Open thread

That was a busy day. Read the rest of this post...

485 Contacts Between Jack Abramoff Team and Bush White House Officials

From Roll Call:

Hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates "raise serious questions about the legality and actions" of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee.

The 95-page report, which White House officials reviewed Wednesday evening but has yet to be formally approved by the panel, singled out two of President Bush's top lieutenants, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as having been offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates.

In total, the committee was able to document 485 contacts between White House officials and Abramoff and his lobbying team at the firm Greenberg Traurig from January 2001 to March 2004, with 82 of those contacts occurring in Rove¹s office, including 10 with Rove personally. The panel also said that Abramoff billed his clients nearly $25,000 for meals and drinks with White House officials during that period.

Rove, Mehlman, and other White House officials have denied having any close relationship with Abramoff, despite the fact that Abramoff was a "Pioneer" who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bush's White House campaigns.

"The documents depict a much closer relationship between Mr. Abramoff and White House officials than the White House has previously acknowledged," committee staff wrote in a three-page summary that accompanied the report. Reps. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman and ranking member of Government Reform, this summer subpoenaed e-mails and billing records from Greenberg Traurig and other firms, including Alexander Strategy Group, which was run by one-time aides to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). They examined more than 14,000 pages of documents from Greenberg Traurig, including 6,600 pages of billing records and 7,700 pages of e-mail.

During the period examined by the committee, Bush administration officials repeatedly intervened on behalf of Abramoff's clients, including helping a Mississippi Indian tribe obtain $16 million in federal funds for a jail the tribe wanted to build.

Abramoff was able to block the nomination of one Interior Department official using Christian conservative Ralph Reed as a go-between with Rove, according to e-mails between Abramoff and Reed.

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Senate passes pro-torture bill that guts US Constitution

Shameful. The Republican party quite literally hates America. Read the rest of this post...

Woman says George Allen repeatedly used the word "nigger" in college

Are they all wrong?

When George Allen stood right up and said he had never used that word, and that just blew me away,” Waring said. “I thought, ‘Boy, you could, if you had any integrity, you would say yes, I may have made some mistakes in my youth, in my younger years, but, and I'm sorry.’ But to hear him lie about it when I know he is lying."

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Republican Senator Trent Lott says Bush and GOP don't pay much attention to the war in Iraq. Adds that all Muslims look the same to him.

And all Republican bigots look the same to me.

Trent Lott told reporters today that George Bush and GOP Senators barely mentioned Iraq when they met this morning and that they don’t obsess over the war.

When asked if the war was discussed, Lott told reporters that “You're the only ones who obsess on that. We don't and the real people out in the real world don't for the most part."

On the sectarian violence in Iraq, Lott said: “Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”

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Bob Woodward: Iraq is getting worse, Bush is lying, Kissinger is advising Bush on Iraq

CBS

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year.

In Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissenger is among those advising Mr. Bush.

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward.

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

"The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public," Woodward tells Wallace.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

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GOP congressman admits to, says nothing wrong with, creepy email exchange with 16-year-old page

What the ABC News story doesn't tell you is about the second email below, where Congressman Foley, in his fifties, remarks on how hot a friend of this sixteen year old is.


Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) had a rather creepy email exchange with a young page a while back. I received copies of these emails several months ago, but couldn't confirm their veracity so I did not report on them. Well, they're out there now, and they've been confirmed. They're creepy as hell.

A 16-year-old male congressional page concerned about the appropriateness of an e-mail exchange with a congressman alerted Capitol Hill staffers to the communication.

Congressman Mark Foley's office says the e-mails were entirely appropriate and that their release is part of a smear campaign by his opponent.

In the series of e-mails, obtained by ABC News, between the page and Rep. Foley (R-FL), Foley asks the page how old he is, what he wants for his birthday and requests a photo of him.

The concerned page alerted congressional staffers to the e-mails. In one e-mail, the page writes to a staffer, "Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out."

Foley's office acknowledges that Foley wrote the e-mails to the page but says they were completely innocent and that Foley is only guilty of being overly friendly.

The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal AOL account. In one, Foley writes, "did you have fun at your conference…what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do."

In another Foley writes, "how are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe…send me an email pic of you as well…"

The page forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick."

Foley's office says it is their policy to keep pictures of former interns and anyone who may ask for a recommendation on file so they can remember them.

The Congressional page program was started in the 1800s. In its current form, juniors from high school work on Capitol Hill after school or over the summer. The page in question did not work or intern for Foley's office.

Patricia Richardson, Foley's Chief of Staff, said they believe the e-mail exchange began when the page asked Foley for a recommendation and that the subsequent exchange was totally innocent. She said Foley's office believes the e-mails were released by the opposition as part of an "ugly smear campaign."

Up for even more creepy? Foley's congressional home page is all about child sex offenders. Why, because Foley is the Co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. Yes, this is the guy the Republicans put in charge of taking care of child sex offenders. Seriously, this is sick. From Brownie, to Bernie Kerik, to Harriet Miers, to Mark Foley, can the Republicans ever EVER appoint someone to a position who is not totally incompetent?

Perhaps it's time to call your Republican member of Congress and demand that Mark Foley be stripped of his title as Co-Chair of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus.

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Gay leader Aleta Fenceroy - part of the Fenceberrys - died

Aleta and her partner Jean were one of the early pioneers in using the Internet to help the gay community. For years they ran the "Fenceberry" email list, sending out massive amount of daily articles from around the country touching on gay issues.

Mind you, they started in 1993 when running an email list was a novel idea, and you have to remember that back then it was still difficult to find gay news in your local paper, let alone online - most newspapers weren't online, there was no Google, I don't even think there was a Yahoo in 1993. So we had our own lesbian Google, the Fenceberrys.

I cannot tell you how helpful their archive of articles was - I kept them all, still have them all, in a folder on my computer, and they're still quite useful for doing newspaper searches, at least during the era they were publishing.

Anyway, Aleta just died from cancer. She was a good lady, and will be missed. Read the rest of this post...

We are NOT like the terrorists

Just keep clicking those heels.

The bodies of 40 men who been tortured were found in [Baghdad] in a span of 24 hours, police said Thursday.

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NYT on Torture

It ain't pretty.

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Republican Senate tries to hijack "cell phone privacy" bill to help Bush's domestic spying program, and help telcoms keep you less safe

You gotta love the Republicans. Never miss an opportunity to throw some pork onto legislation that should be a no-brainer and shouldn't be partisan.

Their latest? Taking the cell phone privacy legislation that they've been sitting on for nine months and finally moving it forward. Oh but there's a catch. They'll only pass the bill if it somehow saves George Bush's domestic spying program (why are the two related? I'm a bit creeped out now.) AND, they want the federal legislation to pre-empt state legislation already in place on the matter - why? - because many states require the telcoms to actually have better procedures in place to protect your privacy. And God forbid the phone companies actually protect their customers' privacy. So the Republicans controlling the Senate are working out a deal to repeal those state laws. Nice. Never miss a chance to help a donor.

Honestly, this smacks of an effort to kill the legislation, a poison pill. And it stinks. Why doesn't the Republican congress want to protect your phone records from complete strangers who can simply buy them on the Internet?

Differences over whether to pre-empt existing state laws reportedly is the sticking point to a Senate consensus on a federal bill against "pretexting," a practice in which Internet-based brokers fraudulently obtain and sell telephone records, sources said late Tuesday.

Several Capitol Hill sources and consumer watchdogs said that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is insisting that language negotiated with the Senate Judiciary Committee pre-empt state laws on the subject.

Stevens' measure, S. 2389, would override state mandates that require telecommunications carriers or Internet-enabled voice services to "develop, implement or maintain procedures for protecting confidentiality of customer proprietary network information," according to a staff working draft. ...

If a pretexting bill with state pre-emption is enacted, it could halt state investigations by utility commissions into the lawfulness of electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency, the American Civil Liberties Union argues.

This is absolutely disgusting. Kill this bill. I'd rather have pre-texting remain legal - and I'll start buying member of Congress' phone records - than to have them use this legislation as a chance to let the phone companies off the hook on protecting our privacy, AND to use this to somehow exonerate George Bush's domestic spying. That is just sick. And people wonder why the Republicans are losing control of the Congress. Read the rest of this post...

Musgrave exposes GOP's warped agenda: Gay marriage, not Iraq or terror, is most important issue

Wonder why we're not safer? Marilyn Musgrave explained why we're not winning the war on terror and why Iraq is a quagmire. The Republicans are too obsessed with issues like gay marriage to focus on real problems.

Think Progress has the video of Musgrave speaking to the theocrats:

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), the lead sponsor of the constitutional ban on gay marriage in the House, spoke this weekend at the Family Research Council's "Values Voter Summit." (Other virulently anti-gay speakers were featured at the event.)

Musgrave declared that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today." She told the audience that when you're in a cultural war like this, you have to respond with equal and hopefully greater force if you want to win," and warned that the "future is grim" if gay marriage is not banned.

Most Americans think the future is grim if we don't solve the Iraq crisis and win in the war on terror. But not the people who run Congress. Bashing gays is their top issue. Explains so much.

Iraqis hate us. The Iraq war is a disaster. It's actually made us less safe. But the theocrats who run the GOP, like Musgrave, are worried about gays.

Wonder if the theocrats talked about the other top GOP priority: torture. Was there a session on "How would Jesus torture?" Maybe Bush heard directly from his higher power on that one.

Seriously, this country is in grave danger if the Democrats don't take control in November. The Democrats will make priorities of the Iraq war and the war on terror -- not the culture war. Read the rest of this post...

Iraq now costs $2,000,000,000 per week and it is increasing

This is an amazing number for a war that has nothing to do with the real war on terror. The Republican answer is everything is throw money at it (and your friends such as Halliburton) and hope it somehow works. Well guess what? It's not working and it is an expensive experiment for failed political ideas. When the GOP gained control of all branches of the federal government, this money was not available for programs such as Kyoto but somehow, out of nowhere, they found it and we will be paying for this for generations, both financially and politically. It is time for a change.

A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week -- nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year -- as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support the extended deployment and scrambles to fix or replace equipment damaged in combat.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

This morning, Bush is heading to Capitol Hill to give the Republican Senators a pep talk...and to celebrate the impending passage of his number one legislative priority: the torture bill. Another campaign event for the President. Iraqis hate us. The war is a disaster. The 16 U.S. intelligence agencies say Iraq has made terrorism worse.

But Bush is going to celebrate torture. That explains so much.

I need coffee. Read the rest of this post...

Dead heat in suburban Seattle Congressional seat

Nice job by Democrat Darcy Burner who was down 13 points just a month ago and is now within the margin of error with GOP incumbent Reichert. The GOP has held this seat for years but Burner has made this a race so if there are any Seattle-area readers out there, helping out would go a long way both for the area and for the Democrats nationally. Read the rest of this post...

Saudis want their own Maginot Line

I know that the wingnuts in the US still love to criticize the French, but didn't the French realize years ago that these walls were a major waste of money and failed to work as advertised? Why are the Saudis and American wingnuts so anxious to repeat such expensive mistakes? Who's laughing now? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

At what point did the Republicans lose every single ideal they ever stood for? I'm talking the real Republicans, not the Washington types, real Americans. When was it that they decided the flag and the Constitution and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were expendable and actually a hindrance to our continued survival?

Why do Republicans hate America? Read the rest of this post...