Stumble it!25 May, 2006: News
posted in Daily News by themaiden |The Cheney/Libby Lie Machine
Cheney wrote on the article, “Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson’s article was published.
Also…
Vice President Cheney was personally angered by a former U.S. ambassador’s newspaper column attacking a key rationale for the war in Iraq and repeatedly directed I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then his chief of staff, to “get all the facts out” related to the critique, according to excerpts from Libby’s 2004 grand jury testimony released late yesterday by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Libby also told the grand jury that Cheney raised as an issue that the former ambassador’s wife worked at the CIA and that she allegedly played a role in sending him to investigate the Iraqi government’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons materials. That issue formed the basis of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV’s published critique.
I couldn’t count the times that the Right-Wing noise machine has denied just these facts.
As un-American as it gets
Both the search warrant for Jefferson’s office and the raid to execute it were unprecedented in the 219-year history of the Constitution. In that sense, they violated an interbranch understanding rooted in the separation of powers — and, indeed, in the events of 1642, when King Charles I burst into Parliament and attempted to arrest five members of the House of Commons, triggering the English Civil War.
Breach was more of the Spirit, not the letter, of the Constitution
I am not defending any criminal activity Jefferson may have committed. I am concerned about the Speech and Debate Clause.
The Speech and Debate Clause, contained in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, says that members of the House and Senate “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.”
Breach was more of the Spirit, not the letter, of the Constitution
I suppose I just don’t trust this administration to take only that related to “Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace”. Oh… wait, opposing the President is “Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace”!
A “Watershed Event”
But Bush offered no timetable for a US withdrawal despite the new prime minister’s vow that Iraqi forces would be in charge in most of the country by December and a British prediction that foreign troops may be out within four years.
Instead, he hailed Saturday’s formation of Iraq’s coalition government, after months of sectarian struggle, as a “watershed event” that opens a new chapter in US-Iraqi relations.
Sigh… How many times will this tale be retold? Bush has low numbers == Bush tells the US that things are peachy in Iraq. Please…
This latest “turning point” reveals an Iraqi state without a social contract, a government without a center, a prime minister without power and an American president without a strategy. Each sectarian group maintains its own militia. Each leader’s influence rests on these armed bands, separate armies of tens of thousands of men. The militias have infiltrated and taken over key units of the Iraqi army and local police, using them as death squads, protection rackets and deterrent forces against enemies. Reliable statistics are impossible, but knowledgeable reporters estimate there are about 40 assassinations a day in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing is sweeping the country. From Kirkuk in the north to Baghdad in the middle to Basra in the south, Kurds are driving out Turkmen and Arabs, Shiites are killing Sunnis, and the insurgency enjoys near unanimous support among Sunnis. Contrary to Bush’s blanket rhetoric about “terrorists” and constant reference to the insurgency as “the enemy,” “foreign fighters are a small component of the insurgency,” according to Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The US makes the world safe
Air strikes in Afghanistan, where “the U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that the Taliban have grown in “strength and influence” in recent weeks”, make things worse.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the air strike “unfortunate” adding he had no reason to believe Canadian troops were involved.
Harper admitted the tragedy won’t help the efforts of the coalition troops to bring peace to the war-torn region.
Why must we be idiots?
What century is this?
Two black women performed an exotic dance. The white men in their audience shouted racial epithets, one of the women has said. Things got rough. Someone in the crowd held a broomstick aloft and shouted “I’m gonna shove this up you,” the other woman told police when she reported being raped. As the women fled the house, a neighbor reportedly heard one of the men shout: “Hey bitch, thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt.”
What century is this, Part II?
I could have easily titled the section, “See what religion does to the brain?”
While the Pearls are well known in fundamentalist Christian circles, they were largely unknown to the secular world until March, when their discipline methods were tied to the death of a North Carolina boy and the alleged abuse of two of his siblings. The children’s adoptive mother, Lynn Paddock, 45, a devotee of the Pearls’ teachings, is currently behind bars. She is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 4-year-old Sean, who suffocated when wrapped tightly in blankets, reportedly to keep him from hopping out of bed. She is also charged with felony child abuse in connection with welts found on two of Sean’s other five siblings. Nowhere in the Pearls’ book do they advocate restraining with blankets; however, Sean’s siblings had apparently been struck with a particular type of “rod” recommended by the Pearls: a length of quarter-inch plumbing supply line.
Spare the quarter-inch plumbing supply line, spoil the child
For another amusing example of religious brain rot, try this from Stupid Evil Bastard.
What century is this, Part III?
Also in the room is 28-year-old Henriette Nyota. Her spirit is all but broken. Three years ago, she said, she was gang raped as her husband and four children were forced to watch. The men in uniform then disemboweled her husband and continued raping her and her two oldest daughters, 10 and 8. The assault went on for three days.
…They then raped Olivier’s three sisters, and when he tried to fight them they turned on him. One at a time, more than a dozen in all, he said.
“I will never forget what happened to me,” he said. “How does one forget something like this? Only revenge can make me forget what happened to me.”
Mukengere takes us from ward to ward, where the beds are filled with sexual abuse patients in various stages of recovery. Colostomy bags hang off their cots and bed pans are everywhere. Once in a while, you hear a woman scream in pain as she’s raised by the team of tireless nurses to have something to eat or drink.
…
“Helene, over there, is 19 years old. She first came here five years ago after having been raped,” he said. “We treated her and discharged her, and off she went back to her home village. Five years later, she’s back after being attacked and sexually violated over and over again. This is pure madness.”
…
“It’s so tragic that the world can afford to sit back and let these atrocities continue like this,” said aid worker Marie Walterzon of the Swedish Pentecostal Mission. “Possibly because it involves poor, voiceless Africans,” she said.
Meanwhile we are fighting a pointless war in Iraq. Why not spend that money fighting for humanity?
A tribute to human stupidity
Are we such idiots that sunlight bouncing off of glass is sufficient to provoke talk of miracles and aliens?
Genius
In the name of national security, the President has the authority to allow private companies to cook the books. And Bush has just given that power to Negroponte.
A trip to the statute books showed that the amended version of the 1934 act states that “with respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States,” the President or the head of an Executive Branch agency may exempt companies from certain critical legal obligations. These obligations include keeping accurate “books, records, and accounts” and maintaining “a system of internal accounting controls sufficient” to ensure the propriety of financial transactions and the preparation of financial statements in compliance with “generally accepted accounting principles.”
I do, actually, understand the reasoning behind allowing the President to shield contractors from too close scrutiny. I do not, however, trust this administration to use this power responsibly. I’m not sure I’d trust any administration, so overall it is a scary thing.
God Bless Jon Stewart
During the May 23 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly asserted that “[m]any Americans ages 18 to 24 have no idea what’s going on,” stating that they “get their news from [Comedy Central host] Jon Stewart and their point of view from bomb-throwing entertainers.” In fact, studies have shown that viewers of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart are consistently better informed about current events than consumers of other media, and Daily Show viewers are considerably better educated than viewers of The O’Reilly Factor. Further, consumers of Fox News in general have been found to be significantly more misinformed about current events than consumers of other mainstream media.
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