New York Times: Issue The Subpoena's

   And I could not agree more!

    The Times editorial says that it is time to stop playing around with these Bush characters and to get down to business.

For months, senators have listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to make them testify in public and under oath.

Congress has now heard from everyone in the Justice Department who appears to have played a significant role in the firings of the prosecutors. They have all insisted that the actual decisions about whom to fire came from somewhere else. It is increasingly clear that the somewhere else was the White House. If Congress is going to get to the bottom of the scandal, it has to get the testimony of Mr. Rove, his aides Scott Jennings and Sara Taylor, Ms. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.

This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available means to get the information it needs.

    Senator Leahy should have issued the subpoena's right from the start in the first place and just tossed all of this playing around nice shit right out the window.

    I'm wondering how much more evidence the Bush Crime Family has had time to destroy on top of the emails that have disappeared.

 

Tags: subpoena's Bush Karl Rove Patrick Leahy Harriet Miers Bradley Schlozman, emails Congress

Bush, Republicans and Politics=Scandals

Original Article and TruthOut

Bush Scandals: It's the Politics, Stupid
     By Bernard Weiner
     The Crisis Papers

     Tuesday 05 June 2007

Overture: Now we've lost both Steve Gilliard and Molly Ivins - two vital, feisty, great-writer journalist/blogger voices speaking truth to power. And Cindy Sheehan's voice will be more muted now, as she recovers from her immensely draining anti-war battles. All three were essential to the building of our current Movement. The progressive community holds them dearly to our collective heart - and Cindy will return re-energized, we hope.

Act 1: Survival of the Unfittest

     When trying to figure out the motives of the Bush Administration on nearly any issue you can think of, the first place to look should always be Karl Rove's "politics" workshop. By "politics," I mainly mean how an action affects the survival of the CheneyBush Administration, and only incidentally with how it affects the Republican Party.

     This solipsistic concern for their own political/economic welfare is as true today with regard to the various impeachable scandals - lying to Congress to foment wars, the outing of a covert CIA agent, the domestic spying program, U.S. Attorney firings, etc. - as it was in the first years of the CheneyBush Administration.

     We were told in those early years, by a White House insider, of the predominance of Rove's political operation in deciding which policies the Administration would advocate and support. Whoops! Strike that word "predominance," since there was virtually no policy-making apparatus in the White House; politics was effectively the ONLY thing in play.

"Kids on Big Wheels

     That insider was John DiIulio, who was the first chief of Bush's faith-based-funding operation - another politics-based scheme, this one designed to pay off the fundamentalist base with grants of public funds to religious groups. DiIulio in 2002 put his finger right on the button of why the CheneyBush Administration has been such a train-wreck. Here's his money-quote in Ron Suskind's January 2003 article in Esquire:

"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis. ... When policy analysis is just backfill, to back up a political maneuver, you'll get a lot of ooops."

     Suskind writes:

"An unnamed 'current senior White House official' [said] pretty much the same thing: 'Many of us feel it's our duty - our obligation as Americans - to get the word out that, certainly in domestic policy, there has been almost no meaningful consideration of any real issues. It's just kids on Big Wheels, who talk politics and know nothing. It's depressing. DPC (Domestic Policy Council) meetings are a farce'."

Iraq in "06, Iraq in '08

     It must be obvious to everyone by now that the CheneyBush Administration has no intention of getting out of Iraq, and recent events have served as confirmation. Bush and his Press Secretary Tony Snow blathered on the other day about the U.S. staying on in Iraq as it has in South Korea for 54 years. Defense Secretary Gates confirmed that policy a few days ago that America might well stay in its hardened military bases in Iraq for many decades.

     Plus, the U.S. is constructing the world's largest embassy, which CheneyBushRove envision will be the locus for U.S. political and military adventures in the greater Middle East for decades to come. Bush is quoted in a Dallas newspaper telling Texas friends that he is setting up Iraq so his successor can not get out of "our country's destiny."

     But the prospect of the U.S. troops being bled to death by a thousand "insurgent" cuts over that time frame is not something the American citizenry might look on with favor, so there's always a countervailing political spin going on to create confusion and try to take the sting out. And, surprise!, that spin gets spun as a new election cycle in America comes into play.

Iraw Withdrawal - Talk Then

     Do you remember what happened in Iraq prior to the all-important 2006 midterm election? Here's how arch-conservative Pat Buchanan ( www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=6812 reported it in July of 2005:

"Standing beside our defense secretary in Baghdad, Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari called for the speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces. The top U.S. commander, Gen. George Casey, also standing beside Rumsfeld, said 'fairly substantial' withdrawals of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq could begin by spring...

"Casey's comment lends credence to a secret British defense memo that described U.S. officials as favoring a 'relatively bold reduction in force numbers.' The memo pointed to a drawdown of Allied forces from 170,000 today to 66,000 by next summer, a cut of over 60 percent.

"Previously, the administration had denounced war critics who spoke of timetables, arguing that they signal the enemy to go to earth, build its strength, and strike weakened U.S. forces during the pullout. Now, America's top general is talking timetables."

     But, of course, major withdrawals of American troops never happened and any ideas about timetables were scrapped. It was all spin designed for the 2006 midterm election, to help the Republicans maintain their majorities in the House and Senate. (The Roveian ploy didn't work, as the American public, tired of being bamboozled yet again, threw the GOP bums out and installed Democratic majorities.)

Iraw Withdrawal - Talk Now

     These days, even amidst the talk of America remaining in Iraq for decades, the Administration is engaging in feints and spin about the possibility of the U.S. withdrawing tens of thousands of troops prior to the 2008 election - the election, it just so happens, that will decide which party controls the Executive Branch (and presidential pardons) for the next four years.

     Just a few weeks ago, anonymous "senior administration officials" leaked to the New York Times that the Iraq plan being considered calls "for a reduction in forces that could lower troop levels [in] the midst of the 2008 presidential election to roughly 100,000, from about 146,000..."

     Do they think we're that stupid not to see through their unbelievable, pre-election B.S.? Wait, don't answer that question.

     Clearly, the Congressional Republicans have got to figure out a way to seem to be supporting Bush's war while not being associated with it in any way. They know that support for the war is poison at the polls and that they'll lose their jobs in a crushing defeat in 2008 unless the Iraq War news starts turning positive and quickly. So spinning the possibility of troop withdrawals is to their partisan benefit.

     But those withdrawals ain't gonna happen. The Bush Administration, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, launched an unnecessary war, botched its implementation and occupation, and helped foment a sectarian civil war. There is no way, at least not at this stage, that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, no way that the U.S. comes out looking good.

     All the options at this stage are awful, but some, such as withdrawal ASAP, are less onerous than the others. Staying in-country, presumably hunkered down in hardened military bases on Iraqi soil, is no solution at all, good, bad or otherwise. It turns American troops into stationary targets for mortar and rocket attacks on the bases and moving targets and potential political hostages once they drive off them. CheneyBush simply refuse to acknowledge that most Iraqis do not want foreigners permanently occupying their country.

Act 2: 2008 is All That Matters

     Am I making this up, that all policy is filtered through a Rovian political prism - even, or especially, U.S. strategy in Iraq? Don't take my word for it. Check out what the Washington Post's former Baghdad Bureau Chief, Rajiv Chandrasekeran, reported in his book, " Imperial Life in the Emerald City."

     As Chandrasekeran reports, the Coalition Provisional Authority overseeing the U.S. occupation in the first few years was an ongoing disaster, run by incompetent bunglers who could not talk or think straight. Supposedly the CPA was preparing the ground for a functioning democracy in Iraq - based on setting up a privatized, free-market "libertarian paradise," heedless of cultural/historical realities - but since the CPA had FUBAR-ed the situation so totally, Chandrasekeran wrote:

"What was best for Iraq [in 2004] was no longer the standard. What was best for Washington was the new calculus. ... The only election that mattered was the one in November - in the United States."

     And that's where we are today both with regard to policy in and about Iraq, and domestic policy as well. Unless it helps Rove lay the groundwork for a GOP presidential victory in 2008 - achieved by hook or by crook - forget about it.

The US Attorneys Scandal

     We now know, based on the evidence that has surfaced in the past several months, that the presidential vote in November of 2008 is what lies at the heart of the U.S. Attorneys scandal. Rove has a long history of winning elections by any means necessary; one of his main ways of doing this is to encourage the removal of hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the precinct rolls in key states, by illegal or unethical means. Usually, these voters are simply bumped from the rolls; most of them live in vulnerable minority areas.

     In addition, many of the fired U.S. attorneys in those key states were leaned on by Rove and his minions to file criminal charges against individuals or groups registering new Democratic voters and to do so before the elections. It didn't matter if the charges were unsubstantiated or ridiculous - file the charges, smear the Dems and their supporters prior to the balloting, make them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the indictments, scare away wavering voters who might vote Democratic, etc. For example, New Mexico's U.S. Attorney David Iglesias says he was fired because he wouldn't file what he called "bogus" charges of "voter fraud" before the election.

     As the U.S. attorneys scandal unravels, the situation inside Alberto Gonzales' Department of Justice has been revealed to be even more outrageous: The DOJ, it turns out, is basically run as an arm of the White House's political operation: inquiring about ideology and party affiliation (which is illegal) before appointing applicants to judicial jobs, staffing the Civil Rights Division with those antagonistic to civil rights and thus not following the law, etc. And other government agencies are similarly infected as well, holding workplace seminars on ways to aid "our candidates," which is also illegal, etc.

     It's abundantly clear that Gonzales will not resign and will not be fired; he's the consiglieri in the White House mob, knowing too much about the various illegalities to be cut loose. The House should initiate impeachment hearings of Gonzales ASAP.

Epilogue: CheneyBush Must Go Soonest

     Likewise, Bush and Cheney will not resign. They are prepared to sacrifice thousands of more troops in Iraq - and perhaps put them in danger over Iran as well - in order to further their imperial policies in the greater Middle East. During the next year and a half of their scheduled tenure, the damage CheneyBush can do is immense: further destruction of constitutional protections, fomenting more terrorist anger, ruining America's reputation even more through aggressive wars and through other policies as well; even on global warming, for example, Bush is unwilling to do anything meaningful, other than to delay and delay until he leaves office.

     The only way out of this reckless nightmare endangering America's national security is to initiate impeachment hearings at once against Cheney and Bush. Once their "high crimes and misdemeanors" are laid out as evidence for all the public to see, it's conceivable that many Republicans will join the effort to convict, if for no other reason than to hang on to their Congressional positions in the 2008 election. It's won't be done maliciously - it's just politics.

    ---------

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers. To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net.

Tags: George Bush Republicans Iraq Dick Cheney Karl Rove Middle East Alberto Gonzales DoJ politics Iraqi withdrawal

Iraqi Lawmakers Forcing End Of Occupation?

   Here is something that you will not hear on Fox News anytime soon or anywhere else on television for that matter.

   The Iraqi Parliament passed a binding resolution that guarantees lawmakers a chance at blocking the extension of the U.N. mandate which keeps coalition troops in Iraq, which is coming up for renewal in December. Of course, Iraqi Bush minion Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is said to probably veto the attempt.

The law requires that any future extensions of the mandate, which have previously been made by Iraq's Prime Minister, be approved by the parliament. It is an enormous development; lawmakers reached in Baghdad today said that they do in fact plan on blocking the extension of the coalition's mandate when it comes up for renewal six months from now.

Reached today by phone in Baghdad, Nassar al Rubaie, the head of Al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives, said, "this new binding resolution will prevent the government from renewing the UN mandate without the parliament's permission. They'll need to come back to us by the end of the year, and we will definitely refuse to extend the UN mandate without conditions." Rubaie added: "there will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the UN mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."     AlterNet for more

   This could be something in the making here, not to mention the fact that the Iraqi parliament is making our Democratic Congress look sort of wimpy, which they are getting to be. While our Congress and Senate ignore the will of the Americans who gave them the power, the Iraqis are listening to their citizens and are trying to take some action to end our occupation of their war- torn country. Maybe the Democrats in the United States should pay attention and take some notes!

Tags: Iraq parliament Baghdad occupation coalition forces

Will Paid Mercenaries Turn On American Citizens?

   This post and the following story goes right in step with my previous piece concerning companies like Blackwater and what they do in Iraq.

 Philosopher Karl Popper: ” ‘It cannot happen here’ is always wrong. A dictatorship can happen anywhere.”

Mercenary units are a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built rogue paramilitary forces. And the appearance of Blackwater fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, may be a grim taste of the future. In New Orleans Blackwater charged the government $240,000 a day.

The word contractor helps launder the fear and threat out of a more accurate term: “paramilitary force.” We’re not supposed to have such forces in the United States, but we now do. And if we have them, we have a potential threat to democracy. On U.S. soil, Blackwater so far has shown few signs of being an out-and-out rogue retainer army, though they looked the part in New Orleans. But were this country to become even a little less stable, outfits like Blackwater might see a heyday. If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets.        Philadelphia Inquirer

  So, you complacent, ignorant little asshole's out there in fantasy land just keep on thinking that these things can't happen here. They thought the same thing in Cuba, China, and almost every other communist country and country that are now run by dictators.

  So, to you ignorant asshole's I have one thing to say. When the shit hits the fan and you have no-where to run to, I'll be glad to help you for a small fee of, say, $1,000 per day, same as Blackwater.

Tags: Blackwater Christian Right paramilitary forces mercenaries United States

Iraq’s Mercenaries - With A Licence To Kill

One day, not so far off, the chickens may come home to roost. If you remain a compliant, docile citizenry, nothing will happen to you. But if you try to object to your destitution and deplorable living conditions under the new American dictatorship, your own mercenaries will deal with you. What a day to watch. An ignorant citizenry does not deserve democracy. They will surely but slowly earn the price of their carelessness and inaction, and they deserve it.  (Saila, commenting on the Bush private armies from a story at Common Dreams, which follows.)

******

Published on Monday, June 4, 2007 by The Independent/UK

Iraq’s Mercenaries - With A Licence To Kill
‘These private contractors can get away with murder… They aren’t subject to any laws at all’

by Johann Hari

Iraq is rapidly vanishing into the mists of uncollectable, unknowable news, with information travelling only as far as an Iraqi scream can be heard. But sometimes, if you peer closely, you can glimpse reality. Last week, Shia militiamen seized four “security contractors” working for the Canadian company Gardaworld. Buried in the story of this small horror is the bigger tale of a vast shift in how Western wars will be fought in the 21st century if the American right has its way - and one of the great lost scandals of this war.

These men are not “security contractors”, nor are they “civilian operatives”, nor “reconstruction workers”. There are now more of them in Iraq than there are professional soldiers: Britain alone has 21,000 in the country, raking in $1.6bn a year.

As he scurried out the door in 2004, Paul Bremer - the first US viceroy to Iraq - issued Order 17, which exempted all mercenaries operating in the country from having to obey the law. He in effect gave these men a licence to kill - and they are using it, every day.

Yas Ali Mohammed Yassiri was a peaceful 19-year-old Iraqi trying to get on with an ordinary life in a deeply unordinary Baghdad when he boarded a taxi on his street in the Masbah neighbourhood. The mercenaries guarding the US embassy spokesman in Baghdad drove around the corner, so Ali’s taxi slowed down - but the convoy opened fire anyway, to clear their path. Ali was hit in the throat and died immediately. Although the US embassy now admits the convoy “opened fire prematurely”, the mercenaries were merely sent home; they are free, happy men.

This is not a one-off freak. It is virtually an everyday occurrence. Colonel Thomas Hammed, who was placed in charge of rebuilding the Iraqi military by Bush, explains, “They [the mercenaries] made enemies everywhere. I would ride around with Iraqis in beat-up Iraqi trucks, they were running me off the road. We were threatened and intimidated.”

In April 2004, mercenaries working for a private militia named Blackwater were guarding US occupation headquarters in Najaf when a protest by Shia Iraqi civilians began to stir outside. According to the Washington Post and eyewitnesses, Blackwater opened fire on the protesters, unleashing so many rounds so rapidly they had to pause every 15 minutes to allow their gun barrels to cool down. A video of this attack made it on to the Web, where a mercenary can be seen describing the Iraqis they are gunning down as “fuckin’ niggers”.

The distinguished reporter Jeremy Scahill claims in his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, that mercenary troops in Iraq are even using “experimental ammunition” that US forces are forbidden from firing. These bullets, made of “blended metal”, are designed to shatter on impact, creating “untreatable wounds”. One mercenary recently bragged about the ammo’s impact when he shot an Iraqi with it: “It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower-left section of his stomach… everything was torn apart.”

Last year, Representative Dennis Kucinich asked Pentagon officials at a Senate hearing if the US Department of Defence would prosecute a private contractor who murdered Iraqi civilians. After being told repeatedly, “Sir, I can’t answer that question,” Kucinich said: “Wow. Think about what that means. These private contractors can get away with murder… They aren’t subject to any laws at all.”

How did this happen? How did Iraq become flooded with private militia making a killing? The story begins back in the early 1990s, when Dick Cheney was secretary of state for defence. He believed Pentagon “bureaucracy” was mere Big Government and had to be smashed into a thousand corporate pieces to be made “efficient”. Cheney’s proposals continued at a slow pace during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who brought mercenaries into the Balkans - then went into over-drive when he was Vice President.

The US right has a slew of reasons to privatise the US military so rapidly. The most obvious is simple corruption. It funnels money to companies in which they have a huge stake, and who in turn donate a fortune to the Republican Party. This is justified in public by a market fundamentalist conviction that governments can never run anything properly, so their functions must always be sold off.

But this is a secondary motive. The main limit on an aggressive US foreign policy today is the limited number of US citizens who are prepared to kill and die for it. Mercenaries solve the problem: just buy troops in. The public is far less likely to protest against a war if the victims are hardened Colombians in it for the cash, rather than their cousin from Wisconsin who signed up out of patriotism. In mercenary wars, all citizens are asked to give is money, not blood. The Cheney model of mercenary warfare being tried out in Iraq is, in fact, a way of making possible his vision of a 21st century in which wars for resources will be “necessary” on a “regular basis”.

We have been here before. In his Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli describes how, in its dying days, the Roman Empire was no longer able to inspire a large citizen-militia, and increasingly bought armies of willing foreigners. The result was dissolution, decadence and imperial collapse. What would the world look like if Cheney’s vision of privatised armies prevailed in this century? There would be far more wars, far less checked by the rules of war built up after the nightmare of the 1940s: in other words, more Iraqs.

History also points towards a longer-term danger. Where governments depend on private armies, they become increasingly their servants, physically incapable of standing up to them. In the 14th century, corporations determined the fate of the Hundred Years War, and in lulls in the fighting would burn down towns that refused to pay for their protection. The French sovereign was powerless to stop them, because his own forces were too feeble.

Little more than a century ago, the East India Company ignored the explicit orders of the British government and attacked Portuguese garrisons in India, solely to boost its own profit margins. The Empire relied on private militias, until they slipped off the leash. Phillip Bobbit, a former advisor to presidents Nixon and Reagan, warns in his book The Shield of Achilles that as we dissolve back into private armies, we are setting ourselves up for a repeat of this corporate dominance over government.

Dick Cheney effectively believes in rule by corporations, rather than rule by the state, so for him, this is a comforting vision. For the rest of us, the seizure of British mercenaries in Baghdad provides us with a glimpse of a future where we are stumbling unwittingly on to corporate battlefield with no end. The Iraqis are living - and dying - in this dystopia today.

j.hari@ independent.co.uk

© 2007 The Independent

 

Tags: Iraq George Bush Dick Cheney Blackwater mercenaries

Democratic Congress Takes Drop In Polls

   A new ABC News poll shows that the Democratic Congress is going down in the ratings of the American public and that drop has mostly to do with the Democrats not getting anything done about Iraq.

   Six weeks ago the Democrats held a 24-point lead over Bush as the stronger leadership force in Washington; today that's collapsed to a dead heat. The Democrats' overall job approval rating likewise has dropped, from a 54 percent majority to 44 percent now -- with the decline occurring almost exclusively among strong opponents of the Iraq War.

Yet the Democrats' losses have not produced much in the way of gains for Bush or his party. The president's approval rating remains a weak 35 percent, unchanged from mid-April at two points from his career low in ABC News/Washington Post polls. The Republicans in Congress do about as badly, with just 36 percent approval.

Another figure underscores the public's broad grumpiness: Seventy-three percent now say the country's off on the wrong track, the most in just over a decade

  Grumpiness? I think that it is a little bit more than being grumpy since we have a president who is an asshole and ignorant along with the rest of the Republican base. We have a Democrat controlled Congress who won't do the right thing by our troops in Iraq by just flat-out cutting the war funding and to top it off, these jerks are spouting the Republican crap about our troops having the equipment they need so we'll just let Bush spend another $120 billion of the anti-war taxpayers money.

   We are not grumpy, we are hostile!

The shift away from the Democrats in Congress has occurred on two levels. In terms of their overall approval rating, the damage is almost entirely among people who strongly oppose the war in Iraq. In this group 69 percent approved of the Democrats in April, but just 54 percent still approve now -- a likely effect of the Democrats' failure to push a withdrawal timetable through Congress.

Their decline in leadership ratings vs. Bush is more broadly based -- that's occurred among war opponents and supporters alike, apparently reflecting more an assessment of their performance than an expression of support or opposition.

  Here's a little more info about feelings on the escalation.

 

More than anything, these views are fueled by the continued grind of the war in Iraq. Few think the Bush "surge" is working -- 64 percent see no significant progress restoring civil order there -- and, looking ahead, 58 percent predict it will not succeed.

Sixty-one percent say the war was not worth fighting (down a scant five points from April's record high) and majorities reject many of Bush's arguments in support of the war -- that it's a critical component of the war on terrorism, that it has improved long-term U.S. security and that withdrawing poses more danger than remaining.

Perhaps most challenging is the president's credibility gap: Sixty percent of Americans feel they can't trust the Bush administration to honestly and accurately report intelligence about security threats facing the United States. That makes any of Bush's arguments a hard sell.

Indeed, the public still trusts the Democrats in Congress over Bush to handle the situation in Iraq, by 51 percent to 35 percent. But the Democrats' number has slipped from 58 percent in April and a high of 60 percent in January.

The toll of this discontent is unmistakable. Bush has not seen majority approval in any ABC/Post poll since January 2005; in presidential polling back to the late 1930s, only President Truman stayed so low for a longer period of time. And Americans are nearly three times as likely to "strongly" disapprove of Bush's job performance (46 percent) as to strongly approve (17 percent).

Tags: George Bush Iraq Democrats ABC news Congress

Congressman Jerrold Nadler Begins Hearings On Civil Liberties and Constitution Examining Bush's Action's and Programs

Hearings Announced: “The Constitution in Crisis”

May 31st, 2007 by Jesse Lee @ The Gavel

From Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler:

Chairman Nadler Announces Hearings Series: “The Constitution in Crisis: The State of Civil Liberties in America”

Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee to Explore Administration Programs Threatening Americans’ Liberties;

Kicks Off with June 7 Hearing on NSA Wiretapping Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, announced a series of hearings titled “The Constitution in Crisis: The State of Civil Liberties in America.” In these hearings, the Subcommittee will examine the Bush Administration’s policies, actions and programs that threaten Americans’ fundamental constitutional rights and civil liberties and also hear proposals for potential legislative fixes.

The series will begin with a hearing on June 7, 2007, which will examine the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and the Administration’s proposals for expanding it.

“This Congress must void the blank check the White House has enjoyed for the last six years,” said Rep. Nadler. “The time for real accountability and meaningful oversight is now, and this Subcommittee will fulfill its constitutional duty to protect the fundamental freedoms of all Americans.”

Topics to be covered by the hearings include:

· The National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and proposed expansions;
· The erosion of Habeas Corpus through the Military Commissions Act;
· The sanctioning of torture through the Military Commissions Act and other government policies;
· The practice of “extraordinary rendition,” or government sponsored kidnapping;
· PATRIOT Act threats to privacy rights, including the FBI’s abuses of the National Security Letter authority and intrusions into Americans’ “Freedom to Read”;
· Government surveillance of First Amendment-protected activities; and
· The gutting of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights Divisions.

“Most importantly, we will carefully examine this White House’s seeming disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law,” added Rep. Nadler. “Secret, warrantless spying, the erosion of habeas corpus, the sanction of torture, and this Administration’s contempt for the other two branches of government - these issues demand close scrutiny and congressional action.”

Rep. Nadler has already introduced a number of important pieces of legislation in the 110th Congress to restore some of the basic civil liberties that the Bush Administration has stripped from the Constitution. Along with Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA-36), Rep. Nadler introduced H.R.1415, the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 along with H. R. 1416, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007. Both bills would fix many of the problems contained in the Military Commissions Act.

What: House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Oversight Hearing on the Constitutional Limitations on Domestic Surveillance

Who: Steven G. Bradbury, Assistant Attorney General, Office of General Counsel

Bruce Fein, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General

Jameel Jaffer, Director, National Security Project, American Civil Liberties Union

Lou Fisher, American Law Division, Library of Congress

When: Thursday, June 7, 2007 — 2:00 p.m.

Where: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building

Tags: Constitution Civil Liberties Jerrold Nadler George Bush NSA FBI

Congressman William Jefferson Indicted

    Louisiana Democrat Rep. William Jefferson was finally indicted today on federal racketeering charges along with charges of shopping for bribes ( soliciting ) and money laundering concerning some business deals he had tried to broker in Africa.

  A federal court in Alexandria., Va. handed up the indicted which is 94 pages long and lists 16 alleged federal law violations which could get him up to 235 years at the local federal club med.

Among the charges listed in the indictment, said the official, are racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.       MSNBC

  You may recall that $90,000 was found in his freezer back in August 2005 and the shithead still has the nerve to say that he is innocent. He has the Nigerian connection also tagged to him since he bribed an official in the country. We all know how honest those people are.

  He is indicted now, so the Democrats need to toss him out of any position that he has left in the House.

Tags: Rep. William Jefferson indicted bribery Nigeria

Democrats Debate In New Hampshire

    The Democratic presidential hopefuls had another debate tonight which consisted of the usual barbs about Iraq with John Edwards jumping on both Senator's Clinton and Obama for not taking the lead action on the Iraq war spending bill.

   John Edwards: "They went quietly to the floor of the Senate, cast the right vote -- but there is a difference between leadership and legislators."

   When asked to name names by Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Edwards said, "Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama did not say anything about how they were going to vote until they appeared on the floor of the Senate and voted."

Sen. Obama didn't care for the comments from John Edwards so he shot back with...,"The fact is that I opposed this war from the start."

"So you're about 4 1/2 years late on leadership on this issue. And, you know, I think it's important not to play politics on something that is as critical and as difficult as this.It is not easy to vote for cutting off funding, because the fact is, there are troops on the ground."

  It would seem that Mr. Obama has a little bit of that Republican talking points bullshit in his blood concerning the troops and cutting off the funding. I have to wonder, does Senator Obama really believe that cutting off the funding will put our troops in jeopardy? If he does buy into that bullshit, then he is obviously to ignorant to run the United States Government from the White House and he has no business being the President of the United States.

   My next thought is, if he doesn't believe that crap then why is he saying it? That would suggest that he agrees with the GOP. It would seem that most of the Democrats seem to agree with Bush on Iraq since they continue to screw around with the White House and they keep funding this sorry excuse for a war.

    Sad to say that it is all about the oil in Iraq with the Democrats also.

   The debate did cover a few other topics such as immigration and such. Blitzer asked the wannabe's if they believed that English should be the United States official language. They were asked to raise their hands and only Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska, raised his hand.

Mike Gravel: "We speak English. That doesn't mean we can't encourage other languages. I speak French and English. People speak Spanish and English. But the official language of the United States of America is English."

   On the Middle East and the rest of the planet...

Clinton said her husband, former president Bill Clinton, would play a role in another Clinton administration.

"When I become president, Bill Clinton, my dear husband, will be one of the people who will be sent around the world as a roving ambassador ... trying to make friends and allies and stopping the alienation of the rest of the world," she said.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as U.N. ambassador and Secretary of Energy during Bill Clinton's administration, said he thinks Clinton could serve a role in the Middle East.

"This administration has not had a Middle East peace envoy as other bipartisan administrations have had. We have serious problems in the Middle East," he said.

Gravel said he would use the former president as a roving ambassador.

"He'd be good," Gravel said. "He can take his wife with him, who will still be in the Senate."

  On Tuesday, the Republican contenders will be here (New Hampshire) for their very own comedy debate which should be a riot.

Tags: Democrats John Edwards Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Iraq immigration

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