Today's Question of the day:

Who else went to Jack Abramoff's SunCruz Casinos on September 5, 2001? The same day several of the 9/11 hijackers came a calling.

For more interesting Jack Abramoff connections read Six Degrees of Jack Abramoff

- rob 1:53 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Ohio "Voting" getting a little more attention

CNN's Lou Dobbs: An Electronic Voting Machine Debacle In Ohio's 2006 Primary Election

STEVE HERTZBERG, ELECTION SCIENCE INSTITUTE: We're missing data. We're missing critical components within the election. The board of elections cannot find it, and we believe that that is probably the greatest issue we're facing in this election. What are equivalent to what might be ballots in ballot boxes in the old days now turned into ones and zeroes.

PILGRIM: The report found the machine's four sources of vote totals, individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives, and the memory cards, did not all match up. The totals were all different.

The report concludes, "These shortcomings merit urgent attention. Relying on the system in its present state should be viewed as a calculated risk."

But the secretary of state of Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, is still in denial. His office saying today, "The machines work. There is nothing wrong with the machines."

The GOP is supposedly anti-drug but what the hell is in the coolaide they all drink these days.

Blackwell thinks he's a jedi doing a mind trick "these aren't the droids you are looking for - all voting machines work perfectly."

- rob 6:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Valarie Plame could no longer do her job because of this spiteful pathetic administration.

Army Reserve Specialist Joe Darby basicly lost his life as he knew it.

It's really just standard operating procedure for these guys.

Abu Ghraib whistleblower feared for his life

The American soldier who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal has told how he feared for his safety once his identity was revealed.

Army Reserve Specialist Joe Darby turned the now infamous photographs over to the authorities, a move he says has caused him untold grief over the last two and a half years.
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implicated tried to discover the identity of the leaker.

In the end Joe Darby's cover was blown by none other than Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and it happened in the worst possible circumstances.

Specialist Darby was eating lunch in an army mess hall with 400 other soldiers in may 2004, when Mr Rumsfeld appeared on an overhead TV and dropped his name.

From that point onwards Joe Darby's life was never to be the same.

He says he's been threatened repeatedly by other soldiers and has even been forced out of his hometown in Maryland.

- rob 6:34 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Meanwhile - the "state's rights" party - the ruling party - is trying to make it so no state or local municipality can make their own special laws or requirements for food products, saying the FDA should have final say for the good of the nation.

The only good it does is allows the food industry one stop shopping when it comes to corruption.

Local laws are important. Because sometimes local folks are just a wheee bit more interested in the health of our citizens than Washington:

Ban Sought On Foods High In Lead

Imported candies and other foods that contain high levels of lead would be banned from sale in New York City under legislation that was announced yesterday by the Council speaker, Gifford Miller, and Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, of Brooklyn. Tamarind fruit candy from Mexico, for instance, has been linked to elevated levels of lead.

If the FDA and the GOP get their way the New York City government would just have to sit back and watch the kids get poisoned.

- rob 6:31 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Sometimes when you are bored it's fun to pour over an impressively compiled by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. of all the lies told and laws broken by our criminal President.

Executive Summary

Oh - actually that isn't fun.

- rob 6:19 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Audit Finds U.S. Hid Actual Cost of Iraq Projects

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

Hmmm... what could all the money be beign spent on that the State Department is embarrassed about?

Bush's Baghdad Palace

Among the many secrets the American government cannot keep, one of its biggest (104 acres) and most expensive ($592 million) is the American Embassy being built in Baghdad. Surrounded by fifteen-foot-thick walls, almost as large as the Vatican on a scale comparable to the Mall of America, to which it seems to have a certain spiritual affinity, this is no simple object to hide.
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Nonetheless, we know much of what is going on in the place, where there will soon be twenty-one buildings, 619 apartments with very fancy digs for the big shots, restaurants, shops, gym facilities, a swimming pool, a food court, a beauty salon, a movie theater (we can't say if it's a multiplex) and, as the Times of London reports, "a swish club for evening functions." This should be ideal for announcing the various new milestones marking the trudge of the Iraqi people toward democracy and freedom.

USA Today has learned that the "massive new embassy, being built on the banks of the Tigris River, is designed to be entirely self-sufficient and won't be dependent on Iraq's unreliable public utilities." Thus, there will be no reason or excuse for any of the thousands of Americans working in this space, which is about the size of eighty football fields, to share the daily life experience of an Iraqi or even come in accidental contact with one.

Meanwhile...

Federal Prosecutors Without Paper Clips

It's hard to be tough on crime when you're short on office supplies.

Here's a head shaker of a story: Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Conyers (D-MI) sent a letter (pdf) today to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the severe budget shortages in U.S. Attorney offices across the country.

Their survey of a dozen major U.S. Attorney offices show that staffing shortages are widespread, such as in Los Angeles, where 40 of the 190 assistant U.S. Attorney positions in California's Central District are vacant.

A number of offices have started pinching pennies to compensate for the tight budget. Two of the offices have started charging defendants for copies of documents. Perhaps most pathetic is one U.S. Attorney's office, where an electronic lock has been placed on the supply closet, requiring prosecutors to fill out requisition forms "in order to get supplies like paper clips."

The shortages have led to a decrease in prosecutions on lesser felonies, they say, "such as fraud against the government." But here's the mystery: the Justice Department's budget for the U.S. Attorney offices has actually increased over the past several years, leading to the question of where the money has gone.

We're witnessing the plundering of our treasury by corrupt business men who now happen to be the executive branch of our government.

- rob 6:00 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Hmmm... will this judge soon become part of a Rovian smear campaign - or with the Bush administration just pretend judges are "quaint."

NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional
Judge orders immediate halt to program

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
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The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

But I have to say - that defense is brilliant.

I need your money to protect you.
How will you protect me with my money?
I can't tell you because then you'd be unprotected. Oh and thanks for the addition to my house.

- rob 5:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Today's Question:

Who told Willie Brown to cancel his September 11, 2001 flight?

The night before the attacks, the Mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, received a warning from his "airport security" contacts not to fly to New York for a mayor's conference on Sept. 11 (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2001).

From: 9/11 Truth.org.

More:

After receiving an unspecified warning from the FBI, Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying by commercial plane, as is usual among cabinet members, and started hiring private jets (CBS, July 26th, 2001). A warning received on Sept. 10 caused "top Pentagon brass" to cancel their travel plans for the next day (Newsweek, Sept. 13, 2001 and Newsweek, Sept. 17, 2001).
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Writer Salman Rushdie, considered a primary target of Islamist terror, was barred from domestic flights already a week before Sept. 11.

An interesting thing. In the weeks immediately following 9/11/01 - the media was really interested in finding out why 9/11 happened. It was interested in inconsistencies and failures. And then it all stopped, by the end of September, 2001 all articles like that stopped - no one wanted to know? or did people didn't want anyone to know? Its not like we'd ever know the full truth, but questions themselves ended.

- rob 12:06 PM - [PermaLink] -

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21st Century Corprate America advice to former employees: Dumpster Dive

That'll build employee loyalty I tell ya.

Northwest advised workers to see treasure in trash

NEW YORK, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. (NWACQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research) advised workers to fish in the trash for things they like or take their dates for a walk in the woods in a move to help workers facing the ax to save money.

The No. 5 U.S. carrier, which has slashed most employees' pay and is looking to cut jobs as it prepares to exit bankruptcy, put the tips in a booklet handed out to about 50 workers and posted for a time on its employee Web site.

Now I've actually worked for a company that had a nice big couch that was secured via dumpster diving, but we were a start up, and though we didn't have heat or air conditioning in most of the office either we did have a play station hooked up to the TV in the room where the couch was. Before Play Station was even available in America (games are a lot more fun when all the characters in the games are all yelling in Japanese - and you have no idea what they are saying) - its about corporate priorities.

- rob 11:36 AM - [PermaLink] -

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What? There is still a line to cross?

Did Cheney Go Too Far?

By insinuating that the sizeable majority of American voters who oppose the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy, Vice President Cheney on Wednesday may have crossed the line that separates legitimate political discourse from hysteria.

Cheney's comments came in a highly unusual conference call with reporters, part of an extensively orchestrated and largely successful Republican effort to spin the obviously anti-Bush message of Ned Lamont's victory over presidential enabler Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary.

For those who still believe that our government (under the rule of the GOP) would use terrorism as just a political tool, I urge you to watch The Nexus of Terror and Poltics (MSNBC Windows Media Clip)

One can not help but wonder - was the entire publicity and timing of the British Terrorism arrests based on American political concerns and not safety:

Source: U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests
British wanted to continue surveillance on terror suspects, official says

Silly British - wanting to actually continue surveillance to learn more and therefore perhaps prevent more damage and bloodshed. Don't they know their are elections at stake?!?

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

British officials knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner.

- rob 11:31 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Though TCS is in a bit of a summer slow down, I still constantly see articles that make me think: "Oh I should post this on TCS." Slightly worried that "good material" for this lowly blog would be lost if I don't post it.

But the sad thing is that there seems to be no lack of "good material." And "good material" for TCS is bad news really.

Bad news for us - free America citizens who want a land where our children and our children's children have more freedoms than we do, more opportunities than we do, and more peace.

I'd love the day when TCS is so desperate for posts that we begin to go mad and just post about NASA covering up the moon bases the lizard aliens have to watch over us.

Unfortunately for every day we post a story (or 5 or 10), and for every day we don't post a story (pretty frequently lately) there are a hundred more that should be front and center atrocities.

Its actually a bit depressing - and I thought "Blue Velvet" by David Lynch was a comedy, so its hard to get me disturbed. Anyway, TCS isn't its being updated as often this summer, but it'll be back to "normal" eventually.

One post I keeping wanting to write is about the constantly growing imperial presidency. Unfortunately its not like I have to rush to write it - it is a story that isn't going away.

Here's an example from last week:

Presidential power grab

A provision tucked in a federal defense bill would allow the president to take control of a state's National Guard, without the governor's consent.

The bipartisan National Governors Association is right to object to this attack on state authority.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, said the provision violates "200 years of American history" and is part of a larger federal effort to make states no more than "satellites of the national government."
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Take, for example, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent denial of President Bush's request to send more troops to work at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Under the proposed federal legislation, the president could have just ordered the California Guard to stand near the border for tough-on-immigrants photo ops.

With a Bush administration intent on grabbing power from every other branch of government, it's easy to wonder whether the legislation is less about saving hurricane victims than about showing up the Terminator.

It used to be Republican politicians at least pretended they were all about state rights.

Now it seems the only GOP members that actually believe that are the ones not located in DC.

Governors Oppose Federal Control of Guard

The nation's governors, protesting what they call an unprecedented shift in authority from the states to the federal government, will urge Congress today to block legislation that would allow the president to take control of National Guard forces in the event of a natural disaster or a threat to homeland security.
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"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors as commanders and chief of the Guard to the federal government," the governors state in the letter.

As of yesterday, 51 governors, including some from U.S. territories, had signed the letter, a sign of broad bipartisan support that underscores the depth of opposition among state executives to encroachments by Washington on their powers.

- rob 3:01 PM - [PermaLink] -

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We've tried to say this before (and each time we do we get to show this image - joy), but AMERICAblog says it quite well:

After September 11, we did get hit again
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It was called Anthrax. And Bush still hasn't caught the killer. So next time Bush/Cheney claim we haven't been hit again, ask them what happened to the Anthrax killer.

- rob 1:09 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt



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 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt



"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson



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"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison



"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.