Group hopes to 'flood the Oval Office' with 25,000 copies of the Constitution
Even though a human rights group believes the Commander in Chief has been naughty, they plan to play Santa Claus this year and make a political statement at the same time.
The Center for Constitutional Rights plans to "flood the Oval Office with copies of the Constitution this holiday season ... as a seasonal reminder that the Constitution needs to be upheld; not destroyed."
Those interested can also sign an accompanying letter addressed to President Bush, which poses a multitude of questions reminding the president "that he swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States."
"I would have hoped that you'd be pretty familiar with [the Constitution] already," writes the anonymous author, "because you have at least three times in your life taken a solemn oath to uphold, protect and defend it, but all the signs indicate that you either don't know what's in it, or you don't care."
The diatribe covers controversial topics such as habeus corpus and torture, and beseeches the President to "uphold, protect and defend [the Constitution], like you swore you would."
Interested parties can donate money to help cover costs if they wish, but the offer itself is completely free. The CCR hopes to send the President more than 25,000 copies of the Constitution by January 2008.
Publisher thanks cops for not beating him during Giuliani incident, but files complaint
Brooklyn reporter booted after asking about 'foreknowledge' of 9/11
When GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani stopped off for a little retail politicking at a Colorado coffee house last Saturday, he came prepared to hammer home his commitment to the war on terror, make a jab or two at Hillary Clinton, and field some tough questions about recently indicted pal Bernard Kerik -- but he apparently wasn't ready for Sander Hicks.
Hicks, a Brooklyn-based journalist, publisher and all-around multimedia maverick, is also a self-described member of the "9/11 Truth" movement, a group convinced that official explanations do not fully account for the Sept. 11 tragedies. As Giuliani shook hands and signed autographs outside of Loveland, Colorado's Loveland Coffee Company, Hicks was waiting with a question.
"Mr. Giuliani, six years ago you told Peter Jennings that 'we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse,'" Hicks said, quoting a remark from the former New York City mayor made during an interview with ABC News. "Where did you get your foreknowledge that the World Trade Center was going to collapse?"
A laughing Giuliani quickly brushed past Hicks according to a video recording of the campaign stop, ignoring the question as he continued to work his way around an informal circle of supporters and press. But Hicks was not ignored by the Loveland Police Department. Two officers immediately took hold of his arms and hauled him into an adjacent parking lot.
"The police were aggressive," Hicks said in an interview with RAW STORY. "There's no need for that. I was there as a professional reporter."
After being led away by officers in what he describes as a "submission hold," Hicks identified himself to authorities and said he was just trying to ask Giuliani a question.
"I'm a member of the media. I'm a publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Megaphone," he told police, citing a newspaper he runs which claims a readership of more than 60,000. "I'm the only New York reporter here."
After denying officers' assertions that he had pushed people in the crowd, he told authorities that they were violating his right to speak. "What you did was illegal," Hicks said. "What what you did was a violation of my fucking Bill of Rights."
"I was emotional," he told RAW STORY. "My mom was just telling me, 'next time don't cuss.'" Although Hicks was not arrested, officers said he was on private property and ordered him to leave.
"I should not have been grabbed," the journalist said by phone. "We need more reporters to ask these questions. We need more citizens to ask the questions."
Hicks is no new-comer to political controversy. He was the subject of the 2002 documentary film Horns and Halos, which focused on his successful efforts to republish author James Hatfield's unauthorized biography of President Bush, Fortunate Son. The New York Times bestselling book, which included allegations that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972, was recalled by its original publisher after it was revealed that Hatfield was a paroled felon. Hicks later returned the biography to bookstore shelves through his own boutique publishing house, Soft Skull Press.
'Why don't you let go of my hand'
Hicks' question for Giuliani had referred to an interview with ABC's then-anchor Peter Jennings, conducted only hours after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, in which the mayor remarked that he and other top city officials had been warned on that the trade center towers were going to come down.
"I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse," Giuliani said in the interview. "And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us."
Critics of 9/11 conspiracy theories say Giuliani was in fact warned -- but only at the last minute.
"Hicks appears to be trying to resuscitate the claim that Rudy knew the Towers were going to collapse in advance," states an entry at the blog Screw Loose Change, a site which claims to debunk "myths" about Sept. 11. "EMS Battalion Chief John Peruggia was warned by a NYC building engineer at 9:58 AM that the North Tower was in imminent danger of collapse. Presumably either Peruggia or the building engineer proceeded to warn the Mayor. Unfortunately Giuliani has compounded the problem by denying that he had any advance knowledge, perhaps because the kooks generally frame it that he had plenty of warning..."
Hicks had made a a previous attempt to ask about the Jennings interview earlier in the campaign stop, soon after Giuliani arrived on the scene.
"Rudy, hi, I'm Sander from the New York Megaphone," he started, shaking the candidate's hand. "On 9/11, when you said -- " But Giuliani cut him off, saying sharply, "Why don't you let go of my hand?" The exchange was captured on tape by a local Colorado Fox affiliate.
But the candidate was confronted with more 9/11 Truth members once he made his way inside the coffee shop.
"Mayor Giuliani, why'd you have thousands of tons of steel melted down and shipped off to Asia," yelled one activist before being shouted down with chants of "Rudy, Rudy" from the crowd. That individual was also asked to leave by police.
"Hey Rudy, the American people are waking up to the fact that you're a criminal," said another Truther. "You're a criminal, Rudy, you're a fake conservative..." The protesters were affiliated with two 9/11 Truth organizations, We Are Change Colorado and TruthAlliance.
Giuliani: 'The conspiracy theorists are all over'
After leaving the coffee shop -- and moments before Hicks would be whisked away by police -- Giuliani made some brief comments about the disturbance.
"It's part of America," he told reporters. "You learn when you are mayor of New York City that people have all kinds of different opinions, all kinds of different views...the conspiracy theorists are all over, they are protesting all over the place...it's very sad, it's not true. But you're not going to convince them that it's not true."
Although Hicks says he is loosely allied with We Are Change Colorado -- and was in Colorado to speak at one of the group's events -- he is careful to distance himself from tactics he refers to as "heckling."
"I was not a heckler and I did not raise my voice," he told RAW STORY. "I did not scream my question." He even has some measured praise for Loveland police.
"The cops did a good job of defusing the situation in the sense that they were professional, they were level headed. I appreciate the fact that I was not booked, that I was not cuffed, that I was not beaten," said Hicks."But I shouldn't have to say this. Of course I shouldn't have been beaten."
He hastens to add that the police, in his opinion, "were making a political choice that was not their job to make." Even if his opinions about Giuliani and Sept. 11 are incorrect, Hicks said, he still had a right to air them.
"This is the main message: the First Amendment allows me to be wrong," said Hicks. "Let's assume that my line of thinking is completely erroneous...that is for the even playing field of free discourse to figure out. We're supposed to have free speech so that truth and error can both come out."
Hicks has filed a complaint with the Loveland Police Department, a copy of which is available at his blog. "No matter what you believe, Loveland Police should be protecting citizens' First Amendment rights, which include our right to ask questions," he writes. "The First Amendment should be counted on to help get the USA back on track, through open dialogue."
The following video incorporates footage shot by 9/11 Truth groups and news reports from local Colorado affiliates.
CNN's Jack Cafferty of the Cafferty File joined CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday to discuss a Bush Administration intelligence's official suggestion that the American people need to "redefine privacy" in order to confront the threats of the 21st century.
In late October, as the Associated Press reported, Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Directory of National Intelligence, delivering the keynote address at GEOINT 2007 (the annual United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation symposium), said that today's times called for a new definition of privacy.
"Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it's an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture," Kerr said. "The Long Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn't seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You'd think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity -- or the appearance of anonymity -- is quickly becoming a thing of the past."
Kerr added, "We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.... I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that up doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."
According to Kerr, privacy should mean only that government and business are safeguarding people's sensitive information, rather than relying on anonymity.
"Of course, I trust the government to do that, don't you?" Cafferty asked facetiously. Cafferty went on to explain how, in his view, Congress' handling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act demonstrates that the government may not have the people's best interest in mind when it comes to privacy.
"Remember last summer when it was threatened they might be held and not be able to go on their break in time, they hastily changed the law and gave the government powers to eavesdrop inside the United States without a warrant as long as one of the parties was reasonably believed to be outside the United States."
"Reasonably believed," Cafferty added. "That's a loophole you could drive a train though."
Cafferty asked CNN viewers to weigh in on the privacy debate.
"The question then for this hour is this: A top intelligence official says it's time for people in the United States to redefine privacy," Cafferty said. "The question is: why should we?"
One viewer wrote in, "Good God, I wouldn't want my personal information to fall into the hands of a bunch of unsavory characters. So I better do everything in my power to keep it out of the government's hands."
Another opined, "Redefining privacy is a bit like redefining virginity. Once it's gone, it's gone."
The following video is from CNN's Cafferty File, broadcast on November 12, 2007
The problem of suicide among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has recently been in the news, with the Department of Veteran Affairs promising to beef up its mental health services in response. Veterans of previous conflicts continue to have problems as well, and the VA has estimated that a total of 5000 suicides among veterans can be expected this year.
However, CBS News has now completed a five-month study of death records for 2004-05 which shows that the actual figures are "much higher" than those reported by the VA. Across the total US veteran population of 25 million, CBS found that suicide rates were more than twice as high as for non-veterans (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide accounted for 32,439 deaths in 2004).
CBS spoke to the families of several veterans who killed themselves after returning from Iraq. "The war didn't end for him when he came home," said the mother of one soldier. "I think he was being tormented and tortured by his experiences."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) told CBS, "That's a lot of young men and women who've gone to fight for us who've come home and found themselves that lost."
Interrogation expert Malcolm Nance, who serves as a counterterrorism and intelligence consultant for the U.S. government and was formerly an instructor at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school in California, did not mince when detailing the dangers of waterboarding, the highly controversial interrogation technique to which he was previously subjected.
"I didn't feel like I was about to die, but I understood that the process of degrading my respiratory system was taking effect," he said in an interview with ABC News' Brian Ross. "I was drowning."
Nance experienced this simulation during staff instructor training at the Navy school. Because the staff must be exposed to all of the processes any student would ever encounter, the dangerous tactic was required as well.
"I know my first thought was, 'I'm being tortured,'" he said, "'and this is not a simulation.'"
Nance, who has served 17 years with the Navy, pointed out that waterboarding videos circulating in the media don't accurately depict the procedure, which he says involves "a very rapid process where a person is put onto a table and then water is introduced to the point where it overcomes their ability to swallow or spit it away," eventually filling the lungs.
On Wednesday, Nance told a House subcommittee that "waterboarding should be banned." As an instructor, Nance conducted "prisoner of war and terrorist hostage survival programs," according to an AP report.
The following video is from ABCNews.com's Brian Ross Investigates and MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast on November 8 and 9, 2007.
Newly confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey will not rein in President Bush, who views himself as having the nearly unchecked executive power of a monarch, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) says.
"Are we just going to have another attorney general that's just going to kowtow to the king -- the president. I'm sorry I get those terms kinda confused here when I'm talking about Bush; I don't know if he's king or president," Harkin told his colleagues from the Senate floor Thursday.
"According to the last attorney general (Bush) was king, and maybe this one believes the same thing, he can do whatever he wants to," Harkin continued. "But even in 1215, the King of England was held to the standard of habeas corpus. I guess we want to turn the clock back to before the Magna Carta."
Harkin spoke shortly before the Senate voted to confirm Mukasey as attorney general, after the nominee weathered criticism of his refusal to declare waterboarding illegal torture. The Iowa Democrat criticized that position and the nominees refusal to commit to the notion that detainees in the war on terror -- including American citizens -- deserve habeas corpus guarantees, which require that anyone in captivity be charged with a crime or released.
"We need an attorney general to tell this king that he's wrong, and that the rule of law will apply and the rule of law says we will not torture," Harkin said. "We will not be like our enemies. That will send a stronger signal to the world than anything else we can do."
The following video is from C-SPAN's Senate debate on Mukasey nomination, broadcast on November 8, 2007.
UPDATE: Judiciary Committee 'Suprised' by Minority Move, Plans to 'Continue to Consider' Matter...
Wasn't able to follow things live, as David Swanson did, so still trying to unravel what specifically happened today on the floor of the U.S. House, where Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) used a "privileged resolution" to try and force a vote on his measure to begin Impeachment proceedings of Dick Cheney.
But as best as we can tell, and if we're reading this correctly, it seems the Republicans are playing a very interesting game of chicken here. From RAW:
Although the roll call vote had initially appeared to favor Hoyer's motion to table, Congressional Quarterly's Ed Epstein told CSPAN that Republicans had switched their votes at the last minute in an attempt to embarrass the Democratic leadership, who is not keen on seeing further action on the impeachment resolution.
"Midway through the vote, with instructions from the GOP leadership, Republicans one by one changed their votes from yes --- to kill the resolution --- to no, trying to force the chamber into a debate and an up-or-down vote on the proposal," reports the Washington Post.
At one point there were 290 votes to table. After the turnaround, the final vote was 251-162 against tabling, with 165 Republicans voting against it. ... Democrats countered by offering a motion to refer the proposal to the House Judiciary Committee for further study, effectively preventing a debate on the House floor. That motion passed by a largely party-line vote of 218-194.
So, in trying to summarize: While the Democratic House Leadership had initially tried to table Kucinich's resolution to Impeach Dick Cheney, the Republicans voted against that, presumably after making some sort of calculation (an incorrect one, in our opinion, but it's just our opinion) that a debate on whether he should be Impeached would somehow benefit Republicans. They would seem to share that calculation with the Democratic House leadership.
The effort to table discussion of the matter, thus failed. But Hoyer's next attempt to dispatch with the measure (for the moment) was his call for a vote to send the matter to Committee for further considering, instead of debating it on the floor of the House.
Which, if we've got our analytics correct here, means the ball gets tossed over to HJC Chairman, John Conyers for now...
UPDATE: Statement just in from a U.S. House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman, in response to the referal of the Impeachment resolution to the committee...
"The Committee has a very busy agenda - over the next two weeks, we hope to pass a FISA bill, to vote on contempt of Congress citations, pass legislation on prisoner re-entry, court security and a variety of other very important items. We were surprised that the minority was so ready to move forward with consideration of a matter of such complexity as impeaching the Vice President. The Chairman will discuss today's vote with the Committee members but it would seem evident that the committee staff should continue to consider, as a preliminary matter, the many abuses of this Administration, including the Vice President."
Letter Calling for Action Sent to Constituents After Kucinich Resolution to Impeach Cheney is Referred to Committee
Says 'Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office'
As reported in full[1] by David Swanson, in the wake of yesterday's wild ride (and game of chicken[2]) on the House floor concerning the privileged resolution filed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the Impeachment of Dick Cheney.
The following is from a letter sent to constituents today by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where the matter has been sent again. Wexler is calling for the committee "to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months."...
I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband. That is why I voted against the motion to table debate on H.Res. 333. Along with only 85 other Democrats, I opposed tabling the measure and supported beginning immediate debate and a vote on the Cheney impeachment resolution. The vote on tabling the Kucinich resolution was rejected, and the House subsequently voted to refer the matter to the Judiciary Committee. ... The American people are served well with a legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we bring begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration; and, if it is determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached and removed from office.
AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein to Senate: "they’re doing a huge, massive domestic dragnet on everybody in the United States"
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2007-11-07 13:54.
[UPDATE: Comedy gold! Weak-chinned Fred Hiatt buries the story on D01.] Here’s my transcript:
My name’s Mark Klein; I used to be an AT&T technician for 22 years.
What I figured out when I got there [AT&’s secret room at 611 Folsom Street, SSan Francisco] is that they were copying everything flowing across the Internet cables, and the major Internet links between AT&T’s network and other company’s networks, and it struck me at the time that this is a massively unconstitutional, illegal operation.
It affects not only AT&T’s customers, but everybody, ‘cause these links went to places like Sprint, Qwest, a whole bunch of other companies, and so they’re basicallly tapping into the entire Internet.
But isn’t the government only monitoring suspected terrorsits and not ordinary Americans?
To perform what they say they want to do, which is look at international traffic, none of this makes any sense. These installations only make sense if they’re doing a huge, massive domestic dragnet on everybody, in the United States.
Shouldn’t the telecoms trust that the Bush Administration’s requests are legal?
These companies know very well what’s legal and what’s illegal; they’ve been dealing with this for decades. And it’s a fact that Qwest refused the NSA’s approach, becuase they weren’t showing any legal justificaiton for it, and they did the right thing and said No.
What I’m here for is, it looked like a few weeks ago that the Senate bill which passed the Intelligence Committee would give immunity to the telecom companies and that would probably put an end to the lawsuits. So I came here to lobby against giving retroactive immunity to the telecom companies, and let the court cases process, and Congress should not interfere in that.
As we’ve been saying. Nice to see the Beltway Dems stepping up on this, to preserve our Constitutional rights. Oh, wait… Just to refresh your memories—Harry, Nance; Hillary—here’s the Fourth Amendment of the United States:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Back in the 1700s, “papers and effects” were letters and records, on physical media, like dead trees and parchment. This—Harry, Nance; Hillary—is three hundred years later. My email is digital paper. My web site an electronic effect. The government has no right to read them without a warrant.
NOTE Sign Chris Dodd’s petition against retroactive im[p|m]munity for the telcos here.
Using a questionable, unprecedented maneuver President Bush has installed a solid Republican majority on a supposedly bipartisan civil rights panel, leading it to abandon racial justice and civil rights cases in favor of arguing against school integration and affirmative action.
The eight-member US Commission on Civil Rights has served for half a century as the nation's watchdog against racism and discrimination. Neither party is meant to have more than four members, but Bush effectively "installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents," Charlie Savage reported in the Boston Globe Tuesday.
"I don't believe that [the law] was meant to be evaded by conveniently switching your voter registration," Commissioner Michael Yaki, one of the two remaining Democrats, told the paper.
The administration's argument? Because the Republicans all-of-a-sudden decided to 'abandon' their party, Bush's appointment of two more Republicans to the panel didn't violate the letter of the law, which only required no more than half the panel be affiliated with one party. Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, received Justice Department approval of the maneuver.
Few noticed the unusual circumstances at the time, and presidents previously have been able to create majorities of like-minded commissioners, Savage reports, but Bush's commission has essentially made an about-face in its view of what civil rights cases to pursue.
Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.
Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.
The conservative bloc has also pushed through retroactive term limits for several of its state advisory committees. As a result, some longtime traditional civil rights activists have had to leave the advisory panels, and the commission replaced several of them with conservative activists.
President Bush's re-shuffling of the deck marks at the very least an abandonment of previous president's efforts to install friendly majorities on the panel.
As Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor, tells Savage, Bush's move represented an unprecedented "escalation" in hardball politics. Previous presidents have established liberal and conservative 6-2 majorities on the panel, but they have done so by appointing like-minded independents, not securing party switches from sitting commissioners.
One of the commissioners who switched party affiliation, Abigail Thernstrom, told Savage that no one in the administration asked her to switch her registration, although she acknowledged discussing a pending vacancy on the commission with the White House.
"The discussion was who were the possible candidates and what did their [party] identification have to be," she told the newspaper.
Thernstrom insisted she was simply "more comfortable" as an independent because she had not been a lifelong Republican. But her actions around the time of the party switch seem to indicate a strong GOP streak, Savage reports.
"In more recent years, Thernstrom had been a consistent Republican. She voted in the March 2000 and March 2004 Republican primaries, gave $500 to the Bush-Cheney campaign in July 2004, and on Oct. 18, 2004, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling herself a Republican appointee - just nine days before she dropped her Republican registration."
Darkhorse presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will hold a nationwide conference call Monday night centering on his plan to force a vote as to whether Vice President Dick Cheney should be impeached.
In an announcement last week, Kucinich said he would bring a "privileged resolution" on the matter to the House floor Tuesday, a maneuver which would require a vote from all House members -- and allows him to act in spite of protestations from Democratic leaders, who don't want a vote to come to the floor, according to Politico's Ryan Grim.
Tonight's call, according to a press release, will address "why and how" Kucinich plans to bring about the vote.
"Dozens of supportive organizations have advised the Kucinich campaign that they will be lobbying Congressional representatives heavily over the next few days to support the Ohio Congressman impeachment resolution (House Resolution 333)," the release continued, adding that the resolution will bring about a vote "within two days" of its introduction Tuesday. The measure has 22 sponsors.
Lawmakers will have three options to deal with the resolution: pass it, relegate it to a committee, or support a so-called "motion to table," which effectively kills a pending matter by ending debate.
According to The Hillnewspaper, Kucinich's idea -- which would put legislators on the record about Cheney's impeachment -- is making some Democrats uneasy.
"If he pulls it off, it could make for an uncomfortable situation for Democratic leaders and centrist Democrats," The Hill's Mike Soraghan writes of Kucinich's plan. "Liberal activists are pushing for impeachment, while leaders worry such a move could turn off independent voters. They have made it clear that impeachment of Cheney or President Bush is off the table."
Democrats might be tempted to opt to send the resolution to committee, according to Soraghan, who says that such a move "avoids an immediate floor vote and might be the most appealing option to the Democratic leadership."
Despite its apparent unpopularity among Democratic legislators, the Kucinich proposal is not necessarily out of line with American public opinion: a July poll from American Research Group found that 54% of those surveyed favored the "US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney."
“Congress must hold the Vice President accountable," Kucinich said in a statement last week. "The American people need to let Members of Congress know how they feel about this. The Vice President continues to use his office to advocate for a continued occupation of Iraq and prod our nation into a belligerent stance against Iran. If the Vice President is successful, his actions will ensure decades of disastrous consequences.”
Conyers files contempt report; says White House has one last chance
White House says 'futile' contempt filing 'won't go anywhere'
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) filed a report today holding that two White House officials are in contempt of Congress for their continued refusal to honor subpoenas in connection with the controversial firing of US attorneys last year -- but he's offering one last chance to make a deal.
In a Monday letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Conyers wrote that he would be officially filing submitting the contempt report, a move which would allow the full House to later vote on the measure, but would stop the contempt process there if the White House would agree to a final compromise offer.
“I have written to you on eight previous occasions attempting to reach agreement on this matter,” Conyers says in the letter. “As we submit the Committee’s contempt report to the full House, I am writing one more time to seek to resolve this issue on a cooperative basis.”
The 862-page contempt resolution was filed with the House clerk Monday afternoon.
But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told reporters that an effort to bring a contempt citation to a vote was "futile."
"I'm just amazed that the Democrats actually think they've accomplished so much on behalf of the American people that they can now waste time again on another diversion," she said. "I don't know if they'll actually have a vote on the House floor or not. If they do, I guess we'll just take it from there. But it's been very clear that this is a futile attempt on their part, because they know that it won't go anywhere."
In July, Conyers had written Fielding to inform him that White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers could be held in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas seeking documents and testimony as part of a House Judiciary probe into the firing of nine US attorneys. President Bush had earlier blocked those requests, citing executive privilege.
In order to prevent further action on the contempt measure, Conyers is requesting that the White House provide communications documents pertaining to the firings, including internal White House materials, and asking that White House staffers be allowed to conduct private interviews -- albeit not under oath -- with the House Judiciary Committee.
“I hope you will consider this offer in earnest and based upon the good faith with which it is delivered,” Conyers writes, going on to give Fielding a Nov. 9 deadline.
"GOP leaders have begun to prepare their own counter-attack if a criminal contempt resolution vote takes place on the floor, and they plan to target conservative and moderate Democrats," he writes. "Republicans see several moves that signal a vote is likely to happen soon, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has not made a final decision one way or the other at this time."
According to the Washington Post, Democrats have been working to secure the votes necessary to make sure that a contempt vote, if brought to the House floor, would be successful. "House Democratic leaders have spent the past 10 days trying round up enough votes to secure a majority on the House floor for a contempt citation, aware that some Democrats from moderate to conservative districts may be wary of such a high-profile vote against President Bush," says the paper.
If Fielding rejects Conyers' offer, reports the Post, a contempt vote could come as early as next week.
A full copy of the resolution is available here in pdf.
Twelve senators introduce bill to outlaw voter 'caging'
In a press release late Monday afternoon, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) announced that he had introduced legislation to ban the practice of "voter caging," a practice in which groups send mail to voters' addresses and then use "return to sender" envelopes to challenge the legitimacy of individual votes.
Wikipedia defines 'caging' as "a term of art in the direct mail industry, as well as a term applied to a technique of voter suppression. A caging list is a list or database of addresses, updated after a mailing program is completed, with notations on responses received from recipients, with corrections for addresses that mail has been returned undelivered from, or forwarded onward from."
In October 2004, the BBC reported on a list of "caging" targets that had been culled from an email allegedly sent by the Bush campaign. The email, which was errantly sent to GeorgeWBush.org instead of GeorgeWBush.com, contained "a list of 1,886 voter names and addresses in largely African-American and Democratic areas of Jacksonville."
“The practice of ‘caging’ is reprehensible and has absolutely no place in our democracy," Kerry said in the release. "Here in America, every citizen, regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation has the right to cast his or her vote. These are the very foundations of our democracy and this bill will ensure that we protect fundamental freedoms for millions of voters across our country.”
The remainder of the release follows.
Caging is a voter suppression tactic in which a political party, campaign, or other entity sends mail marked “do not forward” or “return to sender” to a targeted group of voters – often minorities or residents of minority neighborhoods. A list of those whose mail was returned “undelivered” is then used as the basis for challenges to the right of those citizens to vote, on the grounds that the voter does not live at the address where he or she is registered. There are many reasons that mail could be returned undelivered, however; an eligible voter could be overseas on active military service or a student registered at a parent’s address.
There is evidence that caging lists were assembled in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania during the 2004 elections, possibly intended as the basis for massive voter eligibility challenges. The Florida incident made headlines again earlier this year during Congress’s investigation into the firing of several U.S. Attorneys, when allegations resurfaced that Tim Griffin, the former RNC opposition researcher then serving as an interim U.S. Attorney in Arkansas, had been involved in an effort to cage voters in Jacksonville.
The Caging Prohibition Act would prohibit challenges to a person’s eligibility to register to vote, or cast a vote, based solely on returned mail or a caging list. The bill would also mandate that anyone who challenges the right of another citizen to vote must set forth the specific grounds for their alleged ineligibility, under penalty of perjury.
Senators Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) joined Kerry as cosponsors of the Caging Prohibition Act. To date, the bill has also been endorsed by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and People for the American Way.
Michael Gerson, the speechwriter responsible for many of the president's rare moments of eloquence ("the soft bigotry of low expectations," "Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end.") certainly sounded gloomy about the current state of the GOP during his spot on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos: "The party is still in a funk. There is a lack of creativity, very little domestic policy energy. I think it's going to be a problem."
Of course, Gerson is one of the party's brightest thinkers and a Bush loyalist, so his calling it "a problem" must be translated as "a disaster." In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll [pdf], a whopping 74 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Only 24 percent think we're heading in the right direction.
Which makes the behavior of the leading GOP presidential candidates all the more befuddling. To a man, every one of the top tier candidates -- Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson, and Huckabee -- seems intent on competing to see who can out-Bush Bush. Not a single one of them has tried to put any distance between himself and the president -- especially on foreign policy, the area of Bush's most catastrophic policies. As George Will put it, "If anything, they're to the right of [Bush] on foreign policy. There's a bidding war to see who can be more hawkish toward Iran."
I've written about how the lunatic fringe of the GOP has taken over the party. Well, the takeover is so complete that those looking to lead the party have come to the conclusion that the only way they can win is to compete for the 24 percent of the country that does not think we are headed over the edge of a cliff. They are all vying to be voted head wacko of the lunatic fringe. Running on a platform of heightened Bushism, they seem to think the reason three-quarters of the country has turned against the president is because he just wasn't extreme enough. So the problems of the GOP will only intensify when Bush packs his bags.
The reign of Bush and Cheney has not only alienated the public. It has also alienated conservative intellectuals like Gerson and Will -- and Bill Buckley, the godfather of conservative intellectuals.
Back in April, writing about Iraq, Buckley called public opinion on the war "savagely decisive" and concluded, "There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive this dilemma."
If the Republican Party in its current shape ends up fading away to obscurity and irrelevancy, for its epitaph, we can use the words of Don Rumsfeld (trying to sugar coat a different debacle): "The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost."
Now, can some please explain to me why the Democrats keep caving in to this bunch of dead-enders?
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf today declared “emergency rule,” resulting in the suspension of the nation’s constitution, dismissal of the Supreme Court’s chief justice, and severe restrictions on independent and international media. The New York Times reports:
The emergency act, which analysts and opposition leaders said was more a declaration of martial law, also boldly defied the Bush administration, which had repeatedly urged General Musharraf to avoid such a path and instead move toward democracy. Washington has generously backed the general, sending him more than $10 billion in aid since 2001, mostly for the military. Now the administration finds itself in the bind of having to publicly castigate the man it has described as one of its closest allies in fighting terrorism.
In June, the Washington Post reported that “Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney’s office. The vice president…is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any U.S. criticism of him.”
Four years ago, without public input, the FCC rolled back 30 yr old rules that limited a single company’s ability to be able to dominate local TV, newspaper and radio media markets. Thankfully, the rules changes triggered a massive public response and through legislation and lawsuit, they were defeated. Now FCC chair Kevin Martin is attempting to do it again by trying to push through a similar set of changes allowing further media consolidation as soon as December 18. This time, we needn’t wait until we have been sandbagged. You can help by contacting Congress and the FCC now to stop Kevin Martin before he gets away with slipping this one by us.
Bill Moyers then goes one further and focuses on one glaring example of how our media is already failing us today:
It’s no wonder why groups like Code Pink must go to such lengths to make sure the overwhelming voice of public opinion against the war isn’t ignored entirely. Thankfully we at least still have Bill Moyers to help make sure that doesn’t happen. As always you can watch the full episodes on the PBS website.
Sound familiar? Seems like Musharraf used Bush's talking points in the speech last night where he basically declared martial law. "Judicial activism" and the threat from terrorists required Musharraf to overrule the country's constitution. It's difficult for Bush to criticize that when he's done essentially the same thing. Granted, we're not quite at martial law here in the U.S.:
Just after midnight, General Musharraf appeared on state-run television. In a 45-minute speech, he said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.”
He gave no firm date for nationwide elections that had been scheduled for January and said his current Parliament, which he dominates, would remain in place. He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.
The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.
He accused the country’s Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 11/02/2007 - 3:25pm.Dave Lindorff Even as one faction of the American government, the military and the corporatocracy grow collectively more alarmed about the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran, the Bush/Cheney Administration and its allies seem increasingly moving towards just such a new war.
Okay, so Sen. James Webb (D-VA) and 29 other U.S. Senators who oppose such a mad plan have done what? They've written a letter to the president telling him that he cannot attack Iran without express approval in advance from the Congress.
A letter! Boy, that'll stop him. What's the matter with these people?
A few months back, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution authored by war cheerleader Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a "global terrorist organization." In President Bush's pathologically twisted view of his power, that resolution gave him all the go-ahead he needed, because Bush and his legal apologists claim that back on Sept. 18, 2001, Congress, in passing an Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, were actually declaring a War on Terror -- a conflict without end and without borders. Under this crazy logic, any attack on a terrorist or terrorist organization is simply another battle in that "war."
If Sen. Webb and his colleagues really want to stop the president from further murderous madness, they need only revoke that 2001 AUMF. A simple resolution declaring it ended, and stating that the war on terror is not a war would do the trick.
Why hasn't the Congress done this? Are they afraid the president will call them "soft on terror"?
No doubt he would, but I think most Americans have grown weary of Bush's name calling. People are pretty aware now that the raised and lowered colored alert flags, the periodic dire warnings of impending doom, all conveniently timed to coincide with moments when the president or his allies are facing legal or political difficulties, are just cheap scare politics.
Any member of Congress with a scintilla of courage could easily make that case to constituents.
People know this president is a whack job and that the vice president is a liar.
So why doesn't someone propose revoking the 2001 AUMF?
The aircraft carriers, loaded with Tomahawk missiles and the largest bomber fleet ever assembled, are in place. Stealth bombers are being retrofitted to carry a new 15-ton bomb. The army has built a base right near the Iranian border in Iraq. There was the bizarre case of the six missing nuclear missiles. The verbal threats against Iran are increasing. U.S. special forces are reportedly already operating in Iran, encouraging and perhaps participating in acts of terror against the regime and its military forces there.
Oil prices are starting to rise to unseen levels as commodities traders bet on the impact of a closing of the Persian Gulf to oil traffic.
Time grows short to stop a catastrophe. If Congress doesn't act soon to pull the legal rug out from under the president, we could well see a catastrophe. If the U.S. does attack Iran, the global economy will go into a tailspin as oil soars past $200/barrel. The war in the Middle East would become a vast regional conflagration. U.S. troops in Iraq, already thinly stretched, would come under attack from all sides. A draft would certainly be required.
And if the Iranians respond to a U.S. attack with asymetrical warfare by attacking targets in the U.S., we could see military rule at home.
This is no time for members of Congress to write letters to the president. It's time for them to revoke the 2001 AUMF and to tell the president that an attack on Iran would be an impeachable offense.
In fact, why wait? It's time for them to impeach him now! This is just his latest crime in the making. And even threatening a war of aggression against a nation that doesn't pose an immediate threat is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty the U.S. signed years ago and is bound by.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
Okay, after almost seven years of the Bush administration's contempt for the American people, nothing should really surprise us. The Bush posse not only thrown away the concept of consumer safety, they handed it to the industries they're supposed to regulate.
Lead in toys and all those other consumer safety scandals start to actually make sense after you read the Washington Post's article about the leaders of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Under Bush, you're not safer in any aspect of your life:
The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children's furniture industries and others they regulate, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Some of the trips were sponsored by lobbying groups and lawyers representing the makers of products linked to consumer hazards.
The records document nearly 30 trips since 2002 by the agency's acting chairman, Nancy Nord, and the previous chairman, Hal Stratton, that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufacturers of products ranging from space heaters to disinfectants. The airfares, hotels and meals totaled nearly $60,000, and the destinations included China, Spain, San Francisco, New Orleans and a golf resort on Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Notable among the trips -- commonly described by officials as "gift travel" -- was an 11-day visit to China and Hong Kong in 2004 by Stratton, then chairman. The $11,000 trip was paid for by the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, an industry group based in an office suite in Bethesda whose only laboratories are in Asia.
The CPSC says that at the time, the group had no pending regulatory requests. But since then the fireworks group has urged the commission to adopt its safety standards, an idea that is still pending, according to an organization newsletter.
Consumer groups and lawmakers intensified their criticism of the CPSC this summer after several highly publicized recalls of Chinese-made toys that contained hazardous levels of lead. Critics have long charged that the agency has become too close to regulated industries, opting for "voluntary" standards and repeatedly choosing not to take legal action against businesses that refuse to recall dangerous products.
Government-wide travel regulations state that officials from agencies such as the CPSC should not accept money for travel from nonfederal sources if the payments "would cause a reasonable person . . . to question the integrity of agency programs or operations."
The problem being there is no "reasonable person" in the Bush administration.
This news snuck by on Halloween, and it's a real nightmare. The Giuliani campaign has hired Joe Allbaugh as its senior adviser on "general strategy and homeland security."
Joe Allbaugh? The guy who was George Bush's lackey when he was Governor of Texas? The guy who Bush put in charge of FEMA, with zero experience, after becoming President? The guy who hired his pal "Heck of a job, Brownie" as #2 at FEMA and then saw to it that Brownie succeeded him when Joe left in 2003 to get rich on Iraq, leaving Brownie in charge when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast?
Yes, that Joe Allbaugh.
Rudy's got some track record when it comes to homeland security. He talked Bush into naming his own lackey Bernie Kerik as the first chief of the Homeland Security department when it was created, but that nomination went down in flames amid charges that Bernie was nothing more than a sleaze and a crook.
Back to Joe Allbaugh. In addition to his disastrous tenure at FEMA, he's also the guy who was knee deep in Bush's National Guard records saga back in 1997. A team was ordered to rifle through the old files, and Bush confidante Karen Hughes would later claim - get this - that Bush merely wanted to refresh fond memories of his National Guard days for the book she was writing for him ("A Charge To Keep"), but it's now clear that the purpose was to purge the files of any evidence documenting Bush's military malfeasance and, as the Boston Globe and others reported, subsequent AWOL Guard year back in the early 1970s.
The future president had been a first class flake, and the photo-op of him prancing around in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier after 9/11 was meant to blunt that cold hard fact.
Indeed, even though the infamous Dan Rather memos were never fully verified as originals, the 86-year old retired secretary of Bush's commanding officer told Rather that all of the damaging information in those memos was absolutely accurate because she was the one who'd typed them back then. Case closed.
But again, back to Joe Allbaugh. After he left government service (term used loosely) and was replaced at FEMA by his favored #2 Michael Brown, Joe set up a company based on nothing more than his relationship with Bush. His outfit facilitated business in Iraq for contractors who wanted to get their hands on all that war money the Congress keeps funding with taxpayer dollars, more than half a trillion now.
The man who labored to cover Bush's rear end (Rove handled the brain), and who brought us the Katrina-era FEMA and "Brownie," is now the Giuliani senior adviser on protecting America.
Cable giant Comcast has become the poster child for Net Neutrality with actions to block user traffic that make the case for Internet protections.
On Thursday, a coalition of Net Neutrality supporters and legal scholars took this case to the Federal Communications Commission. We filed an official actionurging the agency to stop the cable giant from meddling with your ability to connect and share information.
The company recently gave us a glimpse of a world without Net Neutrality.
In the "most drastic example yet of data discrimination," the Associated Press exposed that Comcast was actively interfering with its users' ability to access legal content and share it with one another.
Despite mounting evidence that Comcast is crippling peer-to-peer communication, the company's spokespeople have thumbed their noses at the public and the press -- refusing to admit that the blocking of connections is underhanded or in any way threatens the free flow of information that's become the hallmark of an open Internet.
The High Price of Violating a Neutral Net
Comcast's defense is flimsy. The company's blatant and deceptive blocking is exactly the type of problem Net Neutrality supporters warned would occur without proper open Internet protections. It's now time for the FCC to do something about it.
In the complaint, Free Press and Public Knowledge are asking the FCC to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber. Comcast is the nation's largest cable company and second-largest Internet service provider, with 12.9 million subscribers. If the FCC honors the complaint, the size of the fine for violating Net Neutrality could be astronomical.
The action puts the FCC on notice. The agency has policies that partially defend against discrimination but these have yet to be tested against a real violation such as what Comcast is doing.
It's About Video
The not-so-hidden secret behind all of this is video. Network owners are waging a quiet campaign to control how video gets distributed via the Web. In their view, the Internet should only be used for e-mail and surfing. Internet video should be distributed via ISPs. It's a model that treats the Internet like cable TV -- where companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon get to pick the channels you get to see.
The popular trend in video, however, is streaming in the opposite direction. More and more people are becoming their own creators and distributors of homespun video content. For proof that people like to watch videos created by others, go no further than YouTube, which boasts more than 100 million downloads each day.
YouTube is just the beginning of this revolution. Peer-to-peer traffic is spreading via popular technologies like Bit Torrent and Gnutella, which allow users to upload and share videos, music and other rich media without a middleman. It's follows a non-discriminatory Web model that encourages innovation without permission.
The phone and cable companies are desperate to shut this down. In the case of Comcast, they're doing it by spying on traffic and stifling the free exchange of ideas that will continue to make the Internet so remarkable.
Comcast: A Problem Found
Phone and cable lobbyists have called Net Neutrality "a solution in search of a problem." Well, here's the problem. In the past three months, incidents of censorship and blocking by Verizon, AT&T and now Comcast have made headlines around the world. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The FCC should immediately declare that Comcast is violating the FCC's policy.
The Commission now faces a clear choice. It can either side with the interests of consumers and for an Internet unfettered by corporate gatekeepers, or it can let companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T erect "walled gardens" and destroy the most democratic communications tool in history.
In the midst of his presidential candidacy, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani now faces a looming government investigation into his handling of the radios used by firefighters on 9/11.
The investigation, which will examine how the FDNY ended up using faulty equipment during the terrorist attacks and why Giuliani gave a no-bid contract to Motorola for that equipment, has been endorsed by New York City Councilman Eric Gioia, chair of the city's oversight and investigations committee.
"I will do everything in my power to get answers, to get the truth," said Gioia, a Democrat. "These families deserve answers and really the entire city and our country deserve answers."
Calls for an investigation were first proposed by filmmaker Robert Greenwald who has documented Giuliani's handling of 9/11 in a series of shorts for Brave New Films. In The Real Rudy: Radios, Greenwald documents how radios used by the FDNY on 9/11 were the same ones that malfunctioned during the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers. When - eight years later - Giuliani finally purchased new communications equipment for $14 million from Motorola, it was never field-tested. A week later, the equipment was recalled after a firefighter's mayday went un-heard. Giuliani reissued the old batch of radios. And on 9/11 when a police helicopter warned that the North Tower could collapse, more than 120 firefighters remained inside.
"To know that we had failing radios in 1993 and did virtually nothing until September 11 is shocking to say the least," said Gioia. "To watch this documentary and see the important questions that were asked and seemingly unanswered and ignored for so many years, it's disturbing."
More than 20,000 people signed a petition demanding an investigation into Giuliani's handling of the FDNY radios. In an interview posted on YouTube, Gioia confirmed that he will take the steps to initiate public hearings, including sending out letters to fellow council members and requesting pertinent documents. Greenwald praised the initial steps forward.
"Brave New Films is thrilled with Councilman Gioia's response to our petition for a City Council investigation into Giuliani's failure to equip firefighters with the radios they needed on 9/11," Greenwald told the Huffington Post. "The groundswell of support for our petition shows the depth of Americans' desire for accountability."
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Wasn't able to follow things live, as 
As 
Using a questionable, unprecedented maneuver President Bush has installed a solid Republican majority on a supposedly bipartisan civil rights panel, leading it to abandon racial justice and civil rights cases in favor of arguing against school integration and affirmative action.
In a press release late Monday afternoon, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) announced that he had introduced legislation to ban the practice of "voter caging," a practice in which groups send mail to voters' addresses and then use "return to sender" envelopes to challenge the legitimacy of individual votes.
"I will do everything in my power to get answers, to get the truth," said Gioia, a Democrat. "These families deserve answers and really the entire city and our country deserve answers."
Posted November 2, 2007 | 10:14 AM (EST)