Tony Snow's Other Stupid/Ignorant Statement

  I was just going over the transcript of the White House press briefing by tony Snow yesterday and I came upon a question by a member of the press that had me rolling on the floor!

Q I have one follow-up. Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?

MR. SNOW: Yes, the President. The President is in the war every day.

Q Come on. That isn't my question.

MR. SNOW: If you ask any President who is a Commander-in-Chief --

Q On the front lines --

MR. SNOW: The President.

  I cannot believe that even Mr. Snow would have the nerve to say something so ridiculous as this! To claim that Bush is in this war in any form is an insult to not only all of our troops, but to all of the citizens of the United States.

  You all know what an I.Q. test is but I am thinking that maybe we should develop a different kind of intelligence test for the Republicans among us. We could call it a " Low Q " test and it would be one that the Republicans would actually be able to pass.

  I have a firm belief that all of the Bush administration are children that were left behind in the education process. NCLB Act is to little to late for this group of juvenile delinquents.

Technorati tags: Tony Snow, George Bush, Iraq war

F.B.I. sees more National Security Letters Abuse

From The Gavel

June 14th, 2007 by Jesse Lee

From the Judiciary Committee:

Conyers: New FBI Report Confirms “Worst Fears”

(Washington, DC)- Today, FBI officials briefed House Judiciary Committee staff on a new draft audit report detailing the bureau’s use of National Security Letters (NSLs). The briefing served to update and correct prior statements to Congress, since the release of an earlier Inspector General report. The FBI confirmed that they found more abuses in the use of NSLs than the IG’s report had originally found. FBI officials say they are launching a new compliance program as a result.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) had the following statement:

“The Patriot Act and its renewal was rammed through Congress with the repeated claim that there was not one instance in which the Act had been abused. We now know that information on law abiding Americans was illegally obtained and kept in secret files. This confirms some of our worst fears about what happens when you give the government too much power with too little oversight.”

FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data
John Solomon, Washington Post - June 14, 2007

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau’s national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI’s domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.

The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files, which mostly concerned suspected terrorist or espionage activities.

But two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents’ requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have, according to the audit results provided to The Washington Post. Only two such examples were identified earlier in the smaller sample.

FBI officials said the results confirmed what agency supervisors and outside critics feared, namely that many agents did not understand or follow the required legal procedures and paperwork requirements when collecting personal information with one of the most sensitive and powerful intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era — the National Security Letter, or NSL.

Technorati tags: House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, F.B.I., NSL's, Justice department, patriot act

Send Scooter Libby to Gitmo

  I kind of like that idea, don't you? Since a judge has ordered that Libby must spend his time in the slammer I think that we should let him go to Guantanamo for his vacation. So do the fine people over at Act For change, it would seem.

  This group is always sending letters to our Senators and Congressmen with some very good ideas. Below is the letter that I have sent to my state Senators. Keep in mind that they are both Republicans, so this should go over real well!

Former President Bush called them the "most insidious of traitors." He was referring, of course, to those who reveal the identities of America's covert operatives.

Scooter Libby is a traitor and is being detained in jail while his appeals are being heard.  Why not send Libby to Gitmo? Unlike other people currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he's been convicted of his crimes in a court of law. You might say this is inappropriate -- but if it isn't good enough for Libby, then it isn't good enough for anyone.

I ask that you publicly call for Scooter Libby to be imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- or, join fellow senators in co-sponsoring legislation to shut down Guantanamo.  Senator Feinstein has introduced legislation (S. 1249) that will require President Bush to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

You should sign on as a co-sponsor -- or publicly call for Scooter Libby to serve his sentence there.

I look forward to your response to my letter.

  That was sent to both Senator Elizabeth dole and Richard Burr here in north Carolina. Burr will probably get a little mad because he pretty much is a Bush brown noser.

Technorati tags: Scooter Libby, Gitmo, Bush, Elizabeth Dole, Republicans

Subpoenas Issued In Attorney " Purge " Scandal

   The first subpoenas to be issued in conjunction with the U.S. attorneys " purge " investigation have been sent to Sara Taylor ( ex White House political director )  and at the same time it was announced that the House Judiciary Committee will be issuing a subpoena to ex former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

   In another first for this investigation both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Committee will be issuing subpoenas for some documents from the White House.    Source

The committees have issued subpoenas for officials and documents from the Justice Department. The committees are investigating whether the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year were politically motivated and whether the White House was involved.

Taylor resigned from her White House job a couple of weeks ago. Miers resigned her White House post in January. President Bush has nominated Miers to serve on the Supreme Court but later withdrew her nomination. A day earlier, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that the last batch of e-mails provided to investigators by the Justice Department, "shows again that there was no wrongdoing in the replacement of U.S. attorneys."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been authorized to subpoena several current and former White House officials including Taylor, Miers and Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser.    CNN

  Don't look for any subpoena to be issued to Karl Rove as of yet because the committees are still building a case against him, or so they claim.

"We want to build up and get documents to have basis to ask questions of Rove," one of the sources said. "It's the way you do it in any investigation."

Having said that, the source said the reality is that this will end up in a constitutional showdown and they will never get a chance to talk to any of the White House witnesses.

  Begin impeachment proceedings against both Bush and Cheney and that will avoid any kind of constitutional showdown with these crooks.

Technorati tags: attorneys, Harriet Miers, Patrick Leahy, Karl Rove, subpoena, Senate Judicial Committee, House Judicial Committee, Sara Taylor

Iraq Not Meeting U.S. Oil Company Benchmarks

  In this surprise of a story, the New York Times says that the leaders in Iraq have haven't reached agreements on almost every law that the United States have set as benchmarks even though the Iraqi government is getting some pressure from our Congress, military commanders and from the White House.

    As is usual with this article from the times and others, the problems with the Iraqis not meeting Bush's benchmarks seem to put the oil law at the top of the list. This sham oil law is the first thing that is mentioned when referring to the Iraqis failure to get anything done.

    As you know, progress reports on the status of Iraq are due out in three months and we now have Iraqi and U.S. officials saying that they are questioning whether any of the substantial laws ( oil ) will be passed before the end of the year.

   The delusional White House ( Bush ) seem to think that getting the oil law passed will show the American citizens that progress is being made in Iraq. that is not progress unless you happen to be ExxonMobile, BP, or a few other big time players in this scam. Progress in Iraq for the American citizen would be less of our troops getting placed into body bags. That is progress!

Kurds have blocked a vote in Parliament on a new oil law. Shiite clerics have stymied an American-backed plan for reintegrating former Baathists into government. Sunnis are demanding that a constitutional review include more power for the next president.

For the handful of party leaders with the power to make deals, the promise of compromise now carries less allure than the possibility for domination. Long-suppressed Shiites and Kurds now see total victory within their grasp. Previous American benchmarks like elections have failed to bring peace and, after four years of unfulfilled promises, bloodshed and sprawling chaos, once wary glances have become cold, unblinking stares.

  Real progress in Iraq would come first by throwing Bush and Cheney out of the White House and into the World Court. That is progress!

LiveJournal tags: Iraq, oil law, Bush, Cheney, Sunnis, Kurds, Shiite, troops

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Top Donors To Hillary Clinton For Presidential Run

   It would seem that Mrs. Clinton is getting her fair share of corporate contributions from some big players.

Top Ten

1) Citigroup Inc
$101,450

2) DLA Piper
$87,350

3) Morgan Stanley
$79,350

4) NRG Energy
$73,250

5) Goldman Sachs
$68,700

6) Time Warner
$65,550

7) Farallon Capital Management
$59,800

8) Bear Stearns
$55,550

9) Avenue Capital Group
$52,600

10) JP Morgan Chase & Co
$47,950

   Courtesy of Center for Responsive Politics

 

Technorati tags: Hilliray Clinton, campaign contributions, big donors, corporate interest

Google Inc. Has Worst Privacy Practices

     A watchdog group ( Privacy International ) came out with a report on Saturday that says that Google's privacy practices are the worst of any of the Internet's top destinations.

    London-based Privacy International gave Google its lowest score possible in a category that is kept for companies with  "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

   Out of 23 companies which were surveyed, Google was the only one with the bottom of the barrel score, which is no surprise to myself.

Huffington Post

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to "achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings.

In a statement from one of its lawyers, Google said it aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record. In its most conspicuous defense of user privacy, Google last year successfully fought a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding to review millions of search requests.

"It's a shame that Privacy International decided to publish its report before we had an opportunity to discuss our privacy practices with them."

Privacy International contacted Google earlier this month, but didn't receive a response, said Simon Davies, the group's director.

The scathing report is just the latest strike aimed at Google's privacy practices.

An independent European panel recently opened an inquiry into whether Google's policies abide by Europe's privacy rules.

     Google also has a few consumer groups in the United States hot on its ass what with the proposed buyout of DoubleClick, which as you more than likely know has a nasty habit of tracking users Internet surfing habits. This is a $3.1 billion buyout and it really doesn't need to be approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission because this most certainly is not in the consumers best interest in any way, shape, or form.

    To shut the critics of this deal up, Google has said that they will start erasing user's search request info within 18 to 24 months. Sorry Google, that's not enough. 18 to 24 months? Why the year and a half wait to begin this?

As Google becomes more knowledgeable about the people relying on its search engine and other free services, management hopes to develop more tools that recommend activities and other pursuits that might appeal to individual users.

Privacy International is particularly troubled by Google's ability to match data gathered by its search engine with information collected from other services such as e-mail, instant messaging and maps.

   Bullshit! I would suggest that those of you who use Google do as I do. Erase the Google 'cookies' after you have finished your surfing, emailing, or instant messaging. Their cookies do not expire for quite some time.

Technorati tags: Google, Internet, FTC, Privacy International