Response to a Comment

One of those "anonymous coward" comments left this in the previous post. It's chock full of the standard rhetoric you typically see from unquestioning Republicans that thinks anything the GOP does is good for this country and the rest of the world should be paved over. It's a little hard to figure out but here it is.

Anon wrote:

Anonymous said...

Works for me. I have nothing to worry about here. And neither should you. It's all mucky muck and the death throws of the NYT's is all.

Without the US free press would we still be fighting the war in Iraq? At what point during the war in Iraq did the US free press cross the line and openly support our enemies? And at what level did they give support and aide and comfort to our enemies on the battlefield while American soldiers were in harms way?

Inquiring minds want to know. If you have NOTHING to worry about than don'. If you do than, well, worry. Or move. Leave. Suggestion: Canada. Something. Move. Leave.

12/24/2005 12:14:51 PM

I am actually surprised this post took this long to show up. The first part, "I have nothing to worry about and neither should you." A typical "Let them search I have nothing to hide and neither do any red blooded... blah blah blah". The truth is. You should be worried BECAUSE you have nothing to hide. How would you like it if someone skimmed through your personal records just to be sure you weren't doing anything wrong? Saddam's regime did things like that. Do you really want Emperor Bush doing that here?

Second paragraph. Typical bullshit claiming the liberal media (which doesn't exist anyways)is somehow aiding Al Qaeda by reporting how Bush is breaking the law and the Constitution with every word out both his faces? If the commenter, which could not even leave a name, actually had any good point to make he wouldn't have to stoop to lying. I love this sentence: "And at what level did they give support and aide and comfort to our enemies on the battlefield while American soldiers were in harms way?". Despite the fact it's a complete lie, it gives me a visual of Peter Jennings spoon feeding strained carrots to Osama Bin Laden. Thank you for that. It made me laugh.

Finally, the last paragraph. It's the typical "If you don't like it, leave". He even throws in an oblique threat of me having something to worry about.

Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I'm having too much fun pissing off the rednecks that can't form coherent sentences.

By the way, I tried to look up "mucky muck". All I could find was The Free Dictionary defining it as "A high muckamuck".

NSA Had Access to All Our Data

In this article from the New York Times, there's reports that the NSA has had access to many times more information than the Bush administration had let on.

Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the New York Times writes:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

Let me break this down for you. This nation's telecommunications switches carry most of the data coming in and out of this country, including foreign communications that are not too or from anyone in this country.

If the NSA tapped those switches it means this:

• If you made a phone call or possibly an email since January 6th 2002, the NSA had access to it.
• If that phone call or email were destined for outside this country, it was recorded.
• If anyone from outside this country called or emailed you, it was recorded.

All without a warrant

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

This is what the Bush Administration is doing to "protect" the civilians. By denying civil liberties and searching EVERY piece of data going in and out of this country and hoping to find something.

Next time you make an international call be sure to say hi to the NSA for me. I'm sure they probably think I'm a threat.

The full article can be found here:
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

Bush's Pathological Attack on America

Mel Seesholtz for Counterbias.com writes:

“You know, I could run for governor but I’m basically a media creation. I’ve never done anything. I’ve worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that’s not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”

-- George W. Bush, 1989


“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

-- George W. Bush, August 5, 2004

Here is an accurate attack on the presidency of George W. Bush. Filled with many links that are worth following. This is a two part report so i will be sure to folllow up when it becomes available. Be sure to follow all the links to their original source. Also be sure to read the full article at counterbias.com. You will find the link at the bottom of the post.

Combine some truth from the first confession with some from the second, add the appropriate commentary link – in this case “except” – and you have the disaster that is George W. Bush and his administration: “I’m basically a media creation. I’ve never done anything” except “stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people.”

George W. was by “We the People” in 2000. Had he not been appointed president, there would not have been a second term and America would not now be sliding into what can most appropriately be called a theocratic, despotic state. A harsh assertion? Consider the power the fanatical leaders of the evangelical Christian Right have over Mr. Bush. Maureen Dowd noted in an October 21, 2004 New York Times editorial that “evangelicals call the president a messenger of God.” The leaders of the Christian Right thrive on preaching hate and misrepresenting reality “in the name of God.” GWB is indeed their “messenger,” as “Take Him Out” Pat Robertson so well sermonized from the Gospel According to George: “I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord. It’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It’s shaping up that way. … The Lord has just blessed [George W. Bush]. I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn’t make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he’s a man of prayer and God’s blessing him.”

Well there's a scary thought. Bush can do no wrong because God likes him. So the lying, stealing, cheating, torture, and abuse must be gods will. Wow real "Old Testament" stuff.

Consider a vice president who wants to legalize government-sponsored torture: “Mr. Cheney’s proposal … would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of ‘counterterrorism operations conducted abroad’ and they were not American citizens.” Former CIA director Stansfield Turner labeled Dick Cheney a “vice president for torture.” A December 19, 2005 Reuters story suggested Cheney got his way:

A human rights group said on Sunday [December 18, 2005] that the United States operated a secret prison for terrorism suspects as recently as last year in Afghanistan, where detainees where subjected to torture and other mistreatment. The Bush administration has faced international criticism over detainees after a November 2 Washington Post article said the CIA held dozens of terrorism suspects in secret prisons called “black sites” in countries around the world, including eastern Europe.

And in relation to George W., consider Doug Thompson’s December 9, 2005 Capital Hill Blue report entitled “Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’”:

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. “I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.” “Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.” “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper! ”I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

Well that Goddamned piece of paper is what is going to land you in jail. The Conservatives and the GOP defend this?

The rest of the article can be found here:
Counterbias: George W. Bush's Pathological Attack on America: Part I

The case against George W. Bush

Here is a quick but interesting article about the two-facedness of the GOP. They vote guilty against Bill Clinton but for Bush have nothing to say and think he's the greatest for all he's done.

Time and again we've been lied to and cheated. We're being stolen from so that the rich can get richer.

We've got a racist and thieving President who thinks he's emperor and can do whatever he wants while we are left out in the cold. It's time to stop being cheated. Companies are making more and more profits after they laid off hundreds of thousands of employees. their profits are up and they've voted raises for the executives. How many laid off have been called back? How many of those eliminated jobs are still in this country?

All for profit margin.

The Daily Astorian writes:

Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith voted "guilty"” on one count of the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. When The New York Times reported that President Bush had signed a secret executive order years ago to spy on the civilian population without judicial review, Sen. Smith said nothing.

Neither did Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden.

Their predecessor, Sen. Wayne Morse, would have had a lot to say about this transgression on Americans’ right to privacy.

Here is what Sen. Wyden suspects Morse would have said: "“I think he would have said, 'This is beyond belief.'"”

Would Morse have also said that the president'’s action was an impeachable offense?

Speaking for himself, Wyden added: "“As a member of the intelligence committee, I hadn'’t been briefed on the program, and it seems to me that if the president felt this was necessary to protect this country, it'’s not a close call. He comes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and says, "‘Look, this is what I need to do." There is even an emergency provision under this statute that allows the president to gather information now and apply to the court subsequently."

Sen. Wyden'’s comments are one more indication that the president's secret executive order was a poorly conceived theft of our constitutional rights.

The rest of the article can be found here:
The case against George W. Bush

Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants

Not only has the Bush Administration been using warrantless wiretapping, they have been invading property of U.S. citizens and searching without a warrant as well.

Emperor Bush has put us into a police state.

David E. Kaplan of U.S. News and World Report writes:

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.

Let me just point one thing out here. If the Government of a representative thereof wants to look for something, even to sniff the air, they need a warrant. That is according to the Constitution of this country. There is no reason why they cannot request a warrant. Except for the only reason that I can think of. They have no evidence and can't get a warrant legally.

The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.

FBI officials expressed concern that discussion of the program would expose sensitive methods used in counterterrorism. Although NEST staffers have demonstrated their techniques on national television as recently as October, U.S. News has omitted details of how the monitoring is conducted. Officials from four different agencies declined to respond on the record about the classified program: the FBI, Energy Department, Justice Department, and National Security Council. "We don't ever comment on deployments," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages NEST.

In Washington, the sites monitored have included prominent mosques and office buildings in suburban Maryland and Virginia. One source close to the program said that participants "were tasked on a daily and nightly basis," and that FBI and Energy Department officials held regular meetings to update the monitoring list. "The targets were almost all U.S. citizens," says the source. "A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs. We were told it was perfectly legal."

The entire article can be found here:
USNews.com: Nation and World: EXCLUSIVE: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants (12/22/05)

22 Purported CIA Operatives Accused of Kidnapping Imam

Tracey Wilkenson of the L.A. Times writes:

An Italian court has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives accused of kidnapping a radical imam in Milan, and expanded the dragnet for the suspects to 25 countries, a prosecutor said today.

The abduction is one of several controversial cases in which American intelligence agencies are suspected of using European soil and airspace to imprison or to transport terror suspects to third countries without judicial authorization. These so-called extraordinary renditions are one of the most controversial elements of the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorism.

The funny thing is the the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is an almost rabid Bush supporter. CIA officers in the U.S. stated that they were acting with Italian permission while he was forced to deny it.

In the Italian case, 22 CIA operatives including the Milan station chief were accused of snatching Hassan Osama Nasr, a Muslim cleric better known as Abu Omar, as he walked to a mosque in Milan nearly three years ago.

He was spirited away on a secret flight to his native Egypt where he was imprisoned and, he later told friends, tortured.

Italian prosecutors have been attempting to bring the American operatives to trial since June, when they first obtained arrest warrants for some of the suspects. Those warrants only covered Italy, however.

Lead prosecutor Armando Spataro said today that a court earlier this week issued the European arrest warrants, which means that the suspects can now be arrested in any of the European Union's 25 member states.

Seeking the European warrants comes as the Italian Justice Ministry has refused to act on a Nov. 10 request from Spataro's office for the extradition from the U.S. of the men and women who allegedly kidnapped Abu Omar.

Under bilateral conventions, an extradition request for an American citizen must go through the Justice Ministry. But Justice Minister Roberto Castelli answers to the pro-U.S. prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has made it clear he does not want the case to advance.

Of course it won't happen. Berlusconi can't have the scandal.

Berlusconi said this week that while he did not believe the CIA had kidnapped Abu Omar, he thought such an operation was completely justifiable.

"You can't tackle terrorism with a law book in your hand," Berlusconi said. "If they fight with a sword, you have to defend yourself with a sword. ... When hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk, countries have to use the secret methods and arms available to them to defend those lives.''

Berlusconi was speaking to a group of foreign journalists that did not include U.S. newspapers. He added that he did not think there was "any basis in the [Milan] case."

The Milan prosecutors' office, which has tangled with Berlusconi on corruption and other judicial matters in the past, is feeling thwarted in its efforts to get to the bottom of the abduction.

Castelli, the justice minister, made the unusual request on Thursday of asking for all court documents related to the Abu Omar case before he decides on the extradition request. Normally, the minister rules based on administrative or diplomacy issues and does not review the evidence, prosecutors said.

"This was a very, very strange request,'' Spataro said Friday in a telephone interview from Milan. "I don't think he agrees with the extradition, but it could be a very big political problem for him in Italy.''

Not to mention the rest of Europe

The whole article can be found here:
22 Purported CIA Operatives Accused of Kidnapping Imam - Los Angeles Times

Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program

Here's an interesting article. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court is going to be briefed about The Bush Administration's super-secret super-illegal domestic wiretap program. They are worried that the information the gather from these illegal wiretaps are being used to gain warrants for real wiretaps from their court.

Of course it is.

Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post writes:

The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.

Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court.

"The questions are obvious," said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. "What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?"

Such comments underscored the continuing questions among judges about the program, which most of them learned about when it was disclosed last week by the New York Times. On Monday, one of 10 FISA judges, federal Judge James Robertson, submitted his resignation -- in protest of the president's action, according to two sources familiar with his decision. He will maintain his position on the U.S. District Court here.

Other judges contacted yesterday said they do not plan to resign but are seeking more information about the president's initiative. Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who also sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, told fellow FISA court members by e-mail Monday that she is arranging for them to convene in Washington, preferably early next month, for a secret briefing on the program, several judges confirmed yesterday.

Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Kollar-Kotelly expects top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Who the hell said that? It looks like there's a shill on the FISC.

The highly classified FISA court was set up in the 1970s to authorize secret surveillance of espionage and terrorism suspects within the United States. Under the law setting up the court, the Justice Department must show probable cause that its targets are foreign governments or their agents. The FISA law does include emergency provisions that allow warrantless eavesdropping for up to 72 hours if the attorney general certifies there is no other way to get the information.

Still, Bush and his advisers have said they need to operate outside the FISA system in order to move quickly against suspected terrorists. In explaining the program, Bush has made the distinction between detecting threats and plots and monitoring likely, known targets, as FISA would allow.

Bush administration officials believe it is not possible, in a large-scale eavesdropping effort, to provide the kind of evidence the court requires to approve a warrant. Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."

Now that's funny.

The whole article can be found here:
Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program

Conservative Court Questions Administration's Honesty

The HuffPo writes an interesting story about this judicial ruling. It calls out the Bush Administration for lying. What makes this so interesting is that this is one of the most conservative courts in the land.

Stephen Kaus for Huffington Post writes:

Accusing the Bush Administration of being disingenuous is no longer a liberal pursuit. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a bastion of Right-Wing fundamentalism, today called out the Administration for duplicity. Led by former (very former now) Supreme Court candidate Michael Luttig, a three judge panel refused to transfer Jose Padilla to civilian custody and refused to vacate its previous opinion.

The fourteen-page opinion makes a number of charges against the Administration. Fundamentally, it accuses the government of changing its version of the facts to suit its purposes and improperly seeking to avoid Supreme Court consideration of whether the President has the power to declare a U.S. citizen an "enemy combatant." The Court also castigates the government for at least creating the appearance that there really was not such a great need to hold Padilla as an enemy combatant and that the charges that he had entered the country to set off bombs might not be true.

Shortly after the Court had issued an opinion on September 9th, affirming the right of the President to declare Padilla an enemy combatant and remanding the case to a lower court for a determination of the legitimacy of that designation, Padilla was abruptly indicted in Florida. The indictment "made no mention of the acts upon which the government purported to base its military detention of Padilla … namely that Padilla had taken up arms against the United States forces in Afghanistan and had thereafter entered into this country for the purpose of blowing up buildings in American cities."

The government then asked the appellate court to allow the transfer to civilian court, as may be required by a rule of Supreme Court procedure. When the Court of Appeals questioned the different facts, the government asked the appellate court to withdraw its decision entirely. In a scathing opinion, the court refused to do so.

While it is couched in somewhat legalistic language, the opinion basically says that a citizen would conclude that the government is lying by changing the facts. For three and one half years, the opinion states, the government held Padilla militarily, "steadfastly maintaining that it was imperative in the interest of national security." Then, all of a sudden, the need for military custody was gone and it was fine for Padilla to be in civilian court, with lawyer and all.

"Absent explanation," Judge Luttig wrote, "our authorization of Padilla's transfer under the circumstances described and while the case is awaiting imminent consideration by the Supreme Court would serve only to compound the appearance to which the government's actions, even if wholly legitimate, have inescapably given rise."

But wait, there's more:

"As the government must surely understand, although the various facts it has asserted are not necessarily inconsistent or without basis, its actions have left not only the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years even if justifiably, by mistake – an impression we would have thought the government could ill afford to leave extant. They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle upon which it had detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or not cost to its conduct of the war against terror – an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant. And these impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts… .While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be."

This is getting scary folks.

Anyone got a spare "Get out of Conservatism Hell Free" Card?

The rest of the article can be found here:
Conservative Court Questions Administration's Honesty | The Huffington Post

Spy court judge quits in protest

CNN.com writes:

A federal judge has resigned from a special court set up to oversee government surveillance to protest President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program on people with suspected terrorist ties, The Washington Post reported.

Alright, here's the gist of the story. U.S. District Judge James Robertson resigned in protest of the warrant-free-wiretaps. He believes that evidence gathered illegally from those wiretaps is being used to get warrants for other wiretaps.

The action by U.S. District Judge James Robertson stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program that Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court that Robertson resigned from, the newspaper said in Wednesday's editions.

The Post quoted two associates of the judge.

Robertson was one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.

Quoting colleagues of Robertson, the Post said the judge had indicated he was concerned that information gained from the warrantless surveillance under Bush's program subsequently could have been used to obtain warrants under the FISA program.

This really infuriates me. Emperor Bush will prolly get off without any problems because of the republican majority in Congress and one of his cronies is the Attorney General. There has to be something we can do about this.

Any ideas?

CNN.com - Report: Spy court judge quits in protest - Dec 21, 2005

Open letter to George W. Bush

This is an editorial from Online Journal. I'm posting it in it's entirety because it is pretty funny and damn good.

Frank Pitz of Online Journal writes:

Dear George, I hope you don't take offense at my using the more familiar appellation here, I just can't bring myself -- and I'm not alone -- to use "Mr. President." You understand, for me (and about 60 percent of the public) President denotes leadership; and, George, a leader you ain't.

Another reason for my using the intimate form of address is that I feel like I have no secrets from you, and we might be like, buds. Lord knows, I could possibly be one of those many thousands of Americans you had the NSA spy on. I'll bet you just went and stole that page from old J. Edgar's playbook, didn't you? Or perhaps Tricky Dick influenced you a bit.

You see, George, those things are illegal. Presidents don't do that sort of unconstitutional bullshit, however, cowards do. George, you have committed so damn many impeachable offenses in your term that it is mind-boggling.

If one just takes into account all the secrecy and outright deception -- that means lies, George -- leading up to the illegal Iraq war, that alone is an impeachable offense. The Valerie Plame affair, more perjury and cover-up and you were right in the thick of it, George. Also, letting your Enron buddies -- and other corporate bloodsuckers -- rape the taxpayers for billions of dollars that really sucked, George.

And now, George, your own personal little COINTELPRO; Jesus Christ buddy, you guys castigated and persecuted Clinton and all he did was get a blowjob. You and your friends have shafted each and every one of us, and didn't even use the KY jelly! That hurts, George.

Gerald Ford once said about an impeachable offense that it was: "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." And given that the corporate bloodsuckers now control the House of Representatives I hold out no hope for your impeachment George.

But you have to remember your history, you know a couple of centuries ago another guy named George also fucked over the people like you and your friends are doing now. You know what happened, don't you? If you don't recall that part of your history, you might ask your mommy.

So, as it goes, I -- and many of the American people -- have no faith in those weak kneed folks in Washington known as Democrats. Hell, you whipped them into submission much like a dominatrix does to a milquetoast. Shoot, you even have Joe Leiberman and Hillary defending you like a pair of ambulance chasing lawyers -- it doesn't get much better than that.

But you seem George, sooner or later the folks you keep pissing on are gonna get tired of it, I have faith in the American public. You keep kicking a dog long enough, eventually he's gonna jump up and bite you in the ass. And you been kicking the American public for a long time, George; it's time for you to get bitten in the ass.

That Fitzpatrick boy there with his grand jury is going to reach right up there close to you, George, it might even be enough to bring you down -- though I have my doubts. But your house of cards is falling buddy, Christ you've alienated the whole damn world man! The last man to accomplish that was Hitler for crying out loud, and it took him 8-10 years to achieve. You have done it in five.

I know you and your corporate pimps figure you can keep the game going for awhile, George, but remember that kicked dog, buddy. In spite of the fact that most folks in this country are dumber than a bag of rocks, even a bag of rocks will break open once in a while.

You and your corporate buddies have to give it up, George. Your dreams of empire (much like that George of long ago) are crumbling under the weight of public opinion. As well, global evolution is eventually going to do you guys in. Think about it, George, America is just a bit player on the world stage. Hell Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea hold 40 percent of our national debt -- and what they don't have the Saudis do -- think about what would happen if those folks called in their notes, George.

And, George, that little gambit of sending your "enforcer" over to Iraq this past weekend was a total bust wasn't it? Christ he flew low and fast around the place in helicopter gunships and the level of violence on the ground just exploded. Keep him in his bunker, buddy, it's safer that way.

I'll have to close this for now, George, I hope this letter finds you well in that little xenophobic bubble of yours. Sooner or later though, the damn thing is going to burst and no amount of corporate ass-kissing will save you, buddy.

You can find Frank's email on the linked page. You can find mine somewhere to the left.

Here is the original editorial:
Open letter to George W. Bush

Whopper: George W. Bush - The president crosses his fingers behind his back

Whopper: George W. Bush - The president crosses his fingers behind his back. ByTimothy Noah:

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

—President Bush, at a Q and A in Buffalo, N.Y., April 20, 2004.

Lawlessness and Disorder is the GOP Special of the Day

TPM Cafe has an interesting report on the "screw-the-people" mentality of the GOP by enacting Martial Law in Congress.

Ed Kilgore of TMPCafe writes:

The brazen we-make-the-rules-around-here attitude reflected in the Bush administration's domestic spying ukase, and its let's-punish-the-leakers reaction to its exposure, is certainly not just an executive branch phenomenon. Last night's House Republican maneuvers on budget and defense appropriations measures exhibit the same mentality, especially in the strategem that made it possible: a rules change that basically abolished all the rules.

The House's adoption, on a party-line vote, of so-called "martial law," suspending, among other items, the normal requirement that Members have at least 24 hours to read major legislation before they vote on it, was authoritarian even by House GOP standards.

Thanks to martial law, the incredibly convoluted series of decisions made totally behind close doors on the budget bill, turned into a simple loyalty test for partisans. There was a grand total of 40 minutes of debate, which was probably about right since nobody had the chance to read the bill in the first place.

Et Tu, GOP?

Full article is here:
TPMCafe || Lawlessness and Disorder

The Right's "War on Christmas": Hateful, self-involved, Racist

You can almost see what they're thinking.

“Remember the good ol’ days? When People would walk down the street and wish each other Merry Christmas? When you could go to your kid’s Christmas concert, and they would sing real Christmas Carols? When a ceramic baby Jesus was lovingly swaddled in a manger on the front step of every government building across the country?”

Then it follows:

“There was nothing wrong with those days. It’s just those damn (go ahead, pick one) that hate christianity and all religion in general. This is just a (pick another one) propaganda tool. Let’s get them back!”

Why is this happening now? Is Fox News trying to start trouble or are they trying to win ratings? Several days ago, I posted about an article from the International Herald Tribune. It starts off by stating the Conservative cause this season then goes on to mention what they didn’t tell you, or should have told you but lied about it (the article tries to be nice and calls it “rewriting history”).

Christmas was not a big thing in this country. The Puritans despised Christmas. “They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration.” It started to slightly gain in popularity in early 1800s when Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (t’was the night before Christmas…) was published anonymously in the New York Sentinel on December 23rd, 1823. That Combined with Thomas Nast’s weekly drawings, in Harper’s which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing.

The Christmas we now know Started in the 1920s when the retail industry began sponsoring annual ceremonies heralding the start of the “Christmas shopping season”.

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period."'

One more thing that they are lying to you about. They claim that non-Christians have only started objecting to having Christmas forced down their throats within the past ten years, but that is not true. As early as 1906, “the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City urged that Christmas hymns be banned from the classroom after a boycott by more than 20,000 Jewish students. In 1946, the Rabbinical Assembly of America declared that calling on Jewish children to sing Christmas carols was "an infringement on their rights as Americans."

Is that what they want to defend? Is it really about shopping? What is the real reason for their attack? This country is not a theocracy, nor is it a Christian state. When a store says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, they are not “disavowing” Christmas. They are acknowledging that there are more holidays in this time of year than just theirs. I think it’s a good thing, not to mention good for business. It’s not a good idea for a business to alienate an entire religion.

For Fox news to claim that Christians are being attacked and somehow discriminated against is an outright lie. It shows the bigotry and outright hate for people who are not like themselves. It pushes forward the idea that George W. Bush is not a democratically President but a Theocratic King. His reign bent on destruction of the Non-Christians in the new Crusades.

Is that was Fox Wants?

The Day the Blog Stood Still

Sorry about the day without posting. I had become stuck in some family crap that I could not weasel my way out of .

I promise to keep the free days to a minimum. I also have a friend’s blog you can check out as well. You can find him at: Informative Hub. Wow, I just checked out his site and it appears to be down.

Bad luck there. Be sure to check back later it’s a good site to have bookmarked.

There’s a new post coming up soon. I’m writing about the religious right’s “war on everything but Christmas”. Look for it.

It’s fun insulting people for their stupidity.

Why the Patriot Act was Blocked

Once again, the conservatives in Washington are trying to blame all their problems on Democrats. Here's the real problem. They are lying to you.

Here's the truth.

Mark D. Agrast and Peter P. Swire of the Center for American Progress writes:

Last July, the Senate unanimously approved bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. That bill included many improvements that would help alleviate longstanding civil liberties concerns. By the time the bill emerged from a House-Senate conference committee over four months later, most of those improvements had vanished without a trace.

The White House demanded that the Senate accept this seriously flawed legislation, and threatened to veto any effort to extend the expiring provisions rather than try to reach an accommodation.

Today, in a bipartisan vote, the Senate called the president's bluff. Senators properly rejected the conference report and offered to extend the expiring provisions for three months to allow time for further negotiations. Citing the veto threat, the majority leader refused to allow that proposal to come to a vote.

It is hard to imagine a more cynical maneuver. For months, the administration has loudly insisted that the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions must not be allowed to lapse for a single day. Now the president has decided he would rather let those provisions expire than take the time to resolve the outstanding issues.

The Administration is playing politics here, refusing to keep the provisions from expiring and hoping to blame the Senate when they lapse.

Recent reports have demonstrated all too clearly the merits of the senators' concerns. The Washington Post revealed the FBI's extensive use of National Security Letters to obtain access, secretly and without a court order, to the private records of American citizens. And just this morning, the New York Times published the stunning revelation that the president has secretly authorized domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency since 2002.

Given these realities, members of the Senate must not allow the administration to intimidate them into abdicating their responsibility. We trust that they will continue to insist that the expiring provisions be extended until reasonable amendments can be negotiated in good faith.

The article and website can be found here:
Time to Stop Playing Politics with the Patriot Act - Center for American Progress

Bush says: Eavesdropping Helps Save U.S. Lives

In what I thought was a suprising move for the ultra-secret GOP Administration, President Bush gave an address from the Roosevelt Room of the White House where he admitted to the eavesdropping charges.

I heard some of his address and I have to say, as shocked as I was to hear him say it, I was not suprised by his claims of it being legal.

Jenifer Loven of the Associated Press writes:

Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in Congress, President Bush on Saturday unapologetically defended his administration's right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11 spying in the U.S. as "critical to saving American lives."

One Democrat said Bush was acting more like a king than a democratically elected leader.

Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge some of the government's most classified activities was a stunning development for a president known to dislike disclosure of even the most mundane inner workings of his White House.

I want to get one thing straight here. It is against the law: Federal law, FCC regulations and Constitutional law for him to do this. It was put into the Constitution that only Congress can give the President such a power. FCC regulations state that wiretapping requires a judically approved warrant.

In 1978 Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which makes such wiretapping illegal.

Here is a fact sheet on wiretapping from Raw Story:

Fact Sheet on Domestic Intelligence Wiretaps December 17, 2005

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in 1978 to provide a statutory framework for eavesdropping on individuals within the United States, including U.S. citizens, who are not suspected of having committed a crime but who are likely to be spies or members of terrorist organizations.

• FISA established a secret court that could issue wiretap orders if the government showed probable cause that the individual to be tapped is an "agent of a foreign power",” meaning he or she is affiliated with a foreign government or terrorist organization. This is an easier standard to meet than the criminal wiretap standard, which requires that there be: (1) probable cause that the individual to be tapped has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, and (2) probable cause that communications concerning that crime will be obtained through the electronic surveillance.

• In the 27 years since it was established, the FISA court has turned down only a handful of applications for wiretap orders. The number of approved FISA wiretap orders has jumped since September 11, 2001, with 1,754 FISA orders issued last year, up from 934 such orders in 2001.

• FISA already addresses emergency situations where there is not time to get pre-approval from the court. It includes an emergency exception that permits government agents to install a wiretap and start monitoring phone and email conversations immediately, as long as they then go to the FISA court and get a court order within 72 hours.

• FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conduct electronic surveillance except as provided for by statute. The only defense is for law government agents engaged in official duties conducting “surveillance authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order.” [50 U.S.C. § 1809]

• Congress has specifically stated, in statute, that the criminal wiretap statute and FISA “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . and the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted. [18 U.S.C. § 2518(f)]

• The target of a FISA wiretap is never given notice that he or she was subject to surveillance, unless the evidence obtained through the electronic surveillance is ultimately used against the target in a criminal trial.

I bolded the point that wiretapping is illegal without a warrant. It is clear that Bush violated the law and violates the law every 45 days when he renews it.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said. Intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated, he said.

This is an unbelievalbe violation of Civil Liberties, U.S. law and the Constitution. It's worse than Watergate. Contact your Representatives tell them we will not stand for such gross violations of the law and the Constitution.

Click here to find your State's Representative and Email

The AP story is here on ABC:
ABC News: Bush: Eavesdropping Helps Save U.S. Lives

The Raw Story article is here:
Democratic senator says Bush violated law with wiretaps: He is a president, not a king

Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act!

Everyone Rejoice! The Martial Law bill has been pushed back.

David Espo, AP Special Correspondent writes:

In a stinging defeat for President Bush, Senate Democrats blocked passage Friday of a new Patriot Act to combat terrorism at home, depicting the measure as a threat to the constitutional liberties of innocent Americans.

There's proof of Conservative bias right there. "depicting the measure as a threat" while the Patriot Act is "to combat terrorism at home". But enough of that. Return to your rejoicing.

Republicans spurned calls for a short-term measure to prevent the year-end expiration of law enforcement powers first enacted in the anxious days after Sept. 11, 2001. "The president will not sign such an extension," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and lawmakers on each side of the issue blamed the other for congressional gridlock on the issue.

The Senate voted 52-47 to advance a House-passed bill to a final vote, eight short of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster backed by nearly all Senate Democrats and a handful of the 55 Republicans.

"We can come together to give the government the tools it needs to fight terrorism and protect the rights and freedoms of innocent citizens," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., arguing that provisions permitting government access to confidential personal data lacked safeguards to protect the innocent.

"We need to be more vigilant," agreed Sen. John Sununu, a Republican from New Hampshire, where the state motto is "Live Free or Die." He quoted Benjamin Franklin: "Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."

Wow, a busy day for the news. Let's see what else is out there.

Full article is here:
Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act - Yahoo! News

Shocked Lawmakers Demand Spy Program Probe

It's been kinda slow lately. Now all Hell is breaking out.

Katherine Shrader, Associated Press Writer writes:

Dismayed lawmakers demanded on Friday that Congress look into whether the highly secretive National Security Agency was granted new powers to eavesdrop without warrants on people inside the United States.

He's even pissed off hardliner Republicans.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.

President Bush refused to discuss whether he had authorized such domestic spying, saying to comment would tie his hands in fighting terrorists.

Nor would other officials confirm or deny whether the nation's largest spy agency was permitted to gather communications from Americans under a presidential directive signed in 2002.

Instead, they asserted in careful terms that the president would do everything in his power to protect the American people while safeguarding civil liberties.

Apparently,the easiest way safeguard civil liberties is to remove them completely.

"I will make this point," Bush said in an interview with "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." "That whatever I do to protect the American people — and I have an obligation to do so — that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people."

The reported program, first noted in Friday's New York Times, is said to allow the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States. But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications — for example, Americans' calls between New York and California.

"I want to know precisely what they did," said Specter. "How NSA utilized their technical equipment, whose conversations they overheard, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was."

While you're at it, pass that information along to the American people. We'll use it as evidence during the Impeachment.

The full article is here:
Shocked Lawmakers Demand Spy Program Probe - Yahoo! News

NET.org >> Endangered Species Act >> Critter Carols

Yesterday I posted an article about the National Security Archive. IT featured a keynote address from Bill Moyers where he mentioned (almost in passing) the threat to the Endangered Species Act. This evening I checked my mail and noticed this email from the National Envrionmental Trust:

Hi, I'm from the National Environmental Trust and saw that you've written about the Endangered Species Act recently. We thought you might be interested in our latest holiday creation:



Despite its extraordinary success, the Endangered Species Act is the target of an elaborate public relations campaign sponsored by big industries with the most to gain from a weakened law: big logging, mining, grazing, homebuilding, and utility companies.

Listen as the NET Off-Key Singers "explain" the issues in sure-fire holiday hits, including "The Lobbyists Are Coming to Town," "The Litigation Song" and the ever-popular "Let Them Die." Thrills! Chills! Critters! (And we might all learn something before it's done.) Go to http://www.net.org/esa/crittercarols.vtml or Google "Critter Carols."

[For extra fun, be sure to run your mouse over the critters on the page -- some of them have surprises.]

-=name cut=-

National Environmental Trust

So, I checked it out. It's kinda cute. Although the dissonant singing will bring a tear to your eye (in pain, not the good way), and it's a form letter, it's worth checking out.

With or without the painful singing, the ESA is a law we need to keep.

Check out here for NET.org's report on the Endangered Species Act.

The Singing Critters are here:
NET.org >> Endangered Species Act >> Critter Carols

Their website is pretty nice too.

I'm off to get asprin.

Torture Ban Includes a Backdoor

I had a feeling this was the case...

William Fisher of IPS writes:

Bush had previously threatened to veto the bill and Vice President Cheney lobbied hard to change the McCain proposal to give interrogators more flexibility to use a range of extreme tactics on terrorism suspects.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, made it clear that he would not change a single word in his proposal. The House of Representatives voted 308 to 122 to endorse the measure, which is an amendment to the massive defense spending bill that funds military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The supportive vote in the Senate was 90 to 9.

But in the deal worked out with the president, McCain was willing to add two paragraphs to give civilian interrogators legal protections that are already afforded to military interrogators. This means that civilians would be able to defend their use of interrogation tactics by arguing in court that a "person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful".

At least it'll be in place and can be strengthened when someone less hateful is in power.

The article puts this in as a caveat as if it could actually happen.

However, experts say that if CIA or civilian personnel believe they were being directed to use an interrogation technique that was illegal, they would be obligated to disobey the order.

If anyone were to obey that order they would be removed from their job, and either blacklisted or court martialled. It happened in Iraq, soldiers refused to drive the convoys because of the high risk of getting attacked and possibly killed. Those soldiers were court martialled.

We'll strengthen the bill when the people of this country get Bush out.

The complete article can be found here:
POLITICS-US: Torture Ban May Include a Backdoor

Reports: Bush Authorized NSA to Spy in U.S.

From the A.P. via Yahoo! News:

The National Security Agency has eavesdropped, without warrants, on as many 500 people inside the United States at any given time since 2002, The New York Times reported Friday.

Enough to make you paranoid? Consider that they can spy on you or me without so much as telling anyone.

That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States, the Times reported.

Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaida by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said.

But some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions.

Don't let them get away with this. Contact your Representatives right away. Call for an investigation!

Whole article can be found here:
Reports: Bush Authorized NSA to Spy in U.S. - Yahoo! News

Another mission accomplished

Molly Ivans Writes:

As one on the liberal side of the chorus of moaners about the decline of civility in politics, I feel a certain responsibility when earnest, spaniel-eyed conservatives like David Brooks peer at us hopefully and say, "Well, yes, there was certainly a lot of misinformation about WMD before the war in Iraq, but ... you don't think they, he, actually lied, do you?"

Draw I deep the breath of patience. I factor in the long and awful history of politics and truth, add the immutable nature of pols -- fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly -- and compare Tonkin Gulf, Watergate and Iran-Contra with the piddly Curveball and Niger uranium. I prepare to respond like a reasonable person -- "Of course not actually lie, per se, in the strict sense" -- and then I listen to another speech about Iraq by either the president or the vice president and find myself screaming, "Dammit, when will they quit lying?"

I realize this is not helping the cause of civility. On the other hand, sanity has its claims, as well.

I have been listening with great attention to the series of speeches Present Bush has lately given on his newly revealed "Plan for Victory." Of course I was pleased to learn we have a plan for a victory, which consists, it turns out, of announcing: "We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved. ... We will settle for nothing less than complete victory. ... We will never accept anything less than complete victory."

Unfortunately, the White House claims it produced this once supposedly secret plan in 2003, when it is actually a public-relations paper written less than six months ago, which is pretty much the way things go credibility-wise these days.

It has long been clear that this administration thinks it can spin reality to a blue-bellied fare-thee-well, but isn't it a little late for this kind of thing?

Celebrating 20 Years of Keeping Government Honest

This is a keynote address from Bill Moyers at the 20th anniversary of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and library at The George Washington University, in Washington D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

There is way too much much to post here. Here are some highlights. This is going to be a long post but bear with me. It's worth it.

Bill Moyers writes:

Your organization [The National Security Archive] has become indispensable to journalists, scholars, and any other citizen who believes the USA belongs to the people and not to the government.

[snip]

Because of the Freedom of Information Act and the relentless fight by the Archive to defend and exercise it, some of us have learned more since leaving the White House about what happened on our watch than we knew when we were there. Funny, isn't it, how the farther one gets from power, the closer one often gets to the truth?

Consider the recent disclosures about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. These documents, now four decades old, seem to confirm that there was no second attack on U.S. ships on the 4th of August and that President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam on the basis of intelligence that either had been "mishandled" or "misinterpreted" or had been deliberately skewed by subordinates to provide him the excuse he was looking for to attack North Vietnam.

Sound familiar? It's roughly the same reason we went to was with Iraq (the second time). Only this time The Bush Administration was told this intelligence was crap. They then went ahead and sold the lie to us.

I had hoped we would learn from experience. Two years ago, prior to the invasion of Iraq, I said on the air that Vietnam didn't make me a dove; it made me read the Constitution. Government's first obligation is to defend its citizens. There is nothing in the Constitution that says it is permissible for our government to launch a preemptive attack on another nation. Common sense carries one to the same conclusion: it's hard to get the leash back on once you let the wild dogs of war out of the kennel. Our present Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a plaque on his desk that reads, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." Perhaps, but while war is sometimes necessary, to treat it as sport is obscene. At best, war is a crude alternative to shrewd, disciplined diplomacy and the forging of a true alliance acting in the name of international law. Unprovoked, "the noblest sport of war" becomes the slaughter of the innocent.

The country suffers not only when presidents act hastily in secret, but when the press goes along.

[snip]

[...]there has been nothing in our time like the Bush Administration's obsession with secrecy. This may seem self-serving coming from someone who worked for two previous presidents who were no paragons of openness. But I am only one of legions who have reached this conclusion. See the recent pair of articles by the independent journalist, Michael Massing, in The New York Review of Books. He concludes, "The Bush Administration has restricted access to public documents as no other before it." And he backs this up with evidence. For example, a recent report on government secrecy by the watchdog group, OpenTheGovernment.org, says the Feds classified a record 15.6 million new documents in fiscal year 2004, an increase of 81% over the year before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. What's more, 64% of Federal Advisory Committee meetings in 2004 were completely closed to the public. No wonder the public knows so little about how this administration has deliberately ignored or distorted reputable scientific research to advance its political agenda and the wishes of its corporate patrons. I'm talking about the suppression of that EPA report questioning aspects of the White House Clear Skies Act; research censorship at the departments of health and human services, interior and agriculture; the elimination of qualified scientists from advisory committees on kids and lead poisoning, reproductive health, and drug abuse; the distortion of scientific knowledge on emergency contraception; the manipulation of the scientific process involving the Endangered Species Act; and the internal sabotage of government scientific reports on global warming

It's an old story: the greater the secrecy, the deeper the corruption.

[snip]

This is the administration that has illegally produced phony television news stories with fake reporters about Medicare and government anti-drug programs, then distributed them to local TV stations around the country. In several markets, they aired on the six o'clock news with nary a mention that they were propaganda bought and paid for with your tax dollars.

This is the administration that paid almost a quarter of a million dollars for rightwing commentator Armstrong Williams to talk up its No-Child-Left-Behind education program and bankrolled two other conservative columnists to shill for programs promoting the President's marriage initiative.

This is the administration that tacitly allowed inside the White House a phony journalist under the non-de-plume of Jeff Gannon to file Republican press releases as legitimate news stories and to ask President Bush planted questions to which he could respond with preconceived answers.

And this is the administration that has paid over one hundred million dollars to plant stories in Iraqi newspapers and disguise the source, while banning TV cameras at the return of caskets from Iraq as well as prohibiting the publication of photographs of those caskets - a restriction that was lifted only following a request through the Freedom of Information Act.

Ah, FOIA. Obsessed with secrecy, Bush and Cheney have made the Freedom of Information Act their number one target, more fervently pursued for elimination than Osama Bin Laden. No sooner had he come to office than George W. Bush set out to eviscerate both FOIA and the Presidential Records Act. He has been determined to protect his father's secrets when the first Bush was Vice President and then President -
as well as his own. Call it Bush Omerta.

This enmity toward FOIA springs from deep roots in their extended official family. Just read your own National Security Archive briefing book #142, edited by Dan Lopez, Tom Blanton, Meredith Fuchs, and Barbara Elias. It is a compelling story of how in 1974 President Gerald Ford's chief of staff - one Donald Rumsfeld - and his deputy chief of staff - one Dick Cheney - talked the President out of signing amendments that would have put stronger teeth in the Freedom of Information Act. As members of the House of Representatives, Congressman Rumsfeld actually co-sponsored the Act and as a Congressman, Ford voted for it. But then Richard Nixon was sent scuttling from the White House in disgrace after the secrets of Watergate came spilling out. Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted no more embarrassing revelations of their party's abuse of power; and they were assisted in their arguments by yet another rising Republican star, Antonin Scalia, then a top lawyer at the Justice Department. Fast forward to 2001, when in the early months of George W. Bush's Administration, Vice President Cheney invited the tycoons of oil, gas, and coal to the White House to divide up the spoils of victory. They had, after all, contributed millions of dollars to the cause, and as Cheney would later say of tax cuts for the fraternity of elites who had financed the campaign, they deserved their payoff. But to keep the plunder from disgusting the public, the identities of the participants in the meetings were kept secret. The liberal Sierra Club and the conservative Judicial Watch filed suit to open this insider trading to public scrutiny.

Like I said, it's long. The whole speech is 12 pages typed. It's worth it, trust me.
National Security Archive 20th Anniversary: Celebrating 20 Years of Keeping Government Honest

Is the Gov't Spying on us? -=UPDATE=-

According to this article from Reuters, The Pentagon admitted that they made a mistake and will expunge the data. I just wish there was a way for them to prove it.

All they have to do is to pull an archived version on a backup tape and all the data is restored.

Charles Aldinger of Reuters writes:

The Pentagon has built a massive security database to help protect U.S. military bases and troops that includes unwarranted information on Iraq war opponents and peace activists in the United States, a defense official said on Wednesday.

The official said the database included police reports and law enforcement tips in a legitimate domestic security effort, but that it had mistakenly swept up and kept information on people who were not threats to launch terror attacks.

"We held onto things that should have been expunged because they weren't a threat," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone planned to send a letter to Congress explaining the error and promising to clean up the database and protect the privacy of innocent persons, the official added.

Top News Article | Reuters.com

60s Flashback: Is the Government Spying on Us Again?

Arianna Huffington posted in her blog about this news item going around stating that the U.S. Government is spying on it's citizens again.

Arianna Huffington writes:

Reading the new reports about the Pentagon conducting surveillance of peaceful anti-war groups and protests, I feel like I’m having a bad 60s flashback.

But I’m not seeing psychedelic lights and thinking I can fly. I’m remembering how the Defense Department aggressively infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups during that era, spying and collecting files on over 100,000 Americans -- and how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI used every dirty trick in the “black bag operation” handbook to sabotage the anti-war and civil rights movements.

Now it looks like those ugly days of government paranoia and officially-sanctioned law breaking might be making a comeback. A secret DoD database obtained by NBC News indicates that Pentagon intelligence and local law enforcement agencies are using the guise of the war on terror to keep an eye on the constitutionally-protected activities of anti-war activists. And, despite strict restrictions on the military maintaining records on domestic civilian political activity, evidence suggests the Pentagon is doing just that. According to NBC, the DoD database includes “at least 20 references to U.S. citizens”, while other documents indicate that “vehicle descriptions” are also being noted and analyzed.

And it’s not just the Pentagon. Documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has also been recording the names and license plate numbers of peaceful anti-war protesters.

We're in trouble here, people. This is one step closer to a police state. Remember when he wanted to give the military local policing authority?

The entire post is here. Please read on:
The Blog | Arianna Huffington: 60s Flashback: Is the Government Spying on Us Again? | The Huffington Post

What if there really was a Liberal Bias in the Press?

This is funny! It's also one of those rare moments where you can just sit back a dream it were true.

John Kelly of OpEdNews.com writes:

What if you woke up one morning and went to your front walk and picked up your morning paper to find that overnight there had been a revolution and the press really had been taken over by liberals. What would it look like? I think it might look something like this.

There are great! Here is the first headline:

Republicans Push New Tax Plan

Today house Republicans voted unanimously to dump more disabled, poor children and seniors off healthcare, deprive hungry families of food and shut down Headstart programs across America so that Joe & Jane Millionaire can get another yacht. Further it has been decided officially that getting your money while sitting on your yacht (collecting dividends) is favored over actually physically working for it (wages) and as such millionaires will be excused from taxes on dividends and capital gains.

So right-wingers, tomorrow when you read the paper rest assured it is still in the control of its right wing corporate masters.

You can read the whole article here. Believe me, it's worth it.
What if there really was a Liberal Bias in the Press?

Bush says Iran a 'real threat'

Here we go again. I thought Syria was supposed to be next?

From Reuters:

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday called Iran a "real threat" and lashed out at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the country's nuclear program and calls for the destruction of Israel.

"Iran's a real threat," Bush told Fox News in an interview in which he repeated his charge that Iran was part of an "axis of evil" along with North Korea and prewar Iraq. "I called it part of the 'axis of evil' for a reason," Bush said.

"I'm concerned about a theocracy that has got little transparency, a country whose president has declared the destruction of Israel as part of their foreign policy, and a country that will not listen to the demands of the free world to get rid of its ambitions to have a nuclear weapon," Bush said in the interview.

I'm concerned about a White House Administration that has little transparancy, lies to it's own people, and won't listen to the demands of the free world to not invade a country without actual evidence.

Washington accuses Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is only for generating electricity.

In dealing with Iran, Bush said he continued "to work the diplomatic front," but that his objective was to "end tyranny."

Why is he wanting to work on a "diplomatic front" with Iran when he refused to do that with Iraq? There's a double standard in play here.

The full article can be found here:
Top News Article | Reuters.com | Bush says Iran a 'real threat'

Bush takes responsibility for invasion intelligence

W tries to win back a few poll points.

From CNN.com:

President Bush took responsibility Wednesday for "wrong" intelligence that led to the war, but he said removing Saddam Hussein was still necessary.

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said during his fourth and final speech before Thursday's vote for Iraq's parliament. "As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that."

"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision," the president said. "Saddam was a threat and the American people, and the world is better off because he is no longer in power."

Even though he is taking responsibility for flawed intelligence, it gives a wide diversion around the real issue. There is no way that he could have forgotten that the intelligence was wrong (see previous post French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence.

He takes responsibility for wrong intelligence. Is he also going to take responsibility for pushing the wrong intelligence as real evidence for invading Iraq? How about for lying to the American people?

This is the third in a series of speeches to boost support for the Iraq war and himself. This current term has been particularly bad for Bush and the GOP in general. With Delay's indictment, lobbies Indictment, Cheny's pro-torture agenda and the axe looming over Rove's head, George W. has had little time to worry about his own problems. He has personally been accused of appointing cronies without proper experience (IEEE FEMA director Michael Brown) and selling a lie to the American people.

Truth is, this does not go far enough to admit what his administration actually did. Which was con the American people

The full article can be found here:
CNN.com - Bush takes responsibility for invasion intelligence - Dec 14, 2005

Politics delayed troops dispatch to N.O.

Robert Travis Scott of The Times-Picayune writes:

The 82nd Airborne is "trained to deploy anywhere, at any time, to fight upon arrival and to win," according to the mission statement of the famous Army division based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

It's a force capable of launching a strategic mission into any area of the world with 18 hours of notification, so the question for many people is why it took President Bush five days to order the 82nd on the ground to deal with the lawlessness and human suffering that spread across New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.

The reason? Easy, Bush wanted to make himself look good and blanco wouldn't let it. I side with Blanco either way.

Was Gov. Kathleen Blanco too flustered and overwhelmed by the situation to communicate effectively with President Bush? Or was the White House more focused on political maneuvering than helping the citizens of New Orleans?

Blanco will face the controversy on a national stage Wednesday when she testifies before a congressional committee investigating the government's preparation and response to Katrina. Her appearance is preceded by her administration's recent release of thousands of documents, including e-mail messages, reports and hand-scribbled notes, that were requested by House and Senate panels.

In her 16-page overview of those documents, no topicconsumes the governor more than the policy decision of bringing federal troops such as the 82nd Airborne into New Orleans to supplement National Guard units.

The documents show that the White House delayed its decision to deploy federal troops while it pressured the nation's senior National Guard official to persuade Blanco to accept the president's hand-picked commander to run the entire response effort.

The records also reveal a Democratic administration in Baton Rouge seized with anxiety that the media, swayed by a Republican spin machine, would make it appear that the relief effort would improve overnight if the president took control, and that Blanco was dragging her feet to invite federal help.

"The (White House) spin is that this (is) state and local fault," Blanco Chief of Staff Andy Kopplin e-mailed to Blanco's top aides on Sept. 4.

Any paranoia that Blanco officials might have had about a GOP agenda was fed by phone calls and e-mail messages from national media and other sources. For example, an ABC News reporter wrote Blanco's press secretary, "2 senior GOP aides have called me to suggest we should be focusing more blame on Governor Blanco." A New York Times reporter wrote an e-mail message saying, "Several officials in Washington are asserting that the Federal Government should have assumed control of the overall operation . . . As it would have meant, they suggested, better coordination of the response."

GOP spin just to make the democrats look bad. People were hurt and suffering and all the GOP could think about was how to make themselves look better and the Democrats to look worse.

Link to full article is here:
Politics delayed troops dispatch to N.O.

Do You Know What It Means To Diss New Orleans - or Tick Off Dick Cheney?

RJ Eskow of the Huffington Post writes:

Why won't the Bush Administration help the Entergy Corporation in Louisiana? After all, they helped bail out the airlines after 9/11, and Entergy is led by a former Trent Lott crony, Curt Hebert, an advocate at the far right end of the free-market spectrum. Don't they usually come to the aid of a company - and a crony - in need?

What's different this time?

The government's rebuff of this corporation, which is led by a longtime Republican insider (albeit one appointed originally by a Democrat), appears inconsistent with their typical way of doing business.

There's more than one possible explanation for it, but it could be payback for crossing Dick Cheney and Ken Lay. Whatever you think of Entergy and whether or not you support helping them with federal money, it would be a shame if hurricane victims are hit yet again - with higher utility costs - as part of a political vendetta.

As the worst of the Enron-driven fiasco was laying waste to California (remember those traders gloating over screwing grandmothers out of their life savings?) Hebert was head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). He was quoted as saying at the time that "the good people of ... California are much smarter than anybody in Washington ever gives them credit for, and they know when to turn their lights off."

His statements reflected badly on the role of government as protector of the people's interests, but in that respect Hebert was certainly echoing the views of his Administration. So why has that same Administration, which has bailed out other corporations, turned on his company? Not only won't they step in, but they've made it clear that they'll refuse to let Congress help.

The rest of the post can be found here:
Do You Know What It Means To Diss New Orleans - or Tick Off Dick Cheney? | The Huffington Post

Deal reached at climate conference

CNN writes:

More than 150 nations agreed Saturday to launch formal talks on mandatory post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gases -- talks that will exclude an unwilling United States.

And once again, The Bush Administration feels it is superior to every person on the planet and only agrees to "enter a dialog".

For its part the Bush administration, which rejects the emissions cutbacks of the current Kyoto Protocol, accepted only a watered-down proposal to enter an exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat climate change. That proposal specifically rules out "negotiations leading to new commitments."

The parallel tracks represented a mixed result for the pivotal two-week U.N. conference on global warming, doing little to close the climate gap between Washington on one side, and Europe, Japan and other supporters of the Kyoto Protocol on the other.

"These countries are willing to take the leadership," Swiss delegate Bruno Oberle said of the Kyoto nations. "But they are not able to solve the problem. We need the support of the United States -- but also of the big emerging countries," a reference to China and other poorer industrializing nations not obligated under Kyoto.

But the Canadian conference president, Environment Minister Stephane Dion, said the decisions taken here amounted to "a map for the future, the Montreal Action Plan, the MAP."

The Montreal meeting was the first of the annual climate conferences since the Kyoto Protocol took effect last February, mandating specific cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases by 2012 in 35 industrialized countries.

The rest of the article can be found here:
CNN.com - Deal reached at climate conference - Dec 10, 2005

French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence

Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten and Bob Drogin of the L.A. Times writes:

More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigated at the CIA's request.

Chouet's account was "at odds with our understanding of the issue," a U.S. government official said. The U.S. official declined to elaborate and spoke only on condition that neither he nor his agency be named.

The whole article can be found here:
French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence - Los Angeles Times

Is adware all that bad?

Spywareinfo.com, which publishes a weekly newsletter, has written an article asking the simple question. Is adware bad? The companies have mounted a massive campaign trying to say no, adware is fine, it's spyware that's bad.

We need to mount an offensive attacking adware makers and the crap they install on our PCs without our permission.

Spywareinfo.com writes:

We put a good effort into turning "spyware" into a dirty word. They have put ten times the effort into making "adware" a good word. They want everyone to think of adware as something acceptable. They want us to believe that adware is vastly different from spyware.

It is time to stick a pin into this argument and burst a few bubbles. It is time to stop pretending that adware is any better or more benign than spyware.

What is the real difference between a program you would call spyware and another that you would call adware? The truth of the matter is that there is not a whole lot of difference.

The spyware will monitor your activity and report that information to its maker. The adware will not. Otherwise, it might as well be the same program. Same unannounced arrival. Same pop-ups. Same drain on the system resources. Same annoyances.

What causes people to complain about these programs? Are they up in arms because some company might learn that they like yellow toasters and visit certain sites over and over? In some cases, yes - that is exactly why some people are angered. But that really is not what causes the overwhelming majority of complaints.

People notice that their computer takes twice as long to start up. They notice that new, mysterious toolbars appear in their browser. They notice the ads, which pop up relentlessly the entire time the computer is turned on. They notice that their home page has changed and they are unable to change it back.

People do not remember installing the software responsible for all of this. They have lost control of their own computer and they do not understand how it happened.

Maybe they saw some sort of disclosure, maybe not. Maybe the software is monitoring their activities, maybe it isn't. Everything from spyware to adware to browser hijackers fit this description. When it happens to you, you really do not care what you are supposed to call it. You just want it to stop.

Adware often is installed by web sites that exploit browser flaws. This happens all the time. How can a company claim to be legitimate if, time after time, they make payments to people who install their software through security holes?

Rootkits often are installed to hide the adware files. This is done to prevent you from finding them. Why go to all that effort to hide legitimate software? Why would they want to hide it, unless they know that people do not want it?

Adware frequently will put several files into memory, so that if one process is terminated, another will restart it. If certain files or registry entries are deleted or changed, they will be changed right back. That makes it extremely difficult to remove these adware programs. Why do all that, if the program is legitimate?

A computer, with adware installed, becomes a pop-up factory. Window after window after window pops up. They never stop. It does no good to close them, because that simply causes more to open. So many pop-up windows will open that the computer literally runs out of memory and crashes. I have seen it happen with my own eyes. This is legitimate software?

It is time to stop pretending that adware is any less of an annoyance than spyware. It is time to stop pretending that people dislike adware merely because it is serving ads. It is time to stop pretending that adware is better than spyware. It is time to stop pretending that there is any significant difference between the two.

I have one more fact for you. 56,000 people have created more than 325,000 individual topics on the SpywareInfo message board, most of them asking for help to remove some unwanted software. Very few of the programs we have helped them to remove performed any spying. Nearly all of them easily fall under the label of "adware".

Let us stop pretending that there is a valid reason to distinguish between adware and spyware. Except for that one little detail, the two are identical. No amount of money spent in a public relations campaign will ever change that.

The whole editorial can be found here:
Spyware Weekly Newsletter : Dec 10, 2005

Nobel winners accuse Bush of ignoring science

This article tells a lot of things we already know. Bush ignores science and worries more about what big oil wants him to do. This crap we already know, but it's good to keep getting it out. Repeat, people! Repeat!

From CTV.ca:

Two American Nobel Prize winners said Thursday they are worried about U.S. President George W. Bush's attitude toward science and accused his administration of ignoring important research findings.

"There is a measure of denial of scientific evidence going on within our administration, and there are many scientists who are not happy about that," said Roy Glauber, who shared this year's physics prize with fellow American John Hall and Germany's Theodor Haensch. Their research on the quantum nature of light has resulted in more precise optical clocks and measuring systems, and is used in today's satellite positioning systems.

More "well, no shit" moments:

Glauber also said some U.S. Congress members are more concerned about the political consequence of research projects than their scientific importance when they decide where to allocate money.

"(The projects) are not evaluated scientifically, they are only evaluated politically," Glauber said, but did not give details on specific projects. He spoke at a news conference after the three physics laureates gave a lecture to students and fellow researchers at Stockholm University.

Hall agreed that the attitude toward science in the Bush administration "does not go in the right direction."

More of the Bush Administration's well know shortcomings can be found here:
CTV.ca | Nobel winners accuse Bush of ignoring science