At least that’s what one of the fired prosecutors thinks. He believes that the IG will recommend prosecution.
FWIW, “Fredo” Gonzalez clearly thinks so too. He’s lawyered up, and he’s not saying a word to anyone.
Personally, I’d like to see him go to the Hague, not for his perjury, but for his active participation in the torture policies of Bush and His Evil Minions™. He’d get a fair trial, and it would be telecast.
When a Fox News anchor criticizes Bush on S-CHIP, pigs are flying. In this case, the person launching the pigs is Mort Kondracke.
You have George Bush, who promised in 2004 at the Republican National Convention that he was going to cover millions of children who were not covered by SCHIP if he was reelected? And what does he do? He proposes a bill that would result in almost a million kids losing their coverage from the level it’s at. It’s no wonder Bush’s approval ratings is in the 30’s.
Truth be told, they are in the twenties. 25% when I last checked.
The only things less popular than him are hemorrhoids and Dick Cheney.
Three Hamas militants wounded in Gaza in a Gaza explosion, and not only does Israel deny involvement, but Hamas agrees that the IDF had nothing to do with it.
It could be Islamic Jihad, of course, but given the PLO’s record on both conventional and urban fighting, their military record implies that they are over matched by a mean little kid with a pea shooter, this seems more the work of the PLO, particularly Fatah.
It requires a significant investment in resources and planning, but very little risk to the perps.
See the opening paragraph of the New York Times article on the recent political upheval.
The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called “the nightmare scenario” for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play.
In Augues, I referred to Pakistan as an almost failed state. Significant portions of the country are not under government control, the place is lousy with automatic weapons, and there is a significant Islamist movement there.
Pakistan is not fully cooperating because it cannot. It would destabilize the already fragile country, and then its nuclear arsenal would be up for grabs.
The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) won 29% of the vote and 62 of the 200 seats in the National Council, so they will still need to govern in a coalition with the other major parties.
Their success appears largely to be driven by anti-immigrant animus.
I would like to think that most of the voters in Europe are neither bigots or nativist by inclination, but given the political consensus outside of the bigoted and nativist parties, their only choice is to vote for people like the SVP.
The consensus among European intelligencia is that immigration is nearly a human right, while most of the populous sees immigration as serving the national, and to some degree their parochial, interests.
Every society goes through periods of more and less restrictive policies on immigration, and the fact that there is not a more progressive alternative to people like le Pen and the SVP is why they achieve economic success.
Dodd Makes Play on FISA Legislation
Her analysis:
Whenever that big day comes, Dodd — as the keeper of the “hold” — must return from the campaign trail to officially block debate on the bill. That entails standing around on the Senate floor, forcing procedural votes, avoiding the furious glares of colleagues who don’t share the same concerns. The standard duration of such showdowns is about a week — time that Dodd, who is trailing badly in early primary polls, can scarcely afford.
Of course, there is the reality, with facts, as opposed to bloviating:
Chris Dodd: The Netroots Show the Love
Senator Dodd’s campaign communications director Hari Sevugan tells me that $150,000 in small contributions have poured into Dodd’s campaign in the past 24 hours, since his announcement that he will put a hold on–and may even filibuster–a foreign intelligence surveillance bill approved yesterday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Dodd objects to a provision that would grant immunity to the telecommunications companies that turned over their customers’ phone and e-mail records to the government’s warrantless surveillance program. The companies have been hit with 40 pending lawsuits charging them with privacy violation.
You have a 3rd tier candidate for president who has just raised $150K in about 24 hours, and is probably in the 2nd tier (with Bill Richardson) as a result of his stand.
He’s on every bloggers lips right now, but according to Shailagh Murray his move is somehow a really bad idea.
My guess is that the lead levels in DC water are higher than they are letting on.
So, Nancy Pelosi is rebukes Stark for his comments about Bush and the Republican chicken-hawks while debating S-CHIP..
The proper response to the Republican faux outrage is what Bender said. Tell them to kiss your shiny metal ass. Seriously.
Nancy, don’t be a Nancy-boy. Cowardice is unbecoming a house speaker.
I’m seriously thinking about printing up a bunch of T-shirts saying “Bush’s Bitches”, and giving them out to Reid, Pelosi, Rockefeller, etc., but in the absence of that, reprints of this Times OP/ED on the FISA cave in will do.
A Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution The object of this story, the Phoenix New Times, got the hed for this story correct when they called it Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution. The story begins a few years back, when the The Phoenix New Times, a Phoenix, AZ alternative newspaper began looking into the affairs of the very prominent, and very controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio*, and found that since his election as sheriff, he has accumulated millions of dollars in real estate investments on a $78,000 sheriff’s salary, and he used “an arcane statute meant to conceal home addresses of law enforcement officials to shield his investments.” In commenting on Arpaio’s extensive real estate holdings, the New Times published his home address in an OP/ED on their web page, to show how this information was already publicly available, and the Arpaio filed a criminal complaint with the DA, Andrew Thomas†, who appointed one of his cronies, Dennis Wilenchik, as special prosecutors, to see if there was a violation of the law in publishing this information. ‡ Then, in a stunning abuse of the grand jury process, Wilenchik issued a grand jury subpoena to the Phoenix New Times, requesting:
The publishers of the paper, published that they had been subpoenaed, along with this analysis of the entire affair:
The seemingly picayune matter of Sheriff Arpaio’s home address getting printed at the bottom of an opinion column on our Internet site — and the very real issue of commercial property investments the sheriff hid from public view — have now erupted into a courtroom donnybrook against a backdrop of illegal immigration disputes, Mexican drug cartels, the Minutemen, political ambition, and turf disputes between prosecutors and the judiciary.
What’s more, the special prosecutor attempted to use a third party to set up an ex parte meeting with the judge supervising the grand jury, in direct violation of the most basic canons of legal ethics. Well, the newspaper, or more specifically its founders Michael Lacey, the executive editor, and Jim Larkin, chief executive, had had enough, so they published about the secret grand jury subpoena, and they were promptly arrested. Well, if they wanted news of the subpoena, and abuse of the grand jury process, covered up, they got it wrong, because, it got coverage from the New York Times here, and here, Slate, and (FINALLY) the Arizona Republic, to name a few. At this point, realizing that they were completely screwed, Thomas ended the investigation, with much press coverage. As an poster on the New Times web site said, “Not surprising. Cockroaches never do like being exposed to daylight.” *He has created a jail tent city, and sold himself as the “America’s toughest sheriff”. †Who appears to be so close to Arpaio that they could share a bathroom stall with Senator Larry Craig. ‡No, there wasn’t. You know the first amendment allows for reporting stuff like this. It’s news, and furthermore, it is germane, as they are covering the corrupt sheriff’s real estate holdings, which include his house, which he has covered up by misusing a that refers only to his home.
Barack Obama is doing a gospel music tour called the “Embrace the Change” tour with three dates in South Carolina.
I understand that this is a part of his message of inclusiveness, but review the highlighted portion:
As religious conservatives gather in Washington this weekend for the “Values Voters Summit,” Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced its latest effort to attract people of faith to the campaign: a gospel concert tour.
All three of the dates of the “Embrace the Change” tour are in South Carolina, where Mr. Obama is locked in battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for black voters.
Gospel acts including Mary Mary, Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker, Byron Cage and the Mighty Clouds of Joy are scheduled to appear.
It seems innocuous enough, until you dig into the statements and actions of Donnie McClurkin in this 2004 article:
Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who has detailed his struggle with gay tendencies and vowed to battle “the curse of homosexuality,” said yesterday he’ll perform as scheduled at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, despite controversy over his view that sexuality can be changed by religious intervention.
He is also claiming that he was “made gay” by being raped by an uncle.
Unless McClurkin has recanted these views, he is a messenger of bigotry and hypocrisy, and no Democratic candidate should have him sing as a part of their political campaign.
Well, it looks like Reid will ignore Dodd’s hold, so the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut is promising an honest to God filibuster if Reid ignores the hold.
Go to the Act Blue box on the right hand side of the blog, and show him some love.
Note that the Act Blue Box is not an endorsement, just a note that I’m inclined towards them, hence multiple candidates for the same office are listes.
BTW, here is the Doddster on video talking about the filibuster:
This time writing about Larry Craig’s self delusion.
Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself. No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity – no one. Living a life like that – a deeply lonely, compromised, painful interior existence – is a very sophisticated form of hell. No human can keep it up for ever. No human should have to keep it up for ever.
Larry Craig is not in the closet, he is the closet.
Ezra Klein, once more showing that he writes better than I ever will. comments on McCain’s healthcare proposal
It’s another of these plans to sprinkle magical tax credits all across the land that will incentivize folks to buy less health insurance, but do absolutely nothing for the cost of care. Families get a $5,000 tax credit to help them buy insurance, and they can keep what they don’t use, and so the hope is, they’ll buy plans with higher deductibles, be unable to afford the deductibles, and will thus buy less care. It’s like if I tried to make food cheaper by encouraging you to diet.
I love that line on dieting, and it cuts every Republican healthcare plan to the quick.
Read the whole article, but it appears that the first judge was removed on the case because, on the basis that, “because he was prejudiced against the prosecution. The basis cited for this prejudice was that a California U.S. attorney had, a decade earlier, conducted an inquiry focusing on Judge Clemon’s sister.”
The judge that they selected, Judge Mark Fuller, was known to have a personal grudge against Siegelman, and he also had a CURRENT complaint of criminal activity against him with the public integrity division of the DoJ.
I believe that the status of food preservation in Copenhagen is extremely poor.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a review of IRS returns shows that Christofascist groups receipts skyrocketed in 2006.
Remember, just because the Democrats won congress in 2006, and look likely to win the presidency in 2008 does not mean that they are going away.
By way of example 99.8%, or 499 out of 500 complaints to the FCC in 2003 were from the Christofascist group Action for Children’s Television.
These people are still a cancer on the body politic.
This is not a condemnation of Ron Paul, but of a small> segment of his supporters.
Specifically, Paul has become the “it girl” on the (literally) Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists. My guess is that his generally isolationist foreign policy appeals to him.
I have no doubt that Paul is horrified about this, and he needs to do something.
I’m not entirely sure what, maybe giving a speech at a synagogue and having pictures taken with a Yamulke on.
Hillary is not the first politician in Washington to declare ‘Mission Accomplished’ a little too soon.
Pithy, quotable, and profoundly damning.
The answer was in response to statements about the inevitability of Hillary, and that was a delightfully sharp shiv. I’d like to see some more from Obama, because I still have doubts about his willingness to do it, as Sean Connery said in The Untouchables, “The Chicago Way”.
By a vote of 273 to 156, the measure fell 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for an override. Forty-four Republicans voted for the override.
So pass a 1 month extention, and come back again, and again, and again…
For what it’s worth, two “Democrats”, Representatives Gene Taylor (MS) and Jim Marshall (GA) voted with the Republicans.
Time to vote these jerks off the island. Do they have primary challengers?
As you are no doubt aware, the Senate caved to Bush and His Evil Minions™ on indemnifying the telcos.
The Honorable Christopher Dodd (D-CT) has put a hold on the bill.
As I have said before, this amnesty is about covering up the fact that Bush used the telcos to spy on his political opponents.
Any Senator in the race who does not do all they can to strike this provision (yes, that means signing on to a filibuster) will not get my vote for President, that means you, Clinton, Biden, and Obama.
For Senator Obama it means showing up for the votes and taking a stand. I know that you are running for president, but it seems that you are dodging these votes.
As to why Dodd is #2 on my list, behind Edwards, while is he is great on non-economic interests, I think that he is not as good on non-economic issues, particularly those dealing with Wall Street, though considering that 1/3 of Wall Street lives in Southern Connecticut, I’m not surprised.