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First Amendment protection. The U.S. Supreme Court last considered a constitutionally based reporter's privilege in 1972 in Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972).Here are the District of Columbia shield law particulars.
Justice Byron White, joined by three other justices, wrote the opinion for the Court, holding that the First Amendment does not protect a journalist who has actually witnessed criminal activity from revealing his or her information to a grand jury. However a concurring opinion by Justice Lewis Powell and a dissenting opinion by Justice Potter Stewart recognized a qualified privilege for reporters. The privilege as described by Stewart weighs the First Amendment rights of reporters against the subpoenaing party's need for disclosure.
When balancing these interests, courts should consider whether the information is relevant and material to the party's case, whether there is a compelling and overriding interest in obtaining the information, and whether the information could be obtained from any source other than the media. In some cases, courts require that a journalist show that he or she promised a source confidentiality.
Two other justices joined Justice Stewart's dissent. These four justices together with Justice William O. Douglas, who also dissented from the Court's opinion and said that the First Amendment provided journalists with almost complete immunity from being compelled to testify before grand juries, gave the qualified privilege issue a majority. Although the high court has not revisited the issue, almost all the federal circuits and many state courts have acknowledged at least some form of a qualified constitutional privilege.
Several of the journalists are saying privately, yes it was Karl Rove who I talked to. Now, the thing is that the journalists are not going to name Karl Rove publicly because you don't name your sources, and to do so would discredit them as journalists. So the White House is safe for the time being, but Karl Rove's name is very much out there.Brad DeLong fills in the blanks:
No. No. A thousand times no. That's not what happened. Remember: the two White House officials called at least six different reporter. There were at least six people--prominent people--in the elite press corps who have known the whole story since before July 14. The fact that they thought that keeping their Karl Rove brownie points was more important than informing the citizens of the Republic that among Bush's closest White House aides are those who give aid and comfort to our enemies, et cetera--the fact that they thought keeping their Karl Rove brownie points was more important sheds a very interesting light on the flaws in our current press corps. But Shafer is completely wrong in implying that the press corps was flat-footed, or that it had to learn anything from weblogs."Discredit them as journalists," my ass. In other words, the press corps (as I keep reminding you) are a bunch of lazy-ass pussies who hate to have anyone yell at them.
The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was, absolutely. His regime had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox. Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. We had sources that told us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons--the very weapons the dictator told the world he did not have. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes after the orders were given. There could be no doubt that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.
The hidden good news in the Wilson-Novak-Plame melodrama is that it disproves a thesis that jaundiced readers, myself included, have about the weakness Washington reporters have for anonymous sources bearing scoops. Any of the six journalists who were offered the Plame story and declined to run with it could have gotten some sort of career-enhancing bump out of it. That they ignored the calculated leak, and the story ended up with an opinion journalist who used it to make his political point, indicates a level of discipline I didn't know existed in the press corps.
The hidden bad news is that none of them reported that the Plame information was being leaked by sources who wished to embarrass her and Wilson—which they could have legitimately done without burning their sources by name. In other words, they all protected the White House from its blunder.
It might not be fair and it might not be right, but 480 members out of the Gang of 500 have the same theory about what happened, and The Note's strong belief in the First Amendment makes us duty bound to tell you about this operating premise.
Based on the original Novak story; on the language in yesterday's Washington Post story; on the "kind" of people Novak talks to; on the prophetic warnings of Wayne Slater; and on the fact that CIA agents have memories and the capacity to hold grudges nearly as long as the Bush family — based on all that, here's what people are thinking:
Two White House officials lashed out at Wilson, hoping to smear him in the minds of enough elite reporters to discredit him before his platform grew. They didn't want his wife's name out there in the public domain, so much as they wanted it in the brains of gatekeeping reporters.
Again, it might not be right or fair, but we dare you to find a member of the Gang who doesn't think the Post 's source was someone familiar with George Tenet's thinking.
No one was able to (or probably will be able to) match the Post quotes — so news organizations this cycle were left either ignoring them or quoting them. But make no mistake — it is those quotes that set this story on fire.
Since several of you have asked: the THEORETICAL reason the White House would have had to try to nip Wilson stories in the bud by putting out the fact that his wife is a CIA operative would be to try to discredit Wilson by saying he only got the assignment because of his wife, and that he would have been too captive to the CIA mindset on (read: against) the war.
.......White House officials who might have legal or political exposure on this are going to have to decide whether to hire lawyers or not, and the White House counsel's office is going to have to decide what legal help they can and should provide to officials if and when the DOJ wants to talk to them.
That means that the '90s practice of every Washington bureau of calling members of the bar to see who has hired whom is about to heat back up. The first one to report someone hiring a criminal lawyer wins a prize, as does the first person who develops that lawyer as a source on all this.
A reminder that students of recusal politics will have to consider the Rove-Ashcroft history: LINK
Note to MSNBC on TV and Nightly producers who were on duty on Saturday: You really should check out the MSNBC Web site — it has good stuff, and sometimes breaks news.
The leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee yesterday strongly disputed the assertion by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that there was new information to support the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war and was a looming threat to the United States.But if the claims weren't supported by the evidence, why did we go to war? I'm so confused.
"We don't see the support for that," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, whose staff has spent four months scrutinizing 19 volumes of intelligence underlying the intelligence community's prewar judgments about Iraq.
"As we moved to war, did the claims the policymakers made, were those claims supported by the intelligence?" Harman asked. "My conclusion is no."
Wilson said yesterday that he believes Rove "at a minimum condoned the leak," but said he has no evidence Rove was the original leaker. Wilson said that based on reporters' statements, he believes Rove participated in calls that drew attention to his wife's occupation after Novak's column was published. "My knowledge is based on a reporter who called me right after he had spoken to Rove and said that Rove had said my wife was fair game," Wilson said. He said that conversation occurred on July 21.
Even though their objections are founded in facts, Democrats should stop demonizing George Bush because it's not very polite. And yes, I should have insisted more loudly on better manners when our side did it. For example, Richard Scaife was holding his knife incorrectly when he repeatedly stabbed Clinton in the back. I regret not pointing that out.
Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be. The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences.Let's see: Truman considered war profiteering treason, and Bush I considered betraying the identity of CIA agents treason.
It's rarely mentioned nowadays, but at the time of the Marshall Plan, Americans were very concerned about profiteering in the name of patriotism. To get Congressional approval, Truman had to provide assurances that the plan would not become a boondoggle. Funds were administered by an agency independent of the White House, and Marshall promised that priorities would be determined by Europeans, not Americans.
Fortunately, Truman's assurances were credible. Although he is now honored for his postwar leadership, Truman initially rose to prominence as a fierce crusader against war profiteering, which he considered treason.
.......For example, in July two enterprising Middle Eastern firms started offering cellphone service in Baghdad, setting up jury-rigged systems compatible with those of neighboring countries. Since the collapse of Baghdad's phone system has been a major source of postwar problems, coalition authorities should have been pleased.
But no: the authorities promptly shut down the services. Cell service, they said, could be offered only by the winners in a bidding process — one whose rules, revealed on July 31, seemed carefully designed to shut out any non-American companies. (In the face of strenuous protests the rules were revised, but still seem to favor the usual suspects.) Oddly, the announcement of the winners, originally scheduled for Sept. 5, keeps being delayed. Meanwhile, only Paul Bremer and his people have cellphones — and, thanks to the baffling decision to give that contract to MCI, even those phones don't work very well. (Aside from the fact that its management perpetrated history's biggest accounting fraud, MCI has no experience in building cell networks.)
Then there's electricity. One reason Iraq still faces blackouts is that local experts and institutions were excluded from the repair business. Instead, the exclusive contract was given to Bechtel, whose Republican ties are almost as strong as Halliburton's. And if a recent story in The Washington Post is accurate, Bechtel continues to ignore pleas by Iraqi engineers for essential spare parts.
For Democrats, it is a powerful symbol of a sluggish economy, of a lack of federal money to deal with domestic problems because of the deficit and the war in Iraq and of what they say is the Bush administration's insensitivity to the needs of the home front. It could, in short, be a significant vulnerability for President Bush — if the Democrats succeed in framing this election as a referendum on domestic policy.
The White House sought today to head off the calls for a special counsel as numerous Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates said they doubted that the Justice Department could investigate without at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
One Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, said the situation was reason enough to revive the independent counsel law, which Congress allowed to die in 1999 after widespread concern over Kenneth W. Starr's Whitewater investigation.
The current regulations, put in place by former Attorney General Janet Reno, give Mr. Ashcroft discretion over whether to appoint a special counsel if the department appears to have a conflict of interest.
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!" As a reporter, you get around—curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events—but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking. This went on without a break for a minute or two. Then the aide slipped out looking a bit ashen, and Rove, his face ruddy from the exertions of the past few moments, looked at me and smiled a gentle, Clarence-the-Angel smile. "Come on in." And I did.
.....Kristol notes that "the kid is what he is, and he’s different from the father, some differences that I feel good about," but that gray men around "41" who don’t approve of "43" have trouble criticizing the son to the father "and ascribe everything to Karl’s malign influence." In that, Rove is at the center of the most portentous father-son conversation of modern times. Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.
Federal law prohibits prohibits both federal and state officers and employees -- including public school officials -- from searching or seizing journalists' "work product" or "documentary materials" in their possession even when the present a search warrant. The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 has some limited exceptions. A newsroom search may be allowed when the government is searching for: (1) certain types of national security information, (2) child pornography, (3) evidence that the journalists themselves have committed a crime, or (4) materials that must be immediately seized to prevent death or serious bodily injury. In addition, "documentary materials" may also be seized if there is reason to believe that they would be destroyed in the time it took to obtain them using a subpoena, or if a court has ordered disclosure, the news organization has refused and all other remedies have been exhausted.But this one's probably the kicker:
The issue of whether the First Amendment creates a privilege to withhold confidential information came before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 in a trilogy of cases decided together under the name Branzburg v. Hayes.3 The Court ruled that reporters have no First Amendment right to refuse to testify and answer all questions before grand juries if they actually have witnessed criminal activity.There's more, but it looks like subpoenas may be very well going out to newsrooms. Stay tuned.
"The thing I hate most about Bush Co. is that they make me feel like a crazy conspiracy theorist." -Molly Ivins
That won't fly, for the simple reason that high-ranking members of the Bush administration apparently know that it wasn't an "innocent mistake." By telling the Post, it's clear that some cabinet officials are not going to let this die quickly.
To which I say, good. What was done here was thuggish, malevolent, illegal, and immoral. Whoever pedaled this story to Novak and others, in outing Plame, violated the law and put the lives of Plame's overseas contacts at risk. Compared to this, all of Clinton's peccadilloes look like an mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production. If Rove or other high-ranking White House officials did what's alleged, then they've earned the wrath of God. Or, since God is probably busy, the media firestorm that will undoubtedly erupt.
Let me make this as plain as possible -- I was an unpaid advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and I know and respect some high-ranking people in the administration. And none of that changes the following: if George W. Bush knew about or condoned this kind of White House activity, I wouldn't just vote against him in 2004 -- I'd want to see him impeached. Straight away.
.....The second reason is more insidious. As Roger Simon put it in a follow-up comment to his post:
But doesn't it seem weird to you that someone would do something so patently illegal for so little gain? It's such a self-destructive act it doesn't make sense.
Roger is correct -- it does seem weird. If it is nevertheless true, however -- an important "if" -- then a Pandora's box gets opened by asking this question: if the White House was willing to commit an overtly illegal act in dealing with such a piddling matter, what lines have they crossed on not-so-piddling matters? In other words, if this turns out to be true, then suddenly do all of the crazy conspiracy theories acquire a thin veneer of surface plausibility?
If that happens, both the administration and the country will be mired in scandal politics until November 2004. The administration would deserve it -- the country would not.
WHO DID IT?....Based on emails and some surfing around the blogosphere, here are some guesses about who's involved in the Plame scandal. The whistleblower in the Post story seems likely to be CIA Director George Tenet. The two White House leakers probably come from this list:
Dick Cheney — Vice President
Karl Rove — Senior Advisor to the President
Condi Rice — National Security Advisor
Steve Hadley — Deputy National Security Advisor
Andy Card — White House Chief of Staff
Dan Bartlett — Assistant to the President for Communications
John Gordon — Homeland Security Advisor
Scooter Libby — Vice President’s Chief of Staff
Maybe Rove and Libby? Your guess is as good as mine.
And for anyone inclined to defend the president in this affair, here are a few points not to lose sight of:
* This is not just some rogue official somewhere in the bowels of the White House bureacracy. This is someone at the very top, and there are two of them.
* There are people in the administration who know who the culprits are, and who have probably known for months. Why haven't they done anything? Bush could find out who the leakers are in five minutes and have their resignations on his desk in another five. Why hasn't he made the phone call? Why does he tolerate having people like this on his staff — and perhaps even as his friends?
* This is not trivial stuff, and it wasn't an innocent mistake. Someone who is very senior, very experienced, and who is trusted with the highest levels of national security information, exposed a CIA agent. They knew what they were doing, and they shopped it around systematically to make sure someone took the bait.
This should not be a partisan affair. This kind of stuff is wrong, full stop, and both Democrats and Republicans should be demanding that Bush address it immediately. These are not the kind of people we want occupying offices in the West Wing.
HUME: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was asked to inquire in Africa about what Saddam Hussein might have been doing there in terms of acquiring nuclear materials, ended up with his wife's name in the paper as a CIA person. There are now suggestions that the name and her identity and her CIA work had been revealed by the White House. What do you know about that?Condi really should consider seeing a neurologist. At the very least, she has a severe short-term memory problem.
RICE: I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.
My understanding is that, in matters like this, as a matter of routine, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action, and that's what's going to be done.
SNOW: Well, when the story came out — his wife's name is in the paper — was it known in the White House that she was a CIA employee?
RICE: I'm not going to go into this, Tony, because the problem here is this has been referred to the Justice Department. I think that's the appropriate place...
SNOW: Well, but it is revealing, or it's important to figure out what the White House reaction was at the time. For years and years and years, for instance, the administrations chased Phillip Agee all around the globe because he had revealed the name of a CIA officer. This is a grave offense, if you have CIA officers.
Was there, at least within the White House, a gasp when somebody said, "Uh oh"? And if so, did the White House take any action, back then in June, when the story appeared?
RICE: Well, it was well known that the president of the United States does not expect the White House to get involved in such things. We will see...
HUME: You mean the revelation of names?
RICE: Anything of this kind. But let's just see what the Justice Department does. It's with the appropriate channels now, and we'll see what the Justice Department — how the Justice Department disposes of it.
SNOW: But there was nobody at the White House at the time who was saying, "Oh, we've got a problem here"?
RICE: Tony, I don't remember any such conversation. But I will say this: The Justice Department gets these things as a matter of routine. They will determine the facts. They will determine what happened, they will determine if anything happened. And they'll take appropriate action.
SNOW: Do you think the White House should release phone logs, if necessary, to figure out who talked to whom?
RICE: Tony, as a matter of course, when the Justice Department is looking into something, of course the White House cooperates.
For example:
* A committee set up with the help of J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, in 2000 reimbursed the travel of James Kotas at the same time that Kotas was being paid as an employee of the Alexander campaign.
* The Citizens for Florida's Future, which is affiliated with Rep. Randy Johnson, R-Celebration, has paid dry-cleaning bills, a $5,000 equipment repair bill and for trips to Sam's Club and Costco.
* House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, who was vice-chairman of the Committee for Responsible Growth until this summer, has received thousands of dollars in reimbursements for such items as "literature/periodicals," "photo expenses" and "office equipment."
* The Committee for Responsible Leadership paid $1,500 to rent a Tallahassee home. The home's owner said she rented the home to Rep. Stan Mayfield, R-Vero Beach, and two other state legislators for three months during the 2002 session.
One government watchdog said legislators have turned these "committees of continuous existence" into "slush funds."
"It's become another huge loophole in our campaign finance law," said Ben Wilcox of Common Cause. "Clearly those CCE's were never intended to become slush funds for people running for legislative leadership. I think there's some things that are illegal that are going on, and if not illegal, they are trying to push the boundaries of the law as far as they can."
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has asked state investigators to look into the opposite interests of a well-known Annapolis lobbyist who represents two companies involved in the overhaul of the state's voting machine system.
Ehrlich requested the inquiry last week after learning that Gilbert J. Genn, a former Montgomery County delegate, is registered as a lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems Inc., the company that has a $55 million contract to provide the state with its electronic voting system, and Science Applications International Corp., the computer security company the state recently hired to examine the Diebold voting machines for flaws.
"It was a complete surprise to the administration," Shareese N. DeLeaver, a spokeswoman for Ehrlich, said yesterday.
The request by the governor to the State Ethics Commission was first reported yesterday in the Baltimore Sun.
"There's a lot of us who'd like to see him campaign," Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant and Schwarzenegger spokesman, said this week, noting Miller's appeal to younger voters. "Dennis Miller is at the cutting edge of biting political commentary."The fact that they consider the unctous Miller "cutting edge" highlights the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
Another Republican consultant said simply, "We love him."
"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."Ironic, that the father pushed for the law that may lead to the eventual downfall of his son. How Shakespearean!
The president’s national security adviser said she was unaware of any White House involvement in the matter.
“I know nothing about any such calls and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way,” Condoleezza Rice told NBC’s Tim Russert.
Rice told “Fox News Sunday” the same thing, in almost identical language. “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he knew nothing about the matter. Powell told ABC’s “This Week” that he thought that if the CIA believed the identity of one of its agents have been revealed, it had an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into the matter. But he added: “Other than that, I don’t know anything about the matter.”
President Bush is deeply morally unserious when he tells Americans that we can succeed in this marathon and still have radical tax cuts for the rich and a soaring deficit, and the only people who will have to sacrifice are reservists and soldiers. And the Democrats had better decide: What is their party going to be about? Wallowing in the mess, endlessly criticizing how we got into Iraq, or articulating a broader, more realistic vision for successful nation-building there?
The lessons learned this week, and their implications, are gigantic. They will shape America's role in the world, its perception of itself and its ability to grapple with both foreign and domestic problems for years to come. I think the American people will see this through, but they want a pragmatic, strategically optimistic, morally serious plan to get behind. The leader who presents that will be the next president — I hope.
There are many disturbing passages in the soon-to-be-published book "Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait," by Midge Decter.
Ms. Decter is doyenne of the neocon movement, wife of the neocon patriarch Norman Podhoretz; mother of John Podhoretz, the neocon Iraqi war cheerleader and new "West Wing" adviser; and friend of the neocon clan of the über-hawk Bill Kristol.
Her son wrote in his New York Post column last February that those who worried that the Bush team had no postwar vision were "pathetic" sophists: "No one has thought more deeply or seriously about what a post-Saddam Middle East could or should look like than Bush's foreign-policy team. The question has been a near-obsession for conservative foreign-policy intellectuals for more than a decade."
Now Mom has written a love ode to the 71-year-old "studmuffin" defense secretary so palpitating it recalls the clip of a teenage Judy Garland singing "You Made Me Love You" to a picture of Clark Gable.
Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around
When the snow melts away,
Do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy covered burial ground
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy
But now they only bring fatigue
To the home of the brave
The land of the free
And the doormat of the National League
But there is a new crescendo of criticism that goes beyond the objection to PowerPoint's tendency to turn any information into a dull recitation of look-alike factoids. Based on nearly a decade of experience with the software and its effects, detractors argue that PowerPoint-muffled messages have real consequences, perhaps even of life or death.
Before the fatal end of the shuttle Columbia's mission last January, with the craft still orbiting the earth, NASA engineers used a PowerPoint presentation to describe their investigation into whether a piece of foam that struck the shuttle's wing during launching had caused serious damage. Edward Tufte, a Yale professor who is an influential expert on the presentation of visual information, published a critique of that presentation on the World Wide Web last March. A key slide, he said, was "a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyper-rationalism."
Among other problems, Mr. Tufte said, a crucial piece of information — that the chunk of foam was hundreds of times larger than anything that had ever been tested — was relegated to the last point on the slide, squeezed into insignificance on a frame that suggested damage to the wing was minor.
The independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster devoted an entire page of its final report last month to Mr. Tufte's analysis. The board wrote that "it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation."
Okay, no question: the Washington Post has the story about the Wilson/Plame scandal. This story, frankly, blows the whole thing wide open.
The Post got one "senior administration official" to concede that "two top White House officials" disclosed Plame's identity to at least six journalists.
Here are the five bombshell grafs in their entirety ...
A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.
"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.
Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers' allegation was that Wilson had benefited from nepotism because the Niger mission had been his wife's idea. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."
The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said he had no indication that Bush knew about the calls. Columnist Robert Novak published the agent's name in a July column about Wilson's mission.
It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."
How about just wrong, and leave out that they were ineffective?
The report provides the most comprehensive federal study ever of the cost and benefits of regulatory decision-making. It has pleasantly surprised some environmentalists who doubted the Bush administration would champion the benefits of government regulations, and fueled arguments that the White House should continue pushing clean-air standards rather than trying to weaken some.Kevin comments:
"I'm sure the true believers in the Bush administration will brand this report as true heresy because it defies the stereotype of burdensome, worthless regulations," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said yesterday. "They clearly don't understand that the government regulations are there to protect you -- and they work."
Did you get that? The benefits far exceeded the costs for every single major federal rule approved since around the beginning of the Clinton administration. Even given the fact that cost-benefit analysis is a very imperfect science, that's a remarkable finding. I can hear the libertarians going nuts already.
Republicans have been screeching loudly ever since Reagan took office that liberals are killing American business by burdening it with an endless stream of inane regulations while blithely ignoring the costs of this regulatory zeal. Well guess what? They were wrong, and the Bush White House has now tacitly admitted it.
What about the crucial Washington Post article, in which anonymous federal agents alleged the DEA memo was the work of a disgruntled employee?
"The Washington Post article was a plant -- that's obvious. The story was killed," Stability told me. Who planted the story? Stability claimed the FBI was behind it. "Every organization is running scared," Stability added, "because they're afraid of the next shoe to drop. There are many smoking guns out there, many. So consequently every one is at a level of heightened anxiety, and when they're anxious they make mistakes."
Yes, but what are they afraid of? What will the smoking guns prove? Questions, questions, labyrinthine questions, and the more you ask in this matter, the fewer get answered. When I called the CIA to inquire about the agency's March 2001 alert -- an alert that evinced deep disquiet over the affair -- an official who was aware of the inquiry told me, "I'll make a recommendation to you: Don't write a story. This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. As far as we're concerned, we reported it, yes, but subsequently it's nothing of interest to us. And we've just closed the book on it. And I really recommend you do the same. Let it go. There's nothing here."
Barbour of course is former chair of the RNC, former chair of President Bush's campaign advisory committee in DC in 2000, and former just about everything else in the DC Republican party, as well being one of the priciest and most wired Republican lobbyists in town.
At the moment, in his spare time, Barbour's running for governor of Mississippi. But his real digs are at his DC lobbying shop Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc.
Now, yesterday I told you how President Bush's right-hand-man Joe Allbaugh has just set up a new outfit -- New Bridge Strategies -- to help companies get the sweetest contracts in Iraq. New Bridge, as their site says, is "your bridge to success in Iraq."
But when you look more closely at New Bridge, of which Allbaugh is Chairman and Director, you start to see that New Bridge looks an awful lot like an outgrowth Barbour Griffith and Rogers.
.....Actually, you can see why it's so convenient to work at both of these two places since they both happen to be located on the 10th floor of 1275 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Bush isn't president, but he plays one on TV. His presence in the White House is an affront to everything that this country stands for. His fake presidency is treasonous; our passive tolerance for it sad testimony to post-9/11 cowardice. As I wrote in December 2000, "George W. Bush is not the President of the United States of America." And millions of Americans agree.
Two months after 9/11, when Bush's job approval rating was soaring at 89 percent, 47 percent of Americans told a Gallup poll that he had not won the presidency legitimately. "The election controversy...could make a comeback if Bush's approval ratings were to fall significantly," predicted Byron York in The National Review. Two years later, 3 million jobs are gone, Bush's wars have gone sour, and just 50 percent of voters approve of his performance. If York is correct, most Americans now consider Bush to be no more legitimate than Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), who also came to power in a coup d'état.
And that's why we hate him.
A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co.
Democrats have aggressively challenged Cheney's claim that he has no financial ties to Halliburton, despite those arrangements.
The Houston-based energy conglomerate has been awarded more than $2 billion in contracts for rebuilding Iraq, including one worth $1.22 billion that was awarded on a noncompetitive basis.
Let me introduce you to New Bridge Strategies, LLC. New Bridge is 'Helping to Rebuild a New Iraq' as their liner note says.
Here's the company's new blurb from their website ...
New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C. and on the ground in Iraq.
A 'unique company'? You could say that. Who's the Chairman and Director of New Bridge? That would be Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's longtime right-hand-man and until about six months ago his head of FEMA. Before that of course he was the president's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000.
Allbaugh was part of the president's so-called 'Iron Triangle' -- the other two being Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. And now Allbaugh's running an outfit that helps your company get the sweetest contracts in Iraq? That sound right to you? Think he'll have any special pull?
Visit the site to see their "interactive map of Iraq [which] will show areas of opportunity in the post-war rebuilding effort for specific industries."
It's James Fisk and Jay Gould of Arabia. Unbelievable ...
It was like being in the Twilight Zone. It was a nightmare. It was clear that the pastor, Veronica, was speaking directly to me. She said that Christians have a very bad reputation in the world, because we have earned it, with our hate and self-righteousness. We speak in reverent terms of grace, justice, equality, mercy, and then we despise people who were also created in God's image, who are Her children too. She said that if George Bush had been the only person on earth, Jesus would still have come down and died for him.
This drives me crazy. That God seems to have no taste, and no standards. Of course, by the same token, on most days, this is what gives some of us hope.
The outside evaluation was ordered by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., shortly after a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University concluded that the software behind Diebold Election Systems' AccuVote-TS voting machines was vulnerable to tampering that could skew election results.And from the New York Times:
The review released Wednesday paints a less-than-flattering picture of how an election would have been run in Maryland had the Hopkins study not drawn attention to problems. Several risks were deemed serious.
While some changes were required of Diebold, many more are to be made by the State Board of Elections. The study found problems not only with the technology behind the electronic machines, but in policies and procedures used by state and local election boards.
"The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," the report said. "Any computerized voting system implemented using the present set of policies and procedures would require these same mitigations."
Yesterday's report, by the Science Applications International Corporation, said that Mr. Rubin's conclusions about the company's software were "technically correct," but that the researchers "did not have a complete understanding" of Maryland's use of the system.Let me put it this way: Voting machine companies have always been connected to voter fraud. Selling this big-ticket equipment requires greasing of palms and other lubricants (years ago, one national electronic voting machine salesman told me he provided coke and hookers if necessary to seal the deal).
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rubin said he was mystified to see that the state planned to use Diebold machines despite the report.
"It almost seems as though the people writing the Maryland action plan either did not read or did not understand the S.A.I.C. report," he said. "What they should say is, `We're going to put these systems on hold until they say that these things are safe to use.' "
James T. Smith, the Baltimore County executive, who has opposed the move to electronic voting, said the new report should stop the state from using the machines.
"For two years, Baltimore County has warned, `Iceberg ahead!' and now independent experts have warned that it's a gigantic iceberg," Mr. Smith said. "Maryland should not say, `Damn the iceberg, full speed ahead.' "
Some of this may be a pose that is designed to tweak the media by making the news appear to be below the president's notice. During the Iraqi invasion, when the rest of the nation was glued to TV, Mr. Bush's spokesman claimed that his boss had barely glanced at the pictures of what was going on.The apple didn't fall far from the tree. Remember when his dad went the supermarket and saw a scanner for the first time?
But it is worrisome when one of the most incurious men ever to occupy the White House takes pains to insist that he gets his information on what the world is saying only in predigested bits from his appointees.
Mr. Bush thinks of himself as a man of the people, but carefully staged contacts with groups of supporters or small children does not constitute getting in touch with the people. It is in Mr. Bush's interest, as well as the nation's, for him to burst the bubble he has been inhabiting, and take a hard look at the real world.
Even some of those who had previously backed the administration were harsh in their judgment.
"The administration waited until the 11th hour to begin planning," said Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, speaking to the American administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Its leading members believed we would find an oil-rich, functioning country, that we'd be met by cheering crowds, that all we had to do was sweep out the top Baathist layers, implant our favorite exiles and watch democracy take root as the bulk of our troops returned home by Christmas."
The increasingly tough tone was first struck by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a consistent opponent of the war, who charged the administration with perpetrating a "fraud" with its justification for the war on Iraq.
Mr. Kennedy's comments, in an interview last week with The Associated Press, drew a strong Republican rebuke, but Senate Democrats, including their leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, defended his right to speak his mind on the Senate floor. Mr. Daschle himself has been leery of taking on the president over Iraq after coming under intense political fire for his criticism just before the start of the war.
There he was. On the Tuesday after a long Fourth of July weekend. In the ballroom of an ornate Wall Street hotel that once housed the New York Merchants Exchange. Standing in front of a blue-and-white backdrop with the words corporate responsibility printed over and over on it, in case you should miss the point. Promising us "a new ethic" for American business. Our president, Scourge of Corporate Misbehavior.This piece also contains the best damned explanation of Bush's Harken scam to date. And the best line yet about Shrub:
It was like watching a whore pretend to be dean of Southern Methodist University's School of Theology. But as Luther said, hypocrisy has ample wages.
"Harken," said the Bush camp over and over, "was nothing like Enron." Interestingly enough, it was exactly like Enron in each and every feature of corporate misbehavior, except a lot smaller. A perfect miniature Enron.
By the summer of 2002, it had long been known that twelve years earlier Bush made a pile by selling his stock in Harken Energy Corporation just before it tanked. At the time, he was serving both on Harken's board and on a special audit committee looking at the company's financial health. As he spoke on Wall Street, stories were surfacing about Harken's sham sale of a subsidiary to a group of company insiders. The acquisition was financed by an $11 million loan guaranteed by the seller, Harken Energy. In other words, a fake asset swap to punch up Harken's annual profit-and-loss statement.
George W. Bush should declare himself a conscientious objector in his own war on corporate crime.. Amen.
But several American and Iraqi specialists contend the U.S. occupation authority has been slow to address the problem. Immediately after Hussein’s government fell, they maintain, more money and attention should have been focused on buying spare parts and trucking in large, gas-powered generating units that can each power as many as 40,000 homes. Doing so, they insist, would have reduced the frequency of blackouts and the anger that crystallized toward the occupation.
“If they had recognized the problem sooner and devoted more resources to it, the problem wouldn’t be as bad as it is now,” said an American electrical engineer who works with the occupation authority and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Iraqis would have seen a real improvement in their lives.”
According to a corporate press release from May 8, 2002, the Torch-built system would identify "abnormal events or activities that may include rebel actions before damaging events occur." To do this, the contractor would apply "intelligent pattern recognition in identifying latent relationships and behaviors that may help point to potential terrorist threats."
To privacy advocates, that sounds a lot like TIA's mission (PDF) of researching "data search and pattern recognition technologies ... based on the idea that terrorist planning activities or a likely terrorist attack could be uncovered by searching for indications of terrorist activities in vast quantities of transaction data."
"This looks and feels like the data Valdez," said Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Look at how we found out about this, only because one company was foolish enough to speak publicly about it," Tien added. "We should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs, and have a serious national conversation, because travel data is just one example of the many kinds of data every data-mining operation wants to suck in from private businesses."
For eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio talk shows, "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously racist pasts -- all were given hearings, credence and air time. Sliming Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an ambitious young right-wing hitman -- like David Brock, who has since made full confession -- took that golden opportunity.
After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and dragged this country through more than year of the most tawdry, ridiculous, unnecessary pain.
"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the ineffable Krauthammer. "Whence the anger? It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy." I'd say so myself, yes, it would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election fight and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush overall.
The night Gore conceded the race in one of the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through every word of it. One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses.
To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports, it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only president we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election," well good. I don't think we should forget that.
So the three now say that they never said that Hussein was involved in the World Trade Center attack. Look up what we said. We never said it.
Of course they did. Anybody who thinks they didn't is a poor fool. Take a half-word out of a sentence, replace it with a smug smile or chin motion and the meaning is there. Saddam was in on the Trade Center with bin Laden. Of course Bush and his people said it. Then go to the whip, go to the truth.
Only the strong memory is an opponent, and there are few of them. Otherwise, the only thing that can remind people and maybe even inflame them are these dead bodies coming back from Iraq to Heber, Calif. They arrive here in silence. We have no idea of how many wounded are in government hospitals with no arms or legs. You never hear Bush talking about them. He often acts as if subjects like this have nothing to do with him.
Amid all this boasting about its lucrative connections, IILG is surprisingly modest about the family connections of its founder, Salem Chalabi. The website doesn't mention that he is a nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, who just happens to be the leader of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), a member of the governing council and current president of Iraq. Uncle Ahmed, a former banker in Jordan, fled the country in 1989 before he could be arrested in connection with a $200 million financial scandal. He was later tried in his absence and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.
But has never looked back. Despite being detested by the State Department and the CIA, Ahmed Chalabi found strong support in the Pentagon and US Congress, which generously provided funds in support of his opposition to Saddam Hussein through the INC.
Dean launched his broadside against the administration in Kerry's backyard, at a rain-drenched rally in Boston's Copley Square, where he called on supporters to lead a modern-day grass-roots campaign to oust the president by pointing to the Revolution as a comparison. "A King George, who had forgotten his own people in favor of special interests, was replaced by a government of, by and for the people," he said.
Dean's prepared text included some of the harshest language he has used against the administration. He charged that the Bush team has "capitalized on domestic fears of terrorism for political gain," given "handouts" to industries that are "causing irreparable harm to our environment" and "shackled our children and grandchildren" with record budget deficits to enact his "reckless tax cuts."
But that was not how others, from the secretary general of the United Nations to the French president, saw it. The invasion of Iraq, to them, remained a dangerous act of unilateralism now beset by intractable problems.
The audience of world leaders seemed to perceive an American president weakened by plunging approval ratings at home, facing a tough security situation in Iraq where American soldiers are dying every week, and confronted by the beginnings of a revolt against the American timetable for self-rule by several Iraqi leaders installed by the United States.
Nor did they seem eager to help. If anything, they appeared more skeptical than ever of Mr. Bush's assertions, including his promise to "reveal the full extent" of illegal weapons programs he says exist in Iraq, and unforthcoming, at least for now, in their response to his appeal for help with the Iraq occupation and reconstruction.
George Bush was increasingly isolated on the global stage yesterday as he defied intense criticism from a litany of world leaders at the United Nations over the war on Iraq.And this:
Showing no contrition for defying the world body in March or the declining security situation in Iraq, the US president called for the world to set aside past differences and help rebuild the country: "Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid - and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support," he said.
But the French president, Jacques Chirac, who spoke after Mr Bush, blamed the US-led war for sparking one of the most severe crises in the history of the UN and argued that Mr Bush's unilateral actions could lead to anarchy.
Olive branches were in short supply as Mr Bush, eschewing any genuine effort at consensus-building, resurrected his old black and white view of a planet devoid of neutral ground and divided between civilised and uncivilised. He spoke anew of rogue states and the fear of terror weapons falling into terrorist hands. Eyeballing the assembly, he warned that the terrorists, whom as usual he did not name or number or define, "should have no friend in this chamber". And again he made clear that other considerations, political, diplomatic or otherwise, would be subordinated to this overriding obsession.
1. 1963 VW Beetle, aqua. "The Little Darling."
2. 1966 VW Beetle, white. I did the body work and painted it. Stolen next day.
3. 1966 Chevy van, tomato red.
4. 1964 VW Bus. Beige.
5. 1969 Toyota Corona, off-white.
6. 1968 Toyota Corolla, white.
7. 1963 Pontiac Bonneville. Black with red leather interior. "The Batmobile."
8. 1972 Chevy Vega wagon. Mauve metallic. Hey, it ran.
9. 1969 Toyota wagon. Kind of harvest gold-ish.
10. 1971 AMC Eagle. Dark green.
11. 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger. White with black leather top.
12. 1978 Buick Regal. Pale blue metallic. Bad shocks, disposable trans.
13. 1978 Dodge Omni. Gold. Great little car. A gift from a friend of a friend.
14. 1978 Toyota Tercel. Silver. Decent car.
15. 1985 Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon. My pride and joy. Bleeds me dry.
I wish it were 1972 again or even 1992 again and I could feel sanguine that the United States was going to toddle along, for better or worse, under a basic bipartisan consensus that recognized certain constitutional boundaries and limits that could not be breached. I wish that we had an independent media that was less focused on entertainment values and instead recognized that it had an intrinsically important role in democracy. I wish that we were not in the grip of a revolution in technology and communications at the same time as a radical group of idealists have seized power. I wish we had the luxury of choosing candidates purely on the basis of their commitment to a bottom-up revolution of the people and progressive ideas.Great piece. Read it all.
Unfortunately, it is not that time. The modern Republican party presents a clear and present danger to everything we hold dear --- the social safety net, the rule of law, civil liberties, consumer protection, a clean environment, international legitimacy --- everything. They envision a one-party state. They mean to completely and thoroughly change the way this country works.
I'm not that brilliant. Immediately when they began looking at the GEMS program they began commenting on the fact that it has no -- it's something called referential integrity. And what that means is that there are many different ways that it can become vulnerable to hacking. It has to do with how one part of the database is hooked into the next part.
I got a call from one of our more brilliant computer programmers -- he's got quite a few advanced degrees -- and he called me on a weekend and he said, "I want you to go to your computer." And he walked me through it just like a support tech does -- open this panel, click this, do this, do that. And as I'm doing this it was appalling how easy it was. Once you know the steps, a 10-year-old can rig an election. In fact it's so easy that one of our activists, Jim March in California, put together a "rig-a-vote" CD. He's been going around showing it to elections officials, and now this CD has been making its way to Congress members.
It's shocking. All you do is double-click the icon. You go backwards through the Internet to that county computer, and if you have Microsoft Access on your machine you can walk right into that election database while it's open. It's configured for multiple access at the same time. You can be in there changing things and you can change anything you want.
For now, Mr. Bush's political aides are largely dismissive of the Democratic presidential candidates, although some Republicans say the White House is more worried than it lets on about the ability of Howard Dean to energize the Democrats. Mr. Bush, in an interview with Fox News broadcast today, said he was playing little attention to the rise of Dr. Dean.
The more obscure a proposal is, the more points it seems to have. Bush's Iraq policy has only three points, but the energy proposal he unveiled during the 2000 campaign had 23 points. And seemingly unrelated policies can share a common title. In May 2000, the Bush presidential campaign announced "Governor Bush's four-point plan to support public school teachers"; two years later, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell testified about the four-point plan -- for Sudan.
Similarly, Bush proposed a 10-point plan for improving corporate governance in March 2002, with much fanfare. But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick must have missed the announcement, because he declared in October that "America's trade agenda will drive a 10-point plan."
By far, Bush favors the six-point plan as his all-purpose panacea. In February 2000, fighting off a primary challenge from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Bush rolled out a six-point plan for campaign finance reform. Four months later, his campaign announced various budgeting proposals, saying "Governor Bush's six-point plan is designed to reform the way Washington does business."
Also during the campaign, Bush produced yet another six-point plan to hasten cleanup of polluted industrial sites. That one caught Jay Leno's eye. "Number five is very interesting," the "Tonight Show" host said. "He said he would use solar energy to fry death row inmates." But that didn't stop the six-point plan from being reincarnated as Bush's economic policy this month.
AUSTRALIAN investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie that could cost George W. Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.
A television report by Pilger aired on British screens overnight said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.
But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.
Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Federal investigators have concluded President Bush's former telecommunications policy chief committed three ethics violations by allowing industry lobbyists to throw her a party. The Justice Department, however, is declining to prosecute her.
The previously confidential findings by the Commerce Department (news - web sites)'s inspector general came in late June, two weeks before Nancy Victory announced her resignation as assistant secretary for telecommunications and information.
The inspector general said that Victory violated ethics standards that prohibit federal employees from accepting gifts from anyone whose interests they substantially affect and require them to avoid any appearance of impropriety in carrying out their official duties.
Ten days after the catered party in her honor in October 2001, Victory urged a policy change benefiting telecommunications companies that helped pay for the catered $3,000 event with 60 to 80 guests at her home in Great Falls, Va.
George's egocentric judgment is also given credibility under the auspices of his religious conviction. I do believe George is a religious man. But, he has in many ways prostituted his religion to serve his true dogma--the advancement of the corporation.
So, for all his touting of religious and moral imperatives, George's policy decisions constitute nothing less than a moral failure. They have nothing to do with God, despite George's fantasy of divine rule, they have nothing to do with compassion, and they have nothing to do with helping you and me in any real way. Intrapsychically, they have everything to do with George's wish to finally be more than what he fears he is--a moral/business/personal failure. And interpersonally, they have to do with paybacks and power jockeying.
I believe George's handlers exploit his insecurities, posing him as an Air Force Naval Aviator here and a Friend of the Poor there, feeding into his need to play those rolls. At the same time, it fills their need to have an affable, malleable front man, willing to please and needy enough to believe the rolls in which he is cast. Karl and Dick and Co., I believe, are to a certain extent manipulating George just as they are trying to manipulate us.
The financial indifference to community colleges is made all the more confounding by the governor's stated fondness for their role. Bush's Board of Education has pushed vigorously for lower-cost alternatives to full-service research universities, and no one disputes the successful track record of community colleges. Two-thirds of all nursing degrees are awarded by community colleges, and half of all teachers and a third of all engineers begin their education there. So is Florida now too cheap even for the cheaper alternatives?You can't listen to a word they say. Watch the hands, not the lips.
While students are being turned away at community colleges, Florida is sitting on a $948-million windfall from the federal government. But Bush, who in August asked for $66-million extra for prisons and in May threatened to veto the entire budget if he didn't get $120-million for his FCAT testing plan, finds no urgency in the destitution of community colleges. The minimum foundation is cracking, and Florida just looks the other way.
A remarkable exchange concerning Diebold's voting machines in Volusia County, Florida. On January 17, 2001, Lana Hines, a county elections official sends out an inquiry as to how Al Gore ended up with a vote-count of -16,022. That's NEGATIVE 16,022—which just happens also to have been the total number of votes cast for various independent and third-party candidates who also ran. (It was the largest number of such votes cast in Volusia County's history.)
......And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
When will this all-important story break out in the US mainstream press?
When will the Democrats confront the issue? What is at stake here is their future as a party—and ours as a democracy.
In an exclusive Oval Office interview with Fox News' Brit Hume (search), Bush said that while he respected Kennedy, the senator "should not have said we were trying to bribe foreign nations."
"I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game," Bush said in the interview that will air Monday night. "But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say -- use words that they shouldn't be using."
Kennedy's comments, part of the drumbeat of criticism Bush has received lately from Democrats, were described as a "new low" by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Kennedy dismissed DeLay's comments, saying that once again GOP leaders are avoiding questions about Bush's policies "by attacking the patriotism of those who question them."
Kennedy, D-Mass., elaborated on his comments in a televised interview on Friday, saying the administration is announcing an $8.5 billion loan to Turkey, and that country will then provide military assistance in Iraq.
"It didn't have to be this way," he said. "We wouldn't have to be providing these billions of dollars to these countries to ... coerce them or bribe them to send their troops in, if we'd done it the right way, if we'd gone to the United Nations, if we had built an international constituency."
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