Female Iraq war vet running for Congress from Illinois. And she's a dem...

This is gonna be good. Read the rest of this post...

Something fishy about Bush domestic spying scandal

Noah is exactly right. There was no plausible reason for Bush not to seek the search warrants as he apparently had the right to seek them retroactively - i.e., do the search first, get permission after - but didn't. So why did Bush not seek the search warrants after the fact?

Something's up. Noah has some possibilities here. Read the rest of this post...

The full text of Bush's speech, so you don't have to watch a criminal during family hour

From ThinkProgress

Okay, I read the speech. Bush feels that every American who is concerned about the course of the war is a Democrat who is simply after partisan gain. There are no Americans who are sincerely troubled by what is going on in Iraq and Washington, and certainly the only people concerned are Democrats, all 60%+ of them:

Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts. For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope. For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed. And for every terrorist working to stop freedom in Iraq, there are many more Iraqis and Americans working to defeat them. My fellow citizens: Not only can we win the war in Iraq – we are winning the war in Iraq.

Next we learn that we can't pull out of Iraq, even if it's a total loss, because, well, apparently people would make fun of us.

It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done. We would abandon our Iraqi friends – and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We would undermine the morale of our troops – by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. We would cause tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us – and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before.

Then there's the kicker. If you think the war is a mess and that Bush has botched the entire thing, you have committed an act of "dishonor." Funny, I wonder how dishonored our dead soldiers feel, the ones who died because Bush still hasn't send them the necessary body armor three years into the freaking war?

To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor … and I will not allow it....

Yeah, and let's not even talking about dishonoring the Constitution. I can't think of no better way to dishonor our soldiers than to make mockery of the entire system of free and democratic government they are giving their lives to defend.

Then Bush reiterates that any concern about how the war is going is only coming from partisan Democrats:

I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country – victory or defeat. And the need for victory is larger than any president or political party, because the security of our people is in the balance.

Then Bush concludes by telling us that we'll win in Iraq because God has said so:

And we remember the words of the Christmas carol, written during the Civil War: “God is not dead, nor [does] He sleep; the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, with peace on Earth, good-will to men.”

Thank you, and good night.

That's comforting. Unfortunately the other guys are saying the same thing. And both of you can't be right. (Though it is amazing how similar you both sound.)

Now back to Spider-man on TNT. I prefer my fiction to have a happy ending. Read the rest of this post...

It's time to take our country back

I used to be proud to be an American. Now I'm embarrassed.

Let's change that, starting tomorrow.

This cannot stand. In ordering the NSA to spy secretly on America, George Bush has overturned United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by NSA; violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert domestic investigations; and trampled upon the Fourth Amendment guarantee against warrantless searches. It cannot stand for a day, much less a month while Congress is in recess....

Operation Flabbergasted We cannot let that happen. We have to ensure that by Monday, all hell has broken loose in D.C.

Every Senator needs to know there'll be jolly hell back home if they don't demand Bush stop it now. The MSM needs to be discussing the `constitutional crisis.' There has to be a plan immediately to make this happen. I've got one.

We know that domestic spying by the NSA is Orwellian. We don't need to wait for panels of experts to declare the obvious, that Bush's policies violate the Fourth Amendment in the most fundamental way.

Later on in the post there are the "methods" they propose using to get to the bottom of this. Nowhere is impeachment mentioned. I add it to the list. "If" - and I say "if" generously " - George Bush broke the law 30 or more times in order to spy on American citizens, one of the greatest no-no's our country has - then the man needs to be removed from office immediately, whether it's impeachment, the 25th amendment, or his immediate resignation.

This government is no better than the Soviets, the Nazis, the communist Chinese and Cubans, and any other dictatorship that routinely violated the law of the land for the "good of the people." That's not how democracies work. It's now how America works. What the hell are we fighting a war on terror for anyway if we're so willing to give up our country to a dictator? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Anybody seen our country lately? I could have sworn I lost it somewhere around here... Read the rest of this post...

White House lied about having briefed Congress about domestic spying program

From ThinkProgress

This morning, Condoleezza Rice defended the NSA evesdropping program by arguing that congressional leaders — specifically “leaders of the relevant oversight intelligence committees” — had been briefed on the activities.

RICE: It’s been reviewed not just by the White House counsel but by the lawyers of the Justice Department and by the lawyers of the NSA, the National Security Agency, and by the Inspector General of the National Security Agency, and it has to be reauthorized every 45 days. And the Congress, the congressional leaders, including —

RUSSERT: Those are administration lawyers. Why not go to an objective court?

RICE: — including leaders of the relevant oversight intelligence committees have been briefed on this.

This is apparently not true. At the time the program was initiated, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL). On Friday’s “Nightline,” Graham made clear he had never once been briefed by the administration about the program:

There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to…begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional — eavesdropping on American citizens.

Read the rest of this post...

If you can't see Brokeback Mountain...

...then you should read this article from today's Washington Post Magazine. It's a heart-wrenching real story about the real life impact of turning someone's life into a political issue to drum up votes in an election.

"I'm saying, 'I'm not a victim, and you're not going to treat me like this anymore! I'm taking my retirement money somewhere else,'" Tibby says, banging her fist on the dining room table one afternoon. But the women know there is another side to their decision to leave Virginia, a skittering away, a cautiousness that has clung all these years. And the story of where that caution comes from explains why they believe they need to go.
...
It's unlikely they would have paid much attention to Virginia's Affirmation of Marriage Act if they hadn't been so worried that it could keep them apart during a medical emergency. The law infuriated them. "The way Virginia is treating us, what they are saying to us, I feel like it's being in an abusive house," Tibby says.

"I'm saying, let's get out of this house."

Read the article, meet Barbara Kenny and Tibby Middleton, and decide for yourself when you think enough will be enough. Read the rest of this post...

Cheney finally made it to a war zone

Five deferments kept him out of Vietnam, but he finally made it to a war zone. He's in Iraq today, probably making sure those insurgents are still in their last throes, which they clearly showed him isn't true:

A string of attacks killed 19 people, including two relatives of a senior Kurdish official, and Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit Sunday in which he suggested that Iraq's recent elections were a major step toward withdrawing U.S. troops.

Cheney's visit, under heavy security, was so secret that even Iraq's prime minister said he was surprised when he showed up for what he believed was a meeting with the U.S. ambassador only to see Cheney waiting to greet him.

Cheney toured the country the same day President Bush scheduled a prime-time address on Iraq.

Yeah, what a coincidence he's there in time for the "big" speech tonight. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Open Thread

What's the chatter on the Sunday talk shows about the President's criminal activity? Read the rest of this post...

Activist Presidents

It's funny - not in the ha ha way, but in the "this is how the Soviet people must have felt" way - that the right-wing is all upset about "activist judges" who supposedly refuse to obey the Constitution, and instead, again according to conservatives, do whatever they hell they want to impose their whim on the land. And now we have an activist president wantonly breaking the rule of law as passed by Congress and written in the Constitution in order to do the exact same thing.

You conservatives can't have it both ways. If an activist judiciary is dangerous then so is an activist president. We can't have any branch of government or any government official outright disobey the law of the land and the Constitution in order to do what THEY think is "best" for the country, especially when what they think is best just so happens to be spying on American citizens without a court order.

It's time for an all-out war on Activist Presidents. Read the rest of this post...

Bush gets savaged in editorials

Both the NY Times and Washington Posts have editorials today slamming Bush. Both papers make it clear that we have a President who does not respect the rule of law.

The editorial from the NY Times kinda sums it up:

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

If you cross the boundaries of the law, you are a criminal. And this was a willful violation of those boundaries. The Washington Post also lays in to Bush:

As with its infamous torture memorandum, the administration appears to have taken the position that the president is entitled to ignore a clearly worded criminal law when it proves inconvenient in the war on terrorism. That argument is not as outlandish in the case of FISA as it is with respect to the torture laws, since administrations of both parties have always insisted on the executive's inherent power to conduct national security surveillance. Still, FISA has been the law of the land for 2 1/2 decades. To disrupt it so fundamentally, in total secret and without seeking legislative authorization, shows a profound disregard for Congress and the laws it passes.

If Bush disregards Congress and a "clearly worded criminal" law that it passed, he's a criminal. Because criminals disregard the laws that Congress passes. Read the rest of this post...

Kissinger on VietnamIraq exit strategy

Who else are you going to ask for comments when you're talking about a failed war and attempts at saving face while in a quagmire? Lemme guess...B-52 carpet bomb poor innocent civilians, make sure that fragging goes through the roof since nobody wants to be the last one to die for a failed war and support a corrupt government no matter how bad they are? How can the guy can actually be taken seriously after his complete failure in SE Asia not to mention the tarnished reputation that he left the US with after the war?

Since people want to talk about the Iraqi-ization of the war, they ought to take a look at what that meant in Vietnam. During that war, despite pumping money into the corrupt South Vietnamese administrations, much of that money only made it into the pockets of the leading politicians and military brass like what we are witnessing in Iraq. It was standard government policy in South Vietnam for the troops to fail in combat because once the US troops left, they knew the money would leave. Take a look at Afghanistan and tell me that Iraq would be any different. They have to know that the US has a long history of ditching responsibilities once the hot moment is over.

All we ever hear is about the Iraqi troops that are coming into the mix but if this is something that they really wanted, would it honestly be taking so long? Let's put a bit of reality into this picture because the GOP wants to live in a fantasy land with Iraq, just like they did during Vietnam. Kissinger had a failed plan during Vietnam and his new plan for Iraq doesn't sound much different. Why does the MSM give this disgrace the time of day? He's an embarassment and he ought to have been brought up before The Hague for war crimes. Read the rest of this post...

FISA Court, internal spying requests and the numbers

TPM has a lot of great information on the FISA Court and their history of agreeing to almost all internal spying cases that have been presented to them. Between 1979 and 2002 every request was agreed upon and most of the very few that were rejected since 2003 were later modified and accepted. So why did Bush have to go beyond the rule of law? With a court that showed a willingness to go along with this policy, why did they need to deviate from the FISA Court 30+ times? Just who were they targeting if they felt that they could not even get FISA to agree to their request?

The arrogance of Bush is incredible and he always believes that he is above the law. The US is a nation that is based on the rule of law, not a dictatorship and certainly not a kingdom. The Democrats sure as hell better take back something in DC next year because our democracy has been challenged too many times and these people need to be held accountable. Don't fall for the "immigration problem" nonsense that is just another election year wedge issue and stick the real problems that exist such as rampant corruption within the GOP and countless threats to democracy and human rights. Read the rest of this post...