Impeachment!

As I have been saying, here, for awhile, Impeachment for this administration is needed for the sake of the Constitution and the Nation. If we do not do something to control this government, who's to say what will happen in the future. This government has stomped on the Constitution long enough. Others have said and I do believe that if we do not do something now, this nation will live under fascism.

From Seattlepi.com:

Talk of impeachment gets louder
By HUBERT G. LOCKEP-I COLUMNIST

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quick to quash any such idea after the Democratic sweep of Congress in last November's election. And the full-page ads from such groups as Why We Can't Wait, calling for the impeachment of the president, were dismissed as just more national noise from the Looney Left -- hardly to be taken seriously in the raging maelstrom of last fall's election politics.

But that was six months ago. Now, in midsummer and on the eve of a congressionally mandated assessment of the unending madness in Iraq, strange and ominous signs are beginning to appear in all sorts of odd and curious quarters, suggesting that this nation should not have to endure another 18 months of the George W. Bush administration and that, if we do, it well might be at the nation's peril.

Much of the current dismay swirls around Vice President Dick Cheney, who is busily ignoring rules of government he doesn't like and declaring his office to be beyond the purview of anyone's scrutiny, while actively setting about to demolish any government agency that has the impertinence to suggest otherwise. Cheney's advocacy of interrogation techniques for "enemy combatants" that many think tantamount to torture, of monitoring phone calls and e-mails without bothering about warrants, and of ignoring the niceties of the Geneva Conventions when dealing with terrorists has put him out of favor even with a growing number of conservatives. Some want to jettison him as a hopeless drag on the Republican Party's electoral prospects next year; others are beginning to join the throng that is convinced Cheney is out of control and needs to be dispatched for the heath and safety of the republic itself.

According to a senior U.S. diplomat, Cheney "kind of runs by his own rules"; he should, therefore, be a prime target for indictment for having cynically broken a whole bucket of U.S. laws. He has become an arrogant symbol for all that is despicable about the current administration and a contemptible example of the danger of letting such a high office fall into the hands of an ideologue.

The media are also speaking these days of a looming constitutional crisis as committee chairs in the House and the Senate confront a White House refusal to provide requested documents regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department. The chairs of the two judiciary committees are seasoned, tough-minded Democrats who are not likely to take kindly to a flouting of their authority to look over the shoulder of the executive and his minions as they go about managing and manipulating the affairs of government. It's hard to imagine either of them blinking if the White House tries to stare them down.

The last time the nation heard talk of constitutional crises was in the tumultuous second term of the Nixon administration, when first a vice president and then the president himself bit the dust. That's why an op-ed piece in The New York Times last month takes on heightened significance as yet another warning rumble about the Bush White House and its future.

The op-ed was written by Egil Krogh, a Seattle attorney whose name figured prominently in the Nixon years when he was deputy assistant to the president. Krogh, by his own account, wrote the memo that recommended, in the name of "national security," the burglary in 1971 that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal. Krogh incurred a two- to six-year sentence and spent almost five months in prison for his efforts.

In the closing paragraph of his column, Krogh describes sending a memo to the White House staff, shortly after the inauguration of George W. Bush, reminding those who would serve the current president of the importance of personal integrity and of relying on "well-established legal precedents and not some hazy, loose notion of what such phrases as 'national security' and 'commander in chief' could be tortured into meaning." In his last sentence, he wonders "if they received my message."

Six months ago, the mayor of Salt Lake City -- a Democrat no less -- appeared before a committee of our state Senate to speak on behalf of a resolution asking Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush for "heinous human rights violations, breaches of trust, abuses of power injurious to the nation, war crimes and misleading Congress and the American people." Six months ago, hardly anyone took such talk seriously.

What a difference six months can make!

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

If we don't insist that congress starts impeachment proceedings soon, we will lose the country we know and love. Take a hard look at what has happened because the future of this nation is now in our hands!

Paul Craig Roberts calls for Bush impeachment

Do you remember Paul Craig Roberts? He is the father of Reaganomics and a Consrvative. Read what he writes:

From Counterpunch:

Impeach Now
Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is "praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008. Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by the media, but even the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow constitutional orders.
The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Opinion from the New York Times - Founding Fathers feared Imperial Presidency

Since Bush took office (and I mean "Took") he and his admin have been doing everything in their power to give the president more powers and take away powers from congress. This is an opinion piece, however, our Founding Fathers did fear this would happen. And having just come out of a war fighting for the freedom from a king, another George, they made sure they addressed this issue by placing the checks and balances from the congress into the Constitution.

By taking away the congress' checks and balances for the Executive Office this administration is, in essence, making the Executive Office a dictatorship. This has become a Constitutional Chrisis and must be dealt with now!

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

By ADAM COHEN
Published: July 23, 2007

The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”

The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.

Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”

The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical.

“In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers.

The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle.

Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

There's more at the link.

The powers that Bush Admin amassed for the executive office are bad enough now but think of future presidents from either party and what they can do to harm this country with these powers.

Leahy: "They've chosen confrontation rather than compromise or cooperation,"

Looks like Leahy will follow up on the subpoenas. The white House is claiming Executive Privilege, but there's a catch to that.

From the AP:

Patrick Leahy ready to fight White House
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 1, 3:57 PM ET

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said Sunday he was ready to go to court if the White House resiPsted congressional subpoenas for information on the firing of federal prosecutors.

"If they don't cooperate, yes I'd go that far," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He was asked in a broadcast interview whether he would seek a congressional vote on contempt citations if President Bush did not comply. That move would push the matter to court.

"They've chosen confrontation rather than compromise or cooperation," Leahy said. "The bottom line on this U.S. attorneys' investigation is that we have people manipulating law enforcement. Law enforcement can't be partisan."

At issue is whether the White House exerted undue political influence in the Justice Department's firing of prosecutors. Leahy's hardening stance is pushing the Democratic-led investigation ever closer to a constitutional showdown over executive power and Congress' right to oversight.

The White House accused the committee of overreaching.

"After thousands of pages of documents, interviews and testimony by Justice Department officials, it's clear that there's simply no merit for this overreach," presidential spokesman Tony Fratto said.

He said Leahy "is seeking access to candid and confidential deliberations from the president's advisers — an intrusion he would never subject his own staff to. We have gone to great lengths to accommodate the committee in their oversight responsibilities."

Separately, the Senate has subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office for documents related to the administration's legal basis for conducting warrant-free eavesdropping on people in the United States.

Leahy and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who heads the House Judiciary Committee, have demanded a White House explanation by July 9 as to its grounds for claiming executive privilege in refusing to turn over additional documents.

The two lawmakers say that regardless of whether the White House meets the deadline, they would begin acting to enforce the subpoenas as appropriate under the law.

Legal experts have been somewhat divided over the scope of a president's power to shield information and ensure candid advice from top aides. The dispute, if it does head to court, could take months and ultimately outlast the remaining term of Bush's presidency, which ends in January 2009.

Last week, White House counsel Fred Fielding said Bush was claiming executive privilege. Bush also was invoking the privilege to prevent Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying publicly under oath. More Here.

But here's the issue..."The president and the vice president are not above the law any more than you and I are," Leahy said.

And that is the crux of the matter with this administration. They think they are above the law and try to rig the rules to keep it that way. No other President and his admin have ever pushed this far into becoming close to a dictatorship!

Virginia Tech and Iraq

The carnage at V-Tech is horrible! The idea that one deranged person was able to buy two guns and all that ammunition means we do need to look at our gun control in this nation. We are all grieving for the lost lives and trying to deal with it. Our news media is filled with coverage of this massacre. Listening to all these young people talk about what has happened and speak of their friends that were injured and were killed just makes you sick. The whole nation is grieving.

Now to Iraq. This just in from AP:

4 bombs kill 127 people in Baghdad
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated
Press Writer 4 minutes ago

Four large bombs exploded across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 127 people and wounding scores as violence climbed toward levels seen before the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital began two months ago.

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in a mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad, killing at least 82 people and wounding 94, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.

A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Several cars were set afire at the market, where a car bombing in February killed 137 people. About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 30 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 45, police said.

Black smoke billowed from a jumble of at least eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage as Iraqi guards staggered around stunned.

Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the northwestern Risafi area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

Also in Baghdad, four policemen were killed Wednesday afternoon when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city center, police said. Six pedestrians were wounded in the gunfire.

U.S. officials had cited a slight decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks on the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River.

"We've seen both inspiring progress and too much evidence that we still face many grave challenges," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. "We've always said securing Baghdad would not be easy."

What some people don't understand, the people that started this war in Iraq and the people that want to continue this war in Iraq, is that the Iraqis live with the carnage we saw at V-Tech every day. As hard as it is for us to accept the deaths of these young people at V-Tech, the Iraqis are having to deal with it and have dealt with it for over four years. There seems to be a hypocracy, here, in the thinking and actions of these people, these chickenhawks, these war mongerers that want this Iraq war to continue.

We have a chance to change this for this war in Iraq, this occupation, must be changed. WE cannot continue in the same direction the Bush admin insists we continue to stay the course. The surge is not working! The surge will not work!

There needs to be unilateral talks with the Arab States, the UN, and everone that is and could be effected by this unrest the Bush admin has created in that area so we can control the carnage that is Iraq today. If that means talking to Iran and Syria, so be it. But not to talk will only exacerbate the problems in the middle east. I've had more than enough of this admin. Have you?

UPDATE: From the Independent, UK:

Virginia Tech, of course, is the worst incident of its kind in US history - and at one level, you would gain the impression from American television that Cho Seung-Hui has literally stopped the world.

He hasn't of course. On Tuesday, in what passes for a relatively quiet news day in Iraq, wire services reported the deaths of 56 people in violence across the country: some of them gunned down, some killed by a suicide bomber, some discovered as decomposed or decapitated corpses. But we heard not a word of that, nor of the trial in absentia in Italy of a US soldier accused of shooting dead an Italian intelligence agent, nor of the report that North Korea may be about to shut down a key nuclear reactor (which would be very big news indeed if true.) And somebody shot dead the Mayor of Nagasaki. But who cares? Instead, nothing but Virginia Tech.

Yet, however exceptional the event, there is something formulaic, even routine, about the coverage. There is no soul searching, no wondering what might be wrong with a society where such things happen so frequently. You hear no new arguments, for deep down there is nothing new to be said.

No detail of the tragedy is too tiny to recount; from where Cho went to high school to the thoughts of the postman who delivered mail, to where the family lived in the Virginia suburb of Centreville (and never met him). Yet America is showing scant sign of addressing the far bigger issue - of whether it is finally time to get serious about gun control.

Happy Easter/Passover - Open Thread

Seems the MSM don't want to give up picking on Nancy Pelosi. C-SPAN had Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), who traveled last week with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and he desputes what is coming out of the WH.

From Think Progress:

Rahall: Pelosi Personally Told Bush Of Syria Trip And He Did Not Object »
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), who traveled last week with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as part of her delegation to the Middle East, said this morning on C-Span that Pelosi told Bush of the trip to Syria a day before they left, and Bush did not object.
Rahall said, “The Speaker had met with President Bush in the halls of the U.S. Capitol just the day before we left and mentioned to him that we were going to Syria. No response at all from the President.”
Watch it:

The wingers keep saying "the liberal press", but we seem to find numerous stories daily that disputes this.

Anyway have a great Holiday!

Thread's open for you.

UPDATE: Fox Calls Out Gingrich Hypocrisy on Pelosi Trip to Syria. Video at link

More Lies

Tim Griffin, the replacement for Bud Cummings, one of the fired US Attorneys, has put up a web site where he says he has prosecuted 40 cases while in the Army. This has been disputed by....The Army!

Here the rest of the story from Consortium News:

Did Rove's Protégé Puff Up Résumé?

By Richard L. Fricker April 3, 2007

Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin – already at the center of a firestorm over whether the White House has put politics ahead of prosecutorial integrity – made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records.

The 38-year-old Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases while at Ft. Campbell, where he was stationed from September 2005 to May 2006. But Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases, none of which went to trial.

Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed about his claim of 40 criminal prosecutions versus the Army’s confirmation of three cases, all of which were settled as plea bargains. But Cherith Beck, a Griffin spokeswoman, suggested that Griffin’s higher number might refer to all cases he worked on in any capacity.

“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”

Griffin’s prosecutorial experience at Ft. Campbell is important in evaluating Griffin’s fitness to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Arkansas since the bulk of Griffin’s legal career has been in political operations, such as opposition research on Democrats or work as a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill.

Seeking to burnish Griffin’s prosecutorial credentials, his backers also have cited a letter of recommendation dated Aug. 13, 2002, from then-Little Rock U.S. Attorney H.E. “Bud” Cummins III praising Griffin’s nine months of work as one of his assistants.

The article goes on to say:

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hailed Griffin as “a person with Prosecutorial experience who the attorney – who the U.S. Attorney who was going to be removed said was his right-hand man and one of the best prosecutors he had.”

In an e-mail to me, however, Cummins disputed Hatch’s characterization of the letter.

“I don’t see here where I referred to him as my ‘right arm,’” Cummins said. “I don’t know where they are getting that. Tim [Griffin] worked hard and did a good job organizing the launch of what became a very successful PSN [Project Safe Neighborhoods] program. But the great success was at least equally due, if not a great deal more, to the efforts of virtually every prosecutor in the office after his departure.”

False Talking Points

Cummins noted that Hatch also made disparaging remarks about Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego who was another of the eight federal prosecutors fired last year because the White House and Justice Department didn’t rate them highly on lists that included an assessment of whether they were “loyal Bushies.”

“I imagine Senator Hatch will be very upset with the person or persons that fed him all the wrong information,” Cummins said in the e-mail. “I know he doesn’t want to put HIS credibility at risk, too. Sounds like he was provided talking points by someone as reckless with the facts as other previous occurrences in this saga.

“I have lost count of the public statements they have made that are simply wrong, or at least obviously deceptive. It smacks of desperation. You wonder if the bosses know the underlings are composing talking points for them with such little regard for the facts.”

You can read the rest here.

The lies continue to pour out from this admin and all that work for and with them.

Fired US Attorney, Bud Cummins is not happy!

Bud Cummins, at first, was not really joining the others. When he spoke on TV of the firings, he soft soaped the Bush admin and the DOJ. Not any more!!!

From the Times Record:

Fired federal prosecutor Bud Cummins took strong exception Thursday to testimony by a former Justice Department official about the firings of Cummins and seven
other U.S. attorneys.

Cummins objected to the testimony of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in Sampson’s appearance Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sampson told senators he believed each of the federal prosecutors fired late last year by the Justice Department was replaced because of problems related to his or her performance in office.

“If they’re starting to say that I had performance problems, then I have the same gripe the other seven have, because it’s a lie,” said Cummins, a Republican Bush appointee who was removed as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and replaced by Tim Griffin, former assistant to White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Cummins said if he were to comment further on Sampson’s testimony, “I’d need a censor.”

Sampson appeared to contradict the previous testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, who told senators in February that Cummins was removed to make room for Griffin and not because of performance-related problems.

However, Sampson also said he believes the distinction between “political” and
“performance-related” reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is an artificial distinction.

While Sampson was testifying Thursday in Washington, Cummins spoke and answered questions at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock. He also met with reporters after his talk.

Cummins said in his Little Rock speech he was “astounded” by Sampson’s suggestion that political success and success as a prosecutor are one and the same.

snip

He acknowledged that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and can be removed for any reason. But he said he is troubled by evidence suggesting some prosecutors were pressured about specific cases, including David Iglesias of New Mexico, who has said he felt “leaned on” by Republican members of Congress concerning the investigation of a local Democrat.

Nothing could have a more chilling effect on prosecutors than knowing that pursuing the wrong case or resisting pressure to obtain an indictment means that “you’re going to be gone,” Cummins said. Cummins said he never would have come forward to talk about his firing if Justice Department officials had not stated that at least some of the fired U.S. attorneys were removed for performance-related problems.

Ahhh! The worm is turning. It's like watching a soap opera! But much more important. Stay tuned,

President Bush speaks on Fourth Anniversary of Iraq war.

Bush Speaks. He said nothing new. Nothing we haven't heard before. "The new strategy needs time". He asks us to be patient. Patient? I have no patience for this war and his incompetence in waging it. He's asking for another chance to make things right.

But the sad fact is Bush, his admin, and the generals he's chosen, none of them know what to do now. To be honest, he's made such a mess of it that nobody knows how to fix it at this point. So the talking points from the right have been, You, Dems, what would you do? Well first of all, if the Dems were in charge, this war would not have happened in the first place. So what would we do now that your president and his admin screwed up so badly? Well I would not send more troops to die there.

How about diplomacy Mr Bush! How about getting your fading coalition and the nations surrounding Iraq together and put a plan together that doesn't require bombing the hell out of a nation and causing more upheavel! You make speeches all the time, Mr Bush. I see your face on my TV screen daily, Mr. Bush. Why don't you try talking to people other than us that could help make a difference in Iraq?

Are you biding your time til someone else can take over your war, Mr. Bush? If that is the case, Mr. Bush, do us the favor and resign now and take Cheney with you, and let people take over that might be able to fix your mistake. Just like those past endeavors in your life!

Rove being called to testify in the firing of States Attorneys hearing

Senator Schumer has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to call White House Karl Rove to testify over the US Attorney purge. The White House acknowledged yesterday that Rove was involved.

Here's Senator Schumer's statement from Think Progress:

“The more we learn, the more it seems that people at high levels in the White House have been involved in the U.S. Attorney purge,” Schumer said. … “There’s an emerging pattern that is extremely disturbing and everyday the sanctity of U.S. Attorneys as neutral enforcers of law without fear or favor is diminished,” Schumer said. “We will get to bottom of this.”

Eventually Rove will get his due. There is still a sealed file from the Grand Jury for the Plame incident so he's not cleared yet. It will be interesting to watch how this all falls out.

UPDATE: From McClatchy: "Mr. Conyers and Ms. Sanchez intend to talk with Karl Rove about any role he may have had in the firing of the U.S. attorneys," said Sanchez spokesman James Dau.

Rove on the Hot Seat!

No Birth Certificate - No Medicaid!

The federal law that requires people filing for Medicaid to produce papers confirming they are citizens is backfiring. This rule was designed to keep illiegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid, but many citizens in the US do not have a birth certificate if they were born at home. Many are so poor they cannot purchase their birth certificates or cannot get to the county or state office that provides copies of these certificates.

Here's some excerpts from the New York Times that ran the story today:

Citizens Who Lack Papers Lose Medicaid
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, March 11 — A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship, state officials say.

Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have all reported declines in enrollment and traced them to the new federal requirement, which comes just as state officials around the country are striving to expand coverage through Medicaid and other means.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the new rule was “intended to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries are citizens without imposing undue burdens on them” or on states. “We are not aware of any data that shows there are significant barriers to enrollment,” he said. “But if states are experiencing difficulties, they should bring them to our attention.”

So people that really need the help won't even apply because they don't have the documentation that they are truly citizens. More:

“Congress wanted to crack down on illegal immigrants who got Medicaid benefits by pretending to be U.S. citizens,” Mr. Jones said. “But the law is hurting U.S. citizens, throwing up roadblocks to people who need care, at a time when we in Wisconsin are trying to increase access to health care.”

Medicaid officials across the country report that some pregnant women are going without prenatal care and some parents are postponing checkups for their children while they hunt down birth certificates and other documents.

Rhiannon M. Noth, 28, of Cincinnati applied for Medicaid in early December. When her 3-year-old son, Landen, had heart surgery on Feb. 22, she said, “he did not have any insurance” because she had been unable to obtain the necessary documents. For the same reason, she said, she paid out of pocket for his medications, and eye surgery was delayed for her 2-year-old daughter, Adrianna.

The children eventually got Medicaid, but the process took 78 days, rather than the 30 specified in Ohio Medicaid rules.

Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., who has been monitoring effects of the federal rule, said: “Georgia now has 100,000 newly uninsured U.S. citizen children of low-income families. Many of these children have missed immunizations and preventive health visits. And they have been admitted to hospitals and intensive care units for conditions that normally would have been treated in a doctor’s office.”

Dr. Michaels, who is president of the Georgia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that some children with asthma had lost their Medicaid coverage and could not afford the medications they had been taking daily to prevent wheezing. “Some of these children had asthma attacks and had to be admitted to hospitals,” he said.

The ones who suffer most are the children and the elderly.

My thoughts are that this law/rule was also instituted for the purpose of pushing the need for a Federal ID Card. But even with the ID card you still need to prove citizenship.

The other problem this creates is a health problem. Without medicaid many people, children inparticular, do not get regular checkups and serious problems would bring them to an emergency room. This puts stress on the hospitals and eventually raises the rate we pay for healthcare.

Everything that has been done in the past 6 years by the admin and the Congress is suspect!

Haliburton HQ's is leaving Texas and setting up shop in Dubai

Haliburton is following the money. This is ominous for the US. Evidently, even Haliburton believes we are losing power in the world. Oh, they will keep their office in Houston but it will now become a regional office.

From the AP:

Halliburton will move HQ to Dubai
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
44 minutes ago

Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced Sunday.

"Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston," spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE."

Lesar, speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, said he will relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton's intensified focus on business in the Mideast and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world's most important oil and gas markets.

"As the CEO, I'm responsible for the global business of Halliburton in both hemispheres and I will continue to spend quite a bit of time in an airplane as I remain attentive to our customers, shareholders and employees around the world," Lesar said. "Yes, I will spend the majority of my time in Dubai."

Lesar's announcement appears to signal one of the highest-profile moves by a U.S. corporate leader to Dubai, an Arab boomtown where free-market capitalism has been paired with some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws.

"The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," Lesar said.

So is it that Haliburton is abandoning the Bush admin for greener pastures or is there a grander scheme? It's closer to Iraq and Iran. And I believe that Haliburton is already in Iran. I need time to disect this move but it doesn't feel right.

Fired U. S. Attorneys - Part III

Spector's admission:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) confirmed that as Judiciary Committee chairman last year he made a last-minute change to a bill that expanded the administration's power to install U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval.

Seizing upon the new authority granted by Congress last March, the White House has pushed out several U.S. Attorneys, and begun to replace them without the Senate's consent.

"I can confirm for you that yes, it was a Specter provision," a spokesperson for the senator wrote to me in an email earlier today, responding to repeated inquiries. Earlier we reported that Specter had been fingered for the last-minute change, made in a select Republicans-only meeting after the House and Senate had voted on earlier versions.

Now we move to the The Senate Judiciary Committee's oversight hearing:

At an oversight hearing this morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) grilled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over the sudden departure of several U.S. Attorneys at the administration's request.

"How many U.S. Attorneys have been asked to resign in the past year?" Feinstein asked Gonzales.

"You're asking me to get into a public discussion" of personnel issues, Gonzales replied.

"I'm asking you to give me a number."

"I don't know the answer to that question," said Gonzales.

The Senator Lahey:

"If we take a break for lunch," Leahy asked him, "would it be possible to get the number Sen. Feinstein asked for?"

Gonzales fished around for an answer, and finally answered, "I think so." But then he said he couldn't get into a public discussion of personnel matters.

"I don't care about the people," Leahy shot back. "Just get us the numbers."

I'm skipping a few things here but you can go to TPM Muckraker for their excellent coverage of this story.

Now enters Senator Schumer and more from Sen. Feinstein:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is slated to lead a hearing before the Judiciary Committee on Feb. 7 on the topic of "Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys?" No witnesses have been announced.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) bill to fix the loophole allowing administration appointees to U.S. attorney spots to serve indefinitely could see some action. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee panel, expressed "qualified support" for the measure and asked to work with Feinstein on it, according to his spokeswoman, Courtney Boone.

Now comes an Arkansas Lawyer who challanges the new law:

An Arkansas lawyer has risen to challenge the law which allows the administration to circumvent Senate approval when installing new U.S. Attorneys.

On behalf of his client, an alleged crack cocaine dealer who's accused of killing a man he'd robbed to prevent him from talking to the police, Little Rock lawyer John Hall has challenged the appointment of Timothy Griffin, the recently-appointed U.S. Attorney for eastern Arkansas with close ties to the White House.

Griffin's resume is long on Republican bona fides and short on the sort of law experience usually expected of U.S. Attorneys. He was installed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and thanks to a measure slipped into the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act last year, may never face Senate confirmation.

Hall's motion argues that because Griffin's appointment circumvented Senate confirmation, it was unconstitutional -- thus rendering the prosecution of his client invalid. "Contrary to the [Justice Department], I've actually read the Constitution a few times," Hall told us.

More to come!

Fired U. S. Attorneys - Part II

Remember, more of this story is at TPM Muckraker. I'm trying to make a timeline synopsis here.

We left off with eight attorneys being fired by the Bush admin because of this:

Section 502 of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, which was first drafted in July of 2005 and finally signed in March of 2006, changed the law regarding the appointment of U.S. Attorneys. Whereas before the relevant federal district court would have appointed a replacement within 120 days after the Attorney General picked one, now that pick stood without challenge.

Now who allowed this to happen:

In order to replace several U.S. Attorneys with handpicked successors, the Bush Administration has relied on a tiny, obscure provision tucked into last year's USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act.

How did it get there?
Former Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) slipped the language into the bill at the very last minute, according to one of the Republican managers of the bill.

A spokesperson for Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who led the House team working on the bill, said that the provision was inserted by Specter into the final draft of the bill. The language was apparently requested by the Justice Department. Specter's office didn't respond to numerous requests for comment.

Earlier versions of the bill did not contain the provision, which grants authority to the Attorney General to replace U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. When the House and the Senate first voted in favor of the legislation, the provision did not exist.

Instead, the tweak was inserted during the conference committee, where lawmakers from the House and Senate reconcile discrepancies in the two versions and craft a final bill.

In an unusual move, Republicans blocked Democrats from participating in many of the committee's activities.

Now we come to Attorney Genral Alberto Gonzales who said there is no political motive to the firings:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is mounting a PR effort to rebuff suggestions that the recent spate of administration-forced resignations of U.S. Attorneys may be politically motivated.

"Nothing could be further from the truth,” he told the Associated Press.

“We are fully committed to ensuring that, with respect to every position, we have a Senate-confirmed, presidentially appointed U.S. attorney. . . We in no way politicize these decisions.”

Since the November elections, Gonzales' department has requested resignations from several U.S. attorneys. The only known replacements have been political appointees that do not receive Senate confirmation, thanks to a recent change in law.

Sen. Feinstein joins other Senators in another question of an appointment by the Bush admin to replace a fired US Attorney:

Feinstein had earlier joined other senators in questioning the qualifications of one of the Bush-appointed replacements, Tim Griffin, a 37-year-old Karl Rove protege with a background in opposition research on behalf of GOP campaigns.

In his AP interview, Gonzales explained his expanded powers were necessary because federal judges -- who previously had appointed replacement U.S. attorneys -- were susceptible to cronyism and might appoint unqualified candidates.

Reads like a political thriller so far. And there is so much more. This will take a few more posts for the continuing saga.

Fired US. Attorneys - Political Move?

I haven't covered this yet but this issue is going to committe in Congress today. The best way to catch up is to go to TPM Muckraker. They have been covering this story from the beginning.

It all started in mid January:

The head of the FBI's San Diego office and several former federal prosecutors are publicly questioning the politics behind the Bush administration's effort to force Carole Lam to resign as U.S. Attorney for San Diego.

Lam focused her office's efforts on public corruption, including the sprawling Duke Cunningham scandal. That investigation has touched several Republican lawmakers, leading some to speculate that Lam brought political heat down on herself with that probe, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Then to this:

Strange days? Less than a week after news broke that the Bush administration has forced the resignation of San Diego U.S. attorney Carole Lam, we learn that it has done the same to Daniel Bogden, U.S. attorney for Nevada.

According to today's Las Vegas Review-Journal, no one seems to know why he's been asked to leave before his term expires in 2008. As in Lam's ouster, there appear to be no charges of wrongdoing against Bogden.

And then the motive started to show up:

During a floor speech on the topic moments ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said the White House has told her it was replacing from five to 10 Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys with its own interim appointees.

We know of seven who have left during the last couple of months, many under unusual circumstances. Here is our list:

San Francisco - 1/16/07 - Kevin V. Ryan - unclear

Nevada - 1/15/07 - Daniel Bogden - pushed out


San Diego - 1/12/07 - Carole Lam - pushed out

New Mexico - 12/19/06 - David Igleslias - pushed out

Arizona - 12/19/06 - Paul K. Charlton - unclear


Seattle - 12/15/06 - John McKay - unclear; likely pushed out


Little Rock (Ark.) - 12/15/06 - Bud Cummins - pushed out

Feinstein said she also knew of seven, and listed those above. Curiously, she mentioned an eigthth -- from Texas. We haven't been able to identify that one.

There is an eighth recently-departed U.S. attorney we know of, which some readers have noted: Debra Wong Yang, the former U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, Calif. Yang was overseeing the investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). She announced her resignation in October 2006, but to date there hasn't been evidence that her departure was forced.

Senator Feinstin gets involved:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) hit the administration hard on the floor of the Senate this morning for its unexplained "forced resignations" of federal prosecutors around the country.

And all because of this:

The administration is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country. How'd they get that power?

It was an obscure provision in the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, and it didn't take them very long to use it. The president signed it into law in March of last year -- by June, they were already moving to replace unwanted prosecutors.

Former Arkansas USA Bud Cummins told the Wall Street Journal that "a top Justice official asked for his resignation in June, saying the White House wanted to give another person the opportunity to serve." Cummins was finally forced out in December, replaced with Timothy Griffin, formerly the research director of the Republican National Committee.

Section 502 of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, which was first drafted in July of 2005 and finally signed in March of 2006, changed the law regarding the appointment of U.S. Attorneys. Whereas before the relevant federal district court would have appointed a replacement within 120 days after the Attorney General picked one, now that pick stood without challenge.

This is just the start. More on the next post.

From the BBC - US 'Iran attack plans' revealed

Deny, deny, deny! The Bush admin has been denying this through the media. Of course the US press won't print this. I wonder who the source was for the BBC?

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.

The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.

But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.

Two triggers

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.


The Natanz plant is buried under concrete, metal and earth
Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

read the rest here