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Why Impeachment was "Off the Table"
In December of last year, The Washington Post revealed:
Four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
Identically, numerous key Democrats in Congress were told that Bush had ordered the NSA to spy on American without warrants and outside of FISA. None of them did anything to stop it.
In light of this sordid history of active complicity, is it really any wonder that these leading Democrats are desperate to quash any investigations or judicial adjudications of Bush administration actions that they knew about and did nothing to stop, in some cases even actively supporting?
In December of last year, The Washington Post revealed: ... more -
TSA vs. passenger tussle caught on tape, now focus of lawsuit
A New York woman has filed a $10 million lawsuit stemming from her arrest at Washington's Reagan International Airport last year, an arrest she says was unwarranted and abusive A New York woman has filed a $10 million lawsuit stemming from her arrest at Washington's Reagan International Airport last year, an a... more
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Congress has approved a 400 million dollar bill for Bush to start covert action in...
President George Bush has already started covert action in Iran to overthrow the government. Has the war started already. Some think so. President George Bush has already started covert action in Iran to overthrow the government. Has the war started already. Some think ... more
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Martial law is coming?
You are free, to submit to authority.
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Behind the Compromise on Spying
A compromise deal to extend the federal government's domestic spying powers, passed by the House on Friday and expected to sail through the Senate next week, has drawn attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. The right is unhappy at concessions made to protect civil liberties; the left is furious that the Democrats allowed the domestic spying powers to be extended in any form. Much of the latter's rage has been directed against Nancy Pelosi, the liberal House Speaker who was instrumental in negotiating the deal — attacking her on the internet and virtually shutting down her switchboard with complaints. One blogger called Pelosi "disturbingly disoriented" and said the deal she and her allies have cut will "eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, exempt their largest corporate contributors from the rule of law, and endorse the most radical aspects of the Bush lawbreaking regime."
What motivated Pelosi and the Democrats to incur the wrath of their liberal base and allow one of the Administration's most controversial anti-terror policies to be extended? A mix of politics, pragmatism and some significant concessions.
First of all, Pelosi wanted the issue off the table for the political campaign this fall. Despite anti-GOP sentiment in the country and record low popularity for President George W. Bush, Democrats still trail on national security and that could hurt them in Congress. Stonewalling the Administration and letting the surveillance powers expire could have cost the Democrats swing seats they won in 2006 as well as new ones they have a chance to steal from Republicans this November. "For any Republican-leaning district this would have been a huge issue," says a top Pelosi aide, who estimates that as many as 10 competitive races could have been affected by it.
End of Excerpt
Source: Time
I agree with Pelosi, she can always revisit this issue next year when we have the presidency. Things aren't always black and white, in fact most issues are a shade of gray. A compromise deal to extend the federal government's domestic spying powers, passed by the House on Friday and expected to sail throug... more -
White House asserts executive privilege in air-quality case
WASHINGTON — Setting up a constitutional showdown, the White House on Friday asserted executive privilege in denying a congressional request for thousands of pages of documents related to the federal government's rejection of California's efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Congress is attempting to determine whether President Bush played a role in the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California's request for permission to impose tougher air-quality regulations than federal law called for. California had been granted such waivers numerous times over the years, but the Bush administration delayed and then rejected its request for authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. "I don’t think we’ve had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is conducting the investigation. An EPA official, Jason Burnett, has told committee investigators that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson had favored granting the waiver but denied it after meeting with White House officials. In testimony last month, Johnson refused to say whether he’d discussed the waiver request with Bush. Waxman canceled a contempt vote that had been scheduled for Friday morning against Johnson and White House official Susan Dudley after the White House informed him of its last-minute decision. Waxman said the two had refused to cooperate with his panel...
(Click on the link for the rest of the story)
WASHINGTON — Setting up a constitutional showdown, the White House on Friday asserted executive privilege in denying a congressional r... more -
Million dollar a minute war
This counter shows the ever increasing cost of the war in Iraq. A million dollars a minute... I call that ludicrous. You can also view the cost down to individual counties. Almost two million just for mine. The rate at which this total grows amazes and appalls me. Just see for yourself. This counter shows the ever increasing cost of the war in Iraq. A million dollars a minute... I call that ludicrous. You can also view... more
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VA conceals vet suicide figures from CBS to downplay ‘epidemic in suicide’
Yesterday marked the opening day of a class action lawsuit brought by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), arguing “that failure to provide care is manifesting itself in an epidemic of suicides” among veterans. The VA denies the charges, pointing to increased resources devoted to mental health.
Today, CBS News reports that the VA apparently concealed veteran suicide statistics, and fed the news organization faulty data for a story on the issue. The VA told CBS that there were 790 attempted suicides in all of 2007. Yet shortly after, the VA’s head of Mental Health, Dr. Ira Katz, wrote in an e-mail to the VA’s top media adviser that there were “about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.”
The e-mail exchange shows that the VA hoped to keep the statistics out of CBS’s hands:
From: Katz, Ira R.
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11:27 AM
To: Chasen, Ev
Subject: FW: Not for the CBS News Interview Request
Shh!
Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see at our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?
Read More Here: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/22/va-hides-suicide-da... Yesterday marked the opening day of a class action lawsuit brought by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans against the Department of Veterans... more -
The Best Movie I've Seen In 8 Years! A must see for Everyone.
Do your self and your familly a favor and watch this movie. No conspiracy just facts, for $14.95 proceeds go to the victims.
Do you have questions about 9/11 or the war? Follow a step by step timeline.
I Guarantee you will not regret it. http://www.911pressfortruth.com/story
Following the attacks of September 11th, a small group of grieving families waged a tenacious battle against those who sought to bury the truth about the event—including, to their amazement, President Bush. In ‘9/11 PRESS FOR TRUTH’, six of them, including three of the famous “Jersey Girls”, tell for the first time the powerful story of how they took on the greatest powers in Washington—and won!—compelling an investigation, only to subsequently watch the 9/11 Commission fail in answering most of their questions.
Adapting Paul Thompson’s definitive Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by HarperCollins as ‘The Terror Timeline’), the filmmakers collaborate with documentary veterans Globalvision (‘WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception’, ‘Beyond JFK’) to stitch together rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges, one that raises new and more pressing questions.
What actions were taken by top government officials who received dozens of specific warnings before the attack? Was Osama Bin Laden and his top al Qaeda leadership allowed to escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan? And what has been the reason for the deliberate obscuring of evidence for state sponsorship? Perhaps the most important one of all: Why, five years later, are so many of the families’ questions still unanswered?
It was only due to pressure from the 9/11 families, led by a particular twelve calling themselves the Family Steering Committee, that, fourteen months after the attacks, the first hearing finally began. These twelve remained active in monitoring the Commission’s investigation, providing a list of hundreds of specific, well-researched questions to the Commissioners. In the end, the Final Report failed to answer seventy percent of them.
http://www.911pressfortruth.com/story
It will Change your life. Do your self and your familly a favor and watch this movie. No conspiracy just facts, for $14.95 proceeds go to the victims. ... more -
Bush's counterterrorism advisor says McCain lied about war too
The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the long-delayed final phase of its report on prewar intelligence, highlighting the Bush administration's misuse of that intelligence to lead us into war in Iraq. Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism advisor to both the Clinton and Bush administrations, appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the implications of the report.
Clarke stated unequivocally that figures in the administration lied then and that Senator John McCain is not telling the truth now when he defends them. "Someone should have to pay in some way," Clarke emphasized. "I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society."
"The report does not use the word 'lie,' Olbermann began. "Are there lies?"
"There certainly are," Clarke replied. "This is a big report, but what it says is 'statements by the president were not substantiated by intelligence ... statements by the president were contradicted by available intelligence. In other words, they made things up ... that people in the intelligence community at the time knew were not true. ... To say that this is only something we could have known years later is just not true."
"What are we to make now of Senator McCain's ... remarkable claim that every intel assessment of the time was screaming 'WMD'?" asked Olbermann.
"Senator McCain's statements are contradicted by the facts, too," Clarke replied firmly. "He's also now justifying the intelligence statements of the president. ... We have the proof, four years too late, that those statements were flat out wrong."
"Prominent Democrats said today that impeachment was not a remedy to this," Olbermann continued. "Is there some other kind of remedy?"
"There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process," Clarke said, referring to the system used in South Africa to expose and resolve the atrocities of the apartheid era. "If you come forward and admit that you were in error ... then you are forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way."
"I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society," continued Clarke, "and give them seats on university boards and corporate boards and just pretend that nothing ever happened, when there are 4000 American dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded. ... Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people."
Clarke concluded by pointing out that even former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is now expressing remorse for his role in the administration's deceptions. "He asked me to forgive him, and I think we do have to forgive people who ask for forgiveness," Clarke stated. "But first they have to admit they lied."
The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the long-delayed final phase of its report on prewar intelligence, highlighting the Bus... more -
ACLU Sues Denver For Information On Weapons Use During DNC
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the city of Denver after an open records request for information about the purchasing of security equipment for the Democratic National Convention was denied. The group wants to know what weapons the city is buying for crowd control during protests.
"Aren't you asking the police to reveal their tactics?" CBS4 asked.
"No, we're not asking the police to reveal tactics, we're asking the police to reveal how they are spending the public's money," said Mark Silverstein of the ACLU.
The city has allocated millions of dollars for security equipment purchases. Officials said they are planning for a peaceful event, but are ready for "contingencies."
The protest group Recreate 68 believes the city is buying high tech weaponry.
"We could save them a whole lot of money by just talking with us and de-escalating the confrontational situation that would cause them to use this weapon technology," said Glenn Spagnuolo of Recreate 68.
Spagnuolo thinks the city is looking at weapons like a stun gun which fires 20 seconds of pain from a shotgun. He also pointed to the LRAD, a long range acoustic device that emits a tone to disable people.
The city responded to CBS4's inquiries by saying it will not discuss tactics and that weapons use is part of that.
"It is important to keep that part of the planning confidential," said David Fine, a city attorney.
A court date is set for June on another lawsuit the ACLU filed against the city. That case concerns the routes protesters will be allowed to march during the convention.
-Rick Sallinger The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the city of Denver after an open records request for information about the p... more -
Identity Stolen from Identity-Theft Prevention Guy
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Todd Davis has dared criminals for two years to try stealing his identity: Ads for his fraud-prevention company, LifeLock, even offer his Social Security number next to his smiling mug.
Now, Lifelock customers in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia are suing Davis, claiming his service didn't work as promised and he knew it wouldn't, because the service had failed even him.
Attorney David Paris said he found records of other people applying for or receiving driver's licenses at least 20 times using Davis' Social Security number, though some of the applications may have been rejected because data in them didn't match what the Social Security Administration had on file.
Davis acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that his stunt has led to at least 87 instances in which people have tried to steal his identity, and one succeeded: a guy in Texas who duped an online payday loan operation last year into giving him $500 using Davis' Social Security number.
Paris said the fact Davis' records were compromised at all supports the claim that Tempe, Ariz.-based LifeLock doesn't provide the comprehensive protection its advertisements say it does.
"It's further evidence of the ineffectiveness of the services that LifeLock advertises," said Paris, who is lead attorney on the three new lawsuits, the latest of which was filed this month.
Davis learned about the fraud in Texas when the payday-loan outfit called to collect on the loan, he said. He didn't get an alert beforehand because the company didn't go through one of the three major credit bureaus before approving the transaction.
Davis said it's possible driver's licenses have been issued to other people in his name because of the widespread availability of his personal information — and because of what he described as the flimsy mechanisms in place to report that kind of fraud.
Paris noted that LifeLock charges $10 a month to set fraud alerts with credit bureaus, even though consumers can do it themselves for free.
But Davis stands by his company and his advertising gimmick, which has appeared in newspapers and on billboards, radio and MTV. He even broadcasts it by bullhorn on walking tours through crowded downtowns.
"There's nothing on my actual credit report about uncollected funds, no outstanding tickets or warrants or anything," he said. "There's nothing to indicate my identity has been successfully compromised other than the one instance. I know I'm taking a slightly higher risk. But I'll take my risk for the tremendous benefit we're bringing to society and to consumers."
The lawsuits, for which Paris is seeking class-action status, highlight the fundamental limits on how much security identity-theft companies can provide.
Companies like LifeLock can help guard against only certain types of financial fraud by helping consumers set up alerts with credit bureaus, which inform them when someone tries to open a new line of credit or boost their credit limit to finance a buying binge, for example.
The services don't guard against many types of identity theft such as use of a stolen Social Security number on a job application or for medical services, or even the instance of an arrestee giving police a stolen Social Security number to shield his own identity.
LifeLock is also being sued in Arizona over its $1 million service guarantee, which the plaintiffs claim is misleading because it only covers a defect in LifeLock's service, and in California by the Experian credit bureau. Experian accuses LifeLock of deceiving consumers about the breadth of its protection and abusing the system for attaching fraud alerts to credit reports...
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Todd Davis has dared criminals for two years to try stealing his identity: Ads for his fraud-prevention compan... more -
Detainees are drugged for deportation
Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason
The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.
The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.
"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.
Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.
Source: Washington Post Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason ... more -
Rocky Flats: Cold war era plutonium trigger plant secrecy taken too far
Little about the history of the Rocky Flats nuclear trigger plant engenders the trust of Coloradans.
From its secretive Cold War era roots, to suppressed reports about contamination, to a stifled grand jury investigating environmental crimes, there remains a lingering suspicion that we still don't know everything about the former plant.
The U.S. Department of Energy's recently announced plans to digitally copy — then destroy — 500 boxes of records pertaining to the plant will only make matters worse.
The department was painted as a major villain in a class action lawsuit over off-site plutonium contamination from the plant, 16 miles northwest of Denver. Lawyers for the owners of 12,000 properties near the plant, who won a nearly $554 million judgment in 2006, attacked the DOE with allegations the department improperly designated information as classified in order to keep misdeeds and mistakes secret.
That's not the only instance where the public has been left to wonder about what really went on at Rocky Flats.
The nuclear trigger factory may be gone, but its legacy will linger for a long time — and it's important that citizens know as much as possible about its history.
Little about the history of the Rocky Flats nuclear trigger plant engenders the trust of Coloradans. ... more -
Careless Detention : System Of Neglect
As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost
Near midnight on a California spring night, armed guards escorted Yusif Osman into an immigration prison ringed by concertina wire at the end of a winding, isolated road.
During the intake screening, a part-time nurse began a computerized medical file on Osman, a routine procedure for any person entering the vast prison network the government has built for foreign detainees across the country. But the nurse pushed a button and mistakenly closed file #077-987-986 and marked it "completed" -- even though it had no medical information in it.
Three months later, at 2 in the morning on June 27, 2006, the native of Ghana collapsed in Cell 206 at the Otay Mesa immigrant detention center outside San Diego. His cellmate hit the intercom button, yelling to guards that Osman was on the floor suffering from chest pains. A guard peered through the window into the dim cell and saw the detainee on the ground, but did not go in. Instead, he called a clinic nurse to find out whether Osman had any medical problems.
When the nurse opened the file and found it blank, she decided there was no emergency and said Osman needed to fill out a sick call request. The guard went on a lunch break.
The cellmate yelled again. Another guard came by, looked in and called the nurse. This time she wanted Osman brought to the clinic. Forty minutes passed before guards brought a wheelchair to his cell. By then it was too late: Osman was barely alive when paramedics reached him.
He soon died.
His body, clothed only in dark pants and socks, was left on a breezeway for two hours, an airway tube sticking out of his mouth. Osman was 34.
The next day, an autopsy determined that he had died because his heart had suddenly stopped, confidential medical records show. Two physicians who reviewed his case for The Washington Post said he might have lived had he received timely treatment, perhaps as basic as an aspirin.
As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost ... more -
Plainclothes officers in trouble - didn't recognize off-duty chief
At least one cop has been disciplined for ordering the NYPD's highest-ranking uniformed black officer out of his auto while the three-star chief was off-duty and parked in Queens, the Daily News has learned.
"How you can not know or recognize a chief in a department SUV with ID around his neck, I don't know," a police source said.
One officer walked up on each side of the SUV at 57th Ave. and Xenia St. in Corona about 7 p.m. and told the driver to roll down the heavily tinted windows, sources said.
What happened next is in dispute.
In his briefing to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Zeigler said the two cops, who are white, had no legitimate reason to approach his SUV, ranking sources said.
After they ordered him to get out, one officer did not believe the NYPD identification Zeigler gave him.
The cops gave a different account:
At least one cop has been disciplined for ordering the NYPD's highest-ranking uniformed black officer out of his auto while the three-... more -
Hell for leather on Flight 48: is it safe to fly under grinding economic stress?
"American Airlines Flight 48 had just taken off from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at the start of a nine-hour overnight flight to Paris on April 20 when flight attendants heard an alarming noise from the bottom of the plane. According to one source, the sound was of "vibrating, shaking, even some ripping."
Alerted to the noise by flight attendants, the trio of pilots in the cockpit — two of them Miami-based — considered their options. One pilot got on a phone line to the dispatch center at American's headquarters in Dallas and then to the maintenance center in Tulsa.
Though the plane was still a relatively short distance from takeoff, the pilots, with the support of ground technicians, elected to continue the flight.
After the plane landed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, the flight's crew and French airport officials quickly gathered under the airplane to see a frightening scene of exposed machinery and dangling paneling. Some took pictures.
Although the company has made no announcements about the incident, scuttlebutt flew among American Airlines personnel.
"American Airlines Flight 48 had just taken off from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at the start of a nine-hour overnight fli... more -
Bush makes history!
"If there's one thing Congress and the Bush administration can agree on, it's that they've got a fight of historic proportions on their hands.
The House Judiciary Committee is demanding documents and testimony from President Bush's closest advisers about the firing of federal prosecutors.
When the White House refused, the Democrat-led committee went to court. Lawyers called the president's actions the most expansive view of presidential authority since Watergate.
Late Friday night, the Bush administration responded with court documents of its own, similarly steeped in history. Lawyers called the lawsuit unprecedented. Citing George Washington and Grover Cleveland, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, they said these types of clashes get resolved without going to court.
"For over two hundred years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise," Justice Department lawyers wrote.
The idea the Congress can't order the president or his advisers to do something is a principle known as executive privilege. That privilege isn't spelled out in the Constitution and courts are rarely asked to decide exactly what it means. And when they have been asked, judges have tried to avoid getting too specific.
"Never in American history has a federal court ordered an executive branch official to testify before Congress," lawyers for the White House wrote.
That makes for a murky area of law and the Bush administration is urging U.S. District Judge John D. Bates not to tidy it up. The ambiguity fosters compromise, political solutions and the kind of give and take that the Founding Father envisioned, attorneys said.
Clearing it up "would forever alter the accommodation process that has served the Nation so well for over two centuries," attorneys wrote.
Congress wants to know whether the Bush administration fired several U.S. attorney for political reasons. That controversy contributed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigning last year.
The Judiciary Committee subpoenaed former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify and demanded documents from President Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten.
The White House argues that the hiring and firing of presidential appointees is strictly the business of the executive branch. The administration has offered to let White House officials discuss the matter privately with Congress but objects to formal testimony under a subpoena.
Congress says it has tried negotiating and is left with no other options but a court case. The Bush administration countered in court documents Friday that, if Congress really wants to put up a fight about this, the Constitution offers plenty of ways for lawmakers to dig in their heels.
Congress can block presidential appointments until its demands are met, attorneys said. And since Congress controls the government's purse strings, it can cut off funding for the Executive branch agencies.
The stakes are high in a court fight.
Bush, who has prided himself on taking strong views on presidential authority, risks a legacy as the president who forever diminished that power in disputes with Congress. Congress risks having its subpoena authority — one of its most powerful oversight tools — permanently curtailed".
WASHINGTON
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer "If there's one thing Congress and the Bush administration can agree on, it's that they've got a fight of historic proportions on thei... more -
$1M for straphanger (standing subway/bus rider) whacked by cop
The city agreed Monday to pay $1 million to a Brooklyn straphanger who was walloped in the face with a cop's nightstick after being ejected from a No. 2 train, the Daily News has learned.
Mitchi Cunningham, 24, underwent neurosurgery to relieve swelling inside his skull and suffered permanent loss of his sense of smell as a result of the clubbing, according to court documents and his attorney, Fred Lichtmacher.
"He was hit in the face with a baton for asking the officer for his shield number," Lichtmacher said. The city agreed Monday to pay $1 million to a Brooklyn straphanger who was walloped in the face with a cop's nightstick after being ej... more
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Accountability
