Monday, July 31, 2006

5:20 AM

The two bills passed by the House last Friday and Saturday reflect a single Republican electoral strategy. Representatives want to appear to have accomplished something when they face voters during their five-week summer break, which starts today, and at the same time keep campaign donations flowing from special-interest constituents who are well aware that a great deal was left to do.

One of the bills was a pension reform measure. The other was a grab bag that contains three main items: an extension of the expired tax credit for corporate research; a $2.10 an hour increase in the minimum wage, to be phased in over three years; and a multibillion-dollar estate-tax cut. That’s the deal House Republicans are really offering — a few more dollars for 6.6 million working Americans; billions more for some 8,000 of the wealthiest families.

It is cynical in the extreme. Extending the research tax credit is noncontroversial, yet pressing. A minimum wage increase is compelling — morally, politically and financially — but Republicans generally oppose it. And the estate-tax cut has already failed to pass the Senate twice this summer. So House Republicans linked it to the research credit and the minimum wage, hoping to flip a handful of senators from both parties who have voted against estate-tax cuts in the past. Democrats who vote against the estate tax, Republicans think, can be painted as voting against a higher minimum wage.

This is an attempt at extortion. There is no way to justify providing yet another enormous tax shelter to the nation’s wealthiest heirs in the face of huge budget deficits, growing income inequality and looming government obligations for Social Security and Medicare.

Inserted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/opinion/31mon1.html>

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

Inserted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/opinion/30sun1.html?th&emc=th>

Bravo!!

Democrats have been pushing for years for a provision that would raise the minimum wage. And with congressional elections barely three months away, Democratic strategists were preparing to use the issue this fall in their bid to wrest control of Congress from the GOP.

Facing the prospect that they would be portrayed as obstacles on an issue popular with many voters, nearly 50 mostly moderate Republicans last week appealed to their leaders to act.

The group threatened to vote against adjourning for the August recess until their party's leaders agreed to give them a chance to vote on a minimum-wage increase.

On Friday afternoon, GOP House leaders relented. They announced they had tacked it onto a 180-page bill that would cut the estate tax and extend a host of temporary tax cuts -- moves that Senate Democrats have made clear they would block through a filibuster if necessary.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the combination makes the estate tax no more acceptable and he pledged to kill it, saying the legislation would cost more than $300 billion.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/30/bill_linking_minimum_wage_estate_tax_faces_fight_in_senate/

I think the GOP is using a "poison pill" tactic to doom the minimum wage increase while preserving the argument that they voted for it and Democrats voted against it. 

July 28, 2006

Dear Mr. Seving:

Thank you for contacting me with your deep concerns about this administrations behavior. I have heard from a number of people who are ready for this president to be censured, even impeached. Certainly having endured the travesty of the Republican impeachment of Clinton, I can understand and sympathize with that point of view. There are few people who have worked harder in the last election for George Bush not be president. I traveled more miles, raised more money, gave more speeches, and did more political organizing than I think anyone else in Oregon. I truly believe the country deserves better than what George Bush is providing. The problem is that as long as the Republican Congress, controlled as it is by John Boehner's cronies, continues to prevent us from even doing our relatively non-controversial oversight on things like no-bid contracts, the war in Iraq or issues like wiretapping, the simple truth is that impeachment is impossible. They will never allow the hearings to be held, censure or an impeachment resolution to move forward. Given all the problems dealing with this administration, their fiscal irresponsibility, assault on the environment and continued efforts to undermine our civil liberties, I am focusing my time and attention where I think I can make a difference. I respect people who follow their passions and I understand and respect your point of view. I am working hard every day to try and stop bad things from happening in Congress now while focusing on what needs to be done for in the future. I am also working politically for change so that Congress can investigate and if necessary, deal with things like impeachment. I hope that all our efforts will produce the results the American people deserve.

Sincerely, Earl Blumenauer

Member of Congress

For more information on my work in Congress and to sign up to receive electronic updates about these and other matters, please visit my website at http://blumenauer.house.gov.

Published: July 29, 2006

One big thing we’ve learned from watching President Bush’s assault on the balance of powers is that the federal courts are the only line of defense. Congress not only lacks the spine to stand up to Mr. Bush, but is usually eager to accommodate him.

So it is especially frightening to see the administration use the debates over the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and domestic spying to mount a new offensive against the courts.

Inserted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/opinion/29sat1.html>

Lobbying reform that helps incumbents get more cash

Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A24

CONGRESS HAS so disgraced itself with its handling of legislation on lobbying reform this year that it's hard to imagine the situation could get much worse. But that underestimates the audacity of lawmakers when it comes to writing laws on a subject they really care about: rejiggering campaign finance rules to make it easier for them to win reelection. In the latest brazen twist, lawmakers are considering using the sham lobbying reform bill as a vehicle to open up a loophole in campaign finance laws that would tilt the playing field even more in favor of incumbents.

Inserted from <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701555.html>

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A01

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. 

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sounded a warning about the War Crimes Act of 1996 in 2002, when he was White House counsel.  In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales's remarks.

Inserted from <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701908.html>

Could we see Bush and Saddam as co-defendents someday?

The airport said it provided logistical support to military flights

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has protested to the US about its use of Prestwick Airport in western Scotland to transport bombs to Israel.

Amid the Lebanon crisis, she said it seemed the US was ignoring procedure, and she registered her concerns with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

SNP leader Alex Salmond claimed the UK government must decide whether to "be an aircraft carrier" for the US.

The Lib Dems suggested the Americans were taking the UK for granted.

Mrs Beckett was asked about the controversy after discussing the Middle East crisis with fellow foreign ministers in Rome.

"We have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault, and we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened," she said.

Opposition parties have reacted angrily to a report in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that two chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes filled with laser-guided bombs landed at Prestwick en-route to Israel from the US.

Inserted from <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5218036.stm>

TOP TEN DEMANDS BY al-MALIKI

By Don Davis

It’s been widely reported that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has asked Bush to pressure Israel to halt its attacks in Lebanon, and to allow U.S. soldiers in Iraq to be tried under Iraqi law.  But as this reporter has learned, during Mr. al-Maliki’s controversial appearance before a Joint Session of Congress, he plans to present a much more comprehensive list of demands. Here then, are the Top Ten panaceas, from the Top Dog of the Shias:

 10. U.S. troops suspected of abuse to be imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, and attacked by rabid goats.

  9. Jewish members of coalition forces required to wear Star of David armband.

  8. American soldiers must battle insurgents with bottom of shoes instead of assault rifles.

  7. U.S. must erect statue of Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad for locals to topple.

  6. “God Bless You” after sneezes must be replaced by Allahu Akbar (God is Great).

  5. Dispatch of Bill Frist to Iraq to diagnose victims of suicide bombings. 

  4. Female soldiers to be outfitted with camouflage burkas.

  3. Iraqi army units to “stand down” in favor of Cub Scout troops. 

  2. 101st Airborne Division to be reassigned to Beirut – to fight Israelis.

  1. Borrow Tom DeLay’s gerrymander plan — to get rid of Sunnis.

Inserted from <http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=225>

Arlen Specter says his surveillance bill wouldn't give the administration unwarranted power. He's wrong.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Page A16

TODAY THE Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 law that regulates domestic wiretapping and searches. The hearing is an effort on the part of committee Chairman Arlen Specter to move along his very dangerous bill -- negotiated with the White House -- to put the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program before the federal courts. In an op-ed in these pages Monday, Mr. Specter described his proposal as a compromise with President Bush to ensure judicial review of the NSA program, which he called "a festering sore on our body politic." Yet his legislation would essentially respond to this festering sore by shooting the patient.

No matter how adamantly Mr. Specter denies that his bill would give Congress's blessing to domestic spying outside of FISA's strictures, it does so explicitly and unambiguously. It adds the following language to a statute that now provides the sole legal means for the government to spy on Americans in national security cases: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers."

Inserted from <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/25/AR2006072501408.html>

A federal tax cut using state dollars is a bad idea.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Page A14

DO LARGE corporations need another tax break? The House of Representatives seems to think so. It plans this week to take up a measure defining when states can tax companies doing business in their states -- and making it easier for companies to avoid paying state taxes.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Business Activity Tax Simplification Act (BATSA) would drain $1 billion from state government treasuries during its first year in effect and $3 billion a year by 2011 as corporations rejigger their activities to take advantage of this new tax avoidance opportunity. This is an unwise shift of resources from state treasuries to corporate bottom lines -- as the National Governors Association put it, "a federal corporate tax cut using state tax dollars."

Inserted from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400980.html

Read the Fine Print

Published: July 25, 2006

Over 212 years, 42 presidents issued “signing statements” objecting to a grand total of 600 provisions of new laws. George W. Bush has done that more than 800 times in just over five and a half years in office.

Most presidents used signing statements to get legal objections on the record for judges to consider in any court challenge. For Mr. Bush, they are far more: part of a strategy to expand presidential powers at the expense of Congress and the courts. His signing statements have become notices to Congress that he simply does not intend to follow the law, especially any attempt to hold him accountable for his actions.

Inserted from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/opinion/25tue2.html

Electile Dysfunction

By Bill Grigsby

Jane Mayer, journalist who writes for the New Yorker, has penned several disturbing articles over the last few years about the BushCo Administration. Her latest exposes Dick Cheney’s Chief Advisor, David Addington, as the architect behind the administration’s relentless pursuit of unchecked executive power (aka ‘Dicktatorship’). Unchecked power, especially in a so-called democratic state, comes easier to its aspirants during wartime. The ruling party is engaged in publicly financed fear-mongering, in the present historical case with color-coded terror alerts, overblown threats trumpeted by commercial media outlets, and intimidation of dissenters, non-compliant journalists and whistleblowers. So with the corporate media in tow and Congress pushing the pedals, the GOP juggernaut lurches forward.

Hyped terrorist threats notwithstanding, what seems more troubling is what Mayer describes—a White House decision making process hijacked by a handful of extreme right wing superbureaucrats on a mission to dismantle any obstacles in the way of achieving their political ambitions. The president is a passable poster boy for lowering public expectations, even if his self-parody is becoming increasingly shrill.

What often passes for conventional wisdom in commercial media is that this is all part of a philosophical, reasonable debate about the limits of executive power. The neoconservatives ascribe to the ‘unitary executive’ model, which essentially means that the executive branch trumps all, at least in times of war.

If we take the neocons at their word, a rather awkward question begs: Do we really think the ruling junta would support a strong executive branch were the democrats to take the White House in 2008? Would they concede the prospect of Hillary Clinton (sorry! Just a hypothetical!) spying on republicans, in the interest of national security? Their interest in executive power is obviously how to get more of it for themselves, and how to use it, behind a cloak of self-serving legal interpretations by Addington and his brethren, to become more powerful. These guys don’t just want to run government—that would require diplomacy, consensus-building, and open debate. No, they want to own it.

Democracy poses limits, though. Success for the neocons means eroding the one outlet of recourse that almost 50% of eligible Americans still exercise on a biennial basis—the election. And stakes are high for the midterms.

It’s not clear democracy still exists at the presidential level. The election in 2000 was proximately rigged in Florida by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. The commercial media have never investigated, much less revealed the extent of illegal activity that occurred to swing the election into a dead heat and ultimately to use the U.S. Supreme Court, judicial restraint notwithstanding, as a tiebreak. The 2004 election witnessed massive irregularities, from unprecedented and unexplained discrepancies in exit polling and actual counts, severe malfunctions of the electronic voting system, to various kinds of disenfranchisement in New Mexico, Ohio and Florida.

Election rigging has to be part of the plan. And the system has been carefully orchestrated and designed, and had to involve hundreds if not thousands of GOP officials (if only a fraction as much thought was diverted to actual governance …). The list of tactics is long:

• Colluding with e-voting machine manufacturers, software designers and programmers, and promoting paperless voting and the privatization of election data;
  
• Working with local election officials to enable intimidation of mostly minority voters, the use of ‘caging lists,’ the changing of rules to make it difficult for those who have moved to exercise their legal right to vote, and the use of ‘provisional ballots’ to minimize their votes’ importance;
  
• ‘Institutional disenfranchisement.’ The Department of Justice’s political appointees overruled department legal counsel to find in favor of Alabama’s ID card requirement (which would disproportionately affect minority vote turnout), as well as Tom DeLay’s gerrymandering of Texas Congressional districts to shift advantages to republicans. We will no doubt see more attempts at gerrymandering after the Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled in the GOP’s favor—it’s harder to vote the bums out if they’ve just twisted geography to make you part of the minority party;
  
• Voter purges. We will see more attempts to purge voter rolls without informed consent of the purged, as happened in Florida. There are legitimate reasons to conduct purges (e.g., to eliminate the deceased from the rolls), but when populations are cherry-picked for scrubbing because of their partisan proclivities, we can safely call it rigging. In fact, the person who suggested targeting felon populations was the recent recipient of a BushCo recess appointment to the Federal Elections Commission;
  
• Selectively reducing turnout. In New Hampshire the GOP engaged in call-jamming, as democratic constituents attempted to encourage people to get out and vote. Thousands of soldiers serving in Iraq from minority precincts had their registrations challenged after letters from the Republican National Committee to them were returned undeliverable. This is especially effective when combined with state-level wedge issue referenda that arouse the religious fundamentalists;
  
• Partisan foxes guarding public henhouses. Ken Blackwell, (ir)responsible for free and fair elections in Ohio while serving as the Bush/Cheney Campaign Manager in 2004 (now candidate for governor), among many other serious infractions discounted tens of thousands of voter registration forms from democratic sources because they were printed on the wrong kind of paper.

This isn’t intended as a litany of GOP assaults on the electoral process—Robert F. Kennedy has done a thorough job of compiling the rap sheet on republican electoral fraud. The point is, the neocon wing of the GOP has no intention of relinquishing power legally in a free and fair election. The Constitution is a perfectly fine document only when the opposition party is in power.

Obviously this ‘electile dysfunction’ goes much further than what happens to voters and in precincts. Karl Rove has introduced ‘swift boating’ into the campaign vernacular. His body of work shows his psychotic prowess at smear and character assassination. Even Vince Lombardi would have no doubt blushed at Rove’s record of smear. The RNC, thanks in large part to BushCo’s decision to hand the reins of government over to the private sector, is awash in money and can pretty much dictate which neocon republican candidate will emerge from the primaries. Even without Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Tom DeLay shaking down GOP donors.

Rigging elections requires money to organize, pay consultants and media outlets, identify the tight races, and produce and run attack ads. Tax cut policies return millions to people likely to support the party that cut their taxes. The White House has been engaged in efforts to privatize government,

Inserted from <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0607/S00357.htm>

ACLU Sues for Anti-Gay Group That Pickets at Troops' Burials

By Garance Burke

Associated Press

Sunday, July 23, 2006; Page A02

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals nationwide filed suit in federal court, saying a Missouri law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality

Inserted from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/22/AR2006072200643.html

The thing to note here is that the ACLU truly stands for freedom of expression, and not just for liberal causes.  One cannot be more rabid radical religious right than the infamous Westboro Baptist.

By Don Davis

In a classic case of “what goes around comes around,” leading Democrats today called for the impeachment of President Bush, based on his recent grope of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Resigned to the fact that they’ll never be able to nail Bush on his true crimes of lying the Country into war, and shredding the Constitution on a scale that would put Nixon to shame, Democrats are now prepared to “out-Lewinsky” the GOP.  As Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid succinctly put it, “Hey, instead of copping a feel, Bush should have had a V-8 at the G-8.”

Democrats claimed that although Bush’s misbehavior involved no semen-stained dresses, it was far worse in staining the entire nation before the international community.  “Besides,” said Reid, “these sophisticated diplomat-types have no problem with oral sex with an intern, but eating with your mouth full is strictly verboten.”

Predictably, Republican leaders strongly condemned any comparison to Clinton-Lewinsky, since Bush’s action did not involve any genitalia.  However, according to historians, Federalist Paper No. 69 expressly defines “sex” to include any incident where a woman — as with Merkel — experiences an involuntary spasmodic episode.

Inserted from <http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=221>

WASHINGTON, July 21 — A contract employee working for the Central Intelligence Agency said she had been fired recently for posting a message on a classified computer server that said an interrogation technique used by the agency against some terror suspects amounted to torture.

The employee, Christine Axsmith, kept the “Covert Communications” blog on a top-secret computer network used by American intelligence agencies. Ms. Axsmith was fired on Monday after C.I.A. officials objected to a message that criticized the interrogation technique called “waterboarding,” a particularly harsh practice that the C.I.A. is known to have used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is widely regarded as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The episode has opened a window into the new world of classified blogging: an experimental effort being carried out in top-secret computer forums where information and ideas are shared across the intelligence community. Intelligence officials said that since last year, more than 1,000 blogs had been set up on classified intelligence servers.

Ms. Axsmith, a computer security expert with a law degree, posted the message this month, shortly after the Bush administration decided to grant some protections of the Geneva Conventions to suspected terrorists in American custody. She said that her message began, “Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong.”

Inserted from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/washington/22intel.html