Terrorism Policies Split Democrats
Anger Mounts Within Party Over Inaction on Bush Tactics
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/29/AR2007082902355.html?hpid=topnews
A growing clamor among rank-and-file Democrats to halt President Bush's most controversial tactics in the fight against terrorism has exposed deep divisions within the party, with many Democrats angry that they cannot defeat even a weakened president on issues that they believe should be front and center.
The Democrats' failure to rein in wiretapping without warrants, close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay or restore basic legal rights such as habeas corpus for terrorism suspects has opened the party's leaders to fierce criticism from some of their staunchest allies -- on Capitol Hill, among liberal bloggers and at interest groups.
At the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress yesterday, panelists discussing the balance between security and freedom lashed out at Democratic leaders for not standing up to the White House. "These are matters of principle," said Mark Agrast, a senior fellow at the center. "You don't temporize."
The American Civil Liberties Union is running Internet advertisements depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as sheep.
"Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along. I guess that's why they call us the Democratic leadersheep," say the two farm animals in the ad, referring to Congress's passage of legislation granting Bush a six-month extension and expansion of his warrantless wiretapping program.
Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), who leads a newly created House select intelligence oversight panel, lamented, "Democrats have been slow to recognize they are in the majority now and can go back to really examine the fundamentals of what we should be doing to protect democracy."
Reid and Pelosi promised last week that they would at least confront the president next month over his wiretapping program, with Pelosi taking an uncompromising stand in a private conference call with House Democrats. When lawmakers return in September, Democrats will also push legislation to restore habeas corpus rights for terrorism suspects and may resume an effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But conservative Democrats and some party leaders continue to worry that taking on those issues would expose them to Republican charges that they are weak on terrorism. And advocates of a strong push on the terrorism issues are increasingly skeptical that they can prevail.
"I don't think it's that we're reluctant to take on Bush," said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), a senior member of the House intelligence committee. "I think it's we are reluctant to take on each other. . . . If I can fast-forward to September, October, November, December and see where we'll be, we'll be nowhere."
Said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (Va.): "I would've thought the administration would have been bereft of credibility by now, but they seem to be able to get what they want from this Congress."
The terrorism issue came to a head early this month in an explosive final closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting before the August recess. Reps. Hastings, Moran, Melvin Watt (N.C.), John F. Tierney (Mass.) and Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) pleaded with party leaders not to bring to a vote a White House bill extending the administration's authority to listen in on electronic communications from abroad without a warrant.
Conservative Democrats, including Rep. Allen Boyd (Fla.), argued just as vociferously that Democrats dare not leave on vacation without passing the White House bill.
"The most controversial matters are the ones that people use to form their opinions on their members of Congress," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who voted for the administration's bill. "I do know within our caucus, and justifiably so, there are members who have a real distaste for some of the things the president has done. But to let that be the driving force for our actions to block the surveillance of someone and perhaps stop another attack like 9/11 would be unwise."
The administration's bill passed 227 to 183, with 41 Democrats joining all but two Republicans in favor.
Such divisions will not be easy to bridge in the coming weeks. Republicans have said that Democrats who are trying to close the Guantanamo Bay prison want to import terrorists to Americans' back yards. And they have said that those pushing to restore habeas corpus rights want to give terrorists the legal rights of U.S. citizens.
"People say to me, 'Well, what about the 30-second spots?' " said Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referring to attack ads. He is pushing a bill to restore habeas corpus.
"If you just say you're standing up for civil liberties, the American people are with you, but if you say terrorism suspects should have civil liberties, it stretches Americans' tolerance," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who along with Hastings represents Congress on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights monitor. "It's a tough issue for us."
Pelosi signaled last Thursday that she is serious about revisiting the warrantless-wiretapping law, which expires in January. In a rare recess conference call with House Democrats, she opened the session by having John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, lay out his schedule for hearings on the issue, starting right after the break. She also instructed Conyers; Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee; and other committee chairmen to move quickly on draft legislation.
In the Senate, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) are reviving their bill to give the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court exclusive authority over wiretapping, with new provisions to enhance the government's ability to tap e-mail and other modern forms of communication.
Because the January deadline will force legislative action, some Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they can prevail this time. "I'm hopeful. Am I sanguine? Certainly not," Nadler said.
But others are pessimistic. Hastings said that Congress will probably be consumed with the Iraq war through the fall. He predicted that administration officials will announce that the current permissive law has thwarted terrorist attacks and saved lives but will withhold details as classified.
"Then Bush walks all the way to the end of his administration with no changes," he said.
If anything, the habeas corpus and Guantanamo Bay issues will be tougher. In June, nearly 150 House Democrats signed a letter by Moran urging the shuttering of the prison. But Moran said last week that he no longer thinks he could muster the votes to pass the measure, even though the move is supported by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Republicans appear to have won the argument with their accusation that Democrats want to import terrorists.
A restoration of habeas corpus rights may have a better chance. Leahy said he will push the issue next month, and legislation co-sponsored by Conyers and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is likely to move through their committees this fall.
But political fear still hovers over any legislation that touches on the fight against terrorism, which, for Democrats, may be the new third rail of politics.
"We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Democrats FAIL to Hold Bush Accountable for dismal Katrina - New Orleans redevelopment debacle...
In one of the textbook examples of Democratic Party COMPLICITY with the corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration, Democrats in Washington DC are practically VOICELESS at expressing OUTRAGE over the CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT rebuilding and redevelopment efforts in New Orleans following the August 2005 disaster when rains from Hurricane Katrina weakened the levees - the FEDERAL LEVEES - around New Orleans and burst those levees, drowning huge swaths of the city. The Democratic "leaders" in the Senate have YET TO APOLOGIZE to American taxpayers for ALLOWING the CONFIRMATION of Republican crony Michael Brown - "Heckuva job, Brownie" to be the nation's FEMA Director - Brown having NEVER HAD ANY DISASTER EXPERIENCE.
HOW could such an unqualified HACK become the director of the nation's multi-billion dollar civilian disaster relief organization?
answer: BECAUSE OF DEMOCRATIC "leadership" NEGLIGENCE if not corruption and Dereliction of Duty, the abject FAILURE of Democrats to FILIBUSTER the Brown nomination to be the Director of FEMA, despite is gross lack of qualification!
Anger, sadness mark Katrina anniversary
By Cain Burdeah, Associated Press Writer
August 28, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070829/ap_on_re_us/katrina_anniversary;_ylt=AugfsH8g9z9dqyViOsOqXCKs0NUE
NEW ORLEANS - On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, anger over the stalled rebuilding was palpable throughout a city where the mourning for the dead and feeling of loss for flooded homes, schools, snow cone stands, old-time hairstylists and hardware stores doesn't seem to subside...
HOW could such an unqualified HACK become the director of the nation's multi-billion dollar civilian disaster relief organization?
answer: BECAUSE OF DEMOCRATIC "leadership" NEGLIGENCE if not corruption and Dereliction of Duty, the abject FAILURE of Democrats to FILIBUSTER the Brown nomination to be the Director of FEMA, despite is gross lack of qualification!
Anger, sadness mark Katrina anniversary
By Cain Burdeah, Associated Press Writer
August 28, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070829/ap_on_re_us/katrina_anniversary;_ylt=AugfsH8g9z9dqyViOsOqXCKs0NUE
NEW ORLEANS - On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, anger over the stalled rebuilding was palpable throughout a city where the mourning for the dead and feeling of loss for flooded homes, schools, snow cone stands, old-time hairstylists and hardware stores doesn't seem to subside...
Demcrat "leaders" do NOTHING to reverse "PRIVATIZATION" of US military, giving life-and-death powers to MERCENARIES in war zone...
Make no mistake: the Democratic "leadership," which is to say the inside-the-beltway Democrats, are doing NEXT TO NOTHING to CONFRONT and slow-down the relentless Bush-Cheney administration attempts to PRIVATIZE functions that for 2 centuries Americans assumed were part of the US military:
<< Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar.
In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own private legions — soldiers, intelligence analysts, security guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. — in effect, a “mercenary” force bought and paid for by the American taxpayer. >>
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/28/3466/
Indeed, regarding Iraq and the Bush-Cheney occupation of that country, Democrats in Congress - and on the campaign trail - are now jumping on the "COUP! - REMOVE MALAKI!" bandwagon, once again carrying water for the latest Bush/neo-con dreams of expanded occupation and imposition of a neo-colonial "anschloss," or seizure, of the real levers of Iraq's power and economic resources (oil).
It is, once again, a FULL-COURT PRESS of the same characters who got us into the Iraq war in the first place: the Bush-Cheney administration and Republicans in Congress; the war-cheerleading corporate media, and Democrat "leaders" such as Dick Durbin, Pattrick Leahy, Joe Biden, Kent Conrad, and others, who believe that "bipartisanship" on Capital Hill is MORE IMPORTANT than providing America with a GENUINE OPPOSITION PARTY regarding the gross failures and criminal corrupton of the Bush-Cheney administration.
<< Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush Administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar.
In short, CheneyBush have created what amounts to their own private legions — soldiers, intelligence analysts, security guards, construction experts, supply specialists, et al. — in effect, a “mercenary” force bought and paid for by the American taxpayer. >>
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/28/3466/
Indeed, regarding Iraq and the Bush-Cheney occupation of that country, Democrats in Congress - and on the campaign trail - are now jumping on the "COUP! - REMOVE MALAKI!" bandwagon, once again carrying water for the latest Bush/neo-con dreams of expanded occupation and imposition of a neo-colonial "anschloss," or seizure, of the real levers of Iraq's power and economic resources (oil).
It is, once again, a FULL-COURT PRESS of the same characters who got us into the Iraq war in the first place: the Bush-Cheney administration and Republicans in Congress; the war-cheerleading corporate media, and Democrat "leaders" such as Dick Durbin, Pattrick Leahy, Joe Biden, Kent Conrad, and others, who believe that "bipartisanship" on Capital Hill is MORE IMPORTANT than providing America with a GENUINE OPPOSITION PARTY regarding the gross failures and criminal corrupton of the Bush-Cheney administration.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Ted Nugent, promoting "American values" talks about KILLING Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama...
Ted Nugent: "Hillary, you might want to ride one of these (machine guns) into the sunset, you worthless bitch." STUPID, COWERING Democrat "leaders" have NO RESPONSE, NO PUSHBACK, NO OUTRAGE to such blatantly hate-mongering comments by a noted REPUBLICAN PARTY and NRA SPOKESMAN.
The damn Democratic "leadership" STILL has no reliable media stream to COUNTER the DISGUSTING Right-Wing attack politics, of which Ted Nugent talking about using a MACHINE GUN on Hillary Clinton and/or Barak Obama is only the latest example.
Democratic "leaders" like Senator Biden, Senator Durbin, Senator Leahy, Senator Kerry, and others always manage to NOT NOTICE as Right-Wing Republican Party SPOKESMEN make horrendous comments (or, in this case, threats) against Democrats. Just the other day, Senator Leahy praised Seantor Lieberman, who is only one-half step away from Republican 2004 convention keynote speaker Zell Miller who shouted during that keynote Republican speech that "Democrats want to arm the troops with spitballs!"
The fact that Zell Miller had been a former DEMOCRATIC governor only proves the DEMOCRATIC TENDENCY to BETRAY Democratic voters and American citizens who depend on an HONEST, AGGRESSIVE, and VOCAL _OPPOSITION PARTY._
Earlier this week, Senator Dick Durbin said he considered Republican death-squads advocate JOHN BOLTON to be a "close friend and an honorable man" - despite Bolton's frequent characterizations of Democrats as godless appeasers if not cowards, and Bolton's recurrent insistence that the United States should immediately bomb Iran (without UN approval, a declaration of war, or any formalities of international statesmanship.)
AS LONG AS THEY CAN STAY OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE, established, Senior Democratic leaders PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE the GROSS OUTRAGES and ABUSES of the Republican Party and its atrocious spokespersons.
Even when former Vietnam DRAFT EVADER Ted Nugent makes BLUNT THREATS to the safety of two of this year's top Democratic presidential candidates.
FOR SHAME, DEMOCRATS! You have SURRENDERED the HIGH GROUND in the "moral values" battle to those whose hypocrisy is glaring and obvious to the whole world!
=======================================
Facing a draft, Nugent bravely wet his pants
Rocker Ted Nugent is all talk as he calls Obama, Hillary vile names
BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist
August 27, 2007
http://www.suntimes.com/news/roeper/529419,CST-NWS-roep27.article
So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama "a piece of -----" and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" and Dianne Feinstein a "worthless whore."
That Nugent, he's a man's man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?
Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!
Ah, but that was a long time ago. Nugent isn't just a washed-up rocker -- he's a right-wing madman who's not afraid to call out some of the leading Democrats in language so vile it makes the Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush sound like a love poem.
You'd think even someone such as Sean Hannity would dismiss Nugent as a macho clown, desperate for attention.
Yeah, right.
In a discussion on his show last week, Hannity refused to condemn Nugent's remarks, saying, "I like Ted Nugent . . . he's a friend of mine," and even laughing loudly as Alan Colmes read the transcript of some of Nugent's remarks.
Funny. I don't remember Hannity being so cavalier about the Dixie Chicks went they criticized Bush.
Not that he's operating under a double standard or anything.
A different kind of high school text
If you're the parent of a junior high or high school student and your kid has a cell phone, odds are you can tell some version of this story.
Your child reaches a certain birthday, and you agree it's time for the kid to have that cell phone she's been asking for since she was about 4.
When she opens the present, she tells you how much she loves you.
As soon as the phone is activated, she disappears into a world of frantic text-messaging with her friends. When they call the house, she says, "Text me!" and hangs up immediately -- because today's kids are much more comfortable texting or instant messaging than talking on the phone, let alone interacting in person.
A month goes by. The first bill arrives at the house. It's thicker than an issue of Vanity Fair.
Somehow, your child has managed to rack up thousands of text messages.
Next comes the sitdown with the child, in which you attempt to put limits on the number of calls (and especially the number of text messages) per month.
Either the child adheres to the new rules -- OK, stop laughing -- or you get another statement listing thousands of text messages and calls. (Teenagers have a unique ability to operate in a state of denial. They KNOW that bill will arrive, but they'll worry about it later.)
Texting one two three
At that point, the parent takes away the cell phone, and the child tells the parents they are the worst parents in the history of parenting.
I have heard amazing stories about teenagers and text messaging. Stories of kids who rack up 7,000 messages in a single month. Stories of high school students visiting college campuses -- and never looking up during the visit because they're too busy texting. Stories of kids attending baseball games, weddings, birthday parties, etc., and spending the entire event hunched over the communications device, firing away message after message after message.
According to Guinness, the world record for most text messages in a single month is a ridiculous 182,689, held by one Deepak Sharma, a teenager from Ludhiana, India. That's a new SMS message every 14 seconds, which seems impossible, but there you have it.
I'm sure it hasn't gotten that crazy in your house. But I would like to hear your horror tales of teen texting gone mad.
If you're a teenager (or a twentysomething) and you were/are addicted to texting, I'd like to hear your all-time record for most messages logged in a month.
If you're the parent of such a child, I'd like to hear from you as well. I'll publish some of the stories in a future column -- but I won't embarrass anyone, and I'll protect your identity, if you so desire.
Probably the best way to reach me is via text message -- kidding. You know how to get in touch with me.
Richard Roeper will be a guest on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" today on NBC.
Monday, August 27, 2007
America's invasion of Iraq could lead to GLOBAL WAR - says Bush's own Ambassador to UN
Middle East turmoil could cause world war: U.S. envoy
Mon Aug 27 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070827/pl_nm/mideast_khalilzad_dc_1
VIENNA (Reuters) - Upheaval in the Middle East and Islamic civilization could cause another world war, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was quoted as saying in an Austrian newspaper interview published on Monday.
Zalmay Khalilzad told the daily Die Presse the Middle East was now so disordered that it had the potential to inflame the world as Europe did during the first half of the 20th century.
"The (Middle East) is going through a very difficult transformation phase. That has strengthened extremism and creates a breeding ground for terrorism," he said in remarks translated by Reuters into English from the published German.
"Europe was just as dysfunctional for a while. And some of its wars became world wars. Now the problems of the Middle East and Islamic civilization have the same potential to engulf the world," he was quoted as saying.
Khalilzad, interviewed by Die Presse while attending a foreign policy seminar in the Austrian Alps, said the Islamic world would eventually join the international mainstream but this would take some time.
"They started late. They don't have a consensus on their concept. Some believe they should return to the time (6th-7th century) of the Prophet Mohammad," he was quoted as saying.
"It may take decades before some understand that they can remain Muslims and simultaneously join the modern world."
Khalilzad was also quoted as saying Iraq would need foreign forces for security for a long time to come.
"Iraq will not be in a position to stand on its own feet for a longer period," he said in the interview.
Asked whether that could be 10-20 years, he said: "Yes, indeed, it could last that long. What form the help takes will depend a lot on the Iraqis. Up to now there is no accord between Iraq and the United States about a longer military presence."
Khalilzad said the chaos in Iraq since U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003 was not unavoidable but arose from mistakes in the initial period of occupation.
"Historians are discussing now whether we should have sent more troops to Iraq to preserve law and order, if it was right to dissolve the Iraqi army, if we should have built an Iraqi government quicker, if there should have been such a sweeping de-Baathification program (removing Saddam-era officials)."
Mon Aug 27 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070827/pl_nm/mideast_khalilzad_dc_1
VIENNA (Reuters) - Upheaval in the Middle East and Islamic civilization could cause another world war, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was quoted as saying in an Austrian newspaper interview published on Monday.
Zalmay Khalilzad told the daily Die Presse the Middle East was now so disordered that it had the potential to inflame the world as Europe did during the first half of the 20th century.
"The (Middle East) is going through a very difficult transformation phase. That has strengthened extremism and creates a breeding ground for terrorism," he said in remarks translated by Reuters into English from the published German.
"Europe was just as dysfunctional for a while. And some of its wars became world wars. Now the problems of the Middle East and Islamic civilization have the same potential to engulf the world," he was quoted as saying.
Khalilzad, interviewed by Die Presse while attending a foreign policy seminar in the Austrian Alps, said the Islamic world would eventually join the international mainstream but this would take some time.
"They started late. They don't have a consensus on their concept. Some believe they should return to the time (6th-7th century) of the Prophet Mohammad," he was quoted as saying.
"It may take decades before some understand that they can remain Muslims and simultaneously join the modern world."
Khalilzad was also quoted as saying Iraq would need foreign forces for security for a long time to come.
"Iraq will not be in a position to stand on its own feet for a longer period," he said in the interview.
Asked whether that could be 10-20 years, he said: "Yes, indeed, it could last that long. What form the help takes will depend a lot on the Iraqis. Up to now there is no accord between Iraq and the United States about a longer military presence."
Khalilzad said the chaos in Iraq since U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003 was not unavoidable but arose from mistakes in the initial period of occupation.
"Historians are discussing now whether we should have sent more troops to Iraq to preserve law and order, if it was right to dissolve the Iraqi army, if we should have built an Iraqi government quicker, if there should have been such a sweeping de-Baathification program (removing Saddam-era officials)."
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Nancy Pelosi, your 110th Congress is DESPISED by American citizens, for FAILING to reign in the Bush-Cheney-Rove thugs....
Congratulations, Nancy Pelosi. You have fallen in the TRAP of the arrogant, pompous, and self-important Democratic senators: you believe what all the sycophants around you (the DC lobbyists, campaign managers, political action committees, etc.) tell you, and that has reduced your Congress to what the Democratic Senate has become these past 6 years - an impotent, cowering debating body that on most important issues CAVES IN to the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House at the FIRST HINT of trouble.
Congratulations, Nancy: you are TURNING OFF Democratic and Independent voters and activists by the thousands.
Which must lead to the question: like Judith Miller at the New York Times, who was relentlessly hyping EVERY "Saddam has WMDs!" allegation and conjured-up factoid tidbit from the White House propaganda operation (including the "WIG" or White House Iraq group, and Douglas Feith's "OSP" Office of Special Plans over at the Pentagon) - are you, too, RECEIVING PAYMENT from the Bush government? (Note: WE KNOW that the CIA spends hundreds of thousands of dollars paying American journalists as sources and mouthpieces for favorable, 'insider' coverage. While it has never been, and may never be, proven that Judity Miller was one of those American reporters receiving secret payments from the CIA domestic propaganda operation, the great congruence of Miller's reporting with the pro-invasion desires of the CIA under Vice President Cheney's close supervision simply demands that that possibility be left open in discussing Ms. Miller's tenure as a lead, front-page reporter for the Times) - ARE YOU TOO, on the secret government payroll?
We don't believe that you, Madam Speaker, are depressing Democratic- and Independent voter approval because of corruption or bribery, but merely because of ingorance and inertia.
Like the "leaders" over in the Senate, it is FAR EASIER to DEFER to the Bush White House, than to, for example, take on the military-industrial industry, the AIPAC lobby, or (heavens forbid) the media conglomerates, which Democrats have let spin out of control over the past 2 decades. (The media conglomerates can now effectively MAKE or BREAK any candidate they want simply by relentlessly giving an individual candidate either positive or negative coverage; the "Dean scream" receiving airplay 24/7 for 3 straight weeks being the text-book example.)
Well, regardless of the EXCUSE, the 100th Congress is a REFLECTION of NANCY PELOSI's leadership. She has taken the Washington DC political maxim - the FIRST LAW of national politics, "POWER: USE IT OR LOOSE IT" - and decided NOT to use the impeachment process, thereby LOSING the power the Constitution signers SPECIFICALLY gave to Congress....
....THE most important power of the entire Constitution: the power to REIGN IN an abusive government, before the need for violent revolution that all the framers had recently undergone.
Ms. Pelosi, CONGRATULATIONS on your 18% approval rating. You have now matched Vice President Cheney's cellar ratings - the man who only gave Enron license to loot California, did NOTHING to prevent 9-11 after being warned, in person, by the National Security Advisor, 'Counter Terror Czar,' and Director of Central Intelligence that "Al Qaida is determined to attack in America," and, just to confirm that all the above weren't some sort of shadowy nightmare on our part, then shot his own friend in the face during a day of hunting.
Congress Approval Rating Matches Historical Low
Just 18% approve of job Congress is doing
by Jeffrey M. Jones
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
August 21, 2007
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=28456
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds Congress' approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.
That 18% job approval rating matches the low recorded in March 1992, when a check-bouncing scandal was one of several scandals besetting Congress, leading many states to pass term limits measures for U.S. representatives (which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional). Congress had a similarly low 19% approval rating during the energy crisis in the summer of 1979.
Americans' evaluations of the job Congress is doing are usually not that positive -- the vast majority of historical approval ratings have been below 50%. The high point was 84% approval one month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Americans rallied behind the federal government. Since then, Congress' approval ratings have generally exhibited the same downward trajectory seen in those for President George W. Bush. Currently, 32% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a far cry from the record-high 90% he received in September 2001. Bush's current job approval rating is just three percentage points above his lowest.
There was a slight interruption in the downward trend in congressional approval ratings at the beginning of this year when party control changed hands from the Republicans to the Democrats following last fall's midterm elections. In January 2007, 35% of Americans approved of Congress, a significant increase from the 21% who approved of Congress in December 2006. That December rating tied the lowest in the 12 years the Republicans controlled Congress from 1995 to 2006.
But that "honeymoon" period for the new Democratically controlled Congress was brief, as its job ratings dropped below 30% in March 2007 and have now fallen below where they were just before the Democrats took over.
Frustration with Congress spans the political spectrum. There are only minor (but not statistically meaningful) differences in the approval ratings Democrats (21%), Republicans (18%), and independents (17%) give to Congress. Typically, partisans view Congress much more positively when their party is in control of the institution, so the fact that Democrats' ratings are not materially better than Republicans' is notable.
The nine-point drop in Congress' job approval rating from last month to this month has come exclusively from Democrats and independents, with Democrats' ratings dropping 11 points (from 32% to 21%) and independents' ratings dropping 13 points (from 30% to 17%). Republicans' 18% approval rating is unchanged from last month.
The decline in congressional job approval could merely reflect the cessation of any public good will it engendered when the new leadership arrived in January, since the current 18% rating is similar to what it was in December 2006 (21%).
But, it could also reflect disappointment with the new Congress' performance (especially among Democrats) and economic unease.
Americans elected the Democrats as the majority party in Congress in November 2006's midterm election in large part due to frustration with the Iraq war and an ineffective and scandal-plagued Republican-led Congress. But any hopes that the elections would lead to change have not been realized as Democrats' repeated attempts to force a change in Iraq war policy have been largely unsuccessful due to presidential vetoes, disagreements within their own party, and the inability to attract Republican support for their policy proposals. Also, many of the Democratic leadership's domestic agenda items have not become law even though some have passed one or both houses of Congress.
As the trend in congressional approval makes clear, ratings of Congress usually suffer during times of economic uncertainty, as during the late 1970s and early 1990s. While Americans' ratings of current economic conditions are not near historical lows, there is a great deal of concern about the direction in which the economy is headed. The latest poll finds a record 72% of Americans saying the economy is "getting worse."
Survey Methods
These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted August 13-16, 2007. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?
Approve
Disapprove
No
opinion
Congratulations, Nancy: you are TURNING OFF Democratic and Independent voters and activists by the thousands.
Which must lead to the question: like Judith Miller at the New York Times, who was relentlessly hyping EVERY "Saddam has WMDs!" allegation and conjured-up factoid tidbit from the White House propaganda operation (including the "WIG" or White House Iraq group, and Douglas Feith's "OSP" Office of Special Plans over at the Pentagon) - are you, too, RECEIVING PAYMENT from the Bush government? (Note: WE KNOW that the CIA spends hundreds of thousands of dollars paying American journalists as sources and mouthpieces for favorable, 'insider' coverage. While it has never been, and may never be, proven that Judity Miller was one of those American reporters receiving secret payments from the CIA domestic propaganda operation, the great congruence of Miller's reporting with the pro-invasion desires of the CIA under Vice President Cheney's close supervision simply demands that that possibility be left open in discussing Ms. Miller's tenure as a lead, front-page reporter for the Times) - ARE YOU TOO, on the secret government payroll?
We don't believe that you, Madam Speaker, are depressing Democratic- and Independent voter approval because of corruption or bribery, but merely because of ingorance and inertia.
Like the "leaders" over in the Senate, it is FAR EASIER to DEFER to the Bush White House, than to, for example, take on the military-industrial industry, the AIPAC lobby, or (heavens forbid) the media conglomerates, which Democrats have let spin out of control over the past 2 decades. (The media conglomerates can now effectively MAKE or BREAK any candidate they want simply by relentlessly giving an individual candidate either positive or negative coverage; the "Dean scream" receiving airplay 24/7 for 3 straight weeks being the text-book example.)
Well, regardless of the EXCUSE, the 100th Congress is a REFLECTION of NANCY PELOSI's leadership. She has taken the Washington DC political maxim - the FIRST LAW of national politics, "POWER: USE IT OR LOOSE IT" - and decided NOT to use the impeachment process, thereby LOSING the power the Constitution signers SPECIFICALLY gave to Congress....
Ms. Pelosi, CONGRATULATIONS on your 18% approval rating. You have now matched Vice President Cheney's cellar ratings - the man who only gave Enron license to loot California, did NOTHING to prevent 9-11 after being warned, in person, by the National Security Advisor, 'Counter Terror Czar,' and Director of Central Intelligence that "Al Qaida is determined to attack in America," and, just to confirm that all the above weren't some sort of shadowy nightmare on our part, then shot his own friend in the face during a day of hunting.
Congress Approval Rating Matches Historical Low
Just 18% approve of job Congress is doing
by Jeffrey M. Jones
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
August 21, 2007
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=28456
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds Congress' approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.
That 18% job approval rating matches the low recorded in March 1992, when a check-bouncing scandal was one of several scandals besetting Congress, leading many states to pass term limits measures for U.S. representatives (which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional). Congress had a similarly low 19% approval rating during the energy crisis in the summer of 1979.
Americans' evaluations of the job Congress is doing are usually not that positive -- the vast majority of historical approval ratings have been below 50%. The high point was 84% approval one month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Americans rallied behind the federal government. Since then, Congress' approval ratings have generally exhibited the same downward trajectory seen in those for President George W. Bush. Currently, 32% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a far cry from the record-high 90% he received in September 2001. Bush's current job approval rating is just three percentage points above his lowest.
There was a slight interruption in the downward trend in congressional approval ratings at the beginning of this year when party control changed hands from the Republicans to the Democrats following last fall's midterm elections. In January 2007, 35% of Americans approved of Congress, a significant increase from the 21% who approved of Congress in December 2006. That December rating tied the lowest in the 12 years the Republicans controlled Congress from 1995 to 2006.
But that "honeymoon" period for the new Democratically controlled Congress was brief, as its job ratings dropped below 30% in March 2007 and have now fallen below where they were just before the Democrats took over.
Frustration with Congress spans the political spectrum. There are only minor (but not statistically meaningful) differences in the approval ratings Democrats (21%), Republicans (18%), and independents (17%) give to Congress. Typically, partisans view Congress much more positively when their party is in control of the institution, so the fact that Democrats' ratings are not materially better than Republicans' is notable.
The nine-point drop in Congress' job approval rating from last month to this month has come exclusively from Democrats and independents, with Democrats' ratings dropping 11 points (from 32% to 21%) and independents' ratings dropping 13 points (from 30% to 17%). Republicans' 18% approval rating is unchanged from last month.
The decline in congressional job approval could merely reflect the cessation of any public good will it engendered when the new leadership arrived in January, since the current 18% rating is similar to what it was in December 2006 (21%).
But, it could also reflect disappointment with the new Congress' performance (especially among Democrats) and economic unease.
Americans elected the Democrats as the majority party in Congress in November 2006's midterm election in large part due to frustration with the Iraq war and an ineffective and scandal-plagued Republican-led Congress. But any hopes that the elections would lead to change have not been realized as Democrats' repeated attempts to force a change in Iraq war policy have been largely unsuccessful due to presidential vetoes, disagreements within their own party, and the inability to attract Republican support for their policy proposals. Also, many of the Democratic leadership's domestic agenda items have not become law even though some have passed one or both houses of Congress.
As the trend in congressional approval makes clear, ratings of Congress usually suffer during times of economic uncertainty, as during the late 1970s and early 1990s. While Americans' ratings of current economic conditions are not near historical lows, there is a great deal of concern about the direction in which the economy is headed. The latest poll finds a record 72% of Americans saying the economy is "getting worse."
Survey Methods
These results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted August 13-16, 2007. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?
Approve
Disapprove
No
opinion
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Pelosi "no impeachment" is HURTING GRASS-ROOTS Democratic activists...
We understand that David Lindorff is a ardently pro-impeachment writer and activist. And that he does not reflect the "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" held by Democratic Party leadership in general, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular.
But all across the country, Democratic voters have NO REASON to shout and dance and trumpet their support for the Democratic Party.
Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and their pooh-bah Senate colleagues have MUZZELED John Conyers, they have turned Henry Waxman's investigations into a circus freak show, and the Democratic Senators practically fall in line to kiss the emperor's ring on issues from Tax Cuts to Iraq war to spying on Americans to huge war contracts and NO OVERSIGHT of US torture prisons and Iraq war mercenaries.
===============================
Pelosi's Stand Blocking Impeachment in the House is Killing the Democratic Party
by Dave Lindorff
Aug 20 2007
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/9446
It's just the Constitution that's suffering because of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's nutty and unprincipled "impeachment-off-the-table" position
blocking any effort to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney for
their many crimes and abuses of power.
Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving
away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted
for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the
Constitution.
I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I
travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support
of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was
terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to
spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy
domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a
last straw.
My own little call for people so sign an "I Quit This Party" petition has
seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the
right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well
as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic
National Committee Chair Howard Dean.
Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it
reflects a larger trend across the country.
Here's a letter I got from the head of a group of active Democrats in
central Pennsylvania--the very kind of heartland area that Democrats will
need if they are going to win the presidency and hang on to or make gains in
Congress next year.
Writes Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and
president of the Kutztown Democratic Club:
I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside
Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all
of us to help build the grassroots.
EXCUSE ME Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years
trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put that Democrats back in
power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not
holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.
Not only are you losing us...you are making it impossible for us to "build
the grassroots". Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to
join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should
we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq
or impeaching this president?
I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently
changed the word "Democrats" in their name to a lower case "d". Others have
abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed
instead "citizen action groups."
When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not
impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.
I believe that the aptly named Ember is just one spark in a prairie fire
that is going to sweep away the conservative Democratic establishment in
2008. Whether it is by turning to third party candidates, or just sitting
out the next election, these angry and frustrated Democrats are showing that
they've been betrayed one too many times by the Democratic Party.
Either Pelosi--who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her
own San Francisco district--better do an about face and open the path to
impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party
leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in
the position of minority "leaders" in 2009.
_______
But all across the country, Democratic voters have NO REASON to shout and dance and trumpet their support for the Democratic Party.
Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and their pooh-bah Senate colleagues have MUZZELED John Conyers, they have turned Henry Waxman's investigations into a circus freak show, and the Democratic Senators practically fall in line to kiss the emperor's ring on issues from Tax Cuts to Iraq war to spying on Americans to huge war contracts and NO OVERSIGHT of US torture prisons and Iraq war mercenaries.
===============================
Pelosi's Stand Blocking Impeachment in the House is Killing the Democratic Party
by Dave Lindorff
Aug 20 2007
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/9446
It's just the Constitution that's suffering because of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's nutty and unprincipled "impeachment-off-the-table" position
blocking any effort to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney for
their many crimes and abuses of power.
Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving
away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted
for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the
Constitution.
I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I
travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support
of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was
terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to
spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy
domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a
last straw.
My own little call for people so sign an "I Quit This Party" petition has
seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the
right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well
as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic
National Committee Chair Howard Dean.
Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it
reflects a larger trend across the country.
Here's a letter I got from the head of a group of active Democrats in
central Pennsylvania--the very kind of heartland area that Democrats will
need if they are going to win the presidency and hang on to or make gains in
Congress next year.
Writes Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and
president of the Kutztown Democratic Club:
I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside
Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all
of us to help build the grassroots.
EXCUSE ME Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years
trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put that Democrats back in
power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not
holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.
Not only are you losing us...you are making it impossible for us to "build
the grassroots". Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to
join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should
we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq
or impeaching this president?
I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently
changed the word "Democrats" in their name to a lower case "d". Others have
abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed
instead "citizen action groups."
When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not
impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.
I believe that the aptly named Ember is just one spark in a prairie fire
that is going to sweep away the conservative Democratic establishment in
2008. Whether it is by turning to third party candidates, or just sitting
out the next election, these angry and frustrated Democrats are showing that
they've been betrayed one too many times by the Democratic Party.
Either Pelosi--who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her
own San Francisco district--better do an about face and open the path to
impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party
leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in
the position of minority "leaders" in 2009.
_______
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Democrats slavish, cowardly CAPITULATION to Republican/"mainstream media" narrative ENDANGERS AMERICAN WORKERS.....
A terrific, concise commentary by Arianna Huffington lays out the travesty of "mainstream media" 'news' coverage of the Utah mine disaster two weeks ago - and above all, Arianna points out that the American news industry NO LONGER ASKS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS until somebody or some event FORCES THEM TO.
In this case, it took the ADDITIONAL DEATHS of rescue miners BEFORE THE NEWS MEDIA whores STARTED PROBING THE SAFETY VIOLATIONS of the mines owned by Bob Murray, the "colorful" mine owner and Republican Party partisan who has appeared at every press conference to woo reporters and TV persons with his "charming" personality.
And the bigger question: WHERE ARE THE _COWARDLY_ DEMOCRATS in all this?
HOW MANY _INCOMPETENT_ and _CORRUPT_ officials in the mold of "HECKUVA JOB BROWNIE" will George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney INFLICT ON AMERICA'S WORKERS, before the COWARDLY DEMOCRATS FINALLY STAND UP AND SAY "NO MORE!" ????
Putting an UNQUALIFED and counter-productive party hack in charge of million dollar federal safety programs IS FRAUD!
The COWARDLY DEMOCRATIC "leadership" IS PARTY TO, COMPLICIT WITH, that FRAUD by the Bush-Cheney White House!
______________________________________________________________
It Shouldn't Have Taken the Deaths of Three Miners to Get the Media to Focus on Mine Safety
by Arianna Huffington
Posted August 17, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/it-shouldnt-have-taken-t_b_60894.html
So last night, suddenly, after the tragic second collapse at the Utah mine, there was a dramatic shift in the TV coverage of the story. All at once, faux folksy mining boss Bob Murray, who had been everywhere, was nowhere to be found (even sending in a junior executive to handle this morning's press conference). In his place, at long last, were actual scientists, and experts on mine safety and the workings of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Bush mine safety czar Richard "Recess Appointment" Stickler was also absent last night, and did not appear again until this morning's press conference.
So many questions were finally being asked. Prompting one more: What took so long? Why did it take a tragic second collapse before the Murray and Strickler PR Show was finally replaced by actual journalism?
Why did it take until this morning for CNN to finally run a chyron saying "Safety of Rescue Operation Debated"? For 12 days, there was precious little debate about why the mine had collapsed in the first place, or about the safety of the rescue operation -- which was, by law, in the hands of Stickler, another "heck of a job" Bush special, a coal industry insider who couldn't even win the approval of a GOP-controlled Senate.
Coal miners, we are told, operate under a code similar to the Marines: no one gets left behind. So there is little doubt that the rescuers would have done everything in their power to try to save their fellow miners. But might last night's tragic outcome have been avoided if the media watchdogs had been asking tougher questions from the start?
What if, instead of giving endless airtime to Bob Murray, they had brought on some of the experts we saw last night and asked them questions about the chances of another collapse occurring? What if they had given us Professor Larry Grayson, who was interviewed last night by Dan Abrams on MSNBC, and other experts who could have contradicted once and for all Murray's assertion that the company had not been doing retreat mining where the original collapse had occurred? What if they had gotten Stickler on the record on this, and had him definitely say whether or not Murray was lying when he repeatedly denied the dangerous technique was being used in the Crandall Canyon Mine?
What if they gave as much airtime to the seismologists denying that the collapse was the result of an earthquake as they gave to Murray who kept repeating the bogus (and responsibility-avoiding) claim that it was an earthquake, a natural disaster, an act of god?
Might things have turned out differently? We'll never know. But we do know that a number of miners -- perhaps as many as a dozen -- had asked to be moved to a different part of the rescue operation out of fear for their safety. And that Murray had abruptly pulled Bodee Allred, the Crandall mine's safety director (and the cousin of one of the missing miners), away from the microphones when the questions Allred was being asked veered too close to the bone for Murray's comfort.
Here's a question for the media: Since when do the owners of mines -- especially owners who have been fined millions of dollars for numerous safety violations -- set the news agenda?
So here we are, 12 days after the first collapse, with three heroic rescuers dead, six others injured, and the original six trapped miners almost certainly lost forever. And, finally, we have Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman suggesting we "focus like never before on workplace safety" (the Governor had better be prepared for the wrath of Murray: when Hillary Clinton made a similar statement months ago about the importance of workplace safety, Murray attacked her as "anti-American.")
So why wasn't the focus on workplace safety the focus of the media from Day One?
It shouldn't have taken the deaths of 3 miners for those covering the story to have gotten that message.
In this case, it took the ADDITIONAL DEATHS of rescue miners BEFORE THE NEWS MEDIA whores STARTED PROBING THE SAFETY VIOLATIONS of the mines owned by Bob Murray, the "colorful" mine owner and Republican Party partisan who has appeared at every press conference to woo reporters and TV persons with his "charming" personality.
And the bigger question: WHERE ARE THE _COWARDLY_ DEMOCRATS in all this?
HOW MANY _INCOMPETENT_ and _CORRUPT_ officials in the mold of "HECKUVA JOB BROWNIE" will George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney INFLICT ON AMERICA'S WORKERS, before the COWARDLY DEMOCRATS FINALLY STAND UP AND SAY "NO MORE!" ????
Putting an UNQUALIFED and counter-productive party hack in charge of million dollar federal safety programs IS FRAUD!
The COWARDLY DEMOCRATIC "leadership" IS PARTY TO, COMPLICIT WITH, that FRAUD by the Bush-Cheney White House!
______________________________________________________________
It Shouldn't Have Taken the Deaths of Three Miners to Get the Media to Focus on Mine Safety
by Arianna Huffington
Posted August 17, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/it-shouldnt-have-taken-t_b_60894.html
So last night, suddenly, after the tragic second collapse at the Utah mine, there was a dramatic shift in the TV coverage of the story. All at once, faux folksy mining boss Bob Murray, who had been everywhere, was nowhere to be found (even sending in a junior executive to handle this morning's press conference). In his place, at long last, were actual scientists, and experts on mine safety and the workings of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Bush mine safety czar Richard "Recess Appointment" Stickler was also absent last night, and did not appear again until this morning's press conference.
So many questions were finally being asked. Prompting one more: What took so long? Why did it take a tragic second collapse before the Murray and Strickler PR Show was finally replaced by actual journalism?
Why did it take until this morning for CNN to finally run a chyron saying "Safety of Rescue Operation Debated"? For 12 days, there was precious little debate about why the mine had collapsed in the first place, or about the safety of the rescue operation -- which was, by law, in the hands of Stickler, another "heck of a job" Bush special, a coal industry insider who couldn't even win the approval of a GOP-controlled Senate.
Coal miners, we are told, operate under a code similar to the Marines: no one gets left behind. So there is little doubt that the rescuers would have done everything in their power to try to save their fellow miners. But might last night's tragic outcome have been avoided if the media watchdogs had been asking tougher questions from the start?
What if, instead of giving endless airtime to Bob Murray, they had brought on some of the experts we saw last night and asked them questions about the chances of another collapse occurring? What if they had given us Professor Larry Grayson, who was interviewed last night by Dan Abrams on MSNBC, and other experts who could have contradicted once and for all Murray's assertion that the company had not been doing retreat mining where the original collapse had occurred? What if they had gotten Stickler on the record on this, and had him definitely say whether or not Murray was lying when he repeatedly denied the dangerous technique was being used in the Crandall Canyon Mine?
What if they gave as much airtime to the seismologists denying that the collapse was the result of an earthquake as they gave to Murray who kept repeating the bogus (and responsibility-avoiding) claim that it was an earthquake, a natural disaster, an act of god?
Might things have turned out differently? We'll never know. But we do know that a number of miners -- perhaps as many as a dozen -- had asked to be moved to a different part of the rescue operation out of fear for their safety. And that Murray had abruptly pulled Bodee Allred, the Crandall mine's safety director (and the cousin of one of the missing miners), away from the microphones when the questions Allred was being asked veered too close to the bone for Murray's comfort.
Here's a question for the media: Since when do the owners of mines -- especially owners who have been fined millions of dollars for numerous safety violations -- set the news agenda?
So here we are, 12 days after the first collapse, with three heroic rescuers dead, six others injured, and the original six trapped miners almost certainly lost forever. And, finally, we have Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman suggesting we "focus like never before on workplace safety" (the Governor had better be prepared for the wrath of Murray: when Hillary Clinton made a similar statement months ago about the importance of workplace safety, Murray attacked her as "anti-American.")
So why wasn't the focus on workplace safety the focus of the media from Day One?
It shouldn't have taken the deaths of 3 miners for those covering the story to have gotten that message.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Maddam Speaker, FEAR, TREACHERY, and BETRAYAL are the hallmarks of YOUR 'Democratic' Congress....
Dear Madam Speaker:
(California Representative Nancy Pelosi, currently the Speaker of the House, which is to say the leader of the 110th Congress, the Speaker being more powerful than either the House Majority Leader of the House Minority Leader:
I regret to inform you of this, but seven months into the 110th Congress - YOUR Congress, the Congress that you took over the gavel for - your leadership is now synonymous with FEAR, TREACHERY, BETRAYAL... and cowardice. Our own "snapshot" definition of cowardice is "failing to act or do something required because FEAR makes one freeze, flinch, or turn away."
WHICH IS THE DEFINING ATTRIBUTE of the 110th Congress,and therefore of Speaker Pelosi's term in that office.
MUST WE put up a citation to support our contention? Well, here is one, from perhaps the most experienced (and certainly the most independent) of all the writers in the entire Washington Press Corps:
<< WASHINGTON -- President Bush has the Democrats' number on Capitol Hill. All he has to do is play the fear card and invoke the war on terror and they will cave.
What's more, the president has found out that he can break the law and the rubber stamp Democratic Congress will give him a pass every time. >>
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327034_thomas10.html
That quote was by HELEN THOMAS, the most senior and experience correspondent in Washington, and by no means a "lefty firebrand" except that, in reporting the obvious, she puts herself at odds with 9/10ths of her press corps colleagues, and 90% of the Democratic 'leadership.'
Did you get that, Madam Speaker? << the president has found out that he can break the law and THE RUBBER STAMP Democratic Congress will give him a pass every time. >>
MADAM SPEAKER, you are now NO MORE THAN A RUBBER STAMP for CRIMINAL CONDUCT by the executive office of the United States government!
Here's ANOTHER citation along the same lines: Ken Silverstein dissects Washington Post writers Michael Tomasky and E.J. Dionne's columns "WHY THE DEMOCRATS CAVED," not only to letting the Attorney General committ PERJURY in full view of the world, but then the Democratic "leadership" BACKTRACKING, and RETROACTIVELY MAKING LEGAL the subject for which Mr. Gonzales LIED UNDER OATH.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000844
And finally there is the 3rd great element of the HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS that the Congressional Democrats are RUBBER STAMPING for the Bush-Cheney White House: the PURGING of US Attorneys, in order to put partisan US Attorneys in office, partisan prosecutors WILLING TO MAKE FALSE criminal CHARGES against DEMOCRATIC voter registration activists.
Madam Speaker, the ATTORNEY GENERAL and members of the White House have LIED UNDER OATH about the illegal "outing" of an undercover CIA agent to INTIMIDATE and smear whistleblowers and future whistleblowers; the OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE of that case WON President Bush RE-ELECTION TO THE WHITE HOUSE (agaisnt the somnolent Kerry campaign) in 2004; all the while the White House was conducting ILLEGAL ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE of American homes and telecommunications; and in the aftermath of the Democratic sweep in 2006, the White House fired - "purged" COMPETENT US Attorneys, to replace them with those who would make PERJUROUS ACCUSATIONS and criminal cases against INNOCENT AMERICANS! And now, because of the DERELICTION OF DUTY of the Democratic "opposition" leadership, it is now up to the fired US attorneys to defend themselves - going against the Goliath of the Bush administration's control of the ENTIRE US GOVERNMENT, with the cowardly "opposition" party RUBBER STAMPING CRIMES!!
MADAM SPEAKER, THIS is YOUR LEGACY OF BETRAYAL - you know OWN the SELLING OUT of American citizens harmed by this Bush administration.
#1. The Cost of Caving
BY Ken Silverstein
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000844
#2. Department of Justice Fired Officials FIGHTING BACK -
[something the COWARDLY DEMOCRATS WON'T DO!]by Lisa Lerer
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5331.html
After months of scandal, firings and some testimony from Gonzales that many on Capitol Hill found wholly unsatisfying, these ex-Justice Department employees are taking a rare step and fighting back.
#3. Democratic "leadership" CAVES IN AGAIN,
RUBBER STAMPING LAW-BREAKING by the Bush-Cheney White House
by Helen Thomas
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327034_thomas10.html
(California Representative Nancy Pelosi, currently the Speaker of the House, which is to say the leader of the 110th Congress, the Speaker being more powerful than either the House Majority Leader of the House Minority Leader:
I regret to inform you of this, but seven months into the 110th Congress - YOUR Congress, the Congress that you took over the gavel for - your leadership is now synonymous with FEAR, TREACHERY, BETRAYAL... and cowardice. Our own "snapshot" definition of cowardice is "failing to act or do something required because FEAR makes one freeze, flinch, or turn away."
WHICH IS THE DEFINING ATTRIBUTE of the 110th Congress,and therefore of Speaker Pelosi's term in that office.
MUST WE put up a citation to support our contention? Well, here is one, from perhaps the most experienced (and certainly the most independent) of all the writers in the entire Washington Press Corps:
<< WASHINGTON -- President Bush has the Democrats' number on Capitol Hill. All he has to do is play the fear card and invoke the war on terror and they will cave.
What's more, the president has found out that he can break the law and the rubber stamp Democratic Congress will give him a pass every time. >>
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327034_thomas10.html
That quote was by HELEN THOMAS, the most senior and experience correspondent in Washington, and by no means a "lefty firebrand" except that, in reporting the obvious, she puts herself at odds with 9/10ths of her press corps colleagues, and 90% of the Democratic 'leadership.'
Did you get that, Madam Speaker? << the president has found out that he can break the law and THE RUBBER STAMP Democratic Congress will give him a pass every time. >>
MADAM SPEAKER, you are now NO MORE THAN A RUBBER STAMP for CRIMINAL CONDUCT by the executive office of the United States government!
Here's ANOTHER citation along the same lines: Ken Silverstein dissects Washington Post writers Michael Tomasky and E.J. Dionne's columns "WHY THE DEMOCRATS CAVED," not only to letting the Attorney General committ PERJURY in full view of the world, but then the Democratic "leadership" BACKTRACKING, and RETROACTIVELY MAKING LEGAL the subject for which Mr. Gonzales LIED UNDER OATH.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000844
And finally there is the 3rd great element of the HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS that the Congressional Democrats are RUBBER STAMPING for the Bush-Cheney White House: the PURGING of US Attorneys, in order to put partisan US Attorneys in office, partisan prosecutors WILLING TO MAKE FALSE criminal CHARGES against DEMOCRATIC voter registration activists.
Madam Speaker, the ATTORNEY GENERAL and members of the White House have LIED UNDER OATH about the illegal "outing" of an undercover CIA agent to INTIMIDATE and smear whistleblowers and future whistleblowers; the OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE of that case WON President Bush RE-ELECTION TO THE WHITE HOUSE (agaisnt the somnolent Kerry campaign) in 2004; all the while the White House was conducting ILLEGAL ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE of American homes and telecommunications; and in the aftermath of the Democratic sweep in 2006, the White House fired - "purged" COMPETENT US Attorneys, to replace them with those who would make PERJUROUS ACCUSATIONS and criminal cases against INNOCENT AMERICANS! And now, because of the DERELICTION OF DUTY of the Democratic "opposition" leadership, it is now up to the fired US attorneys to defend themselves - going against the Goliath of the Bush administration's control of the ENTIRE US GOVERNMENT, with the cowardly "opposition" party RUBBER STAMPING CRIMES!!
MADAM SPEAKER, THIS is YOUR LEGACY OF BETRAYAL - you know OWN the SELLING OUT of American citizens harmed by this Bush administration.
#1. The Cost of Caving
BY Ken Silverstein
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000844
#2. Department of Justice Fired Officials FIGHTING BACK -
[something the COWARDLY DEMOCRATS WON'T DO!]by Lisa Lerer
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5331.html
After months of scandal, firings and some testimony from Gonzales that many on Capitol Hill found wholly unsatisfying, these ex-Justice Department employees are taking a rare step and fighting back.
#3. Democratic "leadership" CAVES IN AGAIN,
RUBBER STAMPING LAW-BREAKING by the Bush-Cheney White House
by Helen Thomas
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327034_thomas10.html
Friday, August 10, 2007
BETRAYAL: 2007 marks the Summer of Democratic Leadership BETRAYAL of America....
2007 marks the summer of Democratic 'leadership' BETRAYAL of America. To see the ARROGANCE and SCORN of this betrayal, one need only have seen the four senators in the Dem presidential debate at Soldier Field in Chicago this past week, held in sponsorship with the AFL-CIO and other unions, and moderated by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's "Countdown" news show. 'Countdown' the _only_ honest major news show in all of the "major media," and Mr. Olbermann did an excellent job of moderating the debate, keeping the candidates on-message and moving, with the one exception we are about to note here.
Senator Barak Obama, the only senator of the four on state (Biden, Hillary, Dodd) to have actively opposed the war authorization resolution in Congress in the spring of 2003, had made comments that if he had "actionable intelligence" on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden hiding out in western Pakistan (along the mountainous and violent Afghan border) that he, as president, would authorize US strikes and infantry action to capture the Al Qaida leader. IN UNISON, the other three Senators GANGED UP ON OBAMA, to say "talking about ATTACKING al Qaida in AFGHANISTAN IS DANGEROUS, it could push the fundamentalist ('Islamists') in Pakistan who sympathize with the Taliban and al Qaida to overthrow Musharaff and seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal!"
Which IS a VALID POINT. However, the LARGER POINT IS THAT, in the SIX LONG YEARS since 9-11, NONE OF THE COWARDLY DEMCORATIC LEADERS have HELD GEORGE W. Bush to his "get Osama dead or alive" pledge!
HOW THE HELL could George W. Bush and Dick Cheney START A WAR AGAINST IRAQ, by touting Iraq's ALLEGED TIES TO AL QAIDA - and then do NOTHING to root out the real Al Qaida which has been operating UNMOLESTED in Western Pakistan?
Clearly, the Demcoratic "leadership" - in the form of Biden, Dodd, Hillary, Speaker Pelosi, and other Senior Demcorats - are trying to RAMROD HILLARY's CANDIDACY down Democratic voters' throats, just as the DLC elite previously RAMMED JOHN KERRY's "it's all about my experience in Vietnam" candidacy down Dem voters' throats in 2004!
And THAT isn't even the BETRAYAL we are highlighting today! Which would be Senator Biden smuggly answering a question, "Senator Biden, you SAY you SUPPORT UNIONS, but your state is a union-busting 'Right to Work' state?"
Biden's smug reply: "Yes, Delaware is a Right-to-work state, but I have been voting with the unions for my whole career in the senate."
Let's get this straight: An established, entrenched, incumbent, and powerful senator from a SMALL STATE, a state which through its two senators has disproportionate power in Congress compared to its citizen rolls, CLAIMS that he is qualified to BE A LEADER - to be THE PRESIDENT of the United States - but he admits that he is POWERLESS to give the workforce of a relatively small, urban, progressive, and wealthy state the protections of unionization that other states have enjoyed for decades stretching back to the 1930s?
Senator Biden isn't really fit to be the Secretary of Dogcatchers! (Randi Rhodes on her "liberal" talk radio show pointed out that both Biden and Dodd don't really harbor presidential aspirations, but in helping Hillary's campaign as unindicted co-conspirators, they may hope to land a position as secretary of state or other post in her cabinet.) Just to emphasize the point, Biden took his reply to a woman who LOST HER HUSBAND in the SAGO MINE ACCIDENT (she inquired why NOTHING in the way of SAFETY REFORM has come about since the miners were killed there in Janaury of 2007) - and, IGNORING THE WOMAN, shifted his answer back to defending his Democratic senate colleagues, LECTURING the assembled audience that the US Senate had indeed AUTHORIZED USE OF FORCE to capture Al Qaida, even if they were in Afghanistan.
SENATOR BIDEN, YOU GOT YOUR SOUND-BITE IN: but the BIGGER QUESTION IS, "WHY HAVE YOU COWERING SENATE DEMOCRATS _given_ George W. Bush a _FREE PASS_ for _NOT_ CAPTURING bin Laden all these BILLIONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of US taxpayer dollars later, and 4,000 military Iraq war deaths later? (Much less the 20,000/30,000 grossly wounded American servicemen and women.)
The above is only ONE of the Democratic BETRAYALS of the Summer of 2007. TREE other huge Democratic BETRAYALS this summmer are REFUSING TO IMPEACH Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; then HANDING Mr. Bush and his Attorney General carte blanche to SPY ON ALL AMERICANS; and then REFUSING to TIE TOGETHER Purge-gate, the Libby OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE _conviction_, and the efforts of KARL ROVE to CRIMINALIZE Demcoratic voters and vote-registration activists.
FOR SHAME, Speaker Pelosi! You are following in the footsteps of the DERELICIONT
Senator Barak Obama, the only senator of the four on state (Biden, Hillary, Dodd) to have actively opposed the war authorization resolution in Congress in the spring of 2003, had made comments that if he had "actionable intelligence" on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden hiding out in western Pakistan (along the mountainous and violent Afghan border) that he, as president, would authorize US strikes and infantry action to capture the Al Qaida leader. IN UNISON, the other three Senators GANGED UP ON OBAMA, to say "talking about ATTACKING al Qaida in AFGHANISTAN IS DANGEROUS, it could push the fundamentalist ('Islamists') in Pakistan who sympathize with the Taliban and al Qaida to overthrow Musharaff and seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal!"
Which IS a VALID POINT. However, the LARGER POINT IS THAT, in the SIX LONG YEARS since 9-11, NONE OF THE COWARDLY DEMCORATIC LEADERS have HELD GEORGE W. Bush to his "get Osama dead or alive" pledge!
HOW THE HELL could George W. Bush and Dick Cheney START A WAR AGAINST IRAQ, by touting Iraq's ALLEGED TIES TO AL QAIDA - and then do NOTHING to root out the real Al Qaida which has been operating UNMOLESTED in Western Pakistan?
Clearly, the Demcoratic "leadership" - in the form of Biden, Dodd, Hillary, Speaker Pelosi, and other Senior Demcorats - are trying to RAMROD HILLARY's CANDIDACY down Democratic voters' throats, just as the DLC elite previously RAMMED JOHN KERRY's "it's all about my experience in Vietnam" candidacy down Dem voters' throats in 2004!
And THAT isn't even the BETRAYAL we are highlighting today! Which would be Senator Biden smuggly answering a question, "Senator Biden, you SAY you SUPPORT UNIONS, but your state is a union-busting 'Right to Work' state?"
Biden's smug reply: "Yes, Delaware is a Right-to-work state, but I have been voting with the unions for my whole career in the senate."
Let's get this straight: An established, entrenched, incumbent, and powerful senator from a SMALL STATE, a state which through its two senators has disproportionate power in Congress compared to its citizen rolls, CLAIMS that he is qualified to BE A LEADER - to be THE PRESIDENT of the United States - but he admits that he is POWERLESS to give the workforce of a relatively small, urban, progressive, and wealthy state the protections of unionization that other states have enjoyed for decades stretching back to the 1930s?
Senator Biden isn't really fit to be the Secretary of Dogcatchers! (Randi Rhodes on her "liberal" talk radio show pointed out that both Biden and Dodd don't really harbor presidential aspirations, but in helping Hillary's campaign as unindicted co-conspirators, they may hope to land a position as secretary of state or other post in her cabinet.) Just to emphasize the point, Biden took his reply to a woman who LOST HER HUSBAND in the SAGO MINE ACCIDENT (she inquired why NOTHING in the way of SAFETY REFORM has come about since the miners were killed there in Janaury of 2007) - and, IGNORING THE WOMAN, shifted his answer back to defending his Democratic senate colleagues, LECTURING the assembled audience that the US Senate had indeed AUTHORIZED USE OF FORCE to capture Al Qaida, even if they were in Afghanistan.
SENATOR BIDEN, YOU GOT YOUR SOUND-BITE IN: but the BIGGER QUESTION IS, "WHY HAVE YOU COWERING SENATE DEMOCRATS _given_ George W. Bush a _FREE PASS_ for _NOT_ CAPTURING bin Laden all these BILLIONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of US taxpayer dollars later, and 4,000 military Iraq war deaths later? (Much less the 20,000/30,000 grossly wounded American servicemen and women.)
The above is only ONE of the Democratic BETRAYALS of the Summer of 2007. TREE other huge Democratic BETRAYALS this summmer are REFUSING TO IMPEACH Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; then HANDING Mr. Bush and his Attorney General carte blanche to SPY ON ALL AMERICANS; and then REFUSING to TIE TOGETHER Purge-gate, the Libby OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE _conviction_, and the efforts of KARL ROVE to CRIMINALIZE Demcoratic voters and vote-registration activists.
FOR SHAME, Speaker Pelosi! You are following in the footsteps of the DERELICIONT
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Despite Bush's 65% DISAPPROVAL rating, Dems COWER, grant Bush UNLIMITED, NO OVERSIGHT, no restraints spying...
To show just how stultifying, ossifying, coroding, erroding, and DEGENERATING the inside-the-beltway "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" is on Democratic 'leaders,' note that even Senator Jim Webb - Vietnam combat hero, Reagan administration Secretary of the Navy, and fightin' candidate who took on entrenched Republican incumbent Senator George Allen despite a Democratic campaign advisor telling Webb at the outset of his naescent campaign that he only had a 15% chance of ousting Allen - SIGNED ON TO Bush's "spy on anyome, anywhere, WITH NO OVERSIGHT surveillance bill.
Once again we reiterate: The WASHINGTON CONVENTIONAL WISDOM as espoused by Washington grey-beard 'reporters' such as DAVID BRODER and GEORGE WILL, is NOTHING MORE THAN RUSH LIMBUAGH's TALKING POINTS, with an rough academic/intellectual/bureaucratic polish administered by the DC press corps.
Ergo, when Democratic "leaders" FOLLOW the "inside-the-beltway CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" - THEY ARE FOLLOWING RUSH LIMBAUGH's, KARL ROVE's, and RUPERT MURDOCH'S TALKING POINTS.
Democratic "leaders" WHO FOLLOW Limbaugh, Rove, and Murdoch TALKING POINTS are _NOT_ PROVIDING LEADERSHIP - they are FOLLOWING the LOWEST COMMON, BASE DENOMINATOR in American politics, the politics of FEAR & SMEAR.
Democrats CLAIM that they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for the OVERWHELMING RIGHT-WING BIAS in the 'major media.' This is a con-job, for EVERY YEAR (and especially every campaign/election year) the Democrats REQUEST MONEY of Democratic voters and activsts - PLEDGING to PROVIDE _OPPOSITION PARTY LEADERSHIP_ - and then, predictably, every year the Democratic Party leadership FOLDS in the face of Right-Wing "conventional wisdom" as presented by the Broder/Will/NY Times/Wash.Post spin.
THIS IS FRAUD, Democrats! IT IS _YOUR RESPONSIBILITY_ to PROVIDE SOME INFORMATION to American citizen, to CONTROL THE MESSAGE, to DEMAND SOME FAIR COVERAGE from the cable and media networks if not the Limbaugh Righty talking-heads.
You can NOT GO OUT AN PLEDGE to provide an OPPOSITION PARTY every campaign season, and then return to Washington and say "THE PRESS MADE US DO IT" (sign into law another egregious violation of American rights, another wimpy letting Republican criminals and liars off the hook.)
by Dan Fromkin, the last (for now) honest reporter left at the Washington Whore Post:
<< Despite his 65 percent job-disapproval rating, Bush was able to cow congressional Democrats over the weekend into granting him unprecedented authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. >>
============================================
Who's Afraid of George W. Bush?By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/08/07/BL2007080700888.html?nav=hcmodule
We won't have President Bush to kick around anymore in about 18 months. But until then, Bush has someone he can still kick around: the Democratic Congress. At least when it comes to terror issues.
Despite his 65 percent job-disapproval rating, Bush was able to cow congressional Democrats over the weekend into granting him unprecedented authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
White House Watch
Who's Afraid of George W. Bush?
Bush's Optimists Club
Karl Rove's Immunity
Cheney's Unmistakable Admission
Cheney's PR Blitz
More News
Ruth Marcus:
Attack Ads You'll Be Seeing
Robert J. Samuelson:
Masters of the Economy
Victor D. Cha:
Countdown to Beijing
Michael Gerson:
Ourselves in Shakespeare
Today's Editorials
Think Tank Town | On Faith | PostGlobal
White House Watch Resources
Latest Bush Administration News
White House Staff List and Salaries
White House Correspondents
West Wing Floor Plan
E-mail Dan Froomkin: I may publish your e-mail unless you specify "not for publication."
More White House Links
Select a Source____________Associated PressReutersAgence France-PresseNew York TimesLos Angeles TimesUSA TodayGoogle NewsYahoo News Full CoverageLatest Job Approval PollsWhite House Web SiteWhite House Press ReleasesWhite House Press BriefingsLive White House Video FeedGlobal Message of the DayCompilation of DocumentsAppointee DirectoryThe Complete Bushisms
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Now, having beaten the Democrats into submission with the threat of looking weak on terror, a re-emboldened White House is aiming at the media, hoping to bully journalists into making the new law sound innocuous.
The 'Protect America' Act
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the bill in question; a White House " fact sheet," and Bush's remarks upon signing it into law on Sunday. Here's are the roll call votes in the House and Senate.
Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times: "Until last weekend, President Bush had repeatedly fallen short in seven months of battles with a Democratic-led Congress that would not give him what he wanted on immigration or education, health care or energy policy.
"But the Congressional vote that authorized eavesdropping without warrants on international communications, including those involving Americans within the United States, has shown that there is at least one arena in which Mr. Bush can still hold the line: terrorism. . . .
"For a president who has played defense most of the year, relying on veto threats and, in terms of Iraq, almost plaintive pleas for time, it was a rare, winning use of offense. The victory points up an enduring challenge for Democrats, even as they have gained other advantages over Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans. . . .
In interviews, Democratic leaders and their aides acknowledged being outmaneuvered by the White House, which they accused of negotiating in bad faith, and portrayed the bill as a runaway train. . . .
"Everybody was afraid they might be branded as soft on terrorism,' Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential candidate, said Monday while speaking to Iowa voters."
James Risen writes in Monday's New York Times: "President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
"Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
"They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. . . .
Once again we reiterate: The WASHINGTON CONVENTIONAL WISDOM as espoused by Washington grey-beard 'reporters' such as DAVID BRODER and GEORGE WILL, is NOTHING MORE THAN RUSH LIMBUAGH's TALKING POINTS, with an rough academic/intellectual/bureaucratic polish administered by the DC press corps.
Ergo, when Democratic "leaders" FOLLOW the "inside-the-beltway CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" - THEY ARE FOLLOWING RUSH LIMBAUGH's, KARL ROVE's, and RUPERT MURDOCH'S TALKING POINTS.
Democratic "leaders" WHO FOLLOW Limbaugh, Rove, and Murdoch TALKING POINTS are _NOT_ PROVIDING LEADERSHIP - they are FOLLOWING the LOWEST COMMON, BASE DENOMINATOR in American politics, the politics of FEAR & SMEAR.
Democrats CLAIM that they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for the OVERWHELMING RIGHT-WING BIAS in the 'major media.' This is a con-job, for EVERY YEAR (and especially every campaign/election year) the Democrats REQUEST MONEY of Democratic voters and activsts - PLEDGING to PROVIDE _OPPOSITION PARTY LEADERSHIP_ - and then, predictably, every year the Democratic Party leadership FOLDS in the face of Right-Wing "conventional wisdom" as presented by the Broder/Will/NY Times/Wash.Post spin.
THIS IS FRAUD, Democrats! IT IS _YOUR RESPONSIBILITY_ to PROVIDE SOME INFORMATION to American citizen, to CONTROL THE MESSAGE, to DEMAND SOME FAIR COVERAGE from the cable and media networks if not the Limbaugh Righty talking-heads.
You can NOT GO OUT AN PLEDGE to provide an OPPOSITION PARTY every campaign season, and then return to Washington and say "THE PRESS MADE US DO IT" (sign into law another egregious violation of American rights, another wimpy letting Republican criminals and liars off the hook.)
by Dan Fromkin, the last (for now) honest reporter left at the Washington Whore Post:
<< Despite his 65 percent job-disapproval rating, Bush was able to cow congressional Democrats over the weekend into granting him unprecedented authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. >>
============================================
Who's Afraid of George W. Bush?By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/08/07/BL2007080700888.html?nav=hcmodule
We won't have President Bush to kick around anymore in about 18 months. But until then, Bush has someone he can still kick around: the Democratic Congress. At least when it comes to terror issues.
Despite his 65 percent job-disapproval rating, Bush was able to cow congressional Democrats over the weekend into granting him unprecedented authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
White House Watch
Who's Afraid of George W. Bush?
Bush's Optimists Club
Karl Rove's Immunity
Cheney's Unmistakable Admission
Cheney's PR Blitz
More News
Ruth Marcus:
Attack Ads You'll Be Seeing
Robert J. Samuelson:
Masters of the Economy
Victor D. Cha:
Countdown to Beijing
Michael Gerson:
Ourselves in Shakespeare
Today's Editorials
Think Tank Town | On Faith | PostGlobal
White House Watch Resources
Latest Bush Administration News
White House Staff List and Salaries
White House Correspondents
West Wing Floor Plan
E-mail Dan Froomkin: I may publish your e-mail unless you specify "not for publication."
More White House Links
Select a Source____________Associated PressReutersAgence France-PresseNew York TimesLos Angeles TimesUSA TodayGoogle NewsYahoo News Full CoverageLatest Job Approval PollsWhite House Web SiteWhite House Press ReleasesWhite House Press BriefingsLive White House Video FeedGlobal Message of the DayCompilation of DocumentsAppointee DirectoryThe Complete Bushisms
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Vagabond Scholar
BlueHerald - News You Can Abuse!!
Colorado FSO
Full List of Blogs (11 links) »
Most Blogged About Articles
On washingtonpost.com | On the web
Save & Share Article What's This?
DiggGoogle
del.icio.usYahoo!
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Now, having beaten the Democrats into submission with the threat of looking weak on terror, a re-emboldened White House is aiming at the media, hoping to bully journalists into making the new law sound innocuous.
The 'Protect America' Act
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the bill in question; a White House " fact sheet," and Bush's remarks upon signing it into law on Sunday. Here's are the roll call votes in the House and Senate.
Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times: "Until last weekend, President Bush had repeatedly fallen short in seven months of battles with a Democratic-led Congress that would not give him what he wanted on immigration or education, health care or energy policy.
"But the Congressional vote that authorized eavesdropping without warrants on international communications, including those involving Americans within the United States, has shown that there is at least one arena in which Mr. Bush can still hold the line: terrorism. . . .
"For a president who has played defense most of the year, relying on veto threats and, in terms of Iraq, almost plaintive pleas for time, it was a rare, winning use of offense. The victory points up an enduring challenge for Democrats, even as they have gained other advantages over Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans. . . .
In interviews, Democratic leaders and their aides acknowledged being outmaneuvered by the White House, which they accused of negotiating in bad faith, and portrayed the bill as a runaway train. . . .
"Everybody was afraid they might be branded as soft on terrorism,' Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential candidate, said Monday while speaking to Iowa voters."
James Risen writes in Monday's New York Times: "President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
"Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
"They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. . . .
Sunday, August 5, 2007
COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Democrats ENABLE Bush-Republican RADICALISM, SELL American citizens DOWN THE RIVER....
Courtesy The Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/4/04858/29657
here is the list of COWARDLY,TREACHEROUS Democrat Senators who SIGNED ON TO George W. Bush's "SPY ON EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD with NO, ZERO, ZIP, NADA OVERSIGHT" bill - including the USUAL GANG of craven Democrats who should have joined the Rethuglican Party a long time ago:
No Republicans voted against the bill. The following Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).
Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. Joe Lieberman voted ...well, you know how he voted.
Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: "The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases."
-------------------------------
COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Democrats BETRAY their voters and constituents who WANT AN AGGRESSIVE OPPOSITION to the wrongs, abuses, atrocities, and CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES of the Bush administration....
BECAUSE SELLING AMERICAN workers, voters, veterans, families, citizens and children DOWN THE RIVER is what corporate, AIPAC, military-industrial-complex, defer to media-moguls, emperor's-retainers Democrats DO BEST.
Well, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney SHOWED US! We Americans who donated to, supported, and VOTED FOR our DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES in November 2006 THOUGHT we were getting OPPOSITION LEADERS... but instead we were getting COURTIERS who LINE UP TO KISS Mr. Bush's ring.
DISGRACEFUL and DISGUSTING, the abject craven cowardice, complicity, and corporate cronyism of America's ostensible "opposition party."
---------------------------------
Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism
by Glenn Greenwald
Saturday August 4, 2007 11:39 EST
Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/04/democrats/index.html
It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).
I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) book about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss -- including us -- was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: at Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power -- many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.
Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.
Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.
And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA -- a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.
The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting -- even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush's instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.
I don't have time this morning to dissect the various excesses and dangers of the new FISA amendments, though Marty Lederman and Steve Benen both do a typically thorough job in that regard. Suffice to say, craven fear, as usual, is the author of this debacle.
There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.
The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.
UPDATE: Much of this was undoubtedly the by-product of the Democratic Beltway consultant geniuses who insist that Democrats not resist the President's instructions on terrorism lest they look "weak." They need to look "strong," and they achieve that by giving the President what he wants and thereby generating articles like this one in The Washington Post, the first paragraph of which reports (accurately):
The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.
In the mind of the moderate Democratic Beltway centrist consultant, that is how Democrats look Strong -- by "bowing to pressure" exerted by one of the weakest and most disliked presidents in modern history. There is nothing like being described as "bowing" and "capitulating" to give an appearance of strength.
And can we please be spared the condescending assurances about how great it is that the law has a six-month sunset provision, since -- in 6 months -- it will be exactly the same Democrats voting on whether to renew these powers and they will be intimidated by exactly the same threats that if they do not renew it and give the President all of the powers he wants, the Terrorists will kill us and it will be all the fault of the Democrats for disobeying President Bush. The cycle is just going to repeat itself 180 days from now. Why would it be different?
UPDATE II: This afternoon I interviewed Sen. Chris Dodd, who more than any other presidential candidate is attempting to make issues of executive power and constitutional encroachments the centerpiece of his campaign. I'll post the entire transcript and some commentary in a few days, but for now here is part of the discussion we had concerning last night's FISA vote in the Senate (Dodd, along with Obama and Clinton, voted against the FISA bill):
GG: Can you describe what you think it is that motivated 16 of your colleagues in the Democratic caucus to vote in favor of this bill?
CD: No, I really can't . . . We had caucuses during the day, so everyone knew what was there. You had a vote at 10:00 at night, people say I didn't know what was there, then normally I can understand, but we had a caucus during the day. There was a lot of conversation about it.
GG: So this wasn't a Patriot Act case where people can claim ignorance because there was a rushed vote? There was a careful assessment of what the terms in this statute were?
CD: Absolutely. In fact, even during the vote, Carl Levin was sitting there, and Carl said: "look, I want everyone to read this" . . . . Most people know about the Gonzales references and the 180 days -- there is also a section, as Carl pointed out, that basically says that if they can prove reasonably that you're out of the country -- not that you're not a citizen, just out of the country [then they can eavesdrop on you] . . . .
But I wish I had a better explanation. Normally after that, we would be in session Monday or Tuesday, around today, people would be talking about it. So I'm a little stunned, and grasping for some answer here. So I really don't know. . . .
GG: There is this gap in FISA, which everyone, even Russ Feingold, says needs to be filled, which is that if there is a foreign-to-foreign conversation which happens to be routed through the U.S., it requires a warrant -- so why not just say "OK, we fixed this gap and here's our bill and if you veto it, and there's a terrorist attack, then it's your responsibility"?
CD: Hello? Sounds pretty reasonable to me. But part of what this comes down to is that too many people in public life are not secure enough in their own beliefs -- feel vulnerable to attacks by people who will attack you -- and feel unwilling or unable to respond to them with clarity and conviction. And if you lack that clarity and conviction, and if you haven't been through this in the past, then you're likely to be a little weaker in the legs.
I also asked Dodd why Democrats repeatedly engage in the same self-destructive behavior -- refusing to take a hard-core principled stance against the administration, and instead capitulating just enough to look like losers, but -- despite the capitulation -- still allowing the vote to be used against them. As always (see e.g., Iraq War Authorization, warrantless eavesdropping, Military Commissions Act), they capitulate in order to prevent the vote from being used against them, even though it ends up being used against them anyway because so many of them vote (with futility) against it, but do so without ever fighting for, explaining or defending their position.
I also asked him why, when they were in the minority, the Democrats were so afraid to filibuster anything, even something as drastic as the Military Commissions Act or the Alito nomination, whereas the Republicans run around filibustering everything they can find and don't care at all about being called "obstructionist." Why are the Republicans so aggressive with using their minority tools to block all Democratic initiatives whereas Democrats failed to filibuster for years?
Dodd, by his own candid admission, has no good explanation for the Democrats' behavior, which repeats itself endlessly. He has no good explanation as to why so many of his Democratic colleagues are so deeply afraid of being attacked by one of the weakest presidents in modern American history.
Although Dodd's convictions about the constitutional issues are impressively authentic and come from a place of real passion, and although he agreed with most of the criticisms voiced regarding the timidity of Congressional Democrats, I found the interview rather dispiriting, to put it mildly. That was not due to Dodd per se, but because it is clear that Beltway Democrats have no real strategy for doing anything differently or even any real awareness that something different is necessary.
UPDATE III: The House has now also voted in favor of the FISA amendments by a vote of 227-183 (h/t EJ). A total of 41 Democrats voted in favor.
here is the list of COWARDLY,TREACHEROUS Democrat Senators who SIGNED ON TO George W. Bush's "SPY ON EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD with NO, ZERO, ZIP, NADA OVERSIGHT" bill - including the USUAL GANG of craven Democrats who should have joined the Rethuglican Party a long time ago:
No Republicans voted against the bill. The following Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).
Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. Joe Lieberman voted ...well, you know how he voted.
Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: "The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases."
-------------------------------
COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS Democrats BETRAY their voters and constituents who WANT AN AGGRESSIVE OPPOSITION to the wrongs, abuses, atrocities, and CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES of the Bush administration....
BECAUSE SELLING AMERICAN workers, voters, veterans, families, citizens and children DOWN THE RIVER is what corporate, AIPAC, military-industrial-complex, defer to media-moguls, emperor's-retainers Democrats DO BEST.
Well, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney SHOWED US! We Americans who donated to, supported, and VOTED FOR our DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES in November 2006 THOUGHT we were getting OPPOSITION LEADERS... but instead we were getting COURTIERS who LINE UP TO KISS Mr. Bush's ring.
DISGRACEFUL and DISGUSTING, the abject craven cowardice, complicity, and corporate cronyism of America's ostensible "opposition party."
---------------------------------
Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism
by Glenn Greenwald
Saturday August 4, 2007 11:39 EST
Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/04/democrats/index.html
It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).
I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) book about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss -- including us -- was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: at Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power -- many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.
Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.
Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.
And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA -- a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.
The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting -- even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush's instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.
I don't have time this morning to dissect the various excesses and dangers of the new FISA amendments, though Marty Lederman and Steve Benen both do a typically thorough job in that regard. Suffice to say, craven fear, as usual, is the author of this debacle.
There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.
The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.
UPDATE: Much of this was undoubtedly the by-product of the Democratic Beltway consultant geniuses who insist that Democrats not resist the President's instructions on terrorism lest they look "weak." They need to look "strong," and they achieve that by giving the President what he wants and thereby generating articles like this one in The Washington Post, the first paragraph of which reports (accurately):
The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.
In the mind of the moderate Democratic Beltway centrist consultant, that is how Democrats look Strong -- by "bowing to pressure" exerted by one of the weakest and most disliked presidents in modern history. There is nothing like being described as "bowing" and "capitulating" to give an appearance of strength.
And can we please be spared the condescending assurances about how great it is that the law has a six-month sunset provision, since -- in 6 months -- it will be exactly the same Democrats voting on whether to renew these powers and they will be intimidated by exactly the same threats that if they do not renew it and give the President all of the powers he wants, the Terrorists will kill us and it will be all the fault of the Democrats for disobeying President Bush. The cycle is just going to repeat itself 180 days from now. Why would it be different?
UPDATE II: This afternoon I interviewed Sen. Chris Dodd, who more than any other presidential candidate is attempting to make issues of executive power and constitutional encroachments the centerpiece of his campaign. I'll post the entire transcript and some commentary in a few days, but for now here is part of the discussion we had concerning last night's FISA vote in the Senate (Dodd, along with Obama and Clinton, voted against the FISA bill):
GG: Can you describe what you think it is that motivated 16 of your colleagues in the Democratic caucus to vote in favor of this bill?
CD: No, I really can't . . . We had caucuses during the day, so everyone knew what was there. You had a vote at 10:00 at night, people say I didn't know what was there, then normally I can understand, but we had a caucus during the day. There was a lot of conversation about it.
GG: So this wasn't a Patriot Act case where people can claim ignorance because there was a rushed vote? There was a careful assessment of what the terms in this statute were?
CD: Absolutely. In fact, even during the vote, Carl Levin was sitting there, and Carl said: "look, I want everyone to read this" . . . . Most people know about the Gonzales references and the 180 days -- there is also a section, as Carl pointed out, that basically says that if they can prove reasonably that you're out of the country -- not that you're not a citizen, just out of the country [then they can eavesdrop on you] . . . .
But I wish I had a better explanation. Normally after that, we would be in session Monday or Tuesday, around today, people would be talking about it. So I'm a little stunned, and grasping for some answer here. So I really don't know. . . .
GG: There is this gap in FISA, which everyone, even Russ Feingold, says needs to be filled, which is that if there is a foreign-to-foreign conversation which happens to be routed through the U.S., it requires a warrant -- so why not just say "OK, we fixed this gap and here's our bill and if you veto it, and there's a terrorist attack, then it's your responsibility"?
CD: Hello? Sounds pretty reasonable to me. But part of what this comes down to is that too many people in public life are not secure enough in their own beliefs -- feel vulnerable to attacks by people who will attack you -- and feel unwilling or unable to respond to them with clarity and conviction. And if you lack that clarity and conviction, and if you haven't been through this in the past, then you're likely to be a little weaker in the legs.
I also asked Dodd why Democrats repeatedly engage in the same self-destructive behavior -- refusing to take a hard-core principled stance against the administration, and instead capitulating just enough to look like losers, but -- despite the capitulation -- still allowing the vote to be used against them. As always (see e.g., Iraq War Authorization, warrantless eavesdropping, Military Commissions Act), they capitulate in order to prevent the vote from being used against them, even though it ends up being used against them anyway because so many of them vote (with futility) against it, but do so without ever fighting for, explaining or defending their position.
I also asked him why, when they were in the minority, the Democrats were so afraid to filibuster anything, even something as drastic as the Military Commissions Act or the Alito nomination, whereas the Republicans run around filibustering everything they can find and don't care at all about being called "obstructionist." Why are the Republicans so aggressive with using their minority tools to block all Democratic initiatives whereas Democrats failed to filibuster for years?
Dodd, by his own candid admission, has no good explanation for the Democrats' behavior, which repeats itself endlessly. He has no good explanation as to why so many of his Democratic colleagues are so deeply afraid of being attacked by one of the weakest presidents in modern American history.
Although Dodd's convictions about the constitutional issues are impressively authentic and come from a place of real passion, and although he agreed with most of the criticisms voiced regarding the timidity of Congressional Democrats, I found the interview rather dispiriting, to put it mildly. That was not due to Dodd per se, but because it is clear that Beltway Democrats have no real strategy for doing anything differently or even any real awareness that something different is necessary.
UPDATE III: The House has now also voted in favor of the FISA amendments by a vote of 227-183 (h/t EJ). A total of 41 Democrats voted in favor.
COWARDLY Democrats SELL Iraq war veterans DOWN THE RIVER... bcause SELLING AMERICANS DOWN THE RIVER is what COWARDLY DEMOCRATS DO...
COWARDLY Democrat "leaders" - especially the ineffectual Democrat Senators who couldn't lead a successful filibuster fight agaisnt Bush administation atrocities even if Dick Cheney was overseeing the rape and torture of young boys on the White House Lawn in Broad Daylight on Easter Sunday, while George Bush and Alberto Gonzales were using original copies of the Constitution to light a bonfire on the Capitol steps - once again run through their "SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, and for god's sake DO NOTHING about Bush administration EVIL" act YET AGAIN, in this case, BETRAYING returning National Guard and Reseve combat vterans, SELLING them down the river as the Bush administration REFUSES TO ENFORCE job protections laws for civilian employment of Guard and Reserve toops .
PRETENDING IGNORANCE, and BETRAYING AMERICAN CITIZENS (by SELLING THEM DOWN THE RIVER for corporate campaign donations and defering to the major media media whores "conventional wisdom" on hundreds of issues) is WHAT DEMOCRATIC 'leaders' DO BEST.
<< This onerous burden of proof [on returning Reservists denied their old civilian jobs] discourages many from filing formal complaints....
If the Justice Department has failed to prosecute employers who act illegally, the Defense Department has taken unprecedented steps to keep reservists' reemployment problems secret.>>
______________________________________
SAVING SOLDIER's JOBSBy Amy R. Gershkoff
Saturday, August 4, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080301689.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning -- not the end -- of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty.
The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired.
This onerous burden of proof discourages many from filing formal complaints.
Despite such bureaucratic hurdles, more than 16,000 reservist complaints were filed between 2004 and 2006, the Government Accountability Office said this year. But fewer than 30 percent of the reservists who experience USERRA violations file complaints, the GAO estimated.
Those who do file complaints with the Veterans Employment and Training Service Department (VETS) find that resolving their complaints, by the military's own admission, can take "months, if not years." A declassified Defense Department memo compiled for military lawyers stated: "Many VETS field investigators simply accept whatever the employer tells them in a response and close their files" rather than continue an investigation, meaning the reservists never receive assistance. A 2005 GAO report found that the average time service members have to wait for USERRA complaints to be resolved is 619 days -- nearly two years.
Complaints that cannot be closed are referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, but few cases make it that far. In 2005, of the 5,302 complaints filed by reservists, 111 cases were referred to the Justice Department. Only 16 resulted in benefits going to reservists.
The Justice Department special counsel in charge of prosecuting veterans' job cases, Scott Bloch, declared before Congress in May 2005 that he had "zero tolerance for violations of USERRA" and would "enforce the law vigorously." He promised lawmakers that the Justice Department would do better.
It did -- barely. In 2006, the Justice Department received168 cases and found in favor of the service members 48 times. Resolving 48 cases is better than 16, but tens of thousands of veterans are still without jobs and without recourse.
If the Justice Department has failed to prosecute employers who act illegally, the Defense Department has taken unprecedented steps to keep reservists' reemployment problems secret. According to the GAO, the Pentagon's annual Status of Forces Surveys provide the only accurate account of the number of reservists experiencing reemployment difficulties. These surveys ask reservists about their service, job loss and whether they are receiving the legal protections -- occupational and otherwise -- guaranteed to them under federal law.
Status of Forces Surveys used to be available to the public. But the 2005 and 2006 surveys of returning reservists and guardsmen were designated "for official use only," putting them off-limits to civilians, journalists or anyone else outside government curious about enforcement of USERRA.
The Defense Department has effectively made oversight of this issue impossible.
America deserves a full accounting of the sacrifices our soldiers have made on and off the battlefield. Most reservists are not wealthy; when the government fails to redress their grievances, the majority cannot afford to hire lawyers to prosecute their cases, particularly if they have lost their civilian jobs. Thousands of the brave men and women lucky enough to return safely from Iraq are being left without jobs, without hope and without recourse. The government has failed to protect these reservists and has covered up the evidence. It is time for Americans to protect those who protect us by demanding thorough oversight of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
The writer is director of analytics at MSHC Partners, a Washington consulting firm.
PRETENDING IGNORANCE, and BETRAYING AMERICAN CITIZENS (by SELLING THEM DOWN THE RIVER for corporate campaign donations and defering to the major media media whores "conventional wisdom" on hundreds of issues) is WHAT DEMOCRATIC 'leaders' DO BEST.
<< This onerous burden of proof [on returning Reservists denied their old civilian jobs] discourages many from filing formal complaints....
If the Justice Department has failed to prosecute employers who act illegally, the Defense Department has taken unprecedented steps to keep reservists' reemployment problems secret.>>
______________________________________
SAVING SOLDIER's JOBSBy Amy R. Gershkoff
Saturday, August 4, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080301689.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning -- not the end -- of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty.
The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired.
This onerous burden of proof discourages many from filing formal complaints.
Despite such bureaucratic hurdles, more than 16,000 reservist complaints were filed between 2004 and 2006, the Government Accountability Office said this year. But fewer than 30 percent of the reservists who experience USERRA violations file complaints, the GAO estimated.
Those who do file complaints with the Veterans Employment and Training Service Department (VETS) find that resolving their complaints, by the military's own admission, can take "months, if not years." A declassified Defense Department memo compiled for military lawyers stated: "Many VETS field investigators simply accept whatever the employer tells them in a response and close their files" rather than continue an investigation, meaning the reservists never receive assistance. A 2005 GAO report found that the average time service members have to wait for USERRA complaints to be resolved is 619 days -- nearly two years.
Complaints that cannot be closed are referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, but few cases make it that far. In 2005, of the 5,302 complaints filed by reservists, 111 cases were referred to the Justice Department. Only 16 resulted in benefits going to reservists.
The Justice Department special counsel in charge of prosecuting veterans' job cases, Scott Bloch, declared before Congress in May 2005 that he had "zero tolerance for violations of USERRA" and would "enforce the law vigorously." He promised lawmakers that the Justice Department would do better.
It did -- barely. In 2006, the Justice Department received168 cases and found in favor of the service members 48 times. Resolving 48 cases is better than 16, but tens of thousands of veterans are still without jobs and without recourse.
If the Justice Department has failed to prosecute employers who act illegally, the Defense Department has taken unprecedented steps to keep reservists' reemployment problems secret. According to the GAO, the Pentagon's annual Status of Forces Surveys provide the only accurate account of the number of reservists experiencing reemployment difficulties. These surveys ask reservists about their service, job loss and whether they are receiving the legal protections -- occupational and otherwise -- guaranteed to them under federal law.
Status of Forces Surveys used to be available to the public. But the 2005 and 2006 surveys of returning reservists and guardsmen were designated "for official use only," putting them off-limits to civilians, journalists or anyone else outside government curious about enforcement of USERRA.
The Defense Department has effectively made oversight of this issue impossible.
America deserves a full accounting of the sacrifices our soldiers have made on and off the battlefield. Most reservists are not wealthy; when the government fails to redress their grievances, the majority cannot afford to hire lawyers to prosecute their cases, particularly if they have lost their civilian jobs. Thousands of the brave men and women lucky enough to return safely from Iraq are being left without jobs, without hope and without recourse. The government has failed to protect these reservists and has covered up the evidence. It is time for Americans to protect those who protect us by demanding thorough oversight of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
The writer is director of analytics at MSHC Partners, a Washington consulting firm.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
COWARDLY Democrats ALLOW media to IGNORE Bush GUTTING of highway rebuilding bill...
SELLING OUT American voters, consumers, and citizens IS WHAT THE COWARDLY "establishment" (inside-the-beltway) DO BEST....
From John Ashcroft NOT flying on PUBLIC AIRLINERS in July of 2001 because of a "THREAT ASSESMENT" - a "THREAT ASSESMENT" the COWARDLY Democrats were TOO STUPID to ASK QUESTIONS about... (thereby JOINING IN the Bush-Cheney administration leaving American airline passengers and crews EXPOSED to that "threat" - AS BAIT for Mr. Cheney's desire for an excuse to attack Iraq) - to ALLOWING the Bush administration to STONEWALL creation of a 9-11 Commission until some 9-11 widows did the heavy lifting for bringing that commission about - to ALLOWING Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to waltz into that committee, together and not under oath - to IGNORING the DEAD END of the ANTHRAX ATTACK that TERRORIZED CONGRESS and KILLED American (postal) workers - SELLING AMERICA OUT is the NUMBER ONE BUSINESS of Democrats of the United States Senate.
IN THE LATEST EXAMPLE, the BUSH ADMINISTRATION _REJECTED_ a 4-cent per gallon tax to raise funds FOR BRIDGE AND HIGHWAY REPAIRS.
OF COURSE the COWARDLY Democrats will PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE as the corporate media (media WHORES) downplay, whitewash, and ignore this cold hard fact - which, indeed, is at the HEART & SOUL of the Right-WIng agenda, as in Grover Norquist's relentless campaign to "SHRINK THE GOVERNMENT until it is SMALL ENOUGH TO _DROWN_ IN A BATHTUB."
WHY, these DOZEN YEARS since the Right-Wing has begun ratcheting up their REGRESSIVE, unconstitutional, neo-segregationist (voter DISERNFRANCHISEMENT), neo-con (imperial colonizers) agenda, are the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY VOICELESS and POWERLESS to CONNECT THE DOTS - that SLASHING public funding RESULTS IN NEGLECTED ROADS AND HIGHWAYS??!
The two fundamental answers are: #1. The AIPAC Democrats are TORN between two constituencies - between the LIKUD agenda in Israel (which effectively DICTATES _ALL_ AIPAC goals and policies..
#2. Even non-AIPAC senators and congressmen/women are now ENTIRELY DEPENDENT on BIG DONORS, and the fastest way to scare off big donors is to STAND UP to the corporate barons and media moguls and thereby incur NEGATIVE PRESS - which makes Democrats WILT faster than a snowman stuck in the midday Sahara sun.
-----------------------------------------------
Bush Administration Killed Increased Highway Repairs In 2004
Friday :: Aug 3, 2007
by Steve Sotohttp://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010765.php
The Republicans have no problem rubber-stamping $144 billion a year into a failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan without demanding results. But if we committed that same $12 billion a month out of a $2 trillion federal budget, and paid for it with a gas tax increase, we could address our infrastructure needs by the end of the next president’s first term. And we would create millions of good paying jobs at the same time and do our economy a world of good, especially if we married it to a redirection of oil and gas subsidies and a gas tax increase towards development of a domestic, sustainable energy industry.
But for the sake of four cents a gallon back in 2004, the Bush Administration said no additional money would be provided for roads and bridges. Yet we pour billions of borrowed money into Iraq every month.
When a bipartisan majority in Congress suggested increasing the federal excise tax on gasoline back in 2004 for the first time since 1993 to pay for road and bridge projects, the White House threatened to veto the measure because it contained a tax increase. At the time, the White House said they would not support any increase in federal gas taxes to pay for road improvements, and then said that highway needs must be met solely through the existing, woeful level of funding in the highway fund and not the general fund, a position that by all accounts within Congress and among transportation experts shortchanged our true needs to the tune of several hundred billion dollars.
But the White House says "let's not politicize this", like they did to cover up their negligence after Katrina.
From John Ashcroft NOT flying on PUBLIC AIRLINERS in July of 2001 because of a "THREAT ASSESMENT" - a "THREAT ASSESMENT" the COWARDLY Democrats were TOO STUPID to ASK QUESTIONS about... (thereby JOINING IN the Bush-Cheney administration leaving American airline passengers and crews EXPOSED to that "threat" - AS BAIT for Mr. Cheney's desire for an excuse to attack Iraq) - to ALLOWING the Bush administration to STONEWALL creation of a 9-11 Commission until some 9-11 widows did the heavy lifting for bringing that commission about - to ALLOWING Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to waltz into that committee, together and not under oath - to IGNORING the DEAD END of the ANTHRAX ATTACK that TERRORIZED CONGRESS and KILLED American (postal) workers - SELLING AMERICA OUT is the NUMBER ONE BUSINESS of Democrats of the United States Senate.
IN THE LATEST EXAMPLE, the BUSH ADMINISTRATION _REJECTED_ a 4-cent per gallon tax to raise funds FOR BRIDGE AND HIGHWAY REPAIRS.
OF COURSE the COWARDLY Democrats will PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE as the corporate media (media WHORES) downplay, whitewash, and ignore this cold hard fact - which, indeed, is at the HEART & SOUL of the Right-WIng agenda, as in Grover Norquist's relentless campaign to "SHRINK THE GOVERNMENT until it is SMALL ENOUGH TO _DROWN_ IN A BATHTUB."
WHY, these DOZEN YEARS since the Right-Wing has begun ratcheting up their REGRESSIVE, unconstitutional, neo-segregationist (voter DISERNFRANCHISEMENT), neo-con (imperial colonizers) agenda, are the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY VOICELESS and POWERLESS to CONNECT THE DOTS - that SLASHING public funding RESULTS IN NEGLECTED ROADS AND HIGHWAYS??!
The two fundamental answers are: #1. The AIPAC Democrats are TORN between two constituencies - between the LIKUD agenda in Israel (which effectively DICTATES _ALL_ AIPAC goals and policies..
#2. Even non-AIPAC senators and congressmen/women are now ENTIRELY DEPENDENT on BIG DONORS, and the fastest way to scare off big donors is to STAND UP to the corporate barons and media moguls and thereby incur NEGATIVE PRESS - which makes Democrats WILT faster than a snowman stuck in the midday Sahara sun.
Bush Administration Killed Increased Highway Repairs In 2004
Friday :: Aug 3, 2007
by Steve Sotohttp://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010765.php
The Republicans have no problem rubber-stamping $144 billion a year into a failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan without demanding results. But if we committed that same $12 billion a month out of a $2 trillion federal budget, and paid for it with a gas tax increase, we could address our infrastructure needs by the end of the next president’s first term. And we would create millions of good paying jobs at the same time and do our economy a world of good, especially if we married it to a redirection of oil and gas subsidies and a gas tax increase towards development of a domestic, sustainable energy industry.
But for the sake of four cents a gallon back in 2004, the Bush Administration said no additional money would be provided for roads and bridges. Yet we pour billions of borrowed money into Iraq every month.
When a bipartisan majority in Congress suggested increasing the federal excise tax on gasoline back in 2004 for the first time since 1993 to pay for road and bridge projects, the White House threatened to veto the measure because it contained a tax increase. At the time, the White House said they would not support any increase in federal gas taxes to pay for road improvements, and then said that highway needs must be met solely through the existing, woeful level of funding in the highway fund and not the general fund, a position that by all accounts within Congress and among transportation experts shortchanged our true needs to the tune of several hundred billion dollars.
But the White House says "let's not politicize this", like they did to cover up their negligence after Katrina.
Cowardly Senate Democrats pass Bush "unlimited spying on American citizens" bill...
At a time when the Bush White House has NO respect for national security - not for undercover CIA operations it casually publicizes ("outs") as means of smearing critics; not for overseeing gross corruption and contract fraud in billion dollar Iraq contracts; not for following through on the 9-11 Commission recommendations until forced to by the Democrat controlled congress...
And at a time when the Bush administration also demonstrates that they have NO RESPECT FOR THE LAW, with President Bush using "signing statements" as a line-item veto, and with his personal counsel, now attorney general, Alberto Gonzales lying repeatedly (and badly) to Senate investigations...
despite those demonstratable illegalities, failures, and 'abuses' of the Bush administration, the COWARDLY SENATORS of the Democratic Party practically line up to kiss the emperor's ring, this time giving the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration UNLIMITED ABILITIES to SPY ON ANY AMERICAN THEY CHOOSE.
THE COWARDLY SENATORS of Harry Reid's 110th Congress - the end of American democracy?
==================================================
Senate passes Bush-backed spy bill
by By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan, Reuters
Sat Aug 4, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0328188520070804
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led U.S. Senate, amid warnings of further attacks on the United States, approved a bill on Friday that would allow President George W. Bush to maintain his controversial domestic spying program.
On a vote of 60-28, the Senate sent the measure to the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives for consideration as early as Saturday as lawmakers push to begin a month-long recess.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said earlier he needed the legislation "in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States."
The Senate bill was needed, congressional aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by a secret court on the ability of U.S. spy agencies to intercept telephone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists overseas.
Offered by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, no relation to the national intelligence director, the bill would allow the administration to continue the warrantless surveillance but require it to describe to a secret federal court the procedures it uses in targeting foreign suspects.
The Senate defeated, on a 45-43 vote, a Democratic alternative, which would have placed tighter controls on the spying and provided for independent assessments of the attorney general's implementation of the measure.
The Senate votes came shortly after Republicans in the House rejected as inadequate a competing Democratic measure.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid criticized the Senate-passed bill, saying it "authorizes warrantless searches and surveillance of American phone calls, e-mails, homes, offices and personal records for however long (it takes for) an appeal to a court of review."
If signed into law, the Senate bill would expire in six months. During that period, Congress would seek to write permanent legislation.
And at a time when the Bush administration also demonstrates that they have NO RESPECT FOR THE LAW, with President Bush using "signing statements" as a line-item veto, and with his personal counsel, now attorney general, Alberto Gonzales lying repeatedly (and badly) to Senate investigations...
despite those demonstratable illegalities, failures, and 'abuses' of the Bush administration, the COWARDLY SENATORS of the Democratic Party practically line up to kiss the emperor's ring, this time giving the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration UNLIMITED ABILITIES to SPY ON ANY AMERICAN THEY CHOOSE.
THE COWARDLY SENATORS of Harry Reid's 110th Congress - the end of American democracy?
==================================================
Senate passes Bush-backed spy bill
by By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan, Reuters
Sat Aug 4, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0328188520070804
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led U.S. Senate, amid warnings of further attacks on the United States, approved a bill on Friday that would allow President George W. Bush to maintain his controversial domestic spying program.
On a vote of 60-28, the Senate sent the measure to the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives for consideration as early as Saturday as lawmakers push to begin a month-long recess.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said earlier he needed the legislation "in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States."
The Senate bill was needed, congressional aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by a secret court on the ability of U.S. spy agencies to intercept telephone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists overseas.
Offered by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, no relation to the national intelligence director, the bill would allow the administration to continue the warrantless surveillance but require it to describe to a secret federal court the procedures it uses in targeting foreign suspects.
The Senate defeated, on a 45-43 vote, a Democratic alternative, which would have placed tighter controls on the spying and provided for independent assessments of the attorney general's implementation of the measure.
The Senate votes came shortly after Republicans in the House rejected as inadequate a competing Democratic measure.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid criticized the Senate-passed bill, saying it "authorizes warrantless searches and surveillance of American phone calls, e-mails, homes, offices and personal records for however long (it takes for) an appeal to a court of review."
If signed into law, the Senate bill would expire in six months. During that period, Congress would seek to write permanent legislation.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
cowardly, craven Senate Democrats let REPUBLICAN Senator Arlen Specter DO THE HEAVY LIFTING to demand Gonzales' ouster from Dept. of Justice...
Gonzales Issue Snarls Surveillance Law
LARA JAKES JORDAN | August 2, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070802/terrorism-surveillance/
WASHINGTON — Congress struggled Thursday over giving the government more power to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists, bogged down by concerns about the man who would oversee the plan _ Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Democrats and Republicans alike said they wanted to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 before leaving Washington at week's end for a monthlong break. Summer generally is considered a vulnerable time for attacks because more people are traveling and terrorists can move around undetected more easily.
Gonzales "is clearly one of the concerns that has been expressed by the Democratic leaders," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters.
"But at the end of the day, there has to be a way for our intelligence and counterintelligence agencies to collect data from known terrorists," Boehner said. "And we shouldn't let personalities get in the way of protecting the American people."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said lawmakers scoff when "they say Gonzales should do the reviews because nobody believes he has any independence."
"You just can't rely on Gonzales, and the president and the Republicans know it," said Schumer, one of the attorney general's chief critics.
The administration accused Congress of playing politics with national security.
"Putting political interests above the passage of important legislation to protect the American people is truly unfortunate," said Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "We should not be sacrificing national security over partisan differences."
The law generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.
Democrats, who control Congress, would allow the messages from foreign targets to be intercepted, but only after a review by the special FISA court to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.
They reject the Bush administration's proposal to give Gonzales speedy authority to decide if the surveillance properly targets people overseas _ and not in the United States.
In a counteroffer, the White House proposed that Gonzales share that power with the national intelligence director, Mike McConnell. That proposal, however, did not appease Democrats. They want court review of highly classified surveillance that has been at the heart of civil liberties disputes with the White House for years.
But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said having the two men share legal oversight of the spying would, at least, eliminate "the concerns I have about giving any additional authority to the attorney general."
In instances where the two disagree on issues, "I think that Gonzales' vote will be of lesser weight than McConnell's," Specter said. Asked why he believed that, he answered, "Because I know the two men."
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., senators said any final plan should ensure the special court has oversight.
"We are reluctant to amend FISA without assurances that the administration will actually follow the law," wrote Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Negotiations "are going back and forth, back and forth," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. "We will not leave here, we must not leave here, until we get this fixed."
LARA JAKES JORDAN | August 2, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070802/terrorism-surveillance/
WASHINGTON — Congress struggled Thursday over giving the government more power to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists, bogged down by concerns about the man who would oversee the plan _ Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Democrats and Republicans alike said they wanted to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 before leaving Washington at week's end for a monthlong break. Summer generally is considered a vulnerable time for attacks because more people are traveling and terrorists can move around undetected more easily.
Gonzales "is clearly one of the concerns that has been expressed by the Democratic leaders," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters.
"But at the end of the day, there has to be a way for our intelligence and counterintelligence agencies to collect data from known terrorists," Boehner said. "And we shouldn't let personalities get in the way of protecting the American people."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said lawmakers scoff when "they say Gonzales should do the reviews because nobody believes he has any independence."
"You just can't rely on Gonzales, and the president and the Republicans know it," said Schumer, one of the attorney general's chief critics.
The administration accused Congress of playing politics with national security.
"Putting political interests above the passage of important legislation to protect the American people is truly unfortunate," said Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "We should not be sacrificing national security over partisan differences."
The law generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.
Democrats, who control Congress, would allow the messages from foreign targets to be intercepted, but only after a review by the special FISA court to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.
They reject the Bush administration's proposal to give Gonzales speedy authority to decide if the surveillance properly targets people overseas _ and not in the United States.
In a counteroffer, the White House proposed that Gonzales share that power with the national intelligence director, Mike McConnell. That proposal, however, did not appease Democrats. They want court review of highly classified surveillance that has been at the heart of civil liberties disputes with the White House for years.
But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said having the two men share legal oversight of the spying would, at least, eliminate "the concerns I have about giving any additional authority to the attorney general."
In instances where the two disagree on issues, "I think that Gonzales' vote will be of lesser weight than McConnell's," Specter said. Asked why he believed that, he answered, "Because I know the two men."
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., senators said any final plan should ensure the special court has oversight.
"We are reluctant to amend FISA without assurances that the administration will actually follow the law," wrote Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Negotiations "are going back and forth, back and forth," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said. "We will not leave here, we must not leave here, until we get this fixed."
Bill O'Reilly SNARLS at Senator Chris Dodd "YOU'RE A PROPAGANDIST, I have NO RESPECT for you!" Pot calling kettle black....
(click on our LINK to see the HuffingtonPost video of Bill O'Reilly as his uber-hypocrite worst)
We here at DemocraticNationUSA are tired of our Democratic "leaders" TAKING THEIR POLICY POSITIONS from the robber-barons and amoral moguls of the corporate press/media, so in a way it is downright CATHARTIC to see Bill O'Reilly SNARL at Senator Chris Dodd, O'Reilly telling Dodd at one point "YOU ARE A PROPAGANDIST!" and saying a moment later "I HAVE NO RESPECT FOR YOU."
SPEAKING OF PROPAGANDISTS, Bill, we HOPE the craven, cowed Senate Democrats FINALLY get around to INVESTIGATING... and making FRONT-PAGE NEWS, bold-type headlines, the CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS between your boss, Australian business tycoon and Fox 'news' owner RUPERT MURDOCH, and the COMMUNIST PARTY LEADERSHIP in China....
Bill O'Reilly: PAID SMEAR-MOB UNDERLING of the Media Tycoon who grants MORE RESPECT TO COMMUNIST CHINA LEADERS, than to America's _democratically elected_ US senators.
Senator Dodd, your push-back WASN'T NEARLY STRONG ENOUGH to put the vile Bill O'Reilly in his place....
----------------------------------
Sen Dodd Confronts Bill O'Reilly About Smearing YearlyKos Convention August 2, 2007 08:59 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/02/sen-dodd-confronts-bill-o_n_58970.html
In a shouting match that aired this evening on The O'Reilly Factor, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd slammed Bill O'Reilly for his sustained smear campaign against the participants and presidential candidates who plan to attend the 2007 YearlyKos conference, which began today in Chicago.
At one point, O'Reilly accused Dodd of being a "propagandist", declaring, "If I were Joseph Lieberman, I would never talk to you again." Dodd responded: "You object to the fact that 1,500 people are going to gather in Chicago, representing hundreds of thousands of people who utilize this community gathering, this Internet site...a way to express their views every day."
See the video:
We here at DemocraticNationUSA are tired of our Democratic "leaders" TAKING THEIR POLICY POSITIONS from the robber-barons and amoral moguls of the corporate press/media, so in a way it is downright CATHARTIC to see Bill O'Reilly SNARL at Senator Chris Dodd, O'Reilly telling Dodd at one point "YOU ARE A PROPAGANDIST!" and saying a moment later "I HAVE NO RESPECT FOR YOU."
SPEAKING OF PROPAGANDISTS, Bill, we HOPE the craven, cowed Senate Democrats FINALLY get around to INVESTIGATING... and making FRONT-PAGE NEWS, bold-type headlines, the CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS between your boss, Australian business tycoon and Fox 'news' owner RUPERT MURDOCH, and the COMMUNIST PARTY LEADERSHIP in China....
Bill O'Reilly: PAID SMEAR-MOB UNDERLING of the Media Tycoon who grants MORE RESPECT TO COMMUNIST CHINA LEADERS, than to America's _democratically elected_ US senators.
Senator Dodd, your push-back WASN'T NEARLY STRONG ENOUGH to put the vile Bill O'Reilly in his place....
----------------------------------
Sen Dodd Confronts Bill O'Reilly About Smearing YearlyKos Convention August 2, 2007 08:59 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/02/sen-dodd-confronts-bill-o_n_58970.html
In a shouting match that aired this evening on The O'Reilly Factor, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd slammed Bill O'Reilly for his sustained smear campaign against the participants and presidential candidates who plan to attend the 2007 YearlyKos conference, which began today in Chicago.
At one point, O'Reilly accused Dodd of being a "propagandist", declaring, "If I were Joseph Lieberman, I would never talk to you again." Dodd responded: "You object to the fact that 1,500 people are going to gather in Chicago, representing hundreds of thousands of people who utilize this community gathering, this Internet site...a way to express their views every day."
See the video:
IMPEACHMENT - up to 33 Congress FOR impeachment....
33 Congress Members for Impeachment
By David Swanson
Wed, 2007-08-01
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/25325
I ran into Congressman Donald Payne Tuesday evening and asked him if he would sign on to cosponsor H Res 333, articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. He said yes immediately and brought his legislative director in on the conversation. They both said yes, as a matter of course, as if all they'd been waiting for was someone to ask them. Now, I know that's not quite the case, and that citizens of New Jersey have been lobbying Payne and other New Jersey Congress Members intensely. Still, it makes me wonder how many Congress Members might back impeachment if people just got to them, face-to-face, and asked.
Well, here's your chance to find out. Congress is taking the next month off. Congress Members will be in their districts. They'll be near your house. They have offices near your house. Now is the time to ask them to cosponsor H Res 333 or introduce their own articles of impeachment against Cheney. If they agree to cosponsor H Res 333, you should contact Congressman Dennis Kucinich's office and let him know. If they do not agree, you should make a bunch of big posters that say "Honk to Impeach" and stand on the street corner in front of your Congress Member's office. Or you should sit in their office, read the Constitution out loud, and refuse to leave. August is your time to make your message clear. 54% of Americans want Cheney impeached, and 40% do not. See how many of that 54% you can bring with you to your representative's office.
If we add Congressman Payne's name to the official list of cosponsors of H Res 333, including the original sponsor, Kucinich, we get a total of 16 principled men and women standing for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. They are: Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Keith Ellison, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Albert Wynn, William Lacy Clay, Dennis Kucinich, Yvette Clarke, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Bob Filner, Sam Farr, Robert Brady, and Donald Payne.
Meanwhile, two Congress Members have recently said that they support the impeachment of Cheney and Bush, but have not yet signed onto any bills: Jesse Jackson Jr., and Maurice Hinchey. While they should be asked immediately to put their signatures where their mouths are, we can go ahead and include them in our count of Congress Members for impeachment, bringing the total to 18.
On Tuesday, Congressman Jay Inslee introduced or announced he would soon introduce a bill to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Inslee says he has 15 cosponsors, including himself. Neither Inslee nor anyone else I can find provides a full list of those 15 names, but 11 of them are: Jay Inslee, Xavier Becerra, Michael Arcuri, Ben Chandler, Dennis Moore, Bruce Braley, Tom Udall, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen. Of those 11, only one, Hank Johnson, is already on our list of impeachment supporters. Assuming that he is the only one of the 15 already on our list, we can add 14 to 18 and reach a total of 32 Congress Members now backing the impeachment of either Cheney or Gonzales or both.
Bringing the grand total to 33 is none other than the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who said on Tuesday that if she were not the Speaker she would probably be backing impeachment. Word to the wise: other congress members should do as she would do, not as she advises.
It is likely that most or all of the supporters of H Res 333 will sign onto Inslee's bill, assuming – again – that somebody asks them. And supporters of Inslee's bill can now be added to the list of priority Members to lobby to sign onto H Res 333. Of special note is freshman Congressman Steve Cohen because he serves on the House Judiciary Committee. With the addition of his name, there are now four members of the Judiciary Committee on our list of 33, two for impeaching Cheney, one for impeaching Gonzales, and one for impeaching both of them.
Congressman Payne is an interesting addition as well. Payne holds the same seat in Congress that was once held by Peter Rodino, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who led the passage of articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.
In addition to Inslee's cosponsors, it's possible to create a list of priority Members to be lobbied on impeaching Cheney. By combining the lists of those who seem most likely to sign on (primarily those who cosponsored H Res 635 in the last Congress) with those on the Judiciary Committee who seem most likely to sign on, we arrive at this list:
John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, Jesse Jackson Jr., Diane Watson, Sheila Jackson Lee, John Lewis, Steve Cohen, Neil Abercrombie, Tammy Baldwin, Lois Capps, Michael Capuano, Danny Davis, Chaka Fattah, Michael Honda, Carolyn Maloney, Betty McCullom, Gwen Moore, James Oberstar, John Olver, Steven Rothman, Hilda Solis, Pete Stark, John Tierney, Nydia Velazquez, David Wu, Bill Delahunt, Bobby Scott, Artur Davis, Mel Watt, Luis Gutierrez, Zoe Lofgren, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, John Conyers.
These are not people who have suggested or even hinted that they are willing to step up and support the Constitution. But they are the most likely and most important to do so.
Any Congress Members afraid that the media will pillory them for calling Cheney a liar should watch this video from Tuesday in which Cheney lies to CNN and, much more remarkably, CNN suggests that Cheney lied: http://afterdowningstreet.org/cheney2
Any Congress Member still unwilling to get behind impeaching Cheney, should at the very least sign on for the impeachment of an Attorney General who openly lies to Congress.
By David Swanson
Wed, 2007-08-01
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/25325
I ran into Congressman Donald Payne Tuesday evening and asked him if he would sign on to cosponsor H Res 333, articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. He said yes immediately and brought his legislative director in on the conversation. They both said yes, as a matter of course, as if all they'd been waiting for was someone to ask them. Now, I know that's not quite the case, and that citizens of New Jersey have been lobbying Payne and other New Jersey Congress Members intensely. Still, it makes me wonder how many Congress Members might back impeachment if people just got to them, face-to-face, and asked.
Well, here's your chance to find out. Congress is taking the next month off. Congress Members will be in their districts. They'll be near your house. They have offices near your house. Now is the time to ask them to cosponsor H Res 333 or introduce their own articles of impeachment against Cheney. If they agree to cosponsor H Res 333, you should contact Congressman Dennis Kucinich's office and let him know. If they do not agree, you should make a bunch of big posters that say "Honk to Impeach" and stand on the street corner in front of your Congress Member's office. Or you should sit in their office, read the Constitution out loud, and refuse to leave. August is your time to make your message clear. 54% of Americans want Cheney impeached, and 40% do not. See how many of that 54% you can bring with you to your representative's office.
If we add Congressman Payne's name to the official list of cosponsors of H Res 333, including the original sponsor, Kucinich, we get a total of 16 principled men and women standing for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. They are: Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Keith Ellison, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Albert Wynn, William Lacy Clay, Dennis Kucinich, Yvette Clarke, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Bob Filner, Sam Farr, Robert Brady, and Donald Payne.
Meanwhile, two Congress Members have recently said that they support the impeachment of Cheney and Bush, but have not yet signed onto any bills: Jesse Jackson Jr., and Maurice Hinchey. While they should be asked immediately to put their signatures where their mouths are, we can go ahead and include them in our count of Congress Members for impeachment, bringing the total to 18.
On Tuesday, Congressman Jay Inslee introduced or announced he would soon introduce a bill to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Inslee says he has 15 cosponsors, including himself. Neither Inslee nor anyone else I can find provides a full list of those 15 names, but 11 of them are: Jay Inslee, Xavier Becerra, Michael Arcuri, Ben Chandler, Dennis Moore, Bruce Braley, Tom Udall, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen. Of those 11, only one, Hank Johnson, is already on our list of impeachment supporters. Assuming that he is the only one of the 15 already on our list, we can add 14 to 18 and reach a total of 32 Congress Members now backing the impeachment of either Cheney or Gonzales or both.
Bringing the grand total to 33 is none other than the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who said on Tuesday that if she were not the Speaker she would probably be backing impeachment. Word to the wise: other congress members should do as she would do, not as she advises.
It is likely that most or all of the supporters of H Res 333 will sign onto Inslee's bill, assuming – again – that somebody asks them. And supporters of Inslee's bill can now be added to the list of priority Members to lobby to sign onto H Res 333. Of special note is freshman Congressman Steve Cohen because he serves on the House Judiciary Committee. With the addition of his name, there are now four members of the Judiciary Committee on our list of 33, two for impeaching Cheney, one for impeaching Gonzales, and one for impeaching both of them.
Congressman Payne is an interesting addition as well. Payne holds the same seat in Congress that was once held by Peter Rodino, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who led the passage of articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.
In addition to Inslee's cosponsors, it's possible to create a list of priority Members to be lobbied on impeaching Cheney. By combining the lists of those who seem most likely to sign on (primarily those who cosponsored H Res 635 in the last Congress) with those on the Judiciary Committee who seem most likely to sign on, we arrive at this list:
John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, Jesse Jackson Jr., Diane Watson, Sheila Jackson Lee, John Lewis, Steve Cohen, Neil Abercrombie, Tammy Baldwin, Lois Capps, Michael Capuano, Danny Davis, Chaka Fattah, Michael Honda, Carolyn Maloney, Betty McCullom, Gwen Moore, James Oberstar, John Olver, Steven Rothman, Hilda Solis, Pete Stark, John Tierney, Nydia Velazquez, David Wu, Bill Delahunt, Bobby Scott, Artur Davis, Mel Watt, Luis Gutierrez, Zoe Lofgren, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, John Conyers.
These are not people who have suggested or even hinted that they are willing to step up and support the Constitution. But they are the most likely and most important to do so.
Any Congress Members afraid that the media will pillory them for calling Cheney a liar should watch this video from Tuesday in which Cheney lies to CNN and, much more remarkably, CNN suggests that Cheney lied: http://afterdowningstreet.org/cheney2
Any Congress Member still unwilling to get behind impeaching Cheney, should at the very least sign on for the impeachment of an Attorney General who openly lies to Congress.
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