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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt, 1918 |
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Word of the Day
Conservative Hypocrisy In Larry Craig Scandal By Steve @ 10:10 am -- CST (8-31-07) Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct for lewd sexual conduct in a men's public restroom. In July, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) also admitted to a sexual crime - frequenting an escort service run by the DC Madam. As of today, five Republican lawmakers have called on Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign. In contrast, not one Republican lawmaker reprimanded Vitter after he admitted to soliciting a prostitute. He even received thunderous applause from Senate GOP colleagues during a policy lunch held a few days after his admission. | -------------------------------------------------- Judge to Unseal Secret Transcripts From Cunningham Trial By Steve @ 10:00 am -- CST (8-31-07) U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns has decided to unseal the transcripts of a secret court hearing for New York businessman Thomas Kontogiannis, an admitted co-conspirator of former congressman Randy Duke Cunningham. Kontogiannis paid Cunningham nearly $1 million in bribes, and admitted to bribery charges in Feb. 2007. The Kontogiannis have been at the center of a legal tug of war for months, with government prosecutors fighting to keep them under wraps. It's about damn time, when you go on trial it's the people vs a defendent, so everything in the trial should be made public, nothing should be secret. The people have a right to see what these crooks have done, and all judges should make everything public. | -------------------------------------------------- The Watering Down Campaign Begins By Steve @ 9:50 am -- CST (8-31-07) The Bush administration is already in full spin mode regarding the strikingly harsh GAO report on Iraq. An individual leaked the GAO report to the Washington Post because the source feared that the administration would try to water down its conclusions. As predicted, the Pentagon has begun the watering-down campaign. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said that after reviewing a draft of the Government Accountability Office report - which has not yet been made public - policy officials made some factual corrections and offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades assigned by the GAO. | -------------------------------------------------- DOJ Inspector General Will Continue Probe Into Gonzales By Steve @ 9:40 am -- CST (8-31-07) Earlier this month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked the Justice Department's Inspector General to investigate potentially false or misleading testimony given by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during his appearances before various congressional committees. Despite Gonzales resignation, Fine told Leahy today that his office will still assess Gonzales contradictory claims. | -------------------------------------------------- A Legacy of Legitimizing Torture By Steve @ 7:50 am -- CST (8-30-07) The resignation of the torturer in chief was noted by his patron, the president, as an unfortunate day for American democracy. "It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," President Bush lamented on Monday. What good name? After all, Bush picked Gonzales to be the nation's highest law enforcement official only after Gonzales had proved his mettle for the job as White House counsel. His legal advice to the president was that torture is a legitimate option, because Bush's self-defined "war on terror" wiped out all prior legal restraint and in particular "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." | -------------------------------------------------- Bush Lied About Education Funding For New Orleans By Steve @ 7:30 am -- CST (8-30-07) President Bush spoke yesterday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Math and Science to show how much he has done. This appearance marked the fourth time in a row that Bush has chosen a charter school as a backdrop for his Gulf Coast appearance. Bush proclaimed, "I come telling the folks in this part of the world we still understand the problems." He bragged that the federal government has provided Louisiana with $700 million in emergency education funds to rebuild the school system. But a new report by the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation finds that the Bush administration has largely shortchanged the Gulf Coast's schools: - The estimated cost of hurricane-related destruction in K-12 and higher education in Mississippi and Louisiana is $6.2 billion, but the federal government has provided only $1.2 billion. - Just 2 percent of the federal government's reconstruction funding went toward education recovery. - Foreign governments contributed $131.5 million to recovery funding for Louisiana colleges, slightly more than the $135 million contributed by the U.S. government. | -------------------------------------------------- Republican Senators Call For Craig To Resign By Steve @ 7:20 am -- CST (8-30-07) Norm Coleman (R-MN) and John McCain (R-AZ) have become the first members of the Senate to call for Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign over his arrest for lewd conduct in an airport bathroom. Craig, who was arrested in June, pled guilty to disorderly conduct on August 8, though the plea was kept secret until Roll Call newspaper broke the story on Monday. The Senate also forced Craig to step down from his senior position on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, as well as his ranking position on two subcommittees. As of today Craig has said he did nothing wrong, and he will not resign. | -------------------------------------------------- Spitzer And Schwarzenegger Write Bush to Expand SCHIP By Steve @ 7:10 am -- CST (8-30-07) Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) wrote a letter to President Bush, calling on him to reverse new rules instituted by his administration that deny thousands of children health care coverage. The recently proposed SCHIP rules will reverse longstanding agreements with the states and reduce the number of children who receive health care. | -------------------------------------------------- GAO Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals By Steve @ 7:00 am -- CST (8-30-07) Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration. The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved. The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. | -------------------------------------------------- Officer Found Not Guilty of Abu Ghraib Abuse By Steve @ 9:50 am -- CST (8-29-07) A court-martial on Tuesday ruled a U.S. Army officer was not responsible for abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, but was guilty of disobeying an order not to discuss an investigation into the case. A leading human rights group said prosecutors had performed poorly in the case and the fact Jordan was the only officer to face court-martial over Abu Ghraib was unacceptable. John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the U.S. government had not been serious about getting to the bottom of the Abu Ghraib scandal. "They just slapped a couple of wrists and they cleared all the officers who were in command of any wrongdoing. There was no real accountability," Sifton said. | -------------------------------------------------- Secret Service Issues Arrest To Students Who "Mooned" Rove By Steve @ 9:20 am -- CST (8-29-07) Moon Karl Rove, and you'll be arrested. When the politico spoke on American University's campus in April, he was met by a throng of angry Democratic students' behinds as they dropped trou and blocked Rove's motorcade. Most of the kids were given 40 hours of community service by the university, but on Friday, the cheeky group was notified that the Secret Service has issued warrants for their arrest. Details are bare, but the students are reportedly being charged with crossing a police line and disorderly conduct. | -------------------------------------------------- Judge Links Ben Stevens to FBI Probe By Steve @ 9:10 am -- CST (8-29-07) A federal judge has for the first time publicly linked former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, to the corruption investigation that has been underway since 2004. At the same time, a federal prosecutor revealed there are "multiple, ongoing nonpublic investigations" related to the ongoing inquiry into ties between Alaska lawmakers and the oil industry. The Stevens connection turned up in a legal filing in the Weyhrauch case, in which U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick acknowledged Ben Stevens role. | -------------------------------------------------- Housing Prices: Steepest Drop in 20 Years By Steve @ 9:00 am -- CST (8-29-07) Home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest rate of decline since Standard & Poor's began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the group said Tuesday. MacroMarkets Chief Economist Robert Shiller said the declining residential real estate market shows no signs of slowing down. | -------------------------------------------------- Petraeus Softened Intelligence Judgments About Level of Iraq Violence By Steve @ 2:20 pm -- CST (8-28-07) The Washington Post reports that Gen. David Petraeus, after reviewing an early draft of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, succeeded in altering the document's judgments about the violence in Iraq. Petraeus and other military officials have repeatedly suggested that sectarian killings in Iraq are down, touting the decline as proof of security progress in Iraq. Media reports, however, dispute the military claims, and the military has thus far refused to provide its statistics to resolve the matter. | -------------------------------------------------- Neocons One Step Closer to Attacking Iran By Steve @ 8:30 am -- CST (8-28-07) As should be expected, the neocons have shifted from one preposterous lie to another in order to prepare the way for eventually inflicting mass murder, mayhem, and misery on the people of Iran. In an effort to build congressional and Pentagon support for military options against Iran, the Bush administration has shifted from its earlier strategy of building a case based on an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program to one invoking improvised explosive devices purportedly manufactured in Iran that are killing US soldiers in Iraq. Intelligence and military officials caution that there is nothing tying the weapons directly to the Iranian government, nor is there a direct evidentiary chain of custody linking the IEDs to Iran. Even so, this is viewed by some in the Bush Administration as sufficient justification for taking military action against Iran. | -------------------------------------------------- Bush to Install Inexperienced Clay Johnson At Homeland Security By Steve @ 7:40 am -- CST (8-28-07) It was reported that very senior level sources inside the administration are saying that Chertoff will be replaced at Homeland Security by Clay Johnson, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget. Johnson, who has no homeland security experience, is nothing more than a professional Bush loyalist. He has no experience in the many responsibilities of the department, including immigration, air travel security, disaster response, and other aspects of our nation's homeland defense. | -------------------------------------------------- Craig Resigns From Position on Romney Campaign By Steve @ 7:30 am -- CST (8-28-07) Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) resigned yesterday as co-chairman for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, within hours after news broke of Craig's guilty plea to disorderly conduct after an incident in a men's bathroom. Conservative blogger and radio host Hugh Hewitt called on Craig to resign from the Senate. Craig's behavior is so reckless and repulsive that an immediate exit is required, Hewitt wrote. The Romney campaign also removed a video clip of Craig praising Romney from their website. | -------------------------------------------------- Republican Senator Larry Craig Arrested, Pleads Guilty By Steve @ 7:20 am -- CST (8-28-07) Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport for "lewd conduct" in a men's public restroom. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation. This bathroom is known for gay men having sex, Craig was arrested by an undercover police officer who was there to catch men having sex in the bathroom. Craig tapped his right foot. This is a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to the undercover officers foot. Craig moved his right foot so that it touched the side of the officers left foot which was within his stall area. | -------------------------------------------------- Evidence Suggests CIA Spiked Investigations By Steve @ 7:20 am -- CST (8-27-07) After years being withheld the Administration finally is forced to release the CIA's IG Report on 9/11. While earlier news accounts said the report would be released in early September it was released in the middle of a Congressional recess, in the middle of Summer break, thus insuring it will not receive the attention it deserves. Worse still is the conclusion in most press reports since its release that bolsters the official narrative ie. that all the myriad failures were simply due to 'systemic failure' and/or incompetence. | -------------------------------------------------- Alberto Gonzales Resigns By Steve @ 7:10 am -- CST (8-27-07) Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington. The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he's got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general. | -------------------------------------------------- Terror Suspect List Yields Few Arrests By Steve @ 7:40 am -- CST (8-26-07) The government's terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year. But only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list's effectiveness. Slightly more than half of the 20,000 encounters last year were logged by Customs and Border Protection officers, who turned back or handed over to authorities 550 people, most of them foreigners, Customs officials said. David Sobel, senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy organization, said the numbers "suggest a staggeringly high rate of false positives with respect to the identification of supposed terrorists." He added that "this really confirms the long-standing fear that this list is inaccurate and ultimately ineffective as an anti-terrorism tool." | -------------------------------------------------- Despite Escalation Iraqi Deaths Double By Steve @ 7:30 am -- CST (8-26-07) The Iraqi death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago. Compared to an average daily death toll of 33 in 2006, this year's numbers indicate 62 Iraqis have died in war-related deaths each day this year. The AP reports that the recent bloodshed indicates the insurgency has drifted into northern parts of Iraq as a result of the escalation in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the right-wing Brookings analyst Michael O'Hanlon wrote yesterday, "the trends [of Iraqi deaths] are moving significantly in the right direction, and the military is now doing a better job of measuring actual casualty levels." The AP states the military has offered no statistics to back its claim that violence levels are down. | -------------------------------------------------- Iraq Fraud Whistleblowers Vilified By Steve @ 7:20 am -- CST (8-26-07) A new AP investigation finds that despite the "staggering mess" plaguing Iraq reconstruction, people who have attempted to blow the whistle and clean up the fraud have been shunned by the federal government. One way to blow the whistle is to file a qui tam lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act. Signed by Abraham Lincoln in response to military contractors selling defective products to the Union Army, the act allows private citizens to sue on the government's behalf. The government has the option to sign on, with all plaintiffs receiving a percentage of monetary damages, which are tripled in these suits. But the government has not joined a single quit tam suit alleging Iraq reconstruction abuse, estimated in the tens of millions. At least a dozen have been filed since 2004. | -------------------------------------------------- |
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