ARP Poll: Scooter "OJ" Libby's Get Out of Jail Free Card Does Not Sit Well With American Public: 45% Support Impeachment of Bush

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.


--George Orwell, Animal Farm.












Bet Bubble Boy never thought he'd see these numbers.

Poll: Impeachment talk gains steam after Libby move

A bad week for President Bush may foreshadow a dismal political season, as the president’s poll numbers plummet, Republicans abandon his Iraq policy and he faces a nascent censure and impeachment movement.

A new survey by the American Research Group found that only 31 percent of respondents approve of the president’s commutation of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence. The study by the private New Hampshire-based polling company canvassed 1,100 Republicans, Democrats and Independents from July 3-5, finding 64 percent disapproved of the commutation and 5 percent were undecided.

The president commuted the sentence Monday, saying the 2 years imposed last month on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in a case linked to the Iraq war, was “excessive.”

The commutation has sparked a firestorm on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who has drafted a resolution to censure Bush, said the president’s “intervention is an unconscionable abuse of authority by George W. Bush, and Congress must step forward and express the disgust that Americans rightfully feel toward this contemptible decision.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has scheduled hearings Wednesday on the commutation. The hearings will include pardons made by Clinton, former President Bush and possibly other past presidents.

Those hearings may be the least of the White House’s problems.

The ARG poll found a remarkable 45 percent in favor of the U.S. House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush.


In Los Angeles, a storefront “impeachment headquarters” emblazoned with American flags opened July 4. Activists who gathered to open the center accuse the Bush administration of condoning torture, spying on Americans and misleading citizens about the war in Iraq. They also were angry at the president’s decision to commute Libby’s sentence.

“Isn’t it ironic that Paris Hilton will spend more days in jail than Libby?” said Byron De Lear, a Green Party activist.

The White House declined to comment on the impeachment poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq. A Newsweek poll puts Bush’s approval rating at 26 percent.

Full story here. (Big coverage from a rightwing newspaper.)

HuffPo story on Bush hiding his dirty laundry by stiffing Congress, here.

A great piece on the Augean stable that is Bubble Boy's DOJ.

And here's a Bush voter who believes in the rule of law!

And here's a Bush voter who wants to re-elect Gore!


Have the American people finally awakened from the deep sleep of 9/11 PTSD-induced numbing and avoidance?

One hopes so.


Libby
Dirty Bush

Scooter "Scot-Free Felon" Libby IS Paris Hilton!! (But Paris Spent Way More Time in Jail)

Scootie to Judy:

"Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

Will they fall down in clusters, too, as one by one they are chopped down at the root?





Here's the Shuster smackdown of an OJ Libbyist.
Here's Dana Milbank.
And let's not forget: Clinton pardonee Marc Rich's lawyer was -- SCOOTER LIBBY.
Here's Dana Milbank.
Here's Thom Hartmann.


Libby
Dirty Bush

Libby's Unpardonable Offenses

Bushist fascist utter contempt for the rule of law takes a deep nose-dive into just "How Low Can You Go?" limbo-land.

(WaPo here.)

(One can only imagine the revulsion honorable conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. (who is unable to turn in his grave, not yet being dead) must feel to see the National Review crawling on its belly for a slimy pardon, calling for Bubble Boy's slimy mercy for Big Dick/Ming the Merciless' right-hand hatchetman, Scooter "What kind of a name is that for a grown man?" Libby.

And all those nauseating letters puffing off this supposed virtues, all in support of no jail time for him? Feh.

Libby's such a good smart loyal public servant, but he's above the law of the land? It's ok when Libby obstructs justice?

Sure it's OK! It's his country, his rules, his everything.

That's what Bushist fascist sociopathic megalomania is all about.

What America needs is not more megalomania, but less truthiness and more truth.

What America needs to heal is the name of the traitor who outed a covert CIA officer and thus lost all associated humint assets.

Where there's a will, there's a way -- waterboarding Libby.

So, sure, screw jail time for Scooter, just send him to Gitmo.

Food's great.

A nice long Club Gitmo Caribbean tropical vacation -- waterboarding Scooter Libby, just as long as it takes, till he finally spills his guts.

Libby owes us.


Libby
Plame
CIA
Gitmo

(But hey, boys and girls, in case you need some sunshine in your life, here's a real knee-slapper cum laff riot: Bushist fascist nappy-headed ho-in-chief "Dick" Morris tries to blame Bubble Boy's vile Oedipal Iraq War on -- C-C-Clinton!)

Monica's Special Stain: Dirty Bush' s Contempt for the Rule of Law Spreads All Over

Former top Justice Department aide Monica Goodling . . . [will deliberately refuse] to turn over documents that had been subpoenaed as part of the investigation into the firing of 8 US Attorneys. Goodling is set to testify before the Committee on Wednesday.

"I am concerned, however, about your statement that Ms. Goodling is going to refuse to produce documents in her possession that are responsive to the subpoena," Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the committee's chairman, wrote to Goodling's attorney John Dowd.

In responding to an argument made by Dowd on why Goodling did not need to turn the documents over, he added, "We are aware of no authority that permits internal Department administrative regulation to allow a former employee of the Department of Justice, or any other person, to avoid the subpoena power of the House of Representatives, as that power is central to the House's ability to carry out its Constitutional oversight mandate and certainly trumps internal agency regulations."

At issue were a set of documents that Dowd, an attorney for the Washington, DC law firm Akin, Gump, Straus, Hauer, and Feld, acknowledged his client possessed.

Not that we're surprised by her being in contempt of Congress, are we?

More here.

Monica Goodling
Talibangelicals
US Attorney scandal
Attorneygate

Dirty Bush & GonzoGate: US Atty Fired for Being Too Hard on Child Molesters

There's nothing like primary sources.

Link here, to letter from the House Judiciary Committee, and learn that Bush and his henchman Gonzo fired one US Attorney, Mr. Charlton, because he wanted to videotape interviews with child molesters.

Well, we couldn't have that, could we?

First, you videotape pedophiles, next, you might prosecute them!

The GOPedophile Protection Party won't stand for it!


(And for more fun, lookee here, and repeat after me: "consciousness of guilt, consciousness of guilt, consciousness of guilt.")

Via RawStory, the NY Times, briefly giving up its Judy-Miller-Whitehouse-stenographer role, calls Bush's nasty, bumbling comments "nasty and bumbling," here.
Bush
Gonzalez
US Attorney scandal

Bubble Boy's Don't Ask/Can't Tell Policy -- INVESTIGATING CIA LEAK BY DOING NOTHING

ANSWER: ZERO. Squat. Bupkus. Nada. Nothing. Niente. Zip.

QUESTION: What did the White House do to investigate Rove's role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame?

WaPo here.

WHITE HOUSE SECURITY CHIEF REVEALS -- NO PROBE OF PLAME LEAK THERE
NEW YORK Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday he was allowed to appear today.

Knodell said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said.

Rep. Waxman recalled that President Bush had promised a full internal probe. Knodell repeated that no probe took place, as far as he knew, and was not happening today.

More via Editor & Publisher, here.

CIA
Plame
Dirty Bush

When's the Last Time YOU Non-Violently Defeated a SuperPower, Freddie-boy?

LOUDMOUTH ACTOR AND REICHWING SHILL DUMPS ON MAHATMA GANDHI

I'm so sick of listening to loudmouth bottom-feeding stupids like Fred Thompson.

And John McCain, who apparently is unaware of how communicable diseases are communicated. (Quick, let's make him the post-Frist Senate tele-doctor!)

And let's not talk about flat-earthers like Bubble Boy, and sexist sadist pigs like Big Dick Cheney. And the whole pack of rabid reichwingers and their enablers -- Rummy, Rove, Bolton; Coulter, Limpbaugh, Dogbeater/Kiddywhipper Dobson; liar Snow, psychotic freepers and their robot horde -- may they all receive their full karmic reward at once.

Yuh, folks, Gandhi's un-American, but torture's as American as apple pie, is it not?

Death, destruction, deceit, dishonor: the core Bushist fascist family values.

I am reminded of this exchange between a reporter and Mahatma Gandhi.

Reporter: Gandhi-ji, what do you think of Western Civilization?

Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Fred Thompson
Gandhi
Dirty Bush

Dirty Bush to Hicks Defense Atty: Shut Up and Quit

I so like when we "defend democracy" by killing a huge bunch of random people while undermining the rule of law, do not you?

Imagine if one could imprison without trial for five, count them, five years, random people like -- Big Dick, Bubble Boy, Rummy, Condi . . . and treat them to the notoriously wonderful food at Gitmo along with Caribbean waterboarding for free. Plus the continual luxuriation of solitary confinement.

Imagine.

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI, the defence lawyer for David Hicks, could be removed from the case after threats from the chief US prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, to charge him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The intervention may derail Hicks's trial, and possibly prompt his return to Australia. It would take months for a new lawyer to get to grips with the case and the new military commission process.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has told the US that any action leading to further delays would be unacceptable and would prompt him to demand the return of Hicks, 31, after five years in Guantanamo Bay.

Colonel Davis has accused Major Mori of breaching Article 88 of the US military code, which relates to using contemptuous language towards the president, vice-president, and secretary of defence. Penalties for breaching the code include jail and the loss of employment and entitlements.

Major Mori denied he had done anything improper but said the accusations left him with an inherent conflict of interest.

"It can't help but raise an issue of whether any further representation of David and his wellbeing could be tainted by a concern for my own legal wellbeing," Major Mori told the Herald. "David Hicks needs counsel who is not tainted by these allegations."

Major Mori, who has been to Australia seven times, will seek legal advice. The issue will also have to be raised with Hicks when his legal team next sees him. . . Colonel Davis said Major Mori was not playing by the rules and criticised his regular trips to Australia.

"Not playing by the rules"? What? You mean there are rules?

Here's why someone wants Hick's lawyer to shut up and quit -- his counsel knows how to call a spade a spade. So, you know, let's ruin Mori's career, just like we ruined Lt. Cmr. Charles Swift, that other uppity counsel.

Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.

David Hicks
Gitmo
Dirty Bush

Dirty Bush to Vets: Shut Up and Die

Lookee here.

The happy couple. With their happy little boy. You can't tell from this picture that when the happy little boy becomes a bit older, he'll think it's fun to stuff lit firecrackers down the throats of toads who don't want to die. But he thinks it's fun, so the toads will explode, thanks to Bubble Boy, the toad-exploder, who will grow up to be president.

Other families have happy little boys and girls, too. But some of them grow up to be exploded.

In Bubble Boy's Oedipal Iraq war. Some are exploded like the toads, some are wounded. Physically wounded, psychologically wounded, or both.

Bubble Boy doesn't want to pay for troops with PTSD to be treated for the PTSD his splendid little Oedipal war gave them. Suicide saves dough, does it not?

Bubble Boy doesn't want to pay for brain injury treatment for troops with brain injuries his splendid little Oedipal war gave them. They're not Terry Schiavo, are they?

Bubble Boy wants all the rest of the wounded troops who were wounded fighting his splendid little Oedipal war to just shut the f*ck up. He wants them to shut up and die.

More here. And here. And here.

Way to support the troops, Preznit Toad-Exploder!

Vets
Iraq War Vets
Vets with PTSD

Scooter Scooter Scooter -- What kind of a name is that for a grown man?

Waiting for the jury to come in after the Libby trial?

Don't bother with the MSM (mainstream media, for our stout handful of non-blogtopian gentle readers). Go directly to coverage at firedoglake.

Say, Jimmy, isn't firedoglake doing what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do, that is, before it morphed into the loudmouth useless braindead Bushist fascist media whore media? Wasn't all of the media supposed to be defending truth, not truthiness? Truth, justice and the American way -- as Sidney Blumenthal does, here.

But let's take time to tippy-toe down Memory Lane, just a bit. Reviewing the arguments presented in the Libby trial, one does love the little constellation of, um, like NINE , count them, NINE persons to whom Libby somehow managed to "blurt" a CIA covert agent's identity!

But hey, it didn't happen that way, people. It was all about Rove. It was all about Twinkie Sneezing. It was all about being SO BUSY Defenderering the Universe. But In the end, boo-hoo, just as Bubble Boy had become the Deciderer, somehow Libby is now revealed as the Forgetter-er.

Oopsie.

Three words:

Unique
Importance
Anger

Good mnemonic, UIA. Why, it's almost like CIA, is it not? Alliterative irony? Libby's behavior with regard to "Wilson's wife" was Unique -- testimony suggested he was acting in unusual ways, calling people he never called, going way out of his way. Libby's behavior showed the Importance to him of this information-- making time for special two hour lunches, even though he's so busy being the Defenderer of the Universe. Libby's behavior was driven by Anger -- to which many witnesses testified.

On a totally different note, hmm, can anyone say "Sealed vs. Sealed"?

Oh, and here's a little photo of Richard "Big Dick" Cheney. And a big one.

Cheney at Auschwitz. Golly. We're feeling really Jungian today, have you noticed?

The Libby trial summation somehow is just making me feel, so, so -- sentimental! Sentimental about Big Dick!

How about you?




Libby trial
CIA
CIA leak

More Blood for Bush's Hubris: Who Will Be the Last to Die for Bush's Lies?

Bubble Boy's at it again, sending your kids to Iraq to die, but -- not his kids.

(His twins are total slackers who don't even have jobs, never have had any jobs, just like their daddy hasn't ever had a real job ever.)

I mean, golly, what a speech it was. What cheerleading. Big-time. High-end. Sending other people to be the last to die for his lies, but not his people, it's sort of like when coWard Bush wouldn't put his own ass on the line by going to Vietnam, but wanted others to spill their blood for him, kinda Jesus in reverse, as it were.

Can you say -- chickenshit juvenile toad-exploding moron warmonger?

Can you say -- arrogant SOB?

Can you say -- poster boy for not letting stupid people with character disorders run the country?


Thanks all the same.

More here.

Dirty Bush & His Pro-Atrocity Crowd: Water Torture By Any Other Name Would Be -- Waterboarding

While it is not clear exactly what techniques the White House wishes to keep, sources have said those previously used include nakedness, prolonged sensory assault and deprivation, the imposition of "stress" positions, and water submersion to the verge of drowning. Bush has said none of those amounts to torture.

None of those amounts to torture, says Bush. How about we try them on him and see if he agrees with himself? National TV would be nice. But not just Bubble Boy. Rummy, too, and Cheney. Plus some loudmouth media whore media blowhards.

Sigh. I get quite weary of blogging against torture, how about you? You know, having to blog against torture. You'd think the whole thing would be self-evident.

Call me a silly starry-eyed card-carrying Buddhist if you will, but I think that people ought to know right from the get-go that one should really not be inflicting pain on others.

Not intentionally, anyhow.

Because that's, you know, wrong.

So I think that when one comes across people who appear to get off on intentionally inflicting pain on others, for whatever rationale, that, um, you know, there's something really really wrong with them.

And it's quite disturbing to be living in a country where Bush, Cheney, and Rummy, three powerful people, fit into that category. That our country is being run by three people who have something really really wrong with them.

It's disturbing that Preznit Toad-Exploder earned his nickname by purposely blowing sentient beings to bits when he was young. For fun.

It's disturbing that Dirty Dick "Shooter" Cheney finds recreational amusement in blowing to bits captive sentient beings who have zero chance of escape.

It's disturbing that Don "Psycho-Ops" Rumsfeld finds no moral quandary in ordering the torture of captive sentient beings while labeling it as "not torture because I said it's not torture." Water-torture by any other name Orwellianly becomes "waterboarding." The label itself minimizes it, making it sound like, you know, kinda fun. It's summer, hey, let's all go waterboarding!

It's winter, hey, let's all have a little bit of fun at Abu Ghraib! Piling prisoners in pyramid piles is no worse than piling up pyramids of cheerleaders! And we don't call cheerleader pyramid piles torture, do we? Honestly, Abu Ghraib Sgt. Graner's own defense lawyer said that--in Graner's defense! (I'm not making this up! I don't need to. I never need to.) Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, CIA's not-so-secret secret prisons, it's all the same government-supported sadism.

The point of torture is not to cause death but rather to cause suffering. Intense, unbearable suffering such that the torture recipient come to wishe that he or she were dead, so that suffering will cease. Is that clear, boys and girls?

Is it also clear that these our three sadists-in-chief--Bush, Cheney, Rummy--believe it's moral to cause unbearable suffering to captive sentient beings? Is it clear that their hysteric horde of followers now think that torture is as American as apple pie?

There's something really really wrong with these people.

They can't tell right from wrong.

Or, worse, they can tell right from wrong, but they choose to do evil anyway.

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea.
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born,
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world.
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944
Czeslaw Milosz

None Dare Call It Torture, Well, Bubble Boy Doesn't Dare, Anyhow, Since It Would Make Him A War Criminal, Would It Not?, at WaPo, here.
Excellent article by Tom Malinowski at WaPo, here. Moral correctness at its best.
WaPo on "Bubble Boy's Last Stand for Torture Tantrum: Give Me Torture Or Give Me Breath! which I'll hold till I turn purple!! and then you'll be sorry!!)", via WaPo, here.
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Stand Against Torture, here.
Colin Powell finally shows some spine, along with the two Geneva Convention Republicans, here.
Upcoming worldly karmic consequences, here.
Iraq torture
Geneva Conventions
Bush, torture

Dirty Bush Screws the Troops. Again.

What's dirty Bush done this time?

He's cut in half funding for treatment of war-related brain injuries and research on war-related brain injuries.

You know, the kind of war-related brain injuries one might get while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. IEDS, gunshot wounds, that kind of thing.

Please keep in mind Preznit Toad-Exploder's previous record of supporting the troops:

issuing crappy body armor to save money
giving a hard time to troops who buy their own body armor because the DOD doesn't want to be caught being cheap shits
putting crappy armor on tanks to save money
denying treatment to vets with PTSD to save money
putting out anti-PTSD propaganda to save money
undertreating vets with PTSD to save money

Heckuva job.



Full story here.


2006--GET THE SNAKES OFF THE PLANE.

Iraq Veterans
Bush cuts funding for vets
Dirty Bush
Snakes on a plane

El Sueno de la Razon Produce Monstruos

The sleep of reason creates monsters -- Goya




Here is Big Dick Cheney falling asleep at yet another meeting. All things considered, I guess we're all better off when he's unconscious.

PS. Up and running again, knock on wood. Thanks to all.

SERFIN' U-S-A!! . . . (an appreciation of Corporation Appreciation Week, for the CorruptCo Blogfest)

How do we love thee, Bushist fascist corporate corporations of America?

Let us count the ways:

We love thee for pimp-slapping us out of the very notion of pensions.
We love thee for pimp-slapping us out of the very notion of job security.
We love thee for pimp-slapping us out of the very notion of health benefits.
We love thee for pimp-slapping us out of the very notion of a single job being enough to support anyone, much less a family.

We love thee for destroying unions and making us love you for it lest we lose our jobs.

We love thee for disabusing us of the notion that "factory workers at successful companies can achieve a secure, relatively prosperous middle-class life for themselves."

We love thee for creatively creating useless products like Coke and Pepsi which have no nutritional value and yet make beeg money.

We love thee for creatively creating and selling useless products like Camels, Marlboros, etc. etc., totally unecessary & addictive items which actually ruin health and/or kill and yet make beeg money.

We love thee for creatively creating and hypnotically selling products like McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's junk food made out of junk which contribute to obesity and illness and yet make beeg money (see Left of Center's Corruptco post here on high fructose corn syrup and bring your barf bag).

We love thee for successfully poisoning the natural environment and getting away with it, so far.

We love thee for buying and installing Preznit Toad-Exploder who has never actually held an actual job, like both his daughters and I think his mother, and who therefore is able to slap an innocent lady citizen on the back as congratulations to her for her good luck to be living in a country like America where she can hold three jobs--three!--at once.

We love thee for buying and installing Preznit Toad-Exploder who exploded toads in his youth.
We love thee for buying and installing Preznit Toad-Exploder who thinks that invading Iraq and thus making money for Halliburton, the Carlisle Group, and KBR and the rest of the military-industrial complex is way more important than the actual lives of actual troops or the actual lives of actual citizens.

We love thee for always putting profits before people and therefore providing us a sense of security in this impermanent world.

We love thee for your iron grip on corporate media, and your continuing hypnotic hold on the American populace.

We love thee for Enron's happiness at successfully stealing money from little old ladies in California.

We love thee for replacing the notion of American labor with the notion of American serfdom; for replacing noblesse oblige with pure greed and ego; for replacing three classes with the classic two: haves and have -nots--and for blaming the have-nots for not having.

We love thee for not giving a shit about anyone but yourselves.
We love thee for thinking that giving a shit about anyone but yourselves is somehow "quaint," not unlike the Geneva Conventions.

Not only do we love thee, but we worship thee and we bow down.

Ha.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This post is part of the CorruptCo Blogfest, created by LosetheNoose.

Free Speech Equals Sedition in Bubble Boy's Brave New World

This is a sweet little story, by Matthew Rothschild, in The Progressive.

Please read it, say "Bushist fascist, Bushist fascist" aloud thirteen times really fast, notice what emotion you are feeling, and then drop us a line.

VA NURSE INVESTIGATED FOR "SEDITION" FOR CRITICIZING BUSH

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years. Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.

After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the letter on that computer, and accused her of "sedition."

Here's what her letter said.

"I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government," it began. "The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes!" She mentioned that she was "a VA nurse" working with returning vets. "The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder," she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq War.

No Blood for Hubris has been writing about the problem of PTSD in returning Iraq vets, and how poorly the Bush administration has been handling this. Are we to expect a certain knocking at our door as well? How about you seditious people reading these words? Who's next?

"Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence," she wrote. "This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times."

After her computer was seized, Berg wrote a memo to her bosses seeking information and an explanation.

Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources management service at the Albuquerque VA, wrote Berg back on November 9 and acknowledged that "your personal computer files did not contain the editorial letter written to the editor of the weekly Alibi."

But rather than apologize, he leveled the sedition charge: "The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition," he said. "In your letter . . . you declared yourself "as a VA nurse" and publicly declared the Government which employs you to have 'tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence' and advocated, 'act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.'"

Berg, who is not talking to the press, is "scared for her job" and "pretty emotionally distressed," says Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico.

They sure shut her up right fast. That's what it's all about, isn't it?

"We were shocked to see the word 'sedition' used," Simonson tells The Progressive. "Sedition? That's like something out of the history books."

In a press release, Simonson also said: "Is this government so jealous of its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who openly oppose its policies with charges of 'sedition"?"

The ACLU of New Mexico is working in Berg's behalf. It has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents relating to this incident. And it is asking "at the very least" that Berg "receive a pubic apology from Mr. Hooker to remedy the unconstitutional chilling effect on the speech of VA employees that has resulted from these intimidating tactics," according to a letter from the New Mexico ACLU to the VA's Office of Regional Counsel. . .

"While VA does not prohibit employees from exercising their freedom of speech, we do ask that such activity occurs outside government premises and not during their official tour of duty," says Bill Armstrong, a public affairs specialist for New Mexico's VA Health Care System. "When we have reason to believe that this policy is not being adhered to, we have the obligation to review an individual's computer activity."

The VA in Washington also refused to comment on the sedition charge. "We don't discuss internal personnel issues," says Phil Budahn, a VA spokesman in Washington, D.C.

Berg has an additional concern: that the VA may have got the FBI on her case.

A union employee "shared with me that Mel Hooker conveyed to him that my letter had been reported 'up through VA channels' to the FBI in Washington, and that this had been discussed and confirmed" with union officials at the national office, Berg wrote in her November 2 complaint. (The union she belongs to is the American Federation of Government Employees.)

Hooker denied that the VA had contacted the FBI. "The Agency has no knowledge of any report alleged to have been made to the FBI regarding you or your letter," he said in his November 9 memo.

Meanwhile, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, has taken up the Berg case.

"I am writing to express my deep concern regarding news reports that Ms. Laura Berg . . . was investigated for sedition after writing a letter that was critical of the current Administration," Senator Bingaman wrote to R. James Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, on February 7. "In a democracy, expressing disagreement with the government's actions does not amount to sedition or insurrection--it is, and must remain, protected speech."

Watch out, people--FREEDOM'S ON THE MARCH. Out the door, over the cliff. Thanks to our Fearless Leader, Bubble Boy, Preznit Toad-Exploder. Link here. Hat tip to Maccabee at Kos.

VA
Bush
free speech

The Madness of King George, & Karma Karma Karma

Via Buzzflash:

"Bush was . . . desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. . . on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story."

The NY Times, which ran the endless crap stories of stenographer Judith Miller in the run-up to the war, also SAT on this story for an ENTIRE YEAR. Gee, do you wonder who might not be Preznit Toad-Exploder today if the NY Times had not been a media whore? Gee, do you wonder who might not be Preznit Toad-Exploder today if Fitzgerald had had some basic cooperation from virtually anyone? Do we think these tardy happenings happened by mere happenstance?

Bite me.

Here we have David Cole's analysis of Bubble Boy's act of hubris, pointing out that " the president acted in clear contravention of a criminal law enacted by Congress and a Supreme Court precedent, both directly on point."

Here, we have a federal spy court judge quitting over the Bushist abuse of power in the NSA/FISA case.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

Here we have news of Bubble Boy's Department of Defense spending our tax dollars to spy on our sinful American Quakers, environmentalists, and (horrors!) those anti-fur, card-carrying vegans, categorizing them somehow, in that alternative universe in which the Bushist fascists dwell, as military "threats." Don't you feel safer now? Isn't democracy, like, SO, on the march?

And here we have news on the Bush administration lying about the number of casualties occurring from Bubble Boy's Oedipally-motivated, wholly-personal war in Iraq:

"The Pentagon is underreporting the number of American soldier casualties in Iraq, say House Democrats. . . The letter writers argue that Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that, the Democrats declare, adding that the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma.

"We are concerned that that the figures that were released to the public by your administration do not accurately represent the true toll that this war has taken on the American people," the group wrote Bush on Dec. 7. The Dems are right.

Pentagon casualty reports show 2,390 service members dead from Iraq and Afghanistan and over 16,000 wounded. By far the vast majority of the wounded and dead are from Iraq.

But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.

Yet those service members are not included in the Pentagon's casualty reports. That's odd. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a casualty as "a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment or capture or through being missing in action."

"We don't do Webster's," Jim Turner, a Pentagon spokesman told me in 2004 as I was reporting on counting casualties. In a written statement, the Department of Defense told me that the casualty reports describe casualties to fit the "understanding of the average newspaper reader."


"They don't do Webster's?" No, they don't. They don't do truth, either.


In the past few weeks, I've been spending time with two soldiers currently getting treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. One is a 40-year-old man who served in Iraq with the South Carolina Army National Guard. He got hit by a truck in Iraq, fracturing a vertebra, chipping another, and hurting his shoulder. The impact also caused his brain to rock violently inside his skull. He has been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. His wife can't dispatch him down the aisle of a supermarket to fetch ice cream because he often can't remember what happened just five minutes ago.

Another 46-year-old soldier who served in the West Virginia Army National Guard was in an armored personnel carrier that crashed into an eight-foot hole. Because of his traumatic brain injury, his memory is shot. He slurs his words like a drunk and walks with a cane because of dizzy spells. Given the way the Pentagon tabulates casualties, neither of these men count.

Neglecting these kinds of casualties does not appear to be an invention of the Bush administration. Pentagon casualty reports from previous wars, including Vietnam, list the number of dead and wounded and also appear to exclude non-combat injuries and illnesses.

In their letter to Bush, the Democrats cite a November 2004 "60 Minutes" segment (to which I contributed), which featured "badly injured soldiers who were upset by their being excluded from the official count, even though they were, in one soldier's words, 'in hostile territory.'" Democrats assert that counting casualties sustained only from bombs and bullets "does not represent the entire picture of American lives affected by the war."

As the war goes on, that picture is becoming more painfully clear. The Department of Veterans Affairs provides soldiers with medical care after leaving the military. An October V.A. report shows that 119,247 service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan -- and are now off duty -- are receiving health care from the V.A. Presumably, some of those health problems are unrelated to the war.

But the statistics seem to show that a lot of those health problems are war-related. For example, nearly 37,000 have mental disorders, including nearly 16,000 who have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. Over 46,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan receiving benefits from the V.A. have musculoskeletal problems. These are all veterans who within the last four years were considered by the military to be mentally and physically fit enough to fight.

In their letter, the seven Democrats assert that the entire picture of casualties coming out of the Department of Defense is distorted. But the letter concludes that one thing is clear: "What we can be certain of is that at least tens of thousands of young men and women have been physically or psychologically damaged for life."


I have blogged previously about the nipcheese Bubble Boy administration re-classifying soldiers with PTSD by suddenly deciding they don't have PTSD any longer, in order to save money by denying them benefits.

The madness of King George really extends in every direction: pro-torture, pro-undermining the rule of law, pro-pain and suffering; pro-deficit; pro-incompetence; anti-support for troops, anti-Geneva conventions, anti-competence, anti-CIA, anti-life.

One can hardly imagine a worse Preznit.

But--what goes around comes around. Coming around to Preznit Toad-Exploder someday soon.




Torture
Bush
Vets
CIA renditions
spying

Who WOULD Jesus Torture? Hell, let's waterboard Him till He comes up with the answer we're looking for.

No Blood for Hubris is having a major night of right-wing-initiated nausea.

Why might that be? Sure, there was that nauseating thing about the Soft-On-Treason Republicans earlier, and now there's this Torturz-R-US thingie about Big Dick Cheney, he who revealed the name of a clandestine CIA officer to his personal pet Rottweiler, Scooter (what kind of name is that for a grown man?) Libby.

So, one wonders, is it Cheney who's Mr. Sadistic?

See, I always thought it was Rummy.

But no-o-o-o-o.

Consider:

Vice President for Torture

Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A18

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans.

"Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it.

Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture."


Okay, now, gentle readers, we're having a barf break. We had one on the soft-on-treason post, and I just feel like we need to be having some more, again.

"His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors.

Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships."

According to Human Rights Watch:

Earlier this month, in a 90-9 vote, the U.S. Senate approved a measure sponsored by Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham that would prohibit the military and CIA from using “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment” in the case of any detainee, anywhere in the world.

But last week, Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss met with Sen. McCain to propose a presidential waiver for the proposed legislation. The proposed waiver states that the measure “shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense. . . if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”

The waiver, which by its own terms applies to non-military counterterrorism operations against non-citizens overseas, states that such operations need to be “consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party.” But the Constitution does not robustly curtail the conduct of the CIA overseas, and relevant domestic laws contain numerous jurisdictional loopholes. Moreover, administration officials have previously told Congress that they do not consider CIA personnel operating outside the United States to be bound by legal prohibitions against “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment” under treaties to which the United States is party.

“This exception contains code language that could give the CIA a green light to treat prisoners inhumanely,” said Malinowski. “If allowed to stand, it will render President Bush’s past pledges about humane treatment meaningless.”

"Human Rights Watch said the waiver would also open the door for outright torture, as interrogators would find it impossible to draw lines between illegal and 'allowable' mistreatment. Bush administration officials, under questioning from members of Congress in the past, have failed to clearly define differences between torture and lesser forms of mistreatment. They have also made inaccurate statements about the definition of torture; for instance, administration officials have claimed that 'waterboarding' (suffocating a person until he believes he is about to drown) is not a form of torture."

How sick is that?

Back to WaPo:

"The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock [simulated] execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication."

Note for the uninitiated: this is TORTURE.

Deliberately causing pain counts, deliberately causing horror counts, bringing a fellow human being to the point of death--and back--and then to the point of death--and back again--counts.

Don't let those "organ failure" guidelines from Gonzalez fool you, it's all about the pain. Recall one famed oriental torture, not causing death, but causing exquisite pain--those little slivers of bamboo classically used under the fingernails? Because the digits have many more nerve endings than other parts of the body? Think that that doesn't count as torture?

Think again.



Bush
Rumsfeld
Libby
Rove

No Veteran Not Left Behind

Compassion, compassion, compassion.

That's what the Dalai Lama said.

Conservative, conservative, conservative.

That's what the black-heart neo-cons said.

If one scrolls below at No Blood for Hubris, one can see the charming stories such as, "First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You," parts one and two, in which the tale of the notorious non-combatant Daddy's-Friends-Got-Me-Into-The-National-Guards-man and current president Bubble Boy, whose government looks for, and then creates ways to deny mental health treatment to veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder (they do this by deciding, hey! dude! Your flashbacks aren't soooo bad, after all! Adios, amigo! See ya!)

Now, these cuddly neo-cons are doing it again--only it's arguably even more perverse.

Take a gander, but keep a tight fist on your vomit bag:

For Injured U.S. Troops, 'Financial Friendly Fire'

Flaws in Pay System Lead to Dunning, Credit Trouble

By Donna St. George

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 14, 2005; Page A01

His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life's possibilities.

The last thing on his mind, he said, was whether the Army had correctly adjusted his pay rate -- downgrading it because he was out of the war zone -- or whether his combat gear had been accounted for properly: his Kevlar helmet, his suspenders, his rucksack.

At his home near Middletown, N.Y., Robert Loria plays a keyboard. He lost his left hand in a bombing in Iraq. (Dominick Fiorille - Middletown Times Herald Record) 'His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life\'s possibilities.'

But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.

"I was shocked," recalled Loria, now 28 and medically retired from the Army. "After everything that went on, they still had the nerve to ask me for money."

Although Loria's problems may be striking on their own, the Army has recently identified 331 other soldiers who have been hit with military debt after being wounded at war. The new analysis comes as the United States has more wounded troops than at any time since the Vietnam War, with thousands suffering serious injury in Iraq or Afghanistan."


I've asked it before, now I'm asking it again: what is frickin' wrong with these people?

Why have they no shame?

Why have they no care, no compassion, no sense of responsibility toward the post-born?

Why is it that only sentimentalist tales of lonely, sightless, womb-encased embryoes, quite unable to live on their own, are able to inspire any kind of fellow-feeling in them, if you can call it that?

Why have these people only charred, black hearts?

Just asking.


Veterans
Bush

Plus Ca Change: A Country Without a Soul

During Vietnam, some soldiers created necklaces of hacked-off human ears. During World War II, some soldiers brought home skulls, and ears, and bones as trophies.

During Gulf War II/Afghanistan, some American soldiers brutally beat prisoners entrusted to them--some broke bones, some beat the prisoners to death. Some appeared to delight in torturing and humiliating their prisoners. Many troops believed that their commanding officers supported the suspension of the Geneva Conventions during this conflict, and said they were under the impression their brutal treatment was just following orders.

There came a time when pictures from one jail, Abu Ghraib, were made public--pictures of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of American guards. When these pictures were made public, it was the existence of the pictures--not the behaviors of the guards, grinning and pointing at the genitals of their prisoners--that excited concern from the Bush administration. "These pictures will make us look bad!" was their thinking--not "these behaviors are immoral."

There came a time when pictures from the battlefield became publicly known--pictures of mutilated Iraqi corpses with grinning, pointing American solidiers posed next to them, pictures of the genitals of wounded Iraqi women, pictures of charred corpses, pictures of hacked-off limbs, pictures American troops had brought to post on the internet at NowThatsFuckedUp.com, trading sadistic death porn in exchange for sex porn, in a scandal known as "Do-It-Yourself Abu Ghraib."

There came a time when treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was made public--tales of torture and mistreatment of prisoners by their American guards, and tales of sacrilegious treatment of the Koran, the prisoners' holy book. This concerned the Bush administration. Not the behavior--the discovery of the behavior. "These stories will make us look bad!" was their thinking--not "these behaviors are immoral."

There came a time when the existence of CDs showing the rape of children by American troops was made known, but their release to the public was prevented by the Bush administration. "These pictures will make us look bad!" was their thinking--not "these behaviors are immoral."

In the Bush administration, everything is weighed by its spin; will action A. provide us with more power, or less? Will we gain more profit, or less? Will we look better, or worse?

Nothing said about right vs. wrong.

Nothing about preferring good to evil.

With Bubble Boy and his black-heart neo-cons, the culture of chickenhawks, America is utterly empty of any moral leadership. What attracts their "moral" attention is evaluating the sexual practices of grown men and women, and protecting the so-called "human rights" of embryoes who cannot in any case survive on their own.

When it comes to the human rights records of their authoritarian oilist allies--sexual slavery, indentured servitude, women's rights count for absolutely nothing.

Something's missing.

Winston Churchill said, "A country without a conscience is a country without a soul, and a country without a soul is a country that cannot survive."

Is Winston speaking about us, boys and girls?

Compare and contrast with the following:


A Task.

by Czeslaw Milosz


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one

Considered himself as a lost man.





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