Why is Waxman having baseball hearings?

Doesn’t strike me as the Oversight Committee’s highest priority. Strikes me as a Republican-like “oh, look over there….” kind of cover for not doing the real work…am I wrong?

Like, how about a little more attention to this?

Typical Bush law-breaking

TPM

Politicization to a degree forbidden by the law. This is lawbreaking. And of course, the law enforcement apparatus is captive and impotent, according to Bush’s “unitary executive” bullshit. So there is no enforcement against the king; he is above the law.

Same kind of thing is going on at the Federal Elections Commission, Consumer Safety, on and on…

The packing scheme relies on Republican commissioners changing their party affiliation to “Independent” after they’ve been appointed, thus creating room for more Republicans to be appointed (there can be no more than four commissioners at any one time from a single party).

The Republicans who’ve switched their affiliation, of course, have denied changing them just to create more room for other conservatives. Abigail Thernstrom was no different, telling the Boston Globe‘s Charlie Savage that she’d just decided that she’d be “most comfortable” as an independent.

But her comfortability level appears to have abruptly changed. In December, the president reappointed her to the commission, but this time as a Republican, after one of the four Republican nominees left. The move also allowed her to become the commission’s vice chairman.

So to retrace her steps: she was first nominated as a Republican, then registered as an independent, then was re-nominated as an Republican. With that move, the commission’s conservative majority drops to five to two — it’s not clear yet who the eighth nominee will be, or what party he or she will represent. But not to worry: the committee can move forward on business with a simply majority, so the commission’s direction shouldn’t change that much.

Florida, Hans von Spakovsky deny vote to 13,000 US citizens

Thanks to Hans von Spakovsky, the crack Florida legislature, and one whacked out Nigerian, 14,000 US citizens in Fl are going to be denied their basic right to vote. Of course, Hans’ targets were blacks and hispanics, and that makes up most of the total, but there must be a bunch of white people, maybe even a few suburban white males in that bunch. I hope to hell the Republicans who got caught in this anti-democratic/Democratic scam will begin to realize what Amerika is coming to under Bush, Rove, Hans von Spakovsky, and their ilk. Via Josh Marshall, link to Southwest Florida’s News-Press:

County election officials say the number of voters lost through Florida’s central registration system is small — 90 percent of applications get voter cards.

oh, by the way; that ten percent: that was 76,000 people on the initial run.
According to Marshall:

The law, first implemented in January, 2006, was based on advice from Hans von Spakovsky — yet another addition to his legacy of voter suppression at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Civil rights groups, calling the measure “disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy,” have sued to halt the law in an attempt to minimize the effect on the 2008 election.

As far as I know, there was only one person convicted of voter fraud in Florida in the past several years, a confused Nigerian. But under the Bushist regime, we are denying the vote to 14,000 (at this point) mostly minorities:

— three-quarters of them minorities — didn’t make it through that last set of hoops.

Of course, just by coincidence, THESE folks are the most affected:

Blacks were 6 1/2 times more likely than whites to be rejected at that step.

Hispanics were more than 7 times more likely to be failed.

Too bad; better luck next life, if you are reborn as either white or a Republican:

Unaccepted but also not denied, they remain in limbo as “incomplete” or, often, sitting in Florida’s new statewide voter registration system with no designation at all.

State law requires those “lost” voters to be notified; most contacted said they were unaware of the problem…. Applications that don’t match are reviewed by the Department of State, fixed by hand if the problem is obvious, and forwarded to the county for its own determination of whether to fix the application or leave it in limbo.

By law, applicants must be told if their registrations are incomplete. Voting rights advocates complain those notices, when they are sent, often fail to explain the problem.

The Nigerian I mentioned: yes, US Attorney Gregory Miller’s coup that allowed him to get off the US Attorney hit list:

Gregory R. Miller, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, announced today that KOLAWOLE A. OLAOGUN a/k/a YOMI OLAGUN, 53, of Tallahassee, Florida was convicted by a jury of one count of falsely claiming United States citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote, one count of falsely representing himself to be a United States citizen on a voter change of address form, and two counts of illegally voting in a federal election. Evidence introduced at trial established that Olaogun falsely claimed to be a United States citizen when he registered to vote and later voted during federal elections, including the 2004 Presidential Election. As a lawful permanent resident, Olaogun did not have the legal right to vote.

The idea has always been to encourage people to vote, not the reverse. Judge Mukasey/Dianne Feinstein, where do you stand on this issue? What are you going to do about 14,000 Floridians who are being denied the vote? What do you think of the nomination of von Spakovsky to the FEC? How about enforcing the Voting Rights Act? is that an idea? Doesn’t the Clue Train stop at your station four times a day? How about offloading a few?

MSNBC poll: 89% want Bush impeached

at this moment, close to 600,000 votes have been cast.

Freakin impressive.

Mike McConnell: caught again trying to deceive Congress

Digby

….DNI Michael McConnell? I understand that spooks, by nature and profession, are liars, but this fellow is not supposed to be political, and we are ostensibly in a democracy in which government employees — all government employees — work for the people. They are not allowed to lie to the people’s representatives, even if they think it’s for our own good.

McConnell’s position is supposed to be non-partisan and apolitical. And yet he is known to have consciously misled the congress, threatened them with “being responsible for American deaths” if they don’t do what he says and, it’s quite clear, strategized the FISA bill abortion last August with the White house, which is a big no-no. It’s a bad idea to trust anyone with the kind of power this man wields without strenuous oversight. It’s political malpractice to trust a man this manipulative and dishonest. He is a problem.

Here’s the latest example of his blatant (and disturbingly sloppy, which explains why our intelligence agencies can’t find water if they fall out of a boat) misleading of the congress:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told Congress last week that a May wiretap that targeted Iraqi insurgents was delayed for 12 hours by attempts to comply with onerous surveillance laws, which slowed an effort to locate three U.S. soldiers who had been captured south of Baghdad.

But new details released this week portray a more complicated picture of the delay, which actually lasted about 9 1/2 hours and was caused primarily by legal wrangling between the Justice Department and intelligence officials over whether authorities had probable cause to begin the surveillance.

…
This is why all this “trust us, we’re keeping the boogeyman rom killing you in your bed” is so dangerous. Michael McConnell has repeatedly lied to congress. You can’t trust liars. If they needed this power for legitimate reasons they would have no reason to make up scenarios to justify it. They can always go behind closed doors and share classified information with the people’s representatives who are authorized to receive it. Indeed, we expect them to o it. The only conclusion you can come to is that they are using this power for nefarious reasons.

Michael McConnell has given interviews that call his judgment into question. He is a proven liar. He has shown himself to be a tool of the Bush Administration. What in the world is this man doing in charge of some of the most delicate intelligence functions in the government? He had a reputation for rectitude before took the job. but he either became tainted by the Cheney/Addington paranoid vision or he was highly overrated. Either way, the congress should never take his word for anything. There’s something very wrong with him.

Bob Cesca: America used to be really goddamned awesome

link

On watching Ken Burn’s The War:

One day long ago, it was okay to wish for an end to a war, without being accused of hating the soldiers who were fighting it. It was once a given that socialized public education, police, fire departments, roads, parks, national defense and the constitutionally mandated General Welfare & Domestic Tranquility were simply a part of the American way of life and would always be there.

And when our nation had to go to war, we would be there for her.

Conversely, when we crumble to the pressure of our reactionary and authoritarian elements, we get Japanese internment camps, the rise of the military industrial complex, and men turned away from service due to the color of their skin. Some of our greatest failures have been conceived when our irrationality, fear and lust for power overrule our traditional American ideals — even during our finest hours as a nation.

And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

The Bush Years have been a monumental, cataclysmic failure on most fronts due to its inattention to what has, historically, made American great. The president and his thinning ranks of fawn-eyed Hannities don’t understand this yet. They don’t understand it mostly because they’re too ignorant — blinded by sloganeering — to the very basic reality that Bush Republican style government, in practice, is about as successful and practical as a paper condom. It always has been.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when they compare the Bush Wars to World War II. It’s a desperate notion, one that seeks to conflate our current president with greatness he doesn’t deserve and an historical legacy he will never achieve. It’s also meant to inflate our current “enemies” to Hitler status, and thus proving the case for war.

The comparison is pure horseshit.

Bush advising Hillary Clinton on Iraq (?!)

I have no idea whether this is true or not. But it is clear that the Republicans want Hillary Clinton to be nominated, and that they are trying to move her as far to the right as possible. Sen. Clinton thinks that being a hawk and a conservative will make more Republicans and “undecideds” vote for her. In actuality, it will make it easier for the Republicans to win. Look, no Republican is going to vote Clinton even if she joined the Federalist Society. And if the rest of the country sees no difference between Clinton and whatever bozo gets the Republican nomination, the rest of the country will stay home on election day. Combined with the voter suppression tactics that have been put and place, and new ones that will be unveiled on election day, the Republicans might actually win the presidency. And, as we have seen, that is all it takes to establish a dictatorship.

link: President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

Andrew Sullivan:

“I’ve been able to get a lot of Republican and independent support in this campaign,” she said on Fox News Sunday. Hmmm. Over to Gallup’s Frank Newport:

In our latest head-to-head poll pitting Clinton against Rudy Giuliani, Clinton gets only a lowly 8% of the Republican vote. Furthermore, a special analysis of over 7000 Gallup poll interviews conducted from June through September of this year shows that Hillary Clinton has only a 15 percent favorable, 83 percent unfavorable rating among Republicans. (She does better among independents.) That does not appear to be “a lot” of Republican support.

Supreme Court to rule on voter ID laws

Here is the test of the Republican strategy to win the 2008 elections by disenfranchising millions of Americans who are poor, elderly, or don’t drive.  The Republicans also rely on purging voter roles of those whose names are similar to felons’, and on creating long lines in Democratic precincts, and on spreading disinformation about voting times and places. And of course, they rely on the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court to bail them out.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter the poor and minorities from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections.

The justices will hear arguments early next year in a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to present photo ID before casting their ballots. The state has defended the law as a way to combat voter fraud.

The state Democratic party and civil rights groups complained that the law unfairly targets poor and minority voters, without any evidence that in-person voter fraud exists in Indiana. The party argued that those voters tend to be Democrats.

Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona and Michigan, but struck down Missouri’s. Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a challenge to Georgia’s voter identification law, saying the statute does not impose a significant burden on the right to vote.

Election law experts had urged the court to take the Indiana case to instruct courts on how to weigh claims of voter fraud versus those of disenfranchisement. “The court better resolve this question before ballots start getting counted next fall,” said Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan.

The court is expected to issue a decision by late June, in time for the November general election.

The Indiana law enacted in 2005 was upheld by a federal judge and by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Before the law’s passage, an Indiana voter had only to sign a poll book at the polling place, where a photo copy of the voter’s signature was kept on file for comparison.

“The purpose of the Indiana law is to reduce voting fraud, and voting fraud impairs the right of legitimate voters to vote by diluting their votes,” Judge Richard Posner said in his majority opinion.

But in a dissent, Judge Terence Evans said, “Let’s not beat around the bush. The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by folks believed to skew Democratic.”

Bill Groth, an attorney who has represented the Indiana Democratic Party in the lawsuit, said he was thrilled that the nation’s highest court will take up the case. He said the appeals court made light of the right to vote in its decision, but the Supreme Court has guarded that right more seriously.

“The court has over and over stressed that the right to vote should be protected, and any state law that burdens that right should be carefully and meticulously reviewed,” Groth said.

The voter ID challenge was among 17 new cases accepted by the court in advance of the start of its new term on Monday.

The cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25.

The politicization of the Department of Justice started long before the US attorney scandal

link

Elizabeth de la Vega at Atlantic Free Press:

Ashcroft did not disappoint. Almost immediately, he delighted Christian conservatives by gathering his subordinates together on federal property to participate in daily Pentecostal Christian prayer meetings. (Hey, they were voluntary meetings and anyone — Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Buddhist, Atheist, Wiccan — could participate, so what is the big deal?) In May 2001, he turned to another top priority: undermining gun prosecutions by formally advising the NRA that the DOJ would no longer take the position that the Second Amendment does not guarantee private citizens the right to bear arms, a 180 degree shift from longstanding DOJ policy.

Using the DOJ to repay the gun lobby that had donated over $1 million to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign was a trifle, however, compared to the decision to pull the plug on over 50 environmental cases against air-polluting power plants and refineries that had also, coincidentally, been huge donors to the Republican party in the 2000 election. In late June of 2001, the DOJ not only suspended its lawsuits against the energy companies, but advised them to abandon the pollution-control upgrades they were implementing as part of pending settlement agreements. This, as we now know, was merely the beginning of the administration’s use of both the Ashcroft and Gonzales DOJ to benefit big business at the expense of the environment — an assault that is now in its sixth year.

Also in its sixth year is the assault on civil rights and liberties Bush and Cheney set in motion in 2001 — with the wholehearted cooperation of Ashcroft and so many others in the highest levels of the very agency specifically designated to uphold those rights and liberties.

It was, for example, the head of the DOJ’s criminal division — the current Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff — who, in the fall of 2001, supervised the round-up of over 1000 Arab and Muslim non-citizens within the United States, holding them as “material witnesses” to offenses that were never quite specified. Although the men were imprisoned for months, often in solitary confinement, Chertoff refused to allow them to have lawyers, because — he argued without apparent irony — they were not charged with a crime. In 2003, the DOJ’s inspector general called this draconian mass detention “indiscriminate and haphazard.” Ashcroft’s response to that charge? He would “make no apology.”

It was Ashcroft who, in 2001, first lobbied Congress for broad expansion of government surveillance powers in the form of the Patriot Act, which included changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What we did not know, however, was at the same time the attorney general and his minions were secretly acquiescing to widespread violations of that same law. Because the administration has slithered away from oversight and accountability at every turn, we still — six years later — know almost nothing about the executive branch’s illegal surveillance.

Of all the lawlessness sanctioned and nurtured by the DOJ since Bush and Cheney took office, none is more horrifying than the treatment of the thousands who have been detained in the name of the undeclared “War on Terror.” As we now know, on September 25, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft’s subordinate John Yoo penned a memo which informed the president that he had virtually unlimited authority to take retaliatory or preventive action against “terrorists.”

Beginning in October of 2001 — with the door to any and all forms of illegal government conduct having been thrown open by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel — Ashcroft, Chertoff and many other DOJ officials watched and offered counsel to advance a program of mass detentions in Afghanistan and elsewhere that were, more often than not, based on unreliable information and even mere whim. They acquiesced in the torture of these prisoners by both our own and foreign governments, attempting to justify this unspeakable conduct with the now-withdrawn memo John Yoo submitted to then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in August 2002. (That our highest government officials felt the need to commission such a memo and allowed it to remain extant until 2004 is proof enough of widespread guilty knowledge on the part of both White House and DOJ officials.)

Nearly six years after they were first captured on foreign soil in the fall of 2001, 375 of these men are still imprisoned by the United States at Guantanamo Bay — and they have never had a hearing.

Bush/Cheney declares itself dictator. This is not a joke.

This is no joke. Bush issued an executive order declaring that he can freeze the assets of US citizens that HE and his executive branch appointees believe:

i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

and do so without warning, notice or hearing.

Freezing your assets means you can’t get any of your money, you can’t sell anything, you are in essence an instant churchmouse. As in penniless. As in you can’t even pay your bills or hire a lawyer. Your president now thinks he has that power over every single person in the US.

And all you have to do to become penniless is be “at significant risk” for committing an “act of violence” that might undermine or threaten whatever Bush is dreaming of for Iraq. Or be associated with anyone who does.

Does this mean having bumper stickers that say “get out of Iraq”? signs? T-shirts? Chanting antiwar slogans on the Mall in Washington? or contributing money to support a rally? Sorry, people, Bush is losing his mind here, and we are losing our freedoms right and left. Bush’s puppet Department Dereliction of Justice will slap this on protesters in a heartbeat. A big anti-war rally is planned for Washington DC in September. This order is clearly designed to chill, if not abort, this protest.

Bush and Cheney are nuts, people. They are un-American, anti-freedom, anti-truth, and they are evil-doers. They are now going into serious bunker mentality. They have to be impeached. Call your congressperson. Today.

Could Democratic politicians be declared subject to Bush/Cheney’s order? Look at this…..