Make no mistake

This is what our current administration is about, and why we need a change. They are helping corporations steal from the American people.

The Interior Department has dropped claims that the Chevron Corporation systematically underpaid the government for natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that could allow energy companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

. . .

“The government is giving up without a fight,” said Richard T. Dorman, a lawyer representing private citizens suing Chevron over its federal royalty payments. “If this decision is left standing, it would result in the loss of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars in royalties owed by other companies.”

. . .

“This latest revelation proves that the Bush administration is incapable of preventing big oil companies from cheating taxpayers,” said Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a senior Democrat on the House Committee on Resources. “The public has been systematically fleeced out of royalties that these companies owe for the privilege of drilling for oil and gas on lands belonging to all of us.”

It's a corporate give away to an industry already awash in record profits, dragging down our economy. This is the Bush-Cheney agenda.

Once again, since it’s the Iraq war that’s driven up oil prices and led to record profits for the US petroleum industry, why not impose a surcharge on that industry to pay for the Iraq war, since they're the ones benefiting from it.

Just a pathetic criminal

The media really needs to get over their obsession with Karl Rove. Their agenda is so transparent. He isn’t a genius. He’s a criminal who knows how to work a friendly, even cooperative media, as is evidenced by these fawning articles.

Granted he has worked harder and dirtier and has pushed the bounds and often gone past the bounds of what is legal; because in a Machiavellian way, he knows it is all right since he is right and working for a higher cause, as were Nixon and Ollie North and countless others. Sooner or later they are all revealed as the criminals that they are, until they're pardoned by the next Republican administration.

But what’s really sad is the Democrats who respect and admire his so-called intelligence and ability. They need to stop playing into the media and administration talking points. I’m sure the quotes in these articles are carefully selected, but still they need to shut up and stop talking like such morons.

This is how he is effective, but buying votes with federal money is unethical at the least and probably criminal. From the LA Times:

But the most significant element of Rove's effort to help four-term Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds keep his job may have occurred behind closed doors, when the White House strategist met with a federal disaster relief official contemplating how to respond to the storm. Four days later, Reynolds announced that President Bush would authorize millions of dollars in federal disaster aid for the area.

But this is what the article should be about: Rove's lies, his manipulating the system and his criminal conduct. But really that would be too much to expect from the conservative media only concerned with maintaning the conservative Republican power base.

Please make him stop

I mean, John McCain really just needs to shut up. Why does anyone take him seriously?

He is once again so wrong for so many reasons.

First of all, we don’t have 20,000 troops to just send over there. To increase the size of our standing combat troops takes time, and the time for sending more troops to Iraq ran out two or three years ago. It is interesting that the Army is now saying it wants to realign its forces, which would mean moving more soldiers to combat duties and hiring more private contractors (another bad idea) but this again takes time.

Second, sending more troops would just create more targets at this point, and would just make the situation worse for our military and cause more casualties.

Further, how will the military, which is already stretched so thin equip and train these additional troops?

Should we go on? For instance, if we did have 20,000 troops, why don't we use them to find Osama bin Laden?

This sounds more like a plan for a permanent presence in Iraq rather than winning (or more likely calling it a draw) and exiting.

What would the Democrats do?

It would be nice to think that Democratic control of Congress would mean big changes, but I think that's too optimistic.

Yes, to some extent, it would allow the Democrats to control debate, and investigate congressmen, senators and the administration, but the Democratic advantage would be so small, that votes would hardly be different, and that's the best case scenario, with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress. But if Democrats failed to take the Senate, then changes would be much less significant. On the other hand, there would thankfully be some changes, and it's a start to build on in 2008.

There have been a number of articles recently along the lines of this one in USA Today.

Predictably, this Dick Armey quote is B.S.:

“Key Democrats are acutely aware that when they got the White House in 1993, they went on a left-wing binge (with) Hillary's health care and … scared the devil out of the American people and caused them to lose their congressional majority” two years later, says former congressman Dick Armey, who became House majority leader when Republicans took over.

The insurance companies scared the public, not the Democrats, and of course that's what Dick Armey would say, why in the hell are they quoting him anyway. This is where the media does a disservice by parroting a talking point, rather than looking for the truth.

I mean, the American people should be shocked. Nancy Pelosi wants to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission? What the American people should be shocked about is that these recommendations haven't already been implemented.

She [Pelosi] also would face the pent-up demands of partisan Democrats. Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has called for impeachment hearings against the president, which Pelosi has ruled out.

And BTW, it seems a little early to rule anything out, I mean there haven't been any real investigations, so we don't really know what happened.

Pelosi should really be playing all of her cards a little closer to her chest. The Democrats don't have a majority yet, and even if they do get one, she isn't guaranteed to be the speaker.

Electronic voting FUBAR begins

From the Washington Post, the screw ups with new electronic voting machines in the upcoming elections have already begun. And as in Ohio, I'm sure these screw ups will just happen to effect Democratic candidates more often than their opponents; and by what 10 to 1, or 20 to 1? So far, the Webb campaign seems to be taking this casually, which I don't think is the right strategy, since polls show the race in a statistical tie. They need to be getting the lawyers and the lawsuits ready.

A global village or sewer?

If you had any misconceptions that we were protecting the environment and were being good stewards to our earth, this article from Scotland’s Sunday Herald should set you straight. I’ve quoted parts, but you should read the whole thing for the full outrage. Hat tip to FP Passport

The tsunami, however, also uncovered a hidden and altogether more serious problem for Somalis: along more than 400 miles of shoreline, the turbo-charged wave churned up reinforced containers of hazardous toxic waste that European companies had been dumping a short distance offshore for more than a decade, taking advantage of the fact that there was not even a pretend authority in the African “failed state”.

The force of the tsunami broke open some of the containers which held radioactive nuclear waste, lead, cadmium, mercury, flame retardants, hospital waste and cocktails of other deadly residues of Europe’s industrial processes.

As the contaminants spread across the land and in the air, the United Nations said that an unknown number of people died from breathing in toxic dust and fumes. Subsequent cancer clusters have also been linked to Europe’s special gift to the country, delivered by that tsunami.

Rumours had long circulated about European companies, mainly from Italy and Switzerland, taking advantage of the chaos in Somalia to strike immoral deals with local warlords to dump toxic waste. The arrangements, involving countless millions of pounds, inevitably financed the Somali war , offering a powerful incentive to ignore environmental concerns and carry on dumping the waste.

. . .

. . . in recent weeks the voyage of the rust-streaked Probo Koala, a Korean-built, Greek-owned, Panama-flagged, Dutch-chartered 50,000-tonne tanker, has thrown yet more light on a trade that goaded one of Africa’s most distinguished ecologists, Senegal’s Haidar al-Ali, to observe: “We talk of globalisation, of the global village, but here in Africa we are under the impression of being that village’s septic tank.”

. . .

The scandal of the Probo Koala came to light last month, some two weeks after the tanker unloaded its cargo of black sludge in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s capital , after being turned away from Amsterdam and several African ports. The poisonous sludge, spread on waste ground and in the sea and fresh water lagoons that festoon Abidjan, led to the deaths of at least eight people, including four children, while more than 80,000 others sought medical treatment for nosebleeds, diarrhoea, nausea, eye irritation and breathing difficulties.

Had it right the first time

Over the weekend, a senior US diplomat said that US policy in Iraq had shown "arrogance and stupidity."

First the State Department said it was a mistake in translation, then when what he said was confirmed, they made him apologize.

So much for his career under this administration

A damning essay

This article in The Nation, by Kevin Tillman, brother of Pat Tillman, is about the worst kind of criticism you can get, and the Bush administration should take it seriously. It is quite damning. This is the kind of stuff that makes history books and legends. And Bush is on the wrong side of it.

Pat and Kevin Tillman acted on the feelings that I think most Americans (except for the chickenhawks) had, at least for a moment. They did it though: out of pure selfless patriotism, joined the army to retaliate against those who attacked us.

Somehow the more soldiers who die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Tillman ends with this paragraph that I think is important to remember:

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

This is why we need to throw the bums out of office now: they are making a disgrace of us all.

Finally some accountability

A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release logs of who visited Cheney in his office and residence.

This is good news. The public deserves to know how much access lobbyists have to the White House, just as they deserved to know who was on Cheney's Energy Task Force.

Another wrong direction?

So Bush finally wants a new strategy in Iraq?

I'm no military expert, but perhaps instead of talking strategy with loyalists like Don Rumsfeld and the current military command, who have so thoroughly screwed things up, Bush needs to listen to some truly new voices with opposing views. So I'll just pull some names out of a hat: what about Wesley Clark, William Perry or John Murtha (whose ideas they now appear to be stealing anyway) to name a few. And no, not Colin Powell, the man who lied to the UN and covered up the My Lai massacre. He would probably give better advice, but I just want him to crawl into a spider hole and leave us alone.

When will it end?

I feel like I need to say something about Iraq, but I don’t know where to start. The violence has intensified in the last month, with US casualties at their highest levels since the war began, and we aren’t even mounting an offensive now, as we had been at other deadly times during the war--just essentially defending ourselves and trying to stem the violence.

Perhaps one small hope is that this heightened violence, coupled with our continued inability to slow it even in Baghdad, where we have concentrated our troop levels will finally bring about a much-needed and long-awaited change in our policy.

Republicans, including the administration, are finally starting to hint that changes (not so ironically along the lines of those advanced by a number of Democrats) will be pursued.

Now my only hope is that the administration won’t again take the wrong path. Sponsoring a coup to overthrow the current regime would be a mistake, as would pushing to divide the country along ethnic and religious lines. We need to remove our troops from Iraq and reposition them in the region to support the Iraqi army as long as it proves productive. And at the same time we need to continue training the Iraqi army and police and to resume funding the reconstruction.

Far too many Americans and Iraqis have died in this fiasco, and we need to begin the process of ending it now.

The Hillary paradox

I've been thinking about Hillary Clinton's probable Presidential run recently. The reason I've been obsessing on it is that since she doesn't have a chance, I believe she'll be too much of a drag on the Democrats and their prospects in 2008.

I don't think she can win the party's nomination, and the paradox goes like this: As a woman, Hillary is automatically positioned to get solid feminist and liberal Democratic support, but this block won't vote for her because she's too conservative; therefore, she must rely on moderate and independent support, but she won't find it there, because these voters won't vote for a woman candidate.

Personally, I'd be happy to vote for a woman, but what's more important to me is that a progressive, liberal Democrat win the nomination, and that's who I'll be voting for.

Anyway, you heard it here first: she doesn't have a chance (at least I hope she doesn't have a chance) to get the democratic nomination because she is too moderate/conservative for anyone who would vote for her.

Bush tosses aside Constitution

From AP:

Well he signed it finally. I'm not sure what he was waiting for. Waiting to get closer to the election?

Obviously it will be struck down as unconstitutional. You can't eliminate the habeas corpus rights of American citizens, among other reasons, but the intent was to score political points.

It can be stressed too strongly, the magnitude of this assault on the Constitution by this administration and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Ned Lamont

Arianna Huffington has this up on her site on Lamont. I fully agree with her point. Ned hasn't pulled ahead in this race as he should have, carrying his momentum after his primary victory. She focuses on some contagious disease that the Democrats just can't seem to escape. And since these points can't be made often enough, I think we need to hear them again.

This is part of a hypothetical concession speech she believes Ned will be reading on election night:

Like Al Gore and John Kerry before me, I forgot how high the stakes were. And I played it safe. I played not to lose rather than to change the country. I forgot that I had to give people a reason to vote for me -- or a reason to vote against my opponent -- every single day, every single hour. I forgot --and how could I forget? -- how dirty the other side would play to win. I forgot that in building a successful business of my own, I had relied on my own gut instincts, not on advice from some M.B.A. textbook. I should have stuck with my gut; instead I let consultants tell me what to do and what to say.

. . .

I especially regret having allowed myself to be cowed into believing that the way to win was to appeal to the indecisive middle by adopting a tone of fake Senatorial civility -- like the time I said of Sen. Lieberman: "I know the man. I respect the man. He is a man of integrity." The words should have burned my tongue as soon as I said them. That's not what was in my heart; indeed, I spent millions of ad dollars trying to convince voters of exactly the opposite. But it was suggested by some of my Greenwich friends that I should scale back the outrage -- and the truth. As if watching the mounting death toll in Iraq shouldn't fill us with rage and cause us to direct it at those who sent our young people off to die in an immoral war -- and who are stubbornly keeping them there. When you deal with the unscrupulous, it's best to roll up your sleeves, put all thoughts of comity aside, and stop praising them for their integrity. Indeed, I sacrificed mine by pretending that my opponent had an ounce of it. And for that I am more than sorry; I am ashamed.

Let's hope Ned can turn this around so this prophesy isn't fulfilled.

Overthrow Iraq again?

Is the Bush administration preparing to toss aside the Iraqi government?

Crooks and Liars has this coming from David Brooks.

I know committing ourselves to begin anew what we started over three years ago sounds beyond crazy, but when we remember who we are dealing with, it's not so surprising.

This should scare every American to their core.

Downward spiral continues

This milestone doesn't seem to be making very many headlines since Wednesday, but it could be very important. The Iraqi parliament passed a law that would allow some regional autonomy. According to BBC News:

The law is controversial as many Sunni Muslims and others fear it would lead to the country's partition.

The vote went through unanimously, but only 138 of the chamber's 275 members were present.

Absentees included the two biggest Sunni blocs and two of the factions that make up the big Shia alliance.

This may be the most important first formal step in fragmenting the country, something the history of the 20th century would show to be a bad thing for the continuing civil war in Iraq.

War on the press

Allegations have been circling for some time that US troops in Iraq have been intentionally targeting journalists.

Here's another one to add to the list:

A coroner has recorded a verdict of unlawful killing on ITN reporter Terry Lloyd, who was shot dead by US forces in southern Iraq in March 2003.

An inquest heard Mr Lloyd was killed by a US bullet near Basra. His interpreter died and his cameraman is missing.

It was told Mr Lloyd, 50 and originally from Derby, was hit while in a makeshift ambulance, having already been hurt by American-Iraqi crossfire.

The coroner is to ask the attorney general to consider pressing charges.

North Korea

I don't know much about North Korea, but its people have long been suffering and literally starving: apparently its citizens are on average five inches shorter than their southern neighbors because of malnutrition.

And no one admires or respects a leader who willfully starves his people.

I have no problem believing that there are power outages, rationing and blackouts--perhaps that is why they are trying to develop nuclear power.

Rumsfeld can't contain his glee over this photo from a satelite showing a darkened North Korea compared to a light-speckled South Korea. And that makes me suspicious because of what we know of Rumsfeld. Perhaps another explanation for the blackouts is that they have intentionally darkened the country for fear of US bombing raids as happened over Iraq. Understandably this is a real fear as Bush and his administration, and the US media have been threatening war and bombings for years.

Also as an aside, primarily because of the smaller than expected richter scale readings from the North Korean nuclear test, there were suspicions that the test had failed. The AP has more on this today:

Results from an initial air sampling after North Korea's announced nuclear test showed no evidence of radioactive particles that would be expected from a successful nuclear detonation, a U.S. government intelligence official said Friday.

. . .

In Beijing, a government official said Friday that Chinese monitoring has found no evidence of airborne radiation from North Korea's claimed nuclear test. The official with the State Environmental Protection Administration said China has been monitoring air samples since the test-explosion Monday.

This adds further evidence to the possibility that there was no nuclear explosion or that the test had not been a complete success.

Kerry on mistakes

This goes along the lines of an earlier post on President Clinton's recent comments on Sen. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Senator Kerry had some interesting things to say in this article in The Huffington Post yesterday:

Four years ago today, the United States Senate voted to give President Bush the authority to use force in Iraq.

There's nothing - nothing - in my life in public service I regret more, nothing even close. We should all be willing to say: I was wrong, I should not have voted for the Iraq War Resolution.

I'm glad he's finally saying this now; it's too bad he wasn't saying this during the 2004 election as many knew he should have.

And he had this to say about Iraq and its historical comparisons with the Vietnam War:

Today of all days, we should be having this debate, openly, honestly, and in a way that honors America's troops and our best traditions. One of the things I feel most personally is that a Congress that shares responsibility for getting us into Iraq needs to take responsibility for getting us out the right way.


The truth is that America is imprisoned in a failed policy. And as in Vietnam, we're being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. Well, that too is a lie.

Next time you're in Washington, take a moment to walk down to the Vietnam War Memorial, if you haven't done it.

As you walk down that path into the center of the V and you stand in the V, you can look up one end and you'll see 1960 -- earlier, 1959 -- all the way through parts of 1968, and then the other side of the wall brings us toward the end. And half the names on that wall, half the names -- stand in the center of it and look up at tens of thousands of young Americans -- half the names on that wall were lost after America's leaders knew and later acknowledged our strategy wasn't working. It was immoral then and it is immoral now to be quiet or equivocal in the face of that kind of delusion. Just think about what that Wall might look like for this war.

The administration's self-proclaimed "students of history" should know this and accept it. What's the point of being a student of history, as Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld claim to be, if you don't learn anything from it.

Our national shame

That's right, it's not just the President and his administration's war. It's also your Congress' war, your military's war and that means your and my war.

In a sequel to its 2004 study, Johns Hopkins has determined that the Iraqi death toll from our war is estimated at 655,000.

The epidemiological study used the same reliable methodology as public health studies that are used to determine deaths from famines and natural disasters.

From the Washington Post:

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.

. . .

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

This is a truly staggering number and one that should give every American pause.

Our country needs to put an end to this fiasco as soon as possible. A process that should begin when Congress changes hands after the midterm elections.

Border insecurity?

The Washington Post has a thorough explanation of the issues surrounding the border fence and the legislation that might create it.

It's really just more Republican election-year politics, creative bookkeeping and an unrealistic (fraudulent?) estimate of what a fence would cost.

But maybe we shouldn't worry about it at all, since the bill lets Bush do whatever he wants with the money:

There also are questions of whether the fence will be more of a symbol to be used in elections than a reality along the border. For one thing, shortly before Congress adjourned, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money allocated for the fence to other projects, including roads, technology and other infrastructure items to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of building a "virtual fence."

The only question really is what exactly are our congressmen doing in Washington?

Failed foreign policy

The LA Times has a good overview of the Bush administration's foreign policy failings with North Korea.

Donald Gregg, a U.S. ambassador to South Korea under Bush's father and now head of the New York-based Korea Society, said the crisis could have been averted if the current Bush administration had talked to the North Koreans directly. He visited Pyongyang in late 2002 and brought back a written offer from the North Koreans to negotiate one-on-one.

"We were told at the White House that the offer would not be accepted as it would be 'rewarding bad behavior,' " Gregg recalled. "The basic problem is that Bush & Co. see diplomacy as something you give to a country as a reward for good behavior … not as a tool to be used which may bring better behavior on the part of an antagonist."

This was clear to everyone who knew anything at the time, but the Bush administration clearly doesn't have anyone who knows anything on staff, therefore, they weren't in a position to do anything to slow or stop the North Koreans. All they could do was make idle threats and posture.

The six-party talks created an environment in which differences between the United States and the other parties began to loom larger than the North Korean nuclear problem itself.

The North Koreans were able to cleverly exploit the unpopularity of the war in Iraq to sow discord. In light of the United States' failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, China, Russia and South Korea all began to publicly question the U.S. claims about evidence of a highly enriched uranium program in North Korea.

So now who will be next to start a nuclear weapons program, with the United States unable to do anything about it? And the continued threats by the US only force the North Koreans to push their weapons program forward.

Update

Looking back at the Clinton quotes in last Friday's post, I should clarify that what seemed most interesting or even refreshing was the acknowledgment by a mainstream moderate/conservative Democrat that Democratic candidates have failed to respond strongly and effectively to media and opposition attacks in the past. They seem to have an unrelenting grasp on a nostalgic vision of what they think politics used to be and are therefore playing some kind of polite politics and media game of 20 or 30 years ago, and they are losing because of it. When are today's Democrats and progressives going to wake up and fight fire with fire? When will they go on the offensive and fight the same down and dirty way the opposition is fighting and beat them at their own game?

Anyway, it's nice to see Clinton figuring this out.

Newsiness?

FP Passport notes a study by Julia R. Fox of Indiana University that demonstrates that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has as much "substantive news coverage" as the traditional network news broadcasts.

Can you say WTF?

I mean, I knew it was bad, but that bad?

Apparently the network news shows as we know them are done, and will be replaced by John Stewart, Rush Limbaugh and Oprah.

Oh wait. CBS News already got this memo, and the transformation is well underway.

New media politics

The Washington Post had an interesting article on the influence of the Internet and new media and its influence on politics.

There are some interesting quotes from President Clinton:

While the Foley and Allen episodes burned Republicans, Clinton said in an interview earlier this year that he thinks the proliferation of media outlets, as well as the breakdown of old restraints in both media and politics, on balance has favored Republicans. Without mentioning Gore or Kerry by name, he complained that many Democrats have allowed themselves to become unnerved and even paralyzed in response.

. . .

But [Clinton] said Democrats of his generation tend to be naive about new media realities. There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies -- and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new-media excesses.

"We're all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the '60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate," Clinton said. "Those of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations."

I don't agree with everything in the article, like Clinton's assertion that the media was more friendly to the liberal cause in the 60s.

I believe the media and liberals were anti war, but for different reasons. The media was not supporting the liberal agenda; they were supporting their own agenda whose end goal just happened to be similar.

I also think that the Democrats have a long way to go in playing the media game and not just responding to attacks, but initiating attacks on the opposition.

Clearly the mass media is hostile to the Democrats and the liberal agenda, but I belive that the Democrats can also use the new media to their advantage, and they have slowly begun to.

Pedophile-gate fallout

The Washington Post has a follow-up on the FBI's coverup in the Foley pedophile case.

CREW [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] held a news conference Monday to announce that in July it had provided the FBI suspicious e-mails between Foley and a former House page. The group criticized the bureau for not taking more aggressive action and asked Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine to investigate the FBI's handling of the case.

Law enforcement officials said then that the e-mails did not provide enough evidence of a possible crime to warrant a full investigation.

. . .

. . .unidentified Justice and FBI officials told reporters that the e-mails provided by CREW were heavily redacted and that the group refused to provide unedited versions to the FBI.

. . .

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said copies of the original e-mails she sent to an FBI agent show those assertions to be wrong. Sloan said the agent called to confirm receipt of the e-mails and to ask if one of the parties was Foley.

Sloan said the group sent unedited e-mails to the FBI because "we wanted them to commence an investigation. We're sort of outraged that they're saying anything differently."

Isn't it the FBI's job to investigate an alleged crime and then present evidence to the Attorney General. If the FBI can't even pretend to do its job, then they need to close up shop and go home. Does the FBI really want to take the position that it was CREW's job to investigate this crime for the FBI?

Ethics committee approves subpoenas

In what should keep the Foley pedophile-gate in the news for some time, MSNBC reported that the House ethics committee today approved dozens of subpoenas in the case.

This should be good more news for the Democrats' midterm election hopes, and it's definitely good news for a corrupt, ethics scandal-ridden Republican Congress that sorely needs to be cleaned up.

These guys definitely need to be given the bum's rush.

More Foley pedophile-gate

According to CNN.com, the FBI was given e-mails that were sent from Rep. Mark Foley to a congressional page.

The Washington watchdog group that first published the inappropriate e-mails between Foley and a Louisiana teenager said Wednesday that it told the FBI in July about Foley's communications. Those messages were deemed by a congressman who oversees the page program inappropriate but not sexually explicit.

Apparently the FBI said there wasn't enough information, or names or e-mail addresses to pursue the matter

CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan disputed that account, saying the FBI was given the teen's full e-mail address July 21. CREW received the e-mails that day from "a third party who had gotten them from a congressional staffer," she said.

. . .

"The agent called me to follow up to say, 'So, these are e-mails from Mark Foley?' And I said, 'Yes.' And that was the end of our interaction," she said.

And this was an attempt by the Democrats to smear the Republicans on the eve of the elections? Please, we're not all that stupid. It sounds to me like the Republican leadership wasn't the only ones trying to cover this up.

Electoral College challenge

I have been following this a bit, but I missed this yesterday. The NY Times reported that California Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have given all the state's electoral votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote.

I'm no fan of the Electoral College, and I'd like to see it done away with completely, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Since California is a reliably Democratic state, this kind of unilateral change could only stand to help a Republican who won the popular vote but failed to carry California's vote.

That said, I am all for a constitutional amendment that would dispense with the Electoral College and simply elect the president through the national popular vote.

Must be the water

There must be something in the water in the White House that prevents them from telling the truth, or maybe it's all of D.C.

In a followup to yesterday's post, a State Department spokesman has now confirmed that Condi Rice did indeed have an emergency meeting with George Tenet in July 2001 to discuss Al Qaeda's immediate threat according to the NY Times. And in addition, the 9/11 Commission did in fact know about the meeting. But now the 9/11 Commission simply says that Tenet never told them he was blown off.

It must be the water in all of D.C.

Perfect Storm?

Could this be the perfect storm that destroys the Republicans' midterm election hopes once and for all? It looks to me like bad news on the administration and the Iraq war on the one hand, with Bob Woodward's new book; and a family values/morality self destruction on the other with Rep. Mark Foley's resignation and subsequent revelations of a coverup by the Republican congressional leadership. Ouch.

According to the NY Times, the FBI is investigating Foley. The irony will be fantastic when he is charged under the same federal laws that he apparently helped write.

In an article on Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, The NYT discusses a meeting between George Tenet and Condi Rice:

Members of the Sept. 11 commission said today that they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a White House meeting in July 2001 at which George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, about an imminent Al Qaeda attack and failed to persuade her to take action.

Details of the previously undisclosed meeting on July 10, 2001, two months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, were first reported last week in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.

The final report from the Sept. 11 commission made no mention of the meeting nor did it suggest there had been such an encounter between Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice, now secretary of state.

I'll leave it at that, since this really is being beaten to death. And there's just that whole shooting fish in a barrel thing--it's just too easy.