It's been a long time since we've heard about former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The little worm probably thought he wriggled off the various hooks he'd impaled himself on in service to his idol In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.This incident is one of the worst examples of abuse of power in an administration rife with - indeed characterized by - abuse of power. We blogged about this dramatic story back in May of 2007 when the testimony of James Comey revealed the incident in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee. We lamented a day later that it had been virtually ignored by the Lamestream Media (abbreviated LaMe) - in stark defiance of the journalistic rule, "if it bleeds, it leads."
President Bush reauthorized the surveillance program on March 11, 2004, one day after the hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to sign a certification saying that the program was legal and could therefore continue.For the sake of clarity and brevity I'll try to sketch this out in bullet-point form.
In reauthorizing the surveillance program over the objections of his own Justice Department, President Bush later claimed to have relied on notes made by Gonzales about a meeting that had taken place the day before (March 10), in which Gonzales and Vice President Cheney had met with eight congressional leaders—also known as the “Gang of Eight”—who receive briefings about covert intelligence programs. According to Gonzales’s notes, the congressional leaders had said in the meeting that they wanted the surveillance program to continue despite the attorney general’s refusal to certify that it was legal.
But four of the congressional leaders present at the meeting say that’s not true; they never encouraged the White House to sidestep the objections of the attorney general and continue the program without his approval.
Investigators are skeptical of the notes because Gonzales did not write them until days after the meeting with the congressional leaders, and he wrote them after both Bush and Gonzales had together signed a reauthorization of the surveillance program.
Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time he met with the congressional leaders, has told investigators working for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General that President Bush personally directed him to write the notes so that he could “memorialize” what the legislators had told him, according to a report made public by the Inspector General’s Office on September 2 and sources close to the investigation.
The timing of when Bush directed Gonzales to write the notes is important: investigators say the fact that they were written after both the meeting and the reauthorization of the program might indicate that they were written in order to provide an after-the-fact justification for the signing of the reauthorization—and that that timing might have given Gonzales a motive to lie in the notes.
I expect them to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to show that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty committed perjury in their statements before Congressional committees and investigators.Seems like Alberto's got a whole lot of 'splainin' to do.
I was watching this Countdown segment last night about Yawn McCain's defection from Friday's presidential debate when Olbermann mentioned that the Caveman had also cancelled an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman at the last minute. Olbermann knew this because Letterman had called him as an emergency replacement when Letterman received the call from McCain's peeps after he had actually begun taping the show. A McCain spokesperson had just told Letterman he was flying to Washington immediately to 'deal with the financial crisis.' One must assume that the studios of MSNBC and CBS's Ed Sullivan Theater are adjacent or very close to one another.In that interview, Palin did two things that hurt the McCain campaign and, but for McCain's late afternoon shenanigans, would have garnered much more attention. First, buying into the premise of one of Couric's questions, she all but stated that if no bailout legislation is passed, we'll be headed into the next Great Depression. Even if true, that's not a very smart thing for a politician to say and, importantly, it all but foreclosed any possibility of McCain voting against the bailout.Palin looked like a moose in the headlights in the interview. The entire clip is available on YouTube, you can see it in the aforementioned post from The Anonymous Liberal. She really falls flat on her face. This video HAD TO be kept out of the public eye as much as it was in McCain's power to do so.
[...]
I think the McCain campaign knew the Couric interview would be a disaster as soon as it was done taping and spent much of the day frantically trying to think of a way to push it out of the headlines. The clincher for me is the fact that McCain cancelled his Letterman appearance at the last second and instead sat down for an impromptu interview with, of all people, Katie Couric. The hope was to bump the Palin interview even on the CBS Evening News, which otherwise would have hyped and teased the Palin interview all afternoon and used it to lead the broadcast. Instead, CBS devoted most of its coverage to McCain and played segments of the Palin interview almost as an afterthought. Mission accomplished.
And I couldn't be happier for surely this paves the way for the ordination of women in evangelical and conservative churches across the nation. After all, didn't the GOP evangelical base spontaneously break into the Hallelujah Chorus at the news of her nomination as John McCain's running mate? If a woman could serve a heart beat away from the presidency, couldn't a woman be ordained to serve - at the very least - as an associate pastor? David P. Gushee asks some very procative question of the evangelical leadership:Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?
Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?
If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women's leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?
Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?
Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home? If so, does this affect your support for Palin? If not, are you willing to change your position and instead argue for flexibility in the distribution of child care responsibilities according to the needs of the family?
Well a girl can have her fantasies can't she? Too bad even a picture of a woman pastor makes those manly men pastors go limp. Or maybe not. You can purchase this obscene magazine depicting a group of women pastors on its cover at your local Lifeway bookstore, but you won't find it displayed on the rack. Nope, it's been hidden behind the counter like it was some kind of porn. (1) to roll over like a wimp, orSince Governor Palin apparently consults her husband before conducting state business, she is safe for now and the First Dude's manhood remains intact.
(2) beat some sense into their rebellious woman.
Glennzilla's post on the 'rescue' of AIG (and by extension Wall Street) is enough to curl your hair, straighten it out again, then make it fall out altogether. He's also posted what 'details' of the plan anyone is likely to see before it's implemented, and probably ratified without even a reading by the feckless Congress.Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions:In one respect this has all the makings of the USA PATRIOT Act - something rushed through because of a 'crisis'
(1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6];
(2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and
(3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [Sec. 8].
Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.
(and like the USA PATRIOT Act these 'emergency' measures seem suspiciously well developed, as if this plan had been sitting ready in a man-sized safe somewhere all along.)As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional leaders were told "that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally."At least they didn't recycle the 'smoking gun' or 'mushroom cloud' language, although 'complete meltdown' is a suitable substitute I suppose. Why am I calling this the Biggest Story in Living Memory? How could it be bigger for instance than 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, or the devastation of New Orleans when Katrina hit?
...whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.Glenn laments at length the fact that no-one in the beltway elite, either on the political or the media side of the trough, is questioning this government bailout of America's wealthiest on the back of everyone else. But he makes it plain that that is exactly what is taking place.
[...]
..what's probably most amazing of all is the contrast between how gargantuan all of this is and the complete absence of debate or disagreement over what's taking place. It's not just that, as usual, Democrats and Republicans are embracing the same core premises ("this is regrettable but necessary"). It's that there's almost no real discussion of what happened, who is responsible, and what the consequences are.
We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses.
[...]
More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble..
..This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't.
Greenwald makes plain not only who benefits from this corporate welfare - the very ones whose greed created the crisis - but to whom the burden is passed: If there is any "pitchfork moment" -- an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage -- it would be this..Having already loosed numerous hollow-point rounds into the body of the American economy, the thief of the ages now delivers the coup de grace, point blank, right between the eyes. He knows he's going to have to get out of Dodge soon, and is making a final effort to cop as much swag as he possibly can.
..Whatever else is true, generations of Americans are almost certainly going to be severely burdened in untold ways by the events of the last week -- ones that have been carried out largely without any debate and mostly in secret.
So, again a warning to Mathophobes, that's really a bell curve there. The Mean in this case is the result of the survey. The 95% line is at 1.9 standard deviations, or sigmas (σ ). To see what the poll is actually telling us, we draw two of these, one centered at 43% (McCain's results) and one centered at 48% (Obama's results)
So here's the part that may be useless. You've probably all seen this chart - it shows the tax plans supported by each of the candidates. It shows in pretty good detail how McCain would cut taxes for everyone but, in classic Republican style, the rich get richer. If you make $2.87 million per year, still middle class by McCain's estimate, you'd get an additional $269,364 off your tax bill. I don't know about you but that would pay off my house and leave enough for a pretty good additional investment. Obama's table cuts taxes for people making less than McCain would give back to the very "middle class" ($226,982 per year) and increase taxes above it. Dang, under Obama's plan, that guy I saw getting off the Gulfstream with his hunting rifle might have to pay $702,885 more to cover the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. Gist is there would be an overall tax cut of 0.3% under Obama's plan, a more reckless 2% under McCain's. Either way you slice it, Obama's plan cuts taxes.
Here's the same data drawn a little differently. Now both axes of the graph are to-scale. So you can see the percentage of the population on the right side and the percentage tax cut on the bottom. A few other numbers are there for reference sake: The median household income (half the incomes are above, half below), median incomes for males, females, individuals (showing the income gap is alive and well). The benefit of this presentation is it shows in very graphical terms just how many more people would benefit under Obama's plan as opposed to McCains and by how much.
" It was thought by the Federalists during this time that there was no need for a bill of rights as they thought that the preamble spelled out the people's rights."
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America."
Glenn Greenwald:
On this day in 1787, our founding fathers signed the Constitution, making us a nation of laws, not of men. The basic concepts of justice, liberty, and inherent human rights outlined in that founding document, are at the very foundation of our strength as a nation.
But 221 years later, the United States is facing one of the darkest chapters in its Constitutional history. The Bush administration has treated the Constitution and rule of law with disrespect unparalleled in our nation’s history. The list of this administration’s assaults on the Constitution is breathtaking: it includes the warrantless wiretapping program, its interrogation policy and justifications for the use of torture, its extreme positions on the legal status of detainees that have been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court, and its refusal to recognize and cooperate with Congress’ constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight. This is a shameful legacy that must be undone in the years to come.
During the last several nominating conventions, the areas outside the convention hall have become increasingly subject to the same degree of micro-control as events on the inside. With each convention, the physical area of extreme control expands to a larger and larger perimeter. Justified by resort to the same rationale used to suppress liberties in general — vague invocations of “security” — both political parties are now able to relegate dissent, protests and disruptions to unseen and highly controlled environments, far removed from the conventions themselves and far out of sight from delegates, political figures, and the establishment media outlets which televises the convention.
[...]
But while Denver was sterilized, St. Paul was overtly militarized. Beginning the weekend before the GOP convention began, many private homes in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area were raided by machine-gun-wielding, inter-agency SWAT teams, who forced everyone in the targeted houses to lay on the floor in handcuffs while the homes were searched, with the agents carting off laptops, journals and political pamphlets. Lawyers and journalists who were already on the scene or sent there were handcuffed. Advocacy groups having nothing to do with any planned protests were plainly targeted for these pre-convention raids — most notably I-Witness, a group of videographers who had videotaped police action during the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped to compel the dismissal of many criminal charges against arrested protesters and had traveled to Minneapolis to do the same.On the Sunday evening before the convention began, downtown St. Paul resembled the Green Zone in Baghdad far more than an American city. Brigades of law enforcement officers were, by design, extremely visible in the entire area near the GOP Convention, and were flamboyantly displaying their array of weapons, marching in military formation, and chanting. The tension and intimidation levels even before the Convention began were palpable, and the results — truly extraordinary even judging by the metrics of how militarized our police forces
have become — were predictable.
What I had called a "fascist shift" in the United States, projections I had warned about as worst-case scenarios, was now surpassing my imagination: in 2008, thousands of terrified, shackled illegal immigrants were rounded up in the mass arrests which always characterize a closing society; news emerged that the 9/11 report had been based on evidence derived from the testimonies of prisoners
who had been tortured -- and the tapes that documented their torture were
missing -- leading the commissioners of the report publicly to disavow their own
findings; the Associated Press reported that the torture of prisoners in U.S.-held facilities had not been the work of "a few bad apples" but had been directed out of the White House; the TSA "watch list," which had contained 45,000 names when I wrote my last book, ballooned to 755,000 names and 20,000 were being added every month; Scott McClellan confirmed that the drive to war in Iraq had been based on administration lies; HR 1955, legislation that would criminalize certain kinds of political thought and speech, passed the House and made it to the Senate; Blackwater, a violent paramilitary force not answerable to the people, established presences in Illinois and North Carolina and sought to get into border patrol activity in San Diego.
The White House has established, no matter who leads the nation in the future, U.S. government spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans -- a permanent violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The last step of the ten steps to a closed society is the subversion of the rule of law. That is happening now. What critics have called a "paper coup" has already taken place.
What this shows us is that in the years since Republicans became "Fiscal Conservatives", our national debt has grown by $1 trillion offset by the $200 billion surplus created under the rule of a "Tax-and-Spend Liberal." As my daddy in Kentucky would say, "I don't think we can afford no more of them."
It had been declining, roughly, since 1992. What things happened then? Clinton was elected President and eliminated a number of tax cuts. Poverty began to drop until about 2000. What happened then? Bush was elected and implemented new tax cuts. It would be interesting to see the twelve years prior to 1992 but I can make a prediction: The trend was upward. In short, it seems tax cuts do have an effect on poverty or put another way, there's a correlation between tax cuts and poverty increases. Goes against supply-side economics. There's an article I'll digest later in the week at the Center for American Progress but if you want to read ahead, here's the abstract: There is a nugget of truth to supply-side economics but like most right-wing ideological points, rigid application yields expected consequences, in this case, economic disaster.
"The Great Sara P. Mooselini,Ashamed that her weenie was teeny,Threatened Nukular WarWith Putin, that bore,Who shrugged it off with some Vodka and Blini."
Russia, Bitches!
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And an Open Thread for Hurricane Ike and whatever other needs to be talked about. For instance, I never realized this bit of irony until today; IKE also stands for Internal Kinetic Energy as an applied measurement to hurricanes, and this bastard aimed at Houston has way more than Katrina.
TAGS: Mooselini, Palin's comments on War with Russia are STOOPID, Limericks - rude
Are we really gonna have to put up with Palin?
Russia, Bitches!
mav·er·ick -- a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.Tom Cruise in Top Gun was a maverick.
-- Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
John McCain plays a maverick on the campaign trail. But in reality John McCain is a caddy. John McCain rides in George Bush's sidecar. When it comes to neocon warmongering, money laundering and influence peddling, Bush is the cheese and John McCain is the macaroni.
And it will fall apart. 
A disturbing story from Information Clearing House explains why the RNC was held in Minnesota, and why the police there acted as if war had been declared on America's population. In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.
Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.
WHAT?!? Minnesota has its own version of the constitutionally dubious USA PATRIOT Act? What folly is this? It does explain how and why the modern-day version of the 1968 'police riots' at the DNC in Chicago occurred in Minnesota. The sonsabitches want to establish a test case that equates protest, dissent, or simply thinking for yourself as TERRORISM.The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC — other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement — and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants.One has to assume that TPTB (the powers that be) really don't care about getting convictions in these cases. It will suffice for them if a pall of fear is cast over any act of political independence, and even if it doesn't they've got at least eight people who might question their 'patriotic' motives locked up at least until after the elections are over.
Two items: first up, from Huffington Post: A John McCain campaign aide tells Jay Carney that she sees no reason why Sarah Palin should have to answer reporters' queries:Now I ask you, how appropriate is that for a candidate who 1)was virtually unknown to Americans outside of Alaska prior to her being picked as John McCaveman's running mate and 2)seems to have a lot of questionable baggage that the voting public have a right to know about. You know, questions about;
According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads.
You know, the 'getting to know you' stuff that any come-out-of-nowhere candidate should expect to be asked. And considering the lies that were made both by Palin and about her at the RNC, shouldn't the public be allowed some follow-up?
- why she covered up her daughter's pregnancy,
- whether she really had an affair with her husband's business partner,
- troopergate,
- leaving Wasilla nearly $20 Million in debt despite raking in an obscene amount of earmarks
- her support of, then opposition to, Ted Steven's 'bridge to nowhere'
- her general feelings on earmarks and pork
- -her whacky ideas about the will of God
- This space intentionally left blank (more to come?)
Don't Ask Me Questions - Graham Parker and the Rumor
OMG!! If the Democrats can't use this to sink Sarah Palin's political career they're not trying. Turns out that Governor Sarah 'Barracuda' Palin Made a huge gaffe in her RNC speech on Wednesday.In last night's speech, Governor Palin characterized herself as a pit-bull with lipstick.Isis Krieger died on Aug. 18th when she was taken off life support, but the actual attack was on Aug. 12, as reported here. So both Palin and the Republican party had plenty of time to learn of this story.GOV. PALIN: I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA. (Cheers, applause.)...my dog BooMan and I were once attacked and hospitalized by a pit-bull, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask for a dispassionate assessment of this self-characterization. For me, a pit-bull is an animal with the raw jaw-power of a leopard who will attack unprovoked and kill innocents. Don't believe me? The people of Anchorage, Alaska do. This is from the August 18th, 2008 edition of the Anchorage Daily News:
AUDIENCE: (Chanting.) Hockey moms! Hockey moms! Hockey moms! GOV. PALIN: (Laughs.) I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick. (Laughter, cheers, applause.)The 6-year-old girl attacked by a family pit bull last week was taken off of life support and died after she went into an irreversible vegetative state, according to Anchorage police and the girl's family. Isis Krieger was fatally injured in the attack while playing with Dozer in her East Anchorage mobile home last Tuesday. The dog bit her neck, breaking it and ultimately leaving her brain dead, said the girl's great-grandmother, Wanda Injasoulian...There's no way to put lipstick on that.
