White House treading on other branches

(from Rhonda Chriss Lokeman, Kansas City Star)

Are we to understand that the legislative solution to the constitutional crisis precipitated by Bush II is to sue the administration?

Senators proposed reviewing signing statements that President Bush attaches to legislation signed into law. Congress could have the right to sue.

Remember Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture amendment introduced to have the Army Field Manual upheld and prevent “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. custody?

Bush signed it, then dissented in a signing statement. This is like crossing one’s fingers, claiming to be truthful. Those little white lies add up... Senators are building a case for the executive’s obvious contempt for the legislature...

There is but one shield, and we, the people, have it: the Constitution.

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Bush lies to Congress, again

(from AlterNet)

The Washington Post revealed today that the Bush administration knew of a massive Pakistani nuclear reactor in the works -- capable of producing 50 warheads/year -- but didn't tell congress.

And the article contains what may well be the quote of the year (in bold type):

"What is baffling is that this information -- which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had -- was kept from Congress," said Sokolski, now director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal."

As Marcy Wheeler notes, the Bush administration hid disputes over Iraqi capabilities, dismissed a memo disputing the Niger claims and, not as widely known, it hid information on North Korean nuclear capability (much farther along than Iraq's) just prior to the vote to invade Iraq.

And now this. But it gets worse. In Ron Suskind's One Percent Doctrine -- which has already burned through two highlighter pens -- he delves deep into the Pakistan/U.S. relations, a dumpster dive if I've ever seen one.

The world's foremost supplier of nuclear technology to anyone with a checkbook, A.Q. Khan -- friend and adviser to Pakistan's dictator, Musharraf -- was busy, according to the CIA in 2001 (THAT'S 2001), dealing nuclear technology to Iran.

A footnote: the "disarming" of Libya was a complete and total lie -- a fabrication.

American Bar Association denounces Bush's signing statements

(from Chicago Tribune)

President Bush has vetoed only one piece of legislation during more than five years in office, but he has issued more than 800 challenges to bills that he has signed into law with formal "signing statements," more than all of his predecessors combined.

Now, however, a task force of the American Bar Association has concluded that the president's unprecedented stream of signing statements poses a dangerous challenge to the constitutional checks and balances central to power in the United States. One of the signing statements reserves the right to torture detainees held in the war on terror.

The ABA report, to be released Monday, calls on Congress to exert more oversight and empower the courts to review presidential signing statements asserting the president's right to "ignore or not enforce laws." If unchecked, ABA President Michael Greco said in a prepared statement, the presidential use of signing statements "raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy."

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Dubya's Grand Hypocrisy

(from John Perry)

For the first time in his wholly illegitimate presidency, the Pretender-in-Chief has vetoed a bill sent to him by Congress.

George W. Bush says the proposed law, which would have increased federal funding for stem cell research, was wrong because it "crosses a moral boundary".

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," says Mr. Bush.

The bill would have allowed stem cell researchers to greatly expand the life-saving potential of their work, by using extra frozen embryos from fertility clinics that are otherwise thrown away.

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The second most prominent hypocrite in America.

Republicans Reject Ralph Reed's Hypocrisy
(from The Nation)

For those who still claim that the Jack Abramoff scandal will not "play" politically, the Republican voters of Georgia beg to differ.

Christian right leader Ralph Reed's plan to begin his climb of the American political ladder as lieutenant governor of Georgia was thwarted in Tuesday's Republican primary.

Links to convicted influence-peddler Abramoff did Reed in. Horrified the by hypocrisy of Reed, who parlayed his association with the Christian Coalition into a lucrative political consulting gig that saw him wrapping a "moral values" cloak around the lobbyist's sleaziest clients, Georgia Republicans gave the nomination for the state's No. 2 job to Casey Cagle, a state senator who shared Reed's conservatism but not his crookedness.

Reeds political ambitions are now on hold, perhaps permanently.

But the man who led the Christian Coalition and then went on to promote casino gambling and sweatshops is not without accomplishment. While he is certainly not without competition for the title, Ralph Reed is, arguably, the most prominent hypocrite in America.

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Bush gropes German Chancellor Angela Merkel

(from AlterNet)

Eclipsing even his father's unfortunate chunk-hurling on the Emperor of Japan, Bush has made yet another shameful blunder on what is now undoubtedly the most embarrassing official trip abroad for any American president.

After stumbling from Putin's smackdown at his suggestion that Russia ought to emulate the democracy in Iraq to babbling about wanting to eat a pig to getting caught on tape cursing while chomping on a roll, Bush channeled the Creepy Guy at Work who gives a female coworker an unwanted massage, much to his repulsed target's chagrin.

Of course, it wasn't just any gal The Groper went after. It was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mash has a series of still shots here, and Crooks and Liars has the video. This is the ultimate in rude and presumptuous behavior....

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Bush Serves Pork for Foreign Policy

Our Foreign Policy Has Sunk to "Oink, Oink" Stories
(from Buzzflash)
Today we will just quote from a story in "Newsday" that indicates even the mainstream media may be awakening to the gross negligence and cluelessness of Mr. Bush:

"As Israeli warplanes were preparing an attack on Lebanon Thursday afternoon, and a Lebanese militia was aiming a rocket at the ancient Israeli city of Safed, President George W. Bush was bantering with reporters in Germany about a pig.

"Bush kept bringing up the roast wild boar he was about to dine on at a banquet that night, even when asked about the swelling crisis in the Middle East, where pig meat is forbidden to religious Jews and Muslims.

"Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?" a reporter asked. "And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?"

"I thought you were going to ask me about the pig," Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again -- for the fifth time -- before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself.

"He was asked a serious question," said Ian Lustick, a Middle East expert now at the University of Pennsylvania, and his answer "epitomized his disengagement in the Middle East."

This is insanity that this man is still in office.

We're starting to believe that FOX GOP News (also known as FOX Fictional News) is engaged in a criminal enterprise for covering up for an administration which endangers the national security of the United States and is run by an idiot.

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Conservatives Without Conscience.

from the Boston Globe
Triumph of the authoritarians
John W. Dean

CONTEMPORARY CONSERVATISM and its influence on the Republican Party was, until recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners' bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving manipulation of the political processes, and their policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest -- none of this struck me as based on anything related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth be told, today's so-called conservatives are quite radical.

For more than 40 years I have considered myself a ``Goldwater conservative," and am thoroughly familiar with the movement's canon. But I can find nothing conservative about the Bush/Cheney White House, which has created a Nixon ``imperial presidency" on steroids, while acting as if being tutored by the best and brightest of the Cosa Nostra.

What true conservative calls for packing the courts to politicize the federal judiciary to the degree that it is now possible to determine the outcome of cases by looking at the prior politics of judges? Where is the conservative precedent for the monocratic leadership style that conservative Republicans imposed on the US House when they took control in 1994, a style that seeks primarily to perfect fund-raising skills while outsourcing the writing of legislation to special interests and freezing Democrats out of the legislative process?

How can those who claim themselves conservatives seek to destroy the deliberative nature of the US Senate by eliminating its extended-debate tradition, which has been the institution's distinctive contribution to our democracy? Yet that is precisely what Republican Senate leaders want to do by eliminating the filibuster when dealing with executive business (namely judicial appointments).

Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Krik's classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham's guides to conservative governing. Conservatives in the tradition of former senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan believed in ``conserving" this planet, not relaxing environmental laws to make life easier for big business. And neither man would have considered employing Christian evangelical criteria in federal programs, ranging from restricting stem cell research to fighting AIDs through abstinence.

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Bush's Humiliating Spectacle

from The Syndney Morning Herald

IT WAS a stark admission of helplessness from the leader of the world's only super power.

With Israeli jets bombing Beirut airport and Hezbollah rockets landing in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, the US President was asked what he could do to stop the fighting escalating.

Standing beside the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at a press conference in Rostock before he left for the G8 summit in St Petersburg, George Bush said: "We were headed towards the road map, things looked positive, and the terrorists stepped up. It's really sad where people are prepared to take innocent life to stop that process … in fact it's pathetic."

Israel had a right to defend itself, he said, but he was concerned about the "fragile democracy" in Lebanon.

That response was an admission his administration does not have a policy on the conflict. In fact it has not had a policy since the surprise election victory in January of Hamas in a poll that Washington had encouraged.

The so-called road map for peace is dead and the Bush Administration is paralysed...

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Plame Sues Cheney

Will Cheney Go Down In Flames?
from Bloomberg
Cheney, Rove, Libby Sued by Former CIA Agent Over Identity Leak

Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former Cheney assistant I. Lewis Libby were sued by a former covert CIA agent who claims the men conspired to illegally reveal her identity.

Valerie Plame, who worked at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, filed the suit today in federal court in Washington. They are seeking unspecified financial damages.

The couple's suit accuses Cheney, Rove, Libby and other unidentified officials of violating their constitutional rights by conspiring to ``discredit, punish and seek revenge'' against Wilson for publicly disputing statements made by President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address in an effort to justify the war in Iraq.

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Nixon on the "Bush Knew" Story

"Richard Nixon was reached by cell phone in purgatory, where he is serving an eon to expiate his sins of office.

Purgatory - Sun Apr 11, 2004 09:17 am ET

Asked about Bush's prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, Nixon commented:

"Oh, Hell yes Bush knew! See, here's what really happened: the Saudis were in Washington that week doing pre-emptive damage control. The Bin Laden patriarch knew his black-sheep son was plotting terror attacks on US soil, and was scared shitless about the potential blow-back against his business interests. He had the crown prince use the Saudi secret police to 'interrogate' hundreds of innocent civilians until they stumbled across solid verifiable intelligence regarding the details of the 9/11 plot. So, the black-hearted old goat was schmoozing Wolfowitz and Rummey and Chenney, all the time negotiating for favorable treatment of Saudi capital and investment interests.

"But then, a truly bloodcurdling thing happened, something neither CREEP nor The Plumbers could have pulled off in their wildest dreams; the 9/11 plot was _allowed_ to happen. Rumsfeld and Pearl, both chicken hawks of the first order and, really, you know, huge fans of the Bay of Tonkin ploy, saw the coming attacks as a way to wake up the electorate and rally them around the Bush presidency. Rove was preparing briefings and writing press releases on September 10th, for Gods sake! And, you know, Karen Hughes really is a charming woman, an innocent, a genuine Southern Lady, and she just didn't have the stomach for this. Which is why she went back to Texas and quit her White House post."

"The thing is, no one expected it to be as devastating as it was. I mean, my God, you crash an airplane into the World Trade center, you get a real showy explosion and some collateral damage.. but who knew the whole damn thing would come crashing down! Both of 'em! Oopsey!

And that crash into the Pentagon was intended to rally the troops. 'You come after our home base, and we will hunt you down and fuck you up' was the emotion they wanted to stir. That Karl Rove, he's, you know, a political genius, a really brilliant tactician. Oh, sure, he's as evil as Goebbels, but a certified genius, none the less."

"So, the chicken hawks got more than they bargained for; both towers actually came crashing down, for God's sake! And 3000 dead (instead of the anticipated 30 or so), but, as the saying goes, 'in for a dime, in for a dollar' and so they tucked their chins, quietly flew the Saudis out of the country on a hush-hush military transport, and went forward with the primary objective; a takeover of Iraq to establish a new US base in the Gulf, and take pressure off the House of Saud from the US presence in that country. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were."

"But now Bush is screwed. All this crap will come out, too many people know too much. His fate has been sealed ever since Karl Rove leaked that story about Joe Wilson's wife being a CIA operative. Rove might have gotten a hard-on from throwing his weight around, but the blow-back will be very, very, bad. You don't fuck with career intelligence people. That's a very tight community, you know, and they have a Band Of Brothers thing that makes the 101st Airborne pale in comparison. So, you can expect a lot of damaging intel on the Bush administration to leak out from old school CIA, FBI, diplomat corps,. military intel, the whole phalanx of deep cover operatives and spooks. They will be out to fuck up the Bush administration, not just to teach the executive branch a little humility, but probably also to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. That is, after all, their sworn duty.

"And, you know, the Bushies want to just run the Constitution through the shredder. But, they'll implode first. "

(at this point in the interview, the cellular connection with Purgatory was dropped by Cingular)

Bush Deeply Infatuated by French Intellectuals

"I'd like to leave behind a legacy or think-tank, a place for people to talk about freedom and liberty, and the
De Tocqueville model."
- George W. Bush


De Tocqueville once observed that it's easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.



Bush went on to say:

"I would like for there to be a place where young scholars can come and write and think and articulate and opine and teach."

I think it's nice he wants to give the young kids a chance to do something he never got to do.

More on the show with ZeFrank

Bush Foreign Policy Painted Into a Corner

Let's nip this whole "Bush is shifting to a more enlightened foreign policy" theme in the bud, shall we?

Time calls it "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy" in this week's cover story. A David Sanger piece in tomorrow's New York Times is headlined, "Bush's Shift: Being Patient With Foes."

The sad truth is that the Administration's foreign policy has run aground on the shoals of its own incompetence. As Kevin Drum noted last week, "the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore."

Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny.

Worse, for an Administration that has instinctively favored military action over diplomacy, the nation's military resources are depleted, bogged down, and largely unavailable for any further foreign adventures.

Yet we have stories emerging that suggest the current foreign policy dilemma is a deliberate course of action chosen by Bush. Time, in a mishmash of its news and style sections, calls it a "strategic makeover" led by Condi Rice.

The fact is Bush has boxed himself in, frittering away lives and treasure, and leaving himself with few options. He deserves no more credit for a policy shift than the man serving a life sentence who declares that he will henceforth be law-abiding.

-- TPM Reader DK


[Meanwhile, the Democratic stratgey at home plays against Bush's weakness abroad... -M.Peach]
The Case for a Preemptive Strike on North Korea's Missiles
Viewpoint: Former Clinton administration officials Ashton Carter and William Perry argue that the most effective way to curb the threat from Pyongyang is to destroy its missiles at their test sites

dday's How The Neocons Got Bluffed Off The Table provides excellent analysis of how Bush boxed himself in with the Iraq invasion and now cannot respond from strength to any threats from North Korea or Iran.

Cheney is Betting on Bad News

The Veep's Curious Investment Portfolio

Vice President Cheney is apparently betting on a rise in inflation and interest rates and on a decline in the value of the dollar against foreign currencies. That's the conclusion Kiplinger's draws after scouring the financial disclosure form released by Cheney this week.


more from CounterPunch by Mike Whitney

Wouldn't you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you'd know whether his "deficits don't matter" claim is just baloney or not. Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney's financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly.

The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP.

This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness. Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly, foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China.

They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We're sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and "American Celebrity".

The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat corporations who've abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise.

This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and inflation.

Did Americans really think they'd be spared the same type of economic colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the rubric of "neoliberalism"? Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang.

The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office; more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the life's-blood of every economy. Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats:

"Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000manufacturing plants in China. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and US industrial conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide." ("The Globally integrated Enterprise" Samuel Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page 130)

"60,000 manufacturing plants" in 3 years?!?

"Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies"?

No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they're leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern
police-surveillance state.

Welcome to Bush's 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting.

Take another look at Cheney's investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the blackguards in office and their satrapies at Federal Reserve.

Mike Whitney

The Case for Impeachment Now

2008 Might Be Too Late

By RON JACOBS

If George Bush were to be impeached, would it make any difference?

Whenever I receive emails or mass mailings that bring up the topic of Bush's impeachment, that is the question I asked. So, it was with some curiosity that I began reading the book A Case for Impeachment, by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky (Thomas Dunne Books 2006). The process of impeachment has always interested me, at least when it comes to our nation's presidents and, if any president deserved to face some kind of consequences for what he and his cronies have done to this country, George Bush is certainly first in line.

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Washington Babylon

"Washington is unraveling"

Vanity Fair article assesses the damage of the Duke Cunningham scandal.

"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations. "Many felonies went undetected because in the Defense Department a lot goes on in secret, and these crimes grew in the shadow of both 9/11 and (Republican) one-party rule..."

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Supreme Court: Bush Administration Has Committed War Crimes

The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling
By DAVE LINDORFF

Largely missed in all the coverage of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case was the establishment by the court majority that all Bush administration claims to the contrary, the Geneva Convention rules regarding captured prisoners apply to the captives taken not only in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the so-called War on terror.

What has been largely missed is the clear point that the Supreme Court has now declared that for the past five years, Bush and his gang of war-mongers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former Attorney General Donald Rumsfeld and current Attorney General and former White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and many others in the administration, have been guilty of violating the Third Convention on treatment of prisoners of war. They are also, therefore, in violation of federal law, which back in 1996 adopted that convention as part of the U.S. criminal code. In other words, the whole top administration, from Commander in Chief George W. Bush on down, is guilty of war crimes. The punishment for committing war crimes ranges from a lengthy jail sentence to, in the event the crimes in question caused the death of any prisoners being held, to death....

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The Supreme Court, Guantánamo, and the Danger of Dictatorship

The Supreme Court in an important decision thursday ruled 5-3 that the Bush administration's use of "special courts," sanctioned by no one except themselves, to try prisoners held on terrorism charges at Guantánamo, violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which govern U.S. military courts, and the Geneva Convention.

By Norman Markowitz

While anyone who supports elemental democratic and human rights should applaud the majority decision, drafted by Judge John Paul Stevens, a liberal Republican appointed at a time when such people existed by President Gerald Ford over 30 years ago, we all should be very vigilant to the present danger.

The Justice who replaces Stevens, rumored to be the next Judge to retire for reasons of age and health, will radically undermine the rights of the American people, the Constitution, and the nation's following international law if the right-wing Republicans are not defeated in the congressional elections this year and in the presidential elections in 2008.

The danger was most evident in the truculent minority decisions of two veteran ultra-rightists, Bush appointee Clarence Thomas and Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia. Thomas, who read his dissent, stated that the decision would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy." His rationale ignores that the term "war against terrorism" is used to confuse Americans about the differences between occupations of foreign territories and efforts to protect people from small groups of criminal conspirators.

Scalia, known for the sort of arrogance that would not sit well with judges were he not a Supreme Court Justice, stated in defense of Bush's self-serving claims that the special courts were necessary to fight terrorism, and argued that "it is not clear where the Court derives the authority – or the audacity – to contradict this determination."

What is Scalia talking about? Judicial review, which usually is used to defend wealth and power against rulings by the states, Congress, and the president upholding peoples rights, is in principle a defense of the law and the constitution against the sort of arbitrary power that is the foundation of tyranny and dictatorship.

The Bush administration's claim that it has this power, given to it by Congress in perpetuity as a kind of inheritance, makes dictatorship rather than tyranny the more accurate and precise term to apply to what it is trying to do. Tyranny can act in all kinds of direct and indirect ways over long periods of time, but dictatorship almost always operates through a "state of emergency," and martial law decrees rubberstamped by the existing authorities until the dictatorship is ousted one way or another.

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