Interesting timing of major UK anti-terror raid

500 police involved in raids all over the UK today, on the eve of Blair's visit to his pro-war friend. Now why would anyone be suspicious of Blair and the timing of such an event? I'm sure he won't milk it during his visit to Washington and play the fear card. That's just not the kind of guy that he is. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: Fitzgerald may call Cheney to testify in Plame case

In a way, it's already Fitzmas. Read the rest of this post...

Hats off to Nancy Pelosi. Then again, not so much.

We've knocked the congressional dems for sometimes showing a lack of backbone, but today Nancy Pelosi showed backbone. Unfortunately, then she showed less.

Pelosi sent a letter to embattled Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA), the guy who the FBI found $90,000 in his freezer, telling him he should step down from the influential House Ways & Means Committee.

Jefferson replied that he wasn't going to step down, and then suggested that Pelosi was discriminating against him because, he claimed, other congressmen under investigation weren't asked to step down from their committee seats.

Shortly thereafter, Pelosi joined GOP Speaker Denny Hastert in demanding the FBI return the files they took from Jefferson's office.

Here are my thoughts:

1. From what I hear, Jefferson isn't exactly a saint. And you'll recall he's the guy who had the National Guard take him back to his house during the Katrina disaster. This time around the feds find $90,000 in the guy's freezer. Hello? I'm sorry, this is bad, and if Jefferson has to fall on his sword to help the Democrats keep the corruption message pointed at the GOP, so be it.

2. We now understand why House Speaker Denny Hastert was so upset about the FBI searching Jefferson's congressional office. According to ABC, the bribery/corruption investigations are now looking at Hastert himself. The Justice Department is now denying this, but hey, when have we known the Bush administration to tell the truth about anything?

3. Pelosi joins Hastert in condemnding the Jefferson raid. Okay, this is a bit odd, especially coming on the heels of Pelosi demanding that Jefferson step down from his committee chair. It reeks of someone having gotten to Pelosi and threatened her. First suspect, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an institution that doesn't have a lot of respect in the Democratic circles I hang. In fact, the word "corrupt" gets thrown around a lot. Did the CBC put pressure on Pelosi to denounce the raid as pennance for asking Jefferson to step down? Sounds likely.

4. The merits of the raid. Regardless of whether the FBI should or shouldn't be invading congressional offices, I'm not sure why the Dems want to be seen A) Defending a man who really looks like a crook ($90k in the freezer, folks), and B) Joining with the Republicans when they should be saying, "isn't it nice that the Republicans only care about civil liberties and the Constitution when it's their own crimes being investigated." That would have been a lot more fun and useful a message.

At this point, Jefferson is toast. The last thing the Democrats need is a Democratic corruption scandal to take the public's attention away from how Republican the scandals have been to date. While it's understandable that Mr. Jefferson wants to save his ass, sometimes you just have to take one for the team.

And honestly, when you've got $90,000 hidden away in your freezer, you pretty much lose the right to be on anyone's team. Read the rest of this post...

Bush backs Veterans Affairs secretary after the privacy of tens of millions of vets is violated

Heck of a job you're doing. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: FBI investigating GOP House Speaker Hastert for role in bribery/corruption probe

Forks all around, my friends. They're all done.

From ABC News:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level government sources.

Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government....

House Speaker Dennis Hastert is the No.1 individual recipient of money from Abramoff and his clients, with a total of $68,300 contributed to his campaign committee and leadership PAC from 1998 to 2004.

Read the rest of this post...

Tom Delay's legal defense team thinks Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert is a real conservative journalist

There is no other explanation. This is just bizarre.

(And yes, again we're stealing links from Atrios because he's just too damn sexy with his hairy biceps and his wet gorilla testosterone.) Read the rest of this post...

Bizarre Wash Post suck-up story on Bill Frist

UPDATE: Since folks are having a hard time believing this isn't a spoof, here's a screen capture of the article - check it out for yourselves.


Okay, all you journalism students, get a load of this introduction to the article:

The houses were dark on Bill Frist's street. A morning bird chirped; the others were waiting for dawn. But Frist was awake, and his bedroom light was on. "I'm going to take a shower," the Senate majority leader said brightly. Ten minutes later, the blow dryer roared.

Wow, the birds chirped waiting for dawn. LOL I'm sorry, I just can't signify the appropriate level of laughter at this article, it just doesn't come across with LOL.

Oh, but there's more.

Frist spoke "brightly" - at least he didn't chirp - and then his blow dryer "roared." What the hell is this, did someone blow up a high-school thesaurus in the Washington Post news room?

Other lovely parts of the article:

"Well, your first patient was a dog," Karyn said. In medical school, Frist cut out a dog's heart and held it in his palm. It continued to beat for a slippery minute.

"Watching it beat, the beauty of it," Frist recalled. "I decided I would spend my life centered around the heart."

Funny, I'm guessing the now-dying dog lying on the table without a heart didn't find the scene so beautiful.

Oh God, read this:

"I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."

His long legs spilling, he hopes to cure AIDS or even cancer someday! And what's that remark about the "typical person around here" may not understand? You mean, we regular folk can't quite understand the concept of wanting to help people in the world, cuz, you know, we're just country bumpkins like the kind of folks you find in Tennessee?

He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.

"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.

Hairy toned biceps? Superman? Again, where are the editors?

He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females.

The Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who had exclusive mating rights with the females? Excuse me?

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes.

Frist was wet with the gorilla's testosterone? Would some editor at the Post please explain exactly how that works - I'm not familiar with people being wetted by someone else's testosterone.

At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table. Across the city, rolling in a bed of hay, Kuja opened his eyes and grunted. The gorilla kept touching his tongue to his tooth. Something had changed inside of the beast while he slept. Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.

The beast? And again with the reeking of testosterone?

Are they serious? I don't mean to totally berate another writer, I'm sure she's a nice enough woman, but this article is laughable in its word choice and metaphor. And this testosterone thing is just, well, weird. You have got to be kidding that the Washington Post actually printed something like this.

(Major hat tip to Atrios on this one.) Read the rest of this post...

So not ready for hurricane season

The Bush administration had a press conference yesterday to say they're ready for hurricane season. Yeah, right:

But the claims came with hundreds of thousands of displaced victims from last year's hurricanes still living in more than 100,000 trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi, creating the potential for a new evacuation and housing crisis if another storm strikes. States and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are rushing to overhaul the tracking and movement of disaster supplies, but efforts are uncoordinated, state leaders warn.

FEMA's hurricane operations plan is unfinished, state officials said, and the agency remains 15 percent understaffed. Repairs to New Orleans's levee system by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are incomplete, and a state commission recently warned that 40,000 Floridians could face a catastrophic flood if a storm hits weakened flood-control systems near Lake Okeechobee.

What they meant is, they're ready for hurricane season only if there are no hurricanes.

Don't worry. George Bush will keep you safe...again. Read the rest of this post...

Please contribute to AMERICAblog

It's been two months since we last held a reader fundraiser, so this week seemed about time.

You can donate quite easily and safely online via this link (and if the link doesn't work, please use the yellow boxes in the left-hand column of the blog). AND, before I forget, if you use the yellow boxes at left, you can even create a recurring monthly donation that's automatically deducted from your account each month - for me, that's an easier way to give and not have remember each month to give $5 or whatever.


We're finally in the home stretch of re-launching the blog with our own servers, enhanced comments, and lots of new features for you guys (and for the folks on our end as well). We should start the launch next month, and then slowly roll things out to make sure it all works. Having our own servers will let us host way more video and audio than we can now (we pretty much can't host any). And we have even more fun things planned for the new site (we're still working on the look and feel of the home page).

Anyway, all of this takes money, I've had a tech guy working on this for months (and not for free), and we'll be paying around $1500/month in bandwidth and another $500 a month in tech costs once we move.

There's also the salary for my writers and me (I'm working full-time on the blog and Joe is spending about 1/3 to a half of his time, easily - and Chris isn't being slough either. Not to mention, Joe is spending about 1000 bucks out of his own pocket to attend the YearlyKos conference. Yes, that's his choice, I'm just saying there are expenses to blogging on a big site that folks might not realize at first glance). I believe in paying my guys a fair salary for their work. And while they initially volunteered to write for free for fun, I've been paying them what I can, and now want to make that a real salary as the blog responsibilities, and thus their responsibilities, have grown.

I'd also add one more point. If you'd pay for a newspaper subscription, or a magazine in an airport, then why not treat your favorite blogs the same way? Most of our donors are small donors - and the $25 and $50 donations add up surprisingly fast. Your daily coffee fix is important, so please don't deny yourself that, but if you're willing to give the corner coffee shop $3 a day (totally over $1000 a year), is it that much a stretch to give some love to your favorite online folks?

As for the future, our ad revenues picked up again last month, thank God, and we hope to rely solely on ad revenues at some point in the future, only asking you guys to help for special causes (someone in need, or raising money to help a special campaign we want to run). But for now, your donations still help.

So, to the extent you can, please consider helping us out. And as always, if you can't afford it right now, please don't. I don't want folks breaking their banks if they're strapped right now. It's more important that you be a part of this community and help us all work together for the common good.


Thanks guys, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

MUST WATCH: CNN segment on quacks who claim they can "cure" gays

Oh man, you really really really have to see this CNN report on these quacks who claim they can "cure" away the gay. This is the video you need to download and show to anyone who ever brings up these wackjobs ever again.

My favorite parts:

1. Where the gay guy in "therapy" says that the reason he turned gay is that he had "emotional incest" with his mom. Uh huh.

2. The wacky "ex-gay 'therapist'" showing that one way to cure yourself is to take a tennis racket and beat the crap out of a pillow while screaming your mother's name (it's totally freaky). This will help you release "hidden memories in your muscles." Yes, your muscles store memories that make you gay. And don't forget, this "therapist" is pretty much the top guy in this "field." He's one of their "best."



3. Another part of this guy's "therapy" is hugging his patients intimately, giving them the kind of close male contact their fathers never gave them. You have to see this part of the segment, it's creepy as hell.



The most telling part of the entire interview is when the reporter asks the guy who's been in 3 years of therapy, and who claims he no longer has any attraction to men, "Do you see yourself as an 'ex-gay'?" He responds that he sees himself as a much happier person.

If you read the ex-gay literature, their OWN literature, and I've read most of it doing research, they tell you outright that you will NOT become heterosexual from these treatments. You very likely won't even be really sexually attracted to women, and you most certainly won't stop being attracted to men 100%. The goal isn't to become heterosexual, it's to become closer to Jesus. Seriously, that's what they say.

And while being closer to Jesus is a very nice thing, I'm sure, it has nothing to do with "curing" homosexuality. a "cured" homosexual is a heterosexual. And the fact that these folks are avoiding those words and responses tells you the entire story.

It's just very sad. Read the rest of this post...

Hayden passes through Senate committee with support of Democrats

I must say, I'm incredibly disappointed that Mikulski and Levin supported Hayden in the committee vote. As we learn more about the government spying on American citizens, it is beyond belief that any Democrat could not see that this is a serious issue for all Americans and this is just another lost opportunity to call into question the Soviet tactics of this administration. If the Democrats want support from their base, this vote is bullshit. If we wanted a rubber stamp for the millionth time, we'd just vote Republican or not vote at all. Read the rest of this post...

Note to the media: Just because they say it, doesn't make it true

For some reason, the traditional media is determined to take every word from the Bush team as gospel. Despite all the lies and misinformation they've been fed, the press really are still lapdogs to this administration. Think Progress masterfully documents the latest example involving Attorney General Gonzales who claims the domestic spying program is constitutional:

This is a classic case of misdirection. The issue isn’t simply whether or not collecting domestic phone records is constitutional. The issue is whether it’s legal. If the USA Today story is accurate, the NSA program appears to be illegal, not because it violates the fourth amendment, but because it violates two statutes.

Significantly, Smith v. Maryland [the case used by Gonzales to support his contention] considers activities that occurred in 1976. Both of the statutes that prohibit the activity described by USA Today were enacted after that date.

The Washington Post dutifully reported what Gonzales said with no analysis or additional research. I swear, the Bush people must just sit back and laugh about how gullible the traditional media is. Rove thinks their patsies. And, he's been proven right time and time again. Read the rest of this post...

The GOP leaders should be worried about FBI raids on Capitol Hill

The Republican leaders in the House are very upset about the FBI raid on Congressman Jefferson's office over the weekend:

The FBI's raid on a congressman's office is rippling through Capitol Hill, with majority Republicans in the House complaining to President Bush and predicting a constitutional showdown in the Supreme Court.

Let's be real here. Republican leaders have abdicated so much power to Bush, there's got to be something else going on. The real issue is how many GOP members are in hot water.

The FBI didn't raid the office of Randy "Duke" Cunningham despite his egregious illegal activity. They can't possibly ignore the other GOP members in hot water. So to make things easier for the FBI on their next Hill raids, we've prepared this handy list of sleazy GOP members and their offices:

Roy Blunt: 217 Cannon or go right to the Majority Leader's Office right in the Capitol

Ken Calvert: 2201 Rayburn

Tom DeLay: 242 Cannon (Note to FBI:you only have until June 9th, he's resigning)

John Dolittle: 2410 Rayburn

Tom Feeney: 323 Cannon

Jerry Lewis: 2112 Rayburn and check out 2359 Rayburn which is the Appropriations Committee office, too. (He's the Chair.)

Gary Miller: 1037 Longworth

Bob Ney: 2438 Rayburn (get to him fast, everyone wants a piece of Ney these days)

Richard Pombo: 2411 Rayburn

Charles Taylor: 339 Cannon

This is just a start, but it should keep the FBI busy. Read the rest of this post...

Pat Robertson - athletic superstar or mega liar?

Gosh, this guy is incredible, isn't he? He's flogging his protein shakes online, telling us that they are the reason why he can leg press 2,000 pounds? For a 70-some year old guy that's pretty darn good. In fact, even for someone in prime condition who is a competitive lifter, that's well beyond existing records. I'm guessing that Pat is someone a real bionic man. Either that or he's a liar, which would seem to go against his preachings. You decide. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Politicians and pundits are ruminating over the latest message from Osama Bin Laden. The real question which no one seems to be asking or answering: why does Osama Bin Laden still have the ability to send messages? Start with the fact that Bush has failed to capture or kill him as promised.

Anyway, start threading the news, please. Read the rest of this post...

Tony Blair's UK - a lot like Bush's America

It's bad enough the guy dragged the UK into the war in Iraq and is spying on UK citizens in every way imaginable, but free speech took another hit yesterday as anti-war protestors fell victim to the police. Blair and his lot are such spineless cowards, they struggle with any criticism and just don't have any faith in the democracy that they love to talk about. What a shameful time in our democracies we have with Blair and Bush.

There were chaotic and farcical scenes as police wrestled with nine dishevelled protesters led by Mr Haw, and a 40-metre line of anti-war placards, including two donated by the graffiti artist Banksy, was dismantled and dumped in a metal container. Two demonstrators, Martin McGrath and Maria Gallastegui, who tried to climb the metal container to salvage the placards, were arrested. Mr Haw claimed that officers had seized his "personal belongings" as well, including bedding, clothes and a treasured Bible.

It gets worse.

The battle between police and the 57-year-old protester has been going on for some time. Last July, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act came into force, bringing with it powers to halt demonstrations in Parliament Square and its vicinity, a provision widely seen as having been designed with Mr Haw in mind.

Read the rest of this post...

Now this is downright depressing

A third of Americans don't take all of their vacation days. It's bad enough that vacations are so limited in the US compared to Europe, but not taking what you have? In the three years before moving to Europe, I admit to have only taken three days vacation, so I'm was as guilty as anyone. Now, I wouldn't even dream of making such a blunder. Heck, I might even be deported from France if I didn't perform my patriotic duty of taking weeks of vacation. Kidding aside, I think for your own mental health, taking a break is a must-do for all of us. Work will always be there. Read the rest of this post...

Will George Bush attack China to save Jack Bauer?

Come on, you just know he was watching "24" and probably thought he had FOX News on. Read the rest of this post...