Bad Deeds for 8-6-2007

Neocon Bill Kristol Thinks Everything is Fine With America’s Infrastructure; But He Also Thinks Everything is Fine in Iraq – Fox News political contributor Bill Kristol, appearing on the August 5 broadcast of Fox News Sunday, made comments minimizing the significance of a bridge collapse in Minnesota last week. There was some discussion on the show that some of the money squandered on Iraq could have been used to upgrade America’s infrastucture. Kristol prefers bombing bridges to inspecting and repairing them. “I don’t think this symbolizes any great failure of our infrastructure,” said Kristol. “Once every twenty five years some bridge falls down unexpectedly due to engineering problems and it is unfortunate obviously but the idea that the whole country is crumbling is not, I think, credible.”

Fox News Chief Roger Ailes Admits He’s Been Floating “Disinformation the Last Nine Months.” – With The Wall Street Journal and a new business network, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News chief Roger Ailes plan their next move: all-out war. One of the founding ideas of this country was the free press. But when a large part of the press is controlled by one person, it is no more free than if the government controlled it.

New Law Gives Administration More Power to Spy on You – Cheney and Bush are happy to divide the country. They mean to play their hand to the end and they do not take no for an answer. Compromise with them, and you are the one who is compromised. Congress’ latest compromise means the FISA court will be permitted to review the president’s wiretaps only after the fact; and the court is restricted to a generic review of the warrants, with no power to inquire into individual cases. And the “target” need not be a suspected terrorist. If the administration believes a U.S.-to-foreign conversation might serve some kind of intelligence-gathering purpose, it can go ahead and eavesdrop without oversight.

Among Democrats who voted to give more spying power to the Bush Administration was Nick Lampson. – This law will come up for review in six months, so let him know if you are not happy.

After Wiretapping Victory, Bush says He Wants More Spying Authority From Congress – The day after President George W. Bush marshaled political forces in Congress to grant him greater authority to engage in counterterrorism-related spying, the president stated that he would seek greater changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when the legislative branch returns to work in September.

Most Job Openings Are Low-Paying – The Washington State Employment Security Department’s April survey of job vacancies found that, of the 87,447 openings reported statewide, 46 percent paid less than $10 an hour; another 26 percent paid between $10 and $15 an hour. Though registered nurses, with a median hourly wage of $23.55, were most in demand, the next highest-demand jobs were cashiers, farmworkers and retail salespeople — all offering a median wage of $8 an hour.

You Have Less Than 30 Days Left to Preserve Your Rights to the 7th Amendment to the United States Constitution – In about the mid-1990’s the homebuilders exploited a huge loop-hole in the Federal Arbitration Act which encourages the use of alternative dispute resolution instead of the court system. Since then homebuilders have inserted mandatory binding arbitration clauses in their contracts barring homebuyers from the time honored court system guaranteed by the Constitution. This has been followed by credit card companies, employment contracts, insurance, hospitals, and Comcast. You have 30 days from the date Comcast mailed a letter to you to opt out of their kangaroo court binding arbitration.

Here’s the opt-out form :

Bush Plan to Ignore Criminal Contempt Charges May be Illegal – A report issued last week by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service casts doubt on the Bush administration’s claim that assertions of executive privilege protect current and former White House officials from criminal contempt citations by Congress. The report states, “The assertion that the legislative history of the 1857 statute establishing the criminal contempt process demonstrates that it was not intended to be used against executive branch official is not supported by the historical record.”

US is Operating Like a Third-World Dictatorship – Putting political opponents in jail is the sort of thing that happens in third-world dictatorships. In the United States, prosecutions are supposed to be scrupulously nonpartisan. This principle appears to have broken down in Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department — where lawyers were improperly hired for nonpolitical jobs based on party membership, and United States attorneys were apparently fired for political reasons.

As an example, Don Siegelman, a former Alabama governor, was the state’s most prominent Democrat and had a decent chance of retaking the governorship from the Republican incumbent. He was aggressively prosecuted by both the Birmingham and Montgomery United States attorney’s offices. Birmingham prosecutors dropped their case after a judge harshly questioned it. The prosecution may have been a political hit. A Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson, has said in a sworn statement that she heard Bill Canary, a Republican operative and a Karl Rove protégé, say that his “girls” — his wife, the United States attorney in Montgomery, and Alice Martin, the United States attorney in Birmingham — would “take care” of Mr. Siegelman. Mr. Canary also said, according to Ms. Simpson, that Mr. Rove was involved.

Check Up on your Representative and Senators (They May Have Bad Deeds) – The ProgressivePunch website shows the performance of members within 160 different issue categories, and detailed vote descriptions, thereby empowering you to zero in on what matters to you.

Regards,

Jim