TODAY'S TOPICS: Plame Testifies!, Fascism, Videos, Oversight, Soldier/War Myths, Giuliani Exposed, Good E-Voting News, Ohio Fraud

Quick Note: I highly suggest you read today's articles and watch Valerie Plame's testimony before Waxman's Committee. Classic! She dispelled every one of the right wing talking point lies. And she did it with class! Finally, and of course, the few Repubs that showed up and asked questions proved yet again that I can't be hard enough on these criminals, hypocrites, and wastes of space (at least when I'm talking to you all)...but see for yourself.

Here's some of the Plame hearings (and the mainstream media STILL is reporting "he said, she said", regardless how totally proven false the rights' lies). I watched it on C-Span this morning and got up and cheered a few times. If its not all here, try and find it on C-Span. After I've covered this story so meticulously for so long, and for the truth to come out as it finally has, and as predicted (though the punishment and media reaction is a disappointment), watching those hearings was like hearing violins of angels, and as Colbert might say, they "were playing the sweet melody of truth."

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/49312/

But that's not all, watch the unbelievable interrogations by my man Waxman of the director of the Office of Security at the White House...who NEVER investigated the Plame outing...yet Bush was saying the were...oh, this is getting good...and sick:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/16/white-house-security-chief-reveals-no-probe-of-plame-leak-there/

But no, that's not even all. Waxman again, this time taking on Victoria Toensing, the woman (a right wing attorney hack) wrote that op-ed full of distortions and false accusations, in the middle of the Libby Trial, even saying its really Wilson and Plame that should be investigated. See how nice it is to have Waxman as Chair? Watch her squirm, obfuscate, and simply put her own humanity to shame:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/16/waxman-v-toensing/

I just had to point out the latest sign of what kind of politician Hillary Clinton (obviously, 10x's better than a repub) is...thankfully, she won't beat both Obama and Edwards:

When asked by ABC's Tapper if homosexuality was "immoral," she answered as follows:

"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude. I'm very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want make sure they can."

That's poster child stuff for so many of the things wrong with the Democratic Party (and their little cabal the DLC).

This is a great breakdown of just how telling the comment was and the context for which it was said by Matt Tallibi...when I read him I sometimes almost feel like I'm reading myself...so I need say no more:

Let me get this straight. Hillary Clinton wants the most powerful office in the world, but she can't make her own decision about the morality of homosexuality? She's got to "leave that to others?"...She's just said that homosexuality isn't a choice, that it's something "you are" at birth. If that's what she believes, how could she possibly believe homosexuality is immoral? And if that is what she believes, how could she possibly not answer that question forthrightly? How could she duck Tapper's question there?

SNIP

In this case there is no future performance in office one is safeguarding with a careful, poll-tested answer. In this case the very act of answering the question is policy. When you're trying to combat bigotry and ignorance, you need to demonstrate actual human leadership, not computerized hedging. By punting the issue of the morality of homosexuality, Hillary dignifies the question. And let's all be clear about what's going on here. It was the word "morality" that had Hillary spooked....In the DLC mindset, "confronting" issues head on basically means surrendering. When they say that we need to "understand" that America is a very religious country and "show respect" for people who disagree, what they really mean is we need to waffle as much as is humanly possible in the hopes that the Okies won't guess what we really believe. In Hillary's case, that means trying to reassure gays in one sentence by telling them that homosexuality is "who you are," and stroking swing-vote Christians in the next by saying that you’ll "leave it to others" to conclude the issue of the morality of homosexuality.

Because that's basically what she did, in a nutshell. Hillary thinks we're all stupid and that if we're robo-stroked often enough by her poll-generated paeans, we’ll pull the lever for her. Amazingly enough, in modern American politics, that's how you win on the "morality" issue.

http://alternet.org/columnists/story/49251/

Fascism in America?: As I watch media coverage of the barrage of gross criminal conduct being played out before us, I must say, the Matrix is still strong, and still very capable of assimilating such activities...at least to an extent. Enough to largely keep the public in their place...as self absorbed, distracted, apathetic, and mindless automatrons (many..not all). Will the new oversight and democratic congress (and an almost sure to be Dem President in 08'), the growing progressive movement in the country (slow though it be), and the mildly increasing number of partially engaged citizens be enough to sustain a longer term political, cultural, and social shift, out of the darkness, and into something resembling light??? I think we have a chance...that's why I fight anyway. But, this quote encapsulates the darker side of our current predicament:

"...because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode. When you see who is controlling the means of production here, when you see who is controlling the newspapers and periodicals, and the TV stations, from which most Americans take their news, and when you see how the so-called war on terror is being conducted, you begin to understand where we are headed. It's quite something that the nuclear threat today should be seen first and foremost as coming from the United States of America and Great Britain."

-- Ray McGovern, formerly a senior CIA officer

MORE VIDEOS...LOTS OF GOOD ONES

More on the ugly past of Rudy Giuliani...and his real record. I have another article below exposing him further...finally, the 9/11 cloak of protection he's used for so long, and kept him safe from tough questions, is over:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/16/bad-news-day-for-rudy-giuliani/

A dose of honesty and truth from Jack Cafferty...at least he recognizes the difference oversight makes since the Dems took office...most journalists refuse, in the face of overwhelming facts, to point out the truth...as that would be partisan...just like facts have a left wing bias:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/14/cafferty-are-checks-and-balances-making-a-comeback/

Some real passion from Joe Biden on the Senate floor, great stuff...I wish more Dems would have been this angry two years ago:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/49283/

And my man, Senator Pat Leahy, who I kept saying "just wait if the Dems take over and he's chair", is going to supoena Karl Rove...and really investigate the attorney firings,,,just let that sink in...Rove and Gonzales being interrogated under oath...feels good, huh? Watch him here:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/14/watch-out-rove-leahy-promises-subpoenas/

JUSTICE -- LEAHY PREPARING TO SUBPOENA KARL ROVE FOR TESTIMONY ON ATTORNEY PURGE: The Senate Judiciary Committee is "set to vote Thursday on whether to authorize subpoenas to 14 current and former administration officials, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers." The White House has signaled that it will block Rove from testifying. White House Counselor Dan Bartlett said, "I find it highly unlikely that a member of the White House staff would testify publicly to these matters," while Press Secretary Tony Snow added, "[I]t has been traditional in all White Houses not to have staffers testify on Capitol Hill." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) responded in an interview yesterday, "Frankly, I don't care whether [White House Counsel Fred Fielding] says he's going to allow people or not. We'll subpoena the people we want. If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don't want to have." Rove's testimony is crucial in clarifying his role in the ouster of former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, and the naming of his replacement, Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide. According to a recently-released e-mail, Gonzales's former chief of staff wrote that, "It was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." that Cummins get the job. Prior to the release of the emails, the Department of Justice had claimed "in a letter to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) that the department 'was not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.'"

And old favorite of mine, the Simpsons tears Fox a new one:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/49281/

The Daily Show lambasts torture advocate and wiretapper Alberto Gonzales...his days are numbered:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/15/the-daily-show-blasts-gonzales-for-prosecutor-purge/

GREAT ARTICLES...

Now for just one of many coming exposes of the real Rudy Giuliani. I posted a number of such investigative pieces on this scumbag and death profiteer in the past, and this doesn't even go into those, but its no less disgusting. What I did always say about him was just wait until he ran, and the Matrix myth that was constructed would start to crack, because in the end, the core component of his "heroism" is actually where his worst skeletons lie. He botched 9/11 in more ways than one can count, his incompetence resulted in hundreds, maybe thousands of deaths, and worse, he then profited off the tragedy, while secretly pimping products that were paying him millions to cities he spoke at (and was paid millions) to give them advice about how to deal with terrorism! And he never told anyone he was on those companies payroll! But that's another story...this is on why the NY Firefighters HATE HIM. A few clips:

But voters may not know that he is not universally beloved by the real, rank-and-file first responders of 9/11, and that survivors and family members harbor bitter, lasting resentments. The public may also be unaware that Giuliani's preparation for and management of the crisis that has come to define his career, and on which his presidential ambitions rest, has actually become a case study for emergency management experts of what not to do. In fact, rather than representing his strongest qualification for the White House, his actions on 9/11 could be a political liability.

SNIP

The faulty radios were the target of years of scathing internal assessments, bureaucratic wrangling, and accusations of bidding favoritism, and still the Giuliani administration had never replaced them. Here, in the radios fiasco, was government paralysis at its worst, the sort he frothed about as a reformist candidate for mayor. The city's firefighters were sent into the towers without the basic ability to send or receive maydays. The buck stops with Rudy, who knew that the same radios had faltered when the World Trade Center was first bombed by terrorists in 1993, the year he was elected mayor.

What is more, just three months before the 9/11 attack, a city firefighter trapped in the basement of a burning house in Queens broadcast a mayday on a high-tech digital radio issued by his administration to replace the older variety. When firefighters battling the blaze didn't hear his SOS -- it was picked up only by radios carried by firefighters a couple of miles away -- an uproar ensued. The firefighter survived, but the high-tech replacement radios, which had never been field-tested, were thus withdrawn, and the firemen went back to relying on their old radios, just in time for 9/11.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/13/swiftboat_rudy/index.html

This is a fantastic column on one of the foundations of America's Matrix...the hero worship of the American soldier and its function to rationalize and accept our war culture. Ever try and figure out how so may Americans can just sit back and allow our men and women to die for a lie, year after year, yet simultaneously talking endlessly about how heroic they are? But somehow when it comes to hospital care, benefits, and post war compassion they are disposed of and forgotten, like ones last recycling trip...because that's not so fun to watch...not a "good show" like war is? I mean, is every damn soldier an incredible hero? Of course not.

And by artificially making them such, people seem able to rationalize and/or morally accept, sending them to their deaths! That's because the soldier myth makes people feel good about themselves...that young man out there is "fighting for freedom" like John Wayne would have. I suppose its not so difficult, that if you believe hard enough in "heroism" and "bravery" that somehow a morsel of those qualities makes it into some of America's soul dead masses. Well, finally, someone really helps explain these observations I've been having, and questions I've been asking...how can people allow all this death while claiming love for them? Here's some clips, please read:

The mythic soldier’s virtues are all about caring for others -- buddies, the outfit, the service, the nation -- more than self. After all, no one forces them to serve. They volunteered. (The myth conveniently ignores the economic pressures that drive people into the military.) And the news media give us an endless parade of these uniformed heroes, all looking noble and handsome, telling us that it doesn’t matter whether or not they approve of the war. “I made a commitment. I have an obligation to serve. I have to do my duty,” is their constant refrain. Identifying with such selfless heroes lets ordinary civilians imagine that they, too, might someday somehow rise to that higher level of virtue. It lets them believe that in a world so saturated with selfishness, selfless devotion to duty is still a possibility.

SNIP

Of course that’s the strange thing about this myth: It is most powerful when we identify with heroes who are dead. It is usually displayed (especially in local news media) when a soldier has died. So it asks us to imagine ourselves as dead, too. Death gets to the heart of the military myth. The absolute finality of death can easily give the myth an aura of absolute significance, making its messages seem like the absolute, final truth. In a predominantly Christian country, the story of a sacrifice of the innocent to save the rest of us (who don’t deserve it) makes the virtuous cause for which they died seem sacred, too.

SNIP

Of course everyone knows, at some unconscious level at least, that it’s wrong to send others to their deaths to make us feel good. We owe the dead a debt. But those who benefit psychologically from those deaths don’t want to stop the cycle of sacrifice. So they have a simple solution: Let’s repay our debt to the already dead by sending others to their death. When George W. Bush insists that we have to keep fighting -- sending more of “our troops” to their death -- so that those who have already died won’t have died in vain, the logic seems totally twisted to many of us. But within the myth, it actually makes sense. "Our troops" have to be funded, and sent into the jaws of death, so that we can go on believing in our own, and America’s, virtue.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0315-22.htm

And one more fantastic column on new revelations about Rumsfeld's direct role in torture, and the various clear signs of a soft fascist state, a populace asleep, and a media feeding us mind candy...laden with trans fats! Here's a few clips:

In Andrew Cockburn's new book, Rumsfeld, the gap between rampant power and its faraway victims is closed. Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence until last year and a designer of the Iraq bloodbath, is revealed as personally directing from his office in the Pentagon the torture of fellow human beings, exploiting "individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, to induce stress" and use of "a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation". Cockburn's documented evidence shows that other Bush mafiosi, such as Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, "had already agreed that Rumsfeld should approve all but the most severe options, such as the wet towel, without restriction".

SNIP

The lies that have caused this extremely dangerous time are understood and rejected by the majority of humanity. This was illustrated vividly on 15-16 February 2003 when some 30 million people took to the streets of cities around the world, including the greatest demonstration in British history. It was illustrated again the other day in Latin America, which George W Bush on tour sought to reclaim for America's lost "backyard". "The distinguished visitor," noted one commentator in Caracas, "was received with fear and loathing."

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0315-29.htm

Some Brad Blog analysis of the Plame hearings...

VALERIE PLAME-WILSON UNDER OATH TO CONGRESS: 'I WAS COVERT, SERVED OVERSEAS IN LAST FIVE YEARS, WORKED UNDERCOVER OVERSEEING WMD PROLIFERATION ISSUES IN IRAQ'

Testimony Blows Out Every Claim by Republicans, Novak, Toensing, etc. That She Wasn't Covert

Absolutely riveting, historic, under-oath testimony by Valerie Plame-Wilson in the House Oversight Committee on-going right now. Recurring theme over and over again: She was covert, covert, covert when her identity was outed and her cover was blown --- for the first time in history by her own government.

Every wingnut argument to the contrary, and concerning her case has been utterly destroyed. The Republican questioning of Plame-Wilson has come up with absolutely nothing to counter and it's been confirmed that CIA Director Gen. Hayden has also confirmed her covert status and that she we worked overseas (as per the Intelligence Identity Protections Act) in the last five years.

Hearings were covered for first 15 minutes or so on all three cable news nets. Now only LIVE currently on C-SPAN.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4281

This is actually really big news on the e-voting front, as the phony heart string arguments being made by election thieves largely centered around just how wonderful touch screen voting machines are for the blind and disabled...so we can't get rid of them! They conned these groups for a long time...but times, they are a changin:

BLIND AND DISABLED VOTER ADVOCATES, GROUPS CALL FOR 'IMMEDIATE BAN' ON DRE VOTING SYSTEMS!

Two Different Statements from Civil Rights Leaders Call for Discontinuation of Insecure, Unverifiable, Disenfranchising DRE/Touch-Screen Voting Technology - Both Destroy Myth of Need to Sacrifice Verifed Ballots for Accessibility...

Supporters of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, often known as touch-screen) voting system, and indeed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, have used the canard that blind and disabled voters must use DREs to vote privately and independently. Today, a number of leaders in the disabilities community are finally speaking out and calling for "an immediate ban" on such dangerous, unverifiable voting systems.

Two landmark statements, one released today to The BRAD BLOG in advance of Congressional hearings tomorrow, are covered in this report. Here snippets from each...

"Electronic ballot systems such as DRE machines, are neither fully accessible nor secure and accurate methods of recording, tallying, and reporting votes ... [They] are inappropriate for use, because these systems make it impossible for voters to verify that their votes will be counted as cast."-- From a statement released today by more than 20 Disabled Voter Advocates

"We must debunk the myth that we have to choose between accessible voting and verifiable voting. Democracy requires that we have both."-- Stanley J. Eicher, Exec. Dir. of the Disability Law Center in recent statement commending MA for allowing non-DRE ballot marking devices for use by disabled voters.

FULL STORY, COMPLETE STATEMENT:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4270

PLEASE TELL ME WHY THIS ISN'T A NEWS STORY!!!!!

Ohio Election Workers Sentenced to 18 Months for Rigging 2004 Presidential Recount Judge Says - He Believes the Conspiracy Goes Higher...

CLEVELAND (AP) - Two county election workers were sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount of 2004 presidential election ballots...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4266

"Buried in the $124 billion House version of the wartime supplemental appropriation is an order to the Defense Department to release a report on the April 2004 death in Afghanistan of Army Spc. Patrick Tillman," whose death by friendly fire Army leaders tried to cover up.

House investigators are looking at "whether the Army is running a plush ward at the [Walter Reed] complex for VIPs at the expense of ordinary war casualties." The suites -- which are reserved for high-ranking government officials and dignitaries -- "have carpeted floors, antique furniture and fine china in the dining rooms." The only enlisted members allowed to stay there are Medal of Honor recipients.

New report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this "winter was the warmest on record worldwide."

"A review of existing computer climate models suggests that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of ocean at the end of each summer by 2100, scientists reported today." The lead author of the review even said that their estimate "may be conservative."

2.45 billion: the revenues raked in by lobbyists last year. "The Center for Responsive Politics found that companies, unions and other organizations spent a record amount to lobby in 2006, in spite of the black eye from the Jack Abramoff scandal and a midterm election that caused Congress to close early."

TODAY'S TOPICS: Media Bias, Cut the Funding!, Cheney, Florida E-Voting Revelations, Video Clips, Attorney Firings

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now...We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late."

- Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago about the Vietnam War.

I'm juggling a lot of stuff right now, so almost no time, so my intros will be brief, and I've taken a lot from the Center for American Progress's reporting on new revelations on the Attorney firings (yes, its going to be as big as it seems), a new media study, and govt. manipulation/intimidation of the press...so my thanks to them.

"Gen. Pace's principles reflect the strong aversion of our Marines and soldiers to homosexual conduct."

-- Rep. Duncan Hunter, 3/14/07, on Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace's remarks condoning homosexuality

VERSUS

A Dec. 2006 Zogby International poll found "that 73 percent of military members are comfortable with lesbians and gays."

-- Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, 12/19/06

Daily show classic…on our American terrorist, dick cheney:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/14/daily-show-is-cheney-losing-his-clout/

Olbermann gives a classic "worst person in the world"...not because its classically funny, but because of the depths right wing bigots like O'Reilly and Beck are going...can't you just sense the panic out there among the Republicans, bigots, war mongers, fundamentalists, and money whores??? Its literally palpable:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/13/olbermann-bill-oreilly-has-left-the-human-race/

Can iraqi’s ever trust us again? a very sobering piece from 60 Minutes:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/13/will-they-ever-trust-us-again/

Max Cleland takes on Cheney…this is what I’m talking about...being tough and hard hitting doesn't mean dirty or partisan...not when the facts speak for themselves...the dems just need to speak them. Watch Cleland:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/12/cleland-to-cheney-where-the-hell-were-you-in-the-vietnam-war/

Jack Cafferty on alberto gonzales...what else do I need to say...watch it:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/12/cafferty-alberto-gonzalez-is-a-weasel/

ARTICLES...SOLOMON, SCHEER

I just love the brutal honesty, objectivity, and truth that spills from the pen and/or computer from Norm Solomon. Any time you start to feel like the Matrix is sucking you in...and you start going "yeah, dems can't cut funding...yeah, the media says that would be bad...and dc consultants say that would make Dems look weak...blah, blah, blah!!!!!" JUST READ SOLOMON! How many times must we be lied to, and must the Democrats cower because somehow failed pundits and consultants say its strategical, until we say enough? Did vietnam teach us nothing? How long were we bogged down in that war because of the same "caution" claims and "against the troops" accusations or the "dangers of pulling out" myths. Yeah...leaving Vietnam sure let communism spread around the world didn't it???

Here we are again, we've got the plans that deserve support in congress...those that cut funding for this abomination. It ain't rocket science folks. If they can't keep paying to send our young people, off to kill innocents and die for lies, then the war ends. Please explain to me how we can't win that argument? And then, please explain to me how we are endangering troops by keeping them from being sent into the middle of a civil war. Yet here we are, with the Dem leadership (not the majority mind you) supporting "timetables" but with no way of enforcing them. And worse, there are some advocacy groups that aren't calling them on this chicanery.

Note to everyone: timetables without cutting the purse strings mean the war continues indefinitely, no matter how you spin it. And if you know this, but believe Dems shouldn't stop the war because it makes them look weak, then I would ask that you go tell the families of every additional soldier that dies for these lies why you "strategically" (and its NOT strategical...52% of Americans now support cutting funding...and that's without a united voice demanding it!!!!)supported their death.

here's Solomon:

More than ever, in the aftermath of the Scooter Libby verdict, the country's major news outlets are willing to acknowledge that the political road to war in Iraq was paved with deceptions. But the same media outlets were integral to laying the flagstones along the path to war -- and they're now integral to prolonging the war. With the same logic of one, two, and three years ago, the conformist media wisdom is that a cutoff of funds for the war is not practical. Likewise, on Capitol Hill, there's a lot of huffing and puffing about how the war must wind down -- but the money for it, we're told, must keep moving. Like two rails along the same track, the dispensers of conventional media and political wisdom carry us along to more and more and more war.

SNIP

We're urged to take solace from the fact that Washington's debate has shifted to "when" -- rather than "whether" -- the war should end. But the end of the U.S. war effort could be deferred for many more years while debates over "when" flourish and fester. This happened during the Vietnam War, year after year, while death came to tens of thousands more American soldiers and perhaps a million more Vietnamese people.

SNIP

On Capitol Hill, most Democrats seem to have settled on a tactical approach of simultaneously ratifying and deploring the continuation of the war. The approach may or may not be savvy politics in a narrow sense of gaining temporary partisan political advantage. But it is ultimately destructive to refuse to do the one thing that the Constitution empowers Congress to do to halt a U.S. war -- stop appropriating taxpayer money for it. In retrospect, such congressional behavior during the Vietnam War -- while attracting sober approval from much of the era's punditocracy -- ended up prolonging a horrific war that could have ended years sooner. Now, as then, pandering to the news media and other powerful pressures, most politicians are busy trying to pick "low-hanging fruit" that turns out to be poisonous.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0313-23.htm

Robert Sheer at his prosecutorial best...and he's starting to talk my talk about Cheney...a lying murderering coward who should be exposed for such each and every day (how many times have I used the caged/cornered animal analogy? good stuff). A few clips first:

While he is still as dangerous as any cornered animal, Cheney stands brightly revealed as the main culprit in cherry-picking the evidence to make the case for a stupid, failed war. He has been exposed as a vindictive, inflexible ideologue, who attempts to destroy all who publicly disagree with him, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson's CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. His extensive ties and loyal political service to energy and defense companies such as Halliburton (which now, in a burst of honesty, is moving its headquarters to Dubai), reveal him to be a man of deep corruption.

SNIP

It is thus Cheney who has played right into al-Qaida's plans, heightening tension between the U.S. and the Arab and Muslim worlds by evoking an image of U.S. imperial conquest of Mideast oil resources. His palpable disdain for civil liberties, bald-faced lies and support for torture have even tarnished the reputation of democracy itself, which has to please tyrants and theocrats everywhere.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031407D.shtml

RIGHT WING MEDIA (NEW STUDY PROVES THIS YET AGAIN...NOT JUST FOX...AND MORE GOVT. COERSION)

"[The administration is] going to try to really tamp this down and appeal to the polling which indicates that most people think, in fact, that he should be pardoned. Scooter Libby should be pardoned."

-- NBC's Andrea Mitchell, 3/12/07, during an appearance on Hardball

VERSUS

Sixty-nine percent of Americans think President Bush should not pardon Scooter Libby, according to a new CNN poll. Only 18 percent think Libby should be pardoned.

-- CNN, 3/12/07

Conservative Media Bias Marches On

March 12th, 2007

Media Matters for America report that proves the conservative bias of guests booked on the Sunday morning political blab circuit. The lone exception is ABC’s This Week.

Media Matters for America asks:

Now that Congress has switched hands, one would reasonably expect Democrats and progressives to be represented at least as often as Republicans and conservatives on the Sunday shows. Yet our findings for the months since the midterm elections show that the networks have barely changed their practices.

Some of the findings:

On the Sunday after the midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, viewers tuned in to NBC's Meet the Press to hear what the Democratic win meant for the country -- only to discover that host Tim Russert did not have any Democrats on at all. Instead, Russert's guests were Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT), who ran in the general election as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary. And after an election in which the public's opposition to the Iraq war was a central issue, Meet the Press hosted two guests who support the war.

Since the 2006 midterm elections, NBC's Meet the Press and CBS' Face the Nation have provided less balance between Republican and Democratic officials than Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday despite the fact that Fox News Sunday remains the most unbalanced broadcast overall both before and after the election.

During the 109th Congress (2005 and 2006), Republicans and conservatives held the advantage on every show, in every category measured. All four shows interviewed more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives overall, interviewed more Republican elected and administration officials than Democratic officials, hosted more conservative journalists than progressive journalists, held more panels that tilted right than tilted left, and gave more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives.

END

MEDIA -- NEW YORK TIMES BASELESSLY LAMBASTS GORE, CITES DISCREDITED SKEPTICS: Yesterday, the New York Times published an article with the headline "From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype," which argued that some "scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous." The reporter, William Broad, wrote that "scientists are sensitive to [the film's] details and claims" and that Gore has received criticism not "only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists." But as Media Matters noted, of "the sources cited in the article, at least four have records of misinformation on the issue. Though three of these were identified as skeptics or as having expressed skepticism, in all four cases, their past statements or studies questioning global warming theory have been debunked or discredited by the scientific community -- which Broad did not report." For example, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen has repeatedly claimed that "there is no 'consensus' on global warming," even though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- a group consisting of thousands of world's foremost climatologists -- recently issued a report that represents "history's most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change." Eighty-two percent of Americans believe global warming exists. The Times article also cited Bjorn Lomborg, the associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, as someone who has been "long skeptical of catastrophic global warming." But Broad fails to report that in Jan. 2002, "Scientific American ran a series of articles from four well-known environmental specialists that lambasted Lomborg's book for 'egregious distortions,' 'elementary blunders of quantitative manipulation and presentation that no self-respecting statistician ought to commit,' and sections that were 'poorly researched and...rife with careless mistakes.'"

GOVERNMENT: The Dark Ages...MEDIA INTIMIDATION, BRIBERY, COERSION

President Bush's tenure has been a dark time for journalists. The administration has accused the media of aiding terrorists, declared that it has the power to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, and consistently granted preferential treatment to right-wing outlets. The war in Iraq has made journalism more dangerous for reporters all over the world. Additionally, this administration "has restricted access to information about our government and its policies at unprecedented levels," classifying a record number of documents and withholding records that the public has a right to view under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which is approaching its 41st year in existence. In an age of blogging and citizen journalism, the American public's ability to access the federal government is more important than ever. Yet 69 percent of Americans believe that the government is too secretive. This week, Congress is debating several critical pieces of legislation that will increase government transparency. Take action and tell your Members of Congress to open the government.

BLAMING THE MEDIA: Bush administration officials have shown little respect for journalists, blaming them for the White House's own failures. Instead of acknowledging the disastrous conditions in Iraq, President Bush has often attacked the media for covering too much bad news: "We're making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes it's hard to tell it when you listen to the filter." In March 2006, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation" of violence in Iraq. When the New York Times published a story about the Bush administration's secret program to track terrorist financing, Vice President Cheney accused the paper of making "the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs." White House Press Secretary Tony Snow went even further, suggesting the New York Times had undermined Americans' "right to live." Bush's domestic policy advisor Karl Zinsmeister once called journalists "whiny and appallingly soft," wishing "there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling." More recently, in the leak of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice when he attempted to falsely blame the media -- specifically, NBC's Tim Russert -- for the White House's leak of Plame's identity. The White House promised to fire anyone involved in the Plame leak. Rather than acknowledging its wrongdoing, the White House forced 10 journalists to take the stand -- which ultimately revealed that indeed the Bush administration manipulated the media "by selectively leaking information."

PROSECUTING THE MEDIA: The Bush administration has aggressively gone after journalists -- and people who provide information to journalists -- attempting to punish them for publishing information unfavorable to the administration. As the Wall Street Journal notes, "The Justice Department also has long taken a stand against letting its prosecutors routinely pry open reporters' notebooks, and in 1973 issued guidelines requiring that the U.S. attorney general personally approve subpoena requests for the news media. ... Under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department has pursued journalists' sources in cases ranging from a terrorism investigation of Islamic charities to the alleged vandalism of a police car." In May 2006, Gonzales said that "he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security" and would not "hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation." But as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Morton Halperin notes, Congress never intended leaks to the press "to be crimes, but rather essential to public debate." Historically, when the media sheds light on the government, the public benefits. In 1971, the Supreme Court sided with the press and against the Nixon administration, which argued that the Defense Department's top-secret study of the growth of United States military involvement in Vietnam should not be published in newspapers. The New York Times's reporting on the "leaked" Pentagon Papers ended up revealing a covert Pentagon strategy to expand the U.S. role in Vietnam and eventually undermined public support for the war. "The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic," wrote Justice Hugo Black in that case.

SHUTTING OUT THE MEDIA: FOIA has been one of the media's most powerful tools for opening the government. Because of FOIA, Vietnam War veterans learned about their exposure to Agent Orange, the "Food and Drug Administration released studies about aspirin and Reye's Syndrome that resulted in mandatory warning labels," and reporters learned that the military had given U.S. troops in Iraq body armor that failed ballistics tests. But FOIA isn't just for the media. Just 6 percent of FOIA requests come from journalists. Recently, the nonprofit conservative group Judicial Watch filed a FOIA requesting White House visitor logs showing fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made it more difficult for both the media and the public to access government information. "As a matter of policy, they are more secretive," said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch. "They just say no, which undermines the spirit and letter of FOIA." Last year, George Washington University's National Security Archive sued the CIA over its "recent practice of charging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) fees to journalists pursuing news." Though journalists are supposed to be charged only copying fees, in 2005, the CIA began charging additional fees if it felt the journalist's request was "not newsworthy enough." Just one in five federal agencies posts on its website all the records required for FOIA requests, and only 6 percent "tell people how to request what does not appear there." A new study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government finds that the backlog of of unfulfilled FOIA requests "hit a record 31% in 2005, a whopping 138% above the 1998 level. The 13 agencies that have so far reported 2006 data show a slightly higher backlog that the year before."

OBSTRUCTING THE MEDIA: This administration has actively worked to make it harder for the public to gain access to information. In 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memo -- in the works long before the 9/11 attacks -- assuring government agencies that "when you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records...you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions." Ashcroft's memo superceded a 1993 memo issued by President Clinton's Attorney General Janet Reno urging agencies to "err on the side of disclosure." The House is now considering H.R. 1309, which would reform the FOIA process and overturn Ashcroft's memo. It would also require government agencies to more quickly act on FOIA requests and empower citizen journalists. Currently, requests from "unaffiliated individuals" can be denied; under this new bill, an agency would no longer be allowed to do so. A bill in the Senate sponsored by Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) would similarly ensure that bloggers and other Internet journalists are given the same reduced FOIA fees as other journalists. Three other bills being considered this week also open the government to the public by disclosing donors to presidential libraries, restoring public access to presidential records, and increasing transparency and accountability in federal contracting.

FL-13: Company Warned of Touch-Screen Voting System Defect, But Sarasota Declined to Fix Machines or Caution Voters

FULL LETTER POSTED: ES&S Urged State, Local Officials to Take Corrective Measures Three Months Prior to Contested Jennings/Buchanan Race Last November

Election Integrity Advocate's Warning About Bug Also Ignored Both Before and After Election...
Melinda Henneberger at Huffington Post runs a news item today concerning an August 2006 letter from the voting machine company ES&S to Florida Elections officials warning about a defect in the iVotronic touch-screen voting machine which succeeded in losing the votes of some 18,000 voters in the razor-thin election between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R) in Florida's 13th U.S. House Congressional district. Buchanan was provisionally seated, pending a Congressional challenge and state lawsuit filed by Jennings, after he was declared the "winner" by 369 votes.

Sarasota, FL's Election Supervisor, Kathy Dent, decided against both having their machines patched to take care of the defect and posting a warning notice for voters as advised by ES&S. "No one in the State of Florida updated," their machines after receiving the letter, Dent told Henneberger. "That's because it was too close to the election. It was a state decision that it was too late to make changes."

Further, The BRAD BLOG posts the letter from ES&S in full, along with frustrated comments from the Election Integrity advocate who had been trying to get the attention of both Florida officials and Jennings' legal team who were both investigating the matter. "I sent that memo (and my concerns) to anyone I could think of," McCloy explained told us "and this year to every election reform list serve that I could, posted it on political message boards. I asked and asked - has this bug been fixed?"...

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4265

JUSTICE: More than Mistakes

Yesterday, the administration provided Congress with emails between White House aides and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who resigned earlier this week. The documents "show an orchestrated effort to fire several U.S. attorneys, counter to Mr. Gonzales's previous assertions that the firings weren't instigated by the White House." The emails included a list of attorneys Sampson thought the administration "should consider pushing out." Gonzales said at a press conference yesterday, "I acknowledge that mistakes were made here." Yet he pawned off responsibility to those working under him, saying, "I have 110,000 working in the department. Obviously, there are going to be decisions made that I'm not aware of all the time." "I stand by the decision," Gonzales concluded, "and I think it was the right decision." Lawmakers are not accepting his non-apology. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) again repeated his calls for Gonzales to step down, citing the multiple ways in which Gonzales has misled the public about the affair. In the end, the affair is about more than just Gonzales's future. "It’s flatly un-American for the law to be used as a political weapon," the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin writes. "It erodes public confidence in the justice system, and offends the American commitment to fairness." The firing of these eight U.S. attorneys "looks like a political purge, pure and simple, and President Bush and his White House are in the thick of it."

WHITE HOUSE DIRECTLY INVOLVED: "We wish we’d been surprised to learn that the White House was deeply involved in the politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys," the New York Times writes this morning, "but the news had the unmistakable whiff of inevitability." The emails showed an "orchestrated effort" by the Justice Department and the White House to purge attorneys they did not like. "I recommend that the Department of Justice and the Office of the Counsel to the President work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys," Sampson wrote to former White House counsel Harriet Miers in January 2006. Another email from Sampson to Miers contained a list of "USA [U.S. Attorneys] in the Process of Being Pushed Out." Indeed, Karl Rove was deeply involved in the installment of his former assistant Tim Griffin as a replacement for Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins. "Tim said he got a call from Bud offering this idea that Tim come on board as a special [assistant U.S. attorney] while Bud finalizes his private sector plans," Rove deputy Scott Jennings wrote to Sampson. "That would alleviate pressure/implication that Tim forced Bud out. Any thoughts on that?" "I think it’s a great idea," Sampson responded. In another email, Sampson wrote that "getting [Griffin] appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Last month, the Justice Department told Schumer, "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin."

THE 'CLINTON DID IT TOO' DEFENSE FURTHER WEAKENED: Last week in Little Rock, Rove claimed the attorney firings were "normal and ordinary" because Clinton did the same thing when he replaced all 93 U.S. Attorneys in 1993. The difference, as former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta told The Progress Report, is that "the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution." The Clinton administration, like the H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations before it, asked for all U.S. Attorneys to resign at the beginning of their respective presidential terms. As the Carpetbagger blog reports, replacing all the prosecutors is not "remotely unusual" -- "indeed, it’s how the process is designed." "The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. ... It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways -- three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months." (Read the full CRS report here.) The new emails show the Justice Department knew what they were doing had never been done before. "In recent memory, during the Reagan and Clinton Administrations, Presidents Reagan and Clinton did not seek to remove and replace U.S. Attorneys to serve indefinitely under the holdover provision," Samson wrote.

GONZALES LIED UNDER OATH: Congress inserted a little-noticed provision into the Patriot Act in 2005 that allowed the President to install "interim" U.S Attorneys for an indefinite period of time, without Senate confirmation. Earlier this year, Gonzales promised the Senate Judiciary Committee he would not use the provision to bypass the Senate. "I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney," Gonzales said. Yesterday, Gonzales repeated this claim. "I believe fundamentally in the constitutional role of the Senate in advice and consent with respect to U.S. attorneys," he said, "and would in no way support an effort to circumvent that constitutional role." But emails from his chief of staff show the Justice Department had something else in mind. "I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments," Sampson wrote to Miers. "[By sidestepping the confirmation process] we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House." Sampson continued, "There is some risk that we’ll lose the authority, but if we don’t ever exercise it then what’s the point of having it?" The Washington Post notes that "as early as last August," Justice officials "discussed bypassing the two Democratic senators in Arkansas, who normally would have had input into the appointment."

Think Fast

The Senate voted 60-38 to approve legislation "to implement many of the remaining reforms suggested by the Sept. 11 commission." Ten Republicans crossed party lines to approve the measure; Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) skipped the vote to fundraise in California. Bush has threatened to veto the bill "over a provision to expand the labor rights of 45,000 airport screeners."

78: Percentage of Americans who "do not think the Bush administration has done enough to care for [Iraq war] veterans," a new CBS/New York Times poll shows. "A majority of Republicans agree with all Americans overall on this issue."

"The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm."

More questions about Halliburton’s move to Dubai. Senate Commerce Committee member Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asked yesterday, “I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?”

TODAY'S TOPICS: The Giuliani Myth, Profitting on Walter Reed, Halliburton, Children's Health, Gonzales, Libby Pardon, Ban DRE'S, Dumping Fox

VIDEOS...

This is just the tip of the iceberg of not only Giuliani's political duplicity, but also his incredible pre-9/11 failings, and then his gross profiteering off the attack through his phony crisis "consulting company", million dollar speaking tours, and his undisclosed deals with big corporations to pimp their products at those engagements. Just wait...but here's one of the first cracks in the Giuliani myth:

The letter from NY Firefighters reads in part: "Many people consider Rudy Giuliani 'America's Mayor,' and many of our members who don't yet know the real story, may also have a positive view of him. This letter is intended to make all of our members aware of the egregious acts Mayor Giuliani committed against our members, our fallen on 9/11, and our New York City union officers following that horrific day." Watch the clips here:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/11/firefighters-blast-rudy-giuliani/

jack cafferty sums it up nicely on CNN...amazing this guy still has a job, "This is the kind of stuff that happens when the war on terror is used as an excuse to circumvent our civil liberties, which has become the hallmark of the Bush administration." Watch the clip:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/11/cafferty-war-on-terror-is-used-as-an-excuse-to-circumvent-our-civil-liberties/

Major General Eaton interviewed by Bill Maher:

"We've got this thing that so many military believe that Republican administrations are good for the military. That is rarely the case. And, we have to get a message through to every soldier, every family member, every friend of soldiers that the Republican party, the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that's happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps."

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/49095/

Russ Feingold, January 30, 2007, on why Democrats can end the war:

“To hear some in the Administration talk, it as if these [constitutional] provisions were written in invisible ink. They were not. These powers are a clear and direct statement from the founders of our republic that Congress has authority to declare, to define, and ultimately to end a war. . . . As James Madison wrote, ‘Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.’ . . . If and when Congress acts on the will of the American people by ending our involvement in the Iraq War, Congress will be performing the role assigned it by the founding fathers, defining the nature of our military commitments and acting as a check on a President whose policies our weakening our nation. . . . In the United States of America, the people are sovereign, not the President. It is Congress’s responsibility to challenge an Administration that persists in a war that is misguided and that the country opposes. We cannot simply wring our hands and complain about the Administration’s policy. We cannot just pass resolutions saying “your policy is mistaken.” And we can’t stand idly by and tell ourselves that it’s the President’s job to fix the mess he made. It’s our job to fix the mess, and if we don’t do so, we are abdicating our responsibilities.”

END

ARTICLES...Krugman, Rich, NY Times Editorial

I was happy to see this NY Times editorial on children’s health coverage programs being cut...it says about everything there is to say about a nation's "values". here's the Times:

Democratic leaders in Congress are planning to respond with bold, and necessary, proposals to cover a large chunk of the nine million uninsured children - at a cost that could reach $50 billion to $60 billion over five years. That price tag might seem staggering when health care costs are already spiraling out of control, but less so when one considers that the administration is pouring $200 billion a year into a losing war in Iraq. Just eliminating the large overpayments granted to private health plans that participate in Medicare would save $65 billion over five years.

SNIP

…Now the Bush administration wants to focus primarily on children from families earning no more than twice the poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four, while reducing the federal matching rate for everyone else. (A typical family policy can easily cost more than $10,000 a year.) The states would have to take up the slack or watch an estimated 400,000 children - some predict many more than that - fall off the rolls.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031207H.shtml

Frank Rich writes a masterful "dot connector" column on the obvious coming pardon of Libby, how the trial relates to the biggest crimes perpetrated by our government...and what does it all mean for our country and future. Good stuff. A few clips:

Ever since all the W.M.D. claims proved false, the administration has pleaded that it was duped by the same bad intelligence everyone else saw. But the nuclear card, the most persistent and gripping weapon in the prewar propaganda arsenal, was this White House's own special contrivance. Mr. Libby was present at its creation. He knows what Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney knew about the manufacture of this fiction and when they knew it. Clearly they knew it early on. The administration's guilt (or at least embarrassment) about its lies in fomenting the war quickly drove it to hide the human price being paid for those lies. (It also tried to hide the financial cost of the war by keeping it out of the regular defense budget, but that's another, if related, story.) The steps the White House took to keep casualties out of view were extraordinary, even as it deployed troops to decorate every presidential victory rally and gave the Pentagon free rein to exploit the sacrifices of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman in mendacious P.R. stunts.

SNIP

Listening to Ms. Matalin and her fellow apparatchiks emote publicly about the punishment being inflicted on poor Mr. Libby and his family, you wonder what world they live in. They seem clueless about how ugly their sympathy for a conniving courtier sounds against the testimony of those wounded troops and their families who bear the most searing burdens of the unnecessary war WHIG sped to market. As is often noted, any parallels between Iraq and Vietnam do not extend to America's treatment of its troops. No one spits at those serving in Iraq. But our "support" for the troops has often been as hypocritical as that of an administration that still fails to provide them with sufficient armor. Health care indignities, among other betrayals of returning veterans, have been reported by countless news organizations since the war began, not just this year. Many in Congress did nothing, and we as a people have often looked the other way, supporting the troops with car decals and donated phone cards while the same history repeats itself again and again.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031107B.shtml

I guess its NY Times day...and I'll give credit where credits due. Paul Krugman writes a concise, to the point op-ed on the attorney firings, the Rove revelations/implications, and what may be coming for one of the administration's greatest criminals of all: Albert Gonzales. Here's Krugman:

And the thuggishness seems to have gone beyond firing prosecutors who didn't deliver the goods for the G.O.P. One of the fired prosecutors was - as he saw it - threatened with retaliation by a senior Justice Department official if he discussed his dismissal in public. Another was rejected for a federal judgeship after administration officials, including then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, informed him that he had "mishandled" the 2004 governor's race in Washington, won by a Democrat, by failing to pursue vote-fraud charges. As I said, none of this is surprising. The Bush administration has been purging, politicizing and de-professionalizing federal agencies since the day it came to power. But in the past it was able to do its business with impunity; this time Democrats have subpoena power, and the old slime-and-defend strategy isn't working.

SNIP

But the numbers can tell only part of the story. What we really need - and it will take a lot of legwork - is a portrait of the actual behavior of prosecutors across the country. Did they launch spurious investigations of Democrats, as I suggested last week may have happened in New Jersey? Did they slow-walk investigations of Republican scandals, like the phone-jamming case in New Hampshire? In other words, the truth about that "overblown personnel matter" has only begun to be told. The good news is that for the first time in six years, it's possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings - or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031207O.shtml

Democratic Party Dumps FOX!

MoveOn & Robert Greenwald: Major victory for real news, defeat for FOX’s right-wing misinformation - Edwards, Reid, grassroots Democrats praised for principled stand against right-wing Fox; NV Democratic Party praised for making the right choice.

FoxAttacks.com/MoveOn.org petition had over 265,000 signatures;

“Fox Attacks: Obama” video had over 280,000 views on YouTube

Today, Senator Harry Reid and the NV Democrat Party announced they would drop a FOX-sponsored debate scheduled for August – citing FOX President Roger Ailes remarks last night that compared Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden as the final straw.

“We hope this sets a precedent for all Democrats – that FOX should be treated as a right-wing misinformation network, not legitimized as a neutral source of news,” said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Civic Action. “John Edwards, Harry Reid, the Nevada Democratic Party, and grassroots progressives across the nation deserve credit for standing up to Fox’s right-wing agenda.”

END

Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing
by leveymg

Rumsfeld and Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors

A large global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management (dba, Cerberus-Gabriel), is at the center of an emerging Pentagon and CIA contracting scandal that has the attention of three Congressional Committees.

In each case, the companies under investigation have links to prominent GOP figures, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several Republican Congressmen indicted for corruption involving kickbacks from defense contractors. The Republican Congressional Campaign Commitee (RCCC) has also received substantial contributions from conservative fund managers running Cerberus, a virually unregulated $30 billion hedge fund, which owns the second largest bank in Israel.

This scandal involves the mismanagement of VA hospital facilities privatized during the Bush-Cheney Administration, as well as intelligence abuses by private CIA contractors. The scandal involving Cerberus' holding, International American Products (IAP) Worldwide Services, awarded a $120 million contract to manage facilities at Walter Reed, is only the latest in a long line of serious problems involving the company and its officers.

IAP’s President, Alfred V. Neffgen, was formerly Chief Operating Officer for KBR's government operations group, which was forced to repay tens of millions of dollars to the Defense Department for food and fuel overcharges in Iraq. IAP has other contracting connections with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton/KBR. Most recently, IAP bid on part of the Iraq oil reconstruction project as a partner with Halliburton/KBR. The Army Times reports about the Halliburton tie-in:

http://www.armytimes.com/...

But wait...there's more!!!!

BREAKING - Halliburton moving headquarters to Dubai! by Jerome a Paris http://jerome-a-paris.dailykos.com/

Just received this news alert from the Wall Street Journal

Halliburton to Move Headquarters To Dubai, Keeping Office in Houston DUBAI -- U.S. oil services giant Halliburton Co. will shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, Chief Executive Dave Lesar said Sunday. For a company that gets such a significant portion of its income from the US government, this is quite a stunning move, to say the least. Unless it means that they expect that this revenue stream will end soon - or that there is so little oil left in the USA that this is no longer where business will be? Or that it is suddenly becoming safer to stay away from US law enforcement authorities?

Last year, more than 38% of Halliburton's $13 billion oil field services revenue stemmed from sources in the eastern hemisphere, where the firm has 16,000 of its 45,000 global employees. Mr. Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the giant firm with lucrative no-bid contracts in Iraq. Federal investigators said last month that Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq. Last month, Halliburton announced a 40% decline in fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy demand for its oil field equipment and personnel.

MORE...

CORRUPTION -- HALLIBURTON LEAVING HOUSTON TO FOR 'LAISSER FAIR ATTITUDE' OF DUBAI: Halliburton, the oil services giant once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, "will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse of Dubai." Time Magazine's Karen Tumulty wondered if their were reasons for the move beyond being closer to Mideast oil reserves: "Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts." "Dubai," the Financial Times reports, "has long positioned itself as a regional business hub, with a laisser faire attitude to business regulations." House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chair Henry Waxman is "already planning to hold a hearing" on the move, Tumutly reported. Halliburton has brought the added scrutiny upon itself. In February, Waxman's committee found the U.S. government has wasted $10 billion in Iraq on "overpriced contracts or undocumented costs," and of that amount, more than $2.7 billion were charged by Halliburton. In one especially egregious case, the company "failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused 'mass sickness or death,'" according to an internal company report.

END

Brad blog section...lots of great reporting...

AVI RUBIN: 'After Four Years of Study, I Now Believe that a DRE (touch-screen) with a VVPAT (paper-trail) is Not a Reasonable Voting System'

Johns Hopkins Professor, E-Voting Security Expert Goes on Record Against Electronic Ballots at Congressional Hearings on Election Integrity...

E-Voting expert, Johns Hopkins computer science and security professor, Avi Rubin, once again stated for the record, this time in his testimony before a House subcommittee hearing on "Ensuring the Integrity of Elections", that Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems --- with or without a paper trail --- are "not reasonable" for use in a democracy. Period.

His exact words: "[A]fter four years of studying the issue, I now believe that a DRE with a VVPAT is not a reasonable voting system. "

So between Rubin's beliefs, and those of most every other computer scientist I've heard from, why do we (meaning Congress and their public-advocacy group supporters such as PFAW, Common Cause, MoveOn, VoteTrustUSA and others) continue to play this DRE game???...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4242

Fitzgerald Invited, Plame Confirmed for Testimony at Congressional Hearings

Role of Cheney and Bush in CIA Leak Scandal to be Probed in Hearings...

Impeachment, it seems to us, gets closer to "the table" every day now....

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4241

20 Voters File Complaint Alleging Touch-Screen Vote-Flipping in Montgomery County, OH

County's Election Director, Steve Harsman, Wholly Clueless...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4243