Psst. Somebody wanna remind these guys who has been in control of the country for 2/3 of the time between the year 2000 and now? Anyone?
I’m really not sure you want to make this point too loudly with the American people or “conservatives” would get their asses handed to them – as they will anyway, but you know. A Republican preaching fiscal discipline is pretty funny in this day and age.
Gotta love how Sanford tosses in the vague religion reference. I call that Republican Tourettes Syndrome.
Lots of videos, I know, but they’re just too good not to share. Lawrence Lessig outlines two new movements in America; Change Congress and Lessig for CA-12… maybe. This really is a fantastic video.
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
“It felt like prison,” says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming “20/20″ investigation. “I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened.”
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
“We contacted the State Department first,” Poe told ABCNews.com, “and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen” — from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.
Legal experts say Jones’ alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
More at the link – I’ve condensed the main gist here (emphasis mine). Three cheers for Rep. Ted Poe, who seems to be the only person in the gov’t fighting for this girl.
You have got to be kidding me. Congress voting on an AUMF forced the White House’s hand? Really? The joint resolution had 98% support from legislative GOPers, was introduced by the GOP, and was directed by the White House (read the notes section). In fact, here’s the original AUMF as drafted by the White House, in a press release from the day it was introduced.
I didn’t hear much about this yesterday, but there was a hearing before the Senate subcommittee looking into the UT mine disaster last month. More evidence of how pathetic the Bush Administration is…and I agree with the president of the United Mineworkers (full disclosure: this is another union my company works with) that SOMEONE needs to be held responsible, especially when these details start coming to light:
Reporting from the hearing, and for the AFL-CIO blog, was Mike Hall:
Much of this morning’s hearing centered on a controversial mining plan submitted by Murray Energy Corp. and approved by MSHA [within 7 days!] that called for the use of “retreat mining“—a mining method most safety experts say is much more dangerous than conventional methods. That belief is boosted by the fact that the mine’s previous owner had ruled against its use because of safety concerns, says Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts.
[Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) chief] Stickler, Roberts and former MSHA administrator J. Davitt McAteer were among the witnesses at the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee hearing. Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray turned down the subcommittee’s request to testify and now may be forced to appear. Says Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.): “First he says he’s too busy and now he says he’s too sick. I’m personally convinced that we need and will issue a subpoena here.”
Hmmmm…if I remember correctly, Murray was never too busy or too sick to appear before TV cameras…
Anyway, Murray has told the media that this is an “evil mountain.” I don’t know…I have a feeling the families may feel he’s an “evil man.” Again, from the AFL-CIO blog:
Roberts said the mine’s previous owner, Andalex Resources, already had extracted all the coal that could be mined safely. [He said,] “In essence, the only coal remaining in the mine was the barriers and pillars necessary to support the roof of the mine’s main entrance….There can be no doubt that the mountain over the mine was exerting extreme pressure on the remaining coal, which was supporting the mine roof. Murray Energy was extracting that coal, using the pillar extraction method [retreat mining], at the time of the catastrophic collapse.”
After you read the AFL-CIO blog, check out the UMWA president’s post to Huffington Post here.
Was there a White House plot to illegally suppress votes in 2004? Is there a similar plan for the upcoming elections? This week NOW examines documents and evidence that points to a Republican Party plan designed to keep Democrats from voting, allegedly by targeting people based on their race and ethnicity with key battleground states like Ohio and Florida of particular interest. “It was a partisan, discriminatory attempt to challenge voters of color,” Eddie Hailes, a senior attorney for The Advancement Project, a civil rights group, told NOW.
Was the White House involved? David Iglesias, one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, thinks so: “It’s reprehensible. It’s unethical, it’s unlawful. It may very well be criminal.” Iglesias told NOW he was repeatedly urged by his superiors at the Justice Department to investigate allegations of false voter registrations. After his investigations came up short, Iglesias said Republican officials got angry and complained to White House aide Karl Rove. Soon after Iglesias lost his job. As a result of allegations by Iglesias and others, Congress is investigating whether the White House acted unlawfully.
While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to answer many questions about the controversy as he testified before the Senate this week, Iglesias told NOW he believes the White House is keeping documents from Congress to protect the Bush Administration. “That’s why there has been such a circling of the wagons around Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor. I believe there to be incriminating, possibly criminally incriminating evidence contained in those e-mails and other memoranda,” he said.
Jerid pointed out yesterday that Todd’s press conference on Wednesday was a little ahead of the curve:
Anyways, the real meat here is that Todd scheduled this press conference before the grant announcements he cites was released to the public. Kinda strange right? Like Todd has a man on the inside or something.
Apparently, scuttlebutt is that the info may have come from Tiberi’s office, which would be illegal. I’m sorry I didn’t notice this first, but I’ve been a little too busy this week to be paying as much attention as I should. Now that I’ve got something to look for, I’ll see if I can be quicker on the draw.
The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”
Executive privilege? For documents pertaining to the death of a Ranger? This can literally only be political.
Invoking a privilege is one thing, but telling a person not to show up in response to a subpoena — if only to actually invoke the privilege — is quite another. It’s not just worse, it’s a felony under federal criminal law. See for yourself.
18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505 : … Whoever corruptly … influences, obstructs, or impedes … the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress … [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years … or both.
18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b) : As used in section 1505, the term “corruptly” means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including … withholding, [or] concealing … information.
In other words, George Bush could be imprisoned for up to five years for “corruptly impeding” a Congressional investigation by influencing another person to withhold or conceal information. Harriet Miers could have shown up and claimed Executive privilege, but George Bush does NOT have the authority to tell anyone to ignore a subpoena.
Yet another piece of evidence that this White House believes they are above the law.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush has commuted the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.
This is why you give these people no quarter, because they get idiots and their buddies into office and pull this shit. It’s actually quite good news because I’m sure his polling will plummet even further and fundraising among Dems should run even stronger than it is.
President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case Monday, stepping into a criminal case with heavy political overtones on grounds that the sentence was just too harsh.
Tomorrow at 11am Cliff Arnebeck will hold a press conference in which he’ll put the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Bill Todd (Big Head Todd to us) and his monsters on notice. From the release:
COLUMBUS – Ohio public interest attorney Cliff Arnebeck will hold a press conference, at 11 a.m. on Thursday June 21, 2007 at his law office at 1000 East Main St., Suite 102, Columbus, Ohio 43205.
Arnebeck will release and discuss a document to formally put the Ohio Chamber of Commerce on notice to maintain all records related to Ohio Supreme Court campaigns and related expenditures, in anticipation of the filing of a corrupt practices (state RICO) lawsuit against the Ohio and U.S. Chambers of Commerce based upon their pattern of activity, beginning with their attack upon Justice Alice Robie Resnick in 2000, to permanently tilt Ohio Supreme Court elections in favor of candidates.
The Ohio Supreme Court is currently served entirely by GOP Justices.
According to Arnebeck, Chamber affiliated groups spent more than $14 million of illegal corporate money in favor of Republican candidates in the 2000-2004 election cycles.
Last year, a Chamber aligned group, Citizens for a Strong Ohio, dropped the last of repeated appeals filed by Columbus Attorney Bill Todd to Court decisions against them, in what the Plain Dealer described as “a losing fight to overturn repeated rulings in courts and before the Ohio Election Commission that it acted improperly”
So in honor of this event I present to you the following:
The Dispatch has the headline: “Armbruster abused office, ethics probe finds: Ex-senator should face criminal charges, report says”
According to documents released by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, Armbruster, a North Ridgeville Republican, met in his Statehouse office with bureau officials and also had phone conversations in early 2006, pushing to get rates lowered for his company.
Armbruster, who then was vice chairman of a committee that dealt with most bureau-related legislation, eventually got an 88 percent rate reduction for his gas stations.
Another first given to us by corrupt Republicans:
For the first time, the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee today recommended that a member of the Ohio legislature — or in this case a former member — face criminal charges for unethical conduct.
Nice work! I’m with Dave in wondering how prominent this will be covered in the paper and for how long? Probably not long since it wasn’t his wife…
Lessig 08
by Brian on February 20, 2008 · Comments
Lots of videos, I know, but they’re just too good not to share. Lawrence Lessig outlines two new movements in America; Change Congress and Lessig for CA-12… maybe. This really is a fantastic video.
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