Gonzales Morning Funnies

That wacky Alberto!

From yesterday's hearings:

I wonder what Washington had on his ipod?

GONZALES: President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.

They sometimes forget

BIDEN: Thank you very much.

General, how has this revelation damaged the program?

I'm almost confused by it but, I mean, it seems to presuppose that these very sophisticated Al Qaida folks didn't think we were intercepting their phone calls.

I mean, I'm a little confused. How did it damage this?

GONZALES: Well, Senator, I would first refer to the experts in the Intel Committee who are making that statement, first of all. I'm just the lawyer.

And so, when the director of the CIA says this should really damage our intel capabilities, I would defer to that statement. I think, based on my experience, it is true -- you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance.

But if they're not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget.

(LAUGHTER)

Rumor Confirmed: Hillary Hearts Casey

I had heard a long time ago that Hillary Clinton was one of the primary forces behind The-Powers-That-Be's decision to ram Santorum-Lite candidate Bob "I'm so boring that I put myself to sleep" Casey down the throats of the Pennsylvania electorate.

We now know that, at the very least, she is strongly supporting the pro-Alito Casey:

From the New York Post:

February 3, 2006 -- WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — who supports abortion rights and is the darling of pro-choice women's groups — gave $10,000 to a staunchly right-to-life candidate in Pennsylvania, The Post has learned. Clinton ponied up the maximum donation allowed under the law to Democratic Senate hopeful Bob Casey, even though he has been skewered by pro-choice groups for his anti-abortion position.

It was the largest donation Clinton gave to any politician in 2005 and was made by her political action committee, HillPAC, records show.

[snip]

HillPAC gave $5,000 apiece to six of Clinton's Senate colleagues up for re-election this year, but saved the big bucks for Casey and Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former Ku Klux Klan member who was one of just four Dems to vote for Alito.

HillPAC's big payouts to Casey and Byrd come as the committee's bank account flounders with just $48,786 in free-and-clear cash.

Casey was handpicked by Sen. Charles Schumer — who is leading Democratic efforts to retake the Senate — to oust the conservative Santorum this fall, believing a pro-lifer like Casey is the party's only hope to win in the battleground state.

So now we have both of New York state's supposedly pro-choice, anti-Alito senators outed as Vichy Dems.

See? She was covert!

From Michael Isikoff in Newsweek:

Newly released court papers could put holes in the defense of Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in the Valerie Plame leak case. Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.

But then again we knew that.

IMPEACH

The Domestic Surveillance Hearings Start Today

The Associated Press is reporting:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not adequately justified why the Bush administration failed to seek court approval for domestic surveillance, said the senator in charge of a hearing Monday on the program.

Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes that President Bush violated a 1978 law specifically calling for a secret court to consider and approve such monitoring. The Pennsylvania Republican branded Gonzales' explanations to date as "strained and unrealistic."

And the thing we have to keep in mind is that the Presiddent also lied about the surveillance. On April 20, 2004, he said:

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

He said "...a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed..." He's lying right there. And then he said "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." He's lying right there, too.

But back to Tim Russert's interview with Specter. On whether he thinks the Congress gave the administration the authority in October 2002, Specter said this (you'll have to scroll down for the transcript):

I believe that contention is very strained and unrealistic. The authorization for the use of force doesn’t say anything about electronic surveillance, issue was never raised with the Congress. And there is a specific statute on the books, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which says flatly that you can’t undertake that kind of surveillance without a court order.

MR. RUSSERT: The White House also says that they didn’t go to Congress because people in Congress told them that they would compromise this surveillance plan if they requested permission to conduct it.

SEN. SPECTER: Well, the administration also has said, Attorney General Gonzalez has been questioned, reported, and I asked this in a letter I sent to him, saying that if the administration went to Congress, they were likely to be denied the authority. So, it’s very hard in that kind of a context to claim that Congress intended to give the authority if the administration thought that Congress would turn it down.

And then:

Now, on the issue as to whether the program would be compromised, you don’t know that until the administration goes to the Intelligence Committees, or the chairmen and the ranking, and lays the program on the line with sufficient detail so that there can be some Congressional oversight. And I think up until this time, Tim, that’s never been done.

MR. RUSSERT: The President has said that there have been at least 12 briefings of senior members of Congress.

SEN. SPECTER: Well, the statute requires that the committee be informed. And the committee constitutes 15 members. And they have the so-called “gang of eight”: the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committees of each House, and the majority leader and the Democratic leader in each House. That really is not—is not what the statute requires. And if the administration thinks that’s too broad because the Congress leaks, and regrettably that’s a fact of life, we ought to change the law. They’ve never asked us to do that. And I think we would do that if they could have a showing that a more restrictive approach is warranted.

Hmm. They violated the law, failed to inform Congress and lied about it all. What else can be said?

Oh, that's right:

IMPEACH

My Neighborhood on Steelers

This was the scene two blocks from my house about two hours after the game ended.




This is the far end of the celebrations on Pittsburgh's South Side.


The police had already swept the streets a couple of times and weren't letting anyone get closer to thick of the crowd about 5 blocks further down.


Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, but it was snowing (and obviously pretty dark).

GO STILLERS!

UPDATE: WOO HOO!

What's wrong with this picture?

From the State of the Union Address:

Third, we need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country.

Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced placement courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs.

Ok, it sounds like the man who once endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design has maybe come to his senses and is now showing a new-found respect for science.

But then again, maybe not. There's this from the NYTimes:

A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for "scientific openness" throughout the agency.

"It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."

The statement came six days after The New York Times quoted the scientist, James E. Hansen, as saying he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He and intermediaries in the agency's 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters.

Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that beyond Dr. Hansen's case, there were several other instances in which political appointees had sought to control the flow of scientific information from the agency.

They called or e-mailed The Times and sent documents showing that news releases were delayed or altered to mesh with Bush administration policies.

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

And who is this George Deutsch? At the end of the Times' article it says this:

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.

The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity. [emphasis added]

So why bother with science education any more? No need for all those billions of dollars spent on "experiments" that collect "data." All we really need is some 24 year old political appointee with a journalism degree to tell us what's true about the universe. It's a religious issue, you know.

I remember hearing a story about the trashing of the library at Alexandria in the 7th century. The story goes that when Omar, the caliph who'd just conquered the city, was asked about all the books in the library and what should be done with them, he reportedly answered, "If they agree with the Koran, they're unnecessary; if they disagree, they're pernicious." So they torched the whole lot.

Thanks be to Maria, she's blessed us with some art work:

Oh yea:
IMPEACH

Some numbers to keep in mind

From Editor and Publisher:

A new Gallup Poll, conducted in late January, reveals that just 39% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling Iraq, with 58% disapproving.

Over half (53%) now say the administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," with 46% disagreeing. Gallup notes that this finding is "essentially reversed" from one year ago.

Last time I checked, 53% was a majority.

Then there's this from a recent ABC/Washington Post poll taken in January 23-26 of approx 500 adults nationwide. When asked whether they believed whether the statement "He is honest and trustworthy" applies to George Bush, 53% said no.

Last time I checked, 53% was a majority.

Two different polls show that majorities of Americans believe that the administration deliberately misled the public about WMD and that Bush himself is not "honest and trustworthy."

Something, I guess, we missed while getting our news from the "so-called liberal media."

Hey, and wasn't there a poll out there that said that if the president misled the country (which the polling data suggests a majority of Americans already believe) that the congress should consider some sort of constitutional solution?

But I can't remember the word...oh, that's right. The word is:

IMPEACH

They just can't help themselves...

Or as AmericaBlog puts it:

"They even steal their own elections."

From Roll Call:

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.

And speaking of the Right Reverend BONER, NJDC has a piece titled "New GOP Leader Chosen: What Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner."

Actually everyone needs to know what they have to say.

Very Scary!

Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?

I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on. It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?

Read the rest of Senator Russ Feingold's KOS Diary HERE.

Freep this poll

Vote here for Berner/Hafer:

http://politicspa.com/BallotBox.htm

More evidence of Bush's Lies

From the Guardian in the UK:

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.[emphasis added]

Oh, my. Seems that there's a memo that the Bush administration (and its defenders) won't like. Some highlights of the memo:

Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".

Can someone tell me why we should believe anything this president says anymore?

IMPEACH

Bush: If my lips are moving, I'm lying

I'm full of shit!


That didn't take long:

Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

[snip]

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

[snip]

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

Republicans applaude lies.

What else did he lie about?

SOTU: Bush Did Not Inform Appropriate Members of Congress

Bush said: “Appropriate Members of Congress have been kept informed.”

FACT – BUSH BROKE THE LAW BY NOT INFORMING APPROPRIATE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS: The non-partisan Congressional research service concluded that the Bush administration broke the law by not informing the full Intelligence Committees. The New York Times reports:

A legal analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concludes that the Bush administration’s limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping without warrants are ‘’inconsistent with the law.'’

SOTU: Bush Falsely Claims That Previous Administration Did The Same Thing

Bush said: “Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have.”

FACT – BUSH IGNORE THE LAW, OTHER ADMINISTRATIONS FOLLOWED IT: The White House has made this claim before and the AP debunked it:

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

“I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds,” McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

You can learn about all the lies Bush told during the State of the Union Speech at Think Progress...

...or you can just close your eyes to the truth.



If I close my eyes nobody can see me lie.

Keith!

Olbermann smacks back at O'Reilly

Must watch TV!

Democracy for Pittsburgh Meetup Tonight!

Candidates Speaking Tonight at DfP's Meetup:

Mike Isaac - candidate for US Congress, 14th District
www.isaacforcongress.org

Jason Phillips - candidate for PGH City Council, 3rd District
www.jasonforcouncil.com

Dan Cindric - candidate for State House District 27
www.cindric2006.com

Ed Gainey - candidate for State House District 24

Lisa Bennington - candidate for State House District 21
www.lisaforhouse.com

Mark Rauterkus - candidate for PGH City Council, 3rd District
elect.rauterkus.com

Susan Banahasky - candidate for State House District 20
www.susaninthehouse.org

Chad Kluko - candidate for US Congress, 18th District
www.chadklukoforcongress.com

Frank Pistella - candidate for State House District 21
http://www.pahouse.com/pistella/index.asp

Event Title: Monthly Meetup
Event Type: DFA-Link Meeting
Organized by: Democracy for Pittsburgh
Event Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Event Time: 7:00 PM
Venue Name: Mario’s South Side Saloon (upstairs)
Address: 1514 E Carson St
City: Pittsburgh
State: PA
Zip Code: 15203
Phone Number: 412-381-5610

Please R.S.V.P here.

****************

Last month, Chuck Pennacchio was one of the speakers and was met by MUCH enthusiasm:


www.chuck2006.com

You can see pictures of all the candidates who spoke last month (including VALERIE MCDONALD ROBERTS, PAT SWEENEY, and WILLIAM ANDERSON) at Democracy for Pittsburgh's website.

Dan Simpson Gets it Right - Again

In a larger column on the fear mongering of the Bush-Junta, Dan Simpson writes:

The most recent example of that phenomenon is the bugging issue. Even though a perfectly workable and efficient legal procedure exists through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to tap the phones and read the e-mails of anyone who could conceivably be a threat to American security, President Bush decided nonetheless in 2002 to begin breaking that law and establishing surveillance of anyone he liked -- or didn't like -- in disregard of the law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.

On that basis, hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans have had their communications intercepted and monitored by the National Security Agency. Even assuming that the information NSA picked up was important and useful -- most of which the FBI says was not -- there is no reason in the world why the warrants couldn't have been obtained, even after the fact, that would have made the action legal, keeping Mr. Bush in observance of the law.

Now the White House is telling us that we should be glad that the president is taking that illegal action, in the name of keeping us safe, in the process playing to Americans' fear of another terrorist attack. The truly frightening part is that polls show an important percentage of the American population ready to sell off their privacy and this important segment of their constitutionally guaranteed rights in response to the false White House claim that they will be safer for doing so.

There you have it. In each of those three paragraphs, Dan Simpson makes the same point we've been making here for a long time.

George Bush is breaking the law.

Now if we can only get Simpson to agree with us about that pesky "I" word. Which "I" word, you ask? You know the one I'm talking about.

IMPEACH

Completely self-serving blog post.

Hey, gang.

Take a look at this.

I wrote it.

IMPEACH

Tonight

Alternate State of the Union by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal Delivers State of the Union: "Let the Powers That Be Know There is Something Called We the People of the U.S. and all Sovereignty Rests in Us."

Video & Text: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/31/1532246


Progress Pittsburgh Meeting
The first meeting of Progress Pittsburgh for 2006 will be held this evening at 7:00 pm at the Union Project, 801 N Negley Ave. at the corner of Negley and Stanton.

Agenda: http://progresspittsburgh.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=338


Get Smashed
The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat has some link to some complicated drinking game involving some TV show on tonight -- we say just take a gulp every time the camera shows Hillary. That ought to do it.

Link: http://angrydrunkbureaucrat.blogspot.com/2006/01/state-of-union-drinking-game.html

The 2005 Koufax Awards: Best Post Nominations

You can't vote yet, but the nominations are up:

The 2005 Koufax Awards: Best Post

This compilation is of the 222 (+/-) nominations for Best Posts in the Lefty Blogosphere. Voting will open up when all the Koufax nomination posts are complete. Drumroll please.....

2 Political Junkies: Absolut Corruption
2 Political Junkies: Dreaming With Bush
2 Political Junkies: "The Plan"

Check out the other 220 or so Best of the Left here.

The Filibuster: Saving it for something REALLY important

January 30, 2007

The following Democratic Senators voted with Republicans for cloture today on a bill to make George W. Bush "Our Glorious and Infallible Leader for Life:"

Akaka, Daniel K. (D-HI), Baucus, Max (D-MT), Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM), Byrd, Robert C. (D-WV), Cantwell, Maria (D-WA), Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE), Conrad, Kent (D-ND), Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND), Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI), Johnson, Tim (D-SD), Kohl, Herb (D-WI), Landrieu, Mary L. (D-LA), Lieberman, Joseph I. (D-CT), Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR), Nelson, Bill (D-FL), Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-NE), Pryor, Mark L. (D-AR), Rockefeller, John D., IV (D-WV), Salazar, Ken (D-CO)

After the vote, they released a statement saying they were saving a filibuster for something "really important."

(Crossposted at Daily KOS )