Speaker of the House, and nominal "Democratic" 'leader' Nancy Pelosi, has been SO SLOW to NOTICE THE ABJECT, CRIMINAL CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their officials (former and currently serving), that Pelosi's long overdue demands for a Department of Justice Grand Jury investigation into that contempt barely qualifies as "leadership" at all. Just imagine what the history books will write of Ms. Pelosi in a dozen years: "SHE KNEW that the Bush White House and its officials were CONTEMPTUOUS of Congressional subpoenaes, but she DID NOTHING for the first dozen months of her term as Speaker of the 110th Congress"!
Madam Speaker, JUSTICE DELAYED for American citizens WRONGED by Bush administration ABUSES OF POWER, is _JUSTICE DENIED._
Justice NOT ENFORCED is CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE and even DERELICTION OF DUTY to "preserve and defend" the Constitution of the United States.
Madam Speaker, WE SUGGEST YOU MAKE A LIST of all your WAR-LOBBY donors - from Lockheed Martin to General Dynamics to AIPAC to Wall St. - and ask yourself "IS a $10,000 donation from any of these lobbyists, worth going down in history as the Speaker of the House who was BLIND, IMPOTENT, and INCOMPETENT to the serial, gross abuses of law of the Bush-Cheney White House?"
Much less from the Machiavellian point of view - as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, the TELECOMS ARE NOT CONTRIBUTING TO REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES this campaign season, because the BUSH-CHENEY WHITE HOUSE PUT THEM IN CRIMINAL JEAPORDY, a CRIMINAL JEAPORDY that YOU, Madam Speaker, REFUSE TO RESOLVE SWIFTLY and judiciously!
It is rare when Machiavellian precepts ALIGN WITH JUSTICE, but here they are - the Telecoms who cooperated with Bush's ILLEGAL, WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE, are NOT donating to Republican candidates... and STILL Speaker Pelosi is CLUELESS, LIKE A DEER IN HEADLIGHTS, about AGGRESSIVELY PURSUING JUSTICE against the CRIMINAL wrong-doings, systematic degredation of the Bush White House and Justice Department, and even CONSPIRATORIAL, in-your-face CRIMINAL CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS!
FOR SHAME, MADAM SPEAKER! YOU HAVE A _CONSTITUTIONAL_OBLIGATION_ to PROSECUTE AMERICAN JUSTICE, to DEFEND the American legal, legislative, and constitutional system against systematic subversion... and this you REFUSE TO DO in an energetic, forceful, systematic, and thorough manner!
Requesting that the Justice Department hold a Grand Jury inquirey is only a first step in CONFRONTING the SERIAL ABUSES OF LAW by the Bush-Cheney White House, and we hope and pray that the Speaker of the House demonstrate some LEADERSHIP QUALITIES commensurate with her office.
=====================================
Nancy Pelosi Requests Grand Jury Into Contempt For Miers, Bolten
by LARA JAKES JORDAN
February 28, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/28/nancy-pelosi-requests-gra_n_89058.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080228/ap_on_go_co/congress_contempt;_ylt=AhR_zpvuP23qpltty5QHOqys0NUE
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Justice Department on Thursday to open a grand jury investigation into whether President Bush's chief of staff and former counsel should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.
Pelosi, D-Calif., demanded that the department pursue misdemeanor charges against former White House counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to testify to Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors in 2006 and against chief of staff Josh Bolten for failing to turn over White House documents related to the dismissals.
She gave Attorney General Michael Mukasey one week to respond and said refusal to take the matter to a grand jury will result in the House's filing a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration.
THE [Bush] WHITE HOUSE BRANDED THE REQUEST as "TRULY CONTEMPTIBLE." The Justice Department said it had received Pelosi's request and anticipated providing further guidance after Mukasey's review. It noted "long-standing department precedent" in such cases against letting a U.S. attorney refer a congressional contempt citation to a grand jury or prosecute an executive branch. The top House Republican called it "a partisan political stunt" and "a complete waste of time," according to a spokesman.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Iraq & Afghan WARS a $3 trillion - THREE _TRILLION_ dollar drain - on US economy, for benefit of oil companies and war profiteers....
In Florida, a Republican campaign group is broadcasting TV ads saying that the Democratic Congress is "STOPPING electronic surveillance ON TERRORISTS."
THIS IS AN ABJECT LIE, the CIA, NSA and and any other government surveillance agency CAN _wiretap_ ANY SUSPECTS, anywhere in the world they need to, but they must get WARRANTS, even retroactively, so there is SOME OVERSIGHT to otherwise UNLIMITED GOVERNMENT SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS....
The Democrats have been ANEMIC, at best (and, in case of cowardly Senate "Democrats" who voted FOR UNLIMITED SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, COMPLICIT) re _PUSHING BACK_ against the awful Bush-Cheney adminstration's GRABBING OF THE WAR-on-TERROR as a be-all, end-all EXCUSE to permit UNLIMITED EXPANSION OF THE US GOVERNMENT's ABILITY TO SPY ON, ARREST, and even indefinite holding of US citizens WITH NO OVERSIGHT to anyone.
The three trillion dollar war
by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
February 23, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece
The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have grown to staggering proportionsJoseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.
The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece
THIS IS AN ABJECT LIE, the CIA, NSA and and any other government surveillance agency CAN _wiretap_ ANY SUSPECTS, anywhere in the world they need to, but they must get WARRANTS, even retroactively, so there is SOME OVERSIGHT to otherwise UNLIMITED GOVERNMENT SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS....
The Democrats have been ANEMIC, at best (and, in case of cowardly Senate "Democrats" who voted FOR UNLIMITED SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, COMPLICIT) re _PUSHING BACK_ against the awful Bush-Cheney adminstration's GRABBING OF THE WAR-on-TERROR as a be-all, end-all EXCUSE to permit UNLIMITED EXPANSION OF THE US GOVERNMENT's ABILITY TO SPY ON, ARREST, and even indefinite holding of US citizens WITH NO OVERSIGHT to anyone.
The three trillion dollar war
by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
February 23, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece
The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have grown to staggering proportionsJoseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.
The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece
Friday, February 22, 2008
DLC SPUTTERS to a HALT with its Republican-lite, corporatist, neo-con, War-Lobby agenda...!
The DLC has been the HEART OF TREACHERY in American governance over the past dozen years. While it is to be expected that reactionary Right-Wingers (Republicans and "Blue Dog" conservative Democrats alike) would despise the 1960s for the "moral values gutting" ideas of 'free love,' wider enfranchisement, upward mobility, job security & higher wages for (lower) middle-class Whites and minorities alike, one might expect that "DEMOCRATIC" Party 'leaders' MIGHT ONCE IN A WHILE DEFEND the sacrifices, causes, triumphs, and ideals of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PROGRESS and PROGRESSIVE IDEALS in America, dating back to at least the time that REPUBLICAN President TEDDY ROOSEVELT went "TRUST BUSTING" and set aside thousands of acres of national lands for wildlife and future national parks.
Instead, over the decade of the 90's and early 2000s, the DLC, or corporate wing of the 'Democratic' Party, came to represent, not TRUST-busting, but UNION-BUSTING!
The textbook example is HILLARY CLINTON, dutifully sitting on the WALMART board of directors... at a time when the company was FEROCIOUSLY BUSTING UNIONS, and trying to CRIMINALIZE would-be union organizers!
This _The Nation_ article (TheNation.com) lays out the story of the DLC's well-earned DEMISE, as corporate/Republican wolves in "democratic," "liberal" dress.
==============================
Going Nowhere: The DLC Sputters to a Halt
by Ari Berman, TheNation.com
posted March 3, 2005
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050321/berman
In May 2003 the centrist Democratic Leadership Council published its yearly list of "100 New Democrats to Watch." The DLC frequently puts out these lists as a way to publicly solidify its identification with the New Democratic movement within the Democratic Party. The 2003 list, however, contained a number of questionable additions, including then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. As a state senator, Obama had continually passed progressive legislation--a record that he vowed to add to when he began his run for the US Senate on a platform of clear opposition to the Patriot Act, the Iraq War and NAFTA, all positions anathema to the DLC. The puzzling addition caused The Black Commentator magazine to wonder, a month after the DLC list came out, whether Obama had been "corrupted" by the centrist group. Obama's reply to the Commentator was indicative of how the DLC plays the "New Democrat" card.
"Neither my staff nor I have had any direct contact with anybody at the DLC since I began this campaign a year ago," Obama wrote. "I don't know who nominated me for the DLC list of 100 rising stars, nor did I expend any effort to be included on the list.... I certainly did not view such inclusion as an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform." After realizing that his name appeared in the DLC's database, Obama asked to have it removed. The message was clear: The DLC needed Obama a lot more than Obama needed the DLC.
Today, the same is true for many politicians. After dominating the party in the 1990s, the DLC is struggling to maintain its identity and influence in a party beset by losses and determined to oppose George W. Bush. Prominent New Democrats no longer refer to themselves as such. The New Democratic movement of pro-free market moderates, which helped catapult Bill Clinton into the White House in 1992, has splintered, transformed by a reinvigoration of grassroots energy. A host of new donors, groups and tactics has forged a new direction for Democrats inside and outside the party, bringing together vital parts of the old centrist establishment and the traditional Democratic base. The ideological independence of the DLC, which pushed the party to the right, has come to be viewed as a threat rather than a virtue, forcing the DLC to adapt accordingly. Corporate fundraisers and DC connections--the lifeblood of the DLC--matter less and less: Witness the ascent of MoveOn.org and Howard Dean's election as chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). "It's not that the DLC changed," says Kenneth Baer, who wrote a history of the organization. "It's that the world changed around the DLC."
Today's DLC is a far cry from the anti-establishment organization created by New Democrats who captured power within the party in the Clinton era by distancing themselves from the party's traditional base and liberal candidates. After co-founding the DLC in 1985, former Congressional aide Al From aggressively expanded what had been an informal caucus of Southern and Western Congressmen into a $7-million-a-year operation at its peak in 2000. By that time it had 5,000 members, who paid $50 a pop to join; and politicians, policy wonks and lobbyists flocked to its annual conferences. The DLC's tough free-market positions, connections to big business and early media savvy enticed Clinton into becoming chair in 1990. Although the organization always took more credit than it deserved for his 1992 victory, downplaying Ross Perot's impact and Clinton's own charisma, that election nevertheless institutionalized the DLC's rising status. DLC strategists William Galston, Elaine Kamarck and Bruce Reed became top domestic policy aides in the Clinton White House. After the Republican Revolution of 1994, From told the Democrats to "get with the [DLC] program." The DLC quickly became the new Washington establishment, launching state chapters, creating a New Democratic Coalition in Congress and expanding its Progressive Policy Institute think tank. A top aide to Jesse Jackson groused of the post-Clinton Democratic Party, "The DLC has taken it over."
But the DLC's great hopes in 2000 of becoming a permanent power center in Washington never materialized. Al Gore's promising New Democratic candidacy turned sour for the DLC when Gore, a DLC founder, switched to a populist strategy after trailing in the polls. No one but the DLC believes that strategy cost Gore the election. "Gore's defeat didn't reinvigorate the DLC as the defeat of Dukakis did, nor did it vindicate their strategy like the election of 1992," says Baer, a Gore speechwriter in 2000. In George W. Bush's first term, the DLC emerged as an important backer of "compassionate conservatism" and convinced the Democratic leadership to back Bush's war with Iraq. Current and former DLC chairmen Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt flanked Bush at a ceremony announcing the war resolution. Still enthralled by centrist orthodoxy, prowar candidates emerged as early frontrunners in the Democratic primary.
No candidate embodied the New Democrat ethos better than Lieberman, whose moral purity, hawkish views and name recognition earned him early Beltway supporters. Thus, when Howard Dean came into view, the DLC was quick to underestimate Dean's potential resonance with Democratic voters, misjudge the transformative nature of his campaign and mischaracterize the ideological bent of many of his supporters. After supporting a losing candidate in Lieberman, the unpopular war in Iraq and an outdated platform, attacking Dean was the only way the DLC could shift the Democratic debate.
"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration; the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home," From and Reed wrote in a fiery memo titled "The Real Soul of the Democratic Party" on May 15, 2003. Four days later, after Dean won the endorsement of the 1.5 million-member public employees union AFSCME, the DLC denounced the union as "fringe activists." But others were having second thoughts--about strategy and the DLC. As Dean surged ahead, DNC chairman and Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe told From to quiet the attacks. All nine Democratic contenders skipped the DLC's annual convention in Philadelphia.
Instead, over the decade of the 90's and early 2000s, the DLC, or corporate wing of the 'Democratic' Party, came to represent, not TRUST-busting, but UNION-BUSTING!
The textbook example is HILLARY CLINTON, dutifully sitting on the WALMART board of directors... at a time when the company was FEROCIOUSLY BUSTING UNIONS, and trying to CRIMINALIZE would-be union organizers!
This _The Nation_ article (TheNation.com) lays out the story of the DLC's well-earned DEMISE, as corporate/Republican wolves in "democratic," "liberal" dress.
==============================
Going Nowhere: The DLC Sputters to a Halt
by Ari Berman, TheNation.com
posted March 3, 2005
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050321/berman
In May 2003 the centrist Democratic Leadership Council published its yearly list of "100 New Democrats to Watch." The DLC frequently puts out these lists as a way to publicly solidify its identification with the New Democratic movement within the Democratic Party. The 2003 list, however, contained a number of questionable additions, including then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. As a state senator, Obama had continually passed progressive legislation--a record that he vowed to add to when he began his run for the US Senate on a platform of clear opposition to the Patriot Act, the Iraq War and NAFTA, all positions anathema to the DLC. The puzzling addition caused The Black Commentator magazine to wonder, a month after the DLC list came out, whether Obama had been "corrupted" by the centrist group. Obama's reply to the Commentator was indicative of how the DLC plays the "New Democrat" card.
"Neither my staff nor I have had any direct contact with anybody at the DLC since I began this campaign a year ago," Obama wrote. "I don't know who nominated me for the DLC list of 100 rising stars, nor did I expend any effort to be included on the list.... I certainly did not view such inclusion as an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform." After realizing that his name appeared in the DLC's database, Obama asked to have it removed. The message was clear: The DLC needed Obama a lot more than Obama needed the DLC.
Today, the same is true for many politicians. After dominating the party in the 1990s, the DLC is struggling to maintain its identity and influence in a party beset by losses and determined to oppose George W. Bush. Prominent New Democrats no longer refer to themselves as such. The New Democratic movement of pro-free market moderates, which helped catapult Bill Clinton into the White House in 1992, has splintered, transformed by a reinvigoration of grassroots energy. A host of new donors, groups and tactics has forged a new direction for Democrats inside and outside the party, bringing together vital parts of the old centrist establishment and the traditional Democratic base. The ideological independence of the DLC, which pushed the party to the right, has come to be viewed as a threat rather than a virtue, forcing the DLC to adapt accordingly. Corporate fundraisers and DC connections--the lifeblood of the DLC--matter less and less: Witness the ascent of MoveOn.org and Howard Dean's election as chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). "It's not that the DLC changed," says Kenneth Baer, who wrote a history of the organization. "It's that the world changed around the DLC."
Today's DLC is a far cry from the anti-establishment organization created by New Democrats who captured power within the party in the Clinton era by distancing themselves from the party's traditional base and liberal candidates. After co-founding the DLC in 1985, former Congressional aide Al From aggressively expanded what had been an informal caucus of Southern and Western Congressmen into a $7-million-a-year operation at its peak in 2000. By that time it had 5,000 members, who paid $50 a pop to join; and politicians, policy wonks and lobbyists flocked to its annual conferences. The DLC's tough free-market positions, connections to big business and early media savvy enticed Clinton into becoming chair in 1990. Although the organization always took more credit than it deserved for his 1992 victory, downplaying Ross Perot's impact and Clinton's own charisma, that election nevertheless institutionalized the DLC's rising status. DLC strategists William Galston, Elaine Kamarck and Bruce Reed became top domestic policy aides in the Clinton White House. After the Republican Revolution of 1994, From told the Democrats to "get with the [DLC] program." The DLC quickly became the new Washington establishment, launching state chapters, creating a New Democratic Coalition in Congress and expanding its Progressive Policy Institute think tank. A top aide to Jesse Jackson groused of the post-Clinton Democratic Party, "The DLC has taken it over."
But the DLC's great hopes in 2000 of becoming a permanent power center in Washington never materialized. Al Gore's promising New Democratic candidacy turned sour for the DLC when Gore, a DLC founder, switched to a populist strategy after trailing in the polls. No one but the DLC believes that strategy cost Gore the election. "Gore's defeat didn't reinvigorate the DLC as the defeat of Dukakis did, nor did it vindicate their strategy like the election of 1992," says Baer, a Gore speechwriter in 2000. In George W. Bush's first term, the DLC emerged as an important backer of "compassionate conservatism" and convinced the Democratic leadership to back Bush's war with Iraq. Current and former DLC chairmen Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt flanked Bush at a ceremony announcing the war resolution. Still enthralled by centrist orthodoxy, prowar candidates emerged as early frontrunners in the Democratic primary.
No candidate embodied the New Democrat ethos better than Lieberman, whose moral purity, hawkish views and name recognition earned him early Beltway supporters. Thus, when Howard Dean came into view, the DLC was quick to underestimate Dean's potential resonance with Democratic voters, misjudge the transformative nature of his campaign and mischaracterize the ideological bent of many of his supporters. After supporting a losing candidate in Lieberman, the unpopular war in Iraq and an outdated platform, attacking Dean was the only way the DLC could shift the Democratic debate.
"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration; the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home," From and Reed wrote in a fiery memo titled "The Real Soul of the Democratic Party" on May 15, 2003. Four days later, after Dean won the endorsement of the 1.5 million-member public employees union AFSCME, the DLC denounced the union as "fringe activists." But others were having second thoughts--about strategy and the DLC. As Dean surged ahead, DNC chairman and Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe told From to quiet the attacks. All nine Democratic contenders skipped the DLC's annual convention in Philadelphia.
George Bush Sr as Director of CIA, LIED to Americans about the TERRORIST MURDER-bombing of Orlando Letellier... in downtown Washington DC in 1976!
In the below article at ConsortiumNews.com, ROBERT PARRY not only confirms that (then CIA Director) GEORGE BUSH Sr., and the CIA, NOT ONLY _LIED_ about the BOMBING MURDER/ASSASSINATION of Chile regime (Pinochet) critic Orlando Letellier, but Parry is able to indentify the assassination sponsors and triggermen, indicating that the CIA was effectively TURNING A BLIND EYE TO TERRORIST GROUPS OPERATING INSIDE of the United States.
click our link to read the full story, (our words)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022108a.html
==================================
When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
by Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com
Feb. 22, 2008
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022108a.html
Newly obtained U.S. government records reveal that in 1976 -- when George H.W. Bush was CIA director -- the U.S. government looked the other way as U.S.-based Cuban terrorists teamed up with South American dictators to wreak havoc around the Western Hemisphere, including a double homicide in Washington, D.C. A special report. February 22, 2008
click our link to read the full story, (our words)
"George Bush Sr. and the CIA LIED to America to cover up a MURDER-assassination IN WASHINGTON DC, and over the course of many years, ENABLED right-wing TERRORIST GROUPS."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022108a.html
==================================
When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
by Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com
Feb. 22, 2008
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022108a.html
Newly obtained U.S. government records reveal that in 1976 -- when George H.W. Bush was CIA director -- the U.S. government looked the other way as U.S.-based Cuban terrorists teamed up with South American dictators to wreak havoc around the Western Hemisphere, including a double homicide in Washington, D.C. A special report. February 22, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Nancy Pelosi.. STANDS UP for democracy and Democratic voters, vs Bush FISA 'reform' retro-active immunity tactics?!
Democrats set pro forma sessions to avoid 'special session' on FISA
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0208/Democrats_set_pro_forma_sessions_to_avoid_special_session_on_FISA.html
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) mistrust of President Bush is really well known and runs deep.
Fearing a recess appointment by Bush during the Christmas-New Year’s break, the Nevada Democrat refused to adjourn the chamber during the whole period, scheduling very, very brief pro forma sessions every couple of days to avoid any such appointments.
Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has joined with her Senate colleague, scheduling two pro forma sessions for the House this week so that Bush cannot call Congress back into special session to take up the now-expired Protect America Act, an enhanced surveillance bill that lapsed over the weekend, or the Senate-passed amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Bush and the Republican congressional leaders have been pounding the Democrats, claiming they have endangered the country by allowing the law to lapse. Democrats counter that Republicans, joined by some conservative Democrats, blocked a three-week extension of the act, so they are at fault.
The House and Senate also disagree on the hugely controversial issue of retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. The Senate has approved retroactive immunity, while the House has not. Talks are continuing this week, even as Congress is out.
Pelosi, fearing that Bush would try to capitalize on the House’s absence to call Congress back into a special session, scheduled two pro forma sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. The Senate will do the same at the same time. Since neither chamber goes out for more than three days, Bush cannot take the dramatic step of calling the Congress back for the first special session since Harry Truman did it in 1948.
And for all you progressives out there, the non-Republican senator you most love to hate – Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) – will be presiding over one of the pro forma sessions this week. So, you better keep an eye on him
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0208/Democrats_set_pro_forma_sessions_to_avoid_special_session_on_FISA.html
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) mistrust of President Bush is really well known and runs deep.
Fearing a recess appointment by Bush during the Christmas-New Year’s break, the Nevada Democrat refused to adjourn the chamber during the whole period, scheduling very, very brief pro forma sessions every couple of days to avoid any such appointments.
Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has joined with her Senate colleague, scheduling two pro forma sessions for the House this week so that Bush cannot call Congress back into special session to take up the now-expired Protect America Act, an enhanced surveillance bill that lapsed over the weekend, or the Senate-passed amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Bush and the Republican congressional leaders have been pounding the Democrats, claiming they have endangered the country by allowing the law to lapse. Democrats counter that Republicans, joined by some conservative Democrats, blocked a three-week extension of the act, so they are at fault.
The House and Senate also disagree on the hugely controversial issue of retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. The Senate has approved retroactive immunity, while the House has not. Talks are continuing this week, even as Congress is out.
Pelosi, fearing that Bush would try to capitalize on the House’s absence to call Congress back into a special session, scheduled two pro forma sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. The Senate will do the same at the same time. Since neither chamber goes out for more than three days, Bush cannot take the dramatic step of calling the Congress back for the first special session since Harry Truman did it in 1948.
And for all you progressives out there, the non-Republican senator you most love to hate – Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) – will be presiding over one of the pro forma sessions this week. So, you better keep an eye on him
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Donna Edwards SERVES NOTICE! The "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" beats the tar out of the Lieberman/ZELL MILLER TRAITOR wing of the party..
Donna Edwards SERVES NOTICE! The "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" beats the tar out of the Lieberman/ZELL MILLER TRAITOR wing of the party, in this case incumbent Representative ALBERT R. WYNN, who, like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and the inside-the-beltway "Democratic" "leadership" - thought he could get away with RULING AS A REPUBLICAN, while MOUTHING PLATITUDES as a Democrat, for at least another two years....
Liberals joined to lever out Wynn
Edwards' campaign drew together groups dedicated to change
By Matthew Hay Brown | Sun reporter
February 14, 2008
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-te.edwards14feb14,0,7876133.story
WASHINGTON - When she launched her first campaign against Rep. Albert R. Wynn two years ago, Donna Edwards was a liberal activist little known outside progressive circles.
Wynn, a veteran of more than two decades in Annapolis and Washington, raised more than twice as much money as Edwards and enjoyed the support of the Maryland political establishment.
But Edwards began a drumbeat of criticism against Wynn's votes on bankruptcy, the estate tax and the war in Iraq - and came within a few thousand votes of beating him in the Democratic primary election for the 4th Congressional District.
Liberals joined to lever out Wynn
Edwards' campaign drew together groups dedicated to change
By Matthew Hay Brown | Sun reporter
February 14, 2008
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-te.edwards14feb14,0,7876133.story
WASHINGTON - When she launched her first campaign against Rep. Albert R. Wynn two years ago, Donna Edwards was a liberal activist little known outside progressive circles.
Wynn, a veteran of more than two decades in Annapolis and Washington, raised more than twice as much money as Edwards and enjoyed the support of the Maryland political establishment.
But Edwards began a drumbeat of criticism against Wynn's votes on bankruptcy, the estate tax and the war in Iraq - and came within a few thousand votes of beating him in the Democratic primary election for the 4th Congressional District.
COWARDLY Democrat "LEADERSHIP" DOES LITTLE to prevent Bush administration ENABLING PREDATORY LENDING, invoking 1863 law!
AS USUAL, the 'Democratic' "LEADERSHIP" is _AWOL_ ABSENT WITHOUT EXCUSE - as the Bush-Cheney White House SIDES WITH THE PREDATORY LENDERS to EXTORT American workers, and heads of working families, of USERIOUS interest rates.
DIDN'T JESUS KICK THE ferocious MONEY-LENDERS OUT of the Temple 2,000 years ago?
Under Bush & Cheney, Americans STRIVE TO EMULATE those take-over-the-temple Money-Lenders!
Bush Administration invoked an obscure Banking clause 1863 to enable predatory lending practices
By: John Amato
Friday, February 15th, 2008
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/15/bush-administration-invoked-an-obscure-banking-clause-1863-to-enable-predatory-lending-practices/
Gov. Elliot Spitzer explains:
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
That sounds good. I witnessed such practices and saw prices skyrocket before my eyes . That was a huge reason that the Bush economy held up as long as it did—I think Bush called it the “ownership society.” I guess we can call it the foreclosure society…. The right wingers usually try to say that we blame Bush for everything. Well, let’s see how he did, shall we…
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative.
Nuff said….
DIDN'T JESUS KICK THE ferocious MONEY-LENDERS OUT of the Temple 2,000 years ago?
Under Bush & Cheney, Americans STRIVE TO EMULATE those take-over-the-temple Money-Lenders!
Bush Administration invoked an obscure Banking clause 1863 to enable predatory lending practices
By: John Amato
Friday, February 15th, 2008
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/02/15/bush-administration-invoked-an-obscure-banking-clause-1863-to-enable-predatory-lending-practices/
Gov. Elliot Spitzer explains:
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
That sounds good. I witnessed such practices and saw prices skyrocket before my eyes . That was a huge reason that the Bush economy held up as long as it did—I think Bush called it the “ownership society.” I guess we can call it the foreclosure society…. The right wingers usually try to say that we blame Bush for everything. Well, let’s see how he did, shall we…
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative.
Nuff said….
Friday, February 15, 2008
COWARDLY Senator HARRY REID, & some TREACHEROUS Senate "Democrats", helps Bush, Telecoms.. SPY on American citizens...
HE HAS ALOT OF DAMN GALL: The president who AVOIDED the Vietnam war by GOING AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard, the president who, when told in August of 2006 "Al Qaida IS PLANNING TO ATTACK IN AMERICA" _DID NOTHING_ and CONTINUED HIS _ONE MONTH_ vacation, unperturbed, at his Texas ranch, now goes on national TV to tell Americans, "IF YOU DON'T ABSOLVE telecom executives for SPYING ON YOUR communications, THEY WILL ALLOW terrorists to communicate and plot their next attack on America."
George W. Bush actually thinks that because there are people in the world who might want to attack America, that HE is ENTITLED TO SPY on ALL of our communications... WITHOUT WARRANTS or ANY judicial or legislative oversight!
DISGRACEFUL!
In January of 2007, we stopped calling this blog CowardlyDemorats.blogspot.com and changed over to our current title (DemocraticNation.blogspot.com) because the Senate Democrats could no longer HIDE behind the fact that House Democrats (in the minority) were whipped like puppies by a sadistic taskmaster (the Republican House leadership of Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert refused to even let Democrats IN THE ROOM when writing bils... and the cowering Democrats didn't even TRY to explain to the nation and news media just how ferociously PARTISAN the Republicans were being).
BUT... with HARRY REID, nominal Senate Majority "LEADER" - PLAYING FOOTSIE with President Bush's Republican thugs and telecom CRIMINALS under the desk, we just might have to revert to calling this blog "COWARDLYdemocrats.com" again!
We are HAPPY to report that "THE AIPAC GIRL," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has thus far refused to bow down to the president on his WARRANTLESS SPYING "FISA REFORM" bill, almost certainly at the insistence of the "Democratic wing" of the House Democratic caucus. We welcome the Speaker's "OBSTRUCTION" of the president's LIMITLESS, NO OVERSIGHT, totalitarian, no-warrants spying agenda.
HERE IS THE LIST of COWARDLY, LYING "Democratic" SENATORS who SIDED WITH THE MAJOR MEDIA CONGLOMERATES, TELECOM corporations, AND THE BUSH-CHENEY WHITE HOUSE, to make LIMITLESS, NO-OVERSIGHT, NO ACCOUNTABILITY _SPYING_ on American citizens RETROACTIVELY LEGAL:
RINGLEADER, the Telecom/BushCo's chief errand boy; Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER, "Democrat", West Virginia
and....
FOR SHAME, Senators! YOU ARE ALL SOLIDLY in the ZELL MILLER/JOE LIEBERMAN wing of the "Democrat" Party!
Senator Bayh (D-IN)
Senator Carper (D-DE)
Senator Conrad (D-ND)
Senator Feinstein (D-CA)
Senator Inouye (D-HI)
Senator Johnson (D-SD)
Senator Kohl (D-WI)
Senator Landrieu (D-LA)
Senator Lieberman (ID-CT)
Senator Lincoln (D-AR)
Senator McCaskill (D-MO)
Senator Mikulski (D-MD)
Senator Nelson (D-FL)
Senator Nelson (D-NE)
Senator Rockefeller (D-WV)
Senator Salazar (D-CO)
Senator Stabenow (D-MI)
Senator Webb (D-VA)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Dave Sirota lays out the "Democrat" "leadership's" CLASS WARFARE... AGAINST Working-Class American families and DEMOCRATIC VOTERS..!!
Update: The Chicago Tribune article, "Blue-Collar vote TOUGH for Obama"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-working_bdfeb10,0,444908.story
CONFIRMS that Working-class Democratic Voters can, at times, be "conservative" (reactionary), insular, and insecure as many Right-Wing Republicans.
The ultimate iconic image of this "conservative" working-class slice of the political spectrum was the hard-hat working union workers who supported President Nixon during his escalation phase of the Vietnam war, even though, of course, for six decades leading up to the late 1960s, the Republican Party had generally been allied with the UNION BUSTING forces of Big Business and the super-wealthy. (For example, United Auto Workers founding president Walter Reuther survived no less than TWO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS carried out by "security" thugs working for... Ford Motor Company in the 1930s.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-working_bdfeb10,0,444908.story
David Sirota, populist firebrand and former media consultant to the Ned Lamont campaign against uber war-profiteer Joe Lieberman, writes that although the Clinton administration did indeed create several million jobs in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton also helped Wall Street, Republicans, and the big-business lobby create the economic environment that has led to this decade's massive JOB OUTSOURCING, BENEFITS-GUTTING, skyrocketing health-care costs, and crushing LOSS OF REAL INCOME FOR WORKING AMERICANS over the past several decades:
<< Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s. >>
As perceptive, articulate, and insightful as Sirota's article is, he doesn't quite spell out why it is that American voters have succumbed to this narrative that two or more decades of STEADILY DECLINING wages, benefits, and standard of living have been worht voting for "conservative" candidates for: i.e. the Republicans have still MASTERED the "us vs. them" narrative, which is to say RACE and IDENTITY POLITICS.
But Sirota does indeed allude to the DEMOCRATIC PARTY "leaders" COMPLICITY with the Big-Business, major-media narrative that POPULIST
The Democrats’ Class War
By David Sirota
Posted on Feb 7, 2008
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080207_the_democrats_class_war/?ln
For all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America’s preferred candidate is winning the poorer “us” versus the wealthier “them”—a potentially decisive trend with the contest now moving to working-class bastions like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less—many of whom say the economy is their top concern. Yes, the New York senator who appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Business’s candidate is winning economically insecure, lower-income communities over the Illinois senator who grew up as an organizer helping those communities combat unemployment. This absurd phenomenon is a product of both message and bias.
Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s.
Obama hasn’t touched any of this for two reasons.
First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.
But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders.
“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.
That’s because once Obama parroted Edwards’ attacks on greed and inequality, he would “be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race,” says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson—a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.
Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous man in America” for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein’s 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “an African-American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped” and “one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics.”
The Clintons are only too happy to navigate this ugly cultural topography. After a rare Obama attack on Hillary Clinton for supporting policies that eliminated jobs, Bill Clinton quickly likened Obama’s campaign to Jackson’s, and the Clinton campaign told the Associated Press that Obama was “the black candidate.” These were deliberate statements telling Obama that if he talks about class, they’ll talk about race.
And so, as Marable says, Obama’s pitch includes “no mention of the class struggle or class conflict.” It is “hope” instead of an economic case, bromide instead of critique. The result is an oxymoronic dynamic.
Obama, the person who fought blue-collar joblessness in the shadows of shuttered factories, is winning wealthy enclaves. But Clinton, the person whose globalization policies helped shutter those factories, is winning blue-collar strongholds.
Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers. But Clinton, business’s favorite, is being endorsed by the United Farm Workers—the union that Chavez created.
Obama, the candidate from Chicago’s impoverished South Side, is finding support on Connecticut’s gilded south coast. But Hillary Clinton, the candidate representing Big Money, is finding support from those with relatively little money.
As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising “change,” this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network—both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-working_bdfeb10,0,444908.story
CONFIRMS that Working-class Democratic Voters can, at times, be "conservative" (reactionary), insular, and insecure as many Right-Wing Republicans.
The ultimate iconic image of this "conservative" working-class slice of the political spectrum was the hard-hat working union workers who supported President Nixon during his escalation phase of the Vietnam war, even though, of course, for six decades leading up to the late 1960s, the Republican Party had generally been allied with the UNION BUSTING forces of Big Business and the super-wealthy. (For example, United Auto Workers founding president Walter Reuther survived no less than TWO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS carried out by "security" thugs working for... Ford Motor Company in the 1930s.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-working_bdfeb10,0,444908.story
David Sirota, populist firebrand and former media consultant to the Ned Lamont campaign against uber war-profiteer Joe Lieberman, writes that although the Clinton administration did indeed create several million jobs in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton also helped Wall Street, Republicans, and the big-business lobby create the economic environment that has led to this decade's massive JOB OUTSOURCING, BENEFITS-GUTTING, skyrocketing health-care costs, and crushing LOSS OF REAL INCOME FOR WORKING AMERICANS over the past several decades:
<< Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s. >>
As perceptive, articulate, and insightful as Sirota's article is, he doesn't quite spell out why it is that American voters have succumbed to this narrative that two or more decades of STEADILY DECLINING wages, benefits, and standard of living have been worht voting for "conservative" candidates for: i.e. the Republicans have still MASTERED the "us vs. them" narrative, which is to say RACE and IDENTITY POLITICS.
But Sirota does indeed allude to the DEMOCRATIC PARTY "leaders" COMPLICITY with the Big-Business, major-media narrative that POPULIST
The Democrats’ Class War
By David Sirota
Posted on Feb 7, 2008
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080207_the_democrats_class_war/?ln
For all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America’s preferred candidate is winning the poorer “us” versus the wealthier “them”—a potentially decisive trend with the contest now moving to working-class bastions like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less—many of whom say the economy is their top concern. Yes, the New York senator who appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Business’s candidate is winning economically insecure, lower-income communities over the Illinois senator who grew up as an organizer helping those communities combat unemployment. This absurd phenomenon is a product of both message and bias.
Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s.
Obama hasn’t touched any of this for two reasons.
First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.
But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders.
“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.
That’s because once Obama parroted Edwards’ attacks on greed and inequality, he would “be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race,” says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson—a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.
Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous man in America” for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein’s 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “an African-American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped” and “one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics.”
The Clintons are only too happy to navigate this ugly cultural topography. After a rare Obama attack on Hillary Clinton for supporting policies that eliminated jobs, Bill Clinton quickly likened Obama’s campaign to Jackson’s, and the Clinton campaign told the Associated Press that Obama was “the black candidate.” These were deliberate statements telling Obama that if he talks about class, they’ll talk about race.
And so, as Marable says, Obama’s pitch includes “no mention of the class struggle or class conflict.” It is “hope” instead of an economic case, bromide instead of critique. The result is an oxymoronic dynamic.
Obama, the person who fought blue-collar joblessness in the shadows of shuttered factories, is winning wealthy enclaves. But Clinton, the person whose globalization policies helped shutter those factories, is winning blue-collar strongholds.
Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers. But Clinton, business’s favorite, is being endorsed by the United Farm Workers—the union that Chavez created.
Obama, the candidate from Chicago’s impoverished South Side, is finding support on Connecticut’s gilded south coast. But Hillary Clinton, the candidate representing Big Money, is finding support from those with relatively little money.
As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising “change,” this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network—both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Rep. Tom Lantos, House Dem. Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and former Concentration Camp survivor, dies of cancer at age 80.....
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Lantos Dies
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff
Feb. 11, 2008
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002669072
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, a leading congressional champion of human rights, died Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
Lantos, 80, had announced last month that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would not seek re-election to a 15th term in office.
He will be buried Wednesday in Congressional Cemetery, and a memorial service will be held Thursday in the Capitol, two leadership aides said.
Although his death is not expected to alter the partisan balance in the House, it creates a sixth vacancy, four in Republican-held seats and two in seats previously occupied by Democrats. Special elections or primaries are scheduled next month for four of those six seats.
All told, six House members have died since the start of the current Congress in January 2007, and five others have resigned to take other offices or jobs.
Lantos was born in Budapest and was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. When he disclosed his illness last month, the California Democrat praised his adopted homeland, saying, “It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress.”
He was the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a post he assumed at the start of the 110th Congress in 2007, and the second-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
In 1983, Lantos was a founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and under his leadership, the Foreign Affairs Committee took up a range of human rights issues.
He was a vigorous supporter of Israel, and both a supporter and a critic of the United Nations.
Colleagues from both sides of the partisan divide paid tribute to him Monday.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., who represents a neighboring district in San Franciso, said Lantos’ death was “a profound loss for the Congress and for the nation and a terrible loss for me personally.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., who had served with Lantos on the House Foreign Affairs panel before he was elected to the Senate, said, “his devotion to the cause of human rights was as inspiring as it was tireless.”
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo., called him “a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction – and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world.”
Illeana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “An unfailingly gracious and courageous man, Tom was recognized by friends and colleagues alike as a leader who left an enviable legacy of service to his country.”
For years, Lantos and his wife were accompanied to the Rayburn House Office Building by their poodle Gigi. After she died of old age, Lantos began bringing to his office his neighbor’s West Highlands terrier, Max. He called the little white dog Macko, which means “little teddy bear’’ in Hungarian.
Rep. Howard L. Berman , D-Calif., is next in line by seniority for the Foreign Affairs chairmanship. Berman, 66, currently chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, where he has devoted years to advancing intellectual property rights. He would have to relinquish that gavel to lead the full Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ranking just below Berman on Foreign Affairs is Democrat Gary L. Ackerman of New York, who currently chairs the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee.
Labor Camp Escapee
Lantos was 16 when the Nazis occupied the Hungarian capital in 1944 and began to round up the country’s Jews. He was sent to a labor camp in Szob, a village north of Budapest, escaped, was captured and beaten, and escaped a second time.
He returned to the capital and found refuge in one of the apartment buildings that the audacious Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had taken over as safe havens for Jews. The blue-eyed Lantos served as a courier, secretly delivering food to other Jews.
After his election to Congress, Lantos repaid his debt to Wallenberg by pushing through legislation making the Swede, who disappeared into Soviet captivity after World War II, an honorary U.S. citizen. He also got a bust of Wallenberg installed in a niche in the Capitol.
After the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945, Lantos searched unsuccessfully for his mother and other family members, all of whom had perished. He later located childhood friend Annette Tilleman, a cousin of the famous Gabor sisters, who had fled to Switzerland. The two married and were inseparable — she came to work with him every day and frequently gave tours to Lantos’ constituents.
They raised two daughters and have 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, many of whom were at his bedside when he died, according to his office.
(continued at:
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002669072
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff
Feb. 11, 2008
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002669072
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, a leading congressional champion of human rights, died Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
Lantos, 80, had announced last month that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would not seek re-election to a 15th term in office.
He will be buried Wednesday in Congressional Cemetery, and a memorial service will be held Thursday in the Capitol, two leadership aides said.
Although his death is not expected to alter the partisan balance in the House, it creates a sixth vacancy, four in Republican-held seats and two in seats previously occupied by Democrats. Special elections or primaries are scheduled next month for four of those six seats.
All told, six House members have died since the start of the current Congress in January 2007, and five others have resigned to take other offices or jobs.
Lantos was born in Budapest and was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress. When he disclosed his illness last month, the California Democrat praised his adopted homeland, saying, “It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress.”
He was the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a post he assumed at the start of the 110th Congress in 2007, and the second-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
In 1983, Lantos was a founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and under his leadership, the Foreign Affairs Committee took up a range of human rights issues.
He was a vigorous supporter of Israel, and both a supporter and a critic of the United Nations.
Colleagues from both sides of the partisan divide paid tribute to him Monday.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., who represents a neighboring district in San Franciso, said Lantos’ death was “a profound loss for the Congress and for the nation and a terrible loss for me personally.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., who had served with Lantos on the House Foreign Affairs panel before he was elected to the Senate, said, “his devotion to the cause of human rights was as inspiring as it was tireless.”
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo., called him “a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction – and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world.”
Illeana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “An unfailingly gracious and courageous man, Tom was recognized by friends and colleagues alike as a leader who left an enviable legacy of service to his country.”
For years, Lantos and his wife were accompanied to the Rayburn House Office Building by their poodle Gigi. After she died of old age, Lantos began bringing to his office his neighbor’s West Highlands terrier, Max. He called the little white dog Macko, which means “little teddy bear’’ in Hungarian.
Rep. Howard L. Berman , D-Calif., is next in line by seniority for the Foreign Affairs chairmanship. Berman, 66, currently chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, where he has devoted years to advancing intellectual property rights. He would have to relinquish that gavel to lead the full Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ranking just below Berman on Foreign Affairs is Democrat Gary L. Ackerman of New York, who currently chairs the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee.
Labor Camp Escapee
Lantos was 16 when the Nazis occupied the Hungarian capital in 1944 and began to round up the country’s Jews. He was sent to a labor camp in Szob, a village north of Budapest, escaped, was captured and beaten, and escaped a second time.
He returned to the capital and found refuge in one of the apartment buildings that the audacious Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had taken over as safe havens for Jews. The blue-eyed Lantos served as a courier, secretly delivering food to other Jews.
After his election to Congress, Lantos repaid his debt to Wallenberg by pushing through legislation making the Swede, who disappeared into Soviet captivity after World War II, an honorary U.S. citizen. He also got a bust of Wallenberg installed in a niche in the Capitol.
After the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945, Lantos searched unsuccessfully for his mother and other family members, all of whom had perished. He later located childhood friend Annette Tilleman, a cousin of the famous Gabor sisters, who had fled to Switzerland. The two married and were inseparable — she came to work with him every day and frequently gave tours to Lantos’ constituents.
They raised two daughters and have 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, many of whom were at his bedside when he died, according to his office.
(continued at:
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002669072
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER, "Democrat" show his WAR LOBBY, POLICE-STATE SURVEILLANCE priorities...
Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER, heir to the gigantic Rockefeller fortune, gives substance to the stereotype that the hyper-wealthy may at times get into politics to assist the great unwashed masses of working folks, but once they amass a sizable power-base, THEY REVERT TO their ELITISM and "state-security" (hyper-corporate-nationalism, i.e. CONCENTRATION OF wealth AND POWER) uber-alles priorities...
Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth: Drift Nets To Be Legalized
By Ryan Singel February
Feb. 05, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/sen-rockefeller.html
In a Senate floor speech, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) inadvertently made plain that the proposed changes to the nation's spying laws radically expand how the government wiretaps inside the United States. Rockefeller was decrying an amendment that would require the government to discard non-emergency evidence if a court later finds that the spying methods violate the law.
Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure.
Rockefeller, the chief Democratic architect of the changes, explains:
Unlike traditional [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application orders which involve collection on one individual target, the new FISA provisions create a system of collection. The courts role in this system of collection is not to consider probable cause on individual targets but to ensure that procedures used to collect intelligence are adequate. The courts' determination of the adequacy of procedures therefore impacts all electronic communications gathered under the new mechanisms, even if it involves thousands of targets.
In short, the changes legalize Room 641A, the secret spying room inside AT&T's San Francisco internet switching center that was outed by former AT&T employee Mark Klein. That room sits at the center of a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged illegal participation in the government's secret, warrantless spying program.
Under the new rules, secret spying court judges will no longer be evaluating whether the government has probable cause to eavesdrop on a spy or a terrorist who is inside the United States or to wiretap a particular foreigner via wiretaps inside the United States.
Instead the judges will simply evaluate descriptions of how NSA filters in the infrastructure are designed to not catch purely domestic traffic. They can also approve or disapprove of how the spooks 'disguise' or reveal the identities of Americans who are one of the parties in any communication that involves a foreigners.
Rockefeller outlined the differences between the old legal architecture and the new one to argue against a amendment from Sen. Russ Feingold. That amendment would require the government to throw out non-emergency communications that were caught by filters if judges later found the filter to be illegal (and which the spooks didn't fix in 30 days).
Feingold argues that without such a penalty the NSA won't care at all what the courts say since there's no penalty for intercepting purely domestic phone calls in the current bill.
This marks a radical legal shift in how the nation's spooks interact with the nation's communication infrastructure. And by infrastructure, I mean telephone switches for your landline, the server farms that serve up your Google search results, and the computers that handle and store emails for your Yahoo account.
The nation's current batch of politicians -- save for a handful like Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) -- see no problem in handing this unchecked power to the nation's spooks. They collectively have bought into the lies, FUD and politically-expedient exaggerations deployed by the administration in order to legalize the President's rogue warrantless spying on Americans.
Hell, even one of Dem's blog fathers -- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of DailyKos -- called opening the nation's infrastructure to the NSA a "single uncontroversial technical correction."
For years, NSA watchers and former employees swore that NSA employees lived by the mantra 'Don't target Americans.'
But as former White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales publicly admitted in December 2005, that rule secretly went out the window after 9/11 when the President ordered the NSA to point its surveillance equipment at Americans.
The NSA complied and so did the nation's phone companies, with the noted exception of Qwest, which later seems to have been punished for its belief in the nation's laws.
Now that same NSA is going to be granted by Congress virtually unchecked ability to order the nation's internet providers, phone companies and email providers to let the spooks build permanent filters inside their communication flows.
That NSA reports to a president who stands by his lawyers' arguments that nothing - not even the Constitution - limits his authority during the permanent war he unilaterally declared against 'terrorism.'
And for the record, Sen. Jay Rockefeller denies that intriguingly-timed AT&T and Verizon contributions to his re-election campaign bought his support for amnesty for spying telcos.
Hat Tip to emptywheel for noting Rockefeller's remarks.
Friday, February 8, 2008
More Political Cowardice from Nancy Pelosi's Congress: She IGNORES AG Mukasey REFUSAL to enforce CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS citations....
That was then, this is now: Nancy Pelosi, January 2007, basking in the fruits of victory of the DEMOCRATIC win of majority of Congressional races in the November 2006 election. One year later, Pelosi BETRAYS voters across America. She might as well be paid directly by the RNC, her refusal to CONFRONT the Bush administration is worth tens of millions of dollars to the Republican right-wing agenda and Republican candidates and campaigns....
Every day in 2008 is another day deeper into the the INSTITUTIONAL COWARDICE and POLITICAL CORRUPTION of the inside-the-beltway "Democratic" "leadership."
As our previous post illustrated, you can not even outline or highlight Speaker Pelosi's ABJECT COMPLICITY with the CRIMINAL ABUSES OF POWER of the Bush-Cheney White House, without going into a long, extended rant.
Today's headlines bring at least three more such evidentiary reports to the swelling narrative, "NANCY PELOSI WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to WHITEWASH the Bush-Cheney administration's criminal abuses of power, because THAT IS WHAT THE DEMOCRAT "leadership" does: ENABLE THE CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH AND POWER that resides in Washington DC, no matter how abusive, corrupt, or criminal the Bush-Cheney administration may be."
ITEM: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mukasey_no_i_will_not_enforce.php
#1. _ATTORNEY GENERAL_ Michael Mukasey said today that if Congress passed contempt citations against current and former White House officials based on their refusal to respond to subpoenas, the Justice Department would not enforce them, as federal law instructs.
Got that? The Attorney General of the United States not only has informed Speaker Pelosi and her Congress that he will NOT UPHOLD U.S. LAW, but in this case SPECIFICALLY an instance of the executive branch of government (the White House) NOT reporting to, NOT being held accountable by, the legislative branch, the US Congress!
THAT IS THE HEART AND CORE of the United States Constitution!
NANCY PELOSI, in IGNORING Mukasey's face-slapping determination NOT to enforce legal contempt citations, IS ENABLING WHITE HOUSE OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
For this one dereliction of duty, ALONE, Nancy Pelosi DESERVES TO BE IMPEACHED as Speaker of the House. (Since she runs the Congress which would do the impeaching, and since she is the ringleader of the totalitarian block of "Democrats" who favor the sweeping whitewash of Bush-Cheney abuses of power, this of course will not happen.)
ITEM: #2. Los Angeles County DISCARDS 94,000 votes - NINETY-FOUR THOUSAND VOTES! - as "Decline to State" votes.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/counteveryvote
This is a new bureaucrateeze word for "UNDERVOTE", the means by which Republicans trashed 16,000 SIXTEEN THOUSAND votes in Florida District 13 in 2006, thereby in all likelihood robbing Democrat Congressional candidate Christine Jennings of a legitimate win, and handing the election to her Republican opponent.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/NEWS/611090343
WHY would "DEMOCRAT" leader of Congress NANCY PELOSI _IGNORE_ the trashing of SIXTEEN THOUSAND VOTES in a state which is already so infamous for trashing Democratic and minority votes?
(Note: 2,000 +/- was the normal range of "no vote cast for Congressiona race", or "undervote" in most Florida districts in 2006 voting. Subtracting the normal 2,000+/- figure from the 18,000 "undervotes" not counted in District 13 that election, leads to a figure of possibly 16,000 votes trashed.)BECAUSE THE DEMOCRAT "leadership" in Washington is COMPLICIT WITH, and aligned with, the Republican Right-Wing agenda of expanding wars, concentration of power, huge tax breaks for wealthy donors (the corporations that fund K-St. lobbyists who donate to Democrat campaigns such as Pelosi's), and even police-state omnipresent surveillance. (In the name of the "war on terra," of course.)
And the 94,000 NINETY-FOUR-THOUSAND _DISCARDED_ votes in Los Angeles is not the only VOTE-TRASHING that NANCY PELOSI is TURNING A BLIND EYE TO... NEW MEXICO's _DEMOCRATIC_ primary voting was so rife with "irregularities" that New Mexico is now RECOUNTING ALL of its primary ballots!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18785663
New Mexico Democratic Party officials announced Thursday that they will recount every ballot... the Democrat-only contest was plagued by so many problems that the state party, along with the Clinton and Obama campaigns, agreed that only checking all ballots cast would insure an accurate result.
And finally for today, LastChanceDemocracyCafe.blogspot.com reminds us that Pelosi's 110th Congress HAS THE TIME TO RUN A SERIOUS INVESTIGATION OF... baseball star pitcher Roger Clemens possible steroid use, but NOT enough time, funding, energy, or determination to hold even basic (impeachment) hearings into the potentially (and well documented) criminal abuses of power of the Bush White House!
NANCY PELOSI is shaping up to be THE MOST CORRUPT SPEAKER in the ENTIRE HISTORY of the US Congress! In previous eras complicity of the Speaker of the House with fraudulent business schemes was to earn a few hundred thousand dollars in kick-backs and grafts. Today, Pelosi is not only selling out tens of millions of Democratic voters (who must dig into their pockets for millions of dollars of campaign donations every election year) who are ROBBED of the "red meat" that Republican voters get from their leaders every two years, but she is enabling the Republican White House to spend BILLIONS of dollars of taxpayer funds with very little oversight, and, to top all that off, NANCY PELOSI IS SELLING OUT THE US CONSTITUTION to the vote-rigging, false-prosecutions, and permanent, unlimited police-state powers that are the wet-dream of the radical, reactionary, Republican right-wing.
Indeed, NANCY PELOSI is SO COMPLICIT with Republican abuses of power, she WILL NOT even run a Congressional investigation of KARL ROVE's CLOSE CONNECTIONS to the US Federal Prosecution (in Alabama) of former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman,
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1199369729321200.xml&coll=2 even though the former governor now rots in prison doing a SEVEN YEAR TERM for "obstruction of justice," even though WHITE HOUSE PRESIDENTIAL AIDE (and concurrently no less than the Vice President's Chief of Staff) Lewis "Scooter" Libby was given a COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE for his CONVICTION for OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE in the CIA-outing scandal!
Speaker Pelosi ALLOWED President Bush to COMMUTE Lewis Libby's PRISON SENTENCE - effectively QUASHING the on-going investigation into the actual CIA-outing scandal... while she IGNORES the Karl Rove driven prosecution that turned a Democratic gubernatorial state into a Republican led one!
WE REPEAT: NANCY PELOSI IS probably THE MOST CORRUPT SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, in all of U.S. history, and she is making her bread-and-butter (K.-St. campaign donations) SELLING OUT Democratic voters, activists, candidates, and the US Constitution.
===========================================
Congress: go after Cheney not Roger Clemens
http://www.lastchancedemocracycafe.com/?p=1245
Thank the Lord in heaven — Congress is finally trying to make a lawbreaker pay the price! Guess who?
Is it Bush and Cheney for lying to Congress, thereby causing an unnecessary and disastrous war and leading directly to hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries?
Ah, well, no not exactly.
Okay, is it Alberto Gonzales for politicizing the Justice Department, and then lying about it before Congress?
Well, I can see where you might have thought that, but no, it’s something else.
How about the United States Attorneys scandal: are you finally pushing all the way to bring the perpetrators of that disgrace to justice?
No, actually on that one we’ve decided to just let the administration ignore our subpoenas for now.
Is it about the Bush Administration staining the honor of America through the use of torture, such as waterboarding, on alleged terrorism suspects then?
Sorry, still no cigar. Although come to think of it, a lighted cigar on the skin might work almost as well as waterboarding.
Then it’s got to be about unlawful surveillance, right?
You’re getting colder.
Okay, I give up. Just which of the many lawbreakers infesting this nation’s government are you guys going after?
You’re just going to love this one! This is big! We’ve set up a perjury trap for Roger Clemens on his personal use of steroids! Is that terrific, or what?!
You mean, sort of like the perjury trap Ken Starr set for Bill Clinton?
Exactly!
. . . And you think that’s what the American people in general, and the Democratic rank and file in particular, had in mind, in terms of what wrongs they wanted you to right, when they turned the Congress over to you?
Hey, someone else had already done Martha Stewart. What did you expect us to do?
I suppose answering “your job,” would be a waste of breath?
You’re one of those damn liberal bloggers, aren’t you?
Guilty as charged. And you know what? People like me have been working overtime trying to convince other progressives that it’s important to keep Democrats in control of Congress. And I have to tell you, you folks aren’t making our jobs any easier.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
NANCY PELOSI is PARTY TO, COMPLICIT WITH, Republican Right-Wing CORRUPTION. By "keeping Impeachment OFF-the-TABLE," she ENABLES the Right-Wing agenda
"Impeachment unprosecuted = Crimes UNPUNISHED"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-yellen/crimes-without-punishment_b_84826.html
To summarize this long post in a nut-shell, Not only has Nancy Pelosi (and her fellow "leaders" in the Democrat House and Senate) GIVEN KARL ROVE a FREE PASS for his role in the "OUTING CIA AGENT", perjury, and obstruction of justice scandal; and for Mr. Rove's role in the "PURGE-GATE" scandal and PARTISAN PROSECUTION of Alabama Democratic Governor Don Seigelman, (ROBBED of his 2002 election win by Republican vote-rigging, and then "buried" by a partisan federal prosecution by the most Republican prosecutors Karl Rove could find in Alabama in 2002), but today KARL ROVE IS NOW A FEATURE COMMENTATOR on Fox "news" - and the Republicans in Alabama are RAMPING UP _NEW_ PARTISAN PROSECUTIONS of Democratic voter activists in that state, to SWING a "reform" minded Deep South state BACK towards its REACTIONARY right-wing roots!
AND COWARDLY, COMPLICIT, COMPLACENT, AND CORRUPT NANCY PELOSI _PRETENDS NOT TO NOTICE_ that KARL ROVE, DICK CHENEY, GEORGE W. BUSH, and the Republican Party are USING FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TO SWING CLOSE STATE ELECTIONS!
======================================
Nancy Pelosi, the so-called "Democratic" Speaker of the House, follows in JOE LIEBERMAN's FOOTSTEPS: Just as Lieberman stands by at a McCain fundraiser, tacitly supporting John McCain's call for RIGHT-WING JUDGES, so too does Pelosi stand beside the Bush-Cheney White House, while Pelosi PRETENDS NOT TO NOTICE the gross crimes, frauds, abuses of power, and raw corruption of the Bush-Cheney White House. Note: When McCain talks about "NOT SUPPORTING JUDGES WHO WILL LEGISLATE FROM THE BENCH" (click on video image above) he is speaking in Republican code for saying (our paraphrase or distillation) "Let us take America BACK to the days BEFORE the CIVIL RIGHTS movement... before Ivory Tower judges gave away "rights" to uppity minorities and the neer-do-well (quasi-criminal) poor... Indeed, take America BACK to the era before President Roosevelt's despised-by-conservatives NEW DEAL legislation."
Which of course is the America of the GREAT DEPRESSION, of ROBBER BARONS and vast fortunes and vast poverty nationwide... The era of violent strike-breaking (UAW founding President Walter Reuther survived not one but TWO Ford Motor Company linked assassination attempts), of millions of Americans losing their life-savings in banks failures, of the era of blatant segregation and even outright lynch-mob 'justice' which was so integral with the segregation era.
NANCY PELOSI is PARTY TO, she is COMPLICIT WITH, the Bush-Cheney administration's brand of Right-Wing Republican CORRUPTION.
By "keeping Impeachment OFF-the-Table," Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid, Rockefeller, and other "Democratic" "Leaders" in Congress ENABLE the Right-Wing Narrative that is at the heart of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Scalia-Murdoch (et al) CORRUPTION in America...
#1. From WHITEWASHING the stolen election 2000... and all subsequent computerized vote-rigging after the 2000 election (including the massive trashing of 18,000 _EIGHTEEN THOUSAND_ "undervotes" in the Florida District 13 election in 2006)
#2. to WHITEWASHING Vice President Cheney's role in OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE and PERJURY in the CIA agent "outing" scandal...
#3. To allowing the WHITEWASH 9-11 Commission findings to stand
(the pro-war New York Times' word is "tragicomic")
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/books/04thom.html
#4. to massive kickbacks, slush-funds, and crony CORRUPTION in Iraq WAR contracts and (New Orleans) hurricane rebuilding contracts,
#5. to the use of Federal Prosecutors (US Attorneys) to HARASS, intimidate, and file knowingly MALICIOUS PROSECUTIONS against Democratic voters, activists and candidates...
#6. to allowing TORTURE to be the official policy of the United States of America...
#7. to making American consumers and taxpayers bear the burden of every massive corporate failure and government deficits (from ENRON's massive collapse in September 2001 to today's multi-trillion dollar US deficits)...
#8. To the Alpha-&-Omega of America's foreign policy, the COLLUSION of the End-Times Christian Zionists with Jewish Zionists, the Israel government, and the US government, to SABOTAGE _any_ peace progress in Palestinian territories...
ON EACH AND EVERY ONE of the above issues, which DEFINE the Right-Wing AUTHORITARIAN, reactionary, (very nearly) TOTALITARIAN agenda of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration, NANCY PELOSI's TALKING POINTS are SYNONYMOUS with those of the Reactionary Republican Bush-Cheney-Rove administration. SHE IS POSING as a Democrat, while on the hard, substantive issues that DEFINE the Right-Wing Bush-Cheney White House, SHE CAN NOT FORCE the Democratic Party controlled Congress to COUNTER that Republican media narrative!
FOR SHAME, NANCY! YOUR reign as Speaker of the House is a FRAUD pushed on Democratic voters. Like Senator Joe Lieberman, YOU PRETEND that you are a "moderate Democrat," WHILE YOU STAND ASIDE and let the Right-Wing Republicans use all their corporate advantages to cram a Right-Wing reactionary agenda down America's throats!
#1. 18,000 "undervotes" ROB Democrat candidate Christine Jennings (and thereby ALL Democratic VOTERS) of a win in the 2006 Florida District 13 Congressional election. Republicans were so incensed that Katherine Harris gave up her "SAFE" Republican seat to run for the US Senate, that they blatantly instructed the District 13 voting machines to swallow 18,000 _EIGHTEEN THOUSAND_ votes in a Congressional off-year campaign as "UNDERVOTES." The "undervote" tally in neighboring, similar sized districts was in the low one-thousand range, and Jenning's opponent was declared 'winner' by 368 votes. After massive disenfranchisement in minority districts in Florida in 2000 (by none other than then Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her boss then Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the presidential candidate George W. Bush's brother), the Republican dominated Florida legislature CERTIFIED a Bush "win" in Florida by... 385 votes! Whenever Florida Republicans steal elections, they like using that mid-300s number.)
#2. Vice President Dick Cheney's TOP ADVISOR, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, INDICTED and CONVICTED of PEJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE re the CIA "outing" scandal, WHICH "obstruction" of the FBI investigation WAS CRITICAL to the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign prospects...
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/NEWS/611090343
#3. "TRAGICOMIC tale of the 9-11 Commission" NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/books/04thom.html
#4. "Epic Corruption.. Six Billion in DOD contracts in Iraq war under investigation by... the DOD itself!
(This link is to a Frank Rich NYT op-ed, but it would take several encylcopedia volumes to detail all the links about corruption in Iraq contracts, alone.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21rich.html
#5. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002293
#6. Former CIA director Stansfield Turner has labeled Dick Cheney a "vice president for torture."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/11/18/turner.cheney/index.html
#7. Federal deficits soaring higher, menacing the future
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/26473.html
7a: Massive BUSH DEFICITS SHORTCHANGE education and graduation funding... keeping the "SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE" going as crime rates increase.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/75533/
8. Christian Zionists organize to stymie any Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement that would divide Jerusalem
8a: "Pelosi THE AIPAC GIRL Leaves Iraq and possibly IRAN WAR(s) in Bush-Cheney hands (i.e. Pelosi DEFAULTS on her CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY to oversee prosecution and conduct of the US occupation in Iraq)
http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=11&num=70952
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Cowardly PELOSI Democrats IGNORE Bush "signing statements" that IGNORE, DEFY... _CONSTITUTIONALLY_ passed laws & legislation....
Nancy Pelosi in her now usual role: DEFERING to Bush, IGNORING his massive violations of constitional process, voter rights, and US law; and handing over BILLIONS of taxpayers dollars to the Bush-Cheney White House, without so much as a receipt for how those billions will be spent (much less tough investigative auditing for those government expenditures; exactly what Mr. Bush has issued a "signing statement" declaring he will NOT comply with.)
Here we are again, playing septic-tank cleaner just trying to keep up with NANCY PELOCI's DISGRACEFUL 110th Congress.... the "HOW LOW CAN YOU GO to IGNORE President Bush's SERIAL CRIMINAL VIOLATIONS OF LAW and Constitutional separation of powers" Congress.
The Congress that WALLOWS in **** trying to PRETEND that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of War Runsfeld, and UnderSecretary of War Wolfowitz had NOTHING to do with TORTURE and "ABUSE" at Abu Ghraib Prison... even as FEMALE VOLUNTEER PRIVATES LYNDDIE ENGLAND and SABRINA SAMSON serve out FEDERAL PRISON TERMS, while Bush, Cheney, Rove, and their apologists smirk that they can TORTURE _any_ 'terrorist' suspect they want... TO DEATH!
Got that, Speaker Pelosi? Two American women are SERVING PRISON TERMS for their incredibly small-pawn role in the "abuse" of prisoners in American custody at Abu Ghraib prison... WHILE THE PRESIDENT, VICE PRESIDENT, and Secretary and UnderSecretary of Defense who ORDERED THAT ABUSE, INSIST ON THE RIGHT TO ACTUALLY TORTURE PRISONERS TO DEATH!
- For SELLLING AMERICAN SERVICEMEN and WOMEN DOWN THE RIVER of the Bush White House's abusive, corrupt, lying chain of command...
- for FAILING TO CORRECT the FARCICAL "NOT ONE OFFICIAL REPRIMANDED or held accountable for pre-9-11 failures" 9-11 Commission...
- for REFUSING TO HOLD INTENSIVE, INVESTIGATIVE HEARINGS into KARL ROVE'S ROLE in "PURGE-GATE" - the actual purging of US Attorneys (every one of them Republicans) only the tip-of-the-iceberg to the use of PARTISAN prosecutors to file KNOWINGLY MALICIOUS and FALSE prosecutions against Democratic voter activists and even a sitting Democratic state governor, DON SIEGELMAN, ROBBED of his 2002 re-election win by Republican vote-rigging, which Rove and his Republican US Attorney (prosecutors) TURNED INTO A CRIMINAL CONVICTION based entirely on baised and suspect testimony....
- for REFUSING TO STAND UP FOR DEMOCRATIC VOTERS _ROBBED_ of their votes in the past 4 national elections (in 2002 Max Cleland, Walter Mondale, and Don Siegelman were almost certainly victims of Republican vote rigging; as was Vice President Al Gore in Florida in 2000, and as was john kerry in Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa, and probably Florida in 2004. Even in the Democratic land-slide of 2006, Florida Republican officials were so outraged at losing Katherine Harris' "safe" seat - Florida District 13 - that they blatantly instructed that district's computerized voting machines to swallow 18,000 EIGHTEEN THOUSAND VOTES, without those 18,000 voters registering any choice in the congressional race, thereby handing the Sarasota seat to Democrat Christine Jennings' Republican opponent. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND VOTES DISAPPEARED into the same voting machines that helped swipe the 2004 election - neighboring districts had "undervote" totals in the low-one-thousand range - and NANCY PELOSI and HER DECADENT, LAZY, CONFLICTED, COMPLICIT, AND CORRUPT CONGRESS PRETENDS NOT TO NOTICE.
Mr. Lindorff lays out the case that THE PELOSI CONGRESS is now COMPLICIT IN THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. The only thing Mr. Lindorff gets wrong is mostivation: Pelosi and her "Democratic" "Leadership" ARE NOT IGNORING the Bush totalitarian "signing statements" out of FEAR - Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, and the Democrats ARE IGNORING the Bush signing statements because they (the Democrats) are now full-fledged co-partners in the Republican/military-industrial-complex/AIPAC war-lobby agenda. =============================http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5637
New: MORE on Nancy Pelosi's "I'M TOO BUSY and POWERFUL to worry about the little people" arrogant, complicit corruption: 2004 Ohio Secretary of State KENNETH BLACKWELL _IGNORES_ a Judiciary Committee inquirey into voter DISENFRANCHISEMENT in Ohio in 2004... PELOSI DOESN'T CARE, and she will CERTAINLY NOT PUT THE POWER OF THE ENTIRE CONGRESS behind Chairman Conyer's inquirey.
SPEAKER PELOSI, KEEP UP WITH YOUR COMPLICIT CORRUPTION is like CLEAING OUT THE OUTHOUSE that serves an entire army base!
=========================
Crime of the Century: Time for Congress to Act
by Dave Lindorff, ThisCantBeHappening.net
Fri, 02/01/2008
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/059
While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.
Let me say that again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and will not be bound by four parts of a law duly passed by the Congress.
Just so you know that we're not talking about the naming of a bridge or a new ship, the four provisions of the act which the president is going to ignore are:
* the establishment of a commission to investigate contractor fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq
* the protection for whistleblowers who report contractor fraud from harassment or official retribution
* a requirement that U.S. intelligence agencies respond to Congressional requests for documents
* a ban on funding for any permanent military bases in Iraq, and on any actions that would seek to give the U.S. control over Iraq's oil resources or oil money.
Now first of all, let's see what the Constitution has to say. Article I, the first actual statement about how our government works, which comes right after the preamble about "We the People," states unambiguously:
"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
It goes on to state that:
"Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration by two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law... If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it."
Note that there is no asterisk or footnote saying anything about the president having the power to simply ignore those legislative powers or to violate them at will. If he does not veto the entire bill -- and in this case he did not, he signed it -- it becomes the Law of the Land.
Article I also defines the powers of the Congress expansively, stating that it has the power to lay and collect taxes, to regulate commerce, to coin money, to declare war, to call forth the militia, and
"to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Article II goes on to define the powers of the president. It states:
"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."
It goes on to explicitly define and limit the president's powers, specifically to being "commander in chief" of the armed forces (not of the country or of the government!), to the granting of reprieves and pardons (except in the case of impeachments), to making treaties (subject to Senate approval) and appointing officers to the cabinet and the courts (all subject to Senate approval).
That is it. There are no other presidential powers in the Constitution. Certainly there is no power granted to disobey or ignore Acts of Congress or to violate the law.
And yet here we have the president, at the start of his last year in office, announcing that he will not obey a law duly passed by the Congress that requires his administration to establish a commission to investigate the rampant corruption among private contractors operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, that he will not obey a law barring him from punishing whistleblowers who disclose such corruption, that he will not obey an order that his intelligence services must respond to requests from Congress for information (about issues such as torture of captives, or spying on American citizens, or destroying documents), and that he will not obey an order banning the establishment and construction of permanent military bases in Iraq, and banning attempts to gain U.S. control over Iraqi oil.
Logically one would expect members of Congress in both parties to be up in arms over this illegal and clearly unconstitutional defiance -- the more so because both houses of Congress are in the hands of the Democratic Party.
But we have heard not a peep from the "people's representatives" at this brazen abuse of power. The reason: Congress is afraid of impeachment.
It is so afraid to confront this usurper president that, incredibly, its members, Republican and Democrat alike, seem happy to surrender not only their own power, but also the power of the institution of Congress, to avoid doing what the Constitution calls upon them to do: to impeach a criminal in the White House who has abused his powers of office, who has violated his oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution, and who has broken the law multiple times.
This is an appalling abrogation of responsibility on the part of our elected representatives in Washington, who also took oaths of office committing themselves to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution.
How can these hundreds of cowards and traitors in the Capitol, with straight faces, hold hand to heart and pledge allegiance, as they do at the start of every day in Congress? How can they with straight faces go before their constituents and pose as honorable men and women?
The Constitution is clear. It states that:
"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Please observe that the operative word is shall, not may.
Now although the evidence is overwhelming, one can nonetheless debate whether the president broke the law when he went to war in Iraq or whether he knowingly lied about the reasons for that war. One can debate whether he broke the law by personally authorizing torture of captives. One can even debate whether he broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These are matters that require hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. But there is no need to hold hearings to decide whether the president has abused his power by declaring his intention to ignore laws passed by the Congress. This is an objective fact. A High Crime has been committed and openly confessed to by the President of the United States. Congress has only to vote on it as an impeachable act to restore its Constitutional authority, and to restore the damaged Constitution.
There is no question here of "diverting" Congress from its important duties. This need not be time-consuming business. Moreover, defending its authority from a usurper is surely the most important thing Congress can do. Neither is there any question of this being "divisive." Every member of Congress should want to protect the Constitutional authority of the legislative branch from this fatal encroachment which, if unchallenged, renders Congress nothing but a talk shop no better than the local diner. Nor can there be any question about whether the votes are there or not, either to vote for an Article of Impeachment, or even to convict in the Senate. What member of Congress, of either party, would vote to approve and to sanction in perpetuity this or any president's right to ignore the Constitution and willfully violate laws passed by the Congress -- particularly given the likelihood that the next president could be a Democrat?
Here then, is an issue that Congress cannot ignore. Here is an issue that renders ludicrous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that "impeachment is off the table." Here is an issue that should inflame every American citizen. Here is an issue that should be put to every candidate for office, including those running for the office of president:
Is President Bush, and is every future president, a dictator, who personally determines what laws are to be obeyed and what laws are to be ignored? Or is the president bound, like the rest of us, by the rule of law and the Constitution?
The choice is now squarely before us all.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net where you may also order a signed hardcover copy of the impeachment book at an author's discount.
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