Bad Deeds for 6-24-2008

 

President Bush Uses Executive Privilege To Block Subpoena Of EPA Documents – With a contempt of Congress vote looming by Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) House Oversight Committee, President Bush asserted executive privilege this morning to block the committee’s subpoenas for documents relating to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to override scientific recommendations on ozone standards.

Waxman’s committee had scheduled the 10 am business meeting to hold contempt votes for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and White House Office of Management and Budget regulatory administrator Susan Dudley. On May 20, Johnson appeared before the committee, without the subpoenaed documents and evading questions about Bush’s involvement.

Executive Privilege is not intended to protect the Executive branch, or its friends and allies from prosecution for illegal activities. Chairman Waxman is a true patriot, but now it’s time for the rest of our representatives on both sides of the aisle to step up and protect our constitution and country.

 

Bush Officials Committed War Crimes According to Investigating General – The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

Taguba declared that there was no longer any doubt whatsoever that President George W. Bush and others in the White House had committed war crimes “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account,” Taguba wrote. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”

Following the boss’ orders, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s office and in the badly named Department of Justice twisted and turned the words and the very meaning of those words in international treaties, in the Constitution, in the federal statutes and the military regulations so that interrogators in brightly lit prison rooms in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo as well as those secret CIA prisons hidden all around would be free to use the waterboard, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation, and all the other dirty little ways you can make a man scream and talk.

To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence.

 

McCain Wants to Give $300 Million to ExxonMobil – McCain is proposing a $300 million government prize to whomever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. First off, every energy and car company on the planet knows they’ll get rich by improving batteries. The world is probably already spending $1 billion a year to improve batteries. This $300 million prize is a pointless gimmick. But ExxonMobil says they have already made a real breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that solves the problem. So wouldn’t they get the $300 million? But the many other companies that are also working on improved batteries will probably also announce breakthroughs. Who wins then? Who decides?

 

Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South – People Sue Big Tobacco for damages; lawyer makes big money when case against tobacco is won; tobacco funds “tort reform” to limit lawsuits; tobacco money goes to Republicans; Republican appointed US Attorneys target Democrats and those that contribute to them; odd, repeated trials are held until a conviction is eventually obtained. This is complex, but you need to read the whole thing. This is not how the justice system is supposed to work in America.

 

Republicans Scream About Legality Of New Obama Logo…Yet They Already Use Three Similar Logos For Fundraising – The conservative Weekly Standard posted a rant is that Obama is breaking federal law by using the likeness of the presidential seal in his new seal. But, John McCain’s (R) own caucus — the National Republican Senatorial Committee — uses three different likenesses of the official seal…for fundraising purposes.

 

Technology Company Eavesdrops on Internet Users – An online advertising firm called NebuAd that pays ISPs to let it eavesdrop on web users doesn’t just passively record traffic, but actively injects fake packets into responses from other websites in order to deliver cookies to users, according to a technical report released by the advocacy groups Free Press and Public Knowledge.

Regards,
Jim