Quotes & Sound Bites
"An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."  -  Gore's MLK day speech

"Since 1995, Republicans have turned our democratic government into an engine of patronage, not one of responsible policy.  They have linked their party, and the business of the country, to powerful lobbyists in an unprecedented attempt to eliminate the will of the American people from the legislative process."  Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York

"At a press conference yesterday President Bush was asked if he had seen 'Brokeback Mountain.' He said he hadn't seen the movie but is interested in drilling for oil there."  -- David Letterman

"New Orleans is still a great place to bring the family and have fun." - the idiot-in-chief

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think PATRIOT Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."  -  Bush, lying on 4/20/04

Bush has admitted that he personally authorized thousands of illegal wiretaps, and that he doesn't plan to stop it.  Even his usual supporters (even Grover  Norquist!) are objecting to this and are demanding an investigation.  It's past time for impeachment, removal from office, trying the bastard for his crimes and suitable punishment.  The ACLU has filed a lawsuit seeking an end to the secret spying.   More below.

The ever-evil Cheney shot a fellow quail hunter.  Maybe if he'd served in the military during Nam instead of dodging the draft (he said he had "better things to do"), he'd have learned a bit of gun safety.   My hope is that he takes W deer hunting...

The idiot-in-chief reluctantly signed a anti-torture law but added a signing statement saying that he won't follow the law he'd just signed.

The Press-Telegram reports that the regime has awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities" which are to be used in the event of an "immigration emergency."   As one would guess,  Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) subsidiary got the contract.

On 2/26/06, the Earth's human population is projected to hit 6.5 billion people.  The population has doubled since 1960 and quadrupled since 1900.    A relevant bit of wisdom in this reguard:  "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."- Kenneth E. Boulding:

Last year was the hottest on record.  In the past 10 years, we've seen 8 of the hottest years.  Still, the Bush regime says there is no problem.

58% of those polled think Bush's second term has been a  failure so far according to a late Jan. poll CNN/USA Today/Gallup.  A majority say they are more likely to vote for candidates in Nov. congressional elections who oppose the idiot.  His approval/disapproval rating is 43/54 percent, 62% said they were dissatisfied with the way things are going and 64% said things in the United States have gotten worse while the idiot has been in charge.  53% said they believe his administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq had WMDs.

Bush denied knowing  corrupt lobbyist (an tautology- <thanks Chris!>) Jack Abramoff.  Again, he lies for there are numerous photos of them together-  including some showing them shaking hands.  That's not surprising since Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for Shrub. Yet Bush refuses to release the photos.    He should be forced to release the photos since the ripublicans forced Clinton to release videotapes of coffees with big contributors in 1997.

The amount of money saved by US citizens has reached negative numbers.  It's the lowest saving rate since the depths of the Great Depression.   The fact that wages of the mddle class have barely risen in over 30 years while those less fortunate have fallen figures in this.   Yeph, we're well down the road to ruin.   It took the Great Depression to get the stupid ripublicans out of office and some degree of sanity restored.  What will it take this time around?

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars.  That's 5 to 10 times what Bush's ex-economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated.   Of course he was fired because his estimate was 3 times higher than the $70 billion figure the regime mislead Congress with.

President Bush has asked Congress for another $72 billion for his illegal war in Iraq.  This will bring the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to almost $120 billion for 2006 -- that's on top of the $432 billion the military is already spending this year, and in addition to the more than $250 billion already spent on the Iraq war!

The U.N. has called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, accusing the U.S. of practices that "amount to torture," while new stories continue to surface about U.S. kidnapping and "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects to countries that permit torture.  Meanwhile, Human Rights First has reported that nearly 100 prisoners have died in the regime's custody in Iraq and Afghanistan- with at least 34 of them suspected or confirmed homicides.  The a Austrialian TV show released yet more photos and videos of the regime's abuse and torture of prisioners at their Abu Ghraib gulag.  My sincere hope is that when the Bush regime is brought to justice, they receive the same treatment as they've dished out to prisioners.

The regime's intelligence agencies have been reclassifying documents that have long been public.  More than 55,000 pages of previously public documents have been closed to the public, some dating as far back as World War II.

In 12/05, only 94,000  jobs were created.  That's far short of the 250,000 needed to absorb new folks entering the job market.  What's worse is that the vast majority of the jobs are low paying with little or no benefits.  As as example, 38% of the new jobs were for waitresses and bartenders.

Another "Justice Sunday III" rally is planned by Pastor Herb Lusk.  He has a long history of partisan activity on behalf of ripublicans and has been awarded more than $1 million in "faith-based" grants by the Bush administration.

In the last five years the number of special-interest lobbyists in Washington has grown from 9,500 to more than 34,000.

Buzzflash has named Tennessee Republican State Senator Jeff Miller as it's GOP hypocrite of the week.  He's another of your average "family values" GOP poseurs. The family always comes first to senator Miller, except when you are going through a divorce and a local newspaper talks about your dating.  Then family values takes second place to threatening advertisers in the local newspaper- the Bradley News Weekly.  Miller told local retailers, "Myself and many others are going to be watching in the next several weeks to identify and remember those in this community that wish to subsidize the destructive nature of this type of publication in our community."

The Florida Supreme Court struck down Jeb Bush's private school voucher program.  Look for the regime's flunkies on the US surpreme court to overturn the  Florida Supreme Court ruling ala it's award of the '00 election to Shrub.

Bush's  budget includes auctioning off hundreds of thousands of acres of our National Forest and other public lands.   It also includes opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to destructive oil drilling.

The regime's Minerals Management Service (MMS) is planning on opening around 2,000,000 acres in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico for drilling the first time, and prepare areas off Virginia's coast and in Alaska's famous salmon fishing grounds in Bristol Bay for leasing.   For 25 years, drilling in these areas has been banned by both Congressional moratoria and Presidential deferral orders.

As if the above is not enough, the regime's Bureau of Land Management is pushing new rules that would limit public oversight of millions of acres of public lands in the west.   They want to limit oversight so their corporate buddies can rape yet more of OUR land.

This ought to scare the hell out of you-  the Bush regime has given Haliburton a $385 million contract (undoubtably no-bid) for the construction of "temporary detention facilities" here in the good ole USA to be used in the event of an "immigration emergency."

1/2 of Iraq Vets suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder according to Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief consultant for mental health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The regime is demanding that Google give them a million URLs accessible through their search engine and a million of the search queries submitted to Google.  Google is resisting, so far....

It has been 16 years since the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Exxon has yet to pay for the damage.   Maybe now that it has reported over $36 billion in profits last year (the largest ever for any corporation!) that will change.....

The Bush regime is planning to bring their typical program of rape, pillage and kill to our National Parks.  Among other things, they are planning to let the corporation buds run amok.  You have until 2/16/06 to let them know what you think.  Do so via http://info.sierraclub.org/ct.html?rtr=on&s=arz,hxhz,o7l,6gps,bulf,c0z6,ce7b

Ripublican Congressidiot Richard Pombo charged us taxpayers for his family's 2003 two-week vacation thru the national parks.  His Chief of Staff has billed us more than $87,000 for his nearly weekly flights and hotel stays in Washington.

Bush flunkie, attorney general Alberto Gonzales, refused to answer many, many questions during recent congressional hearings about the regime's use of the NSA to illegally spy on Americans.   What questions he did answer, he very likely lied about.  That's no problem for him-  the ripublicans on the committee voted to exempt him from having to take an oath to tell the truth (not that that would disuade the serial liar).    Even some ripublicans are pissed about the regime's spying and are demanding a congressional investigation.  Alas, they are wilting under pressure from Cheney.

The idiot-in-chief said in his State of the Union speech that,  "America is addicted to oil."  Well DUH!   At the same time his new budget cuts $113 million from Department of Energy conservation programs, cuts the Weatherization Assistance Program by a third, and increases oil and gas drilling on BLM lands.   Then the idiot trapses to a DOE energry research lab in Colorado for a photo-op.   Alas, his budget cuts there will mean the layoff of 32 alternative energy researchers- including many wind and biomass researchers, two of the things Bush had touted in his speech.

While in the Solicitor General's office, Alito argued that Cabinet  officials charged with authorizing illegal wiretaps of Americans in this country are entitled to absolute immunity from legal liability

As a judge, he issued and opinion approving of the the strip search of a mother and her ten-year-old daughter even though the warrant authorizing the search did not name them.

In the Alito confirmation hearing, Senator Durbin asked Alito to tell thecommittee whether he considered Roe vs. Wade to be "settled law." John Roberts answered this question during his hearing, but Alito, amazingly, would not even match the low standard set by Roberts.  He instead adopted semantics: he said his answer depends on what "'settled' means."  Sounds just like what Clinton was critized by the right-wing for.

"It's the top officials in the [Mine Safety and Health Administration] who have, over the past five years, interfered with the field operations and tried to prevent inspectors from doing their jobs....Two weeks ago [I] talked with someone in the agency who's quite knowledgeable about what was happening with the agency, and that person said, 'Jack, I'm afraid that there's going to be another mine disaster very soon, because of how poorly the agency's being managed and because the inspectors aren't being allowed to go forward with the kind of enforcement action they think is necessary.' I think that may be what happened here at [Sago Mine]."

By law, every coal mine must have at least two mine rescue crews.  Per MSHA's own records, there's only one rescue team for every four underground coal mines.  Worse yet, when a plan to upgrade the response system was proposed three years ago, the Bush regime scuttled the reform- just as it has every other reform.

USA Today reports that MSHA has issued $9.1 million in fines under the Bush regime but has actually collected less than a third of the fines and that the trend is getting significantly worse with each passing year.  The fines would more than make up for the deep Bush budget cuts at MSHA, which has lost more than 170 positions since Bush was appointed president.

First, the president said publicly there was no such program.  He said, "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."   He lied.

For weeks, Gonzales, President Bush and others have insisted that the wiretapping program was only applied to suspected terrorists. But just last Sunday (2/5/06), the Washington Post exposed that the program was broad and not limited to suspected terrorists. In a nutshell, it's a fishing expedition and participants are increasingly "uncomfortable with the mountain of data they have now begun to accumulate."

And on 2/6/06, the attorney general said that he could not assure the Senate that the program did not eavesdrop on innocent Americans.

Background:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ( FISA) of 1978 prescribes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between or among "foreign powers."    The highly classified FISA court was set up in the 1970s to authorize secret surveillance of espionage and terrorism suspects within the United States. Under the law setting up the court, the Justice Department must show probable cause that its targets are foreign governments or their agents. The FISA law does include emergency provisions that allow warrant-less eavesdropping for up to 72 hours if the attorney general certifies there is no other way to get the information. ("Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program," Washington Post, 12/22/05)

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others without the court-approved warrants required for domestic spying, according to government officials. . . Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years." ("Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," New York Times, 12/16/05)

In January, the Non-Partisan Congressional Research Service Reported that Bush Broke Law  "A Congressional Research Service [CRS] report concludes that: 'the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping without warrants are 'inconsistent with the law.''" ("Report Questions Legality of Briefings on Surveillance," New York Times, 1/19/06)

Legal Experts Repudiated President Bush's Claim that He has Inherent power for Wiretaps as Commander-in-Chief.

• A letter to Congress from a group of legal experts including Lawrence Tribe, David Cole, Ronald Dworkin, and others concluded:   "But even conceding that the President in his role as Commander in Chief may generally collect "signals intelligence" on the enemy abroad, Congress indisputably has authority to regulate electronic surveillance within the United States, as it has done in FISA. Where Congress has so regulated, the President can act in contravention of statute only if his authority is exclusive, that is, not subject to the check of statutory regulation." ("On  NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress," The New York Review of Books,  2/9/06)
• The Non-Partisan Congressional Research Service Repudiated President Bush's Claim that the NSA Program was Authorized after September 11th.
• A Congressional Research Service [CRS] report concludes, "that Bush's assertion that Congress authorized such eavesdropping to detect and fight terrorists does not appear to be supported by the special resolution that Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which focused on authorizing the president to use military force. " ("Report Rebuts Bush on Spying; Domestic Action's Legality Challenged," Washington Post,  1/7/06)

•  White House Counselor Dan Bartlett claimed: "We went to Congress. We talked to the chairman and the ranking member of the intelligence committee. We talked to the leadership, both Republican and Democrat, House and Senate. These very discussions happened three to four years ago... The fact of the matter is, everybody came to the same conclusion, that what the president was doing was legal and was necessary." (CNN American Morning,   1/23/06, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/23/ltm.08.html)
• But Senator Jay Rockefeller released a sealed 7/03 letter that warned of "profound oversight issues" with warrant-less spying program: "For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General repeatedly misrepresents the facts. The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program. The limited members who were told of the program were prohibited by the Administration from sharing any information about it with our colleagues, including other members of the Intelligence Committees." (http://thinkprogress.org/wp-images/upload/Intell.pdf)
• And in a separate report from the one described above, the Congressional Research Office concluded that "the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping without warrants are 'inconsistent with the law.'" ("Report Questions Legality of Briefings on Surveillance," New York Times, 1/19/06)

"The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. 'There were no imminent plots--not inside the United States,' the former F.B.I. official said." ("Spy Agency Data after 9/11 Let F.B.I. to Dead Ends," New York Times, 1/17/06)

"In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. [...] 'We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism--case closed,' said one former F.B.I. official...After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.'" ("Spy Agency Data after 9/11 Let F.B.I. to Dead Ends," New York Times, 1/17/06)

• CONSTITUTIONAL LAW SCHOLARS AND FORMER GOV. OFFICIALS: "Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law." ("On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress," The New York Review of Books, 2/9/06)
• SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: "If he has the authority to go around the FISA court, which is a court to accommodate the law of the war of terror, the FISA Act was--created a court set up by the chief justice of the United States to allow a rapid response to requests for surveillance activity in the war on terror. I don't know of any legal basis to go around that . There may be some, but I'm not aware of it." (http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/18/no-legal-basis/)
• SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER: "'There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,' said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who favored the Patriot Act renewal but said the NSA issue provided valuable ammunition for its opponents."("On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings Greet News of Stateside Surveillance," Washington Post, 12/17/05)
• GROVER NORQUIST: "Referring to what some see as a conflict between fighting vicious terrorists and upholding all civil liberties, Norquist said: 'It's not either/or. If the president thinks he needs different tools, pass a law to get them. Don't break the existing laws .' " ("Political opposites aligned against Bush wiretaps," San Francisco Chronicle, 1/26/06)
• JOHN MCCAIN : "Wallace: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps. McCain: You know, I don't think so, but why not come to Congress?" (Fox News Sunday, 12/22/05)
• CHUCK HAGEL : "Chuck Hagel said he is looking forward to congressional hearings on the legal justification for the secretive National Security Agency program. He remains unconvinced that Bush could allow the program without fully consulting with the courts or Congress." ("Hagel Urges Bush to Explain Spy Program," Associated Press, 1/29/06) "If he needs more authority, he just can't unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law." (This Week, 1/29/06)
• BOB BARR: "It's bad to be spying on Americans apparently in violation of federal laws against doing it without court order. So it's bad all around, and we need to get to the bottom of this. . . And if we're going to say, well, simply because some people think that this is a new threat, we're going to throw the constitution and specific laws out the window and let a president rule by the seat of his pants, is extremely dangerous, and it's uncalled for. The president had full authority to have done this under the law. He apparently chose not to, and we need to find out why? . . . Well, I am because the law provides very vast authority, and for the president, or Frank Gaffney to justify the president saying even though I have the authority under the law to do it, I have to take certain steps, I'm just going to ignore that, puts us in a situation where we've seen in decades past, with Mr. Nixon, with President Lincoln and others, President Truman, when they overstep their bounds, they need to be held accountable.

• CNN/USA Today (Jan. 20-22): "As you may know, the Bush Administration has been wiretapping telephone conversations between U.S. citizens living in the United States and suspected terrorists living in other countries without getting a court order allowing it to do so. Do you think the Bush Administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?" Right 46%. Wrong 51%.  (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/16/sitroom.03.html)
• CBS/NYT (Jan 20-25): "After 9/11, George W. Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants. Do you approve or disapprove of George W. Bush doing this?" Approve 46%. Disapprove 50%.  (http://www.pollingreport.com/terror.htm)

On the Senate floor on February 7, he went after Bush.  Some of what he said:

• The NSA "program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify his program."
• "When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable."
• "What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people."
• "The President’s defense of his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling," Feingold said.
• "We all recall the President’s "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq."

He also tore into serial liar Gonzales:

We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.  At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as "hypothetical." He then testified that "it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."
Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the law.

But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York Times revealed the program.

The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.

Repealing the Magna Carta  by Nick Turse, 1/6/06 Mother Jones Magazine argues that Bush is voilating not only the Constitution via his power-grabs- he's voilating it's precursor, the Magna Carta which placed limits on the king.  The lead:

What might happen to an "often cruel and treacherous" national leader who "ignored and contravened the traditional" norms at home and waged "expensive wars abroad [that] were unsuccessful"?   On June 15, 1215, just such a leader arrived at Runnymede, England.

Molly Ivins: They don't tell him anything  The lead:
My theory is that they don't tell him anything, that's why the president keeps sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about.  There he was at Brooke Army Medical Center over the weekend, once again getting it wrong: "I can say that if somebody from al-Qaida's calling you, we'd like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program ... I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States, to calls within the United States."  So then the White House had to go back and explain that, well, no, actually, the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is not limited to calls from outside the United States, or to calls from people known or even suspected of being with al-Qaida. Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. It's more like information-mining, which is what, you may recall, the administration said it would not do. But now Bush has to investigate The New York Times because Bush has been breaking the law, you see?
 

Republican Dirty Tricks is a great listing of some of the dirty tricks used by ripbulicans in the past.

 Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights by Thom Hartmann