Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

Continue reading "Because this is important..."

{ Tuesday, 10 January, 2006 }

"Judge Doom's" Application for Employment

I can't quote the whole thing here since it's an image file, but not surprisingly, ScAlito believes in "the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values." That meaning, of course, that many pervert that gets the slightest wood over Brokeback Mountain ought to be rounded up and publicly shot, paying for the bullet beforehand. I kid mostly, but this kind of openly political statement (and others, read the app) deeply concern me. If the Preznit is so serious about not selecting activist judges, why did he pick Alito?

jaybird found this for you @ 12:00 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 20 December, 2005 }

Turn down the heat: Inuit sue US over climate policy

People living in the Arctic have filed a legal petition against the US government, saying its climate change policies violate human rights. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) claims the US is failing to control emissions of greenhouse gases, damaging livelihoods in the Arctic.

Its petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demands that the US limits its emissions. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a vast scientific study which took four years to compile, found that the region will warm by four to seven degrees Celsius by the end of the century, with summer sea ice disappearing within 60 years.

jaybird found this for you @ 21:05 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 14 December, 2005 }

Peekaboo: Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?

“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”

Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.

jaybird found this for you @ 20:26 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Happy Place: Bush in the Bubble

Bush may be the most isolated president in modern history, at least since the late-stage Richard Nixon. It's not that he is a socially awkward loner or a paranoid. He can charm and joke like the frat president he was. Still, beneath a hail-fellow manner, Bush has a defensive edge, a don't-tread-on-me prickliness. It shows in Bush's humor. When Reagan told a joke, it almost never was about someone in the room. Reagan's jokes may have been scatological or politically incorrect, but they were inclusive, intended to make everyone join in the laughter. Often, Bush's joking is personal—it is aimed at you. The teasing can be flattering (the president gave me a nickname!), but it is intended, however so subtly, to put the listener on the defensive. It is a towel-snap that invites a retort. How many people dare to snap back at a president?

jaybird found this for you @ 08:14 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 30 November, 2005 }

Dubya, the Obvious: Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War

Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins [via metafilter]

jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 29 November, 2005 }

Hersh: Where is the Iraq war headed next?

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.

“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”

jaybird found this for you @ 16:32 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Tsunami Remembered: The Day the Sea Came

For the earth, it was just a twinge. Last Dec. 26, at 7:59 a.m., one part of the planet's undersea crust made an abrupt shift beneath another along a 750-mile seam near the island of Sumatra. The tectonic plates had been grating against each other for millenniums, and now the higher of the two was lifted perhaps 60 feet. For a planet where landmasses are in constant motion across geological time, the event was of no great moment. But for people - who mark the calendar in days and months rather than eons - a monumental catastrophe had begun, not only the largest earthquake in 40 years but also the displacement of billions of tons of water, unleashing a series of mammoth waves: a tsunami. These surging mounds of water raced toward land with the speed of a jet aircraft and then slowed as they reared up to leap ashore at heights of 50 feet and higher. They were long as well as tall, stampeding inland and carrying with them all they were destroying. People caught in the waves became small ingredients in an enormous blender, bludgeoned by concrete slabs and felled trees, stabbed by jagged sheets of glass, tangled up in manacles of wire.

The number of the dead and missing is now estimated at 232,000. And while this includes victims from a dozen nations, more than two-thirds - some 169,000 - came from a single place, the Indonesian province of Aceh. And of Aceh's mortal toll, more than half - some 90,000 - came from a single city, Banda Aceh, and its immediate surroundings. This provincial capital was a place of large government buildings, two major universities, a historic mosque, stores and restaurants, a harbor and a fishing fleet. It sits in the northwest nub of Sumatra, where converging sea lanes from the Malay Peninsula, India and Arabia once sustained a flourishing trade in aromatic spices. The location, for centuries so favorable, was a mere 155 miles from the earthquake's epicenter. Banda Aceh was swamped by the tsunami within 30 minutes of the tremor.

The devastation left its own peculiar boundaries. Roughly a third of the city - the two miles nearest the Indian Ocean - was flattened and denuded, with only an occasional tree or shank of cement escaping the sledgehammer strength of the waves. A mile or so farther inland, the destruction was more erratic, its effects less a consequence of battering than of flooding. The rest of the city entirely evaded the water's horrific reach; hours went by before some of its residents even knew the day was anything other than sunny and serene...

That morning, as usual, Jaloe, who was 46, was out the door soon after sunup. His wife, Yusnidar, and their three children, Mukhlis, 15, Mutia, 14, and Azarul, 5, were left at home. Their rented wooden shack - just a 12-by-12-foot space diced into three tiny rooms - was but 50 yards from the Aceh River, near where it meets the sea. Jaloe carried breakfast with him - coffee as well as a bar of sticky rice sweetened with coconut milk and packed in banana leaf. In an hour, he was four miles off the coast, within sight of the tree-covered Breueh Islands. The water was remarkably tranquil. Barely a bird arced across the deep blue sky...

jaybird found this for you @ 12:29 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 21 November, 2005 }

Double Header: Bush's secret cronies & Bush's secret PR

From Cronies:

No discussion of cronyism in the Bush administration would be complete without talking about PFIAB, short for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. George W. Bush's latest appointments to the PFIAB, which advises the president on how various intelligence agencies are performing, represent a who's who of the Halliburton-Texas Rangers-oil business crony club that made Bush into a millionaire and helped propel him into the White House.

From PR:

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

jaybird found this for you @ 11:27 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 16 November, 2005 }

Revision Thing: A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were.

We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We didn't want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We've tried every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to go to war than President Bush.

jaybird found this for you @ 16:30 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 }

Secret Scrutiny: In Hunt for Terrorists, FBI Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:10 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 10 November, 2005 }

Comprehensive: Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled. [via metafilter]

jaybird found this for you @ 16:50 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 09 November, 2005 }

Spreading Freedom: US forces used chemical weapons during assault on Fallujah

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

jaybird found this for you @ 15:41 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 04 November, 2005 }

Illegitimate governemnt notices itself, winces

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

jaybird found this for you @ 08:18 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 03 November, 2005 }

Raging Chimp: Bush's Increasing Mental Lapses and Temper Tantrums

Senior aides describe Bush as increasingly “edgy” or “nervous” or “unfocused.” They say the President goes from apparent coherent thought one moment to aimless rambles about political enemies and those who are “out to get me.”

“It’s worse than the days when Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s began setting in,” one longtime GOP operative told me privately this week. “You don’t know if he’s going to be coherent from one moment to the next. What scares me is if he lapses into one of those fogs during a public appearance.”

Aides say Bush, who has always had trouble focusing during times of stress, is increasingly distant during meetings, often staring off into space during discussions on the nation’s security and other issues.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:07 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 01 November, 2005 }

Noonan: A Separate Peace

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

I'm not talking about "Plamegate..." I'm not talking about "Miers." I mean . . . the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn't think so.

But this recounting doesn't quite get me to what I mean. I mean I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:24 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 28 October, 2005 }

Merry Fitzmas!

It's only the stocking stuffer!

jaybird found this for you @ 13:06 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 25 October, 2005 }

Merry Fitzmas:Dick in the know

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

More here, here, and here.

jaybird found this for you @ 15:11 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Rosa Parks

Rest in Peace.

jaybird found this for you @ 09:06 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 14 October, 2005 }

Gone Tomorrow: Anticipated disappearance

Albert Einstein claimed he never thought of the future. “It comes soon enough,” he said. FOREIGN POLICY decided to not grant 16 leading thinkers that luxury. Instead, to mark our 35th anniversary, we asked them to speculate on the ideas, values, and institutions the world takes for granted that may disappear in the next 35 years. Their answers range from fields as diverse as morals and religion to geopolitics and technology. We may be happy to see some of these “endangered species” make an exit, but others will be mourned. All of them will leave a mark. [via ?]

jaybird found this for you @ 16:26 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 12 October, 2005 }

The Body Language of Bush

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.

jaybird found this for you @ 21:21 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 07 October, 2005 }

The Administration's Swagger

In an increasingly hazardous world teetering on increasingly dangerous technology in the control of a most dangerous and unstable nation, a nation that has returned US to the morality of the Dark Ages and its justice based upon torture, invasion and mass murder, a nation controlled by the satanic cult-driven motive of world domination and control via the enslavement of all people, a robust, inquiring press that informs the American people as opposed to pimping for its dangerous politicians is what is really needed.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:11 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Gore: the strangeness of our public discourse

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

jaybird found this for you @ 08:07 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 26 September, 2005 }

Letter from Louisiana: High Water

Kalamu ya Salaam told me that he thought the suffering was far from over. Hurricane Rita has made recovery even more difficult. For the moment, people are focussed on the grace of their own survival, and are grateful for the small and large acts of compassion that have come their way. And yet, he said, “you are going to see a lot of suicides this winter. A lot of poor people depend entirely on their extended family and their friends who share their condition to be a buffer against the pain of that condition. By winter, a lot of the generosity and aid that’s been so palpable lately will begin to slow down and the reality of not going home again will hit people hard. They will be very alone.

“People forget how important all those Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs are for people. It’s a community for a lot of folks who have nothing. Some people have never left New Orleans. Some have never seen snow. So you wake up and you find yourself beyond the reach of friends, beyond the reach of members of your family, and you are working in a fast-food restaurant in Utah somewhere and there is no conceivable way for you to get back to the city you love. How are you going to feel?”

jaybird found this for you @ 08:02 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 22 September, 2005 }

Typical of this Gov't: National Archives Indian Records Discarded

Federal officials are investigating how National Archives documents of interest to Indians suing the Interior Department were found discarded in a trash bin and a wastebasket. The discovery came to light on Sept. 1, when Archives staff noticed federal records in one of the trash bins behind the National Archives Building near the Capitol. They notified the Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, whose staff recovered the documents. They found at least a portion of the documents were Bureau of Indian Affairs records dating to the 1950s... in a letter last week to an Interior Department official.

Brachfeld's office began investigating, and ``what appear to be Indian records were discovered in a waste basket in the stack areas at Main Archives,'' Baron wrote. Taken together, the two dumping incidents ``may be intentional acts aimed at unlawfully removing or disposing of permanent records from the Interior Department,'' he wrote.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:52 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 21 September, 2005 }

Oral Histories of Katrina Survivors

Babies were floating on a mattress, and the baby fell off the mattress. And nobody couldn’t find him., and they had a bunch of men trying help find him. I come up with the baby. It feels good, you know, to save lives, because I have seen people get killed and die, but I have not seen that many people at one time. What I went through, I never thought I feel the way I feel about life. Living, you know, is beautiful, and God sent us to a place that we never been.

I even saved a dog. That’s how intimate this thing wa. It was intense, it was scary, it was a situation you’ll never forget. I heard the dog screaming. The dog was trapped in the twines where a tree had fallen. He was standing up on his hind legs trying to keep his head above water. He was trembling. But the dog was real friendly to me. He must have known I was the onliest person going to save him. I held him in my arms and brought him to this porch.

jaybird found this for you @ 16:02 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Frank Rich on Bush: I Care About the Black Folks

Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.

This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)

The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.

Some of these poses are re-enacted in the "Hurricane Relief" photo gallery currently on display on the White House Web site. But this time the old magic isn't working. The "compassion" photos are outweighed by the cinéma vérité of poor people screaming for their lives. The government effort to keep body recovery efforts in New Orleans as invisible as the coffins from Iraq was abandoned when challenged in court by CNN.

jaybird found this for you @ 11:52 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 19 September, 2005 }

Lest we forget: Katrina Day 21

We do remember that NOLA is where are cameras are. My thoughts go to all those places where the cameras aren't, and to my good friend Jen Wo who is in Gulfport, Mississippi right now volunteering for the Red Cross.

Bogalusa, Louisiana: Far from spotlight, deep in plight

What hasn't been said

Even big media noticed it: I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort

The City We All Love (and pray is not lost forever).

Katrina through the eyes of the world press: “How America now responds to their desperate plight will tell the wider world much about what Americans really value.”

As New Orleans Drowned, Chertoff Was Focused On Avian Flu and Immigration

Karl Rove in charge of rebuilding effort?

Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts

Of failures and unfairness

The few people left in New Orleans are unimpressed with President Bush's visit: The site of Bush's speech was notably antiseptic and isolated, given the mayhem all along the Gulf coast. Fallen trees had been cut down, and scores of bags of leaves and branches were piled outside the 154-year-old, cast-iron fence that surrounds the square. The government brought in a truck-mounted generator, and Hollywood-style lighting. In the afternoon, fresh liners were put in trash cans. By dusk, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne had been deployed to keep regular citizens several blocks back.

After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons...

More surely to come

We must remember, and rebuild.

jaybird found this for you @ 07:48 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 16 September, 2005 }

Louisiana Took Necessary and Timely Steps

Conyers: "This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability by shifting the blame to the Governor of Louisiana for the Administration's tragically sluggish response to Katrina. It confirms that the Governor did everything she could to secure relief for the people of Louisiana and the Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."

jaybird found this for you @ 08:35 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 15 September, 2005 }

Surprise: Louisiana officials did everything right

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government...

jaybird found this for you @ 12:10 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 14 September, 2005 }

Dionne: End of the Bush Era

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this...

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

jaybird found this for you @ 20:35 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Roberts: The princess and the frog

Bufo... was menaced by big guys. In his case, the big guy was a San Diego developer who wanted to get his hands on the soil from Bufo's breeding ground. This would have been the end of Bufo and all his kind. The US Fish and Wildlife Service - Bufo's bodyguards if you will - stopped the developer. So the developer went to court. A three-judge panel in California ruled for Bufo and against the builder. For their authority, they relied on that commerce clause.

Step forward Judge Roberts - that pivotal nominee for the Supreme Court. Everyone has been trawling through his record to see how he might tip the balance of the Court. A response of his to Bufo gives us the best clue so far. Writing a commentary, Roberts was critical of those three judges who rescued Bufo from extinction. Bufo, he said, ought not to have been protected by the interstate commerce clause, because "he is a hapless toad that for reasons of its own lives its entire life in California."

jaybird found this for you @ 12:28 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 13 September, 2005 }

Nero revealed

Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from... blistering analyses... it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

jaybird found this for you @ 16:32 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 12 September, 2005 }

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 14

Two weeks now, and the scope of the disaster and its disastrous response widens and become even more sad as time goes by. American citizens are living in 'camps' where few can enter or leave, environmental collapse threatens the Delta, and the criminal negligence of the government becomes more apparent. But, there is the goodness of humanity emerging, and like any American morning, people are slowly waking up to the gravity of this nation-shattering event. On a personal note, my dear friend and colleague Jen Wo leaves today to be a Red Cross volunteer in Alabama. You go girl. Bring them hope.

Destruction is manifold: major oil spills, lost islands, industrial collapse.

Med student's report from inside the Astrodome: "You will never know what happened in that city during the flood."

The GAO to investigate contracts to rebuild offered to ethically challenged corps in an ethically challenging manner.

A scorcher: How Bush Blew It (Newsweek): "How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace."

German plane carrying Katrina aid turned back

Some towns completely wiped off the map

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade...' "He said the water being pumped out of the city was not being tested for pollution and would damage Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi river, and endanger people using it downstream."

Maureen Dowd stings: "Getting truth on the ground in New Orleans was very difficult," a White House aide told The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller. Not if you had a TV.

Head of National Guard: Guard stretched too thin by Iraq, hampering Katrina recovery.

Texas Gov and Bush crony Perry seems to believe that Jehova the thunder god brought Katrina in to punish the gays. Primitive!

NIMBY callousness: Police in Suburbs Blocked Evacuees, blockaded key bridges out.

On-the-scene report from a rescuer

The polluted water, a looming ecological crisis

...Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

A Letter to All Who Voted for George W. Bush from Michael Moore: "Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake."

We must remember, and for the sake of justice, we must rebuild.
Godspeed Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Sources include Kos, Sploid, Metafilter, Huffington Post and the randomness of the internet.

jaybird found this for you @ 10:40 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 09 September, 2005 }

Katrina Outrage Quickie

Sweet! Gov't finally realized that Mike Brown is an idiot.

Police State: Locked out of the Astrodome.

Report: I just got back from a FEMA detainment camp.

A dismal report from an EPA agent.

jaybird found this for you @ 14:16 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 11

I'm not getting off the bus until we know where we're going...

In the Crescent City, there are other fears: "At the very least, there are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc. There are surely other labs in the city."

In Bush's emergency declaration before the storm, no southern parishes were covered by the declaration, contrary to where we knew the storm would hit. Weather Channel, Dubya?

Evacuees: Welcome to the Rockies, now get behind the fence! "The signs on the buildings say "Community College of Aurora," though for now they're serving as an impromptu Camp Katrina. About 160 hurricane survivors are being housed in the dorms, surrounded by fences, roadblocks, security guards and enough armed police officers to invade Grenada."

Reporter's book predicts disaster months before: "If I, a reporter in Little Rock, with nothing more than Internet access, a car and a telephone, could predict, almost hour-by-hour, the horror that Katrina would unleash, what were [the] cronies at Homeland Security doing with all the assets at their disposal and nearly $40 billion in funding?"

3.7 million gallons contribute to ecological mayhem: Oil spillages threaten Gulf of Mexico

Even Mike Brown's resume is fudged.

Mississippi Burning: hiding the devastation to score political points.

Series of first person reports from grad student inside Supoerdome: 1, 2, 3.

Even Colin Powell sees federal failure in the response.

Cindy Sheehan on the road to distribute relief to poor areas out of the spotlight.

Laura Bush does not know what the name of the storm was. Corrina?

LEVITY: 93 year old woman held off looters with a tight grip on the cajones.

Transcript of Daily Show exchange on Kos about sums it up:

Jon Stewart: The president has vowed to personally lead the investigation into the government's failed response to Katrina? Isn't that a job perhaps someone else should be doing? Samantha Bee: No, not at all, Jon. To truly find out what went wrong, it's important for an investigator to have a little distance from the situation. And it's hard to get any more distant from it than the president was last week.

.

Also, I'd like to thank Daisy Wififred from Animated Stardust for this encouragement:

Thank you for the work you have been doing in getting info out to people like me so far away but whose heart is very close to the abandoned and struggling many on your side of the pond. The BBC has kept us very well informed and I suspect the public here knows rather more than many of those in the States as I suspect even as some of your news people broke lose of the 'chains' midst the horrer thay were being asked to report on the leash will almost certainly be being tugged again now and misinformation and disinformation will begin to take the upper hand if people like you do not continue to bring in to the light the reality, the truth for so many lives and for so many deaths caused not just by a president and his men but by a society that got all wrapped up in a dream that many have woken to find nightmare. For all the cracks and mismanagement here as far as health, social services, education, infrastructure etc are concerned, and they are systems run by human beings so of course there are failings, in time of real need from the poorest to the richest are remembered and as a society we have not lost the understanding that taxes feed, educate, care and house us all even when there are some that are rich enough to provide that for themselves they understand that if the whole community is not endeavoured to be given the same opportunity the rich might as well be living in cardboard boxes for it is true no man is an island.

Sorry Jay, have gone on, am just so appalled that it might take the death of 1,000's of people for others left alive to question where their society has taken them and I fear that excuses, comfort zones etc will make memories and questioning very short and sense that a collapse of a nation is nearer than anyone would wish.

Thank you again for your work and for your continuing challenging and thoughtful blog...

.

I have spent an insane amount of time gathering and sorting through all this info, at the expense at times of my sanity. But from this information, my hope is more and more humanity, and more and more global sanity.

For their sake, we must remember, and rebuild.

Sources include Metafilter, Kos, Sploid, Eschaton, AmericaBlog, Crooks and Liars, and Talking Point Memo..

jaybird found this for you @ 11:46 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 08 September, 2005 }

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 10

Here's another burst...

MUST SEE: Famed N.O. musician Charmaine Neville details life in the aftermath. "What Charmaine describes is beyond what anyone should go through. In America her story makes it ever worse to believe such events could happen. This video will and should being you to tears..."[embedded real]

Here's the federal disaster plan that DHS and FEMA completely ignored [.pdf].

Stunning photos of the aftermath.

We must get them out: Astrodome unsafe, inhumane.

Low-Power FM station has license and ability to operate in Astrodome to help evacuees, but the gov't won't let them set up shop.

Standing floodwater major ecological, biological threat. It's 10x over the toxic load limit, and rising.

New Orleans Aquarium, which I visited a few years ago, is devastated, but a few critically important creatures have been saved. The Zoo, which I saw on the same trip, fared much better.

Pat Robertson is swimmin' in it: "Operation Blessing" a bane.

The Post-Katrina Era; Katrina's tragic consequences were not just due to incompetence, natural disaster, or Bush policies (though he is accountable). This is a failure of moral and political philosophy.

Ivins: A flood of bad policies.

Soloman: Ending the impunity of the Bush White House.

Speak up, Gov'nor: Race played a role in Katrina deaths.

Hurricane Katrina has shredded what was left of the Bush Administration's credibility. Now we watch the slow train wreck of America.

America Implodes: The devastation of Katrina demonstrates that we have come to the end of the tether. The American people have wasted so many resources on comfort, ego, and war that they can no longer afford basic protection against disaster.

The Principles of Reconstruction: "Take the opportunity to design and build the most efficient and secure and environmentally sound transportation, port, oil and gas, business and residential communities in the world."

The ballyhoo over martial law.

Former Deputy Sec'y of the Treasury: Americans are being brainwashed.

For their sake, and for the sake of their children,
we must remember, and rebuild.

Sources include Kos, Americablog, ThinkProgress, Metafilter, Sploid, and Intervention.

jaybird found this for you @ 09:19 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 07 September, 2005 }

Outrage A-Go-Go

Apologists and naysayers are trying to make a dent in the zeitgeist today, but the momentum seems to lie with those of us, from the left, right, neutral and previously apathetic, are keeping up the tidal wave of cries for accountability. The logic of those glad to make excuses for the Worst Preseident Ever is fairly simple to deconstruct. Sure, many of those in State government probably made a few mistakes, but not at the collosal level that helped to drown an entire city... it comes down to levee funding, and appointing completely inexperienced people by way of patronage to fill positions vital to national security. The accountability trail stops at the Oval Office door.

Here's a few new developments:

Pelosi on fire: She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown. "He said 'Why would I do that?'" Pelosi said. "'I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'" "Oblivious, in denial, dangerous," she added.

FEMA fiddles dangerously with freedom of the press.

HRC grows some, seeks investigation.

Fake premise used to hike gas prices.

Tom DeLay halts Congressional hearings. 'Nuff said.

FEMA can't cope with biohazards.

Camping: FEMA camps for evacuees far from helping people to feel at home and comfortable after losing everything. Same goes in Colorado.

Sorting out opinion from fact.

Billmon: The Problem Solving Presdient.

New laws make life harder for evacuees.

Conyers calls for investigation from Congressional research agency.

BBC rescues the stranded where the US Government fails.


Never surrender.





Image from Kos, stories from Kos, Sploid, Rawstory, Billmon, AmericaBlog.

jaybird found this for you @ 17:48 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 9

Regular blogging on my relatively regular schuedule will resume soon, but for now, all attention needs to go to this. We can't let the fuckers get away. So, no rest for those in their blazing desire to expose the wicked:

Comprehensive timelines here and here.

Experienced and professional personnel wanting to volunteer are given "promotional" duties for feds. Handling out flyers, or being photo-op props.

FEMA wankers waited hours before asking DHS "What should we do, boss?"

College kids make it down to help where Feds fear to tread. Their synopsis: "Disgraceful."

Feds had received briefings about Katrina's full potential before landfall. More context.

"Top FEMA deputies make Brown look qualified."

Disgusting politics being played with relief funds: Repub politicos poised to get relief first.

What the Katrina, Rehnquist, and Intelligent Design stories have in common

Broussard: "I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Controversial: The Attempt to Declare Martial Law in Big Easy. The basis of the article is this WaPo article I posted yesterday. The thrust is whether federalizing N.O. would've enabled the feds to cover up. MeFi is on the case, and I'm mighty curious.

BBC: Has Katrina saved US media? "Mr Bush's famed "folksy" style has failed to impress in this crisis"

Outrage: Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded

Foreign aid donors still waiting for clearance.

Further FEMA proof of incompetence.

FEMA bungles meta-evacuation: Flies planeload to Charleston, WV and not Charleston, SC!

FEMA: Please don't photograph the truth.

Time: It isn't easy picking George Bush's worst moment last week.

I'll add more as the day goes by. Stay tuned.

We must remember, and rebuild.

Pic by Fliss of Sunday's candlelight vigil. Link to her Flickr entry.

jaybird found this for you @ 11:20 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 06 September, 2005 }

Nero, or Caligula?

Never forget.

Oh, and he's investigating himself. Twit.

From the WWL ongoing coverage:

3:32 P.M. Ben Morris, Slidell mayor: We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horse$#@@."

3:11 P.M. - From all corners of this country, hundreds of would-be rescuers are wending their way to the beleaguered Gulf Coast in buses, vans and trailers. But government red tape has hampered many who ache to help Katrina's victims.

Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines.

Why? FEMA has not explained. But the outraged Broussard said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the agency needs to bring in all its "force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives."

The government says it is doing the best it can in the face of a massive and complicated disaster.

"Even as progress is being made, we know that victims are still out there and we are working tirelessly to bring them the help they need," said Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Some of the delays can be explained by the need to control a volatile situation. Long lines of volunteers are being stopped on freeways on their way into New Orleans.

"Anyone who self-responded was not being put to work. The military was worried about having more people in the city. They want to limit it to the professionals," said Kevin Southerland, a captain with Orange Fire Department in Orange County, Calif., a member of one of eight 14-member water rescue teams sent to New Orleans at FEMA's request.

10:12: A.M. - Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard: I'm not surprised at what the feds say, they're covering their butts. They're keeping the body counts down because they don't want to horrify the nation. It's worse than Iraq, worse than 9-11. They just don't want to know how many were murdered by bureaucracy.

10:10 A.M. - Broussard: I know what the body count is so far, but I won't horrify the nation.

jaybird found this for you @ 15:00 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 8

I had a great roundup all set and Firefox went all to hell. So, I'm trying to put it all back together. Anyway, this will not rest until our sisters and brothers are in real homes and not Thunderdomes.

The Council on Foreign Relations has a very sobering assessment of the long-term effects, environmentally and socially, that will last for a very long time.

The Northern Command wasn't activated by the W until too late. The USS Bataan, a ship with a large hospital and major search and rescue capability, was left to bob offshore with no ok to go ahead. Video here.

HOPE in the heroes: Six year old Deamonte Love (above) saves many toddlers.

Abandoned pets facing a critical situation. Consider giving to the US Humane Society as well.

The Congressional Record doesn't obscure the many times that New Orleans pled for help to secure the levees. Homeland security, inaction.

Metafilter scoops: Love Canal-type toxic site under New Orleans floodwater, serious ecologic catastrophe immanent.

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard in June '05: The President... has failed us.

WAPO: "As president, Bush typically has been loath to admit mistakes, and this situation is no different."

Further evidence of egregious media manipulation to prop up a wounded regime.

Krugman is hopping mad: Killed by contempt.

These two words need to be repeated over and over: Criminal Negligence.

Some asshole needs to sell the ranch.

Why FEMA turned away help.

Europe sees the problem here. How come the government can't?

Barbara Bush, the mother of the Beast, condescends to Astrodome evacuees. Audio.

Olbermann nails it: "Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: 'Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater...' Well there's your problem right there."

Katrina survival story.

Heartbreaking: This is what a plea for help sounds like [mp3].

Interesting: Timeline of response to the last time America lost a city. Note the fast response, note the year.

A struggle for the soul of America.

We must remember, and rebuild.
Sources include Metafilter, Americablog, Crooks and Liars, Talk Left, emails and perousal.

jaybird found this for you @ 09:57 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 05 September, 2005 }

Total Information Awareness - Katrina Day 7

Here's the latest roundup of must-reads...

Tribes find ways to survive in the French Quarter.

Living paycheck to paycheck made leaving impossible.

Cuba can successfully evacuate and withstand a cat. 5 hurricane without any deaths. How? Preparedness...

Katrina reveals that America is still far away from fully achieving from Dr. King's dream...

Rove and Bartlett rush in to rescue W from his collpased house of cards and mist historic fuckup.

Death by Bureaucrats: Red tape hals flow of major medical help. You'll need this form in triplicate.

Inland survivors still aren't seeing any FEMA, Red Cross, presidential photo ops.

Experts: Homeland Security was too preoccupied with terrorism, to the terror of many. Depose Mike Brown!

Asking the right questions: Katrina and criminal negligence?

Has Katrina's wake created a new untouchable class in Amercia?

Newsweek: The lost city and its disastrously slow rescue. Exposes critical ineptitude.

Frank Rich: Falluja floods the Superdome.

"They embraced and they cried on Sept. 11; they cried for the tsunami... But they just left us here to die.... We survived the hurricane, and now we're still fighting to survive a week later. It's crazy."

NYT: The man-made disaster.

By the Numbers: In Katrina’s Wake, Race and Class Still Not Being Addressed

Despair: New Orleans, Year Zero.

And, most importantly...

Hope: Musicians keep the New Orleans spirit alive in Detroit.



We must remember, and rebuild.

Sources for the above include Metafilter, ThinkProgress, Americablog, through email and random perousal.

jaybird found this for you @ 11:24 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Sunday, 04 September, 2005 }

Total Information Awareness

Here's some key information and stories for us to begin the process of understanding this massive event.

22 reasons America needs New Orleans

Army Times: N.O. going to look like a 'little Somalia,' residents are an 'insurgency.'

Bush visit halted food delivery to refugees

East of New Orleans, Heavy Damage, Lost Lives and Pleas for Help

From CNN, which recently discovered its cajones: The big disconnect on New Orleans

Bush and Chertoff both state that they didn't anticipate the levee breach. Governor Blanco did, and here is the Disaster Relief Request, filed last Sunday, to prove it [pdf].

Background articles on Iraq war & New Orleans crisis: A perfectly avoidable catastrophe

I call bull: Chertoff says that Katrina scenario did not exist. Even Mr. Bill knew about it.

Yet in 2001, FEMA ranked a cat. 3 hurricane strike on N.O. as a top three potential national disaster

Here's a Scientific American article from 2001 about that very same topic.

DHS apparently ignores its own mission statement.

The next crisis: refugees being treated like they aren't Americans.

Mississippi still not getting help due to FEMA bureaucracy, yet Bush's pal Gov. Barbour says everything just fine.

Bush faked levee repair for photo op

Bush faked food distribution for photo op

Feds rejected Chicago's help

Red Cross not allowed into N.O.

BBC: New Orleans crisis shames US

Maureen Dowd agrees

FEMA and DHS had privatised hurricane disaster preparations.

Times-Picayune: An open letter to the president

Video: Mr. Chertoff, are you contemplating resignation?

Video: Jefferson County Parish president says that "Bureaucracy has committed murder here." A very tearful, agry indictment.

My Pet Goat, The Sequel

Chopra: Tsunamis, New Orleans, and the War Against Nature

Anne Rice: Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

Desperate plea from Landrieu, backing up photo op claim

Another Congressman can't get Bush on the line

Corps of Engineers honcho fired because he criticized Bush plan to halt levee funding.

Fox News outfoxed by its own reporters showing backbone

A not-so-modest proposal

Analysis: Can this actually be happening in America?

Sharpton on Olbermann: Where is the culture of life now?

Jackson Blasts Bush Over Katrina Aid

Rhetoric not matching reality

Katrina: America's shame

The speech a real president would give

Casual to the point of careless: Bush under fire for slow reaction

Michael Moore speaks out

We must remember, and rebuild.

Sources for the above include Metafilter, Dailykos, Sploid, Americablog, Crooks and Liars, emails and personal digging.

jaybird found this for you @ 15:06 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 02 September, 2005 }

A Can't-Do Government

A powerful indictment from Krugman...

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

jaybird found this for you @ 17:35 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Nagin: "They're spinning a line of bull..."

MP3 of interview with Mayor Ray Nagin. [via metachat]

This man has tremendous courage, and an incredible dedication to the people of his city. The very end of the interview is incredibly poignant. He reflects great virtue.

Bless this man.

jaybird found this for you @ 13:31 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Category 4 Hurricane Determined to Strike U.S.

The administration specifically cut the funds to fix these specific levees, in order to specifically divert that Corps money to Iraq, despite urgent warnings and predictions of catastrophic disaster if the levees were breeched. The administration specifically cancelled the Clinton-backed flood control program to preserve and restore the wetlands between New Orleans and the gulf, instead specifically opening parts of that buffer zone for development.

Nobody anticipated this disaster? It was identified by FEMA as one of the top three likeliest major disasters to strike America...

jaybird found this for you @ 09:22 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 01 September, 2005 }

The name of the beast

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms. Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying. Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:18 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

An American Diaspora

The only certainty here now is uncertainty.

Across the south hundreds of thousands of Americans have been unceremoniously dumped: displaced by Katrina in rest stops and hotel lobbies; among strangers in shelters and in hospitals.

And for most there is no going back, for weeks, and more probably, months.

They sleep where they can.

jaybird found this for you @ 08:09 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 31 August, 2005 }

On Looting

...[A]n older woman was interviewed after taking part in the "looting" of a store for food. After giving her full name, she expressed a great deal of remorse for what she was doing, saying that every time she'd ever seen looters on television, she'd been extremely upset by it and never thought she'd be in their shoes. Well, shame on anyone who would make these people -- who are in the middle of a literal hell on Earth -- feel as if scavenging for bread and clean water from flooded and abandoned stores is somehow wrong or shameful.

jaybird found this for you @ 20:50 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

Photo essay: As Katrina Struck, Bush Vacationed

What Bush saw: At El Pueblo Mirage, guests relax on the luxurious greens

What Bush missed: In Louisiana, residents dig themselves out from under the trees

jaybird found this for you @ 16:26 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

When the levee breaks...

It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:24 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

How out of touch is George Bush on this disaster?

'Nuff said

jaybird found this for you @ 07:54 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 30 August, 2005 }

shit.

Things in Louisiana and Mississippi are going to absolute hell. Please donate. Please volunteer. Please give blood, food, clothes to the Red Cross. Please expand your compassion wide and do something. Too many people just aren't quite noticing... there's not enough Guard troops (they're in Iraq), flood prevention funding for NOLA was severely cut by Bush in 2003, and poor fucker, he's cutting his vacation short by two days. I rarely use raw language on this site, but I've just got to say it... fuck him. This is a major "wake up" situation here. The government has failed in a criminally negligent manner to protect the population by redirecting critical resources away from the states and into a black hole of a false war. Citizens rising up with their compassion and giving to those who will directly help those in the Gulf States is a way to subvert a useless government through direct action by its people.

Doing something compassionate right now is revolutionary, and American. Godspeed Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

jaybird found this for you @ 21:17 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 29 August, 2005 }

Mulkey: Cindy Sheehan's courageous stand

...Sheehan has helped move the national conversation on the war to the tipping point. For while the Bush administration continues to predict victory in Iraq and admits to no errors in judgment, truth is finally taking hold. As we knew it ultimately would, the reality of this bloody tragedy (over 1,800 American and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi deaths) has trumped this administration's hubris, arrogance and wishful thinking (being greeted as liberators, finding weapons of mass destruction and quickly exiting after transforming Iraq into a western-style democracy). At this time 54 percent of Americans believe it was a mistake to enter Iraq in the first place, 61 percent believe Bush is mishandling the war and Bush's approval rating, according to a recent poll, now stands at 36 percent.

One woman's courageous stance has reawakened us to our power, to the fact that a single citizen can make a difference and that millions of us standing together can create transformation.

jaybird found this for you @ 12:09 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Friday, 26 August, 2005 }

Cindy's Return Speech

They are going to know that I’m not going to give up and today was really hard when I came in and saw Casey bigger than life over there. I miss him so much and I miss him more every day, but like that song “Joe Hill,” Casey’s not dead. I see him in all of your eyes and Casey will never die. And they can kill the body, but they can’t kill the love and the spirit, and no matter how hard they try they can’t do that.

jaybird found this for you @ 21:38 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Tuesday, 23 August, 2005 }

"Christian" Calls for Assasination of Chavez

Twit, Pat Robertson: You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Non-Twit, Thinking Person: Well, Gee, why not call upon the Thunder God to just plain smite him... y'know, send a hoard of locusts or even a few busloads of bingo-happy lepers? Why pull out the big guns? You, know, Pat-dear, you'll have to do a little work around with that whole Sixth Commandment thing? Oh, and you of all people ought to know what happens when you martyr someone who is the hotness, right? If you do it, be sure to wash your hands, m'kay?

jaybird found this for you @ 12:59 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Monday, 15 August, 2005 }

Sometimes, One Woman is All it Takes

...A single act of courage and determination can come to define a larger issue. Last Saturday, Mrs. Sheehan set up a roadside camp near Bush's ranch, which is now known as Prairie Chapel (The man truly has no shame), and vowed to remain there until Bush agreed to meet with her and answer questions about the war that has claimed the life of her son, Casey, and more than 1,800 others. In the week since, she has become a magnet for other antiwar activists and, perhaps as important, she has forced a gutless White House press corps to confront an issue it can no longer ignore: that a majority of Americans are rapidly losing faith in the scoundrels who lied us into a war with no coherent strategy for ending it.

See also: Someone tell the president the war is over.

jaybird found this for you @ 15:54 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Wednesday, 10 August, 2005 }

global struggle against a violent preident

Chaos under heaven

...The president and his people - who have spent the last four years reaching for their dictionaries (the way gunfighters once reached for their six-guns) whenever they wanted to redefine our world to fit their needs - suddenly, and quite atypically, broke ranks over a definition. A week ago, led by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the president's top men and women began using a new phrase. The global war on terror (fondly, if inelegantly, known as GWOT) was to be no more. It was now the "global struggle against violent extremism" (or G-SAVE) and General Richard B Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained why. He told the National Press Club that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution".

Somehow, the new term, and acronym, hit the planet like one of those "tripods" from Mars after the germs got to it. The media ridiculed it, and Bush, our "war president", agreed. He immediately broke ranks with his own spinmeisters. In a speech last week, he managed to use the phrase "war on terror" repeatedly and "global struggle against violent extremism" a total of zero times. According to former State Department counterterrorism official Larry Johnson, at a White House meeting a peeved "Bush reportedly said he was not in favor of the new term ... In fact, he said, 'no one checked with me'. That comment brought an uncomfortable silence to the assembled group of pooh-bahs. The president insisted it was still a war as far as he is concerned."

Meh.

jaybird found this for you @ 07:28 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink

{ Thursday, 04 August, 2005 }

juan cole

Fisking the "War on Terror"

...In July, 2005, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that there was not actually any "War on Terror:" ' General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." ' (Question: Does this mean we can have the Bill of Rights back, now?)

The American Right, having created the Mujahideen and having mightily contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda, abruptly announced that there was something deeply wrong with Islam, that it kept producing terrorists.

jaybird found this for you @ 16:32 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink