Porter Goss, Bush’s hand-picked CIA lackey, has told congress that he thinks reports of illegal spying by the media are undermining domestic security.  Aparently he thinks the FISA courts are too chatty to be trusted with sealed legal rulings on wire taps.  Goss also spewed the party line when he announced that those who leaked the information should be punished.  Perhaps they should just shut down the Crime Stoppers line to report illegal activities by the president.

Even some Republican Congress members are thinking twice about Bush’s recent power grab, but Carl Rove has even threatened them to keep their mouths shut.  According to an article in Insight.com:

 The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.

 Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

 "It’s hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said

Hey, once you are in the mob, it’s hard to get out.

These Democrats voted for Alito (who, based on his record, will become the most oppressive justice in history):

Byrd (D-WV), Conrad (D-ND), Nelson (D-NE).

The Three Traitors.

The following Demcrats have show themselves to be a disgrace to their party by not supporting the majority and voting for the Alito cloture vote (thereby killing a potential fillibuster):

Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bingaman (D-NM), Byrd (D-WV), Cantwell (D-WA), Carper (D-DE),Conrad (D-ND),Dorgan (D-ND), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lieberman (D-CT),Lincoln (D-AR),Nelson (D-FL),Nelson (D-NE),Pryor (D-AR), Rockefeller (D-WV),Salazar (D-CO).

The Shameful Nineteen.

One day in 2002, the China’s government decided they did not want the defense minister from Taiwan to attend an arms conference in Florida.  China demanded the Bush administration bar his attendance.  They did not. 

When China did not get what they wanted, Chinese General Zhu released the following comment: "China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan."

My first response is how can China possibly want to attack the US over such a trivial issue?  My second is nauseating fear thinking about the trivial Iraq war.  

Here is another sign the Chinese Yahn is more powerful than the dollar and marching to get the US.  This from the BBC News:

Leading internet company Google has said it will censor its search services in China in order to gain greater access to China’s fast-growing market.

Google has offered a Chinese-language version of its search engine for years but users have been frustrated by government blocks on the site.

The company is setting up a new site - Google.cn - which it will censor itself to satisfy the authorities in Beijing.

Google argued it would be more damaging to pull out of China altogether.

 Bush has made China so powerful, they can force US companies to bow to their oppressive demands.  When China decides to squash the US financially, we will be subject to the same nonsense as Google.  Instead of Republican or Democrat, our choices will be Free Speech or Nukes.  Soon the phrase "Choose Life" will have new meaning.

There are three branches of government in the United States: Executive, Judicial, and Congress.  There are checks and balances built into the system designed to keep the balance of power.  It was set up this way because the colonists did not want an autocratic government with King sitting on the throne.  

  When the Congress gave up their power to the President and allowed him to declare war, that balance was shifted.  That was the beginning of the downslide.

Now Bush is on the speech circuit trying to justify civilian wire taps order by him.   When the power is balanced, Judges make those decisions (as they should, charged with being impartial rather than political - that is why they frustrate Bill Frist).  Bush’s reasons are for the protection of the American people.  However he thumbed his nose at us when he said he has no intention of halting these missions.

Who is going to protect us for Bush?  Congress, do your job and impeach the King while you still have that authority.

Texas District Judge Pat Priest upheld the money laundering charges against DeLay today, but dismissed the conspiracy charges.  DeLay has denied any money laundering in the case involving his Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (TRMPAC) and tried to spin the case as a Democratic plot to remove him from power because of his success in advancing a conservative political agenda.

DeLay and colleagues Jim Ellis and John Colyandro are accused of laundering $190,000 in corporate donations to TRMPAC through the RNC for distribution to Republican candidates to the Texas Legislature in the 2002 state campaign. Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in political campaigns.The illegal donations from TRMPAC to Texas congressional candidates helped the Republican party take control of the Texas state legislature in 2002.

After the Republicans illegally took control of the Texas legislature, with help from DeLay, the legislature then redrew congressional districts to increase the number of Republicans elected to Congress from Texas.

This is strikingly similar to the motive of the K Street Project run by DeLay and Santorum.  The purpose of the Republican run K Street project is to inject staunch Republicans into the most influential lobbying firms in the US.  So far it is working, but is it ethical?  In a word no. 

Is it aginst the law? Despite being admonished for it by the Ethics Committee in 1999, lets see if the Committee has any backbone to follow up since DeLay has been at it again.  Stay tuned.

In November 2004 Judge James Robertson halted the Survivor-like military tribunal games Rumsfeld and Bush were playing with the Gitmo prisoners. They were being denied any trial rights as the Executive Branch was pretending to be the Judicial Branch. Judge Robertson declared the procedures unlawful and stated the court could not proceed until a decision was made whether the Gitmo prisoners should have Geneva Convention protections.

Enter Judge Raymond Randolph on the infamous 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Randolph was appointed by Bush Sr. in 1999. In 2001, Randolph overturned a previous court decision and ruled Microsoft did not attempt illegally “tie” the browser to its market-dominant operating system. In May of 2005, Randolph helped his buddy, Dick Cheney, keep his energy policy task force procedures secret by ruling against the Sierra Club that was trying to make Cheney comply with open meeting laws during policy sessions. Randolph also serves on the Advisory Board of George Mason University Law and Economics Center, which has received $115,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Obviously, Judge Raymond Randolph is not one to rule against his friends. Last Friday Randolph made the decision that he was qualified to determine the Geneva Convention status of Gitmo prisoners, as previously requested by Judge Robertson. He decided that Gitmo prisoners are not subject to Geneva Conventions and that military tribunals do apply to the prisoners.

Judge Randolph’s opinion states the Bush Regime does not violate the separation of Powers under the constitution by trying the prisoners in military tribunals. Judge Randolph also ruled that Rumsfeld has authority to conduct military tribunals because on the Congressional joint resolution authorizing the use of force after the September 11 bombings.

The Congress made him do it. Oh wait, the Congress was lied to before they made that decision. Facts do not seem to deter Judge Randolph in his decision-making, hence the US Gulag is open for business again.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asked a state prosecutor on Friday to investigate the circumstances of Terri Schiavo’s collapse, saying a new autopsy report revealed a possible gap between when Ms. Schiavo fell unconscious and when her husband called paramedics.

“It’s a significant question that during this entire ordeal was never brought up,” Governor Bush told reporters in Tallahassee after faxing a letter to Bernie McCabe, the state attorney in Pinellas County, where Ms. Schiavo suffered extreme brain damage when her heart temporarily stopped beating in 1990. McCabe, who agreed to open the investigation, is a republican that will surley expect a promotion for this deed.

In a statement on Friday, Ms. Schiavo’s husband, Michael, called Governor Bush’s actions “sickening” and said he had called 911 promptly. Mr. Schiavo said in an interview with CNN’s Larry King in 2003 that he found his wife on the floor outside their bedroom about 4:30 a.m. and quickly called 911.

This is nothing but a circus side show designed to divert attention away from the real issue of the day - the inevitable impeachment of his brother, President Bush. The more coverage Shiavo gets, the less coverage the Downing Street Memo gets. Simple, but unfortunately, effective.

Chairman James Sensenbrenner, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, ended a meeting and walked out during a discussion of the Patriot Act that was not going his way. As reported by the Washington Post on June 10:

“Will the gentleman yield?” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) asked.

“No, I will not yield,” replied Sensenbrenner, 61, the heir to a paper fortune who is known for a brusque insistence on decorum. He completed his reproof of the witnesses and left the Rayburn House Office Building hearing room amid a cacophony of protests from Democrats seeking to be recognized. (End Post report)

C-SPAN2 continued televising the proceedings after Sensenbrenner left the room. Is there no end to the arrogance of these people? As Sensenbrenner left, Nadler continued talking and was applauded after saying that “part of the problem is that we have not had the opportunity to have hearings on all these other administration policies that have led to abuses.”

James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute said, “I think as we are lecturing foreign governments about the conduct of their behavior with regard to opposition, I’m really troubled about what kind of message this is going to teach to other countries in the world about how they ought to conduct an open society that allows for an opposition with rights.”

This is just another example of Republicans trying to stiffle dissent regarding Bush’s twisted and unbalance policies. Their terroristic tactics of control are beginning to become more and more bold. They will probably defund C-SPAN now that they have slashed PBS.

OK, I gave the big guys a chance to report this, but alas they are afraid. Once again it is left to the tiny, internet blogs to propogate the truth. In a nutshell this memo proves Bush was determined to invade Iraq…regardless of the WMD outcome.

The date of the memo is July 23, 2002. From David Manning, at the time the Foreign Policy Advisor to Blair, from Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide. On a side note, Manning is now UK ambassador to the US. It appears the USA is not the only country that promotes incompetence.

The memo outlines the US intentions to wage war on Iraq. “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” reported the memo.

The date of the infamous “decapitation strike” ordered by the Bush crime family was 3/19/03. One month earlier, on February 20, 2003, CBS reported that UN inspectors reported US tips about WMD locations in Iraq to be “garbage”. That leaves about 7 months in which Bush knew he wanted to invade, versus the time he let the inspectors do their thing. How much patience can a man have?

Bush used his power to wage a war on a country that had no capacity to harm the USA. He knew it, and he intended to do it. Is this worse than letting Monica do her deeds on the president? You bet. Impeach the greedy Republican Whore and turn the whole lot of them over to the World Court for crimes against humanity.