't seem to be a usual lobbyist," Noble said.

Um, yeah. He's a Republican lobbyist who was working a scheme with his Republican cronies to funnel money to Republican causes and Republican legislators, as directed by his Republican pal Tom DeLay and his Republican KStreet project. Is that clear enough for everyone?

And then, Bloomberg actually crunches some numbers. I mean, really crunches them -- totals before and after the tribes hired Abramoff -- and reports on the actual facts of how donations were given, and how they changed in favor of Republican lawmakers at Abramoff's and pals' direction.

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff joined with his former partner, Michael Scanlon, and tribal clients to give money to a third of the members of Congress, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, according to records of the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service. At least 171 lawmakers got $1.4 million in campaign donations from the group. Republicans took in most of the money, with 110 lawmakers getting $942,275, or 66 percent of the total.

Of the top 10 political donors among Indian tribes in that period, three are former clients of Abramoff and Scanlon: the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of California. All three gave most of their donations to Republicans -- by margins of 30 percentage points or more -- while the rest favored Democrats....

Abramoff's tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past....

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said yesterday that Bush was making the point that Abramoff's links weren't exclusively Republican. "The president was referring to press reports showing Mr. Abramoff, his clients and associates have contributed to both Democrats and Republicans alike," Healy said.

I interrupt this article to say, "Hahahahahahahahaha." Carry on.

"Republicans are bending over backwards to exaggerate the links" between Democrats and Abramoff, said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "This is a Republican scandal that involves Republican lawmakers doing favors for a Republican lobbyist."

Jane reported on L'il Debbie's [Howell, the WaPo "ombudsman"] response to the criticism of her inaccurate reporting on the Abramoff mess. Deborah Howell's response was defensive and hurt -- and I'm sure that the firestorm of criticism after she failed to immediately correct her reporting probably did sting. But the point is this: the Administration is using inaccurate reporting to bolster it's PR campaign, and every time a news organization doesn't accurately report the facts, they are helping in that PR. Period.

This is about honest journalism versus helping the Administration shill around its lies. It's about being truthful about an enormous corruption scandal that is Republican in origin, versus enabling the GOP to continue to lie to the country.

And the bottom line is this: when a news organization gets it wrong, they are going to be called on it -- as loudly and as often as it takes until they do the right thing and report honestly on the facts. The chips will fall where they fall -- but enabling corruption will not be tolerated in the face of clear, honest facts. Period.

Word!

Posted by vicki at 11:55 PM

Take a moment to wish Maria a Happy Birthday today.

Posted by vicki at 03:26 PM | Comments (6)

Not content to illegally wiretap U.S. citizens, the Justice (sic) Dept. is now demanding that Google turn over the records of millions of its users in their heroic effort to find users of PORN Yep. That's the most pressing problem in America today. You cannot make this shit UP! From the New York Times:

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: January 20, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program.

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, once again defended the N.S.A. eavesdropping operation in a speech Thursday as "critical to the national security of the United States," even as House Democrats prepared to hold an unofficial hearing on Friday into a program that they charge is illegal and unconstitutional. Mr. Cheney is also scheduled to meet with Congressional leaders on Friday at a separate, closed-door briefing on the program.
[/end snip]

Read the whole sorry piece here: Beyond the pale.

Posted by vicki at 11:21 AM

Welcome!

Democrat - KY 3rd Congressional District

Posted by vicki at 06:32 AM | Comments (2)

The great, "git gubmint off my back" party wasted tens of millions of tax dollars on a worthless effort to prosecute former Clinton HHS Sec. Henry Cisneros. $21 million dollars down the drain and more than a decade long investigation, into, you guessed it, SEX! Yep. The inquiry began over Mr. Cisneros giving money to his mistress. The New York Times gives us this: WWW.newyorktimes.com

Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up

By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: January 19, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

Henry G. Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development, speaking to President Bill Clinton on Dec. 19, 1994, in Washington.

The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

...

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.

Some Republicans long contended that efforts to close down Mr. Barrett's operation were motivated by an effort to suppress information about the Cisneros investigation that could reflect badly on Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But to Democrats and other critics of independent counsels, Mr. Barrett's inquiry has stood as a prime example what went wrong with an important post-Watergate law. That legislation allowed prosecutors, outside the Justice Department's traditional criminal justice bureaucracy, and armed with virtually unlimited time and money, to pursue their subjects into areas few federal prosecutors were likely to venture.

The final report, scheduled to be made public on Thursday, discusses in detail why the office remained in operation for so long: an intense behind-the-scenes clash between senior Justice Department officials and Mr. Barrett, who was trying to explore possible obstruction of justice within the Justice Department and the I.R.S.

A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known. On Wednesday, Mr. Barrett declined to discuss the report, saying he would not talk about it until it was officially made public.

The report reveals little new about the accusations that led to Mr. Barrett's appointment - that Mr. Cisneros misled investigators about payments to a former mistress. Those issues were the subject of news accounts during the 1990's.

Posted by vicki at 05:54 AM

Check out this website. It's a work in progress, so check back often.

Horne For Congress.

Posted by vicki at 12:08 PM

305 West Broadway, #199, NY, NY 10013 212-941-8086 www.bushcommission.org

PRESS ADVISORY- URGENT Contact: Connie Julian 917-449-9064

January 15, 2006 Janet Yip 212-941-8086 commission@nion.us

www.bushcommission.org

FORMER ABU GHRAIB COMMANDER AND EX UK AMBASSADOR TO TESTIFY AT BUSH WAR CRIMES COMMISSION IN NYC THIS WEEKEND

Friday, January 20, 5pm Saturday, January 21 at 10am, Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive

Sunday, January 22 at 1pm, Columbia University Law School, 116th & Amsterdam Avenue

An unprecedented citizens’ tribunal will hear testimony from international expert witnesses and whistle-blowers on war crimes and crimes against humanity alleged against the Bush administration.

Witnesses at the Tribunal include: former commander of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray who exposed the use of information gathered through torture, former arms inspector Scott Ritter, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Dahr Jamail (journalist who has reported extensively from Iraq), Guantanamo prisoners’ lawyer Michael Ratner, Katrina survivors, former State Department officer Ann Wright, among many more.

January’s hearings will be the second and final session of the Commission. Indictments from the first session were formally delivered to George W. Bush at the White House on January 10. Bush’s staff would not receive the indictments at the gate, saying that the president “will not accept any materials from the public.” As TV cameras rolled, a hazmat squad was called in by White House personnel to remove the envelope.

The indictments are based on moral, political, and legal grounds, and are undertaken in fulfillment of the Commission’s Charter: “When the possibility of far-reaching war crimes and crimes against humanity exists, people of conscience have a solemn responsibility to inquire into the nature and scope of these acts and to determine if they do in fact rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.…” The Bush White House has been invited to testify at the Tribunal in its defense.

The indictments allege war crimes and crimes against humanity authorized by the Bush Administration in relation to:

1) Wars of Aggression, particular reference to Iraq and Afghanistan;

2) Torture and Indefinite Detention;

3) Destruction of the Global Environment, distortion of science and obstruction of efforts to stem global warming;

4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights, potentially genocidal effects of enforcing abstinence-only, and global

gag rule concerning abortion; and

5) Failure of Bush administration, despite foreknowledge, to protect life during and after Hurricane Katrina.

The commission was organized by the Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience and is endorsed by: Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street.org and others, including Former Sen. James Abourezk, former British MP Tony Benn, authors Gore Vidal and Howard Zinn, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and actor Edward Asner.

The Charter, full indictments, standards for judgment, audio and video coverage of the first session and schedule are available at:

305 West Broadway, #199, NY, NY 10013 212-941-8086 www.bushcommission.org

Jeepers H. Christmas! Hot DAMN!

Posted by vicki at 11:49 AM

Check out this site looking for under 40 Dems.

http://www.dembench.org/

I know we have some fine attorneys here, so spread the word.

Posted by vicki at 11:38 AM

This is just one of a long line of excellent speechs given by our REAL President.... the one the was elected by the PEOPLE in 2000.

I am now beginning to understand evil Dubya's "War on Education".. as long as there are illiterate masses willing to be blindly led by fear tactics and 10 second sound bites, the evil can survive. Once the populus learns to actually read and comprehend something above grade school level, then the words like these from Al Gore will change our nation...

Al Gore
Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.
In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Text_of_Gore_speech_0116.html

For those gentle readers that have QuickTime in thier web browsers.. and six minutes of time, you will NOT regret watching this speech highlights video..

http://interface.audiovideoweb.com/lnk/avwebdsnjquick4768/dspan/acs_gore.mov/play.qtl

The end of the speech..

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

Posted by Mojo at 10:38 AM

President Tells Insurers to Aid Ailing Medicare Drug Plan

From The New York Times

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: January 16, 2006

With tens of thousands of people unable to get medicines promised by Medicare, the Bush administration has told insurers that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was previously taking, and it said that poor people must not be charged more than $5 for a covered drug.

The actions came after several states declared public health emergencies, and many states announced that they would step in to pay for prescriptions that should have been covered by the federal Medicare program.

Republicans have joined Democrats in asserting that the federal government botched the beginning of the prescription drug program, which started on Jan. 1. People who had signed up for coverage found that they were not on the government's list of subscribers. Insurers said they had no way to identify poor people entitled to extra help with their drug costs. Pharmacists spent hours on the telephone trying to reach insurance companies that administer the drug benefit under contract to Medicare.

Many of the problems involve low-income people entitled to both Medicare and Medicaid.

Read the rest here

Posted by vicki at 10:57 AM

I've been reading the WaPo online for years and think their so-called "media critic," Howie (the putz)Kurtz was a pathetic hack. But the ombudsman they have now seems seems to be trying her damn best to create favorable press for republicans. I am serious. She's supposed to be an advocate for the Post's readers, not KKKarl Rove's spin machine. Does she even read her own paper? This little snip is via Jane at Firedoglake. Click and enjoy. [Snip]

Then she [WaPo's Deborah Howell] goes on to service those right wing think tank folk with true mastery:

The second complaint is from Republicans, who say The Post purposely hasn't nailed any Democrats. Several stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

It is a very serious question that needs to be asked of WaPo management: Is Howell's job to mindlessly repeat whatever the Heritage Foundation tells her, or is she just too brutally ignorant to look beyond it?

That she does not understand the thrust of this story -- that Abramoff was fundamental to the architecture of the GOP money machine -- is obvious. But beyond that, she can't even master the simplest detail -- that Abramoff's VICTIMS, the people he fleeced, the Indian tribes, are free to give money to whomever they feel will help them serve their interests. That is quite a different thing than contributions given by Abramoff himself; Abramoff is the one currently under indictment, not the Indian tribes. What part of this does Howell not understand?

American Indians are some of the most bitterly victimized people this nation has ever seen. And now Howell's attempt to paint Democrats into this picture depends on the completely condescending notion that they are nothing but Jack Abramoff's dupes who cannot be trusted to handle their own money, that every nickel they gave to politicians was done so because he either exploited their stupidity, their ignorance and their naivete for his own ends or because they were complicit in his crimes. As a person of American Indian ancestry, I cannot tell you how racist and demeaning I find Howell's assertions.

Deborah Howell needs to figure out that the Justice Department is prosecuting Jack Abramoff, not the Indian Tribes. If she has proof that any Democrat took money quid-pro-quo, or that the Indian tribes were themselves responsible for actions that in any way violated campaign finance laws, she needs to produce it. Now. The Democrats are the natural constituents of the Indian tribes in this country and their only provable crime so far is that they have not done more. It is quite obvious that they should be recipients of the contributions of Native American peoples as they attempt to have a voice in the system that has oppressed them for so long, and Deborah Howell's bitter, condescending racism is deplorable.

Word!

Posted by vicki at 11:15 PM

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Bill targets Wal-Mart's health-care coverage
By Patrick Howington CJ article here
Wal-Mart would have to increase spending on health insurance for its Kentucky employees or else help the state's Medicaid program pay for their care under a bill pending before the General Assembly.

The measure, patterned after a law enacted by the Maryland legislature this week, is opposed by Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration. [my bold]

The bill, whose lead sponsor is freshman Rep. Melvin Henley, R-Murray, makes Kentucky one of about 30 states where "Wal-Mart bills" could be filed this year. That's according to union-backed organizations pushing for such legislation.

The bills are in response to growing criticism that the retail giant has shifted health costs to state governments by skimping on benefits for employees.

Wal-Mart offers health insurance, but many low-income employees who can't afford the premiums join state Medicaid rolls instead, critics say.

'The right thing to do'

Thanks, Ernie! Who's looking out for workers?

Posted by vicki at 08:33 AM

'Package deal' on jobs reported
Fletcher denies claim in transcript

By Elisabeth J. Beardsley
ebeardsley@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- In a taped phone call, a district highway official told a transportation personnel official that the governor's office had a "package deal" to satisfy two people promised the same job, according to records released yesterday.

The attorney general sent a transcript of the conversation to the state Personnel Board, which asked for the information as part of its state hiring investigation.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher denied yesterday that his office had arranged a deal.

"I made it a policy not to promise jobs," Fletcher said in an interview.

But Attorney General Greg Stumbo said the transcript shows that administration officials were violating hiring laws by selecting candidates for merit system jobs, which by state law must go to the most qualified applicant.

"This confirms again that the governor's office is involved in illegal and corrupt practices," Stumbo said in a statement. [end snip] Read all about it!

Hacktacular Ernie! You're doing a heck of a job.

Posted by vicki at 08:17 AM

You might want to TiVo or tape this before heading out to DL.

Lt. Col. Andrew Horne will be on Lou Dobbs tonight with Congresswoman Anne Northup tonight @ 6:00 pm.

Andrew will also be on the Bill Press show on Friday morning at 8:30 am on Sirrus radio.

Andrew J. Horne

ANDERSON & HORNE, PLLC

517 West Ormsby Avenue

Louisville, Kentucky 40203

(502) 587-0599 ext. 29

(502) 338-0234 mob.

(502) 637-2774 facs.

HYPERLINK "mailto:AJH@AndersonandHorne.com"AJH@AndersonandHorne.com

To be removed from this e-mail list, put "Remove" in subject and e-mail your name & e-mail address to rcrider@insightbb.com

Louisville/Jefferson County Democrat Party

901 Barret Ave

Louisville, KY 40203

Posted by vicki at 11:49 AM

You might want to bookmark this little piece of heaven on earth. He is a national treasure. Click here: for pure joy

The Crying Game
Posted by James Wolcott

It seems as if it was only this afternoon--because it was only this afternoon--that conservative bloggers were flopping all over each other to express their boredom with the windbag monotony of the Alito hearings, trying to outdo each other with yawns, snores, and zzzzzzzzzz's.

Then Mrs. Alito suffered a case of the weepies that was so dramatically well-timed and patently maudlin that I was reminded of the classic stage direction in Private Eye (takes out onion, wipes away tear), and suddenly the proceedings turned into a soap opera with Fox News commentators arriving on cue to deplore the toll taken on innocent bystanders in these brutal proceedings. From their sympathetic clucks and disapproving tones you would have thought Alito had been subjected to a Stalinist show trial presided over by Randi Rhodes in a bad mood rather than honey-tongued Lindsey Graham asking Alito with tender solicitude, "Are you a bigot?" The hypocritical highpoint came when Newt Gingrich, who during his reign as Speaker of the House did more than any political leader in recent memory to dump raw sewage into the political discourse, had the gall to invoke Joseph Welch's famous rhetorical throwdown of moral umbrage during the McCarthy hearings--"At long last, sir, have you no decency?"--to showboat his phony disgust over this trivial episode of upset feelings.

Yes, so heartsick were conservatives over this lady in distress that they immediately hurrahed Mrs. Alito's walkout as the humanizing moment that would win the public's sympathy vote and put Judge Alito's candidacy over the top and assure him a seat on the Court. If Alito is confirmed, Mrs. Alito and Judge Clarence Thomas's wife can commisserate by exchanging monogrammed crying towels as their men folk roll back women's rights and civil liberties and go duck hunting weekends with Scalia.

Posted by vicki at 01:06 AM

He sure seems to love Drinking Liberally! He's out of his goard, I tell you! See you sane liberals soon.

Posted by vicki at 12:17 AM

My friend and DL pal, Jim G. sent me this, this morning. I laughed my ass off. Andy Dick is a riot. Then I reflected on what an incompetent idiot Bu$h is and got major chills. It's really not all that funny having a moron *running* the show.

Click here for the video. You'll laugh! You'll cry!

Posted by vicki at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)

The Culture Of Corruption. Despite Bu$h's use of recess appointments to place hacks in high offices at the DoJ, justice carries on.

January 10, 2006
Fitzgerald Maintains Focus on Rove

by Jason Leopold

http://www.opednews.com

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to have spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.

Although there have not been rumblings regarding Fitzgerald's probe into the Plame leak since he met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the case more than a month ago, the sources said that Fitzgerald has been quietly building his case against Rove and has been interviewing witnesses, in some cases for the second and third time, who have provided him with information related to Rove's role in the leak. It is unclear when Fitzgerald is expected to meet with the grand jury again.

Fitzgerald has been investigating whether officials in the Bush administration broke the law and blew Plame's cover as a way to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a staunch critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

According to sources, Fitzgerald had planned to meet with the grand jury several times last month, hoping to wrap up the case specifically as it relates to Rove's involvement. But the prosecutor, who empanelled a second grand jury in November and whose term expires in 18 months, had his hands full dealing with another high-profile criminal case he is prosecuting involving Lord Conrad Black, owner of several major metropolitan newspapers, who was indicted on charges including racketeering.

Moreover, several members of the grand jury had questions involving Rove's prior testimony before the previous grand jury on four separate occasions and had requested additional information about the testimony and about the overall case, these sources said, leading to a delay in the proceedings so Fitzgerald could provide that information.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said in a brief interview Monday that he has not heard anything about the grand jury requesting additional information about Rove and is unaware that Fitzgerald has been building a case against his client.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Fitzgerald, said he could not comment on grand jury proceedings because they are secret. However, Luskin said that Rove's status has not changed since the indictment against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted in late October on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements related to his role in the Plame leak.

"I think it's fair to say that there is no change in [Rove's] status. He is not a target of the investigation, but there remains an open investigation," Luskin said.

But sources knowledgeable about the case against Rove say that he was offered a plea deal in December and that Luskin had twice met with Fitzgerald during that time to discuss Rove's legal status. Rove turned down the plea deal, which would likely have required him to provide Fitzgerald with information against other officials who were involved in Plame's outing as well as testifying against those people, the sources said.

Luskin would neither confirm nor deny that a meeting with Fitzgerald took place last month. "I am simply not going to comment on whether I was or wasn't talking to Mr. Fitzgerald," Luskin said. "I am not acknowledging that it did or didn't happen, I am just saying that I have never commented about that before and I am not going to start doing that now."

Rove has remained under intense scrutiny by Fitzgerald's office for several months. During that time Fitzgerald, according to sources, has acquired evidence suggesting that Rove tried to cover up his role in the leak by withholding crucial facts from investigators and the grand jury, during his three previous appearances beginning in October 2003, about a conversation he had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Rove's conversation with Cooper took place a week or so before Plame Wilson's identity was first revealed in a July 14, 2003, column published by conservative journalist Robert Novak. Cooper had written his own story about Plame Wilson a few days later.

During previous testimony before the grand jury in 2003, Rove said he first learned Plame Wilson's name from reporters - specifically, from Novak's column - and that only after her name was published did he discuss Plame Wilson's CIA status with other journalists. That sequence of events, however, has turned out not to be true, and Rove's reasons for not being forthcoming have not convinced Fitzgerald that Rove had a momentary lapse, according to sources - particularly because Rove was a primary source for Novak and Cooper and failed to disclose this fact when he was first questioned by FBI and Justice Department investigators just three months after Plame's identity was leaked.

Luskin maintains that his client has not intentionally withheld facts from the prosecutor or the grand jury but had simply forgotten about his conversations with Cooper.

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

Orininally published at www.truthout.org

Posted by vicki at 02:05 AM | Comments (1)

California Parents File Suit Over High School Course

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: January 11, 2006
A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.

The course at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, which serves a rural area north of Los Angeles, was proposed by a special education teacher last month and approved by the board of trustees in an emergency meeting on New Year's Day. The 11 parents are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the course, which is being held during the session that ends on Feb. 3.

Last month, a Federal District Court in Pennsylvania ruled that it was unconstitutional to teach intelligent design in a public school science class because it promoted a particular religious belief. After the ruling, people on both sides of the debate suggested that it might be constitutionally permissible to examine intelligent design in a philosophy, comparative religion or social studies class.

But the parents, represented by lawyers with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, contend that the teacher is advocating intelligent design and "young earth creationism" and is not examining those ideas in a neutral way alongside evolution.

Intelligent design posits that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent force. Young earth creationism holds to the biblical account of the origins of life and the belief that the earth is 6,000 years old.

In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos

Posted by vicki at 11:26 PM

Hal Rogers, (hack-KY) is getting attention in the WaPo and NY Times. Frank Rich, of the Times also links to this story.

Congressman Benefits From Homeland Security Spending

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 25, 2005; A01

As a small start-up company in Massachusetts sought to become a major player in the business of homeland security, it hired a lobbyist and attended a fundraiser for one of the most powerful members of Congress.

The company was Reveal Imaging Technologies Inc. The congressman was Rep. Harold "Hal" Rogers (R-Ky.). The fundraiser, held Oct. 22, 2003, brought in $14,000 from Reveal and was the beginning of a mutually beneficial association.

Reveal had just received a government grant to develop smaller, cheaper explosives-detection machines to scan baggage at the nation's airports. Rogers, who chairs the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, said he wanted the machines to improve security while saving taxpayers money.

In the end, Reveal received a federal contract from the Transportation Security Administration worth up to $463 million. Rogers achieved his goal of launching the next generation of machines. In the process, he received $122,111 in donations to his leadership political action committee from Reveal executives and associates -- and a pledge from the company to move $15 million worth of work to Rogers's poor Appalachian congressional district.

Reveal's dealings with Rogers illuminate the intersection of politics, money and homeland security in the rush to make the nation safer since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The relationship fits into a long tradition of companies seeking sympathetic ears on Capitol Hill and of lawmakers securing money for their causes and their constituents back home.

What is different today is that the money at stake is the billions of dollars that the White House and Congress have set aside for homeland security at a time of persistent fear about another terrorist attack.

A Washington Post review of scores of documents, along with interviews with company executives, government officials and procurement specialists, shows that while Reveal was developing a machine that would receive accolades, it also was donating to Rogers's PAC and hiring two lobbying firms to help smooth the way with the government. Rogers pressed homeland security officials to deploy the Reveal machines and take other measures that he said would make the country safer while his PAC received donations from homeland security contractors, some of which he encouraged to create jobs in his district.

In an eight-page letter to The Post, Reveal executives said there was no "connection between voluntary political contributions" to Rogers's PAC and the awarding of the contract. The president of the company said Reveal secured the contract strictly on the merits of its technology after a "rigorous and objective" certification process.

"Members of Reveal's management team, and others, make these voluntary contributions to Representative Rogers, and many other elected officials, because they share our concern about improving our Nation's Homeland Security technology, and for no other reason," Reveal president and chief executive Michael P. Ellenbogen said in the letter.

"It is the scientists at the TSA -- not Congress -- who decide what systems meet the government's rigorous requirements," he said.

TSA officials said Rogers played no role in the contracting process.

"The decision to award the contract to Reveal was based on the source selection team's conclusion that it offered the best value to the government," TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said.

Rogers said he is working in the interests of the nation and his district. He dismissed any suggestion that campaign money could sway his policymaking.

"It's demeaning," the 13-term congressman said in a recent interview. "Anybody that knows me and knows my record knows that I will go after whoever it is standing in the way of doing the right thing. I'm going to do what I think is best for the country, regardless."

hahahahahahaha What fresh hell awaits us?

Posted by vicki at 05:38 AM

From the Magazine | Nation
The Book Behind the Bombshell
By ROMESH RATNESAR

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 03, 2006
In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about the spying program. "They would look at me with these blank expressions, and say, 'No--that can't be going on,'" Risen told TIME. That's when Risen knew he was sitting on a major scoop.

But it took Risen more than a year to get the story into print--and not before President Bush personally implored Times editors not to publish Risen and Lichtblau's account of how Bush authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap telephone and e-mail communications inside the U.S. without court-sanctioned warrants. The Times ran the article on Dec. 16, touching off a blogospheric scrum: conservatives accuse the Times of aiding terrorists by revealing secrets of U.S. spycraft while liberals say the paper caved to White House pressure by not dropping the bombshell sooner. At the center of the article's backstory is Risen, who unsuccessfully pushed to publish the wiretap report last year, then took a leave to write a book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. It now appears he may pay a price for the disclosure: last Friday the Justice Department opened an investigation into who leaked the existence of the NSA program to the Times, raising the prospect of Risen's being compelled to reveal the identities of the "nearly dozen" current and former officials who spoke to him about the program or face jail time for contempt of court. [/end snip]

You can read the entire article here

Good grief. Who in hell would have ever thought in just a few short decades we'd see a repeat of both Nixon and Viet Nam? Only worse.

Posted by vicki at 11:08 AM

Friday, January 6, 2006

Dear Vicki,

I wanted to let you know that the Democratic leadership requested me to give our party's response to this weekend's (Saturday, January 7, 2006) radio address of President Bush. While local radio stations do not carry this speech, the cable network channel C-SPAN will carry both starting at 2:50 pm. You will also be able to listen and read my speech at the national Democratic Committee's web site. here

The topic of my address is going to be the growing Republican ethical crisis and the need for honest leadership in Washington. Speaking of which, I distributed a backgrounder to the national media on Jack and his Republican pals in Washington, making it clear - this is a Republican scandal. Keep repeating this over, and over, and over again. Here is the backgrounder on Jack and his Republican friends. click here

So, please tune in tomorrow and come back to my website, and let me know what you think by posting your comments here:

http://www.votelouise.com/blog

Thank you again for all you do to restore faith in our democracy.

In Solidarity,

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter

Posted by vicki at 04:08 PM

Democrats.org has a post called "New DNC Web Video: Wiretap" that's worth checking out...

On April 20, 2004, President Bush said, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order." The DNC Communications team put together a video that looks at Bush's reassurance, the subsequent revelation that he isn't getting a court order, and Nixon-like defense he's laid out since.

Posted by vicki at 03:56 PM

Hahahahahaha. Bring in the clowns. Media Matters For America has the clip and the context here

What a fine, fine Christian man.

Posted by vicki at 05:25 PM

Reading through the letters to the editor in today's CJ made me laugh. There is nothing the right wing titty babies won't excuse from the Bu$h admin in their extreme, irrational fear of terrorists. They excuse the incompetent Bu$h admin for vacationing away the month of August while the "system (terrorist warnings) was blinking red" and willingly give up their right to privacy in the name of fighting the *war* on terrorism. Never mind that the Dept. of Homeland Security scores a big, fat F. They endorse torture and excuse WH illegal wiretaps for the same reason. Such cowards! They want to turn the U.S.A into sniveling, fearful handwringers. Well, I'm not having any of it. Read the lilly livered writers:

[S]suppose that sometime in late January 2006 it was learned by someone in the media, from an anonymous source in government, that President Bush had received intelligence that alluded to the attack, but was told that to be sure of the correctness of this intelligence a wiretap of telephone calls between an American citizen with suspected ties to terrorists and someone in the Middle East would be required.

As long as we're supposing, let's make a stretch and suppose that Bush replied, "We can't do that; it would be a violation of a citizen's privacy rights, or, at the least, we need to get authorization from Congress or the courts."

Now let's really stretch and assume that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Charles Schumer, Sen. Harry Reid, The New York Times and The Washington Post would praise the President for his courageous defense of the Constitution.

Or is it more likely that the same people who are crying for impeachment because the President authorized wiretaps in some cases would be howling for impeachment because he didn't in others? Just supposing.

KEN CAMPBELL

And,

'Don't get a second chance'
When I read about how this nation is too great to stoop to torturing people in order to gain information, I know I'm reading the words of another pompous liberal. We have enemies who, by their own words, believe that people of all other faiths are infidels who should be eradicated. Given the means to do so, they would annihilate everyone on the planet who is not of their ilk.

That's the key point here: given the means. That is what President Bush is trying to ensure: that they don't have the means, and never will.

Will mistakes be made along the way? Yes, they will. But the one thing everyone must remember (and liberals should try to understand) is that if the mistake is made in the wrong direction, we don't get a second chance. You, me, Republicans, Democrats, Christians, atheists and even liberals -- we will all be memories if the enemy ever gets the means. So if Bush errs, let him err on the side of preserving this great nation. . . .

MIKE O'BRIEN

Brooks, Ky. 40109

Hahahahahahaha

Posted by vicki at 12:39 PM | Comments (1)

I understand that the mine accident in West Virginia is news, but the ridiculous 24/7 cable *news* channels spent the last few days covering damned near nothing else. They had no idea what caused the explosion, or of any meaningful details about the fate of the men trapped there.

It was news that the miners were trapped. News that the effort to rescue them was under way and news that after years of decline, mine accidents are now rising. But it was not worthy of dominating the bulk of entire days of coverage to the near exclusion of all else. They devoted hour upon repitious hour to rumor and endless speculation. That was not news and it fed into the horrible lapse in which the families and friends of the miners, waiting to hear of their fate, poclaimed a *miracal* had occured and that all but one trapped miner was alive. What a disgrace! Meanwhile, really hard news was ignored.

One such example is that a Big Coal lobbyist is in charge of mine safety, ala worse than "Brownie." Another is the long GOP reach of the Abramoff matter.

Salon.com has the goods at their site in numerous articles. Http://salon.com Don't want to sign in? Here's a preview:

GOP corruption and WH lawlessness is rampant. It's everywhere you look. Name a department of government and you'll find another Brownie.

Was the NSA listening?
Does NBC's Andrea Mitchell know something about the Bush administration's domestic spying program that the rest of us don't? As AMERICAblog's John Aravosis notes, Mitchell put a question to the New York Times' James Risen Tuesday that suggests that she might.

In an interview with Risen, Mitchell asked if he had any information suggesting that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Risen said he hadn't heard that. Has Mitchell heard something to that effect, or was she just using Amanpour's name as the example of what might have gone wrong with the spying program?

We don't know the answer to that, and neither does Aravosis. But as Aravosis notes, the implications of tapping Amanpour's phone lines could be enormous. There's the chilling thought that government officials might be listening in on the conversations of a reporter, and then there's this: Amanpour's husband, who like any husband might have had occasion to use his wife's phone, happens to be Jamie Rubin, the former Clinton administration official who served as a foreign policy advisor for John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Update: As several readers note in the comments below, the exchange between Mitchell and Risen about Amanpour has rather mysteriously disappeared from the transcript of the interview posted on the MSNBC Web site. If MSNBC has an explanation for why Mitchell's question and Risen's answer have disappeared, we'd sure like to hear it. Did Mitchell not ask the question -- that seems unlikely, doesn't it? -- or does someone at MSNBC just wish she hadn't?

-- Tim Grieve [Salon.com]

Posted by vicki at 09:31 PM

This is a very sad account of the senseless loss of a son in the pointless *war* in Iraq. I think it is the most brutally honest I've read so far. I feel so, so sorry for these suffering families. I don't know how they get out of bed in the morning.

Exerpt from the WaPo: Full column here

I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.

At Augie's grave, the lieutenant colonel knelt in front of my wife and, with tears in his eyes, handed her the folded flag. He said the only thing he could say openly: "Your son was a true American hero." Perhaps. But I felt no glory, no honor. Doing your duty when you don't know whether you will see the end of the day is certainly heroic. But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

I choose to honor our fallen hero by remembering who he was in life, not how he died. A picture of a smiling Augie in Iraq, sunglasses turned upside down, shows his essence -- a joyous kid who could use any prop to make others feel the same way.

Though it hurts, I believe that his death -- and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq -- was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator -- a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation -- a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush.

The writer is managing director of a trade development firm in Cleveland.

Posted by vicki at 10:12 AM

LIAR!

Bush Defends Legality of Domestic Spy Program

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 2, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - President Bush today continued to defend both the legality and necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, and he denied that he had misled the public last year when he asserted that any government wiretap required a court order.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush told reporters in San Antonio, Tex.

Oh, spare us the crap, Bu$h! There is no defense for breaking the law. It is patently illegal to spy on Americans without a WARRANT. The law is perfectly clear which is why the WH was so secretive about the practice and desperate to keep it under wraps. I am still extremely bothered that the NY Times sat on the story for over a year. We had a right to know we were under surveillance.
Read Bu$h's latest pack off lies here.

Posted by vicki at 06:19 PM | Comments (1)