Tom Delay keeps running away, but he can’t hide – FBI agents continue to interview aides to former Rep. DeLay, offering immunity in exchange for testimony, individuals close to the investigation say. Justice officials ask whether former aides paid the Texas Republican’s wife $3,200 a month for a no-show job at their lobbying firm.
White House has used the Justice Department to restrict voting and help Republicans – For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates. In the face of strong voter registration drives from left-leaning organizations, the Bush administration “alleged widespread election fraud” and pushed proposals at the state and federal level that would make it tougher for people, especially minorities, to vote. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Former White House Chief of Staff refuses to testify to Congressional Committee but appeared on ‘The Daily Show’ – Rep. Henry Waxman announced today that he’ll consider issuing four subpoenas in a meeting this coming Wednesday, April 25. In a letter to one subpoena target, the Oversight Committee Chairman complained that a former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card appeared on Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show,’ but has so far refused to testify before his committee.
After Tillman death, Army Went Into Information Lockdown – Within hours of Pat Tillman’s death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman’s uniform.
Global Warming is Most-Likely Cause of Australia’s Drought – An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia’s major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said Friday. Scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, which threatens the survival of Australia’s prime agricultural zone, was strengthening. Farmers say that unless drenching rains fall within weeks, the drought will devastate grape, citrus, stonefruit and apple production, cripple the wine industry and see food prices soar. “Well, we’ll never prove it’s climate change until after the event but a lot of farmers have said this drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it,” the government’s Murray-Darling Basin Commission chief Wendy Craik said.
Bush Administration Has Incredible String of Bad Luck with Missing Documents and Videos – Do you see a pattern here? Documentation of bad deeds lost hidden, or that were claimed to never existed, later (sometimes) found during investigations.
Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards …
Political advisers to President Bush may have improperly used their Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, and some communications that are required to be preserved under federal law may be lost …In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period …
…what happened to a crucial video recording of Padilla being interrogated in a U.S. military brig that has mysteriously disappeared? The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence …
Key documents are missing from the batch of newly declassified documents the White House released this week on its policies on torture and the treatment of prisoners, …The Pentagon sought Sunday to explain why some 2,000 pages were missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates …
Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records …
[Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael] Brown’s comments about the president surfaced in a transcript of an Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials today after they initially told Congress that no such document existed. . . .A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show. For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. …
The White House failed to archive some e-mails in accordance with normal procedures in 2003 …
The video follow-up from Keith Olbermann:
Quicktime
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey