Friday, December 30, 2005

Bush Spying in Context


Bush defends spying without warrant tactic

TONI LOCY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress late Thursday saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns of individuals caught up in the surveillance.

In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the Justice Department said President Bush authorized electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States. ...



No one above the law?
Donald A. Lykkebak

December 25, 2005

"They that can give up esssential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin

Recent revelation that President Bush provided personal authorization to bypass judicial review of electronic eavesdropping and wiretaps of U.S. citizens is alarming. It is also illegal. ...

... It is doubtful we will ever know the extent of this fishing expedition. Nor will we discover which of our neighbors were targets for this invasion of privacy. If this information were held up to public scrutiny, we may learn the worst about our government. Was your contribution to an Islamic charity sufficient to catch their attention? Perhaps, you may have criticized the candor, motive or methods of the government or its leaders. Maybe it was simply your critical letter to the editor that sparked government interest in you.

The president and his aides say, "Trust me." Is this still good enough? We trusted them when they said there were good reasons for war in Iraq. Those arguments proved to be "faulty intelligence" or outright lies. The president now says he was mistaken about WMD. To what end? Current events suggest that a deterioration of our moral resolve as a nation may be a less obvious, but equally troubling consequence. CIA torture of prisoners, rendition, secret prisons and now warrantless spying on U.S. citizens within in our own borders are all apparent consequences.

Is it still true that in our country no one is above the law?

There must be no exceptions. We are asked to trade our privacy and our freedom from warrantless snooping and exchange it for promises of security.

Remember Benjamin Franklin. His warning is prophetic. We may be left with neither liberty nor safety.


You might read that and say "Lose our liberty? It couldn't happen here." I suggest you read the following articles and then see if you can still say "it couldn't happen here".


STATE DEPARTMENT OPENS FILES ON ARGENTINA'S DIRTY WAR

... "The documents provide clues to the fate of 'disappeared' citizens in Argentina by an unchecked security apparatus, and tell the story of a massive and indiscriminate counterinsurgency campaign carried out by the military dictatorship targeting real or imagined subversives including thousands of labor leaders, workers, clergymen, human rights advocates, scientists, doctors, and political party leaders" said Carlos Osorio, director of the National Security Archive's Argentina Documentation Project. ...


Dirty War

Project Disappeared


ACLU: Protesters placed in terror files

By ANSLEE WILLETT [The Gazette - Colorado Springs, CO]
December 09, 2005

The names and licenseplate numbers of about 30 people who protested three years ago in Colorado Springs were put into FBI domestic-terrorism files, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado said Thursday.

The Denver-based ACLU obtained federal documents on a 2002 Colorado Springs protest and a 2003 anti-war rally under the Freedom of Information Act.

ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said the documents show the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force wastes resources generating files on "nonviolent protest."

"These documents confirm that the names and license plate numbers of several dozen peaceful protesters who committed no crime are now in a JTTF file marked ‘counterterrorism,’" he said.

"This kind of surveillance of First Amendment activities has serious consequences. Law-abiding Americans may be reluctant to speak out when doing so means that their names will wind up in an FBI file." ...




The Terror of Our Ways
Conflating environmentalists and terrorists is all the rage
By Michael J. Kavanagh

Just Joshin'
Electric-car driver was not an eco-terrorist, FBI admits

Miami Police Take New Tack to Deter Terrorists,
Staging Random Shows of Force at Hotels, Banks
By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press Writer

America's enemy within

Armed checkpoints, embedded reporters in flak jackets,
brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrators. Baghdad? No, Miami
Naomi Klein - Guardian
Wednesday November 26, 2003

And you don't even have to be a protester


Next Stop: Big Brother
... One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand. ...



In "Fascism Anyone?," Laurence Britt identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism."

Wake up and smell the fascism

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Depleted(not)Uranium=Genocide

the pain and suffering ahead is staggering. not only have we rendered Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan uninhabitable, we are poisioning our troops, their loved ones and future children. this is has been done in our name since Gulf War I and continues....tons of this WMD have been spread on our planet, in our name. why do they hate us??????

Heads roll at Veterans Administration
Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed
by Bob Nichols
Project Censored Award Winner

Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.
Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”
Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”
He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.
full article

Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
A death sentence here and abroad
by Leuren Moret
At an April press conference, a group of New York Army National Guard vets raised their hands when asked if they have health problems. The soldiers, all from the 442nd Military Police Company, are complaining of headaches and fatigue after what they think is exposure to depleted uranium during their recent tour in Iraq.Photo: www.americanfreepress.net
“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”
Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.
full article

(At an April press conference, a group of New York Army National Guard vets raised their hands when asked if they have health problems. The soldiers, all from the 442nd Military Police Company, are complaining of headaches and fatigue after what they think is exposure to depleted uranium during their recent tour in Iraq.Photo: www.americanfreepress.net)

ACLU Ad: No President Is Above the Law

Still - Out of Touch

It never ceases to amaze me that so many Americans are so out of touch with reality.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- More than four years after the
attacks of September 11, 2001, many U.S. adults still believe some of the
justifications for the invasion of Iraq, which have now been discredited,
according to a new Harris Poll. For example:

-- Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. adults believe that Saddam Hussein had
"strong links to Al Qaeda."
-- Twenty-two percent (22%) of adults believe that Saddam Hussein "helped
plan and support the hijackers who attacked the United States on
September 11."
-- Twenty-six percent (26%) of adults believe that Iraq "had weapons of
mass destruction when the U.S. invaded."
-- Twenty-four percent (24%) of all adults believe that "several of the
hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11 were Iraqis."
But on a more hopeful note;

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Dec. 15-18, 2005. N=1,003 adults nationwide. Results below are among registered voters. Fieldwork by TNS.






.


"If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006 were being held today, would you vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate in your congressional district?" If other/unsure: "Would you lean toward the Democratic candidate or toward the Republican candidate?" Options rotated






.




Republican Democrat Neither/
Other
(vol.)
Unsure Won't
Vote (vol.)


% % % % %

12/15-18/05

41 51 4 4 1

I'm guessing that the 41% who think 'Saddam had "strong links to Al Qaeda"' are the same 41% that would vote for a Republican candidate... what do you think?

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

State Politics - WA 42nd District

Washington State House of Representatives
42nd LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
Jasper MacSlarrow (D) is challenging Doug Ericksen (R)

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Bush - screwing up the war on terror



Egged on by his bat-shit crazy neo-con cronies, Bush's arrogant over-reaching spying policies hasn't caught any terrorists but has lost him the trust of the American people.

Some fear eavesdropping could undermine work of spy agency

By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay - Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The White House decision to order surveillance of international phone calls by U.S. citizens without a warrant violated longstanding practices and could undermine a key U.S. intelligence agency that's critical in the struggle against terrorists, former senior intelligence officials and other experts said this week.

The super-secret National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on the Soviet Union's leaders and scored other intelligence coups during the Cold War, has spent three decades recovering from domestic spying scandals in the 1970s.

Now, with its electronic ears and vast computer banks turned primarily to intercepting suspecting terrorists, the officials said they fear that the NSA once again will bear the brunt of congressional scrutiny and public outrage, complicating its mission.

"The damage it's done to NSA's reputation is almost irreversible in my view," said a longtime top intelligence official with intimate knowledge of the agency's workings.

Those concerns are part of a broader backlash in the intelligence community against some of the Bush administration's tactics in the war on terror. ...(more)


Speedier trial?

It seems Tom DeLay thinks he's entitled to special rights... ain't that a hoot!
DeLay takes case to state's highest criminal court

By LIZ AUSTIN - The Associated Press

AUSTIN -- In a last-ditch effort to secure a speedy trial, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's attorneys asked the state's highest criminal court Friday to dismiss the charges against him or order a lower court to try him immediately.

DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin took the case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals a day after a lower appeals court denied his request to send the case back to the trial court or expedite it through the appeals process.

DeLay was forced to step aside as House majority leader after he was indicted on money-laundering and conspiracy charges in September. He denies wrongdoing and has been pressing for a quick resolution to his case so he can regain his post before his colleagues call for new leadership elections.

His case was put on hold, however, when prosecutors appealed a judge's partial dismissal of the charges. ...(more)


Friday, December 23, 2005

A New Year is on the way


In Generalissimo Georgie's neo-America; he says his power eclipses the Bill of Rights, the Congress and the Supreme Court.


In Generalissimo Georgie's neo-America; he says Citizens can be spied on without warrant, imprisoned without charges, tortured and tried using secret evidence.




But
WE THE PEOPLE say, cut out the BU(LL)SH(IT)!

Evolution takes science honours



By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter

Research into how evolution works has been named top science achievement of 2005, a year that also saw fierce debate erupt over "intelligent design".

The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year.

The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution.

The announcement comes in the same week that a US court banned the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms. ...(more)


Thursday, December 22, 2005

Tom sets the record straight

as the white house and their shills scramble to rewrite history, muddy the issue and quiet the masses as they shread the constitution.....

Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A21
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
full article

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

back away from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge..

good news today.....dems and some repubs are stepping up......

Senate Blocks Alaska Refuge Drilling
By H. JOSEF HEBERTThe Associated PressWednesday, December 21, 2005; 2:29 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Senate blocked an attempt to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling Wednesday, foiling an attempt by drilling backers to force the measure through Congress as part of a must-have defense spending bill.
It was a stinging defeat for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, one of the Senate's most powerful members, who had given senators a choice to support the Alaska drilling measure, or risk the political fallout of voting against money for American troops and for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
full article



thank you Senator Cantwell for clarity and strong leadership on this one!!!!

...........Once again, we commend Senator Cantwell for her tremendous leadership on this very important issue. It is imperative that we prohibit drilling or development of any sort in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, of the world's greatest untouched wildernesses. We will gain nothing from opening up the Refuge to drilling - and we will lose a lot. There isn't even a tradeoff. This is without a doubt, an attempt to sell out one of America's national treasures to greedy oil companies.
full article

many questions remain about the oil to be recovered and i've heard it said because of the quality of the oil there it would go to Asia.....sort of eliminating the argument that we could be rescued from our appalling over consumption.....

Arctic Refuge: How Much Oil? Both Sides On Drilling Issue Tout Estimates, But Volume, Quality Of Resources UnclearDecember 21, 2005
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- President Bush calls it the most promising source of untapped oil in America and the key to greater energy independence. But how much oil is there in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Nobody really knows for certain.
full article

dicked again.....

dick grinch gives the American people a christmas to remember.....one finger victory salute to the needy, welfare to the greedy....

UPDATE 1-Cheney breaks Senate tie to pass US budget bill
Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:26 PM ET
........It's an attack on the middle class and those in greatest need on behalf of lobbyists for the powerful," Reid said.
Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of five Republicans who opposed the bill, called it a "a cynical piece of legislation that punishes our most vulnerable citizens."
full article

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

who cares about our security????

yo sheeple!!! if you're counting on the bush crime family to keep you safe, wake up!!! these people don't give a damn about us......where will the "anthrax" turn up next now that the "patriot" act needs renewal???...Hmmmmmm...........

MISSING RADIOACTIVE VIALS COULD PRESENT A DANGER
Officials were still searching for two vials of radioactive material that went missing earlier this month as they were being shipped by truck from Albuquerque to Kilgore, a press officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services said Monday night.
full article

and then this......

Explosives missing from site again
Updated 2:45 p.m. In the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, one might assume bomb-making materials would be under the tightest possible security.
In fact, they sit unattended in the New Mexico desert, guarded by little more than lock and key.
Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White says he doesn't understand it.
"You have to question the logic behind federal regulations that prohibited you from carrying nail clippers onto an airplane, but allow you to store high-grade explosives in a poorly protected site in the middle of nowhere," White said.
full article

and then they have the nerve to tell us they are circumventing the law and our civil liberties for our security.......JEZ!!!!!

Bush bypassed compliant court on wiretapping
Warrants rarely denied
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff December 20, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The court that authorizes wiretaps on terrorism suspects had not rejected a government request for a warrant in its 22-year existence to 2001, when President Bush issued an order allowing agents to wiretap citizens without judicial approval.
full article

how many "evil-doers" arrested so far????????? what are they hiding???

What's wrong with this picture?

Everett Herald - Published: Tuesday, December 20, 2005

All-mail balloting voted down - for now
Democrats say they will revisit the issue once they have a majority in January.

By Jeff Switzer
Herald Writer

A pitch to switch to all-mail elections was rejected by Snohomish County Council Republicans on Monday, but Democrats vowed to revisit the issue in January when they are in the majority. ...

... GOP members of the council forced a vote on the proposed all-mail legislation during their morning meeting, yanking it from Democrat Dave Gossett's afternoon operations committee.

"I'm not willing to disenfranchise 40 percent of the voters," Koster said. Voting is a precious right and mail-in ballots should be the exception, not the rule, he said.

The trend is going the other way, however.

Thirty-two of the state's 39 counties have switched to all-mail elections since the state Legislature relaxed rules this spring.

Nelson criticized mail voting as a source of fraud. He said 1,779 mail ballots were rejected during the general election.

A report shows that of those ballots, 1,176 were rejected because they were postmarked too late. ... (full article)


Isn't it interesting how desperately the Republicans want to keep their black-box voting machines. WA state Republicans have become knee-jerk slanderers... They make a habit of screaming voter fraud but never have a single real case to point to.

Obviously the electronic voting machines magical qualities are what attract the Republicans.


Evidence Of Election Irregularities
In Snohomish County, Washington, General Election, 2004


Absentee ballots composing 2/3 of the total ballots showed a Democratic lead of 97044 to 95228 votes, while the remaining 1/3 of the votes, on touch screens, showed a Republican lead of almost 5% (50,400 Republican to 42,145 Democratic).

Vote-switching and machines freezing up occurred in 58 polling locations out of approximately 148 total. There is a high correlation between the problem machines — as reported by KING5 news — and the Republican percentages the machines reported.

Statistical analysis of machines that recently had their CPUs repaired shows a propensity for Republican voting that is present but weak on the individual level but strong at the polling location where the machines were placed.

The average of the 58 polling places reporting vote switching, freeze-ups, or repairs within two weeks of the election was 11.58% more favorable to Republican Dino Rossi than absentee voters did, and averaged 10.8% more votes than Gregoire on election day, while RossiÂ’s overall spread among all electronic voters at all polling locations was under 5%.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Culture of corruption, greed and abuse of power

just when you think the corporatists have topped it, they go ya one more.....these arrogant, cruel bullies will not stop until they are stopped.
wake up sheeple!! they've taken over our assets and are using them to steal other people's assets............

How the Media Is "Authorizing" The Abuse of Government Power

The story of President Bush deliberately breaking the law to create a domestic spy operation is a lot of different things: it is a tale of power abuse, arrogance, and contempt for the law by an out-of-control president. But it is also a story of how today's major media behaves with near total deference to power and its own profit motive. What we are watching, even in the seemingly small details of the coverage, is the media's complicity in helping estsablish a quasi-legal framework for what was a clearly illegal abuse of government power. Put another way, we are watching the media being used as a tool of state power in overriding the very laws that are supposed to confine state power and protect American citizens.
full article

Thursday, December 15, 2005

So what the H*%% does that mean?

Yesterday in a Seattle Times article about a "poor taste" item

offered for sale on the WA state Democrats website, State Rep. Doug Ericksen was quotes as saying:

State Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Bellingham, put out a news release Tuesday criticizing the Democrats for posting what he described as an "anti-Christian" symbol.

"It's just amazing that they have people sitting in their office who think that way," Ericksen said. "You would never see anything on a Republican Web site demeaning Judaism or the Islamic faith."

Articles in the Bellingham Herald and on the KGW-TV website cut it down to: "State Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Bellingham, called it an "anti-Christian" symbol."

Now I just gotta ask, what the hell is Doug saying?
Firstly, He's described something as "anti-Christian" that would more fittingly be called anti-pompous hypocrite. But that's not unexpected...

The puzzler is switching religions in mid-put-down: ["You would never see anything on a Republican Web site demeaning Judaism or the Islamic faith."].... Is he intimating that the Republican Party IS the Christian Party? How did Muslims and Jews get mixed up in this flap?

P.S. I see that WorldNutDaily has a garbled article about this 'sticker stink'.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Detached from REALITY Sis-boom-ba

Bush thinks he's back cheerleading at the big game! In his speech today he stumbled off script and said "our guys played" and then corrected himself and said "performed great".
In the summer of 2004, we discussed the growing problem in Najaf with Iraq's
political leaders -- and the coalition and Iraqi government decided to
retake control of the city. And we did. Together, coalition and Iraqi forces
routed out the militia in tough, urban fighting. It was an intense battle,
our guys (played per) performed great, and so did the Iraqi forces. Together with the
Iraqi government and the Shia clerical community, we forced the militia to
abandon the shrine and return it to legitimate Iraqi authority. The militia
forces agreed to disarm and leave Najaf.
Click the link in the quote to hear the audio clip.

c-span has audio of the whole speech. [02/08/07 Update: the c-span audio is no longer online - Video of the speech is available on the Whitehouse website]

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Citizensteve's 15 seconds of fame

Early Monday morning, I got a mention on Air America Radio's "The Rachel Maddow Show". Rachel took a comment I'd made on her show blog and developed it into a news commentary. And what's more, she said I'm one of her favorite bloggers. (Aah, gee whillikers)

Sunday, December 04, 2005

letter to the editor

citizen steve weighs in after a local spews lies about the "do nothing" left......

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Says Democrats countered terrorists
The writer of the letter headlined "Says left's policies caused deaths too" had a lot to say, but as Sen. Patrick Moynihan said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
The "Butler Report" found "the intelligence available was 'insufficiently robust' to prove Iraq was in breach of the United Nations' resolutions."
On Sept. 21, 2001, Bush was told in a briefing that there was no evidence linking Saddam to the attacks nor Iraq to al-Qaeda.
Results of the "Bush Doctrine": Osama bin-Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi still on the loose, Iraq in chaos, 2,100 Americans dead.
Claiming Democrats don't respond to terrorist attacks is just plain silly:
Response to USS Cole attack: The planner killed with a hellfire missile. Three sentenced to death, four others sent to prison.
African embassy bombings: Four sentenced to life.
1993 World Trade Center bombing: Six sentenced to 240 years each.
Millennium bombing plot: thwarted! The "bomber" sentenced to 22 years.
We know about the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." and that after reading it Bush did nothing.
The "do-nothing policy" that resulted in 3,000 deaths on 9/11 was Bush's policy.
citizen steve


original letter-
Says left's policies caused deaths too
The dishonest coordinated assertion is, "Bush lied, people died." The British "Butler Report," which overviewed British intelligence leading up to war with Iraq - even now - asserts that Iraqi officials sought uranium in Niger. This supports Bush's infamous "16 words" in his State of the Union address.
Also the war against "militant Islam" is a war we were losing, because these extremists remained nomadic and claimed no national affiliation while enjoying insulation in de facto host countries from Syria to Pakistan - across the Middle East. Addressing these terrorist gangs effectually required engaging the host countries directly (the Bush Doctrine). That was obvious when Congress supported the war in Iraq and before Monday-morning quarterbacking became an art form of elected leaders of the Democratic Party.
Why Iraq: a) The Bush Doctrine. b) Saddam had used biological and chemical weapons that were not verifiably deactivated as called for in United Nations sanctions.
Not responding to attacks: the USS Cole, embassies in Kenya, the World Trade Center (1993), etc. - do-nothing policy ad infinitum resulted in 3,000 deaths on 9/11.
Doing nothing was and remains a policy decision favored by the redundantly described "far left" ... and people died.
Stuart Andrews
Bellingham

Saturday, December 03, 2005

BushCo - rotten to the core

FBI reopens its inquiry into forgery leading to Iraq war

By Peter Wallsten, Tom Hamburger and Josh Meyer

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - The FBI has reopened an inquiry into an intriguing aspect of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear-weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion. ...



Report Accuses EPA of Slanting Analysis
Hill Researchers Say Agency Fixed Pollution Study to Favor Bush's 'Clear Skies'

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 3, 2005; Page A08
The Bush administration skewed its analysis of pending legislation on air pollution to favor its bill over two competing proposals, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Oct. 27 analysis of its plan -- along with those of Sens. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) -- exaggerated the costs and underestimated the benefits of imposing more stringent pollution curbs, the independent, nonpartisan congressional researchers wrote in a Nov. 23 report. The EPA issued its analysis -- which Carper had demanded this spring, threatening to hold up the nomination of EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson -- in part to revive its proposal, which is stalled in the Senate. ...


State Department using ideological litmus tests to screen speakers

BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The State Department has been using political litmus tests to screen private American citizens before they can be sent overseas to represent the United States, weeding out critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to department officials and internal e-mails. ...


Gonzales Defends Approval of Texas Redistricting by Justice

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 3, 2005; Page A04

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday defended the Justice Department's 2003 decision to overrule a staff recommendation and approve a congressional redistricting map for Texas, arguing that subsequent court rulings and election results show that the plan did not harm minority voters.

A December 2003 internal memo shows that eight members of the Justice Department's voting section unanimously concluded that the Texas plan would violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting the electoral power of blacks and Hispanics. Political appointees in the department disagreed and allowed the plan to go forward. ...


Thursday, December 01, 2005

Summarizing bushes America

oh man, this guy nailed it......
Tom Gilroy 12-1-05

What would you do if your country was under attack? If your government was under siege by an occupying force with utter disregard for the well-being of your fellow citizens? Would you ‘cut and run’? Or would you take up arms against the invaders as a true patriot?
No, this is not some clever peacenik defense of the Iraqi ‘insurgency’—common citizens using the dire means at their disposal to eject an occupying enemy.

I’m talking about America; what if some foreign force that supported torture and opposed human rights and your constitution—a force not unlike say Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey—suddenly invaded Washington. What would you do? Act like a patriot or a girly-man?

Well, it’s happened.
read full article