GOP Rep. Bob Ney to plead guilty and he's going to jail

Bob Ney, one of the leading Republicans in Congress, will plead guilty tomorrow to charges stemming from his relationship with Jack Abramoff:

A guilty plea would make Mr. Ney, a six-term congressman, the first member of Congress to admit to criminal charges in the Abramoff investigation, which has focused on the actions of several current and former Republican lawmakers who had been close to the former lobbyist.

People with detailed knowledge of the investigation said Mr. Ney had entered an in-patient rehabilitation facility in recent days for treatment of alcoholism, making it uncertain whether he would appear at a court hearing to announce the plea. Lawyers and others would speak only anonymously because of concern they would anger prosecutors.

They said the agreement with the Justice Department — and the exact criminal charges, which are expected to include conspiracy and false statement — would be disclosed in Washington as soon as Friday and would probably require Mr. Ney to serve at least some time in prison.

Yep, the Mayor of Capitol Hill is going to jail. Maybe he can share a cell with Duke Cunningham -- or Tom DeLay. Read More......

Senate Republicans protect terrorists

Not really, but it's what George Bush would say, and after 6 years of listening to his moronic pronouncements on issues he can't possibly understand, it's fun to turn his idiotic assertions on his own party once in a while.

Now that that's out of the way, this is important. For five years this administration has poo-poo'd laws, both international and domestic, that are in place to protect us from harm by others. They are not in place to protect furners, they're in place to protect our soldiers and our citizens.

Case in point, the Geneva Conventions. We didn't sign them because we're nice guys. We signed them because we don't want other people abusing OUR troops. Same logic applies to why we let foreign diplomats do bad things in America yet still don't charge them with a crime. We don't want bad governments to trump up charges against OUR diplomats.

But all of that is far too complicated of logic for a president who is an idiot. If you're simple-minded, it's understandable that you can't quite fathom why we'd want to let suspected terrorists have rights so that our troops and citizens are offered their rights in return.

And a word about suspected terrorists. The operative word there is suspected. In America, you're innocent until proven guilty - something that Republicans don't like much. Or rather, they like to demean the concept for partisan reasons - it's good fodder to attack "criminals" and the Democrats who defend them. Or in the case of George Bush, he doesn't believe in protecting the rights of possible criminals because he's simply too stupid to understand why such rights exist in the first place.

Again, we believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty NOT to protect murderers, but to protect the rest of us innocents when we're accused of being murderers falsely.

It's a concept Bush, and far too many Republicans can't understand, either because they're simply too dim, or worse, because they don't really believe in democracy, or America. George Bush Republicans believe that the state knows all and knows best, and if a government official wants to charge you with a crime, or even investigate you for a crime, that government official can do whatever it wants, to hell with the law. You have no rights as a suspect because government knows best.

That's what the military tribunal debate is really about. It's about whether we think US troops deserve to be treated like human beings when they're captured by the enemy.

The sickest part of all. It's entirely possible that George Bush actually understands the reason we have such laws in place IS to protect our own troops. The reality is, he simply may not care. Read More......

Creation of the next generation of conflict, in Gaza

Anyone who asks how anybody could possibly hate America should read this article about the imminent collapse of the economy in Gaza. Not that it's our fault -- it's not -- but perception is everything, and millions of people will see the videos and the pictures and blame the U.S. The current situation is ugly, and it's likely to get worse. Malnutrition, civil strife, and increasingly angry citizens are all worrisome indicators, politically and morally. The problems inherent in lack of electricity (since Israel bombed the only power plant, Gaza gets between 7 and 12 hours of power a day, at unpredictable times) include shutdown of any modern commerce, inability to keep food from spoiling, and, worst, lack of running water, which depends on electric pumps.

Palestinian leadership certainly deserves some blame for the current disaster, as the article indicates:

Hamas promised security in its victorious election campaign. But it has failed at that, said Hamdi Shaqqura of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "There is security chaos and no respect for law," he said, and a prime reason is the involvement of the police and security forces, many of them from Fatah, in the lawlessness, and the constant clashes with militia and gunmen affiliated with Hamas. "People who are supposed to protect the law are the people who break it," he said, "and no one is brought to justice." For this chaos, he said, "I must blame the Palestinian Authority," not Israel.

I'm sure, however, that this isn't the majority opinion. After all, the U.S. trumpeted democracy, practically calling it the cure for all ills in the Middle East. So Palestinians went to the polls and elected a political party that they felt best represented their concerns, rejecting the corruption of the Fatah party and going with the one that provided goods and services, as well as a sense of pride: Hamas. Hamas, of course, happens to be a terrorist group, which the West (rightly) dislikes, though the will of the people was indisputable. As a result, however, the international aid Gaza depended on was cut off.

It is difficult to exaggerate the economic collapse of Gaza, with the Palestinian Authority cut off from funds by Israel, the United States and the European Union after Hamas won the legislative elections on Jan. 25. Since then, the authority has paid most of its 73,000 employees here, nearly 40 percent of Gaza’s work force, only 1.5 months’ salary, resulting in a severe economic depression and growing signs of malnutrition, especially among the poorest children.

Unemployment is reportedly nearing 50%, which means you have lots and lots of Palestinians with nothing to do all day, leaving plenty of time to contemplate ways to avenge their situation. Having thousands of people without jobs, without hope, and without something to occupy their time and energy is a recipe for disaster, and in this age of globalization, the results of that disaster, as we've seen repeatedly, aren't likely to stay localized. One of the greatest motivations for human action is humiliation. If you want to make an enemy for life, all you have to do is humiliate someone, and the themes of humiliation and impotence are hugely influential in Arabic literature and thought.

His son Muhammad is a Palestinian Authority policeman who is supposed to make $340 a month, but who has been paid only $500 since Feb. 1. Now, Fatma says, "he spends little time at home, because he hasn’t a shekel in his pocket, and he’s ashamed."

The one percent doctrine shouldn't be that we attack a country if there's a one percent chance they could harm us, it should be that we try to alleviate the conditions that cause shame and humiliation and despair because -- aside from vaild humanitarian considerations -- there's a one percent chance it might keep someone from becoming a terrorist down the road (literally and figuratively).

But the Bush administration can't even put together a consistent policy when it comes to this stuff. We're for elections, except when we're not. We're for human rights, except when we're not. We're for democracy, except when we're not. A little bit of diplomacy, a little bit of aid, and a little bit of hope would go a long way in Gaza. As it is now, we're helping cultivate the next generation of Middle East conflict. Read More......

Conservatives continue to claim that Disney/ABC mockumentary was "based on the 9/11 Commission Report"

Here's what widely-read GOP pundit Ann Coulter has to say about the mockumentary:

If you wonder why it took 50 years to get the truth about Joe McCarthy, consider the fanatical campaign of the Clinton acolytes to kill an ABC movie that relies on the 9/11 Commission Report...

See, the right-wingers are claiming that the TV show's defamation is based in fact. (And you do have to love the fact that Coulter throws in a quick defense of Joseph McCarthy's devastating rampage of defamation. How many different levels of irony can you put in a single sentence?) That means that Disney/ABC's damages when Clinton, Berger, Albright and American Airlines sue them will be all the bigger because the message is being spread across the land (well across the entire English-speaking world) that the tv show's defamation is based in fact.

PS We don't link to skank. Read More......

Open thread

News? Read More......

Chertoff: If we inspect cargo for nukes, the terrorists win

Well that's a unique argument, even from the always-creative Bush administration.

You see, Osama's goal is to bankrupt us - or so we hear. And that means that if we scan cargo coming into the US to make sure it doesn't contain a nuclear bomb, well, that would cost money, and spending money is what Osama wants us to do. So, wise man that Chertoff is (you'll recall, he was in charge of Hurrice Katrina response), we're going to outsmart Osama and not spend much money at all on checking for nukes.

Take that, Tall One!

Of course, if Chertoff and Bush were serious about not bankrupting the country, they'd figure out what to do about Bush's great adventure in Iraq that's costing us nearly $100 billion a year. That would buy a lot of anti-nuke protection.

But hey, no one ever accused Republicans of wanting to spend money on anything other than tax cuts and invading small countries. And no one ever accused the Bush administration of actually making us safer. Read More......

GOP Senate Leader Bill Frist is trying to put special interest gambling amendment on Iraq and Afghanistan funding bill

Our soldiers are dying in a foreign quagmire - two actually - and the Republicans' top priority is putting pork on our defense bill for special interest lobbyists that have nothing to do with defense or foreign policy or anything even vaguely related.

In fact, this is the same legislation in which House Republicans earlier this year carved out special rights for horse race gambling online. Yes, the House legislation included specific language, inserted by lobbyists, to ensure that horse race gambling stays legal on the Internet. Does Senator Frist's bill include the same?

Now, how does gambling have anything to do with the defense of our country? It doesn't. But this is what our country has come to. Somhow Republicans want us to believe that handing out bennies to the religious right and to special gambling interests is actually helping us defend the homeland, when in fact, they're defending their wallets and their rich donors at the expense of our troops.

If you think gambling legislation helps us fight Al Qaeda, then please do vote Republican in the fall. Read More......

Novak says Armitage is lying about Plame leak

Well this is getting interesting. Novak says Armitage lied to CBS - his revelation about Plame was not just idle chatter. Which begs a very large question - who put Bush's Deputy Secretary of State up to the task of taking down Plame and Wilson? I have a very hard time believing Armitage just did it out of the wickedness of his own heart, with no prompting.

You're going down, Dicky. Time to fess up. Read More......

Powell joins McCain, Warner and Lindsey opposing Bush's torture plan

Bush is on the Hill today to push his pro-torture agenda. Colin Powell just undermined Bush's plan:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed efforts by three Republican senators to block President Bush's plan to authorize harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

The latest sign of GOP division over White House security policy came in a statement that Powell sent to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the rebellious lawmakers. Powell said that Congress must not pass Bush's proposal to redefine U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that sets international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.

Bush and Rove intended to use this issue against Democrats. Instead, it's the White House chicken hawks against the GOPers with actual military experience. Let the games begin:

“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” said Powell, who served under Bush and is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”

Bush is putting our troops at risk -- not supporting them. Read More......

Novak, Armitage fighting over who said what about Plame

The Washington Post reports on the battle between Novak (who is looking out for Cheney, Rove and Scooter) and Armitage (who never was quite right wing enough for the hard core). Let's face it, not like you can trust any of this crowd to really be honest about this. And, let's remember what happened here: During the time of war, these Bush administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative for purely partisan political reasons. In World War II, Roosevelt would have had them in the brig. Under Bush, there are no ramifications:

Columnist Robert D. Novak, who first revealed Valerie Plame's employment by the CIA and touched off a lengthy federal leak investigation, is accusing his primary source of misrepresenting their conversation to make the source's role in the disclosure seem more casual than it was.

In an unusual column that appears today, Novak says his initial source, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, was more sure of Plame's ties to the CIA than the source has indicated. Novak adds that Armitage linked her directly to her husband's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger and suggested the disclosure would be a good item for Novak's column.

This differs from Armitage's assertions last week that his disclosure was made in an offhand manner and that he did not know why Plame's husband was sent to Niger.

Armitage, in an interview yesterday, said he stood by his account and disputed Novak's.

The right wing punditry in unison are trying to downplay and dismiss this issue. Some in the traditional media have fallen for it. These guys all did something very wrong. Just imagine how apoplectic the wingnuts would be if this had happened during a Democratic administration. There would have been impeachment hearings already. Read More......

GOP Senator George Allen voted against giving our troops the body armor they needed

Read More......

Bolton's nomination is "dead as far as the Senate is concerned"

Last year, Bush did a recess appointment to get Bolton to the U.N. This year, Bolton actually needs Senate confirmation -- and it looks like he's not going to to get it. Republicans on the Hill are conceding defeat:

President Bush's nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations appears increasingly endangered in the Senate, prompting the administration to explore other ways to keep him in the job after his temporary appointment expires in January, officials said yesterday.

The situation represents a sharp turnaround from two weeks ago, when the White House was confident it could finally push through Bolton's long-stalled nomination. But last week's surprise move by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) to delay a vote convinced Republicans on Capitol Hill that the nomination may be doomed, prompting a search for alternatives.

It all depends on Chafee. The Bush team wants payback from Chafee for all they did for him in the primary so he's going to be under enormous pressure. They must know that supporting Bolton will endanger Chafee's re-election chances when he faces a very strong Democratic opponent. Looks like the White House wants Bolton more than they need Chafee. But Chafee wants to keep his Senate job so Bolton's nomination is over:

"It's dead as far as the Senate is concerned," said one Republican official at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Chafee holds the decisive vote. "Chafee made it a 9 to 9 vote, and that's not going to change." A Senate Republican leadership aide added: "Chafee holds Bolton's future in his hands, and people are very worried he's going to squeeze and never let go."

This is a major loss for Bush. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Let's get it started... Read More......

Diebold voting machines hacked

Ahh, democracy in the age of special interests. Diebold has strongly criticized the study on the ease of hacking Diebold machines, but Diebold always has an answer when a new fault is publicized, don't they? Surely any correction today means no problems ever again with Diebold machines, right? How many times per year/month/week does Microsoft (or any tech company) produce a new urgent hot fix to correct a new hole in their product that could easily allow hacking or destruction? Maybe Diebold has corrected some of the issues, but this still does not sound like it is ready for prime time. Their cozy relationships with the GOP hardly make me any more confident in their ability to deliver a neutral solution.

A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.

In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines.

Read More......

Military in Afghanistan asking for more troops - will Bush listen and respond?

OK, Bush has always said that he listens when commanders on the ground ask so why not send more troops? Afghanistan is becoming another tough battleground and we need more feet on the ground, guns, equipment, etc so why is Bush hanging our troops out to dry? Hell, why did Bush not listen before and let bin Laden slip away? Read More......

Open thread

Gnite Read More......