At Last, Consservative Competition for AARP

Taking on the big guys

TownHall.com
Jul 21, 2005
by Brian McNicoll

Jerry Barton doesn't need this. He's made a fortune as an executive in the company that made NAPA auto parts a household brand. He lost that fortune and made another. But as he looks around, he sees that something isn't right. The lead organization in America that purports to represent all seniors has come, in Barton's view, to represent only those on the left.

AARP, he fumes, fights President Bush on Social Security reform when only the president's proposal offers real promise. It also doesn't speak for America's seniors on tort reform, on Medicare and Medicaid reform and on a variety of other seniors issues.

So, as he's done all his life, he's doing something about it. Barton, who lives in the Atlanta area but no longer next door to radio talk-show host Neil Boortz as he did for years, is putting together an organization to rival AARP and speak for the growing number of senior conservatives.

Barton is a longtime supporter of conservatives and their causes. He served as finance chairman for one of Mitch McConnell's Senate campaigns. He has worked with John Linder, Johnny Isaacson and Saxby Chambliss.

Now, he wants to use his connections ? Boortz is going to host a coming-out gathering for the group in August, Sean Hannity is reportedly ready to help, and Peter Marshall, the former game-show host, is the honorary chairman and national spokesman ? to take on AARP. Why? "He believes it's becoming one of the most dangerous organizations in America," says his son, Stuart, who will help honcho the new organization, known as the National Association for Senior Concerns (http://www.nascon.org on the web). "He wants to punch AARP in the nose."

And what about USA Next, the longtime voice of conservative seniors for whom Art Linkletter is the national spokesman? If attacking AARP is the goal, USA Next is well on its way. Items on its web site include "Seven Deadly Sins of AARP" and "AARP against taxpayers" and "AARP against trustees of Social Security."

Stuart Barton says the group has had its chance and has yet to make a dent. "We have a plan to make an impact for our members on the issues they care about," he says. "It's taken them 20 years to get 1.5 million members. We'll have that in 18 months."

Nascon plans to offer the usual array of discount programs, travel assistance and other services that AARP and similar organizations offer their members. As far as Congress goes, it plans to focus on questions such as Social Security reform, Medicare/Medicaid reform, tort reform, fighting judicial activism and reducing dependence on government. Nascon favors a tax code that can be understood and a government that can be counted on to do, if not depended upon.

"We want less government in general," says Jerry Barton. "But we understand government has to do some things, and we want it to do those things better. It's important that someone look out for the interests of seniors, and we don't think AARP does that."

In addition to the rollout party in Atlanta in August, the Bartons and their spokesman, Phil Kent, former editor of the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle and spokesman for the Southeastern Legal Foundation, will appear Sept. 21 at the National Press Club in Washington.

Hallelujah!!! I am all in favor of this. AARP has been parading around too long posing as a non-partisan advocate for the elderly, when their agenda has been anything but non-partisan. Their nearly incessant attacks on President Bush and the repeated lies they told about the Bush Tax Reform Plan, belies their claim to being impartial. AARP is full of people who are Socialists at heart. NASCON is going for their jugular. They don't offer all of the discounts that AARP offers yet, but it is a good bet they soon will. I joined just this night, as soon as I read about them. I will be touting them as much as I can on this and all of my websites.

Full Story: Tolling AARP's Funereal Bell

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Idiot Floridian Republicans Eating Their Own.

Rep. Harris upbeat on Senate run
Now a long shot, Harris says she's focused on Senate run

By JOE FOLLICK
Sarasota Herald Tribune
TALLAHASSEE BUREAU

TALLAHASSEE -- It would seem that few in Florida politics suffered through a more miserable 2005 than Katherine Harris.

The Longboat Key congresswoman's attempt to replace incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in the 2006 election was impeded by her own Republican Party leaders who engaged in a public attempt to find another candidate.

Polls show her trailing Nelson badly, she failed to meet her own fund-raising targets, and the caricatures from her role in the 2000 presidential election were resurrected.

Worried? Not she.

"It's been a great year," she said, rattling off a list of accomplishments in Congress and praising a re-energized campaign team.

Her former campaign manager cited Harris' fixation on her work in Congress as a reason for abruptly leaving his post earlier this year. Harris says she's now fully focused on the campaign.

She cites a fund-raising tour that will begin next month with Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity as the host in six Florida cities.

"Whenever you have to get into a campaign, I think there's always a mental transition it takes me to get there. I'm certainly focused now and excited," she said.

Harris said the media "kind of jumped the gun on me" by devoting so much attention to her campaign.

"I hadn't really intended to start the campaign so early," she said, decrying the "fabrications" of her campaign's woes as "neither true nor having an effect."

She notes that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report still lists the race as competitive, despite polls repeatedly showing Nelson with up to a 20-percentage point lead.

"That may be the hopes of the media," she said. "I don't think they'd be writing about it if they weren't worried we'd win."

Republicans spent much of 2005 trying to find someone else to run against Nelson, fearing Harris' controversial role as Florida's secretary of state in the 2000 election would make her a long shot.

The biggest sign of desperation came when House Speaker Allan Bense, well-respected in Tallahassee but little-known around the state, was courted in a White House meeting with President George W. Bush's top advisers.

On top of that, Harris' fund-raising ability -- assumed to be a strength given her national fame from her role in the 2000 presidential election as Florida's Secretary of State -- has instead disappointed, falling short of the $1 million she predicted. She has about $470,000 in her0 in her campaign account compared to nearly $6.5 million for Nelson.

I am really tired of these GUTLESS, SPINELESS, TURNCOAT, BACKSTABBING, (did I SAY GUTLESS?) GUTLESS, SPINELESS,, Republican career politicians who are fighting Katherine Harris' bid to be the next Senator from Florida. Yeah, Yeah, I understand it is their state and not mine, but Harris has earned her spurs. She stood up forthrightly and did her job AS DIRECTED IN THE FLORIDA ELECTION LAWS in spite of the immense pressure being applied on her by the SCOFLA and the "Whining Gore Posse" during the 2000 Presidential Election. Her reward for carrying the Florida Republican Party's water, snide remarks about her appearance, typical Left-wing attacks, from members of her own party. As far as I can see, she has done a great job in the House, and deserves the shot. It is time for Jeb and the other Republicans to stop playing games and let the people decide. When Republicans begin to mimic Democrats, I know we are in trouble. You Go Katherine!!!

Full Story: Disgusted With Floridian Republicans

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A Well Reasoned Suggestion from the Post? Is It Snowing Down There?

Three Lessons From Vietnam

By Dale Andrade
Washington Post
Thursday, December 29, 2005; Page A23

It's not uncommon these days to hear talk of "lessons" learned in Vietnam and their application to current U.S. conflicts. Unfortunately, most observers have ignored the uniqueness of the Vietnam War, picking and choosing the lessons learned there with little regard for their application to the present.

This is particularly true with the current buzz over the "clear and hold" concept, which has gained popularity in some circles. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice invoked it during Senate testimony in October, and columnist David Ignatius reported in his Nov. 4 op-ed that many Army officers are reading historian Lewis Sorley's book "A Better War," which argues that the United States could have prevailed in Vietnam if the military had used Gen. Creighton Abrams's ideas earlier in the war.

This simplistic notion may resonate in Washington, but it means little to troops on the ground. Marines in Fallujah or soldiers in Baghdad or near the Syrian border will tell you that they have been "clearing" areas for more than a year now, but "holding" them is a different matter. That takes a lot of troops, not small teams.

So much for simple lessons from Vietnam. But for better or worse, Vietnam is the most recent example of American counterinsurgency -- and our longest -- so it would be a mistake to reject it because of its complex and controversial nature. Stripped to essentials, there are three basic lessons from the war. All must be employed by any counterinsurgency effort, no matter what shape it takes.

First, there must be a unified structure that combines military and civilian pacification efforts. In Vietnam that organization was called CORDS, for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support. Formed in 1967, it placed the disjointed and ineffective civilian pacification programs under the military. This was accomplished only at the insistence of President Lyndon Johnson, who took an active interest in seeing the pacification process function smoothly under a single manager: Gen. William Westmoreland. CORDS gave the pacification effort access to military money and personnel, allowing programs to expand dramatically. In 1966 there were about 1,000 advisers involved in pacification, and the annual budget was $582 million; by 1969 that had risen to 7,600 advisers and almost $1.5 billion. This rapid progress was possible only because of CORDS's streamlined system under Defense Department control.

In Afghanistan, the provincial reconstruction teams have viewed CORDS as a model, but there is no truly integrated system yet. In Iraq, the old Coalition Provisional Authority suffered from the same problems that caused the formation of CORDS, in particular a dual chain of command that failed to coordinate military and civilian efforts. Not enough has been done since the CPA's dissolution in 2004 to integrate nation-building into military planning.

The second lesson involves attacking the enemy's center of gravity. An insurgency thrives only if it can maintain a permanent presence among the population, which in Vietnam was called the Viet Cong infrastructure, or VCI. This covert presence used carrot and stick -- promises of reform and threats of violence -- to take control of large chunks of the countryside. U.S. planners were aware of VCI, but until 1968 only the CIA paid it much attention. Under CORDS, however, the United States implemented the much-maligned Phoenix program, which targeted VCI and resulted in the capture or killing (mostly capture) of more than 80,000 VCI guerrillas. Criticisms of Phoenix abound, and there were many problems with the system, but the fact is that a counterinsurgency plan that ignores the guerrilla infrastructure is no plan at all.

The application of intelligence aimed at guerrillas' ability to live among the population is obvious. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are weak enough that their ability to influence the people is limited, but failure to watch them as they try to worm their way back into the villages will bring disaster later.

In Iraq, the situation is different in that the guerrillas have not made a concerted effort to mobilize the people. A large part of the Sunni population seems to support the insurgency, but the guerrillas are not forming local shadow governments or attempting to establish their own political and economic programs. Still, it makes sense to aim intelligence directly at the guerrillas' recruiting process to try to disrupt it.

I believe this is the first reasonable examination of the Iraq war strategy I have seen, certainly in the Post. Mr. Andrade's evaluation and implicit suggestions seem to have a great deal of merit. There is no strategy during war that doesn't need re-evaluating occasionally. Vietnam can serve as a perfect example of what to do and what not to do. Mr. Andrade is correct in stating that the failure to deny the North Vietnamese Army bases within South Vietnam was one of the causes for the collapse of South Vietnam. He fails to state the primary reason however, the failure of the mostly Democrat (67%) Congress to live up to the commitments it made to the South Vietnamese Government in the Paris Peace Accord. That is a perfect example of why we cannot afford to have Democrats in control of our foreign policy. Had the Democrats lived up to their commitments, very likely South Vietnam would still exist as a free and democratic nation.

Full Story: Better Coordination Between Civilian and Military Efforts

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Proof Positive: Being Canadian Causes Brain Damage

Canada blames U.S. for gun violence
Toronto shooting is latest death in a record year

CNN.COM International
Wednesday, December 28, 2005 Posted: 0254 GMT (1054 HKT)

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller warned that Canada could become like the United States after gunfire erupted Monday on a busy street filled with holiday shoppers, killing a 15-year-old girl and wounding six bystanders -- the latest victims in a record surge in gun violence in Toronto.

The shooting stemmed from a dispute among a group of 10 to 15 youth, and the victim was a teenager out with a parent near a popular shopping mall, police said Tuesday.

"I think it's a day that Toronto has finally lost its innocence," Det. Sgt. Savas Kyriacou said. "It was a tragic loss and tragic day."

While many Canadians take pride in Canadian cities being less violent than their American counterparts, Toronto has seen 78 murders this year, including a record 52 gun-related deaths -- almost twice as many as last year.

"What happened yesterday was appalling. You just don't expect it in a Canadian city," the mayor said.

"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," Miller said.

Miller said Toronto, a city of nearly three million, is still very safe compared to most American cities, but the illegal flow of weapons from the United States is causing the noticeable rise in gun violence.

"The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.

Miller said that while almost every other crime in Toronto is down, the supply of guns has increased and half of them come from the United States.

Miller said the availability of stolen Canadian guns is another problem, and that poverty in certain Toronto neighborhoods is a root cause.

"There are neighborhoods in Toronto where young people face barriers of poverty, discrimination and don't have real hope and opportunity. The kind of programs that we once took for granted in Canada that would reach out to young people have systematically disappeared over the past decade and I think that gun violence is a symptom of a much bigger problem," Miller said.

The escalating violence prompted the prime minister to announce earlier this month that if re-elected on January 23, his government would ban handguns. With severe restrictions already in place against handgun ownership, many criticized the announcement as politics.

It is interesting to watch as Canada goes the way of the rest of Western Europe. There is a progression in Western Europe away from God and Reason. Canada is showing definite symptoms of the same illness. It is the argument of a the intellectually dihonest to blame the availability of guns for the increase in violent crime. It is the increase in criminal behavior which leads to the increase of murders in Toronto. Such an argument provides an easy target and scape-goat for the failures of the Canadian socialist agenda. Tolerance of bad behavior causes increases in bad behavior. We saw it in California two weeks ago when the left came out in protest over the execution of "Tookie" Williams. A multiple murderer who refused to apologize for his crime was being lauded by the left and internationally as a "hero" and the "Govenator" was being vilified by those same individuals. Forcing your population to obey the law and be responsible for their actions is a much more difficult job than just laying blame on "American exportation of violence." Canadians need to hold Paul Martin to account for his failures. If you re-elect him, don't look to us for sympathy.

Full Story: Canadian Cop-Out

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Post Op-Ed That Actually Faces Entitlements Reality...Amazing

Our Entitlement Paralysis

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Page A21

As noted by recent cover stories in Newsweek and Business Week, the first of the roughly 77 million baby boomers turn 60 in 2006. J. Walker Smith of the polling firm of Yankelovich Partners told Newsweek that many boomers "think they're going to die before they get old" -- a reference to one survey in which boomers defined old age as starting around 80. Business Week asserted that fifty- and sixtysomethings consider their "middle age a new start on life" to indulge hobbies, begin new careers or remarry. These portraits of vigorous baby boomers clash with another reality: Their huge federal retirement benefits may seriously damage the economy and American politics.

Our continued unwillingness to address this disconnect counts as one of 2005's big stories. We should ask ourselves: Why? After all, the need is well known. Consider the Congressional Budget Office's just released projections. By 2030, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may cost 15 percent of national income -- almost double their level in 2000 and equal to 75 percent of today's federal budget. Left alone, these programs would require massive tax increases, cause immense deficits or crowd out other important government programs. We also know of at least partial solutions: curb costs by slowly raising eligibility ages and cutting benefits for wealthier recipients.

Still, we fiddle. The paralysis is understandable. No one wants to offend older voters, so we dance around the issues without truly engaging them. President Bush's ill-fated plan for "personal" investment accounts in Social Security was a perfect example. The president complained about unaffordable entitlement spending but never said how his plan would cure that problem. There was a reason: It wouldn't. In its first decades, it would mean more spending, not less. Government would pay for personal accounts and traditional benefits.

Democrats correctly saw Bush's proposal as a political attempt to steal their signature issue -- Social Security. For younger voters, the "personal accounts" might make the program a Republican product. It might cease being liberalism's crown jewel. Naturally, Democrats and the AARP denounced Bush's plan. People shouldn't depend on "risky" stocks for Social Security, they said. By July, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of the public thought personal accounts a "bad idea." Even many Republicans abandoned Bush.

Doubting Bush's motives is easy, because in 2003, he had engaged in a similar political makeover for Medicare, through his drug benefit. It aimed to ingratiate the president with elderly voters in 2004. But the potential cost is huge. By 2015, the drug benefit could increase Medicare costs by 30 percent, says the CBO. All of Bush's complaints about runaway entitlement spending reek of hypocrisy.

But ascribing today's deadlock exclusively to Bush's clumsy partisanship is too glib. It ignores the many years in which Democrats have shamelessly exploited for political advantage any threats to Social Security and Medicare benefits. It also overlooks the deeper and more intractable source of our stalemate: competing moral claims.

I don't think I'd be so cynical as to describe President Bush's efforts as an effort to turn Social Security into a Republican issue, it was an attempt to turn SSI into what should have been the original intent, a privately supported pension plan independent of government and corporate control. However it is refreshing to see the pages of this bastion of Liberal thought facing the harsh realities of the shortcomings of the socialist model. It is time for American lawmakers to get their collective snouts out of the public trough long enough to solve this problem before we wind up with a bunch of 80-year old pan-handlers under our bridges. Yes this nation is supposed to be based on self-responsibility, but I am neither so naive as to expect everyone in the nation to attend to their responsibilities, nor so cold as to say "let them eat cake" and allow those irresponsible individuals to starve to death. Perhaps public "poorhouses" for the indigent elderly would be the way to proceed.

Full Story: The (Rapidly Approaching) Entitlement Crisis

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Washington Post Relentlessly Anti-Bush

The Economy and Mr. Bush

Washington Post Editorial
Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Page A20

THE PAST YEAR has been remarkable for the economic disasters that did not happen. The huge U.S. trade deficit, which threatened a collapse in the dollar and a destabilizing spike in U.S. interest rates, actually delivered neither. High oil prices, which peaked dramatically after hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast, created neither gas lines nor the wider economic fallout that many had anticipated. Instead, the U.S. economy kept growing at a rate close to the impressive 4.2 percent notched up in 2004, which many had assumed was unsustainable. All this testifies to the flexibility of the economy and the wisdom of the Federal Reserve -- though it shouldn't be assumed that the trade deficit, even bigger now than it was a year ago, will remain forever free of consequences.

Yet on one important measure, the economic news hasn't been as good. The majority of workers have not felt the benefits. The issue is not joblessness: Ten years ago economists debated whether unemployment could fall below 6 percent without triggering inflation, but in November joblessness stood at just 5 percent, down from 5.4 percent a year earlier -- a feat that the euro zone, with an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent, can only envy. Rather, the problem for workers lies in take-home pay. Wages for blue-collar manufacturing workers and non-managers in services have remained stagnant since the economic recovery began in November 2001.

Part of the reason lies in the rising cost of non-wage benefits, especially health insurance. The value of benefits received by the average civilian worker rose 5.1 percent in the year to September, and that increase followed two years in which benefit costs were roaring ahead at a rate of more than 6 percent. These increases, which outpaced inflation, help explain disappointing wages. If it costs more to provide medical insurance to workers, employers will pay themselves back by holding wages down.

But it may also be true that technology and globalization are contributing to wage stagnation; if workers can be replaced by machines or foreigners, they have limited bargaining power. In the four years since the recovery began, inflation-adjusted compensation (that is, wages plus benefits, as measured by the government's Employment Cost Index) has risen just 0.8 percent per year on average, less than in past recoveries and less than gains in productivity would seem to justify. One might expect wage gains to improve as the recovery matures and the economy reaches full employment. This may yet happen: After all, neither technological progress nor globalization prevented solid wage gains in the 1990s. But so far there's no clear evidence that the corner has been turned.

Truly an amazing conclusion in this editorial. We have had one of the shallowest recessions in history in spite of the major blow to the economy that was 9/11/01 as well as the increased expenditures necessary for security which followed. In addition, we have survived unbelievable hits on the economy this year, as pointed out in this editorial, yet still managed to have a 4.2% growth and a vigorous economy. In spite of this impressive accomplishment, including the statistics given in the editorial, the Post's editorial position is Bush has us on the wrong path. Simply breathtaking in its hubris and lack of intellectual consistency.

Full Story: Post: Robust Economy is Bush Failure?

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Eugene Robinson: Combining Lies with Straw Men, Claiming Moral High Ground?

Power That Bush Can't Just Take

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, December 27, 2005; Page A25

Since the holiday season is a time of generosity and goodwill toward all -- even those who torture the Constitution and hoodwink the nation into ill-advised wars -- let's do a little thought experiment.

Let's assume that George W. Bush's claim of virtually unfettered presidential power is not just an exercise in reclaiming executive perks that Dick Cheney believes were wrongly surrendered after Watergate. Let's assume that Bush genuinely believes he needs the right to blanket the nation with electronic surveillance, detain indefinitely anyone he considers a terrorist suspect, make those detainees disappear into secret, CIA-run prisons, and subject them to "waterboarding" and other degradations. Let's assume for the moment that the president's only desperate motivation is to prevent another day like Sept. 11, 2001.

Let's go even further and assume he decided to invade Iraq for the same reason. Even in a thought experiment, we can't forgive the way he snowed the country into believing there was some connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks; nor can we forget the way he hyped the flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction -- we're being generous here, not stupid. But let's assume that however calculated and cynical the machinations, and however wrongheaded the decision to go to war, the underlying motive was purely to avoid another catastrophic terrorist attack.

All right: Given these overly kind assumptions, can this administration's usurpation of power somehow be justified?

Every time I work it through, the answer I come up with is no. The president has no right to ignore the rule of law as if it were a mere nuisance.

The problem is that if the president really were determined to do anything it takes to prevent another terrorist strike, why not suspend habeas corpus, as Lincoln did during the Civil War? That way you could arrest everyone who could possibly be a terrorist, or who once lived next door to a suspected terrorist's uncle, and you could hold those people as long as you wanted. Why stop at surveillance of international telephone calls and e-mails? Why not listen in on, say, all interstate calls as well? Or just go for it and scarf up all the domestic communications the National Security Agency's copious computers can hold?

Why stop at waterboarding? Why not go all the way and pull out some fingernails, if that would give Americans another tiny increment of security? Wouldn't electric shocks make us safer still? Just order the White House lawyers to draw up yet another thumb-on-the-scale legal opinion explaining how torture isn't really torture, and have at it.

I can only assume that Eugene is Brain damaged. That is the charitable thought path. Less charitable, but probably more accurate, he is intent on decieving his readers for the sake of his undefendable political position. So to help our brain damaged friend, let's make some information available.

1. In order to Lie, you have to have the intent to deceive.
2. The NSA's electronic surveillance does not "blanket the nation with electronic surveillance." They are not interested in the Nation at large, only al Qaeda connected and sympathetic groups and individuals.
3. A President cannot "usurp" powers to which he is already entitled. See Presidential Executive Order 12139, P.E.O. 12333, P.E.O. 12949, the statement by Jamie Gorelick in 1995 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 2001 Joint Senate (23) and House (64) (resolutions) which authorize the President to use "any and all means necessary" to defend the nation against another attack by terrorists.
4. We don't torture. It is against the law, and has been for some time. The techniques being use in interogations do not amount to torture.

So now Eugene, you can rest easy none of those terrible things you allude to are occurring. Of course, I know you don't care about the truth, only your misrepresentations.

Full Story: More Lies from the Post

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E.J. Dionne, Jr. Surprise! We are not a Socialist State.

When the Cutting Is Corrupted

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005; Page A25

With indicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff reportedly ready to cooperate with prosecutors and his partner, Michael Scanlon, already singing, 2006 is expected to be the year of congressional scandals.

Lord knows, a housecleaning in the Capitol is definitely in order. But the Abramoff scandal is just part of the corruption of our political system. There is another level of special-interest influence that cannot be handled by prosecutors: Only the voters can render a judgment on a politics of favoritism that has created a new Gilded Age. It's clear that the national government has placed itself squarely on the side of the wealthy, the privileged and the connected.

Rarely does a single action by Congress serve as so powerful an example of how the system is working. The recent budget bill, which squeaked through the House and Senate just before Christmas, is a road map of insider dealing. It shows that when choices have to be made, the interests of the poor and the middle class fall before the wishes of interest groups with powerful lobbies and awesome piles of campaign money to distribute.

Republican majorities in the Senate and House insisted that they wanted to cut the federal budget. But the Senate and House offered competing plans for achieving savings. When it came time to meld the two proposals, almost every choice congressional leaders made favored the interest groups.

Consider federal health programs. The House bill proposed substantial cuts for Medicaid beneficiaries, but the Senate bill -- partly because of pressure from moderate Republicans -- did not include those cuts. Instead, the Senate proposed to save taxpayer money by eliminating a $10 billion fund to encourage regional preferred-provider organizations, known as PPOs, to participate in the Medicare program. It also sought more rebates to the federal government from drug manufacturers participating in Medicaid.

Note the difference: Instead of imposing cuts on the poor, the Senate sought savings from corporate interests. Surprise, surprise: The final bill dropped the $10 billion cut to the PPOs and most of the rebate demands on drug manufacturers. Instead, the agreement hammered Medicaid recipients with $16 billion in gross cuts over the next decade. (The net cuts are lower because of new Medicaid spending, partly to help cover the scattered victims of Hurricane Katrina.)

The Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."

Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.

Hey E.J. the middle class is supposed to take care of itself. The government is not supposed to be funding welfare programs for the middle class. It is not even supposed to be funding welfare for the poor. None of that can be found in the Constitution. I have a really great suggestion for E.J. and the National Council of Churches and Nancy Pelosi and all of those Liberals, gather together, take all of your extra money, you know the money that you want the government to take from you in higher taxes, and give it to all of those poor people. You Liberals are always real generous with the taxpayer's money. Why don't you put your money where your mouths are. You don't need that 6 or 7 figure income in order to live. Just give 60 to 70% of your income to charities. We could really slash the budget then. What's the matter E.J.? Maybe you don't really believe that you should sacrifice for the "good of the poor" people.

Full Story: Times Continues Socialist Philosophy

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Time for Indians to Drop Their Pseudo"Independence"

Homeless for Over a Century, a Tribe Awaits U.S. Redemption

By JIM ROBBINS
Published: December 24, 2005

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Here at the base of a rise called Hill 57, a steady, cold wind blows on a cloudless day as James Parker Shield and Russ Boham tell of life for the landless Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

The tribe, its land taken away more than a century ago, squatted in Great Falls and elsewhere in north-central Montana through the late 1960's, living as many as 12 to a tar-paper shack without plumbing, and scavenging at the dump for scrap metal, rags and food. Parents often ran afoul of state child welfare officials. "They'd see you sleeping in a car body and take you away from your family," said Mr. Boham, who, like Mr. Shield, was among those shipped to the state orphanage when he was a child.

Today, with most of its members living in public housing around Great Falls, Mr. Shield and Mr. Boham are leading a protracted fight for government recognition of the tribe. Recognition would allow their people to gain control of federal money to buy land here for a tribal headquarters and housing, and to win back a measure of dignity.

The 112 families led by Chief Little Shell lost their North Dakota homeland to the government in 1892 when a chief of the Pembina Chippewa signed away their rights to it, without their authority and in their absence. The Little Shell had left home, in the Turtle Mountain area, to go hunting, and an Indian agent forced the other Chippewa to accept the Ten Cent Treaty - so called by Indians because it bought about 10 million acres of Chippewa land, including that of the Little Shell, for a million dollars.

Ever since, the Little Shell have known only diaspora.

Most came to Montana, where they lived near dumps and on the streets of Great Falls, Helena and other towns. In 1896, angry whites asked the government to do something about them, and the Army rounded them up at gunpoint, put them on boxcars and shipped them to Canada. "Most of them made their way back," said Mr. Shield, the vice president of the tribal council, which Mr. Boham serves as assistant.

The three other surviving Chippewa tribes from the Turtle Mountain area - the Turtle Mountain, the White Earth and the Rocky Boy - were all less scattered and received federal recognition over time; they now have reservations. But the 4,500 or so Little Shell still await official recognition from the Office of Federal Acknowledgment at the Interior Department, a quest for which they have gained the support not only of other tribes in Montana but also of the Montana governor's office, the State Legislature and Cascade County, which includes Great Falls.

The recognition process was created by the government in 1978 to make reparations to tribes that had been forced to move from place to place throughout American history. There are now 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States.

Roughly 220 others have expressed interest in recognition, but such efforts are often strongly opposed. Some of that opposition comes from tribes, already recognized, that are eager to protect their vast casino gambling income, and from states that do not want recognized tribes within their borders, because a bid for recognition is occasionally a ploy of relatively few Indians with dubious historical ties simply to open a new casino.

"We're running into the ripple effects of gaming and politics," Mr. Shield contended. "But the gaming has nothing to do with us. If you take a hard look at the gaming opportunities in Montana, there's no market and no population. We want a home."

James E. Cason, an associate deputy interior secretary who oversees Indian affairs, denied that the gambling issue had been a factor in the case of the Little Shell, who first applied for recognition in 1984, who received preliminary approval in 2000 and who have spent much of the time since then engaged in assembling the documentation needed for final approval. (The final draft of their petition was sent to the government earlier this year.)

"It doesn't have anything to do with gaming - it's a nonissue," Mr. Cason said, adding that the Little Shell had been "in control of this process the last five years and have asked for extensions."

With the final draft now in hand, "we will try to do it as expeditiously as we can," he said.

You know what, I don't care! I'm sorry that some of the people are suffering, and for that I do care, but if these people want our goverment to take care of them, they need to become part of our society. It is time to close the reservations down. They serve no purpose but ego stroking by providing cover for the lie that these people are independent. I really don't care about the fact that they were here before us, that's ancient history. In a clash of societies, one side always wins and the other loses. The American Indians lost. Western culture won. I don't give one wit about a century old feud. We already spend our tax dollars to support their people, it's time for them to become our people and be a part of the American Nation. I don't see those wealthy Indian Nations going out of their way to support their poorer brethren, so why should my tax dollars be spent that way. If they wish to become citizens of the United States of America and commit to our way of life, then they are entitled to the rights and privilleges of a citizen otherwise, tough. Life is not fair.

Full Story: Put Up or Shut Up

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New YorK Times Still Attempting to Create Its Own Watergate

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: December 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

The Desperate Times is still trying to create a big scandal where there is none. They apparently believe that if they can come up with their own "Watergate," they might be able to regain some of their lost readership. They are desperately trying to make the NSA "spying scandal" into something that is is not. Their drive to do this leads them to repeated willingness to compromise American security. I'm sure it won't be long until there is a nickname given to these anonymous "current and former government officials." HINT TO NYTIMES: Deepthroat has already been taken.

Full Story: NYT: Creating News Where There is None

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In U.K. Free Speech is Hate Crime

Police tell Christian couple view on gays 'close to hate crime'

By David Sanderson
The Times December 23, 2005

POLICE questioned a retired couple for 80 minutes about their “homophobic” views after they asked their local council if they could display their Christian literature next to gay rights leaflets, it was reported last night.

Joe and Helen Roberts said that police officers warned them that their actions “were close to a hate crime” after they complained to Wyre Borough Council about its gay rights policies.

The couple claimed that the police told them they were “walking on eggshells”.

Mr Roberts, from Fleetwood, Lancashire, said he had been offended because of the council’s distribution of the gay rights leaflets and its promotion of its theatre as a venue for civil partnership ceremonies.

He said he complained to Paul Deacon, the council officer responsible for Wyre’s part in the Navajo Charter Mark campaign being run by several local authorities to offer assistance to gay and lesbian people.

Mr Roberts, 73, told the Daily Mail: “I told him I was offended. I asked him if I could put Christian literature on display alongside the gay material. He said I couldn’t because it would offend gay people.

“I said we had no objection to gay people, but we thought that homosexual practice was wrong and we were offended by the gay culture which the council is promoting.

“They warned me that being discriminatory and homophobic is in line with hate crime. The phrase they used was that we were ‘walking on eggshells’. I asked the officer, if I phoned the police with a complaint that the council were discriminating against Christians would he go to interview them?”

Lancashire police said its visit to the Robertses’ family home was a matter of routine after a complaint from the council. A spokesman added: “Words of suitable advice were given and we will not be taking any further action.”

Why the surprise? This is nothing new. Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" were warnings about this kind of intolerance. Those on the Left are intolerant of the very freedoms they claim to support. Don't you remember the '60s and '70s? Every time a Conservative got up to speak in public, those on the Left would attempt to shout them down. We see the same thing in modern time. We witness it with the attempts by those on the Left trying to intimidate Ann Coulter and Pat Buchannon by throwing pies or other substances at them. The Left hate free speech if it is in opposition to what they believe. Liberalism as a political philosophy is anti-freedom.

Full Story: Tolerance of Nothing

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Come On Chief, It's Not the Time for Political Correctness

Face of homicides changing, HPD says Killings up 23%;
chief is reluctant to blame evacuees

By MÓNICA GUZMÁN and CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

An upward swing in the city's homicide rate — up by nearly a quarter from last year —isn't the only thing concerning Houston police. Officers say they are seeing more stranger-on-stranger crime, a resurgence of gang activity and more violence around apartment complexes, especially those swelled with an influx of Katrina evacuees.

Though officials acknowledged that at least eight of the homicides involved hurricane evacuees, Houston Police Department Chief Harold Hurtt said Wednesday that it was incorrect to assume that "the reason that crime is up in the last quarter of this year is evacuees from Louisiana. A lot of this is (attributed) to homegrown citizens."

To date, 324 homicides have been reported this year, unofficially, compared with 263 in the same period in 2004, he said. That's up more than 23 percent.

Most of the spike has come since mid-November, when 14 homicides were reported during the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Police and city officials, who said they already had been aware of an increase in crime since earlier this year, then launched a series of initiatives intended to increase police presence in high-crime areas.

Late last month and under pressure from city officials concerned about police manpower, Hurtt instituted a $4 million overtime program designed to free up officers for patrol duty.

And last week, the chief announced an initiative to "dramatically" increase patrols in five of the most crime-ridden local apartment complexes.

Overall crime is down

Though violent crime is up 2.3 percent through November of this year compared with the same period last year, HPD officials said overall crime is down 2.2 percent.

In recent months, violent crimes appear to be on a dramatic rise, and police say, is undergoing some disturbing changes.

Fifty-one homicides were reported in November and December — a 70 percent increase from the same period last year, Hurtt said.

Hurtt also said he has seen a "tremendous change" in how killers and victims are acquainted. Twenty to 25 years ago, most killings involved friends or family members, but that is no longer the case — and it's making murders harder to solve, he said.

Sorry folks, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. It may not be a pleasant thing to contemplate, we always like to believe the best of people, but considering the timing of this upsurge and the infusion of so many refugees from New Orleans, it hardly seems a coincidence. I suspect that there are a lot of territorial battles going on between locals and the former denizens of New Orleans' mean streets. Remember most of those refugees were unable to flee because they didn't have cars. They come from the poorest and consequently the highest crime rate areas of New Orleans. It's time for Mayor White to pull a "Rudy" and order the crackdown on all crimes, minor and major. It worked in New York and it will work here.

Full Story: Refugees Arrival's Confluence With Higher Crime No Coincidence

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Give DeLay His Day in Court

DeLay's request for speedy trial denied

By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN - - A state appeals court has rejected motions filed by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay to help him get a speedy trial, an essential step in the Sugar Land Republican's efforts to regain his congressional leadership post.

In an order made public today, the intermediate appeals court rejected DeLay's bid to be tried on a money laundering charge while prosecutors appeal the dismissal of a related charge accusing DeLay of violating the election code.

DeLay's attorneys said they would take the matter to the state's highest criminal appeals court.

The panel of two Democrats and one Republican also overruled a motion to expedite the appeal by shortening the time for filing briefs from the customary 20 days per side to five days.

DeLay's lead lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said DeLay will seek emergency relief from the Court of Criminal Appeals.

``We're not through. We're going to the top,'' said DeGuerin.

DeGuerin said he will ask the high court to intervene in the appeal filed last week by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

He will argue that a long legal battle would disrupt congressional business. DeLay had to step down as U.S. House majority leader when he was indicted by a Travis County grand jury in September.

"Ronnie Earle, a local county prosecutor, is affecting the business of the United States by his foot dragging and his frivolous appeals, and we're not going to stop,'' said DeGuerin.

Kevin Madden, DeLay's spokesman, said: "The court's decision allows Mr. DeLay the opportunity to move past intermediate courts and go right to the highest appeals court to make a case for dismissal of Ronnie Earle's baseless charges."

The appeals court said that Senior Judge Pat Priest was correct to postpone any action on DeLay's money-laundering charge while the state was appealing the dismissed charge.

Sure looks suspiciously like these Democrat judges are playing politics. I really and truly don't like to make those kinds of assumptions about judges allowing their petty political ambitions affect their decision making, but it has become painfully obvious over the last few years that judges are finding it easier and easier to disregard their obligation to be objective adjudicators. We have seen, far too often, judges willing to play partisan politics with the courts decisions. DeLay's request is reasonable in light of the imposition these delays are posing on his ability to perform his job. Given the highly questionable behavior of Ronnie Earle in all of this, I think there is no reason to make DeLay wait for Earle's appeal. What is it lawyers like to say? "Justice delayed is justice denied."

Full Story: Courts Delay DeLay

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Fee, Fie, Foe, FISA, I Smell the Mendacity of Democrat Judges

Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 22, 2005; Page A01

The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.

Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court.

"The questions are obvious," said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. "What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?"

Such comments underscored the continuing questions among judges about the program, which most of them learned about when it was disclosed last week by the New York Times. On Monday, one of 10 FISA judges, federal Judge James Robertson, submitted his resignation -- in protest of the president's action, according to two sources familiar with his decision. He will maintain his position on the U.S. District Court here.

Other judges contacted yesterday said they do not plan to resign but are seeking more information about the president's initiative. Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who also sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, told fellow FISA court members by e-mail Monday that she is arranging for them to convene in Washington, preferably early next month, for a secret briefing on the program, several judges confirmed yesterday.

Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Kollar-Kotelly expects top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

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 warrantless eavesdropping for up to 72 hours if the attorney general certifies there is no other way to get the information.

Still, Bush and his advisers have said they need to operate outside the FISA system in order to move quickly against suspected terrorists. In explaining the program, Bush has made the distinction between detecting threats and plots and monitoring likely, known targets, as FISA would allow.

Bush administration officials believe it is not possible, in a large-scale eavesdropping effort, to provide the kind of evidence the court requires to approve a warrant. Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."

Gee, i wonder who that anonyous "government official" was, some left-over political hack from the Clinton era, a useless government bureaucrat on the Federal dole. What an absurd statement. The reason for the need to bypass the FISA court in these cases is simply a matter of time. Not time for the judge to make the approval, time to provide the information FISA requires for one of these taps. This is what ids required for a FISA warrant:

(1) the identity of the Federal officer making the application;
(2) the authority conferred on the Attorney General by the
President of the United States and the approval of the Attorney
General to make the application;
(3) the identity, if known, or a description of the target of
the electronic surveillance;
(4) a statement of the facts and circumstances relied upon by
the applicant to justify his belief that -
(A) the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign
power or an agent of a foreign power; and
(B) each of the facilities or places at which the electronic
surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used,
by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;
(5) a statement of the proposed minimization procedures;
(6) a detailed description of the nature of the information
sought and the type of communications or activities to be
subjected to the surveillance;
(7) a certification or certifications by the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs or an executive branch
official or officials designated by the President from among
those executive officers employed in the area of national
security or defense and appointed by the President with the
advice and consent of the Senate -
(A) that the certifying official deems the information sought
to be foreign intelligence information;
(B) that a significant purpose of the surveillance is to
obtain foreign intelligence information;
(C) that such information cannot reasonably be obtained by
normal investigative techniques;
(D) that designates the type of foreign intelligence
information being sought according to the categories described
in section 1801(e) of this title; and
(E) including a statement of the basis for the certification
that -
(i) the information sought is the type of foreign
intelligence information designated; and
(ii) such information cannot reasonably be obtained by
normal investigative techniques;
(8) a statement of the means by which the surveillance will be
effected and a statement whether physical entry is required to
effect the surveillance;
(9) a statement of the facts concerning all previous
applications that have been made to any judge under this
subchapter involving any of the persons, facilities, or places
specified in the application, and the action taken on each
previous application;
(10) a statement of the period of time for which the electronic
surveillance is required to be maintained, and if the nature of
the intelligence gathering is such that the approval of the use
of electronic surveillance under this subchapter should not
automatically terminate when the described type of information
has first been obtained, a description of facts supporting the
belief that additional information of the same type will be
obtained thereafter; and
(11) whenever more than one electronic, mechanical or other
surveillance device is to be used with respect to a particular
proposed electronic surveillance, the coverage of the devices
involved and what minimization procedures apply to information
acquired by each device.

Yep, all of that just to tap a brief call from a phone in Afghanistam and America. The FISA system was set up to deal with matters from a 30 year old technological standpoint. Satelite and cell technologies have rendered the FISA law useless in tracking these terrorists.

As for Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, you guessed it, she's another Clinton appointee. Who knows maybe she's in earnest, but I wouldn't bet the farm. We've seen far too often what these Liberal judges think about involving their own personal political opinions in making their decisions. We saw it in the Florida Supreme Court in 2000 when they chose to tell the states executive branch to disregard state law and continue to count the votes, in direct violation of the Constitution, as we saw when they were twice reversed by the SCOTUS.

Full Story: Democrat judges want in on the act as well

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For Democrats: The Hits Just Keep Coming

Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in 1 1/2 Years

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
Dec 21 8:37 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy turned in a remarkably strong performance in the summer despite surging energy prices and the battering the Gulf Coast states took from hurricanes, although business growth was slightly lower than the government previously estimated. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services, rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the July-September quarter. It was the fastest pace of growth in 1 1/2 years.

While down slightly from the 4.3 percent GDP estimate made a month ago, the new figure demonstrated that the economy kept expanding at a strong pace during the summer, led by solid increases in consumer demand, especially for autos, and business investment.

The third quarter performance was up substantially from a 3.3 percent GDP growth rate in the April-June quarter and was the best showing since the economy expanded at a 4.3 percent rate in the first three months of 2004.
Analysts believe growth has slowed substantially in the current quarter to around 3 percent, reflecting slower increases in consumer spending now that attractive auto incentives have been removed.

The increase in third quarter growth came despite the fact that the country was hit by Katrina, the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, and by Rita.

Yep it's another disaster for Democrats. The "Bush Economy" is booming. Those horrible tax cuts for the rich, you remember those, the ones which "wouldn't work," the ones that were "improperly targeted," seem to be driving the economy at full throttle.

Original Post: Killer Economy Shows little sign of slowing

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More Bad News for Liberals: Alito Popular Pick

Majority of Americans Support Alito Nomination

By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; 6:00 AM

A majority of Americans now support the confirmation of U.S. Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 54 percent of the public say the Senate should confirm Alito while 28 percent say he should not be approved. That marks a modest increase in public support for Alito since November, when 49 percent said he should be confirmed and 29 percent said he should not. In both surveys, about one in five Americans said they did not yet know enough about the nominee to have an opinion.

Alito now is about as popular as Chief Justice Roberts was on the eve of his Senate confirmation hearings last September, the survey found. Roberts easily won Senate approval, breezing through his hearings and winning the vote of all 55 Republican senators and half of their Democratic colleagues. It is uncertain whether Alito will pass so effortlessly through his Senate confirmation process, which is scheduled to start Jan. 9 with hearings. The Senate hopes to hold a final vote on Alito by Jan. 20.

The new poll found some evidence that the abortion issue plays an important but not decisive role in shaping public perceptions of Alito. While his current views on abortion are not publicly known, memos that he wrote two decades ago, while he was a lawyer in the Reagan administration Justice Department, indicated he opposed Roe v. Wade , the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

Alito will sail through. I said it when he was nominated, he is a lock on confirmation. The Liberals have all fired their best shots to no avail. The man is rock-solid and will win confirmation with at least 70 votes. Cry Freedom!

Full Story: Alito Proves Strong Candidate

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Democrats: "On the Highway to Hell"

4 GOP Senators Hold Firm Against Patriot Act Renewal
More Safeguards Needed, They Say

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A04

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) could barely conceal his anger.

"The Patriot Act expires on December 31, but the terrorist threat does not," he told reporters at the Capitol yesterday. "Those on the Senate floor who are filibustering the Patriot Act are killing the Patriot Act."

There was just one problem. Well, four problems, actually. Four of the 46 senators using the delaying tactic to thwart the USA Patriot Act renewal are members of Frist's party. It is a pesky, irritating fact for Republicans who are eager to portray the impasse as Democratic obstructionism, and a ready-made rejoinder for Democrats expecting campaign attacks on the issue in 2006 and 2008.

The four Republican rebels -- Larry E. Craig (Idaho), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), John E. Sununu (N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) -- have joined all but two Senate Democrats in arguing that more civil liberties safeguards need to be added to the proposed renewal of the Patriot Act. The law makes it easier for FBI agents to monitor phone calls, search homes and obtain business records of terrorism suspects. The four stand calmly at the center of a political storm that soon will determine whether the law, enacted soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks, is renewed in a modified form or allowed to expire in 11 days.

The House passed the Patriot Act renewal Dec. 14, but two days later the four Republicans joined most Democrats in the Senate in blocking action on the bill.

The four Republicans' concerns about the proposed Patriot Act renewal are basically the same as those of most Senate Democrats. They say the bill is slanted too heavily in the government's favor when it comes to letting targeted people challenge national security letters and special subpoenas that give the FBI substantial latitude in deciding what records should be surrendered. The targeted people should have a greater ability to challenge such subpoenas and require the government to show why it thinks the items being sought are connected to possible terrorism, the Republicans contend.

Their Republican colleagues try to look the other way, but Democrats are delighted to have some bipartisan cover. "In a full-court press by the White House to demonize Democrats, it's great to see we've got at least four Republican profiles in courage," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Charles Babble-ton, 4 Republicans are not going to provide cover for 42 Democrats pursuing a policy which is detrimental to American Security. They are fully visible in their ill-thought out, ill-chosen, lemming-like path. In their efforts to defeat Republicans, they have lost sight of what is good for America and its people. Ambition is great in its place, but if in pursuing your ambition, you endanger your nation, then your priorities have become distorted.

Once more, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Full Story: Endangering America for Politics

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President IS the Power During Wartime

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush Effort to Widen Executive Power

By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A01

The clash over the secret domestic spying program is one slice of a broader struggle over the power of the presidency that has animated the Bush administration. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney came to office convinced that the authority of the presidency had eroded and have spent the past five years trying to reclaim it.

From shielding energy policy deliberations to setting up military tribunals without court involvement, Bush, with Cheney's encouragement, has taken what scholars call a more expansive view of his role than any commander in chief in decades. With few exceptions, Congress and the courts have largely stayed out of the way, deferential to the argument that a president needs free rein, especially in wartime.

But the disclosure of Bush's eavesdropping program has revived the issue, and Congress appears to be growing restive about surrendering so much of its authority. Democrats and even key Republicans maintain Bush went too far -- and may have even violated the law -- by authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens' overseas telephone calls in search of terrorist plots without obtaining warrants from a secret intelligence court.

The vice president entered the fray yesterday, rejecting the criticism and expounding on the philosophy that has driven so many of the administration's actions. "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it -- and to some extent that we have an obligation as the administration to pass on the offices we hold to our successors in as good of shape as we found them," Cheney said. In wartime, he said, the president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired."

Speaking with reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force Two to Oman, Cheney said the period after the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War proved to be "the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy" and harmed the chief executive's ability to lead in a complicated, dangerous era. "But I do think that to some extent now we've been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency."

For Cheney, the post-Watergate era was the formative experience shaping his understanding of executive power. As a young White House chief of staff for President Gerald R. Ford, he saw the Oval Office at its weakest point as Congress and the courts asserted themselves. But scholars such as Andrew Rudalevige, author of "The New Imperial Presidency," say the presidency had recovered long before Cheney returned to the White House in 2001. The War Powers Act, the legislative veto, the independent counsel statute and other legacies of the 1970s had all been discarded in one form or another.

"He's living in a time warp," said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and Reagan administration official. "The great irony is Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he's still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974."

Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) said: "The vice president may be the only person I know of that believes the executive has somehow lost power over the last 30 years."

The tug over executive power traces back to the early years of the republic, and presidents have traditionally moved to expand their reach during times of war. John Adams, fearing a hostile France, presided over the imprisonment of Republican critics under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson jailed Socialist Eugene V. Debs, who had run against him for president, for protesting the entry into World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. And Ronald Reagan circumvented a Cold War congressional ban on providing aid to contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The Bush administration rejects comparisons to such events and says its assertions of authority in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have been carefully tailored to meet the needs of a 21st-century war against a nebulous foe. At his news conference Monday, Bush bristled at the notion that he sought "unchecked power" and said he had consulted with Congress extensively.

Yet Bush supporters believe that other branches should take a subsidiary role to the president in safeguarding national security. "The Constitution's intent when we're under attack from outside is to place maximum power in the president," said William P. Barr, who was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, "and the other branches, and especially the courts, don't act as a check on the president's authority against the enemy."

Guess what, William P. Barr is right. During a time of war, we do expand the President's power greatly. That is because, though Congress has the power to declare war, it is the President's job to run the war. We lose some of our freedoms and liberties during war. We always have. Remember rationing? The government told you how much beef, rubber, gasoline, and pretty much everything, one could buy. The power during war rests with the President.

I will repeat this until you finally comprehend it. We live in a REPUBLIC not a democracy. We elect people to run our government for us. In doing so, we invest these people with trust. We do not elect the press. They are not employed by the people to be a "watchdog" for us. They are self-appointed in their assumed role. I trust the President, not the New York Times to run the war on terror.

Full Story: George Bush was Elected, not New York Times

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Political Hack Judge Resigns FISA Court...Good! Another Liberal Judge Gone

Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A01

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment when reached at his office late yesterday.

Word of Robertson's resignation came as two Senate Republicans joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security Agency's warrantless interception of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White House kept Congress informed.

Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) echoed concerns raised by Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has promised hearings in the new year.

Hagel and Snowe joined Democrats Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) in calling for a joint investigation by the Senate judiciary and intelligence panels into the classified program.

The hearings would occur at the start of a midterm election year during which the prosecution of the Iraq war could figure prominently in House and Senate races.

Not all Republicans agreed with the need for hearings and backed White House assertions that the program is a vital tool in the war against al Qaeda.

"I am personally comfortable with everything I know about it," Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in a phone interview.

At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan was asked to explain why Bush last year said, "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." McClellan said the quote referred only to the USA Patriot Act.

Revelation of the program last week by the New York Times also spurred considerable debate among federal judges, including some who serve on the secret FISA court. For more than a quarter-century, that court had been seen as the only body that could legally authorize secret surveillance of espionage and terrorism suspects, and only when the Justice Department could show probable cause that its targets were foreign governments or their agents.

Robertson indicated privately to colleagues in recent conversations that he was concerned that information gained from warrantless NSA surveillance could have then been used to obtain FISA warrants. FISA court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had been briefed on the spying program by the administration, raised the same concern in 2004 and insisted that the Justice Department certify in writing that it was not occurring.

"They just don't know if the product of wiretaps were used for FISA warrants -- to kind of cleanse the information," said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the FISA warrants. "What I've heard some of the judges say is they feel they've participated in a Potemkin court."

I'm going to change my mind here. I agree with Specter and Hagel. In fact, I think we just need to drop the whole war against terror thing entirely. We need to invite al Qaeda into the country, While we're at it, let's just provide them with grade A, number 1, C-4 or Symtex high explosives so they don't have to risk their lives building make-shift bombs.

Good grief Arlen where is your outrage at the leaking of top secret information during a time of war? How about it Chuck? Are you not outraged at the revealing of our investigation techniques? Olympia, where do your loyalties lie, with al Qaeda?

I understand Chuck "I want to be President" Hagel's activity, he mistakenly thinks this will help him in his futile bid to be President. No harm, no foul Chuck, your chances were zero to begin with. You will never be President.

I understand Olympia, she and Collins have always been more Democrat than Republican.

Specter, I guess, has just gone senile. He was never a Conservative, always a Liberal.

As to the judge, the portion of the article I highlighted tell us all we need to know, "appointed by Clinton." He's just another Liberal judge who needed to be gotten rid of anyway.

Full Story: Liberal Judge resigns

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Conservatives Should Be Americans First, Conservative Second

Why Didn't He Ask Congress?

By George F. Will
Tuesday, December 20, 2005; Page A31

The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?

Presumably the argument is that the president's implied powers as commander in chief, particularly with the nation under attack and some of the enemy within the gates, are not limited by statutes. A classified legal brief probably makes an argument akin to one Attorney General John Ashcroft made in 2002: "The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

Perhaps the brief argues, as its author, John Yoo -- now a professor of law at Berkeley but then a deputy assistant attorney general -- argued 14 days after Sept. 11, 2001, in a memorandum on "the president's constitutional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations supporting them," that the president's constitutional power to take "military actions" is "plenary." The Oxford English Dictionary defines "plenary" as "complete, entire, perfect, not deficient in any element or respect."

The brief should be declassified and debated, beginning with this question: Who decides which tactics -- e.g., domestic surveillance -- should be considered part of taking "military actions''?

Without more information than can be publicly available concerning threats from enemies operating in America, the executive branch deserves considerable discretion in combating terrorist conspiracies using new technologies such as cell phones and the Internet. In September 2001, the president surely had sound reasons for desiring the surveillance capabilities at issue.

But did he have sound reasons for seizing them while giving only minimal information to, and having no formal complicity with, Congress? Perhaps. But Congress, if asked, almost certainly would have made such modifications of law as the president's plans required. Courts, too, would have been compliant. After all, on Sept. 14, 2001, Congress had unanimously declared that "the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism," and it had authorized "all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in Sept. 11 or threatening future attacks.

For more than 500 years -- since the rise of nation-states and parliaments -- a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power. The problem is expressed in the title of a brilliant book, "Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power," by Harvey Mansfield, Harvard's conservative.

Particularly in time of war or the threat of it, government needs concentrated decisiveness -- a capacity for swift and nimble action that legislatures normally cannot manage. But the inescapable corollary of this need is the danger of arbitrary power.

Modern American conservatism grew in reaction against the New Deal's creation of the regulatory state, and the enlargement of the executive branch power that such a state entails. The intellectual vigor of conservatism was quickened by reaction against the Great Society and the aggrandizement of the modern presidency by Lyndon Johnson, whose aspiration was to complete the project begun by Franklin Roosevelt.

...and there you have Mr. Will's real argument. He is being a "Conservative." That's well and good Mr. Will, I too am a Conservative, but (and this is the difference between you, Buchanon, and the like, and me) I am an American first. I believe that the American nation, culture, and governmental philosophy must survive. I believe in the inherent "rightness" of America and our unique form of government. I also believe in individuals, not just generalities. This is an act which would disturb me greatly had Lyndon Johnson or some other Liberal pursued it, but I am not afraid of George Bush. I do not fear that he has some higher ambition of power. He has proven himself to be a man of moderate temperment and ambition. So excuse me if I tolerate this mild imposition, (I have no al Qaeda contacts to be concerned about, do you?) while George W. Bush is in office, WE ARE AT WAR. Call back later after it is over.

Full Story: Will's Worries

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Bush: Defending Americans. Democrats: Playing Politics

Bush Vigorously Defends Domestic Spying

Dec 19, 7:55 PM (ET)
By TERENCE HUNT

WASHINGTON (AP) - Accused of acting above the law, President Bush forcefully defended a domestic spying program on Monday as an effective tool in disrupting terrorists and insisted it was not an abuse of Americans' civil liberties.

Bush said it was "a shameful act" for someone to have leaked details to the media. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said it was "probably the most classified program that exists in the United States government" - involving electronic intercepts of telephone calls and e-mails in the U.S. of people with known ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

At a news conference, Bush bristled at the suggestion he was assuming unlimited powers.

"To say 'unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject," he said angrily in a finger-pointing answer. "I am doing what you expect me to do, and at the same time, safeguarding the civil liberties of the country."

Despite Bush's defense, there was a growing storm of criticism from Congress and calls for investigations, from Democrats and Republicans alike. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a handwritten letter expressing concern to Vice President Dick Cheney after being briefed more than two years ago.

Rockefeller complained then that the information was so restricted he was "unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities." He registered concern about the administration's direction on security, technology and surveillance issues.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he would ask Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito, his views of the president's authority for spying without a warrant.

"Where does he find in the Constitution the authority to tap the wires and the phones of American citizens without any court oversight?" asked Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Bush's interpretation of the Constitution was "incorrect and dangerous."

Bush said he had asked, "Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely."

The spying uproar was the latest controversy about Bush's handling of the war on terror, after questions about secret prisons in Eastern Europe, secrecy-cloaked government directives, torture allegations and a death toll of more than 2,150 Americans in Iraq. As a result, Bush's approval rating has slumped as has Americans' confidence in his leadership.

Appealing for support, Bush used the word "understand" 25 times in a nearly hour-long news conference. "I hope the American people understand - there is still an enemy that would like to strike the United States of America, and they're very dangerous," he said. Similarly, he said he hoped that blacks who doubt his intentions "understand that I care about them."

Bush challenged Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. - without naming them - to allow a final vote on legislation renewing the anti-terror Patriot Act, saying it was inexcusable to let it expire. "I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer" without the extension, he said.

Reid and Clinton both helped block passage of the legislation in the Senate last week.

Bush noted that U.S. intelligence agencies have been faulted for failing to "connect the dots" about threats to the nation's security. He said the Patriot Act and the spying program help take care of that problem.

I would be nervous if this was a Liberal administration, because I mistrust Liberal's goals. You see, 1984 is a vision of a "socialists paradise." It is a vision of what would result if the Left took over. Orwell's Animal Farm was not a warning against democracy and free enterprise, it was a warning against socialism and facism. Facism arises not from those seeking to defend freedom, it arises from those seeking to "protect" citizens from themselves, "for their own good." What President Bush did may border legality, but the motives were unquestionable. If a Liberal did this, then we would be much more likely to have violations of individual civil liberties. You know, something similar to what happened in the first Hillary administration with the FBI files and the IRS.

Full Story: Reid Telling Tales...Again

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Left's Campaign of Distortion and Lies Continues Unabated

Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2005

Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

---SNIP------

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

I hate to give an unethical slime thrower like Alter all of this space, but it is illustrative of what the Left in their desperation is willing to do to achieve what Alter finally admits to in that last paragraph, impeachment. Nothing new hear, Alter and his ilk have been striving toward that end without pause since Al Gore first conceded the race in 2000. Alter has no noble goal, he knows that no ones civil rights were violated. He is fully aware that all of these taps were warranted, particularly given the new type of war in which we find ourselves. No, his goal is a simple one, one he has had from the first, destroy George Bush. That has been the goal of the Left from day one. That is why it has been so frustrating for us on the Right. We have watched again and again as the President and other good natured and well intentioned Republicans have sought to work with their Demcrat counterparts in Congress, only to be slapped down. You cannot work through such unreasoned hatred. You can pray for them; you can wish them well, but you cannot trust them to work with you. They will always betray you because their political goals are more important to them than is your friendship. Alter you are a pitiful creature.

Full Story: Alternate Reality

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Mr. President, The Left Have No Shame.

Bush vows to continue domestic spying

By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — President Bush, brushing aside bipartisan criticism in Congress, said today he approved spying on suspected terrorists without court orders because it was "a necessary part of my job to protect" Americans from attack.

The president said he would continue the program "for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens," and added it included safeguards to protect civil liberties.

Bush bristled at a year-end news conference when asked whether there are any limits on presidential power in wartime.

"I just described limits on this particular program, and that's what's important for the American people to understand," Bush said.

Raising his voice, Bush challenged Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — without naming them — to allow a final vote on legislation renewing the anti-terror Patriot Act. "I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer" without the extension, he said.

Reid represents Nevada; Clinton is a New York senator, and both helped block passage of the legislation in the Senate last week.

"In a war on terror we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment," Bush said.

Reid fired back quickly. "The president and the Republican leadership should stop playing politics with the Patriot Act," he said in a statement that added he and other Democrats favor a three-month extension of the expiring law to allow time for a long-term compromise.

The legislation has cleared the House but Senate Democrats have blocked final passage and its prospects are uncertain in the final days of the congressional session.

On another issue, Bush acknowledged that a pre-war failure of American intelligence — claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — has complicated the United States' ability to confront other potential emerging threats such as Iran.

"Where it is going to be most difficult to make the case is in the public arena," Bush said. "People will say, if we're trying to make the case on Iran, 'Well, if the intelligence failed in Iraq, therefore, how can we trust the intelligence on Iran?'"

Reid, Shut up! You are such an ass, even for a Democrat. You must be shaving by feel because I don't see how you can look at yourself in the mirror. You lie and distort with your every breath. You are the one you and Feingold and Leahy and the rest are the ones playing politics with the patriot act and the lives of your constituents. If the poltential for death among our troops isn't enough,then you might consider the citizens who voted for you

Full Story: Betrayed by the times

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Does America Need an Official Secrets Act?

Senator Accuses Times of Endangering U.S.

Sat Dec 17,10:15 PM ET
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A Republican senator on Saturday accused The New York Times of endangering American security to sell a book by waiting until the day of the terror-fighting Patriot Act reauthorization to report that the government has eavesdropped on people without court-approved warrants.

"At least two senators that I heard with my own ears cited this as a reason why they decided to vote to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the Patriot Act," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record) of Texas. "Well, as it turns out the author of this article turned in a book three months ago and the paper, The New York Times, failed to reveal that the urgent story was tied to a book release and its sale by its author."

Cornyn did not name the senators in his remarks on the Senate floor.

A call to The New York Times' Washington bureau was referred to spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, who could not be reached immediately.

Times reporter James Risen, who wrote the story, has a book "State of WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," coming out in the next few weeks, Cornyn said.

"I think it's a crying shame ... that we find that America's safety is endangered by the potential expiration of the Patriot Act in part because a newspaper has seen fit to release on the night before the vote on the floor on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act as part of a marketing campaign for selling a book," Cornyn said.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has, without court-approved warrants, eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States. President Bush said Saturday that the White House had kept the congressional leadership informed, which a Republican lawmaker confirmed.

But several senators cited the NSA revelation as a reason to uphold a filibuster on the renewal of the expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act — the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — without getting additional safeguards into the law. Supporters of renewing the law failed to get 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

I have long been proud of our tradition of freedom above all else, but in a time of warfare, we are seeing an unprecedented level of top secret information being leaked to and by the MSM. This kind of activity not only endangers our troops overseas, but it also endangers our citizens here at home. President Bush rightly cited the inexcusable release of information which told Osama Bin Laden how we were tracking his movement. Not only do those who leak this information need to be found and tried for treason, but those in the media who knowingly repeat or make public, this information need to be tried as traitors or as enemy agents. The MSM can squawk and scream all they want to, their right to free press has limitations just as our right to free speech does. I would love to see some of these arrogant, self-righteous media prigs doing time in Leavenworth or stood up before a firing squad for betraying state secrets to the enemy.

Full Story: Treason in the Times

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Budget "Cut" A Good Beginning, First in 10 Years

GOP Leaders Agree to $41.6 Billion Spending Cut

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 19, 2005; 7:00 AM

House and Senate GOP leaders agreed yesterday to a five-year budget plan for cutting spending for Medicaid and other entitlement programs by $41.6 billion and a separate measure to open the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.

The authority to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration -- long sought by President Bush, energy companies and Republican leaders -- was attached to a separate fiscal 2006 defense spending bill that has widespread support in both parties because of its funding for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan

Rushing to get out of town for the holidays, the House approved both bills in early morning votes Monday. The pre-dawn showdown hid the House votes from public view, a maneuver that leaders have used all year on difficult votes.

A defense policy bill was also cleared for consideration, after Republican leaders decided to strip out a controversial, unrelated campaign finance measure that had garnered bipartisan Senate condemnation. The Senate could act today on the budget bill and as early as Wednesday on defense spending.

Republican leaders hailed the agreements as proof that they were finally getting a handle on the federal budget after a five-year binge of new spending and tax cuts that turned record budget surpluses into a stream of massive deficits. The budget accord would cut less than one-half of 1 percent from a projected $14.3 trillion in federal spending over the next five years. Depending on the outcome of negotiations over as much as $60 billion in tax cuts, the savings in spending could vanish.

Congress, however, has not tried to slow the growth of entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and student loans for more than a decade. Extracting those cuts has been a politically painful process that has divided Republicans and kept Congress in session months after its once-scheduled Sept. 30 adjournment debate.

"House Republicans promised the American people that we would restrain federal spending and reform government programs," said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "This bill is a good first step."

"The Republican revolution is back," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who rallied House conservatives to push the cuts.

Democrats were furious about the drilling maneuver on the defense bill, engineered by veteran Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who for years has sought federal approval for tapping oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Blocking Arctic drilling is a priority for environmental groups, and Democrats said they would attempt to strike it using procedural tactics.

Democrats and liberal economic analysts also said the budget deal, although less dramatic than an earlier, House-passed version, would still allow states to impose significant new costs on health care for the poor, cut child support enforcement and foster care aid, and impose new work requirements on welfare recipients.

Gotta love those Discouragers (Democrats). Even nearing Christmas, they still continue to work against the interests of the people. They would much rather Americans pay higher gasoline and oil prices than allow drilling to occur in the ANWR. ANWR has got to be the most bogus, least supportable, environmental cause since, well...the last one. It doesn't even have the supporting data (such as there is) that "global warming" does. Liberals never miss a chance to work against American citizens, and their nation.

Full Story: New Budget Agreements Reached

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Truth Makes Rare Appearance in Washington Post Op-Ed

In the Mideast, Democratic Momentum

By Jackson Diehl

Monday, December 19, 2005; Page A23

Though Iraq has now held the freest election in Arab history, conventional wisdom in Washington and the Middle East still dismisses the Bush administration's hope that its military intervention will catalyze democratic change around the region. A recent survey by Brookings Institution scholar Shibley Telhami found that 58 percent of Arabs outside Iraq said the war had produced less rather than more democracy. In the United States, a Pew poll released last month showed that only 34 percent of Americans believed Middle East democratization would happen.

That's one of the perverse effects of the war: Amid all the noise of suicide bombings, talk of a quagmire for U.S. troops and a sectarian conflict that could lead to Iraq's disintegration, most people haven't noticed that in the rest of the Arab Middle East, the political momentum of the past year has been . . . distinctly democratic.

"There's enough going in the right direction . . . that I am one of those who believes that the intervention in Iraq will be good for democracy in the region in the middle term," is the way Mark Malloch Brown, the witty chief of staff to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, puts it. "I'm just not sure it will be good for democracy in Iraq."

The most obvious element of the liberalizing drift has been the elections of 2005: in the Palestinian Authority, in Lebanon, in Egypt, even in Saudi Arabia. Flawed as many of the polls were, they produced some stunning results, from the formation of a government in Lebanon committed to independence from Syria, to the quintupling of seats held by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's parliament, to the electoral victory of two women in the Saudi city of Jiddah. Last week the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas presented its list of 62 candidates for scheduled legislative elections next month, including 10 women. The corrupt old guard of the ruling Fatah party meanwhile has been challenged by several new lists of secular reformers; elections may bring, at last, rejuvenation of the corrupt power structure created by Yasser Arafat.

Another revealing index is the number of the Arab world's authoritarian rulers who have felt obliged to spell out plans for a democratic transition. In the past two months Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah have unveiled platforms to introduce a free press, an independent judiciary and liberalized election laws during the next several years. By some accounts, Saudi Arabia's then-Crown Prince Abdullah privately promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in June that democracy would reach his country in a decade. Whether or not they meant it, the autocrats' promises raised expectations in their countries, and gave their growing domestic reform movements a standard to hold them to.

For the first time, too, the Arab world is getting a peek at what political accountability looks like. Four senior Lebanese generals are in prison for their role in the car-bomb assassination last February of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and Syrian President Bashar Assad is under growing pressure from a U.N. investigation; never before have the region's thugs been collared for their political killing. In Morocco, an official truth commission has spent the past 12 months listening, in public, to the accounts of citizens who were tortured or persecuted by the government; reparations are being paid to thousands.

Holy Cow! A voice of reality at the Washington Post? I'm not sure my heart can stand it. Someone at the Post actually sees what is happening in the Middle East. Yep folks, that's right, Bush's strategy is working. The people of the Middle East are watching events in Afghanistan and in Iraq and saying if it can work there, why not here? Democracy is expanding in the Middle East, slowly to be sure, but the progress is real and pronounced if you look for it.

Full Story: The Truth From the WA-PO?

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President Expresses Joy for Iraqis, Reality for Americans

President Gives Both Reassurance, Warnings on Iraq
'Victory or Defeat' Are Only Options, He Says

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005; Page A01

President Bush last night hailed Thursday's Iraqi elections as a vital step toward stabilizing that nation, but warned that despite the political progress more violence lies ahead as Iraq struggles to establish a democracy amid a raging insurgency.

Speaking in a nationally televised prime-time address, Bush made a direct appeal to war opponents, conveying a more humble tone in saying he understands their arguments but asserting that there is no choice but to forge on. "I have heard your disagreement and I know how deeply it is felt," Bush said. "Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat."

The speech also included his most forthright statement to date about how often Iraq has confounded his own expectations, from weapons of mass destruction that were not found to the problems of reconstructing a civil society in Iraq. "Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. And as your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq," he said. "Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

The 17-minute address capped an intense campaign in recent weeks by the White House to recast the Iraq debate, at a time when rising public skepticism threatens to overwhelm his presidency. Over the past three weeks, Bush has released a new plan for victory, hosted private White House briefings for skeptical members of Congress and delivered four other speeches laying out a more detailed explanation of his war strategy, 33 months after U.S. forces first invaded.

Despite the U.S. death toll -- which is approaching 2,200 -- and widespread skepticism about the war on Capitol Hill and with citizens across in the country, Bush said the United States is making steady gains in Iraq, and suggested that these will lead to troop reductions in the year ahead.

"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day," Bush said. "I don't believe that. Our military commanders don't believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make the sacrifice, do not believe that America has lost. And not even the terrorists believe it."

Even as he struck a more deferential tone, Bush sought to put his political adversaries on the defensive, saying that "defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts."

He also repeated his warning against a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that "to retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor -- and I will not allow it." The carnage from roadside bombs and suicide attacks by insurgents in Iraq does not constitute defeat, he added: "This proves that the war is difficult -- it does not mean that we are losing."

Earlier in the day, Vice President Cheney made an unannounced trip to Iraq, keeping it secret even from Iraq's prime minister, who did not know the vice president would be there until walking into a meeting and finding Cheney waiting for him. Cheney's visit occurred against the backdrop of renewed violence, as more than 30 people died in suicide bombings and other attacks since Saturday night.

Visiting with U.S. troops, Cheney -- who in May said the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes" -- said that "remarkable" progress is being made there. "I think we've turned the corner, if you will," he said in response to a question from a Marine corporal. "I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq."

It's about time the President and his administration went on the offensive. They have been too complacent for too long. I understand the theory of not giving credence to the idiots who oppose you, but as the President has finally come to realize, if you let such a large assault of defeatist propaganda go completely unanswered, it will eventually have a negative effect on even the stauchest of allies. You cannot just sit back in politics, you must always remember that no matter how well you recall events in the past, the voting public's political memory is measured in months, not years.

Full Story: President Touts the Great Success of the Iraqi Elections

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Reid Should Know, He's the Most Corrupt of All

Sen. Reid calls US Congress 'most corrupt in history'

By Thomas Ferraro
Sun Dec 18, 1:33 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called the Republican-led Congress "the most corrupt in history" on Sunday, and distanced himself from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, at the center of an escalating probe.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Jack Abramoff directed illegal payoffs to lawmakers, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who was forced to step down as House Republican leader in September after indicted in his home state of Texas on unrelated charges.

"Don't lump me in with Jack Abramoff. This is a Republican scandal," Reid told Fox News Sunday, saying he never received any money from Abramoff.

Reid, like many members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, has received campaign contributions from Abramoff clients. Some lawmakers have returned those donations, but Reid gave no indication he would do so.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been examining stock sales by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, and last month Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, resigned from the House after pleading guilty of taking more than $2.4 million in bribes involving defense contracts.

Democrats have accused Republicans of "a culture of corruption," and plan to make it an issue in next year's congressional elections.

"America can do better than what we've done," said Reid. "The most corrupt Congress in the history of the country. We have such significant problems with what's going on in this country."

"I may have taken money, but that doesn't mean I'm like all those other money grubbing politicians," is that it Harry? Man, what a sleezeball you are Harry. Even your laser pointer throws a curved line. You are without a doubt the most deceitful, dishonest, disrespectful, hateful leader the Discourager Party has had in the Senate since...well, since Tom Daschle. I guess it just goes with the party, eh?

Full Story: Harry Sees Reflection, Calls Rest of Senate "Corrupt"

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Rumsfeld Not Leaving...Not Bloody Likely.

Long-term Rummy?

Dec 17, 2005
by Robert Novak

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senior Defense Department officials say Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told them nobody should stay for just another year, but that he wants them for the rest of President Bush's second term. That is read as a signal that Rumsfeld intends to serve out the next three years.

Rumsfeld finishing his term would contradict wide speculation that he will quit soon after this week's Iraqi parliamentary elections. That is now considered unlikely even if he does not complete the full term.

A footnote: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has said flatly there is no truth whatsoever to reports he is about to move to the Treasury to replace Secretary John Snow.

I said when it started that the rumors were just wishful Liberal thinking. I guess I was correct. Rumsfeld stepping down wouldn't make sense except for some overiding personal interest. He is just too good in this job. Go Rummy Go!

Original Post: Rummy Staying?

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Sheehan on Liberal Haj to Soak Up More Headlines Following Drought in America

Sheehan Leads War Protest in Spain

Dec 17 10:19 AM US/Eastern

MADRID, Spain - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan led a small protest Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy to denounce the war in Iraq.

About 100 protesters carried banners criticizing President Bush.

Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, called Bush a war criminal and said, "Iraq is worse than Vietnam."

The protest also was called in memory of Jose Couso, a Spanish television cameraman killed on April 8, 2003, in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired at a hotel where many foreign correspondents were staying. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed in that incident.

Looking at the picture, it appears that the food is giving her constipation. Not only is this woman profoundly stupid, but she is a bad actress as well. What a loser! The only reason I'm giving her space is for the amusement factor. HEY CINDY, your 15 minutes is up. Thankfully this is the entire article.

Original Post: Sheehan Grimaces for the Cameras

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Oh, do tell...Bias in the Media...Naaaahh!

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

I wonder how many tens of thousands of dollars this clown spent to discover what all conservatives have known for decades. Gee Einstein, you had to do a study to figure this out? I and every conservative or middle of the roader I know have been saying this for forty or more years. Do you think the media coverage of Barry Goldwater's bid for the Presidency was biased? Or maybe Nixon might have had a few words to say on this, or maybe the "teflon President," or maybe our current "dumb" President. Do you think he might have something to say about media bias?

Liberal hubris is just amazing to me. They have to do a study to discover what is so blatant that any objective observer could see in an instant. Then they announce it like it's some great new discovery. This definitely falls into the "give me a break" category, or maybe the "DUH!" catagory.

Full Story: UCLA is Shocked! Shocked to discover media bias.

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WaPo's Dana Milbank Continues Work as Democrat Shill

Bush's Fumbles Spur New Talk of Oversight on Hill

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page A07

After a series of embarrassing disclosures, Congress is reconsidering its relatively lenient oversight of the Bush administration.

Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by several recent reports, including the existence of secret U.S. prisons abroad, the CIA's detention overseas of innocent foreign nationals, and, last week, the discovery that the military has been engaged in domestic spying. After five years in which the GOP-controlled House and Senate undertook few investigations into the administration's activities, the legislative branch has begun to complain about being in the dark.

On Friday, after learning that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping on conversations in the United States, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that the activity was "wrong and it can't be condoned at all," and that his committee "can undertake oversight on it."

That same day, the House approved a resolution that would direct the administration to provide House and Senate intelligence committees with classified reports on the secret U.S. prisons overseas.

Democrats have long complained about a dearth of congressional investigations into Bush administration activities, but their criticism has been gaining validation from others after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, problems in Iraq and ethical lapses.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said this fall that "the people's representatives over on the Hill in that other branch of government have truly abandoned their oversight responsibilities [on national security] and have let things atrophy to the point that if we don't do something about it, it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is."

In an interview last week, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said "it's a fair comment" that the GOP-controlled Congress has done insufficient oversight and "ought to be" doing more.

"Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own," said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. "I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches."

Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.

Some experts on Congress say that the legislative branch has shed much of its oversight authority because of a combination of aggressive actions by the Bush administration, acquiescence by congressional leaders, and political demands that keep lawmakers out of Washington more than before.

"I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not," said Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, told reporters this month: "It has basically lost the war-making power. The real debates on budget occur not in Congress but in the Office of Management and Budget. . . . When you come into session Tuesday afternoon and leave Thursday afternoon, you simply do not have time for oversight or deliberation."

Last week, Democrats in the House denounced their GOP counterparts for failing to pursue investigations. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, criticized Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) for his handling of an inquiry into former committee member Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), who resigned after acknowledging he took bribes. Hoekstra's decision to proceed with existing committee staff without the House counsel or inspector general "threatens to compromise our ability to conduct a thorough, expeditious and bipartisan investigation," she said.

Democrats demanded that Davis, who heads the select committee investigating the Katrina response, issue subpoenas to get e-mails and communications of White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and three other White House officials. "Congress will never understand why the federal response failed unless we obtain access to the e-mails and communications of Andrew Card and other senior White House officials," committee Democrats wrote Davis.

Last month, House Democrats tried to pass a measure criticizing the GOP for a "refusal to conduct oversight" of the Iraq war. In the Senate, Democrats forced the chamber into a closed session to embarrass Republicans for foot-dragging on an inquiry into the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence.

"The House has absolutely zero oversight. They just don't engage in that," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week.

Specifically, Democrats list 14 areas where the GOP majority has "failed to investigate" the administration, including the role of senior officials in the abuse of detainees; leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; the role of Vice President Cheney's office in awarding contracts to Cheney's former employer, Halliburton; the White House's withholding from Congress the cost of a Medicare prescription drug plan; the administration's relationship with Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi; and the influence of corporate interests on energy policy, environmental regulation and tobacco policy.

Meanwhile, the House ethics committee has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite outside investigations involving, among others, Cunningham and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In most cases, Republicans have said that Democrats are motivated by partisanship rather than fact-finding. After Democrats forced the closed Senate session last month over the slow pace of the inquiry into alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) railed: "They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas. This is a pure stunt."

Dana Milbank continues his fine work as a reporter for Al Jazeerah's Washington publication. Towing the anti-American line he distorts and prevaricates as only a Left-winger can. Such clever lies as his statement that "lawmakers were "caught by surprise by...the military has been engaged in domestic spying." It is a fact that Jay Rockerfeller wasn't surprised, Nancy Pelosi wasn't surprised, Bob Graham wasn't surprised. Seems as though this is a well planned strategy to attack the President as soon as the information was released. It also appears that the release was planned to bury any stories about the amazing success of the Iraqi elections.

Full Story: Dana Milbank Democrat Agent

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Not Unprecedented, Just Unprecedented Since Church Committee Emasculated Intelligence Capability

Pushing the Limits Of Wartime Powers

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page A01

In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.

Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978.

Defiant in the face of criticism, the Bush administration has portrayed each surveillance initiative as a defense of American freedom. Bush said yesterday that his NSA eavesdropping directives were "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." After years of portraying an offensive waged largely overseas, Bush justified the internal surveillance with new emphasis on "the home front" and the need to hunt down "terrorists here at home."

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

A high-ranking intelligence official with firsthand knowledge said in an interview yesterday that Vice President Cheney, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet and Michael V. Hayden, then a lieutenant general and director of the National Security Agency, briefed four key members of Congress about the NSA's new domestic surveillance on Oct. 25, 2001, and Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after Bush signed a highly classified directive that eliminated some restrictions on eavesdropping against U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

In describing the briefings, administration officials made clear that Cheney was announcing a decision, not asking permission from Congress. How much the legislators learned is in dispute.

Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate intelligence committee and is the only participant thus far to describe the meetings extensively and on the record, said in interviews Friday night and yesterday that he remembers "no discussion about expanding [NSA eavesdropping] to include conversations of U.S. citizens or conversations that originated or ended in the United States" -- and no mention of the president's intent to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S. switches. He believed eavesdropping would continue to be limited to "calls that initiated outside the United States, had a destination outside the United States but that transferred through a U.S.-based communications system."

Graham said the latest disclosures suggest that the president decided to go "beyond foreign communications to using this as a pretext for listening to U.S. citizens' communications. There was no discussion of anything like that in the meeting with Cheney."

The high-ranking intelligence official, who spoke with White House permission but said he was not authorized to be identified by name, said Graham is "misremembering the briefings," which in fact were "very, very comprehensive." The official declined to describe any of the substance of the meetings, but said they were intended "to make sure the Hill knows this program in its entirety, in order to never, ever be faced with the circumstance that someone says, 'I was briefed on this but I had no idea that -- ' and you can fill in the rest."

By Graham's account, the official said, "it appears that we held a briefing to say that nothing is different . . . . Why would we have a meeting in the vice president's office to talk about a change and then tell the members of Congress there is no change?"

Democrats are in full lie mode now. Faulty memories, convenient timing, self-righteous indignation, and deceptive phrasing, are the orders of the day. This is not the first time this kind of domestic investigation has occurred. It was commonplace prior to the infamous "Church Committee." The excesses of the Church Committee were directly related to the success of the attack on 9-11. During the period in which Americans were safest, the 50's and 60's this was routinely done. Yes the technology has changed, by not the philosophy. This nation is in a war of ideals, one side places politics above national interest, and will use any event and any situation to further their political agenda. The other side understands that the world is not a safe place and that there are people out there who are determined to kill Americans. They understand that good intelligence is the basis of a successful defense of this nation and its people. This is a battle between reasoned reality and unbridled political ambition.

Full Story: Democrat Selective Memory of History of Intelligence

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NEWS FLASH: "Old Gray Lady," "Paper of Record," Announces New Permanent Name Change

DATELINE: New York City, Saturday, 17 December, 2005

In a long expected, but none the less exciting announcement, The New York Times today announced a name change intended to more accurately reflect the views of the editorial staff and their political agenda. Publisher Mohamet Ahrtur ibn Sulzbergeerhi, in a statement made today, said he "hoped to further the agenda of the freedom fighters in Iraq in their battles against the American imperialist invaders. It is our intended mission to undermine, wherever possible, the efforts of the infidels seeking to impose the decadent anti-Islamic concept of 'democracy.'

THE NEW YORK TIMES-JAZEERAH will make its debut with the Monday morning edition as will its new Editor "Ali" Jason Blair. Blair, in a brief statement said, "It is my fervent wish to maintain the accuracy and truthfulness for which we have so recently become known, while continuing our campaign against the corrupt Bush Administration. We will also ferret out any state secrets or secret operations of the administration that we can, in an attempt to disrupt the war efforts in support of our friends in al Qaeda."

After recent events, would it really surprise you if it happened?

It wouldn't, me.

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Another Blow to Democrat and MSM Liars Who Claim Bush Lied

White House 'never told' of WMD doubts

Herald Sun
From correspondents in London
18dec05

THE US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday night.

Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us."
"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us," he said.

Mr Powell's comments follow US President George W. Bush's acceptance earlier this week of responsibility for going to war on intelligence, much of which "turned out to be wrong".

US involvement in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion has led to the loss of 2,140 of its troops and badly hit the Republican president's popularity.

The opposition Democrats have increased calls for a timetable for a military withdrawal.

But ahead of this week's parliamentary elections in Iraq, President Bush insisted he was still right to order the invasion and argued a hurried withdrawal would be "a recipe for disaster".

The British government, Washington's key allies in the invasion, has similarly refused to give a withdrawal date for its 8,000 or so troops in Iraq's four southern states, although has said it could happen next year.

For his part, Mr Powell considered the US military could not be deployed in Iraq at its current strength for years to come, raising the possibility of withdrawal from next year.

But he told the BBC that "essentially just to walk away, to say that we're taking all of our troops out as fast as we can, would be a tragic mistake". A US presence would be required in Iraq for "years", he added.

Of course, you know what will come of this story. Colin Powell will now be called a "Tom," or "House Nigger," or some other horrible hate-filled epithet by the Liberals. Why? Simply because he is confirming that the Bush Administration was mis-led on the pre-war intelligence, and did not consciously lie about WMD. Most of the sane people in America knew this long ago. For us it was simply a matter of character. Unfortunately most Democrats and Liberals don't have the slightest understanding of what character is or why it matters. Just look at the people they have nominated for President over the last thirteen years. Clinton had absolutely no morals whatever. He no more knew the difference between telling the truth and lying than he did the difference between right and wrong. Al Gore didn't even know who he was and Kerry-Heinz betrayed his fellow troops in Vietnam in his testimony before Congress in 1971. Character is what it's all about and George Bush has it in spades. Don't expect your Dimocrat friends to understand. It's a concept they generally don't understand.

Ful Story: More Proof That Democrats Are the Liars

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Democrat Leaders "Shocked, Shocked I Say" to Find Out About Domestic Spying

Bush claims right to authorize spying
Report says he has approved NSA listening to calls of thousands in U.S.

By DAVID G. SAVAGE
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - In 1978, Congress thought it had closed a loophole in the law when it passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The loophole concerned secret spying authorized by the president on grounds of national security.

On Friday, many people in Washington were surprised to learn that despite the 1978 law, President Bush and his advisers had claimed the power to authorize secret spying within the United States.

The New York Times reported that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on the phone calls of thousands of people in this country without getting permission from a court.

Bush's lawyers maintained that the president had the inherent authority as commander in chief to protect national security through secret spying. The account was confirmed by the Los Angeles Times.

"This sounds like an extraordinarily broad exemption to FISA," said Washington lawyer Kenneth Bass, who worked on the 1978 law as an aide to President Carter. "This is well beyond the pale of what was anticipated back then."

As a general matter, the Constitution forbids the government from spying on Americans — including by listening in on their phone calls — without a court's permission. The Fourth Amendment says police or federal agents must show a magistrate some evidence of wrongdoing before they can obtain a warrant that authorizes them to listen in on phone calls.

Through most of the 20th century, however, presidents maintained they had the power to protect the nation's security by, for example, spying on foreign agents who were operating in the United States. No one questioned that U.S. intelligence agencies could tap the phones of Soviet agents.

In the mid-1970s, Congress learned the White House had abused this power. Presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, had authorized the FBI to tap the phones of hundreds of political activists and celebrities — including Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnam War protesters.

Well Mr. Savage we know who wasn't surprised, Senator Rockafeller. The Senator from West Virginia was in on the news, as was the Senate Intelligence committee. The FISA judge was also consulted on this. So I guess maybe it wasn't such a big story as the press has been attempting to make it. You don't suppose that the huge news about the success of the Iraqi election had anything to do with the timing of this story. Interesting how you can hold on to a story for a year, and then just as good news comes in from Iraq, it suddenly becomes necessary to release the story. Of course it isn't told in full, only the sensational portion is released, not the mitigating information. Bias, what bias?

Full Story: Surprise! No Surprise

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Schumer, Hagel, and Feingold Now Carrying Al Qaeda's Water

Renewal of Patriot Act Is Blocked in Senate

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A01

Efforts to renew the USA Patriot Act collapsed in the Senate yesterday, when four Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking action on a volatile issue that pits anti-terrorism efforts against civil liberties protections.

The rejection triggered a frantic round of closed-door meetings between White House and congressional officials who hope to avert a major setback for President Bush. Some vowed to let the law's key provisions expire as scheduled on Dec. 31, saying Democrats will pay a political price. Others pressed for a three-month extension, hoping to reach a House-Senate compromise early next year.

Bush issued a stern warning late in the day that the "delaying tactics" in the Senate could benefit the nation's enemies. "The terrorists want to attack America again and kill the innocent and inflict even greater damage than they did on September 11th -- and the Congress has a responsibility not to take away this vital tool that law enforcement and intelligence officials have used to protect the American people," he said in a statement.

"We can come together to give the government the tools it needs to fight terrorism and protect the rights and freedoms of innocent citizens," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a leader in the effort to block the vote. By day's end, deep uncertainty surrounded the statute that the White House has called "an essential part of the United States' effort to prosecute the war on terror."

For months, many Democrats and a handful of GOP lawmakers had vigorously argued that the renewal would do too little to protect civil liberties. Their hand was strengthened before yesterday's Senate vote by a New York Times report that Bush had signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in this country.

Bush's allies wanted a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act's chief provisions, including various modifications drafted during weeks of House-Senate negotiations. The House approved the compromise bill on Wednesday. But four Senate Republicans -- Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John E. Sununu (N.H.) and Larry E. Craig (Idaho) -- joined yesterday's Democratic-led filibuster, leaving proponents well short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and force a yes-or-no vote on the legislation in the 100-member chamber.

Fifty-three senators, including two Democrats, initially voted to end the filibuster, seven shy of the required number. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) switched his vote from yes to no at the last minute, a parliamentary move allowing him to seek another roll call later. The official tally was 52 to 47 in favor of ending debate.

"The Patriot Act expires on December 31, but the terrorist threat does not," Frist said. He added that he may seek another vote in the coming days. But one key Republican held out little hope of the outcome changing.

"I'm not going to make any allusions to changing any minds by additional debate," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who led the floor fight for the bill. "And the president has laid down a pretty tough marker. He said he's not going to sign an extension."

Well we now know who in our party support al Qaeda in their efforts to destroy America. Chuck Hagel led a group of four Republicans in joining the Democrats in voting to kill American troops and citizens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John E. Sununu (N.H.) and Larry E. Craig (Idaho), joined with Hagel and his fellow Democrats in rolling back the Patriot Act, including the Gorelick Wall between domestic and foreign intelligence, thereby increasing the likelihood that another 9-11 type attack against the American people. Treason is the work which first comes to mind.

Full Story: Republican Al Qaeda

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I Wish Congressional Republicans Would Investigate Stories Prior to Voting On Them

On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings Greet News of Stateside Surveillance

By Dan Eggen and Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A01

Congressional leaders of both parties called for hearings and issued condemnations yesterday in the wake of reports that President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to spy on hundreds of U.S. citizens and other residents without court-approved warrants.

Bush declined to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program in a television interview, but he joined his aides in saying that the government acted lawfully and did not intrude on citizens' rights.

"Decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people," Bush said on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Disclosure of the NSA plan had an immediate effect on Capitol Hill, where Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans derailed a bill that would renew expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. Opponents repeatedly cited the previously unknown NSA program as an example of the kinds of government abuses that concerned them, while the GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he would hold oversight hearings on the issue.

"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.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the intelligence and judiciary committees, called the program "the most significant thing I have heard in my 12 years" in the Senate and suggested that the president may have broken the law by authorizing surveillance without proper warrants.

"How can I go out, how can any member of this body go out, and say that under the Patriot Act we protect the rights of American citizens if, in fact, the president is not going to be bound by the law?" she asked.

Officials across the government yesterday declined to publicly acknowledge the presidential order. But they defended, in general terms, the administration's aggressive strategies in attempting to combat terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and said that all programs have been lawful and protective of individual rights.

"Let me just say that winning the war on terror requires winning the war of information," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told reporters. ". . . And so we will be aggressive in obtaining that information, but we will always do so in a manner that's consistent with our legal obligations."

Government officials credited the new program with helping to uncover and disrupt terrorist plots, including plans by Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris's attorney, David B. Smith, said he and his client were never informed about the NSA surveillance and had presumed that the monitoring of his cell phone had been authorized by a court-issued warrant.

The existence of the NSA domestic surveillance program was reported late Thursday by the New York Times and confirmed by U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The Washington Post, citing an informed U.S. official, reported that the NSA's warrantless monitoring of U.S. subjects began before Bush's order was issued in early 2002 and included electronic and physical surveillance carried out by other military intelligence agencies assigned to the task

There used to be more than one news outlet in America. Americans could count on them to watch each other and make sure each was acting responsibly. Now however, they have apparently decided that their Democrat Political Agenda is more important than reporting facts. They have become one single organization now which is acting as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. The only independent organizations in America appear to be Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times. I find this ironic in that those two are targeted as being biased by the Left. Apparently, it is okay to be biased in your reporting as long as your are biased in favor of the Left. NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, NY Times, Wa Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, all are okay with the Democrats. They also all appear to be routing for the victory of the terrorists over our troops in Iraq. What's the matter Dems, American death toll not high enough for your ghoulish appetites?

Full Story: Post Taking NYT Story at Face Value

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Bogus Domestic "Spying" Story: Rockafeller Knew and Book Deal Involved

At the Times, a Scoop Deferred

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A07

The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication.

In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's representatives met with White House officials. It said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny."

The Times said it agreed to remove information that administration officials said could be "useful" to terrorists and delayed publication for a year "to conduct additional reporting."

The paper offered no explanation to its readers about what had changed in the past year to warrant publication. It also did not disclose that the information is included in a forthcoming book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," written by James Risen, the lead reporter on yesterday's story. The book will be published in mid-January, according to its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

The decision to withhold the article caused some friction within the Times' Washington bureau, according to people close to the paper. Some reporters and editors in New York and in the bureau, including Risen and co-writer Eric Lichtblau, had pushed for earlier publication, according to these people. One described the story's path to publication as difficult, with much discussion about whether it could have been published earlier.

In a statement yesterday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller did not mention the book. He wrote that when the Times became aware that the NSA was conducting domestic wiretaps without warrants, "the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security."

"Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions," Keller continued. "As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time."

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, two things changed the paper's thinking. The paper developed a fuller picture of misgivings about the program by some in the government. And the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said it was conceivable the Times waited to publish its NSA story as the Senate took up renewal of the Patriot Act. "It's not unheard of to wait for a news peg," he said. "It's not unusual to discover the existence of something and not know the context of it until later."

Yesterday's article was a dramatic scoop for a newspaper whose national security coverage has been marked by some turmoil in recent years. The Times admitted last year that much of its reporting on Iraq's weapons programs before the war was flawed. The principal author of those stories, Judith Miller, later spent 85 days in jail to protect the identity of an administration source in the CIA leak case.

More recently, the Times has been scooped by the Los Angeles Times on a story that the U.S. military has been secretly paying to run favorable stories in the Iraqi media, and by The Washington Post on the revelation last month of a secret network of CIA prisons for terrorism suspects in foreign countries. The Times announced last week that it was replacing its deputy bureau chief in Washington, which outsiders read as a sign of the paper's dissatisfaction with its Washington coverage.

The Post was in contact with senior administration officials before publication last month of its story on the CIA prisons. But officials did not seek to stop publication of the article, only to remove information that could jeopardize national security, said Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor.

The story said the officials argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and could make them targets of terrorist retaliation. The Post honored one request by not publishing the Eastern European countries that permitted the prisons.

The Times withheld this story, not for security reasons, not because the Bush administration requested it, but because of the book which is to be published in January. It was not supposed to be released until the book was published, but the successful election in Iraq forced the Times to release the information to knock the successful election story off the lead on news. The Times is operating in concert with the Democrat Party to actively impair our ability to fight the War on Terrorism. Yep folks, we now have an active alliance between the Democrat Party and Al Qaeda.

Full Story: Time to Investigate Security Leaks

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House Takes Good First Step Towards

House Votes to Toughen Laws on Immigration
One Setback for Bush: No Guest-Worker Plan

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A01

The House last night passed tough immigration legislation to build vast border fences, force employers to verify the legality of their workers and tighten security on the nation's frontier, but it rebuffed President Bush's entreaties to include avenues for foreign workers to gain legal employment.

The bill passed 239 to 182, with 36 Democrats joining 203 Republicans to vote yes. Seventeen Republicans, 164 Democrats and one independent opposed the measure.

The bill was designed to demonstrate to voters a new resolve on border security before the House adjourns for the year. But it also revealed deep divisions in the Republican Party between lawmakers who agree with Bush that a strict clampdown alone cannot work without a guest-worker program for noncitizens, and others resolutely opposed to any plan that would keep undocumented workers flowing into the country.

Bush had made the immigration issue a top item on his domestic agenda, hoping a carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with a growing number of illegal immigrants and undocumented workers would satisfy conservatives while advancing his efforts to reach out to Latino voters. But in the face of unyielding conservative opposition in the House, leaders abandoned the president's guest-worker plan, which would have allowed foreign workers into the country under temporary work visas.

The House bill was adamantly opposed by an unusual coalition of business lobbies; ethnic groups, such as the National Council of La Raza; religious organizations; and labor unions that contend the measure is too harsh on illegal immigrants and imposes unworkable requirements on employers. Supporters -- including the House Republican leadership -- are convinced their measure has the ardent support of constituents fed up with illegal aliens flooding through the border. The Senate will probably consider a very different version next year that includes a guest-worker provision.

"For the first time, I can go out on the stump and say our party has done right on the issue of immigration," said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a firebrand on illegal immigration who drove the debate. "And I feel good about it."

Opponents from both parties said the House had approved a punitive measure that could criminalize not only undocumented workers but also their families and employers, while doing nothing to bring some 11 million illegal aliens out of the shadows and into lawful society.

"We owe a little more honesty to our constituents," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), whose efforts to pass nonbinding language endorsing a guest-worker program were rebuffed by GOP leaders. The bill "means those who are here illegally will stay in the shadows," he said. "That's unacceptable. That's not enforcement. That's a charade."

The future of the immigration bill is unclear. In the Senate, bipartisan support is growing for legislation co-authored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would combine border enforcement measures with a guest-worker program. But a large number of House conservatives say they will never accept such a measure.

"I really worry that anything we do over here will be a vehicle for a guest-worker program," said Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.).

Tancredo agreed: "Now the fight begins."

Under the House bill, employers would have to confirm the authenticity of employees' Social Security numbers against a national database of legitimate numbers or face stiff new fines of as much as $25,000 per violation. The measure would end the "catch and release" policy for immigrants other than Mexicans who are caught entering the country illegally and then released with a court date. All illegal immigrants apprehended at the border would have to be detained, and deportation processes would be streamlined.

This is a good start but they need to continue by providing for the ferreting out of illegals who are here. They must not be allowed to hide in the "shadows." As I have said, once illegals are out of America, outside the borders, then we can sit down and examine the possibility of re-admitting however many might be needed to fill those jobs that Americans will not fill. Our first priority must be to regain control of our borders. We must know who is in our country at any given time. No more free tickets to citizenship.

Full Story: Border Battle

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Americans Spying on Americans...I hope not!

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying
Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A01

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

The aim of the program was to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said.

But the program's ramifications also prompted concerns from some quarters, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, and the presiding judge of the surveillance court, which oversees lawful domestic spying, according to the Times.

The Times said it held off on publishing its story about the NSA program for a year after administration officials said its disclosure would harm national security.

The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages.

Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions. The sources, who demanded anonymity, said there were conditions under which it would be possible to gather and retain information on Americans if the surveillance were part of an investigation into foreign intelligence.

But those cases are supposed to be minimized. The sources said the actual work of the NSA is so closely held that it is difficult to determine whether it is acting within the law.

The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States.

Most of the powers covered under that law are overseen by a secret court that meets at Justice Department headquarters and must approve applications for wiretaps, searches and other operations. The NSA's operation is outside that court's purview, and according to the Times report, the Justice Department may have sought to limit how much that court was made aware of NSA activities.

Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is disturbing if it is true. Anyone who has read my writing will know that I am a strong believer in the Constitution. Domestic spying by the government is one of the most egregious violations of the constitution there can be if done without due process. The key phrase here though is "if it is true." I mean we are talking about a story found in the New York Times, I just hope Jason Blair didn't write this story.

Full Story: Disturbing Disclosure

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What is Congress Hiding from the American People

Publish the Barrett Report!

I am calling on Congress to overturn it's decision to bury the full text of the Barret report. This is an outrage that Congress is trying to prevent American citizens to have access to the information discovered by Independent Counsel David Barrett's investigation of Henry Cisneros for lying to the F.B.I. about money he paid to his mistress.

Hmmm...lying to the F.B.I. That sounds familiar, where have I heard that before? Hmmm...Oh yeah, I remember, the Fitzgerald investigation-you remember, Plamegate? Sound familiar? Isn't lying to the F.B.I. what he has indicted I. Scooter Libby for? I remember now yeah the press and the Democrats just couldn't repeat the name often enough. "Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby ad nauseum it's the prelude to the "downfall of the Bush administration." Okay, now that we remember all the press hype about that, we can turn back to the Barrett Report.

What makes this report so interesting is not the investigation of Cisneros, but the expanded investigation of the actions of the IRS during the Clinton Administration. This is important isn't it? Don't you want to know if the IRS has been doing double duty as a political hit team? I know I do. I want to know what is in that report.

Well apparently Byron Dorgan, the Senator from North Dakota doesn't want you to know. What are you hiding Byron? How about it Carl Levin? Why don't you say something? Clinton got your tongue? Worse than the predictable response of Democrat Hack Senators, is the complete dereliction of duty by our Republican Congressmen. Representative knollenberg and Senator Kit Bond were apparently so consumed with protecting their pork barrel projects, that the neglected the information regarding the Barrett report, and allowed legislation to slide through attached to an appropriations bill burying the portion of the report which covers the misdoings of the Clinton Administration.

Well I'll tell you folks we all better wake up before the Democrats steal this nation out from under us. The IRS is arguably the most powerful institution in America. It alone of all enforcement agencies can seize your property without due process of law as the Constitution (or Bill of Rights, actually} requires.

WAKE UP! CONTACT YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND TELL THEM YOU WANT TO SEE THE BARRETT REPORT IN ITS ENTIRETY.

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Now That's What I Call a Rainstorm

Some calm after the storm — for a day or so, at least

Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

The forecast is expected to improve, at least for today, after Wednesday's torrential thunderstorms that caused major street flooding, severe traffic slowdowns across the Houston area and, possibly, two twisters.

"It will be mostly sunny. It should be a nice day out," said Bryan Kyle, with the National Weather Service's Houston-Galveston office.

The temperature is expected to reach the lower 60s, with the mercury dipping to the mid-30s tonight as a fresh cold front starts moving into the Houston area.

"We've got another storm system coming in from the west," Kyle said.

Clouds should return Friday, and additional rain is expected throughout the day Saturday, Kyle said.

Dang near didn't make it home myself yesterday. Man, everytime it looked like it was going to stop, along came another downpour. I wound up driving my car through one lowspot which had I been forced to stop, would have flooded my car out. Darn near floated my car. That's one thing about Houston, we really know how to put on a rainstorm.

Full Story: "It's Floodin' Down in Texas"

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Grim Day for American Democrats, Iraqi Elections

Election day comes to Iraq
Some returns expected later today

By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Iraqis voted in a historic parliamentary election today, with strong turnout reported in Sunni Arab areas that had shunned balloting last January, bolstering U.S. hopes of calming the insurgency enough to begin withdrawing its troops.

Several explosions rocked Baghdad as the polls opened, including a large one near the heavily fortified Green Zone that slightly injured two civilians and a U.S. Marine, the U.S. military said. A civilian was killed when a mortar shell exploded near a polling station in the northern city of Tal Afar, and a bomb killed a hospital guard near a voting site in Mosul.

But violence overall was light and did not appear to discourage Iraqis, some of whom turned out wrapped in their country's flag on a bright, sunny day and afterward displayed a purple ink-stained index finger — a mark to guard against multiple voting.

A bomb also exploded in Ramadi, and the U.S. military said one was defused at a polling station in Fallujah, another insurgent stronghold, despite promises by major insurgent groups not to attack polling places. Some election sites in Ramadi were guarded by masked gunmen.

With a nationwide vehicle ban in effect, most Iraqis walked to the polls. Streets were generally empty of cars, except for police, ambulances and a few others with special permits.

An alliance of Shiite religious parties, which dominate the current government, was expected to win the largest number of seats — but not enough to form a new administration without a coalition with rival groups. That could set the stage for lengthy and possibly bitter negotiations to produce a government.

Up to 15 million Iraqis were electing 275 members of the first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's ouster from among 7,655 candidates running on 996 tickets, representing Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, Turkomen and sectarian interests across a wide political spectrum. Iraqis do not vote for individual candidates, but instead for lists — or tickets — that compete for the seats in each of the 18 provinces.

Some preliminary returns were expected late today, but final returns could take days, if not weeks.

Sunnis appeared to be turning out in large numbers — even in insurgent bastions such as Ramadi and Haqlaniyah — in an effort to curb the power of Shiite clerical parties who now control the government.

"I came here and voted in order to prove that Sunnis are not a minority in this country," said lawyer Yahya Abdul-Jalil in Ramadi. "We lost a lot during the last elections, but this time we will take our normal and key role in leading this country."

Teacher Khalid Fawaz in Fallujah said he also participated "so that the Sunnis are no longer marginalized."

And 28-year-old college student Yassin Mohammed Samarra said he voted so that "no particular (religious) sect controls the country."

In Fallujah, the former Sunni insurgent stronghold overrun by U.S. forces in November 2004, hundreds packed a high school polling station, with many saying they saw the vote as a way to get rid of the Americans and the Shiite-dominated government.

What a nightmare for Democrats. Iraqis voting. The sales of Prozac and Zoloft in the power centers of the MSM and in the Democrat Headquarters must be skyrocketing. Freedom for the Iraqis spells doom for the Democrat doom and gloomers. Success in Iraq is the one thing they cannot afford to happen. They have invested in the abject failure of Iraq too heavily. Their anti-American dreams are coming crashing down.

Full Story: Democrats in Mourning

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McCain, Murtha: No More Talking Mean to Detainees

House Supports Ban on Torture
Measure Would Limit Interrogation Tactics

By Josh White and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 15, 2005; Page A01

The House gave strong support yesterday to a measure that would ban torture and limit interrogation tactics in U.S. detention facilities, agreeing with senators that Congress needs to set uniform guidelines for the treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

On a 308 to 122 vote, members of the House supported specific language proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in the custody of the U.S. government. Though lopsided, the vote was largely symbolic and does not put the language into law.

The vote specifically instructed House negotiators to include McCain's language, word for word, in the fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill, a decision that is not binding but carries significant political weight.

The House also supported a McCain provision that would require officials in any Defense Department detention facility to follow the interrogation standards in the Army's field manual on interrogations. That manual is currently being revised.

The vote sends a clear signal to the Bush administration that both chambers of Congress support the anti-torture legislation and want the government to adopt guidelines that aim to prevent damage to the U.S. image abroad. The White House has been aggressively pushing to create exceptions for CIA operatives and to water down McCain's language to keep it from limiting interrogators' options. But it appears that the administration and House Republican leaders lost some leverage yesterday.

With the Senate's 90 to 9 vote in support of McCain's language earlier this year, both houses have presented veto-proof tallies to a White House that has vowed to strike down any bill that would limit the president's authority to wage the war on terrorism.

"We cannot torture and still retain the moral high ground," said Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who called for the vote yesterday. "No torture and no exceptions."

Both Johns, SHUT UP! Since when is "degrading treatment or punishment" torture? Maybe we should just enroll them in pottery class. I understand, we just ask really really nicely and they'll tell us everything we need to know. These are just really nice people and we misunderstand them. If we're polite, then they'll leave us alone. I mean they hardly did anything to us before we "invaded Iraq." 9-11 was just a mistake. As was the Cole incident, as was the first attack of the World Trade Center, as was the attack on the Khobar Rowers, as were Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, we just over-reacted. if we had just held a dialogue with them, all would have been alright. John Murtha is just a senile old Democrat hack, and John McCain is a self-seeker and possibly the "Hanoi Candidate." Certainly neither has the best interest of either the troops in Iraq, or the best interests of this nation at the top of their agenda. Political ambition is a destructive and powerful drug.

Final Stroy: Doily Crochet Class for Detainees?

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Mitt, Throwing His Hat in the Ring...For Sure?

Mass. Governor Will Not Seek Reelection

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 15, 2005; Page A04

BOSTON, Dec. 14 -- Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) announced Wednesday evening that he will not seek reelection next year, leaving open the possibility that he will pursue a presidential run full time after leaving office in 2007.

Romney, 58, said he was leaving after one term because his work was nearly finished: Every campaign promise was either completed, near completion or beyond all political hope.

"Frankly, there was very little that had to spill over into a second term," Romney said in a speech at Boston's State House. He said he had come to this decision after going over a list of goals with his wife, Ann.

With his Cabinet looking on, Romney listed his accomplishments in office, including streamlining the state's bureaucracy and improving education. He allowed himself one comparison between his state and the rest of the country, noting that while Massachusetts schoolchildren are succeeding in standardized tests, "our nation is falling behind."

But Romney, who has said only that he is considering a presidential run, was noncommittal when pressed about aspirations for higher office. During his demurrals, he quoted baseball sage Yogi Berra -- "It's very difficult to forecast, particularly when the future is involved" -- and the "Star Wars" movies.

"It's in a galaxy far, far away," Romney said of the 2008 elections. "It's a lifetime away in the world of politics."

Here in Massachusetts, however, there seems to be little suspense.

"He started running for president the day he was elected governor," said Philip W. Johnston, chairman of the state Democratic Party, who has criticized Romney for taking conservative stands on issues such as same-sex marriage and making fun of Massachusetts to out-of-state audiences.

Since Romney was elected governor in 2002, he has begun to take on more national prominence within the Republican Party. In recent months, he has spoken to GOP groups in several states and ascended to chairman of the Republican Governors Association, allowing him to expand his contacts within the party's national donor network.

I guess it's about time for me to pay some "real" attention to Mitt Romney. I know very little about his core beliefs, but I have to say, he's going to have a really high hill to climb to convince me. I have a hard time believing that someone conservative enough for me could ever be elected as governor of a State that would have two anti-American Senators like Ted "The Killer" Kennedy and John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry-Heinz. Did I say REALLY BIG HILL? I still don't understand the State of Massachusetts. I can't explain William Weld or Mitt Romney, although I know that Weld was a "progressive Republican." Yep Mitt you've got to show me a lot before I'll buy what your peddling.

Full Story: A President Named After a Baseball Glove?

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Post, Still Whipping a Dead Horse of Plamegate

Columnist Says Bush Knows Who Leaked Name

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 15, 2005; Page A07

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has repeatedly declined to discuss his role in disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, said in a speech this week that he is certain President Bush knows who his mystery administration source is.

Novak said Tuesday that the public and press should be asking the president about the official rather than pressing journalists who received the information.

Novak also suggested that the administration official who gave him the information is the same person who mentioned Plame and her CIA role to Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward in the summer of 2003.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday, according to an account published yesterday in the Raleigh News & Observer. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is," Novak said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to Bush yesterday urging him to name the source and make public any disciplinary action taken, "in keeping with your stated desire to root out leaks."

Novak revealed Plame's name and CIA role in a column on July 14, 2003, just eight days after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Wilson said that a CIA-sponsored mission he led had concluded a year earlier that allegations about Iraq taking steps to build a nuclear weapons program were probably untrue.

Woodward disclosed last month that he, too, learned about Plame's CIA role in a confidential conversation with a senior administration source. Many involved in the case believe that Woodward and Novak had the same source. Though neither journalist has identified the source publicly, both have said the official was casually providing a tidbit of information and did not seem to be trying to generate a story to discredit Wilson's mission.

Seems Mr. Novak has decided he's not as anxious to write all about this event as he so loudly proclaimed he was back in August-September when he claimed to be chomping at the bit to be freed up to comment. Novak has lost any claim to legitimacy. He has passed from being a strong and useful Conservative voice to self-seeking has-been. It takes guts to be a Conservative voice speaking out against the haters on the Left, and it appears that Mr. Novak has chosen to demur rather than fight.

Full Story: Novak Disappointing

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Democrats and Their Terrorist Allies Couldn't Stop It

Undeterred by Violence, Iraqis Head to Polls to Choose New Government

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 15, 2005; 6:00 AM

BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- Iraqi voters, undeterred by early violence, went to the polls in force Thursday to elect the country's new National Assembly, which in turn will ultimately form a new government.

Among the voters were many Sunni Arabs in western insurgent strongholds taking part in national elections for the first time, in contrast to previous election boycotts by Sunnis.

Explosions in Baghdad and Ramadi marked the opening of polls. At least one mortar round hit a neighborhood near Baghdad's Green Zone as some leaders of Iraq's transitional government cast ballots behind the fortress-like walls. More explosions hit near a polling center in the far western city of Ramadi, prompting U.S. and Iraqi forces to cordon off the area. There was no immediate word of casualties in either blast.

Lines nevertheless formed early outside Ramadi polling places even before they opened. Iraqis there were encouraged to vote by promises from some insurgent groups to refrain from election day attacks and by Sunni clerics' lifting of a boycott call that had suppressed Sunni turnout in January's national elections.

"Even though there were many explosions last night, and even if there are more now or on my way to the polling center, I will come and vote," declared Mizhar Abud Salman, heading to a schoolhouse polling center in Saddam Hussein's home region of Tikrit.

"Ballot boxes are a victory of democracy over dictatorship," Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari told reporters as he cast his vote. "The real triumph is that people are casting ballots--whoever they choose--and that they've chosen voting over bombs."

Election day featured a heavy presence by police, security forces and U.S. troops patrolling roads in major cities. A three-day ban on traffic and sealed borders were designed to increase security as well.

About 15 million Iraqi voters were eligible to select 275 members of the new National Assembly. Complete returns were not expected until late December or early January.

A total of 7,648 candidates are seeking assembly seats, which will be allocated by population in Iraq's 18 provinces.

The results may determine whether Iraq becomes a more heavily religious nation, and whether factions will split among sectarian and ethnic regions. The new government will face insurgent and political violence that have killed tens of thousands of Iraqis since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The current alliance of Shiite religious parties was widely predicted to win most seats, as it did in voting in January. But members of the Sunni Muslim minority hoped to win more representation, as Sunni religious leaders encouraged Sunnis to participate in the vote. Many members of the minority boycotted the January elections and an October ballot to approve a new constitution.

It was Iraq's third election since the U.S. invaded the country and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. The first was on Jan. 30 for an interim government. The second was a referendum on a new constitution on Oct. 15.

No matter how hard they tried to keep it from happening, Democrats and their Terrorist allies couldn't manage it. So, having failed to defeat democracy in Iraq, they are now trying to twist it into a signal for us to abandon our Iraqi allies. Senators Kennedy and Levin immediately began calling for a schedule for withdrawal, saying that we could no longer afford to have an "open ended" presence. Of course Teddy is just too stupid to understand what's going on in the world beyond asking where his next bottle is coming from, but Levin is a malevolent presence who like Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Durbin and the like, routinely place their political interests above those of the American people and our nation.

Full Story: Democrats Answer to Iraq Vote, Cut and Run

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Senator Liar Levin Doesn't Like Truth Teller Smith

Senate Democrat May Block Nominee for Pentagon Post

Associated Press
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A05

President Bush's nominee for chief Pentagon spokesman appeared in jeopardy yesterday, with a senior Democrat leaving open the possibility of blocking the appointment.

J. Dorrance Smith, the nominee, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session about an opinion article in which he accused U.S. television networks of helping terrorists through the networks' partnerships with al-Jazeera.

The article has sparked concern among committee members and has prompted Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) to pledge to defeat Smith's nomination to be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

"I have deep concerns about whether or not he should be representing the United States government and the Department of Defense with that kind of attitude and approach," Levin said after yesterday's hearing.

"I will consult with colleagues on the next step," he said when asked whether he intended to put a "hold" on the nomination.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, said he expected to forward Smith's nomination to the full Senate later this week. "I have confidence in this nominee," Warner said.

But Levin called Smith's comments in the article "extreme" and "over the top."

In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal in April, Smith wrote: "Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in Al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S. This partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq."

Smith also singled out U.S. networks, saying: "Al-Jazeera has very strong partners in the U.S. -- ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Video aired by Al-Jazeera ends up on these networks, sometimes within minutes."

Have you forgotten the Al Jazeerah presence in the press box during the 2004 National Conventions Karl [spelling intentional] Levin? Are you so naive as to not see the truth in what he has said? Of course you aren't you know this is true, just as you know that you yourself and your fellow Democrats in Congress are helping the cause of the terrorists as well. Come on Karl, you can tell the truth. Come on, don't be shy now Carl you can tell us the truth now, you want the American troops to fail. You want the Iraqi's to fail. You know you do. Come on Carl, confession is good for the soul. You ChikenSh-- turncoat treasonous hate monger.

Full Story: Anti-American Levin Calls for Possible Filibuster

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Business Interest v. National Interest

Immigration Pushes Apart GOP, Chamber

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A01

The House Republican leadership and the nation's business lobby, usually close allies, are battling each other over the issue of immigration.

In a rare schism, employer groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pressing to kill a Republican-sponsored measure that would require businesses to verify that all of their workers are in the United States legally and would increase penalties for hiring illegal employees.

Lobby groups including the chamber, the National Restaurant Association and the Associated General Contractors of America are so vehement in their opposition that they will consider lawmakers' votes on the bill a key measure of whether they will support them in the future.

Still, acting House majority leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) appears to welcome the chance to disagree with his normal confederates. "Congressman Blunt sees no problem with being in a different place from the chamber on this legislation," said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for Blunt.

The immigration debate comes as lawmakers are facing rising public criticism for their cozy relationships with lobbyists. Recent scandals have led to one lawmaker's resignation for taking bribes and to the investigation of several others. The atmosphere has given a leg up in the immigration fight to the faction of House Republicans that has long been wary of its party's ties to business lobbyists. The vote is scheduled for tomorrow.

Republican leaders assert that the measure is an overdue effort to improve border security and to protect jobs by ensuring that only workers with legitimate documentation are eligible to be employed. The bill would phase in for all employers a program in which businesses would be required to check names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth against government records to verify that their workers can work legally. Fines for knowingly hiring an undocumented worker would also be increased. As for the workers, those in this country illegally could be charged with a felony.

The business groups contend that the verification system, which has only been tried in experimental form, is too mistake-prone to give employers accurate results. They worry that, as a result, companies might be subjected to steep and misapplied penalties because of faulty computer readouts, and that individuals might have their working status jeopardized and their private backgrounds scrutinized needlessly.

"There's a huge chasm between us and big business," said Will Adams, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a leader of the 90 or so House members who want a get-tough approach to illegal immigration. "They're addicted to cheap labor, which illegal aliens provide. It's in their interests to keep the border porous and to keep the labor flowing."

Big business needs to start putting national interests over business interests. I am not one of those who thinks that jobs are being taken from Americans by these illegal immigrants. My concerns revolve around national security and national identity. I welcome those who come to this nation who desire to become a part of this culture. I have no use for those who come to this nation and want to retain their own "home" culture. I bridle when I watch a boxing match between two fighters for whom they play the National Anthem of America and Mexico, and the people boo the American National anthem. I have contempt for those who prefer celebrating Cinco de Mayo to celebrating the Fourth of July. If you think that Mexico is so great, then GO BACK! No one is stopping you, no one invited you to come in the first place. LEAVE! GET OUT! GO HOME! STOP RUNNING DOWN MY COUNTRY! WE DON'T NEED YOU! If you want to stay here, then you better bow down and kiss the feet of Lady Liberty, learn the Pledge Of Allegiance to the United States of America. Salute the flag, and learn to speak English. Comprende?

Full Story: Congress Fighting the Illegals Battle

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This Kind of Treatment is Retribution, and Unacceptable

To Halt Abuses, U.S. Will Inspect Jails Run by Iraq

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: December 14, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 13 - American military officers will inspect hundreds of detention centers and embed with Iraqi police commando units and other Interior Ministry forces to try to halt widespread abuses uncovered by raids on two Iraqi-run detention centers in Baghdad in the last month, the American ambassador pledged Tuesday.

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said at a news conference that "over 100" of the 169 detainees whom American troops found on Nov. 15 in an Interior Ministry bunker in the Jadriya neighborhood had been abused, a far higher figure than the Americans had previously disclosed. In the second raid last week, on another makeshift detention center run by a notorious police commando unit, the Wolf Brigade, as many as 26 of the 625 detainees jammed into the overcrowded center had been abused, Mr. Khalilzad said.

He gave no details of the abuse, but an Iraqi official said some of the detainees held by the Wolf Brigade had been "severely" tortured. The official insisted on anonymity, citing a clampdown on discussing the latest raid that he and other Iraqi officials said had been ordered by high-ranking Iraqis who were concerned about the effects that new disclosures about torture might have on the election on Thursday. Most victims in the two detention centers were Sunni Arabs, already estranged from the Shiite-led transitional government.

One Iranian-backed Shiite religious party in the alliance that is favored to win the biggest bloc of parliamentary seats in the election, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, has controlled the Interior Ministry under the transitional government that took office in May. The minister, Bayan Jabr, is a senior Sciri official. He has been widely accused by Sunni Arabs of infiltrating hundreds of members of the paramilitary wing of Sciri, the Badr Organization, into the police force, and allowing them to form death squads and to run torture centers. Mr. Jabr has vigorously denied the accusations.

Although Mr. Khalilzad said Tuesday that "the United States does not endorse" any group in the election, American policy has placed a high premium on attracting a large Sunni turnout that will give Sunnis a major voice in the electoral process and an incentive to turn away from the insurgency. The Americans, so long seen as patrons of the Shiites and Kurds, are eager to send the message that they are determined to protect Sunni interests, too.

The raid by American and Iraqi troops last Thursday, on a converted stable once used to keep racehorses owned by Uday Saddam Hussein, eldest son of the ousted dictator, was the first conducted by a joint American and Iraqi investigative unit that was established after the initial raid on the Jadriya bunker.

With hundreds of other Iraqi-run detention centers due to be inspected, American officials here appear to be concerned that the torture of detainees that was an entrenched feature of the Hussein years has reasserted itself under his successors.

"I want to let the Iraqi people know we are very committed to looking at all other facilities" run by the Interior Ministry, Mr. Khalilzad told a news conference in the fortified compound known as the Green Zone, the principal center of American power in Iraq.

He said it was "unacceptable for this kind of abuse to take place" and added that he wanted Iraqis to know that American officers were being assigned to police commando units and other Interior Ministry forces, as well as "security institutions" under ministry control, "so that they can observe how raids are carried out, how people are taken into custody."

The Wolf Brigade has been implicated by Iraqi human rights groups and Sunni Arabs in a wide pattern of torture and killing, mostly of Sunni Arabs whom the commandos have sought for links to the insurgency raging across the Sunni heartland or in revenge for the widespread torture and killing in Mr. Hussein's years in power.

The brigade was established this year under a Sunni Arab officer who was imprisoned under Mr. Hussein, Gen. Adnan Thabit, and was armed and financed under an $11 billion American program to develop new Iraqi security forces.

This is the difference between how we are treating our prisoners and what real torture is. When you see this kind of prisoner treatment, no matter how understandable the desire of the Shiites is to strike back against their former oppressors, you realize how absurd John McCain's "torture" bill is. America doesn't torture. That is the law. The penalty for torture is up to 20 years for the offender and if the prisoner dies, the offender can receive the death penalty. What McCain is talking about is not torture, it is humiliation and therefore perfectly legal and acceptable.

Full Story: Torture v. Bad Treatment

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More Bad News for Liberals, General Optimism On Rise in Iraq

Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 13, 2005; Page A19

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 12 -- President Bush estimated Monday that 30,000 Iraqis have died in the war since U.S.-led forces invaded in March 2003, but he offered no second thoughts about ordering the attack and said the threat of terrorism against the United States has subsided as a result.

"Knowing what I know today, I'd make the decision again," Bush told a questioner after a speech here. "Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country."

The estimate marked the first time Bush has personally provided an assessment of the Iraqi death toll, a highly sensitive subject that his administration largely avoids discussing at any level, much less from the presidential lectern. Although the Pentagon keeps careful track of Americans killed in Iraq -- now exceeding 2,100 troops -- military officers have said they do not count Iraqi dead.

Bush cautioned that further casualties lie ahead, casting Iraq as the key battleground in a war with terrorist groups that could play out elsewhere as well. "The long run in this war is going to require a change in governments in parts of the world," he said. Bush did not elaborate on which ones he had in mind, but a few moments later he mentioned his confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear program and earlier he had tough words for two of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria.

The comments came during a rare audience question-and-answer session after a speech here on Iraq's upcoming elections, the third of four speeches leading up to Thursday's vote. After being criticized for refusing to honor the custom of taking questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington last week, the president opened the floor after his address to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

The first person he called on was Didi Goldmark, 63, a former libel lawyer from New Hope, Pa., who asked him how many Iraqis have died in the war. Unlike aides who have been asked that question, Bush gave a direct answer.

"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," he said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

Bush moved on to the next question without identifying how he arrived at the figure or how many were killed by U.S. forces and not Iraqi insurgents and foreign militants. Aides later said it was not a government estimate but a reflection of figures in news media reports. Still, Bush offered it without qualification, in effect accepting it as a reasonable approximation.

The Iraqi death toll has been the subject of considerable debate. A group of British researchers and antiwar activists called Iraq Body Count estimates civilian casualties between 27,383 and 30,892, not counting Iraqi troops or insurgents, by tabulating incidents reported in media and human rights reports. Iraqi authorities have said that roughly 800 people die a month in violence there, a rate that if typical over the course of the conflict would come to 25,600.

An epidemiological study published in the British journal the Lancet last year estimated 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months since the invasion based on door-to-door interviews in selected neighborhoods extrapolated across the country, an estimate that other experts and human rights groups considered inflated.

The violence has not stopped the country's transition to a democratic government, a process that reaches a milestone with Thursday's election of a new parliament. On the eve of the vote, a poll by ABC News and other media outlets found rising optimism among Iraqis.

Seventy-one percent said things were going well in their own lives, and 44 percent felt the same about the country. Schools, crime, health care, security, water, electricity and jobs were all rated in good condition by more people than in February 2004. Still, the poll found Iraqis souring on U.S. involvement, with 50 percent now judging it wrong for the United States to have invaded and 65 percent opposing the presence of U.S.-led forces.

30,000 is a lot of folks, but as a war goes, it's pretty low. And we must not forget that a great many of those are victims of terrorists, not our troops. Poor Liberals must be pulling their hair out now. Once again, It seems they just can't buy a disaster to pin on President Bush. With a booming economy, the election in Iraq accompanied by growing optimism there, and his rebounding popularity, the "nattering Naybobs of negativity" must be getting really desperate. I can't wait until Judge Alito is seated as Justice Alito in the "O'Conner seat." yep, '06 is looking good, and '08 even better for the Republicans.

Full Story: Dems on a Downer

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Tookie Took Last Breath

Schwarzenegger Clemency Denial Called Politically Safe

By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A18

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13 -- In the end, there was outrage from some quarters and a sense of justice from others -- but little surprise.

Political strategists on both sides of the death penalty debate said Tuesday that whatever California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's view on capital punishment, he took the politically safe road by denying clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams. Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, was executed at San Quentin State Prison early Tuesday.

"Even if you assume he made the decision without political motivations, the political impact or ramifications certainly worked in his favor," said Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist in California. "All those swing voters who supported him during the recall election support the death penalty."

Schwarzenegger, who faces a reelection bid next year, has been on shaky political ground, having had all of the initiatives he was pushing defeated in a special election last month. That defeat was compounded two weeks ago when he incensed his Republican base by appointing a Democrat -- a staff member of former governor Gray Davis, no less -- as his chief of staff. Political insiders said that some Republicans are so outraged by the appointment that they are threatening to field an opponent in the Republican primary.

So while Williams, who was convicted of killing four people in two robberies in 1979, may have sparked a campaign for mercy because of his repudiation of the gang life, the pleas on his behalf by religious leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Hollywood stars such as Jamie Foxx were no match, political experts say, for those of swing voters -- whom Schwarzenegger most wants to please.

"Let's face it, he is a first-term governor who wants a second term. He is going to make decisions that appeal to those who got him into office and those who could return him to office," Bruce S. Gordon, president of the NAACP, told reporters after the governor announced his decision. Gordon supported clemency for Williams.

A spokeswoman for the governor said he had explained the reasons for denying clemency in a statement released Monday. It read in part: "After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts."

I don't take pleasure in anyone's death, but this man deserved to die as surely as anyone on death row. The only outrage is that so many supposedly good people tried to keep this from happening. Any time you see the America haters like Mike Farrel
and Jesse Jackson lining up to protest, it's a good bet the guy deserves what he's getting. I hear that Winnie Mandela is taking his ashes back to Africa. Good the Necklacing Queen and Tookie make a good match. For all you bleeding hearts who claim his innocence, how can he be innocent when he described the death rattle that Aurther Owens made after he had been shot? Yet having made that statement including the six minutes of hysterical laughter following hte description, he refused to his death to apologize for the killing. How is this a "reformed man in any way. Tookie Williams was a cold blooded killer to the end. Good riddance!

Full Stroy: Death for a Killer

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More Bad News for Blood Thirsty Democrats

DA must prove DeLay purposely avoided fund ban
Nothing shows a scheme existed, the defense says

By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - To get a conviction against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and two associates, Travis County prosecutors will have to prove the men knowingly raised or converted corporate cash with the intent of getting around the state's ban on using such money in campaigns for elective office.

DeLay's top lawyer, Dick DeGuerin of Houston, said prosecutors lack the evidence to prove any such scheme occurred.

The road map for what prosecutors will need to prove to get a conviction in DeLay's case was clearly spelled out in a ruling last week by Senior District Judge Pat Priest.

Priest upheld charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering against DeLay, Jim Ellis and John Colyandro by describing how financial exchanges between political committees can constitute money laundering under Texas law.

Priest said money laundering would have occurred if swaps were done to get around the state's ban on corporate funds being used. But he also said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle will have to show the men violated the law by acting with "express intent;" in other words, knowingly and intentionally doing it.

The case against DeLay, Ellis and Colyandro essentially is an alleged campaign finance violation focused on a state law that prohibits corporate money from being used in campaigns for elective office.

Corporate money can be legally raised by a political committee to pay for administrative expenses.

Republican lawyers have argued the definition of administrative expenses is vague, while Earle has said it is clearly meant to cover only rent and utility bills.

The DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority, TRMPAC, in 2002 raised about $600,000 in corporate money in an effort to help the GOP win control of the Texas House.

Colyandro and Ellis, relying on legal advice, defined TRMPAC administrative expenses broadly to include polling, telephone banks and fundraising for candidates. DeLay was on the board of advisers and helped with raising some of the corporate money.

The money-laundering case focuses on whether TRMPAC sent $190,000 in corporate money to the Republican National Committee, which then gave $190,000 raised from individuals to seven GOP state House candidates.

DeGuerin's defense for DeLay rests on the idea that the corporate money was raised legally; it could legally be donated to the RNC; there was no swap of funds with the RNC; and any similarity in the amounts of money involved were pure coincidence.

Democrats are facing more and more bad news. This is just the latest blow. How do you prove "intent" without any evidence? DeLay freely admits that he walks a fine line between what's legal and what's not. Fine, but careful. This is not my choice of behavior but I am not Tom DeLay and I do not face the same difficulties as he. My encounters with Liberals and Democrats don't have the impact on society which his do.

Full Story: DeLay Defense Winning

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Schumer Declares "the Gaunlet" has been Thrown Down

Frist Cautions Senators Against Stalling Alito Vote
Democrats Don't Plan Filibuster

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 12, 2005; Page A05

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) threatened yesterday to strip Democrats of the power to filibuster if they block the vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.

"It would be against the intent of the Founding Fathers and our Constitution to deny Sam Alito an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

His willingness to consider a procedural maneuver called the "nuclear option" seemed somewhat premature. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that although he anticipates intense questioning of Alito during next month's hearings, he does not detect strong sentiment for using the filibuster to stall a vote.

A spokesman for the leading Senate Democrat agreed.

"As far as I can tell, the only person talking about a filibuster is Senator Frist and some of the far-right fringe groups," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.). "This kind of talk is silly and unhelpful."

Another Senate Democrat agreed: "Senator Frist has thrown down the gauntlet at a time when the country least needs it," Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said in a statement. "The American people know that checks and balances are an integral part of our government."

Under Senate rules, a lawmaker can thwart action by talking nonstop. It takes 60 votes to override a filibuster, which means Frist would need every Republican and five Democrats to force a vote. But Frist, as he has done in the past, said he would be willing to seek a parliamentary ruling declaring the filibuster cannot be used in judicial nominations. He would need only a simple majority -- 51 votes -- to uphold that view.

In May, seven Democrats and seven Republicans -- known as the "Gang of 14" -- signed a pact agreeing that a judicial nominee would be filibustered only under "extraordinary circumstances."

Cici, if you wish to lay any claim to impartiality, you've got to show a little bit of historical perspective and at least a modicum of skepticism when someone like Chuck Schumer demures. Given the outrageous behavior of Senate Democrats during the spring's judicial battles, how can you possibly state that Frist's "willingness to consider a procedural maneuver called the "nuclear option" seemed somewhat premature." The Democrats in the Senate oppose everything that Judge Alito stands for. If you don't believe me just check with those groups like People for the American Way, NOW, and MoveOn.org, which dictate Democrat Leadership policy. Is it really believable that they have not even considered the possibility of filibustering? I thought reporters were supposed to be skeptics of those on both sides of the aisle.

Full Story: Pre-emptive Warfare-Senate Style

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Torture's Not Desirable but Understandable

Abuse Cited In 2nd Jail Operated by Iraqi Ministry
Official Says 12 Prisoners Subjected to 'Severe Torture'

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 12, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 -- An Iraqi government search of a detention center in Baghdad operated by Interior Ministry special commandos found 13 prisoners who had suffered abuse serious enough to require medical treatment, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday night.

An Iraqi official with firsthand knowledge of the search said that at least 12 of the 13 prisoners had been subjected to "severe torture," including sessions of electric shock and episodes that left them with broken bones.

"Two of them showed me their nails, and they were gone," the official said on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

A government spokesman, Laith Kubba, said Sunday night that any findings at the prison would be "subject to an investigation," but he declined to comment on the allegations.

The site, which was searched Thursday, is the second Interior Ministry detention center where cases of prisoner abuse have been confirmed by U.S. and Iraqi officials.

U.S. troops found the first site last month when they entered an Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad to look for a Sunni Arab teenager they believed had been detained, officers said at the time. Several prisoners at that site appeared to have suffered beatings, and many were emaciated, U.S. and Iraqi officials and witnesses said.

The abuse alleged at the prison found this week appeared to have been more severe. Asked specifically what types of torture were found in the commandos' prison, the official cited breaking of bones, torture with electric shock, extraction of fingernails and cigarette burns to the neck and back.

International law, including the U.N. Convention Against Torture, bans torture in all cases. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad issued a sharp public rebuke of the Iraqi government after the secret prison was discovered last month, demanding in a statement that all detainees nationwide be treated in accord with human rights.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, under heavy pressure from Khalilzad and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered a nationwide investigation of detention centers after that discovery. The prison investigated Thursday was the first center examined as part of the government-ordered inquiry.

Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for U.S. military detention issues, said American authorities had already been aware that the prison searched Thursday existed. U.S. forces had not known about the previous facility.

Prison inspectors from the Ministry of Human Rights and representatives of other ministries participated in the commando prison search, the ministry said in a statement. Authorities did not say whether any Americans were involved in the inquiry.

Investigators said they found 625 prisoners at the center but declined to give details about them. Most of the detainees found at the secret prison last month were Sunni Arabs who had been picked up by forces of the Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry.

As a rule I don't support torture. I consider torture to be the antithesis of civilized "Christian" behavior. That being said, I would also point out that we are engaged in a war. War is not pretty; it is messy and bloody. This war is particularly so for the Iraqi people do to it's nature as a war for freedom. These people have been ruthlessly dominated by a murdering despot and his entourage. I would expect there to be some attempt at retribution by those people who were victimized for so long. This does not excuse what they are doing, merely provides a perspective. This is also a war for survival. These Iraqi people are fighting for the existence of their nation as a democracy and they are fighting an enemy who has no compunction about violating the norms of decency. Given those factors, I can find little right, in my own heart, to be very critical of what is being discovered. I hope that, confronted by the same situation, I could behave as well as the Iraqis in general have .

Full Story: Torture and War: Nothing New

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Hillary's Dangerous Political Gambit

Hillary Clinton Crafts Centrist Stance on War

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 12, 2005; Page A01

At a time when politicians in both parties have eagerly sought public forums to debate the war in Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has kept in the shadows.

Clinton has stayed steadfastly on a centrist path, criticizing President Bush but refusing to embrace the early troop withdrawal options that are gaining rapid favor in her party. This careful balance is drawing increasing scorn from liberal activists, frustrated that one of the party's leading lights has shown little appetite to challenge Bush's policy more directly and embrace a plan to set a timetable for bringing U.S. forces home.

Clinton is confronting the Democratic Party's long-standing dilemma on national defense, with those harboring national ambitions caught between the passions of the antiwar left and political concerns that they remain vulnerable to charges of weakness from the Republicans if they embrace the party's base. But some Democrats say, the left not withstanding, her refusal to advocate a speedy exit from Iraq may reflect a more accurate reading of public anxiety about the choices now facing the country.

When Senate Democrats called on President Bush last month to explain the conditions and establish a schedule for withdrawing U.S. forces, Clinton offered backroom advice on the language but let others take the lead on the Senate floor. When Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) called for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq over the next six months, the New York senator told reporters she was opposed. When her advisers were later asked whether she supports a two-year phased withdrawal advocated by a liberal think tank and embraced by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, they demurred.

Faced with rising pressure to join the intensifying debate over an exit strategy and Bush's policies, the politician many think will seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008 chose as her medium a 1,600-word letter outlining her views, recently e-mailed to constituents and supporters.

In the e-mail, Clinton took responsibility for her vote for the 2002 resolution authorizing Bush to go to war, while leaving open whether she would have opposed it, given what is now known about faulty intelligence and mismanagement by the administration. She pummeled Bush for his conduct of the war itself but left murky how long she believes U.S. forces should stay in Iraq. As she told Kentucky Democrats earlier this month, "I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it."

Clinton's support for the war continues the pro-defense posture she has maintained in the Senate. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, she has courted Pentagon commanders and military families, and as a senator from New York on Sept. 11, 2001, her advocacy for the campaign against terrorists has been unwavering. But her decision to let others lead the debate over Iraq reflects what allies say is her innate caution.

Antiwar activists have been displeased. "Senator Clinton is demonstrating cowardice in the face of the right-wing noise machine," said Tom Mattzie, Washington director of the liberal group MoveOn.org.

But Clinton's refusal to embrace a quick exit strategy drew strong editorial support from the Buffalo News, which on Thursday praised her as a politician of conviction and conscience.

Some analysts call her approach a classic example of the kind of third-way triangulation -- putting herself at odds not only with the Republicans but also with much of her own party -- practiced by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Others say she has been on target in her approach. "I think she's been very measured and very thoughtful and very consistent with her criticisms," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Clinton's support for the war has prompted a challenge from Jonathan Tasini, an antiwar Democrat, in next year's Senate primary in New York. She remains overwhelmingly popular among Democrats in New York, so the challenge may be more an irritant that a real threat. But it could be a harbinger of a more significant challenge from the left to Clinton in 2008, if she decides to seek her party's presidential nomination.

Her advisers say she has adopted positions out of conviction and accepts the consequences of her actions. "She is doing what she believes," said Howard Wolfson, a communications adviser to Clinton. "The politics will either flow from that or they won't."

Come on Dan. Your not buying this hawk nouveau stance Hillary has carved out for herself are you? If eight years of the Clinton Travesty has taught us anything it has taught us that they believe in Manifest Destiny above all else. I'm not talking about the Manifest Destiny of the Nineteenth Century here, I'm talking about the Clinton Manifest Destiny to be rulers. The primary tenet of the Clintons is and always has been to rule the country. All other considerations, no matter how important otherwise, are of secondary importance. This is classic Clintonian triangulation. She is attempting to have her cake and eat it too. No one on the conservative side of any intellect is buying this act, although she has raised a few eyebrows. It will take a lot more and stronger prowar action and statements by her before anyone will buy her act. The Clintons have proven themselves to be the most power-hungry and Machiavellian politicians in Washington. It is not reasonable to believe that the author of Hillary-care has changed her stripes.

Full Story: Hill-climbing With Hillary

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So Young Men Like Tough Strong Guy Characters...Nothing New Here

What Men Want: Neanderthal TV

By WARREN ST. JOHN
Published: December 11, 2005

THERE was a heart-wrenching moment at the end of last season's final episode of the ABC series "Lost" when a character named Michael tries to find his kidnapped son. Michael lives for his child; like the rest of the characters in "Lost," the two of them are trapped on a tropical island after surviving a plane crash. When word of Michael's desperate mission reaches Sawyer - a booze-hoarding, hard-shelled narcissist who in his past killed an innocent man - his reaction is not what you would call sympathetic. "It's every man for hisself," Sawyer snarls.

Not so long ago Sawyer's callousness would have made him a villain, but on "Lost," he is sympathetic, a man whose penchant for dispensing Darwinian truths over kindnesses drives not only the action but the show's underlying theme, that in the social chaos of the modern world, the only sensible reflex is self-interest.

Perhaps not coincidentally Sawyer is also the character on the show with whom young men most identify, according to research conducted by the upstart male-oriented network Spike TV, which interviewed thousands of young men to determine what that coveted and elusive demographic likes most in its television shows.

Spike found that men responded not only to brave and extremely competent leads but to a menagerie of characters with strikingly antisocial tendencies: Dr. Gregory House, a Vicodin-popping physician on Fox's "House"; Michael Scofield on "Prison Break," who is out to help his brother escape from jail; and Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis on "The Shield," a tough-guy cop who won't hesitate to beat a suspect senseless. Tony Soprano is their patron saint, and like Tony, within the confines of their shows, they are all "good guys."

The code of such characters, said Brent Hoff, 36, a fan of "Lost," is: "Life is hard. Men gotta do what men gotta do, and if some people have to die in the process, so be it."

"We can relate to them," said Mr. Hoff, a writer from San Francisco. "If you watch Sawyer on 'Lost,' who is fundamentally good even if he does bad things, there's less to feel guilty about in yourself."

Gary A. Randall, a producer who helped create "Melrose Place," is developing a show called "Paradise Salvage," about two friends who discover a treasure map, for Spike TV. He said the proliferation of antisocial protagonists came from a concerted effort by networks to channel the frustrations of modern men.

"It's about comprehending from an entertainment point of view that men are living a very complex conundrum today," he said. "We're supposed to be sensitive and evolved and yet still in touch with our Neanderthal, animalistic, macho side." Watching a deeply flawed male character who nevertheless prevails, Mr. Randall argued, makes men feel better about their own flaws and internal conflicts.

"You think, 'It's O.K. to go to a strip club and have a couple of beers with your buddies and still go home to your wife and baby and live with yourself,' " he said.

The most popular male leads of today stand in stark contrast to the unambiguously moral protagonists of the past, good guys like Magnum, Matlock or Barnaby Jones. They are also not simply flawed in the classic sense: men who have the occasional affair or who tip the bottle a little too much. Instead they are unapologetic about killing, stealing, hoarding and beating their way to achieve personal goals that often conflict with the greed, apathy and of course the bureaucracies of the modern world.

"These kinds of characters are so satisfying to male viewers because culture has told them to be powerful and effective and to get things done, and at the same time they're living, operating and working in places that are constantly defying that," said Robert Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Consequently, whereas the Lone Ranger battled stagecoach robbers and bankers foreclosing on a widow's farm, the enemy of the contemporary male TV hero, Dr. Thompson said, is "the legal, cultural and social infrastructure of the nation itself."

Because of competition from the Web, video games and seemingly countless new cable channels, television producers are obsessed with developing shows that can capture the attention of young male viewers.

To that end Spike TV, which is owned by Viacom and aims at men from 18 to 49, has ordered up a slate of new dramas based on characters whose minds are cauldrons of moral ambiguity. They will join antiheroes on other networks like Vic Mackey, Gregory House, Jack Bauer of "24," and Tommy Gavin, the firefighter played by Denis Leary on "Rescue Me" who sanctions a revenge murder of the driver who ran over and killed his son.

Sawyer your dreaming if you think this is new stuff. The only thing here is that this programming is on television, not the big screen. Have you never heard of Cinema Noire? It was the dominant form of movie plot throughout the 40's and 50's. Virtually every big named movie star played the roll, from Bogie as Rick in Casa Blanca to Clark Gable in Red Dust they virtually made their careers playing precisely those kinds of rolls. The anti-hero is nothing new. What is new is that some of the graphic behavior is making its way on to the small screen. Young males have always been attracted to the sort of rogue, loner, tough-guy with a good heart character you describe. The reason is that none of us are the Lone Ranger. That sort of character was the aberrant one, forced on the American audiences by the practices and standards committee. None of that was visible on the big screen...Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Barry Newman in Vanishing Point, Sean Connery as James Bond, all were more anti-hero than hero. This is just a case of new generation "discovering" what the prior generation knew all along. Sawyer, you must have been raised by your mother.

Full Story: Naive, The Young "Discover The Old"

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Pryor: A Very Funny and Very Controversial Comedian Will Be Missed

With Humor and Anger On Race Issues, Comic Inspired a Generation

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A01

Richard Pryor, the outrageously raunchy and uproariously funny comedian and actor who defied the boundaries of taste, decency and race to become the comic voice of a generation, died yesterday at a Los Angeles hospital, where he had been taken after a heart attack. Pryor, who was 65, had been in deteriorating health for years because of multiple sclerosis.

Throughout the 1970s and early '80s, Pryor rode his uninhibited and foul-mouthed comedy to the heights of stardom, notching one hit movie after another, selling millions of recordings and drawing huge audiences to his one-man show, which treated some of the most volatile social issues of the time with a penetrating, unsparing comic eye. In 1998, he was the first person to receive the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

After beginning his career with relatively tame, race-neutral comedy, he delved deep into his experiences and anger as a black American and emerged with a fresh, daring approach that put race, sex and obscenity -- and all the anxieties these once-taboo subjects evoked -- at the forefront of his almost stream-of-consciousness comedy.

He drew his humor straight from the lives and speech of working-class black Americans in an overt, unapologetic way never before seen. In so doing, he helped bring black customs and language into the American mainstream and exerted a lasting influence on the nation's humor and cultural life. He assailed the nation's inequities, unabashedly used the n-word and adopted a variety of exaggerated facial expressions to touch on some of the deepest and unspoken fears of all Americans.

Once forced off a Las Vegas stage for obscenity, Pryor saw his ribald routines adopted as the standard comic fare of a later generation of comedians of all races. Without his bold example, the careers of Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dave Chappelle, Margaret Cho and Chris Rock would scarcely be possible.

An article in Ebony magazine in the 1970s said Pryor "mirrors the black condition without exploiting it" and called his comedy "a major step forward in the evolution of a true black humor in the United States."

In 1998, comedian Damon Wayans told The Washington Post that "Richard basically blazed a trail for black comedy; he defined what it is. As a young black man he was saying what he felt -- and that was shocking."

Pryor had his first gold record in 1974 with his provocatively titled, "That Nigger's Crazy." He followed that a year later with an album whose cover showed him questioning a group of Ku Klux Klansmen about to burn him at the stake, under the title "Is It Something I Said?"

He recorded more than 20 albums in a period of 14 years, including the landmark "Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip" (1982), which was a distillation of his acerbic, lacerating style. Pryor received five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums. He also received an Emmy Award for writing and was nominated for an Academy Award as an actor.

During his prime, almost every joke included a spate of blue language that can't be printed in a newspaper but induced uncontrollable laughter in his audiences. Beneath the humor, though, there lay a raw edge of barely tempered anger. Nothing was too sensitive for his barbs. In a joke about black men in prison, Pryor said: "You go down there looking for justice; that's what you find: just us."

Pryor's humor reflected the turbulence and anger in his life, which was marked by arrests, outbursts of violence, failed marriages and a long history of drug abuse. On June 9, 1980, he almost died when he was freebasing cocaine at his Los Angeles home, set himself on fire and received severe burns on half his body. With his body ablaze, he jumped out a window and onto a city street.

As usual, he turned the episode into humor: "You know something I noticed? When you run down the street on fire, people will move out of your way."

As a sheltered rigid Conservative in my youth, I took great umbrage at his language and his "tasteless" humor. As I matured and became more worldly, the subtlety of his message of hurt and suffering buried beneath the humor came to touch my heart. I doubt I will ever be comfortable with no holds barred foul language, even when I laugh at it, but in the end, the man was hysterical. I have rarely laughed harder or more thoroughly than in watching his stand-up routines, and the characters he played in his movies, particularly those he made with Gene Wilder, will stay with me as long as I live. God bless you Richard Pryor, you will be missed.

Full Article: Good-Bye to a Funny Man

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Bush's Strategy Proves to be Right Path

In Iraq, Bush Pushed For Deadline Democracy
Timeline Yields Constitutional Order, Not Peace

By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A01

Whenever he was asked in public last winter about the prospect of delaying Iraq's first election since the fall of Saddam Hussein, President Bush flatly dismissed it. His administration, he insisted, was "very firm" on going forward.

But inside the White House, Bush's team was anything but firm. A powerful debate was raging, officials now acknowledge, among the president's top advisers over postponing the Jan. 30 interim election in hopes of first tamping down the flaring insurgency and bringing disaffected factions to the table.

"There was a good debate in front of the president," recalled national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. "It was a close question and if it had gone to consensus, I don't know how it would have come out."

Ultimately, it did not go to a consensus decision but to Bush, who opted to stick with the election, a decision with distinct costs and benefits as the United States labored to build a democratic government in Iraq from the ground up. When U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer transferred sovereignty to Iraqi authorities in June 2004, he left behind a script with hard-and-fast deadlines for drafting a constitution and forming a government, a script that culminates Thursday with another election for a permanent parliament.

The story of the 18-month process that unfolded after Bremer left Baghdad was one of steadfast fidelity to the script, as well as a costly period of U.S. inattention and endless frustrations with squabbling Iraqi leaders, according to a wide array of Bush advisers, Iraqi politicians and others involved in the effort. While Bush refuses to set a timetable for military withdrawal, he has stuck doggedly to the Bremer political timetable despite qualms of his staff, relentless violence on the ground and disaffection of Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs.

Bush's deadline democracy managed to propel the process forward and appears on the verge of creating a new government with legitimacy earned at the ballot box. His approach resulted in a constitution often described as more democratic than any in the Arab world. Yet by pushing forward without Sunni acceptance, the Bush team failed to produce the national accord it sought among Iraq's three main groups, leaving a schism that could loom beyond Thursday's election. And the Sunni-powered insurgency that was supposed to be marginalized by an inclusive democracy remains as lethal as ever.

"The key for a long time in Iraq to stabilization . . . has been to pull in significant elements of Sunnis near the insurgency into the political process," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University scholar who for a short time advised U.S. authorities in Iraq, only to become a scathing critic. The press to meet the Bremer deadlines, starting in January, he said, only fueled the militants. "Much of the violence after that was entrenched or reinforced by the elections when the Sunnis were pressed to the margins."

In private, Bush aides agree there were tradeoffs but found no better alternatives, and they take heart from signs that Sunnis who boycotted the January election plan to participate this week. "Perfect wasn't on offer," a senior administration official said. "It's not that anyone thought it was a great idea, but that was the path we were on. No one had the confidence to think of moving along another path. The biggest fear was that things would get slowed down."

In the end, according to participants, the political process has both succeeded and failed. It produced elections and soon a permanent government, but did not end the war, at least not yet. "I believed -- and I said from the podium -- that as Iraqis became more politically empowered, the insurgency would become politically weakened," said Dan Senor, a top Bremer adviser. "That hasn't happened. The political process has been resilient -- and so has the insurgency."

Peter Baker and Robin Wright, when will you on the Left realize that Americans don't care what loser academics have to say? If Larry Diamond had what it took to be involved in building governments and advising on foreign policy, he would have a real job. There is an old adage, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Who cares that "Larry Diamond, a Stanford University scholar" is a scathing critic? Who is he to inform or advise me, or any individual capable of thinking for themselves? The one thing in Iraq which has shown progress more clearly than any other phase of the war is this march toward democracy. In spite of the starts and fits one would expect, it has been a remarkably successful progression, and will be culminated with Thursday's election. Of course this will be a major blow to the aspirations of the Democrats here in America.

Full Story: Iraqi's Boldly March to Democratic Future

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Another Ludicrous Claim by the Left

Staff Opinions Banned In Voting Rights Cases
Criticism of Justice Dept.'s Rights Division Grows

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A03

The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics, congressional aides and current and former employees familiar with the issue said.

Disclosure of the change comes amid growing public criticism of Justice Department decisions to approve Republican-engineered plans in Texas and Georgia that were found to hurt minority voters by career staff attorneys who analyzed the plans. Political appointees overruled staff findings in both cases.

The policy was implemented in the Georgia case, said a Justice employee who, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation. A staff memo urged rejecting the state's plan to require photo identification at the polls because it would harm black voters.

But under the new policy, the recommendation was stripped out of that document and was not forwarded to higher officials in the Civil Rights Division, several sources familiar with the incident said.

The policy helps explain why the Justice Department has portrayed an Aug. 25 staff memo obtained by The Washington Post as an "early draft," even though it was dated one day before the department gave "preclearance," or approval, to the Georgia plan. The state's plan has since been halted on constitutional grounds by a federal judge who likened it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

The policy shift's outlines were first reported by the Dallas Morning News. Sources familiar with the change said it was implemented by John K. Tanner, the voting section chief, who is a career employee.

In response to a request to comment yesterday, Justice Department spokesman Eric Holland wrote in an e-mail: "The opinions and expertise of the career lawyers are valued and respected and continue to be an integral part of the internal deliberation process upon which the department heavily relies when making litigation decisions." He declined to elaborate.

What? Just because these lawyers are "staff" we're supposed to believe they are any less biased or political than "political appointees?" Since when did anyone working for the Civil Service leave their political opinions behind upon employment? It is absurd and naive to claim that staff members are less politically motivated than are the political appointees. Individuals employed by the Federal Government tend to be more liberal than their free-enterprise counterparts. They are after all on the government dole (after a fashion), they have a vested interest in maintaining the bureaucracy and the status quo.

Full Story: Sorry, Need More Proof

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"Quack, Quack, Kyoto's Back

Nations Agree to Binding Climate Talks
United States Balks, Agrees to Informal Dialogue

By Julet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; 8:48 AM

MONTREAL, Dec. 10 -- Brushing aside the Bush administration's initial protests, all the industrialized nations except the United States and Australia reached an agreement early Saturday to embark on a fresh round of formal talks aimed at setting new mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the existing pact known as the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The United States, after fiercely resisting any new international talks to address Earth's warming climate, agreed to a separate nonbinding informal dialogue to respond to climate change as representatives of nearly 200 nations concluded two weeks of meetings on the issue.

In the separate set of negotiations aimed at extending a second, voluntary climate compact, the United States dropped its resistance which included a midnight walkout and brokered language that would allow for nonbinding talks.

The two accords nearly fell apart in the early morning hours after Russia proposed creating a new pact under Kyoto for countries to set voluntary targets for emission cuts. In the end, Russia relented and agreed to a compromise measure that would allow nations to offer their views on how such a program might be established

The agreement to begin a process that would extend the Kyoto pact underscored how many nations now see global warming as the world's most serious environmental threat. The Bush administration disavowed the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 and has opposed any kind of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, arguing that research, new technology and market forces are the best way to address warming linked to the buildup of greenhouse gases.

"We would have wanted a stronger outcome, but we should not underestimate the strength of this package," Stavros Dimas, the European Union's commissioner for the environment, told reporters. "Kyoto is alive and kicking."

The last day was also marked by high drama as former president Bill Clinton urged meaningful action to combat global warming, giving a half-hour speech that the Bush administration had tried to block, according to sources close to Clinton who would not speak on the record for fear of jeopardizing the talks.

Few question that the world is now warming at an unprecedented rate, due at least in part to human activity. On Dec. 15, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center plan to release data showing that 2005 remains on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, with land temperatures between Dec. 1, 2004, and Nov. 30 at 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and in Britain have interpreted the same data more conservatively and consider 2005 likely to be the second-hottest year on record.

Such statistics, coupled with evidence of melting glaciers, rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes, have prompted many policymakers to press for stricter limits on greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, 157 countries agreed to cut such emissions by an average of 5 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012, and the same nations pledged Friday to begin negotiations on a possible new set of emission cuts.

"If it walks like a duck and talks like duck, it's a duck," Watson told the other delegates, according to several participants in the closed midnight session.

As Watson walked out, one of the other delegates, baffled, responded: "I don't understand your reference to a duck. What about this document is like a duck?"[My emphasis]

Ms. Eilperin, like most Liberals out there simply have faith in the Greens Religion. Whatever one of the Prelots of the Greens Church (Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is one of them) states, becomes a tenet of faith for them. They believe it to be true out of faith rather than fact. Hurricanes are more intense (patently not true) therefore it's being caused by the Holy Doctrine of Global Warming. It is flawed logic...

Postulate: Global warming is caused by man.

1. Man industrialized in the 19th century, and really got it going in the last half century.
2. Global temperatures have been rising for the last 50 to 75 years.
3. Therefore: Man causes global warming.

That is the logical equivalent of saying,

1. Man eats fish.
2. Sharks eat fish.
3. Therefore: Men are sharks

Now however one may feel about some trial lawyers, I hardly think we've made a case for looking for fins on man.

The problem with such flawed logic is that you ignore all the inconsistent information.

1. Mars is heating up. Man made global warming?
2. Our direct records of temperatures globally is on the order of a couple of millenia at the most. The Earth is billions of years old
3. Volcanic activity: single events release the equivalent of decades of human activity.

Environmentalism is a religion impure and simple. "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck."

Groucho: "Now here is a little peninsula, and...eh...here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland." Chico: "Why a Duck?" Groucho: "I'm alright. How are you?"
["the Cocoanuts" Paramount Pictures]

Full Story: "Why a Duck?"

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There's Life in the Old Economy Yet

Happy Days Here Again?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; 1:09 PM

President Bush was out talking up the economy the other day, and that is no accident.

The White House is convinced that the media aren't telling America how well things are going, fiscally speaking.

Sound like Iraq?

This is a familiar lament for most administrations. I remember the Clintonites, during the first term, complaining that their man wasn't getting credit for an economic rebound whose existence was doubted by many people. Presidents and their handlers talk up the economy. It's almost in the job description.

There is usually a lag, after a recession, from the time the numbers begin to improve to the time when the average person on the street perceives an improvement. With strong growth last quarter, gas prices down from stratospheric levels and unemployment holding steady at 5 percent, there's no question that the economy is breezing along. The improvement hasn't yet jelled as a media story (Bush backers undoubtedly think it's because of hostility toward their man) or in public opinion (52 percent say the economy is getting worse in a recent Post/ABC poll).

But I think, whatever the numbers, there's still a good deal of anxiety out there. With GM cutting 30,000 jobs, Delphi bankrupt and United, US Air, Delta and Northwest flying in Chapter 11, that's hardly surprising. The housing boom has peaked, and stocks haven't done much this year. Louisiana and Mississippi are still reeling.

If the picture continues to brighten, the press should provide ample coverage (even if newspaper layoffs and buyouts are dampening reporters' spirits). But commentators on the right are in no mood to wait. Take the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

"We interrupt your daily doom-and-gloom programming with a word from the real economy: It's even better than advertised. October's estimate of 3.8% third-quarter GDP growth was revised upward yesterday to 4.3%, which means the expansion was moving fast enough in late summer to blow right past Hurricane Katrina.

"This represents the fastest expansion since the first quarter of 2004, as well as the 10th consecutive quarter of growth averaging close to 4% on an annual basis. So much for those predictions of recession we heard in the spring, and again in September. In fact, has there ever been a U.S. expansion this robust that has been accompanied by so much disbelief and predictions of imminent collapse? Not since the 1980s, we'd guess. . . .

"Last quarter's GDP numbers show that the U.S. economy can withstand natural disasters, rising interest rates, $70 oil, $4 gasoline -- and the relentless pessimism of elite forecasters who said today's prosperity could never happen."

There's nothing Democrats hate worse than good economic news coming from a Republican dominated government. How can this be? Doesn't the MSM know that our economy is a disaster? Don't they understand how bad it really is? For Democrats the operative line is "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" [Chico Marx, Duck Soup] Actually I find that quote quite apt. Watching the Democrats is much like watching a Marx Brothers movie or maybe a Keystone Kops movie. Certainly their political arguments resemble a game of 3 card Monte.

Full Story: 3 Stooges Running Democrat Party

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Dean's Huge Gaff

Dean's Delayed Day

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 8, 2005; 11:54 AM

It's taken awhile, but the Democrats' position on the war has finally hit the front pages.

Well, of The Post , anyway.

When Howard Dean says we're not gonna win in Iraq and the paper uses a short wire story--and then comes back with a front-pager about the Democrats fearing a backlash--it's a tacit acknowledgment of having blown it the first time.

That piece yesterday also made much of Nancy Pelosi backing a pullout. I never understood why Pelosi's flip-flop (she was against Murtha's proposal before she was for it) wasn't bigger news. She's the House minority leader! If she's speaking for her caucus--and she claims more than half of House Democrats support her position--that's a sea change in the opposition party's stance. If she's way out in front of her troops, the party is in considerable disarray. Either way, the emerging views of Democratic leaders on the most divisive issue in America deserves a bigger ride, as conservative bloggers have been quick to point out.

Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker makes this very case:

"Murtha, Murtha, Murtha, Murtha, Murtha, Murtha, (Lieberman), Murtha, Murtha, Murtha.

"That's about how news coverage has gone the past several weeks concerning Rep. John Murtha's call to withdraw from Iraq versus Sen. Joe Lieberman's call to stand fast.

"And the media wonder why newspaper circulations are dropping and why Fox News dominates television ratings over the networks and other cable programs. It's not that Murtha doesn't deserve airtime to voice a point of view many Americans share. It's that Lieberman surely deserves at least equal time for a point of view that other Americans, as well as most Iraqis, share.

"Those who rely on traditional news sources other than The Wall Street Journal, which published an op-ed by the Connecticut senator, may not even have known that Lieberman recently returned from Iraq. Or that his conclusions were that the U.S. has to keep fighting the insurgency, and that two-thirds of Iraq is in 'pretty good shape.' You don't have to be a partisan war hawk to see the difference in treatment of these two stories, from news reports to the talking-head shows."

Ed Morrissey , writing in the Weekly Standard, sees a suicide strategy:

"The good news for the Democrats is that their leadership has settled on an electoral strategy for 2006. The bad news is that they have cribbed their game plan from one of the most disastrous campaigns in their history. The Democratic leadership has decided to elevate surrender to a party platform for the upcoming elections, with their national chairman, House leader, and last presidential nominee all running up the white flag as the Democratic war banner.

"When was the last time that an entire political party stood for backpedaling the way the Democrats have in the past two weeks? Since Rep. John Murtha made his supposedly stunning announcement that he wanted an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, the Democrats have embraced surrender.

"Not even during the Vietnam War did a major American party position itself to support abject retreat as a wartime political platform. For that, one has to go back to the Civil War, when the Democrats demanded a negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America and a withdrawal from the South."

I wonder how that would have played on Fox.

Howard having fun at the expense of the MSM and their DNC coverage. It's pretty sad when even the Democrats own propaganda machine begins to make fun of them and their stance on the Iraq war. Thing is, they're right. Not even during their most vocal and vehement opposition to the Vietnam war, did the Democrat Party call for a cut and run policy. Bush will continue to rise in the polls because the Democrats will continue to mess up and let the public catch glimpses of their core beliefs. As Sir Walter Scott so aptly put it, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive." It is very, very tough to maintain a lie of the magnitude the Democrats are attempting to perpetuate. The simpler version of Scott's quotation is Abraham Lincoln's "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Full Story: Kurz, the Press on Dean

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How Can This Be? The President Still Welcome...Amazing!

Candidates Welcome Bush
Despite Dip in Polls, He's Like a Magnet for GOP Money

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 9, 2005; Page A07

Slumping poll numbers and rebellion in Republican ranks have been tormenting President Bush for months. But he is still welcomed with open arms -- and checkbooks -- when he comes to town with a promise to raise campaign cash for GOP candidates.

Bush, who smashed fundraising records in back-to-back presidential triumphs, has helped raise more than $50 million this year. He is planning to greatly intensify his political efforts for Republican members of Congress in next year's midterm elections, aides said.

The willingness of candidates to enlist Bush's help suggests that even in a season of discontent, the president retains some powerful political assets, ones that could help him improve his fortunes on Capitol Hill and beyond.

White House aides said they are expecting Bush to host scores of fundraisers for GOP House and Senate candidates in 2006 as way to keep the congressional majority intact and to retain leverage over an increasingly combative GOP Congress. Even with Bush's popularity sagging, Republican lawmakers are betting that the money Bush can bring in is worth any political costs associated with a presidential visit.

A case in point: Rep. Mark Kennedy, a Republican running for the Senate in independent-minded Minnesota. Bush lost the state twice, and some evidence suggests his narrow loss last year might be a blowout today.

A poll released Wednesday by St. Cloud State University found that Bush was less popular than any state official mentioned in the statewide survey, with 33 percent saying he is doing a pretty good job or better. The poll asked Minnesotans to think of a thermometer reading to match their feelings about politicians. Bush got a chilly 44.

Still the president can expect a warm embrace from Kennedy today, when Bush headlines a lunch event at the Hilton Minneapolis Hotel expected to raise $1 million.

Heidi Fredrickson, a Kennedy spokeswoman, refused to say if Bush was a political asset, highlighting how her boss sometimes parts ways with the president on key issues. "Mark has always been very independent-minded," she said. But Kennedy, the likely nominee for a seat held by retiring Sen. Mark Dayton (D), has no worries about the big-money event with Bush. "The president is a great fundraiser," she said.

Rep. John Kline (Minn.), who represents a Republican chunk of the state and will appear with Bush today, said the huge amount of money Bush raises should more than soothe the anxieties of nervous Republicans. "I don't understand any of my Republican colleagues who would not want to stand up there with a Republican president," he said.

Even Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who often opposes Bush on policy issues, said he would "welcome him" in his district: "I know he would be controversial, but he is the president and he is a friend."

This is good news for Bush, GOP strategists say. One barometer of presidential popularity is the eagerness of candidates to appear with the chief executive. In 1994, only a few Democratic candidates were willing to appear with Bill Clinton -- foreshadowing then-Rep. Newt Gingrich's "Republican Revolution" in the midterm elections that fall. On the other hand, even during his second-term sex scandal and impeachment, there were still plenty of Democrats eager for Clinton's help in fundraising.

Bush has never been radioactive with conservative contributors. As long as he remains a financial draw, Bush will retain considerable leverage over GOP lawmakers who determine the fate of his agenda.

Impossible! I thought the President had been run out of town, according to the MSM. I guess that shows how reliable and accurate polls actually are. This kind of disconnect occurs when the polling organizations skew their polls to reflect their own philosophy. I quit following them earlier this fall when I noticed that the "unbiased" poll demographic was about 40% Democrat leaning, 28% Republican and 32% independent. Yep I can see how that is completely unbiased. Afterall the world is Democrat isn't it? These kind of numbers are especially interesting in light of the fact that more Americans describe themselves as Republican and Independent than as Democrat. The fact is that the President remains a tremendously popular figure both as an individual and as President.

Full Story: President Retains Political Pull

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Fitzgerald Wasting Tax-payer Money...Self Justification

New Grand Jury in CIA Leak Case Hears From Prosecutor

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 8, 2005; Page A17

The CIA leak investigation returned to a more active stage yesterday as a special prosecutor presented information to a grand jury for the first time in six weeks.

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's decision to enlist a new grand jury comes as he continues to investigate possible criminal charges against senior White House adviser Karl Rove. Rove faces possible legal consequences for not telling investigators for months that he had provided information about CIA operative Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in July 2003.

Rove disclosed the conversation only after Cooper was subpoenaed to testify about their discussions, said sources familiar with Rove's account. Rove maintains that he initially forgot about the contact, the sources said.

Yesterday was the first time a grand jury has met to consider the case since Oct. 28, when a previous grand jury indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Fitzgerald, who arrived with four deputies, an FBI agent and boxes of files, declined to comment on the three-hour session as he left the courthouse. No witnesses were seen entering the grand jury room.

But several legal experts and sources involved in the case said Fitzgerald was probably providing the new grand jury with a primer on what has been learned in the investigation and what remains unresolved. They said the prosecutor's move into a more active probe could spell trouble for Rove, or for other people enmeshed in more recent developments in the case.

Fitzgerald has spent two years investigating whether White House officials knowingly disclosed Plame's identity and undercover status in 2003 to discredit allegations made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The term of the previous grand jury expired on the day it indicted Libby on five felony counts of lying, perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald said then that he would continue to look into lingering issues, and he privately told Rove's attorney that Rove remained under investigation.

Two other revelations have been made since then. Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward disclosed that, unbeknown to Fitzgerald, an administration source had told him about Plame's CIA role in June 2003, before Libby allegedly disclosed similar information to another reporter. In a Nov. 14 deposition, Woodward answered questions under oath from Fitzgerald about the mid-June 2003 conversation with his source. The source, whose identity has not been revealed, had testified much earlier in Fitzgerald's investigation but did not mention the conversation, said two sources familiar with the investigation.

Hey Patrick, it has been clearly established, beyond any question, that Valerie Plame/Wilson's employment was widely known in D.C. It is time to stop flogging this dead horse for your own self promotion. Her identity was revealed twice by the CIA, once by Aldrich Ames, and once in Cuba by the CIA itself. She drove her own car to the CIA and Joe Wilson mentioned her in his interview with Nicholas Kristoff for his May 6th, 2003 article.

Full Story: Patrick Go Home

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Additional Good News for the Economy and American Taxpayer

$56 Billion in Tax Cuts Passed
House Measure Would Extend Breaks for Investment Income

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 9, 2005; Page A06

The House approved yesterday $56 billion in tax cuts that would keep alive the deep reductions in the tax rates on dividends and capital gains passed in 2003, but the measure is certain to be challenged by senators who have so far balked at the tax cuts for investors.

The bill passed largely along party lines, 234 to 197, after a rancorous partisan debate over whether the tax cuts would chiefly benefit the rich or sustain economic growth. Nine Democrats joined 225 Republicans for passage, while three Republicans -- Reps. Sherwood L. Boehlert (N.Y.), Jim Leach (Iowa) and Fred Upton (Mich.) -- sided with 193 Democrats and independent Bernard Sanders (Vt.) to oppose it.

The tax measure's cost would more than offset the savings in a tough budget approved by the House last month, which would trim federal spending by $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, squeezing student lenders, cutting federal child-support enforcement and paring the food stamp rolls.

Democrats charged that those spending cuts, largely affecting programs for the poor, are making way for tax cuts mainly for the rich that would increase the federal budget deficit. "The poor suffer, the rich benefit. The middle class is paying the bill," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Republicans countered that allowing the tax cuts to expire would choke off the economic expansion and harm the poor far more than the modest changes to federal programs.

"The Democrats want to take away the paychecks of [my constituents], replace them with welfare checks and call that compassion," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.).

Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) dismissed the Democrats' complaints as "pathetic arguments" and "nothing but the ideological baggage of the past."

The nine Democrats who voted for the bill were Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Melissa L. Bean (Ill.), Dan Boren (Okla.), Bud Cramer (Ala.), Henry Cuellar (Tex.), Lincoln Davis (Tenn.), Bart Gordon (Tenn.), Jim Marshall (Ga.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.). All Democrats from Virginia and Maryland voted against the measure, and all Republicans from those states voted for it.

The tax package was the fourth tax-cut bill approved by the House in two days, resulting in a total of $94.5 billion in cuts over five years. But yesterday's bill was the largest and most widely debated.

The measure would extend a number of tax breaks for a single year, including incentives for employing Native Americans and welfare recipients; establishing tax-free medical savings accounts; extracting oil and gas from old, marginal wells; and investing in the District.

The bill would also extend for one year a federal tax deduction for local sales taxes and for some college tuition costs. It would extend through 2009 an earlier tax break that allows small businesses to write off much of the value of investments, at a five-year cost to the Treasury of $7.3 billion.

But the centerpiece of the bill is the extension, through 2010, of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts, which lowered the tax rate on investment income to 15 percent, from as high as 38.5 percent. This extension alone is projected to cost $20.6 billion over five years and $50.8 billion over 10 years.

Mr. Weisman, I told you yesterday that there is no "cost" associated with these tax cuts, they more than pay for themselves by stoking the fires of the economy. Compassion is providing jobs for the indigent, not providing handouts. Lower taxes mean higher revenues. That is the real "beef" that Democrats have with tax cuts, they make for a strong economy. How are Mr. Weisman and his brethern to impose their socialist policies when the capitalist economy is booming. Keep hoping Jonathan with any luck you and your fellow Democrat Party members may yet succeed in ruining the economy.

Full Story: Cut Capital Gains Completely?

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The Broken Record of Global Warming

No climate for change as America snubs talks

New Zealand Herald
09.12.05
By David Fogarty

MONTREAL - The EU and host Canada piled pressure on the United States to join an international pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit the predicted chaos from global warming.

Ministers from more than 90 nations sought to break a deadlock over how to launch talks that entice the US and big developing nations to join a system that limits emissions.

"We will continue to talk to our US partners and remind them of their commitments," US Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.

He said George W. Bush agreed at a summit of eight leading industrial nations in July and at a UN summit in September to advance global discussions in Montreal on long-term co-operation to curb climate change.

But Bush's representative, Harlan Watson, has rejected joining any new round of discussions, saying such talks would inevitably lead to new targets for emissions curbs that Bush rejects.

"There is absolutely no excuse for any more delay in action," Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said.

"To the reluctant countries, including the US, I say this; there is such a thing as a global conscience and this is the time to listen to it. Above all, now is the time for action."

Delegates to the November 28-December 9 talks have made little progress in agreeing on the shape of the next phase of the UN Kyoto Protocol pact, which caps emissions and has been rejected by the US and Australia.

Kyoto's first phase, which runs from 2008 to 2012, only covers about 40 wealthy developed nations. Many countries and green groups say the pact will only be effective if all nations, and the biggest polluters, are on board.

But doing so means a huge economic shift for many countries and particularly for rapidly developing nations, who say cleaning up could limit growth. Rich nations should be taking the lead, they say.

I wish these guys would shut up, all that hot air is contributing to "global warming." Come on folks, once more let's jump on the bandwagon of global warming. Say the oath of faith

..."We believe that man, that evil vermin which has come to infest the entire Earth, has intentionally attempted to destroy the Earth by burning noxious chemicals, generating noxious gases. We believe that these "gases" accumulate and cause the Earths ambient temperature to rise. We have no proof of our belief, only faith that we are right, because we believe it to be so. We therefore embrace the idea that we must destroy Western economies by imposing onerous restrictions on pollution and requiring those evil Western societies to adopt expensive chemical gasoline additives. Amen"

Well, I mean, it is a matter of faith, not fact...

Full Story: Global B.S.

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Emily Messner:, Additional Proof that Liberals are the Einsteins of "Wrong Again" Set

The Debate
Emily Messner

The Iraqi-al Qaeda Connection

Washington Post

In a news conference following Bush's announcement of his plan for Victory in Iraq, Sen. Richard Lugar said:

It is not an option simply to say that Iraq doesn't matter. Iraq does matter because, in the worst of cases, not only would there be civil war but there would be intervention by other countries, the possibility for training ground for al Qaeda or others and we've recycled Afghanistan from another time and another place into a very dangerous predicament. And we are in this predicament because we were attacked here in Washington and in New York. The world did not leave us alone.

Sorry, but who didn't leave us alone? All those Iraqi hijackers? Oh, wait, they weren't Iraqi. Most were Saudi; not a single one was Iraqi. (Nor were any of the hijackers Iranian. Or Syrian. How again is it that Saudi Arabia isn't a member of the Axis of Evil? But I digress.)

Point is, it is astonishing that respected members of Congress are still making these logical leaps from Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein. That's in spite of the fact that it was more than two years ago that President Bush himself admitted there was no evidence of a connection between the attack on America and the little pismire in Baghdad.

Just a few months after Bush made this decidedly unstartling admission, U.S. Rep. Mac Collins again conflated Iraq and 9/11. In the Chatanooga Times Free Press in December of 2000, he asserted:

We are at war in Iraq because it is a major step in our effort to defeat the radical group of Islamic militants that killed more than 3,000 innocent Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. We didn't start this war; the Islamic militants did because they are fundamentally opposed to the very idea of freedom and against those who hold up freedom's banner: the United States of America.

The tendency of war supporters to relate Saddam Hussein to 9/11 has left some Debaters expressing exasperation that resources were diverted from Afghanistan -- a haven for terrorists -- to Iraq, which only became a haven for terrorists after the invasion.

"Like most bullies, Bush picked the weakest opponent he possibly could find," Debater Left Angle offers.

"That the War On Terror suddenly became all about Iraq and little to do with Osama Bin Laden has always baffled me," reflects Debater ErrinF. "Bin Laden was behind 9/11, and yet Saddam Hussein got put on the top of the hit list instead of Osama because of 9/11 and Bush's manipulation thereof. Could capture Saddam; Couldn't capture Osama. If that's all that Bush can claim by the end of his presidency, then he will have done the American people a great disservice."

Well it is understandable, Ms. Messner is a Liberal after all. It's not her fault that it is a disease which diminishes intellectual capacity and is known to specifically attack the logic centers of the brain, allowing the emotions to run unchecked. They seem to believe that America suffers the same infimity they do, the complete inablitiy to walk and chew gum at the same time. Why, we couldn't possibly go after Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein at the same time. Al Qaeda and Iraq couldn't possibly be coordinating their efforts, Hussein is a secularists and bin Laden is a religious fanatic. They fail to see the truth of the matter which is that both men hated America far more than each other, and both men saw that there was advantages to their partnership. Al Zarawaqawi's presence, en force, in Iraq...prior to the attacks by our forces illustrate that there was coordination and cooperation between the two. It's okay Emily, we understand...you are afterall a Liberal. By the way I'll bet the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam and his two "lovely sons" don't consider him a "pismire." How terribly sensitive of you.

Original posting: Liberal Naivte or Lies?

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Congress May Inadvertently Drive Economy Forward

House Passes 3 Tax Cuts, Plans a 4th
Cost Would Outstrip Recent Action on Deficit

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 8, 2005; Page A01

The House passed three separate tax cuts yesterday and plans to approve a fourth today, trimming the federal revenue by $94.5 billion over five years -- nearly double the budget savings that Republicans muscled through the House last month.

GOP leaders portray the tax bills -- for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, affluent investors, U.S. troops serving in Iraq and taxpayers who otherwise would be hit by the alternative minimum tax -- as vital to keeping the economy rolling.

"Our economic policies have done the trick," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). "We are in the middle of one of the strongest economies this country has ever seen."

But some budget analysts say the flourish of tax cutting badly undermines the recent shows of fiscal discipline. Last month's budget-cutting bill would save $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, trimming the food stamp rolls, squeezing student lenders and cutting federal child support enforcement.

"I don't think it makes any sense to go through all the difficulty they just went through with the budget-cutting bill, then give it all back in tax cuts," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. "If they want to cut taxes, fine, but they are going to have to cut spending by at least that much to help the deficit, and clearly they are not willing to do that. They have to start looking reality in the face."

Under rules reserved for the least controversial bills, the House yesterday approved three tax bills in rapid succession. The first, at a cost of $31.2 billion, would slow the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system designed to prevent the rich from dodging taxation but that increasingly has affected the middle class.

The next, at a cost of $7.1 billion over five years, would provide an array of tax breaks to create President Bush's proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone in the region ravaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Businesses could write off much of the cost of new structures and equipment, while the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be granted tax-exempt bond authority for their own rebuilding.

Bowing to pressure from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and other social conservatives, GOP leaders exempted casinos, country clubs, hot tub facilities, liquor stores, massage parlors, golf courses, racetracks and tanning salons from the tax breaks, exemptions the administration initially opposed.

Finally, the House passed a modest, $153 million tax break that would extend a provision allowing members of the military to use their combat pay to claim the earned income credit.

The three measures passed overwhelmingly, with virtually all Democrats voting with Republicans, and with hardly a mention of their impact on the deficit, which is projected to reach $331 billion in fiscal 2006 and remain above $300 billion a year through the end of the decade, when most of Bush's tax cuts are set to expire. The Senate has already passed similar measures, indicating that all the measures are likely to become law.

The House voted 414 to 4 to spare 17 million individuals and families from paying the alternative minimum tax next year. Democratic Reps. Jerry F. Costello (Ill.), Collin C. Peterson (Minn.), Martin O. Sabo (Minn.) and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (Va.) voted against the measure.

Mr. Weisman and those in the Concord Coalition fail to grasp the simple basics of operating a economy on a national scale vis. tax-cuts work. You don't have to "pay for" tax cuts, they pay for themselves in increased federal revenues due to economic growth. That is the reason that for the last 2 quarters, CBO deficit estimates have been high by over $50 Billion. Tax increases will never pay for deficits, they can't because you cannot make up for the lost revenue during a declining economy, which will always result from increasing taxes. The only way to quickly balance the budget is to cut taxes and spending, the latter part of which Congress, both Democrat and Republican, seems incapable of grasping. These purportedly "moderate" Republicans need only look at the performance of the economy and the evidence is there for all to see. Need I repeat it? 5% unemployment, 1.2% inflation, 4.2% growth in GDP, What part of successful healthy economy don't the Liberal Democrats and Republicans understand. I see the reason for the Democrats to want the economy to tank, it is the only possible path for them to regain power, by sabotaging the economy and blaming it on Republicans and President Bush. But the "moderate" Republicans I just don't understand. I guess they just live in constant fear.

Full Story: More Tax Cuts, Stronger Economy

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The Price of Isolationism: May We Never Pay It Again

Today, America Declares War on Japan, December 8th, 1941

Yesterday, 64 years ago, Japan launched an attack against Pearl Harbor which propelled America into the throws of what would come to be called World War II. Prior to Pearl Harbor, America was basically isolationist and didn't want to get involved. The opening cost of that isolationism was Pearl Harbor.

The United States declared war on Japan the day after the attack. Germany and Italy, bound by a treaty with Japan, declared war on the United States three days later.

Only the attack on the World Trade Center rivals the shock and impact of this despicable act by Japan. Interestingly, Japan has never, as far as I can find out, officially apologized for this unwarranted attack against a sovereign part of the America. In honor of this arrogance and lack of remorse by the Japanese government, I offer these small gifts.

SO MUCH FOR THE BUSHIDO AND JAPANESE "HONOR."

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

--John Stuart Mill

NEVER AGAIN!!

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Rumsfeld May Step Down in '06, I Hope Not.

Rummy exit rumored; Lieberman eyed for job

BY THOMAS M. DEFRANK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - White House officials are telling associates they expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit early next year, once a new government is formed in Iraq, sources said yesterday.

Rumsfeld's deputy, Gordon England, is the inside contender to replace him, but there's also speculation that Sen. Joe Lieberman - a Democrat who ran against Bush-Cheney in the 2000 election - might become top guy at the Pentagon.

That's not as farfetched as it might first appear.

The Daily News has learned that the White House considered Lieberman for the UN ambassador's job last year before giving the post to John Bolton, a Bush adviser said.

"He thought about it for a week or so and finally said no," the adviser recalled.

A source close to the White House said Rumsfeld wanted out a year ago, after Bush's reelection, but neither he nor President Bush wanted his departure to appear to have been forced.

"They didn't want to give the critics the satisfaction that their piling on was what got rid of him," a Bush adviser said.

Bush has told friends that Rumsfeld is a political liability, but the President has a history of sticking with his personnel baggage until an opportune moment.

"Only Rumsfeld will make Rumsfeld leave," a White House source said.

Rumors that Lieberman could replace Rumsfeld started flying early this week, and Bush and Vice President Cheney fanned the flames by quoting the former Democratic veep candidate's pro-war statements.

The mention of Lieberman's name prompted some Democrats to whisper that he is lobbying for the job.

"Lieberman seems to be coordinating his statements on the war with the White House," a Senate Democratic source said.

The source pointed to a news conference this week where Lieberman urged his party not to undermine Bush. The timing of Lieberman's pitch, also this week, to form a bipartisan "war cabinet" to aid Bush was cited as well.

But Lieberman and Team Bush dismissed the rumors.

"The U.S. Senate is where Sen. Lieberman wants to be, which is why he is actively campaigning for reelection to his fourth term," the senator's spokeswoman, Casey Aden-Wansbury, said.

These "rumors" about Lieberman come mostly from the Liberal Extemists that run the Democrat Party, who hate Lieberman for telling the truth about Iraq, thereby revealing the lies of the political hack Democrats. You will find the first of these "rumors" on websites like democratunderground and dailyKos where these denzens of hatred and distortion lurk. Leave it to the political hack press to pick these stories up and distribute them as legitimate rumors.

Full Story: Lieberman To Replace Rumsfeld

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UN Criticizes US on Human Rights...UN?

U.N. Official Faults U.S. Detentions
Terrorism Fight Hurts Torture Ban, Human Rights Chief Says

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 8, 2005; Page A27

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 -- The U.S.-led fight against terrorism is eroding the time-honored international prohibition of torture and other forms of cruel or degrading treatment of prisoners, the top U.N. human rights official said Wednesday in a statement commemorating Human Rights Day.

Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, presented the most forceful criticism to date of U.S. detention policies by a senior U.N. official, asserting that holding suspects incommunicado in itself amounts to torture.

She also expressed concern in a news conference with efforts by some U.S. policymakers to exempt CIA interrogators from elements of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Vice President Cheney's office has sought to block efforts by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other lawmakers to subject CIA personnel from the 1984 convention's ban on the use of cruel or degrading treatment of detainees.

But sources on Capitol Hill said yesterday that the administration is backing down on its opposition to the proposed legislation, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Ukraine that U.S. personnel are prohibited from violating the U.N. Convention on Torture while overseas. The administration has previously said the agreement does not apply abroad.

Arbour's statement said that the "absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is under attack. The principle once believed to be unassailable -- the inherent right to physical integrity and dignity of person -- is becoming a casualty of the so-called 'war on terrorism.' "

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticized Arbour, calling it "inappropriate" for her to choose a Human Rights Day celebration to criticize the United States instead of such rights abusers as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe. He also warned that it would undercut his efforts to negotiate formation of a new human rights council that would exclude countries with bad rights records.

"Today is Human Rights Day. It would be appropriate, I think, for the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights to talk about the serious human rights problems that exist in the world today," Bolton told reporters. "It is disappointing that she has chosen to talk about press commentary about alleged American conduct. I think the secretary of state has fully and completely addressed the substance of the allegations, so I won't go back into that again other than to reaffirm that the United States does not engage in torture."

He added: "I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers."

Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, did not name the United States in her statement. But she criticized two elements of U.S. counterterrorism policy: the use of severe interrogation techniques -- which the CIA has authorized -- and the rendition, or transfer, of suspected terrorists to countries that have engaged in torture.

Yeah, I'm going to listen to a former member of the Canadian Supreme Court. We really need the UN to lecture us on proper behavior. "Hey lady! We are the single most positive force for good in the world. We sacrifice the blood of our troops for the freedom of other nations and people, not just ourselves. We are the bastion of freedom in the world. Without America, the Soviet Union would have dominated the world." Of course, Canadians would like that because they are socialists. They have been envious of American freedom, power, wealth, and prosperity. The masses of the world migrate to America. The world looks to America to help them in times of trouble, not a bunch of Canuck Hockey Pucks. As to the your right to criticize America, I ask you to explain Darfur, Somalia, the massacres of Rwanda, the oppression in Zimbabwe.

Full Story: Louise Arbor, Barking Up the Wrong Tree

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Ms. Applebaum Please Leave Military Strategy to Those More Competent

It's Not Whether You 'Win' or 'Lose' . . .

By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A25

In recent months it has become common practice to talk about what it will take to "win" -- or what it would mean to "lose" -- the war in Iraq. Recently the pace of that talk has accelerated. Just last week President Bush published a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," presumably a follow-up to the speech in which he talked of "defeating the enemy." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also assured Congress that "we are not losing this war." Both were responding to politicians such as Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who worried out loud a few months ago that "we're losing in Iraq," as well as the experts who voice the opinion, as one did in Foreign Affairs, that "the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win."

But what if all of this vocabulary -- winning, losing, victory, defeat -- is simply misplaced? There are, after all, wars that are not actually won or lost. There are wars that achieve some of their goals, that result only in partial solutions and that leave much business unfinished. There are wars that do not end with helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy roof but that do not produce a victorious march into Berlin, either. There are wars that end ambivalently -- wars, for example, such as the one we fought in Korea.

I hasten to explain that the comparison between Iraq and Korea does not come from nowhere: It has been suggested, implicitly and explicitly, by the Bush administration itself. In a speech last year, Vice President Cheney spoke of Harry Truman, the president who took us into Korea, as a model of "the kind of leadership required to defend freedom in our time." Rumsfeld has also pointed out that Truman, like Bush, suffered from low popular approval because of the Korean War: "Back then a great many people questioned whether young Americans should face death and injury in Korea, thousands of miles from home, for a result that seemed uncertain at best. And today the answer is the Korean Peninsula."

Well, yes -- but actually it isn't all that clear that "the Korean Peninsula" really represents a slam-dunk victory, to use Bush administration terminology. Certainly in 1953, when the cease-fire was signed, no one thought so. More than 33,000 Americans died -- more than 15 times as many as have died so far in Iraq -- and more than 103,000 were wounded. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had defined "victory" as "the unification of the Korean Peninsula," but in fact the war merely preserved the status quo. The South Korean government was independent, but too weak to survive without an American military presence. Red China, as we then called it, was probably strengthened by the war, as was the tyrannical North Korean dictator, Kim Il Sung.

Fifty years later, the picture is indeed more nuanced: South Korea is a democracy, an economic success, and proof that it was right to fight communism and prevent it from spreading. And yet North Korea, which we didn't manage to push back, not only remains one of the world's most repressive and paranoid dictatorships but has also become a nuclear power that poses a continuing threat to its neighbors. Good things came out of the war. Bad things came out of the war as well.

As she has well demonstrated in the above commentary, Ms. Applebaum doesn't know or understand anything about war. The problems we face in Korea, and the fact that we didn't win there has more to do with weakness of political will than with military capacity. When politician inject themselves into the efforts to win a war, they drive us toward failure. McArthur was correct and Truman was an idiot. Bad things only come out of war if they are allowed to. Iraq victory is not questionable, as long as we have a strong leader dedicated to victory in the White House. It is only when faced with a Congress which has lost its backbone, say a Democrat controlled one as we had during the Vietnam abandonment, that we need to wonder about the possibilty of failure.

Full Editorial: Liberals Just Don't Get It

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Illegals: Get Them Out, Get Them Out Now

Study: Illegal Immigrants Not Drawn by Jobs

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A11

A majority of Mexican nationals who crossed into the United States illegally in the past two years left behind paying jobs that, in some cases, are similar to the agriculture, construction and manufacturing work they find north of the border, according to a study of Mexican immigrants released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The study seemed to explode widely held beliefs that Mexicans risk deadly trips across the Rio Grande and through broiling Arizona and New Mexico deserts solely to find work. But the Pew Center's director, Roberto Suro, said he could not say that definitively.

"There's one very clear finding and that's that unemployment per se is not a very large factor in determining whether people migrate or not," Suro said. "This is not a flow of people without jobs. Unemployment is not pushing people out. . . . "

More often, he said, the decision to migrate involve a variety of reasons, such "improvement of earnings" in Mexico, even though immigrants earn very low wages in the United States.

The study's author, Rakesh Kochhar, associate director of research for the center, said that, based on estimates, undocumented Mexican immigrants earn about twice as much in construction, manufacturing and hospitality jobs as they did working south of the border.

Other factors that contributed to Mexican migration include rejoining families and improved working conditions, Suro and Kochhar said.

The Pew Center study comes as Congress prepares to debate a number of immigration bills meant to check what appears at times to be an unimpeded flow of illegal border crossings. President Bush urged Congress to create a temporary guest worker program for immigrants, but many lawmakers are reluctant to do so without asking immigrants already in the country illegally to return home immediately or slowly over time.

The study, "The Economic Transition to America," is part of a series of reports culled from a survey of more than 4,000 Mexican nationals at consulate offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Fresno, Calif., between July 2004 and January 2005.

Thirty-two percent of men questioned said they worked in agriculture in Mexico, followed by 15 percent who were employed by manufacturers and 13 percent in commerce and sales. Women -- 19 percent -- mostly worked in commerce and sales, followed by manufacturing and domestic service.

This removes the biggest of the hollow arguments in favor of ignoring this biggest problem in Homeland Securtity we have. There is NO legitimate excuse for tolerating this rampant and uncontrolled mass migration from Mexico to the USA. Cheap labor is not a sufficient excuse for ignoring this illegal activity. Stop it Now!

Full Story: Unemployment Not Reason for Illegals

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Molly-coddling a Monster

Hussein's Trial Continues Without Him
Former Dictator's Seven Co-Defendants Were in Court

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; 8:54 AM

BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 -- The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed with an empty chair for the former dictator Wednesday after Hussein carried out his threat not to come to what he called "a court without justice."

After a four-hour delay, the five-judge panel of the special tribunal decided to go forward, with Hussein absent, to hear testimony of the torture and punishment meted out to residents of a small Iraqi village in 1982 after an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

Hussein's seven co-defendants were in court. Hussein had balked at the end of a nine-hour court session Tuesday, saying he was too exhausted to return to the courtroom Wednesday. He said he had not had a clean shirt or clean underwear in three days.

"I will not be in a court without justice. Go to hell to you and to all the agents of America," Hussein shouted as the judges filed out Tuesday evening.

Court officials were unavailable to give details of Hussein's complaints Wednesday, and American officials have insisted that even the vaguest information about his custody be withheld for security reasons.

It was previously reported that he was being held on a secure military base near the Baghdad Airport before the start of the trial in the fortified green zone in central Baghdad.

When court resumed today, a witness identified only as W described how men and women from the town of Dujail were rounded up and imprisoned, many for three to four years. The charges against Hussein allege he ordered the execution of more than 140 men.

Why isn't this guy hogtied, muzzled and dragged into this courtroom? Why are we even paying attention to traitors like Ramsey Clark? We know that he is a monster, they should just proceed with the trial with or without his cooperation.

Full Story: Hussein Protesting Trial

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Two Former Vietnam POW's: One a Voice of Reason, One of Ambition.

Brothers in the 'Hilton' now are foes on the Hill
McCain and Johnson split on the issue of how the U.S. should treat war captives

By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 6, 2005, 10:37PM

WASHINGTON - As American prisoners of war, sometimes in the same crude cell, they encountered brutal treatment at the hands of their North Vietnamese captors.

Now, more than 30 years later as Republicans in Congress, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, has positioned himself opposite Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in a legislative battle over how America should treat war captives.

Johnson has written a letter to colleagues saying McCain's anti-torture amendment would "potentially prevent us from obtaining valuable information that could avert future attacks."

The congressman said he and others opposed to McCain's proposal were not advocating torture, just seeking to avoid a potentially confusing definition of proper prisoner treatment that could tie the hands of U.S. interrogators.

"Having to potentially sift through thousands of pages of proper techniques in order to get interrogation authorization would likely compromise our ability (to gain information)," Johnson wrote. The letter was first reported in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.

The McCain provision would strictly limit Americans to using techniques approved by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. McCain has said without the United States taking such a stand, there is a greater risk of future American prisoners of war being tortured.

Johnson's spokeswoman did not return calls for comment on the letter Tuesday; McCain was traveling and could not be reached for comment. A staff member said he continued to oppose any change in his amendment, which got 90 votes in the 100-member, GOP-dominated Senate in October. (Texas' two Republican senators split. Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for; John Cornyn voted against).

Johnson and McCain first met as prisoners in the Vietnam War. Both were U.S. aviators shot down while flying combat missions.

Johnson, 75, has described vicious treatment by his captors in a book, Captive Warriors. Severe injuries to his hand, arm, shoulder and back were left untreated and compounded by beatings. He spent 72 days in leg irons. For almost three years, he was held in isolation, suffering from near starvation.

McCain, 69, suffered injuries so severe that they disqualified him for sea duty after his release. After being shot down, he endured beatings from an angry crowd. His captors tortured him repeatedly and placed him in solitary confinement for two years, as described in his book Faith of My Fathers.

Johnson's legislative letter, which has been selectively circulated by his staff, urged fellow House members to block a version of the McCain amendment to the House version of the defense appropriations bill.

Deleting the wording from the House bill would set up a struggle among House-Senate conferees when the measures are reconciled.

McCain's amendment reads: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

The Bush administration has threatened to veto any bill to which the measure is attached.

Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss have argued that in the event that America faced an imminent attack, the U.S. needs the flexibility to allow the CIA to use some techniques that the McCain provision would ban.

The administration proposed changing McCain's provision to exempt "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States ... if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."

Regardless, the White House has said repeatedly that the United States obeys existing laws banning torture.

President Bush repeated that Tuesday: "We abide by the law of the United States, that we do not torture. We will try to do everything we can to protect us within the law."

But critics say that under Bush, the Justice Department has been willing to define torture narrowly, permitting some activities barred by the Army and international conventions.

Johnson is a longtime supporter of the president's, having backed Bush over McCain during the 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign.

When McCain appeared to have Bush on the ropes after winning the New Hampshire primary, Johnson appeared with Bush in South Carolina before a critical primary there.

"I happened to be with McCain for the last year and a half in prison camp over there in Vietnam," Johnson said then. "I know him pretty well, and I know him pretty well from the Congress. He can't hold a candle to George Bush."

That last is pretty damning for "America's President, John McCain." It is apparent that Sam Johnson doesn't hold Senator McCain in very high esteem. One has to wonder it McCain didn't receive "special considerations" from the North Vietnam government once it was found out he was third generation military. They apparently considered that pretty important as they repeatedly offered to free him on those grounds. McCain has repeatedly shown himself to hold his ambition to be President above his obligation to the people of this nation. In that he resembles a Democrat more than a Republican. He only hews to the Republican line when it suits his ambitions. He also lessens his credibility when he claims that torture doesn't work and that it didn't work on him. Everyone involved in training our troops knows this to be a lie. That is why troops are now trained to "hold out as long as they possibly can" rather than that they will be court marshalled for failing to hold out.

Full Story: One Hero, One Politician

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Time for the Mayor and Council to Work for the Taxpayers not the Illegals

Council urged to let police detain illegal immigrants

By TONY FREEMANTLE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 7, 2005, 6:37AM

Houston residents asked a divided City Council Tuesday to end an official city policy that forbids local police from rounding up undocumented immigrants for being in the country illegally.

Slightly more than a dozen people appeared before the council in support of Councilman Mark Ellis' proposal to overturn the policy, which prevents officers from asking about someone's citizenship status or detaining someone for being in the country illegally.

Houston is not officially a so-called "sanctuary city," since the policy is not codified in a city ordinance. Ellis' proposal would rescind the general order that governs the policy and replace it with a city ordinance that would require officers to enforce federal immigration laws.

"Houston has never passed a resolution at City Hall designating the city as a sanctuary city," Ellis acknowledged. "But (the general order) creates the appearance of a sanctuary city."

Resident Eric Story said he was concerned about the message the policy sends to people who are contemplating coming to the United States illegally.

"What it tells them is that as long as they make the trip to Houston, they will receive protection from the mayor and the City Council," he said.

Several council members spoke up in support of Ellis' proposal, but others, including Mayor Bill White, were concerned it could be used to discriminate against people who were immigrants, legal or not, and that it would put an added burden on the city's already overtaxed police department.

Some speakers who favored the proposal said the failure of local police to enforce federal immigration laws placed law-abiding citizens at greater risk of crime at the hands of illegal immigrants.

"How many more Houstonians' blood will be spilled at the altar of political correctness?" asked Wanda Sisco-Schultz.

Those who opposed changing the order were outnumbered about 3 to 1 by those favoring it.

Houston politicians who wish to remain in office had better think long and hard before choosing to side with the illegal aliens rather than with the citizens of Houston and the United States. The issue will be framed in precisely those terms, believe me. It is a much greater threat to our safety to have undocumented potentially criminal aliens in our town than it is to have some hesitate to call 911 in an emergency. Council members, whose side are you on? That of the taxpayers of this city or those who are a net drain on the resources (which are intended for the use of our citizens) of our city? Political correctness is a dagger pointed at the heart of American society, inhibiting our citizens from exercising their true Constitutional rights out of fear of being criticized.

Full Story: If They're Illegals, Arrest Them!

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Chronicle Continues Liberal Tradition: Good News is Bad News

DeLAY FAILS TO GET CASE TOSSED OUT
With charges of money laundering upheld, hopes for a rapid resolution come up short

By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
Dec. 6, 2005, 12:44AM

AUSTIN - U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay suffered a blow to his efforts to regain his House leadership position when a judge ruled Monday that he should stand trial on felony money laundering charges in an election finance case.

Senior District Judge Pat Priest threw out charges accusing DeLay and two associates of conspiring to violate the state election code, but he upheld charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

A spokesman for DeLay called the split ruling a victory, but the congressman had hoped to gain a quick resolution to the entire case by challenging the indictments against him. The Sugar Land Republican had to relinquish his post as House majority leader when he was first indicted in September.

Some Republicans already are pushing for a House leadership vote in January to permanently replace DeLay. Priest has said he could not hold a trial in DeLay's case before early next year.

DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin of Houston, said he will ask Priest to hear additional motions to get the case thrown out of court next week. And if that fails, DeGuerin wants a trial to begin in January.

"The longer he's out of his position, the less chance there is that he can regain it. Others are going to come in and take over," DeGuerin said.

The case against DeLay, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis stems from an alleged scheme to get around the state election code's ban on corporate financing of candidates.

The DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority raised about $600,000 in corporate donations during the 2002 state elections, but Texas law restricted that money to committee administrative expenses. In September 2002, TRMPAC donated $190,000 to the Republican National Committee, which within days sent $190,000 raised from individuals to seven GOP House candidates.

Prosecutors say that was an illegal swap of money, but the three defendants claim no such trade occurred. Colyandro was TRMPAC's executive director, while Ellis was his adviser and still is the executive director of DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, or ARMPAC.

Republicans, aided by TRMPAC's fund-raising activities, gained control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections. That takeover set the stage for DeLay to push a congressional redistricting plan through the Legislature in 2003 that helped Republicans win a 21-11 majority of the state's congressional seats in 2004.

DeLay's spokesman and lawyers for Ellis and Colyandro declared Priest's ruling as a major legal victory over Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

"The court's decision to dismiss a portion of Ronnie Earle's manufactured and flawed case against Mr. DeLay underscores just how baseless and politically motivated the charges were," Kevin Madden, DeLay's spokesman, said in a statement.

"Mr. DeLay is very encouraged by the swift progress of the legal proceedings and looks forward to his eventual and absolute exoneration based on the facts and the law," Madden said.

It is Ronnie Earle, not Tom DeLay who should be investigated for abuses of power. The idea that a state prosecutor can use the frightening powers of his office in a political vendetta against a political opponent undermines the trust which must be held by the people in their government for a democratic/republic to successfully function. The pattern of behavior followed by Mr. Earle is highly suspect. Particularly worrying is the pattern of immediately impanelling a new grand jury if the prior one fails to find criminal activity. That bespeaks of a campaign rather than an investigation.

Full Story: DeLay Wins on Conspiracy Charges

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Democrats Greatest Fear: America Seeing the Truth of Them

Democrats Fear That Antiwar Remarks Could Backfire

By Jim VandeHei and Shalaigh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A01

Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders' rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year.

Several Democrats joined President Bush yesterday in rebuking Dean's declaration to a San Antonio radio station Monday that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."

The critics said that comment could reinforce popular perceptions that the party is weak on military matters and divert attention from the president's growing political problems on the war and other issues. "Dean's take on Iraq makes even less sense than the scream in Iowa: Both are uninformed and unhelpful," said Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.), recalling Dean's famous election-night roar after stumbling in Iowa during his 2004 presidential bid.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking House Democratic leader, have told colleagues that Pelosi's recent endorsement of a speedy redeployment, combined with her claim that more than half of House Democrats support her position, could backfire on the party, congressional sources said.

These sources said the two leaders have expressed worry that Pelosi is playing into Bush's hands by suggesting Democrats are the party of a quick pullout -- an unpopular position in many of the most competitive House races.

"What I want Democrats to be discussing is what the president's policies have led to," Emanuel said. He added that once discussion turns to a formal timeline for troop withdrawals, "the how and when gets buried" and many voters take away only an impression that Democrats favor retreat.

Pelosi last week endorsed a plan by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to redeploy all U.S. troops in Iraq within six months, putting her at odds with most other Democratic leaders and leading foreign policy experts in her party.

Democrats, who have not controlled the White House since 2000 and the House in more than a decade, have tried over the past year to put aside deep philosophical differences and rally behind a two-pronged strategy to return to power: Highlight the growing number of GOP scandals and score Bush's unpopular war management.

While the party is divided over the specifics of Iraq policy, most Democratic legislators are slowly coalescing around a political plan, according to lawmakers and party operatives. This would involve setting a broad time frame for drawing down U.S. troops, starting with National Guard and reserve units, internationalizing the reconstruction effort, and blaming Bush for misleading the country into a war without a victory plan.

The aim is to provide the party enough maneuvering room to allow Democrats to adjust their position as conditions in Iraq change -- and fix public attention mostly on Bush's policies rather the details of a Democratic alternative. A new Time magazine poll found 60 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Bush's handling of Iraq.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) embodies this cautious approach. He has resisted adopting a concrete Iraq policy and persuaded most Democratic senators to vote for a recent Senate resolution calling 2006 "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" and to compel the administration "to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq." While Republicans introduced the resolution, it was prompted by a Democratic plan.

Democratic Reps. Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher, both of California, plan to push House Democrats to adopt a similar position during a closed-door meeting today that is to include debate on the Pelosi position.

Once more we are granted an incite into the black heart of the Democrat Party. Notice that none of them are actually willing to disagree with Murtha and Pelosi (except of course for the heroic Senator Lieberman), they just don't want to openly acknowledge their beliefs until the polls indicate that it is safe to do so. You see they can't afford for America to actually win this war, they have far too much of their political capital invested in our defeat. They just don't want the American people to find out their desire for our defeat. So they jump on their own anytime they get close to expressing what they are all thinking. This time, Murtha alone could easily have been passed off as a heroic, but slightly "cracked," old man and left at that. But when the Wicked Witch of the West poked her nose into that discussion, she instantly rocked the boat. Now suddenly the Democrats can't back-peddle fast enough. "Instant withdrawl?" "Nobody said anything about instant withdrawal." Kind of like the punchline from that old joke about someone caught stealing chickens, "Nobody in here but us chickens."

Full Story: Democrats "Stealing Chickens"

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True Conservatives Don't Fear the Fight, Only the Betrayal

Dodging Debate On Alito

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page A29

When conservatives revolted against President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, they proudly proclaimed their desire for a big debate over constitutional principles. Now they are running from the fight.

No, they are not giving up on Samuel "I am and always have been a conservative" Alito. They just want to act as if their ardent support for Alito has nothing to do with his ideas or how he might rule. Whatever Alito said in the past that proves conservatives are right in seeing him as a comrade in arms is supposed to be irrelevant to the Senate's debate over his confirmation.

Last week a 1985 memo emerged in which Alito, then a Reagan administration lawyer, outlined a strategy to "advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects."

Alito seems, really and truly, to believe that Roe was a mistake. In his now famous letter seeking a promotion during the Reagan years, Alito said that he was proud of his work in the administration advancing arguments "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Believing that Roe was wrongly decided is a perfectly respectable position. Many, perhaps most, conservatives hold this view. So do some liberal supporters of abortion rights.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said that the court overreached in Roe . In his indispensable new book, "Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America," University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein -- obviously no conservative -- sees Roe as having "shaky constitutional foundations."

While Sunstein questions the wisdom of overturning Roe now, he understands why it enraged so many conservatives. "With its ambitious ruling, not at all firmly rooted in precedent," Sunstein writes, "the court allowed pro-life citizens to think that they had been treated with contempt -- as if their own moral commitments could be simply brushed aside by federal judges."

You would think that Alito and his supporters would welcome a principled discussion of Roe. In fact, they want to change the subject. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Alito about that letter seeking a promotion, she said he told her: "First of all, it was different then. . . . I was an advocate seeking a job. It was a political job. And that was 1985."

Rather than defend his letter, in other words, Alito preferred to leave the impression that he might have been engaging in a bit of opportunism. Does that mean that 20 years from now, he will say that his statements to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were simply those of an appeals court judge seeking a promotion and were never intended to be taken too seriously?

Alito's supporters also tried hard to minimize the importance of the Roe strategy memo. Steve Schmidt, the White House official who is managing the Alito confirmation, said reading the memo as an indication of "how he would rule as a Supreme Court justice" is "a fairly absurd proposition."

When it comes to having an argument about abortion, the administration's strategy is to cut and run.

There are some conservatives who realize the danger for Alito and their cause if he is seen as evasive. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Terry Eastland, who served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration, noted that "the views Alito stated in his 1985 essay were plainly and proudly his own, and for that reason they cannot so easily be set aside." Eastland added: "The better strategy for Alito is the more credible one of straightforwardly discussing the substance of what he wrote."

I would suggest that Mr. Dionne get outside of the beltway and talk to some real Conservatives. Those of us who are not steeped in the culture of the D.C. coffee and dinner circuit, are not afraid of conflict, we look forward to the battles in Congress, we relish the dismantling of the straw men the Liberals prop up to divert the debate from the truth that Samuel Alito is among the most qualified candidates ever to sit before the Senate for confirmation. I don't fear the "Borking" offered by light-weights like Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer. The only ones we can't fight are the spineless members of our own team. When faced with the weakness of Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe and "Republicans" of their ilk, it is then we see the great need for more hard work in our party, in conveying the Conservative message clearly through the fog of distortion and lies of the Liberal Press. I would rather go down in a losing effort fought on honorable and honest grounds than to have to compromise my Conservative ethics to "sneak" a good one in.

Full Story: Misreading Conservatives

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Forget Rumsfeld, Richard Cohen Knows What's Best for the American Military

Let Rumsfeld Go

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page A29

Subjecting the newly declassified White House "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" to a cynically inspired computer search, I find that the name "Donald Rumsfeld" is missing from the document's 35 pages. A reasonable person would be confounded by this. How can we have "Victory in Iraq" if the man in command has already brought us defeat?

"Defeat" may be too strong a word, but if so, that's only for the moment. If, in fact, U.S. troops pull out of Iraq anytime before their mission is accomplished -- the plan of some Democrats and the wish of a few Republicans -- then defeat is surely what this debacle will be called. Even if that does not happen, any victory that comes three years and more than 2,000 U.S. military deaths later than promised cannot be considered a triumph. Call it what you will, but at the very least it's a tragedy.

Yet the man who has had prime responsibility for Iraq, for planning for the war, waging it and then occupying the country, remains precisely what he has been all this time -- the head of the American military, the secretary of defense, the very honorable (but not very capable) Donald Rumsfeld. His mistakes, miscalculations and arrogant dismissal of dissent have cost American (and Iraqi) lives and prolonged the conflict. If there has been a worse secretary of defense, it could only be Robert McNamara. History has hung Vietnam around his neck like a noose.

Similarly, Iraq will be Rumsfeld's constant companion. He will be faulted for insisting on fighting the war on the cheap -- in terms of both manpower and money. He did not bring enough troops to the task, and when one of his senior generals, the Army chief of staff, Eric K. Shinseki, warned before the war that the occupation would require "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers," he was quickly steered to his next assignment, a retirement community. A four-star had been humbled, and all down the line the brass got the message: Stick with the program.

That program was Rumsfeld's. Early on it meant that the Bush administration eschewed "nation-building," which was some sort of do-gooder enterprise favored by the dreamy Clinton people. Rumsfeld gave a speech titled "Beyond 'Nation-Building,' " which said the United States was out of that line of work. Unfortunately, it is precisely what the United States needed to do in Iraq. The Pentagon left it to others.

Under Rumsfeld's plan, the United States never had enough troops on the ground -- still doesn't, actually. It was Rumsfeld who thought the United States would get into Iraq and then swiftly get out -- leaving nation-building to the United Nations and similar agencies, maybe the Boy Scouts. He dismissed the looting that stripped Iraq bare following the war, setting the stage for the chaos and lawlessness that persist to this day. He made Jay Garner the viceroy of Iraq and then replaced him with L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, who sacked the Iraqi army and much of the bureaucracy -- a huge mistake. Under Rumsfeld, just about nothing has gone right.

Now this is what we need, the clear thinking of some Northeast Liberal Columnist telling us how to run the war. Such brilliant lines as victory "that comes three years and more than 2,000 U.S. military deaths later than promised cannot be considered a triumph. Call it what you will, but at the very least it's a tragedy." proves nothing if it doesn't prove that God was surely watching over America when President Bush was elected instead of some Northeast Liberal. Most certainly no one promised early, cheap or easy victory. I suppose it is the booze and drugs that Cohen is obviously consuming in mass quantities which distorts the Presidents words about being in it for the long hall and how this is not going to be easy, into a "promise" that we would win it in a couple of months. Or perhaps Mr. Cohen has secret access to the President for special interviews, during which the President personally promised him a quick simple victory. We are presented here with clear evidence of what we Conservatives have been saying for decades vis. Liberals tell their lies so often that they begin to believe them themselves. Hey Richard, stop bogarting and let others get some of that halucinogenic vapor you've been breathing.

Full Opinion: Cohen's Drug Trip

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Make Them Permanent: Any Other Decision "Stoopid!"

Bush Renews Push for Extending Tax Cuts

By Michael A. Fletcher and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page A02

KERNERSVILLE, N.C., Dec. 5 -- Intensifyin