The WAWG Blog

Justice Dept. Withholding More Than 170 Documents Related to Attorney Firings – The Justice Department has notified Congressional investigators that it is withholding more than 170 documents related to the ouster of eight United States attorneys, on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to turn them over. According to a list provided by the department, the documents withheld include exchanges last January between D. Kyle Sampson, then the attorney general’s chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, then White House counsel.

Cheney Pushed the Country to War in Iraq Without Ever Conducting a Serious Debate – George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the U.S., nor “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Fox News to Help Pick Republican Party Debate Participants – Fox News will have a say in deciding which Republican presidential candidates participate in next month’s debate in South Carolina. The debate participants must have “garnered at least 1 percent in recent state and national polls leading up to the registration deadline, as determined by Fox News Channel and the South Carolina Republican Party,” according to Rob Godfrey, the state party’s communications director. In a variety of national and state polls, seven of the 10 candidates hover around 1 percent or less. Only Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney easily meet the criteria based on polling. The standard has the potential to bar several candidates from the debate and anger the lesser-known GOP hopefuls.

Long History of Racists Comments From Rush Limbaugh Continues

Warmongers Don’t Want to Talk About It – At the end of Bill Moyers’ documentary “Buying the War,” he asked all the warmongers to come on and explain themselves.

BILL MOYERS: We wanted to talk to some others in the media about their role in the run up to warÂ….Judith Miller, who left the TIMES after becoming embroiled in a White House leak scandal declined our requestÂ…on legal grounds. The TIMES’ liberal hawk Thomas Friedman also said no. So did Bill Safire, who had predicted Iraq would now be leading the Arab world to democracy. President Bush recently awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

THE WASHINGTON POST’s Charles Krauthammer also turned us down…so did Roger Ailes the man in charge of FOX NEWS.. He declined because, an assistant told us, he’s writing a book on how Fox has changed the face of American broadcasting and doesn’t want to scoop himself.

Noecon William Kristol led the march to Bagdad behind a battery of Washington microphones. He has not responded to any of our requests for an interviewÂ…but he still shows up on tv as an expert, most often on FOX NEWS.

He gave them a chance to defend their positions. They declined because they can’t defend the indefensible.

Neocon Bill Kristol Tried to Get President Bill Clinton to Invade Iraq – If at first you don’t succeed. try again … with the next president.

Regards,

Jim

U.S. Prison Chief in Iraq Charged with ‘Aiding Enemy’ – A U.S. Army officer who was commander of a military prison in Iraq has been charged with giving a cell phone to suspected insurgents who were detained there, a charge described as “aiding the enemy,” according to the U.S. military. Lt. Col. William H. Steele, who was commander of the U.S. Army’s Camp Cropper, also was charged with having an improper relationship with a detainee’s daughter and an interpreter and possessing pornography. The four charges also accuse Steele of possessing and mishandling classified information, disobeying an order, and not doing his duty in the approval of funds.

White House Held Multiple GOP Election Briefings at Gov’t Agencies – White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday. A nearly identical briefing given at the General Services Administration last January – attended by GSA chief Lurita Doan – has triggered an investigation by the Office of Special Counsel to determine whether it violated the federal law barring the use of taxpayer-funded resources for partisan purposes.

US Officials Exclude Car Bombs in Touting Drop in Iraq Violence – Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the Bush administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Overall, statistics indicate that the number of violent deaths has declined significantly since December; nearly all of that decline, however, can be attributed to a drop in executions, most of which were blamed on Shiite Muslim militias aligned with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which have since been ordered by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to stand down. Meanwhile, the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show – up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.

US Wants Tighter Limits on Guantanamo Lawyers’ Access to Clients and Evidence – Claiming that visits by civilian lawyers have caused unrest among the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and have improperly served as a conduit to the news media, a Justice Department filing proposes imposing new, even stricter limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence. The proposed changes would, among other things, limit lawyers to only three visits with their client (there is currently no limit), and allow U.S. intelligence officers to read any and all attorney-client communications. The proposal would also reverse existing rules to permit government officials, on their own, to deny the lawyers access to secret evidence used by military panels to determine that their clients were enemy combatants.

Iraq Refuses to Give Casualty Figures to UN – The Iraqi government has refused to provide the United Nations with civilian casualty figures for its latest report on the hardships facing Iraqis, the U.N. said Wednesday, but numbers from various ministries indicate that more than 5,500 people died in the Baghdad area alone in the first three months of this year, apparently indicating an increase in Baghdad civilian deaths in recent weeks after an ebb when a new security plan was launched in February.

Dirty Air for Washington, D. C., Courtesy of Congress – The U.S. Capitol Power Plant, operated by Congress, is the only coal-burning plant in the District of Columbia and is a major source of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and soot in a city that has repeatedly been found in violation of the Clean Air Act. In 2002, the most recent year for which figures were available from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the Capitol Power Plant was the second-largest fixed source of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide in the District. Sulfur dioxide is a primary component of acid rain and an ingredient in smog. Carbon monoxide, a factor in smog and global warming, can cause breathing problems and damage plants. But any efforts to eliminate coal have been thwarted by two of the most powerful figures in the Senate, who just happen to represent coal-producing states: Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Resurrects Cold-War Language: Calls Russians “Soviets” – There’s nothing like a diplomat being un-diplomatic. Does our Secretary of State, who allegedly holds a PhD in International Studies, think that the Soviet Union still exists?

Hannity and Colmes Make False Statements About PBS’ Bill Moyers – On Fox News, 4/24/07, Hannity and Colmes went after Bill Moyers over his upcoming documentary on PBS, Buying The War, about the role of the media in the run-up to the Iraq war. During the introduction, Alan Colmes said, “The fact is, (Moyers’) work is done on the taxpayers’ dime.” Hannity said, “It’s the fact that tax dollars are gonna be used here, Brent Bozell. So he can selectively edit to make his left-wing case, to support his left-wing agenda and we’re paying for it.” In concert with the conservatives, the chyron that ran at the bottom of the screen intermittently throughout the discussion read, “Tax payers pay up as Bill Moyers returns to PBS.” Moyers has said he takes no public money to do his show. Hannity & Colmes have not made a retraction. You can contact them at hannity@foxnews.com, colmes@foxnews.com, comments@foxnewscom.

How the Mainstream Media Helped Bush Sell the Invasion of Iraq

On Fox News, neocon Bill Krystol Says Our Soldiers in Iraq Are Fighting Al Qaeda, Not Sunnis and Shias – On Fox and Friends, host Brian Kilmeade said of Iraq, “Al Qaeda is there and they are there by the thousands.” Guest Bill Krystol went on to make the point that our soldiers were not getting shot by Sunnis and Shias, we were fighting Al Qaeda over there. (Where do they get their figures from? The State Department has said that the foreign fighters in Iraq were only around 5 to 7%.)

2004 Election Tampering – There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio’s “official” Secretary of State website – which gave the world the presidential election results – was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Bush Nominates Anti-Consumer Pro-Industry Lobbyist to Head the Consumer Products Safety Commission – The Consumer Products Safety Commission was supposed to protect you and me and our families (and our pets) from dangerous, unsafe products. Now, President Bush has nominated Michael Baroody – one of Corporate America’s leading anti-consumer henchmen – to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Rudy Giuliani’s Fear mongering
Hear what Keith Olbermann says about Rudy Giuliani’s statement that the election of any Democrat would mean the country would be back on defense.     Quicktime     Windows Media Player

Bush Distorted George Tenet’s ‘Slam Dunk’ Comment – Ex-CIA director George Tenet has lashed out against the Bush administration, accusing it of distorting his pre-Iraq War claim that the existence of weapons of mass destruction was a “slam dunk.” “The phrase ‘slam dunk’ didn’t refer to whether Saddam Hussein actually had WMDs,” Tenet said. “He says he was talking about what information could be used to make that case when he uttered those words. ‘We can put a better case together for a public case. That’s what I meant,'” Tenet explained. “It’s the most despicable thing that ever happened to me,” the former CIA director is quoted as saying. “You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me.”

Utah County GOP Delegate Links Illegal Immigration to Satan – Don Larsen, a Republican district chairman, has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to “Satan’s plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion” for debate at Saturday’s Utah County Republican Party Convention. The resolution refers to a plan by the devil for a “New World Order … as predicted in the Scriptures.”

Regards,

Jim

Republican Representative’s Aide Accepted Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Gifts from Lobbyist Jack Abramoff – A former congressional aide pleaded guilty Tuesday to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff in an influence-peddling scandal that has touched the White House, Interior Department and congressional Republicans. The former Republican aide is the fifth congressional staffer to plead guilty in the Abramoff scandal, including two ex-aides to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Tom Delay’s “Treasonous” Rant Against Harry Reid is Just Plain Crazy – This giggle-fest from Tuesday’s “Tucker” was priceless. Guests Pat Buchanan and A.B. Stoddard simply couldn’t contain their laughter before or after watching a video taped interview with Tom Delay where he claims that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are “very very close to treason.” When the interviewer suggests that treason is a pretty serious charge Tom assures him that he’s right because he “looked it up while we were driving over here, what the definition of treason is.” Pure comedy gold. With video.

US to Make History Trying Alleged Child War Criminal – The U.S. has decided to file murder charges against Omar Khadr, a Canadian national and alleged Taliban fighter who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed lawyer says the U.S. would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations if a trial went ahead, and points out that one conspiracy charge against his client is based on acts allegedly committed before the age of 10.

Worker Safety Regulations Dramatically Loosened Under Bush Administration – Under the Bush administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say, a trend they credit to the administration’s habit – by now familiar – of appointing former industry officials and lobbyists to regulatory posts. Since Bush took office, OSHA has imposed only one major safety rule, while the only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court. At the same time, the agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others.

Bush Supports Alberto Gonzales in Order to Maintain Executive Power – As the White House continues its efforts to maximize its executive power, the president’s willingness to withstand his own party’s disdain for Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales probably springs not from loyalty but from self-interest. Since it is the Justice Department that ultimately passes judgment on questions of presidential power, confirmation hearings for any replacement would be likely to cast new scrutiny on the administration’s past excesses while possibly revealing new, previously hidden abuses of power.

Fox News’ Brit Hume Falsely States That Congress Has NO War Powers – Last night (4/24), Fox News Special Report host Brit Hume said, “In a paragraph of the United States constitution that makes no mention of Congress — the founding fathers decreed that ‘the president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.’ What Hume is neglected to mention is Article I, Section 8 (Powers of Congress) of the Constitution, which states numerous powers of Congress with regard to the military and war.

Bill O’Reilly Falsely Charges That George Soros Funds MediaMatters.org – O’Reilly charged on 4-23-07, that George Soros funds MediaMatters.org. Media Matters responded: “As previously indicated, Soros has never given money to Media Matters, either directly or through another organization.”

Regards,

Jim

Tom DeLay Says Top Democrats Are Acting Like Traitors [More Bush enemies]– Democratic leaders are acting like traitors by opposing the Iraq war, and President Bush must answer with a toughened stance, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Monday. Delay praised the president, but had harsh words for his handlers: “If they let George W. be George W., he’d be just fine.” “It’s not good enough to defeat somebody politically or vilify him publicly,” DeLay said. “They’ve got to carpet-bomb you and drive you out of office, disgraced, bankrupt, your family busted up, headed to jail.” But DeLay quickly added that he’s not complaining or whining.
Comment: DeLay is wrong because he has been complaining and whining non-stop for months. But he is right about “headed for jail.” – JLV

Neo-Conservatives Work Their Way Through the Ten Steps To Close Down Our Open Society – It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy – but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

The Political Bad Deeds Led by Karl Rove – The Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove. The question of improper political influence over government decision-making is at the heart of the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys and the ongoing congressional investigation of the special e-mail system installed in the White House and other government offices by the Republican National Committee. All administrations are political, but this White House has systematically brought electoral concerns to Cabinet agencies in a way unseen previously. For example, Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country. Some officials have said they understood that they were expected to seek opportunities to help Republicans in these races, through federal grants, policy decisions or in other ways.

Follow-up: Rove’s Investigator Is Under Investigation – Who is Scott Bloch, and should his vow of investigating Rove be taken at face value? Bloch is a George W. Bush appointee, and his recent record is not one of a relentless pursuer of government corruption and wrongdoing. What’s up here?

MSNBC Ignores Their Success; Looks To Emulate FOX News – MSNBC may be considering Michael Smerconish as the replacement for Don Imus. Do we need another fact-challenged pundit that goes out of his way to smear liberals? Have they not internalized the results of the last election? Why are they ignoring the fact that the show on MSNBC with the rising ratings in the money demographic is Countdown, a show thankfully devoid of conservative punditry in lieu of news? Please, unless you really want another apologist for the Republican party on the air, let the management of MSNBC know who you’d rather see get Imus’s slot. Remember, nasty-grams are easy to dismiss and ignore. Being polite and reminding them of the advertising potential of the demographic they shouldn’t be ignoring will get you much further.

Ninety Days Ago, House Minority Leader John Boehner Said We Would Know if the Iraq Surge Was Working in 60 to 90 Days – TIMES UP! – Ninety Days Ago, Boehner told CNN, “I think it will be rather clear in the next 60 to 90 days as to whether this plan is going to work. And, again, that’s why we need to have close oversight, so that we just don’t look up 60 or 90 days from now and realize that — that this plan is not working. We need to know, as we — as we’re — we move through these benchmarks, that the Iraqis are doing what they have to do.”

Regards,

Jim

Down and Dirty with Republican Candidates Down South – Vote buying, astroturfing, anonymous attacks — the 2008 Republican contenders keep hitting each other below the belt in South Carolina.

Bush Says His Confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Has Increased as a Result of Gonzales’ Testimony – “The Attorney General went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer, in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job,” the President said in a brief press stake-out. What reality is Bush in? Apparently, it’s the same one he uses to view events in Iraq.

Government Indictment Against Padilla ‘Very Light on Facts’ – At a pretrial hearing in which defense attorneys for accused would-be “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla complained about the ethereal nature of the alleged conspiracy, U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke seemed to agree telling prosecutors that the indictment “is very light on facts.” For their part, prosecutors in the case say that the charges against the defendant – whose competency to carry out a conspiracy, let alone stand trial, has been widely questioned – are based on a crime that they call “hard to particularize.”

Republicans Continue to Embrace Corruption and Unethical Behavior – The abrupt resignations last week of Republican House members John Doolittle and Rick Renzi from their sensitive committee assignments have thrust lingering legal and ethics issues back into the limelight, potentially complicating GOP efforts to retake Congress next year (Doolittle’s case, in particular, shows some worrisome parallels to that of former congressman Bob Ney Doolittle and Renzi disclosed, on successive days, that the FBI had conducted raids on family businesses; meanwhile, Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) are already the targets of federal investigations, and two other Republican lawmakers face possible ethics inquiries into charges that they pressured former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias – since fired – to indict Democrats before last year’s elections. According to one Republican congressman, “everybody’s kind of a little bit numb… there’s this, ‘What else can happen now?’ feeling going around here.”

Evidence indicates that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs in US Attorney firings – Absent another explanation, the signs point to the White House and, at least in some degree, to the president’s political adviser, Karl Rove. David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House’s role is the logical next step – one that would follow existing clues about Rove’s involvement.

Sheryl Crow and Laurie David Step Between Karl Rove and His Dinner Plate; Watch Out! – At the White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner Saturday, Sheryl Crow and Laurie David asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to their dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there. As the debate intensified, Crow tried to calm things down but was drawn into the debate with Rove instead. Approached afterward about the exchange, Rove said he was enjoying it all, “if I can get to my meal.” More. Even more.

If You Don’t Understand President Bush, It’s Because You’re Not Plucking Chickens – “If you’ve got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I’m talking about.” – President George W. Bush, April 19, 2007

Have You Seen Me?

Habeas Corpus
Date of Birth: c.1215
Parents: Magna Carta, Constitution
Missing Since: 10/17/06
Last Seen: Washington, D. C.

Sign petition to restore our constitutional rights

Regards,

Jim

The following information is taken from: Sourcewatch and Right Web.

Sourcewatch excerpts:

… The following year [1981] he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense in the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan. During the presidential campaign of George W. Bush, Perle served as a foreign policy advisor.

In February 2002, the dispute [as an Israeli agent of influence] spilled over into the Washington Post’s editorial pages, with one writer blasting the ‘toxic’ charge that Israel was unduly influencing President Bush’s Iraq policy. A Post editorial responded by pointing out that Perle, who was chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, and two other Bush policy men, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and David Wurmser, a State Department special assistant, had in 1996 participated in Likud policy deliberations. Under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a Likud-leaning Israeli think tank, the three helped come up with a paper, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which declared that “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” was an “important Israeli strategic objective in its own right as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” (Clean Break spells out the reconfiguration of the Middle East into an Israeli sphere of influence, and the document is viewed as the basis upon which PNAC was formulated. The Israeli designs would only be feasible if the United States provided the muscle and the resources, and thus the nexus between these two plans. Clean Break also undermined all the negotiating efforts to obtain a negotiated solution with the Palestinians.)

… Whether or not Perle speaks for Bush, the president’s recent reasoning on Iraq follows a pattern found in Perle’s writings, particularly in a lengthy piece for Israel Insider, which uses numerous non-sequiters[sic] in its emotionally-charged connection of Saddam to terrorist activity.

… Perle is fighting off the impression that he was trying to use his Pentagon influence to profit from a war that he is doing all he can to implement. [Seymour] Hersh criticized Perle’s relationship with Trireme as an ethical conflict of interest, to which Perle responded by calling Hersh “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.”

Perle is also associated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which backs Bush’s Iraq war push. Others with the foundation are columnist Charles Krauthammer,the Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and Georgia senator Zell Miller. …

The wide-ranging Perle even finds himself involved in Total Information Awareness technology. … Congress forbade such technology to be used against Americans.

Mr. Perle has received some heat due to a possible conflict of interest with serving on the Defense Policy Board and being hired as an advisor for Global Crossing. … Perle maintained that he had not violated any ethics rules, but decided to resign his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Board on March 26, 2003 ….

… On March 29, 2003, The New York Times reported that Perle was involved with Loral Space and Communications in 2001 as an advisor while it faced accusations that it transfered rocket technology to China. …

In a press conference held on March 25, [2004,] to promote the book [Battle Ready], both Clancy and Zinni singled out the Department of Defense for criticism. Clancy recalled a prewar encounter in Washington during which he “almost came to blows” with Richard Perle …

Right Web excerpts:

Richard Perle is widely considered a core representative of the neoconservative political faction; he played a central role in championing the war in Iraq and an aggressive war on terror centered on the Middle East in the wake of 9/11. Once dubbed the “Prince of Darkness” because of his advocacy of extremely hawkish anti-Soviet policies while in Ronald Reagan’s Department of Defense, Perle’s former post as chairman of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’ s Defense Policy Board (DPB) in the years leading up to the Iraq War gave him a privileged perch from which he helped shape Bush administration foreign policies.

Echoing the efforts of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Perle convened a meeting of the DPB shortly after the attacks to produce policy alternatives for the administration. Perle invited as a guest to the classified meeting Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who was a longtime confidant of Perle’s …. Commenting on this apparent coordination in and outside the administration, Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn wrote: “It appears that after 9/11, the network of hawks and neoconservatives that had coalesced around PNAC’s founding agenda had mobilized in a highly coordinated way to fashion the administration’s response to the terrorist attacks and rally the public behind their new agenda” (see “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives,” Right Web Analysis, November 17, 2006).

Like many neoconservatives, Perle seems to have been particularly influenced by his views of the Holocaust …. Said Perle in a 2003 interview with BBC: “For those of us who are involved in foreign and defense policy today, my generation, the defining moment of our history was certainly the Holocaust. It was the destruction, the genocide of a whole people, and it was the failure to respond in a timely fashion to a threat that was clearly gathering. We don’t want that to happen again; when we have the ability to stop totalitarian regimes we should do so, because when we fail to do so, the results are catastrophic” (Jim Lobe, “Moral Clarity of Moral Abdication?” TomPaine.com, May 11, 2005). Similarly, in his 2004 book An End to Evil , he and coauthor David Frum argued: “For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause … There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust” (Jim Lobe, “From Holocaust to Hyperpower,” Inter Press Service, January 26, 2005).

In an op-ed for the New York Times Perle wrote: ” … This means precise military action against Hezbollah and its infrastructure [By Israel in 2006] in Lebanon and Syria, for as long as it takes and without regard to mindless diplomatic blather about proportionality.”

Perle has for decades supported the work of a number of hardline think tanks and advocacy groups, including the Committee on the Present Danger, PNAC, AEI, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Hudson Institute, and the Center for Security Policy.

In 2001, Perle also signed the now notorious post-9/11 PNAC letter to President Bush arguing that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a ‘safe zone’ in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.”

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

Windows Media Player

Regards,

Jim

Republican Senator Connected to Prosecutor’s Dismissal – The Senate on Tuesday confirmed that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is the subject of a “preliminary inquiry” over his involvement in the firing of former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. The Senate Ethics Committee had previously refused to confirm whether or not Domenici was under scrutiny for a phone call he made to Iglesias, prior to the November election, inquiring whether Iglesias was going to indict some New Mexico Democrats.

Republicans Request Delay in Vote on Immunity Grant for Goodling – Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said yesterday that the panel will vote next week on a plan that would grant immunity to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s former White House liaison Monica Goodling, who has so far refused to testify about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors. Conyers had originally planned to hold the vote today, but agreed late yesterday to a request from the panel’s Republicans to postpone it a week. A two-thirds majority on the committee would be required to grant her immunity. The panel has 22 Democrats and 17 Republicans.

Republican senators block Medicare bill – Legislation that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices stalls without vote.

US Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher says, “I HOPE IT’S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE” to those who question the Bush Administration’s unlawful extraordinary rendition policies – Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American.

US frees convicted bomber wanted by Cuba, Venezuela – We’re tough on terrorist, … uh, depending on who they’re terrorizing.

Why does the Bush administration have a list of everyone who has gotten a prescription for anti-depressants? – This paragraph is in an ABC News story about the Virginia Tech killer, “Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government’s files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.” They don’t even have a list of gun owners, but they have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants? And, the article suggests that this isn’t just a database of patients who use anti-depressants, it’s a federal database of every prescription drug you’ve ever bought.

St. Paul Minn. is getting the “Hospitality Suites” ready for us – In preparation for the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, a funding request includes more than $80,000 for chain link fence to build outdoor holding areas for protesters. The sheriff expects to arrest between three and five thousand protesters during the convention. They seem to be splitting the difference between recent examples. In 2004, six protesters were arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, while approximately 10,000 were arrested during the RNC in New York City.

And here’s a comment from a reader of the above article:

I was literally just walking down the street in Manhattan and got swept up with everyone on my side of the street for two blocks during the RNC in 2006. I was just trying to get to work. I was shoved, cuffed, sworn at, booked, printed and photographed. Now, I have a criminal record… to go along with my doctorate and the recently ruined Brooks Brothers suit.

In situations like these, the police don’t want to think or care. Oh, and BTW, I WAS a Republican.

Republican Places Secret Hold on Senate Electronic Disclosure Bill – On April 17, Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein brought S.223, the Senate electronic disclosure bill, to the floor for a unanimous consent vote. When they asked if there was any objection Sen. Lamar Alexander filling in for the minority leadership, announced that he had an objection, indicating that some Senator in the Republican caucus has placed a secret hold on the disclosure bill.

Regards,

Jim

Bill O’Reilly and Tom DeLay Together – O’Reilly renewed his attacks against Rosie O’Donnell on 4/16/07 with the help of Tom DeLay for comments she made on The View. O’Reilly called O’Donnell ” the queen of mean” and “out of control” telling viewers in the tease that DeLay wanted her fired from ABC. He showed a clip of O’Donnell making the point that O’Reilly had called Mexicans ” wetbacks” which she considered racist and another clip of her making a brief sarcastic remark about DeLay’s ethical challenges. Tom DeLay talked about suffering through 11 years of these attacks from left wing groups and people like Rosie O’Donnell who ” carpet bomb” people unfairly. DeLay said we need ‘honest commentary” because the left is ” never held accountable”.

Pentagon ordered contractor to hire Wolfowitz friend – The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department’s policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq. Wolfowitz, an Iraq war architect who left the Pentagon in 2005 to become president of the World Bank, is under fire for overseeing a high-paying promotion for Riza after he took the helm of the poverty-fighting global lender.

Bush Lawyers Say Bush Can Exclude Whoever He Wants From Attending His Speeches – Even though the speech is a taxpayer-funded event, you can be barred.

Logging decimates African rainforest – The world’s second largest rainforest — a haven of biodiversity and one of the planet’s vital safeguards against runaway global warming — is being devastated by illegal logging, environmentalists have warned. More than 15 million hectares of central African forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been given away to international logging companies since a moratorium sponsored by the World Bank was agreed in 2002, causing “social chaos environmental havoc.” According to the 2002 deal, the government of the DRC agreed not to issue any further logging licenses or to renew any existing contracts in return for $90 million in World Bank development aid. But Greenpeace estimated that up to 100 logging contracts had been issued since the moratorium was due to come into force. It also fears many of those could be legalized as part of a review subsequently initiated by the World Bank.

Conservatives Fear That the “Fairness Doctrine” May Return to Public Broadcasts – There’s nothing that scares Conservatives more than fairness. The Fairness Doctrine, which was enacted in 1949 by the FCC and eliminated during the Reagan administration, required broadcasters to give equal time to dissenting opinions. Its abolition is credited with the explosion of conservative talk radio in the 1980s. At the Next Conservatism Forum, conservatives were already thinking of ways to fight back. One idea was using misleading language such as saying the opposite of the Fairness Doctrine is the Freedom Doctrine.

Oliver North Attacks Nancy Pelosi Over Trip To Iran She Does Not Intend To Make – Only on FOX News would a guy like Oliver North, convicted of deceiving Congress about illegal sales of arms to Iran with profits being channeled to the Nicaraguan Contras (his conviction was later overturned on a technicality), be presented as a credible critic of any unofficial contact Nancy Pelosi might make with Syria or Iran. Yet Fox allowed North to accuse Pelosi of consorting with Iran for supposedly considering a trip there – even though she had already said she does not intend to go. There was no mention of North’s questionable record on the subject of Iran or his conduct of non-authorized foreign policy nor was any balancing view of Pelosi provided to the audience. With video.

They Decided Not to Brag About That Anymore
About a week ago, TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University boasted that 150 of its graduates, including former top Deptartment of Justice aide Monica Goodling, are serving in some capacity in the Bush administration. According to Google cache, as recently as April 12, Regent’s “facts” web page included seven bullets noting graduates in various political positions, with the seventh noting, in all bold letters, “150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration.” As of yesterday, the same page is identical, except the seventh bullet has been deleted. Regent stopped bragging about staffing the administration almost immediately after someone from the media noticed. Is Regent suddenly embarrassed to be associated so closely with the Bush administration, or is the administration suddenly embarrassed to be associated so closely with Regent? Also in this blog.

Regards,

Jim

Gonzales Claims Contradicted Again – The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys has told congressional investigators that – despite Atty. General Alberto Gonzales’s public claims to the contrary – several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a meeting attended by Gonzales. One day before he faces Congress in a last-ditch effort to restore his credibility, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans think Gonzales is lying and should lose his job.

DOJ Documents Contradict Sampson, Describe Effort to ‘Muddy Coverage’ – The latest document dump from the Justice Department is barely a couple hours old, and has already yielded two gems: first, an e-mail from Gonzales’s former chief of staff Kyle Sampson suggesting replacements for seven U.S. attorneys sent nearly a year before their dismissal, contradicting Sampson’s congressional testimony. Then there’s the e-mail from the DOJ’s spokeswoman to top White House officials, describing the Department’s efforts to “muddy the coverage” of the fired prosecutors’ qualifications one day before several of those prosecutors appeared before Congress.

Report: France Warned US of Al Qaeda Plot in Early 2001 – A French intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al-Qaeda was working on a plot to hijack U.S. airliners and passed the information on to the CIA, according to a report published Monday in French newspaper Le Monde, citing 328 pages of classified reports on the terrorist network written up between July 2000 and October 2001.

The Decider can’t decide – Asked at a recent news conference about congressional war powers, President Bush acknowledged that lawmakers are “exercising [their] legitimate authority” in seeking a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, seemingly contradicting a March 19 White House statement that such bills are an unconstitutional challenge to the President’s authority.

American Enterprise Institute fellow continues to claim links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaida terrorists – Richard Perle, the American Enterprise Institute fellow who helped build the case for the Iraq War prior to the US invasion in 2003, appeared on CNN’s ‘Late Edition’ with Wolf Blizter last night and continued to cling to the existence of links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al Qaida terrorists.

White House wants it ‘difficult for people to vote’ – On Sunday’s edition of ABC’s This Week, pundit Robert Reich suggests the core issue behind the US attorney firings and missing White House emails. Reich says, “I think the question here is that once you start asking, ‘Should the emails have been disclosed?’ — ‘Which emails to disclose?’ — is that the public loses sight of what the big issue is in the background.” Reich continues, saying, “The issue at stake here has to do with what the White House was trying to do with the US attorneys. What the White House was trying to do in terms of, perhaps, creating a public image of voter fraud across this country that would entitle the White House to make it more difficult for people to vote.

Ultra-Conservative Bill Kristol says Don Imus controversy is spectacle of liberalism in America – Fox News employee Bill Kristol, a founding member of the Project for a New American Century and a founder, together with Fox’s Rupert Murdoch, of the Weekly Standard magazine, which is owned by Fox’s parent company News Corp., weighed in on the Don Imus controversy last night (April 15, 2007) on Fox News Sunday. Kristol said, “I think this has been such a spectacle of vulgarity and idiocy and pomposity and hypocrisy on all sides, that it’s hard to believe anything good will really come out of it but it’s been fun for conservatives to watch. You know, basically it’s just been an incredible spectacle of liberalism in America. …”

Ann Coulter to get Coulter $30,000 plus travel expenses to preach hate and intolerance at a university – The Livingston Economic Club (LEC) has opted to pay Coulter $30,000 plus travel expenses to preach hate and intolerance to a crowd of 200+ at Cleary University in October. Even worse, Coulter kicks off the Cleary University Founders Week Celebration. Contact the Livingston Economic Club at lec@cleary.edu, or call them at 734.929.9107, if you think that Coulter is over the line on decency. More contacts to e-mail or call at the link below:

Regular watchers of Fox News found to be among least knowledgeable Americans – A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that Americans who scored the highest in knowledge of national affairs were regular watchers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.

Click on image for more survey results

Wolfowitz: An Example of NeoCon Principals in Microcosm – The saga of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank really is indicative of the US under neo-con control: A crony with fairly insubstantial bona fides within the arena is appointed to a position of critical importance on the world stage solely on the basis of his connections to ideological brothers. He then bullies and pushes his own arrogant notions, alienating his colleagues and promotes more cronies (and love interests) without regard to appearances. Then when the house of cards inevitably comes tumbling down, he pleads ignorance or cries victim and must send out other cronies to argue for his job. How many times have we seen this pattern–with very little variation–play out again and again in the Bush White House? There is one passage in a Washington Post report that may be a much larger issue than his promoting of his girlfriend:

“Both staff and management also have raised concerns over what several described as Wolfowitz’s insistence that the bank accelerate its lending to Iraq and open an office there.

A principal architect of the Iraq war as deputy defense secretary during President Bush’s first term, Wolfowitz has pressed the issue in the bank against strong concerns about security and poor governance in Iraq.”

Regards,

Jim