Late Night Open Thread

So much for the Latin vacation Mr. President, huh? You got the stuffing beat out of you down there. That Chavez was all up in your grill Mr. President. So, even though it's only Monday night, I REALLY think you need this drink Mr. President:

Jager Vacation

Scale ingredients to servings
1 oz chilled Jagermeister® herbal liqueur
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz pina colada mix

Add all three ingredients in a shaker or blender, and mix with ice.

Open thread away! Don't you just love that George Bush has restored so much dignity and honor to the White House he's being chased around by the head of Venezuela? And yet, it's so nice to see someone stand up to the bully... Read the rest of this post...

Iraq carnage continues - 4 more US soldiers killed

Jesus Christ. The insurgents are getting even more sophisticated. What a mess:

Four U.S. soldiers were among at least 15 people killed in a bloody day of suicide car bombings in and around Baghdad on Monday as a major offensive against Sunni Arab insurgents took place near Iraq's border with Syria.

The four soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed when a car bomber attacked their checkpoint on a road south of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

The attack echoed a similar attack a week ago when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush: "We do not torture"

But it all depends on what your definitions of "we" and "torture" are:

Vice President Dick Cheney has been spearheading an effort on Capitol Hill to have the CIA exempt from an amendment by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Off to tape DemsTV. Read the rest of this post...

Signorile interviews goof running anti-gay referendum in Maine tomorrow

UPDATE: Oops, link works now. Sorry.

This is a clip from a few months back, it's worth a listen - BUT, it's not work safe, and includes sexual content.

Click here to listen to the mp3. Read the rest of this post...

Italian media alleges US using chemical weapons against Iraqi combatants and civilians

UPDATE: The English language video version of this story is online here. The part about white phosphorus begans at around 5:27 into the broadcast. Just finished watching much of the report, it's rather long (like 30 minutes, I think). This kind of stuff, true or not, does NOT help our image abroad. We look like animals.
The Italian media is reporting that US troops have used a chemical agent, normally used for lighting up enemy positions in the dark (and/or sowing confusion with billowing smoke), as a weapon against Iraqi combatants and civilians.

According to the Italian story, the chemical is called "white phosphorus," but the soldiers call it Willy Pete. According to the article, they say they interview former US soldiers and Iraqi civilians in the broadcast.

Obviously, we have no way of confirming the Italian report, but it was done by the RAI media conglomerate, which is a big network in Italy. They're broadcasting a show on this on Tuesday in Italy and on satellite. So I'm posting the story. At the very least, hopefully this will get some US reporters to either confirm or repudiate the story.

It's quite possible that we're using the phosphorus the way it was intended, and that someone simply misunderstood and thought we were using it as a weapon (which is what I'm sure we'll here from the US government). Then again, it's also quite possible that some military folks decided to shoot the phosphorus at gatherings of enemy combatants to harm them en masse. After what we've seen with this war, I'm highly suspicious of everything this administration does (torture anyone?)

For any of you with international cable TV access, and who speak Italian, the show is called "Fallujah: The Secret (Hidden) Slaughter." It's on Rai News on Tuesday November 8, at 07.35 (I suppose that's Italian time) on satellite Hot Bird, and on channel 506 of Sky and its Rai Tre channel, and it will repeated son satellite Hot Bird and on channel 506 of Sky at 5pm and on several days thereafter (basically, look it up).

I found a further discussion of this issue on another blog from several months ago. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Tomorrow is election day across the country. Vote. There are some especially important elections in Virgnia (governor), Maine (anti-gay referendum trying to repeal laws protecting gays against employment discrimination), Texas (marriage ban against gays), and California (lots of pro-Arnold referenda), and more.

As always, the margin of victory is usually decided by which side gets more of its people out to vote. Read the rest of this post...

Bush's IRS to threaten the Pope?

Assuming the IRS isn't violating US law, and the US Constitution, by launching a partisan witch hunt against a liberal church, we assume that the IRS will soon be threatening the tax status of the entire Catholic Church in America since Pope Ratzinger himself overtly tried to throw the US presidential election in favor of George Bush.

And I take you back to July 11, 2004:

American Catholic bishops are trying to defy secret advice from Rome that Communion should not be given to John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.

The advice is contained in an explosive memo - clearly directed at Sen Kerry - by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Pope's doctrinal advisor, who is head of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the institutional heir to the Inquisition.

The memo was sent to the US Catholic Bishops' conference last month. With formidable clarity and force, it states that pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be warned by priests that they are not eligible for Communion. If the politician then "shows an obstinate persistence in grave sin", writes Cardinal Ratzinger, he or she should be turned away at the altar rail. Mr Kerry has consistently voted in favour of maintaining abortion rights during his 30-year senatorial career.

The tone and content of Cardinal Ratzinger's memo, which was leaked to an Italian magazine last week, leave little room for misunderstanding. Some passages appear to have been drafted specifically with Sen Kerry in mind.

"Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia," writes the Cardinal, "when a person's formal co-operation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his pastor should meet with him, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist."....

Last month the Pope delighted White House election strategists by agreeing to meet President Bush in Rome after repeated overtures from Washington. A senior religious advisor to the White House told The Telegraph that there was "no doubt" that the Pope preferred President Bush to Sen Kerry, even though the Vatican was strongly against the war in Iraq and the senator is a practising Catholic.

You'll recall that in the case of the liberal church, the IRS recently threatened to revoke the church's tax status simply based on a newspaper article's report of a sermon given in the church, a sermon critical of the war on terror. Clearly, a newspaper article stating that Pope Ratzinger intentionally crafted a memo on church doctrine in a way so that it would specifically take a swipe at the Democratic president candidate, is obviously against US tax law.

I can't wait for Bush's IRS to send a letter to every Catholic Church in America threatening their tax status. Perhaps we need to write the IRS and demand they do.

Here's the phone number for the IRS' national media office, since we are media and all:

202-622-4000.

Tell them you're looking forward to their investigating the Catholic Church's tax status, or do they only go after liberal churches

And here's the chief counsel's office:

202-622-3300 Read the rest of this post...

Bush refuses to answer if he upheld his promise to the American people to run an ethical administration

He won't even answer the question. Sad. Read the rest of this post...

Bush administration threatens liberal church for being anti-war

Yes, the Bush IRS is threatening a "liberal" church because of reports of an alleged sermon quoted in a a newspaper article. A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE. Yes, this is the IRS' basis for threatening a church with loss of its tax status - basically, threatening to destroy that church - because the IRS read an article in the paper.

Not that the Bush administration hates all religions. Conservative Bapstists and far-right fundamentalist Christians taking opinions on politics, that's okay. But you gotta remember, they voted for Bush so that gives them more of a right to the Constitution.

And, lest you be one of those silly students of history, there is nothing similar at all between the Nazi's tactic of progressive silencing critics by coercive and un-democratic uses of the law and government organs and the Bush administration's growing use of the federal government and a willing Congress to silence its critics. Really. No comparison at all.

Remember what the self-appointed owners of Hitler's history tell us, the Hitler regime and its brilliantly evil tactics for slowly and progressively silencing dissent were unique in history and could never happen again, so don't even give a moment's thought to whether any government anywhere is starting down the path to totalitarianism. It can't happen, won't happen, so forget about it.

The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election.

Rector J. Edwin Bacon of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena told many congregants during morning services Sunday that a guest sermon by the church's former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, on Oct. 31, 2004, had prompted a letter from the IRS.

In his sermon, Regas, who from the pulpit opposed both the Vietnam War and 1991's Gulf War, imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry. Regas said that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support.

But he criticized the war in Iraq, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."

On June 9, the church received a letter from the IRS stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … " The federal tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

The letter went on to say that "our concerns are based on a Nov. 1, 2004, newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times and a sermon presented at the All Saints Church discussed in the article."

The IRS cited The Times story's description of the sermon as a "searing indictment of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq" and noted that the sermon described "tax cuts as inimical to the values of Jesus."

As Bacon spoke, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a co-celebrant of Sunday's Requiem Eucharist, looked on.

Read the rest of this post...

More chatter about Karl leaving

While the White House apparently prepares the cover story for why Karl will leave, From the Roots reminds us of the real reason Karl the traitor must go:

1. Rove was involved in the leaking of an undercover agent’s identity, putting her work and her contacts at great risk.

2. Rove lied to the American public about his involvement in the leaking of this undercover agent’s identity.

3. Rove furthered Scooter Libby’s efforts to leak an undercover agent’s identity.

4. Rove has failed to live up to President Bush’s Standards of Official Conduct, including the rule that White House employees “avoid any actions creating the appearance that they are violating applicable law or the ethical standards in applicable regulations.”

Read the rest of this post...

Senator Coburn (R-OK) says Alito is an activist judge

Oops. Read the rest of this post...

Most popular search engine requests that led to AMERICAblog over the past 7 days

Interesting. And odd.

Search term, number of visits, percentage of total.

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AmericaBlog (154 - 0%)
http://americablog.blogspot.com/ (140 - 0%)
Target (49 - 0%)
blog America (43 - 0%) Read the rest of this post...

Cheney is the torture king

The Vice President is the point person and main lobbyist for torture:

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials.

Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said three U.S. officials.

In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department's rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.

Doesn't it make you proud? Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Get this week going. Read the rest of this post...

Blair "seduced" by US power

That is the accusation made by former UK ambassador to the US. Despite all of that brain power, Blair can't resist raw power and he crumbled to the every whim of an otherwise weak US president. There is no way Bush would have invaded Iraq had it not been for Blair tagging a long with the entire program. Instead of going along with the entire plan, not that there was much of a plan, Blair could have added some reason to the half baked ideas of the neocons but instead he earned his reputation as Bush's little poodle.

Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador in Washington who was heavily involved in the pre-war planning, said Blair was reluctant to negotiate conditions with President George W. Bush over Britain's support for war.

"Britain should have made its participation in any war dependent on a fully worked-out plan, agreed by both sides, for the rehabilitation of Iraq after Saddam's demise," Meyer wrote in memoirs serialized in two British newspapers on Monday.

"Had Britain insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise," he wrote.

Read the rest of this post...

Chirac leaps into action after more than a week of riots

Obviously impressed by the Bush slowness to respond to Katrina and earlier the tsunami, Chirac finally broke his silence and spoke publicly about the race riots that have spread across the country. The focus on the right seems to be more about the violence and political finger pointing than the actual problem behind the problem. Of course something needs to be done about the violence but instead of cowboy politics which seem to almost dare the rioters to try again, there should be more time spent on discussing the root cause. Chirac is saying that he will announce a policy initiative today but politicians are always long on talk, short on action. If his initiative does not address the underlying problems and does not start soon, this problem will not go away. Read the rest of this post...

Others have lost security clearances for MUCH lesser offenses than Karl Rove's

Tell us again why this known security risk retains a security clearance during wartime?

This is our issue, folks. It's time we mounted a campaign to yank Rove's clearances and defend our country against a president who puts personal friendship ahead of national security and the rule of law. I'm open to suggestions for additional ways to get attention to this issue - types of protests, online and off, and more. Perhaps a button/image everyone can put on their Web sites to show solidarity on this issue - a modern day "loose lips sink ships"?

I'm quite serious, let's take on Karl, now, and embarass the hell out of this president until he does the right thing.

From the LA Times:

An intelligence analyst temporarily lost his top-secret security clearance because he faxed his resume using a commercial machine.

An employee of the Defense Department had her clearance suspended for months because a jilted boyfriend called to say she might not be reliable.

An Army officer who spoke publicly about intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks had his clearance revoked over questions about $67 in personal charges to a military cellphone.

But in the White House, where Karl Rove is under federal investigation for his role in the exposure of a covert CIA officer, the longtime advisor to President Bush continues to enjoy full access to government secrets.

That is drawing the attention of intelligence experts and prominent conservatives as a debate brews over whether Rove should retain his top-secret clearance and remain in his post as White House deputy chief of staff — even as Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald mulls over whether to charge him with a crime in connection with the operative's exposure.

"The agencies can move without hesitating when they even suspect a breach of the rules has occurred, much less an actual breach of information," said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who has represented more than three dozen intelligence officers in security clearance cases, including those cited above....

Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia and a former CIA official and federal prosecutor... said the Justice Department should examine Rove's actions, apart from the Fitzgerald probe, to determine specifically whether Rove's security classification should be stripped....

Retired Navy Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was director of the CIA during the Carter administration, said Rove's actions needed to be "fully aired" and reviewed by intelligence and Justice Department officials.

Turner acknowledged that revoking or suspending Rove's secret clearance would "almost certainly end his usefulness as a top White House aide" and would be a "drastic step." But, he said, "you can't hold lower-level people accountable for possible leaks and not act when leaks occur at a higher level."

Turner said that among other consequences, the unmasking of an operative makes it difficult for intelligence agents to recruit sources, who may be skeptical of confidentiality pledges.

Read the rest of this post...