Oops, My Bad

Dick Cheney:

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged on Tuesday he was wrong in 2005
when he insisted the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes."

Maybe if he says pretty please we'll forgive him.

Oh Please

Please please please please.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) is introducing legislation that would require the House
Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives to begin an impeachment
investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in the wake of his
damaging testimony last week.

We have to kill the Republican zombies or they will keep coming back.

Stevens' Home Searched

It feels like the entire Alaska GOP is involved in one form of corruption scandal or another.

Federal agents searched the Alaska home of Sen. Ted Stevens in a widening investigation of alleged public corruption in Congress and the Alaska state legislature.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Mr. Stevens accepted bribes or unreported gifts from oilfield-engineering firm VECO Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Another Alaska Republican, Rep. Don Young, is under criminal investigation in the same case, the Journal reported.

In the raid last night, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service
agents searched the senator's home near Anchorage, an FBI spokesman said. Mr. Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican, is a former chairman of the Appropriations Committee and has long been a powerbroker in Congress and the Republican party.

When your sole purpose of having power is to further that power - the Republican raison d'etre - this is what you get.

Progress

Iraq-style:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faces a revolt within his party by factions that want him out as Iraqi leader, according to officials in his office and the political party he leads.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, al-Maliki's predecessor, leads the challenge and already has approached leaders of the country's two main Kurdish parties, parliament's two Sunni Arab blocs and lawmakers loyal to powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Jaafari's campaign, the officials said, was based on his concerns that al-Maliki's policies had led Iraq into turmoil because the prime minister was doing too little to promote national reconciliation.

But that's ok, because six months ago I was told we were going to be able to evaluate our progress in September December when Bush leaves office.

Now See Here, Mr. Pot

No, see here, Mr. Kettle:

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman on Monday criticized a U.S. plan to sell state-of-the-art weapons to Saudi Arabia, saying it would undermine security in the Middle East, the state broadcasting company reported.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini's comments followed reports last week that the U.S. planned to sell Saudi Arabia an estimated $20 billion of sophisticated weaponry, including advanced air systems that would greatly enhance the striking ability of Saudi warplanes.

"What the Persian Gulf region needs is stability and security," Hosseini was quoted as saying on the Web site of the state broadcasting company. "Americans have been trying to disturb it by selling weapons to the region."

It's been true for a long time that Bush's foreign policy is something of a joke; with decisions made less on ideology and pragmatism than on cronyism and egos.

Al-Qaeda is a Sunni organization and recruits heavily in Saudi Arabia, home to a hotbed of terrorists, yet Bush - and the Republican party and very serious people followed suit - decided to brand Iran as Evil(tm) and make Iraq the focal point for Al Qaeda, while Saudi Arabia continued to be our ally. We even had last week's report of the Saudi terrorist-funding bank that our government has decided to not take action against.

These people are very, very stupid.

Black Is White! Up Is Down!

Global warming is a hoax!

Global warming is causing more frequent hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, according to a study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The increased frequency of tropical cyclones ``is largely a response'' to a 1 degree Celsius rise in sea water temperatures since 1905 that was caused by greenhouse gases, the study found. Since 1995, the North Atlantic has experienced an average of 15 tropical storms a year, of which eight became strong enough to be called hurricanes. That compares with 10 tropical storms and five hurricanes per year from 1930 to 1994, the report says.

``There is an 80 percent chance that the majority of the current increases have been impacted by global warming,'' said Greg Holland, director of the research center in Boulder, Colorado, and co-author of the study. ``The bad news is that we've gone up in numbers overall, and in the proportion of major hurricanes as well.''

Just another drop in the bucket for Exxon-Mobil, who recently posted record profits. I have been doing some thinking about taxation. Should write up a rant soon. Should...

Subpoena Me, Again! Again!

First up, Gonzo is a goner:

A group of Senate Democrats called Wednesday for a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales perjured himself regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys and administration dissent over President Bush's domestic-surveillance program.

"We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress," four Democratic senators wrote in a letter Wednesday, according to a draft obtained by the Associated Press.

Guess that little TSP thing did not work out so well, huh? But even better,

Senator Leahy has just issued subpeonas [for Rove and Jennings] on the floor of the Senate.

Please tune into C-Span 2 for live speech, he is laying it all out for the entire country to hear how the Bush Administration has exceeded the boundaries of law and ignored the Constitution.

Oversight is one hell of a thing.

Calling All Wingnuts

The Wall Street Journal hates America and is publishing classified information about our intelligence activities.

The U.S. intelligence reports, heretofore secret, describe how Al Rajhi Bank has maintained accounts and accepted donations for Saudi charities that the U.S. and other nations have formally designated as fronts for al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
In addition, Mr. Al Rajhi and family members have been major donors to Islamic charities that are suspected by Western intelligence agencies of funding terrorism, according to CIA reports and federal-court filings by the Justice Department

Now the terrorists know exactly how we are going to come after them. Sic, boy, sic!

Gonzo for Gonzo

No reasonable person watching Gonzales' tragically comedic performance Tuesday's on Capitol Hill-- especially his miserable exchange with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in late morning-- can any longer defend his appalling lack of competence, courage and credibility. And no one who hears him say that he is what's best for the Department right now should forget that on the eve of his testimony (and a few days after he urged his subordinates to work diligently to regain their morale) the nation's top law enforcement official reportedly left work early to go for a bike ride Monday afternoon-- at about 3:50 p.m.

I am running out of words to describe how inept this public servant is and how awful
is the message our government sends to the nation and to the world by allowing him to continue to represent us.

Sounds about right.

Republican Obstructionism

Children's healthcare-style.

YouTube Debate

I'm impressed. I think we have a really good field of candidates this time around (I am not taking Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich seriously) and would gladly support any of them if they got the nomination. There was little-to-no kicking around of the Democratic party and they all offered significant contrasts to the Republican party.

I really liked the YouTube format too. It was great to see earnest questions coming from real people, as opposed to the "Gotcha!" type we've come to expect from the press. Some of the videos, like the snowman one, were warm, positive and funny. I also thought Anderson Cooper did a good job of moderating. He kept things moving at a brisk pace in order to air as many questions as possible, and although he did not give certain candidates as much time, he did not let any of them meander about.

While watching the candidates' ads, it occurred to me that part of what separates the top tier from the rest is their ads. The top tier are running funny, engaging and catchy ads, while the rest are running more traditional, on-the-issues ads that are not that gripping.

Profiles in "Wait, What in the World Could That Be?!"

Alberto Gonzales.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under congressional pressure to quit over the firing of nine U.S. prosecutors, vowed on Monday to stay and fix problems with the Justice Department.

In testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Gonzales acknowledged the Justice Department has been shaken by accusations that partisan politics played a role in hiring practices and the administration of justice.

"There are two options available in light of these allegations," Gonzales said. "I could walk away or I could devote my time, effort and energy to fix the problems."

"Since I have never been one to quit, I decided that the best course of action was to remain here and fix the problems."

Abu is going to fix the problems - the leakers and dissenters.

I promise this is not an Onion article.

TV I Will Never Watch

24.

Executive Privilege Above the Law

Bush.

Someone needs to stop him, now.

November

It's the new September.

For months September has been cast as a pivotal time for determining the course of the war in Iraq, yet a top general now says a solid judgment on the U.S. troop buildup there may not come until November.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told he would need beyond September to tell if improvements in Iraq represent long-term trends.

"In order to do a good assessment I need at least until November," said Odierno, a deputy to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

Is anyone in the media or in the Republican party going to hold Bush responsible for this? (The Dems already are and have enough votes to push legislation through the House, but not the Senate. If Senate Republicans continue to obstruct the will of the people and the right thing to do to protect Bush, the only thing they will accomplish is their own self-destruction)

The answer to this rhetorical question is obviously not. Previous hard deadlines will be tossed aside like simple decency in Guantanamo. The media will continue to perpetuate these lies it started and aided because to do otherwise would be tantamount to admitting its own role in this fiasco. Thomas Friedman will continue to praise the administration and encourage that we give them more time to get it right. Lindsey Graham will tell us to leave the war to the generals - that do Bush's bidding - and Joe Lieberman will tell us that criticizing the President is equivalent to supporting the enemy (whoever that may be, but it is a bad, bad, evil enemy).

Shorter Republican Party

What Digby said:

Their only purpose in government is to steal from the taxpayers, help their rich friends, cover up their leaders' crimes and destroy Democrats. That's it. That's all they do.

Indeed.

Things I Learned from Joe Lieberman

Bi-partisanship is the holy grail of politics.

Excuse me, I need to expurgate myself.

Filibuster

ThinkProgress is live-blogging.

Maybe they can explain to Diane Sawyer what a filibuster is.

A Small Victory for the Grownups

Finally.

The United States is ready to hold new direct talks with Iran on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the State Department said Tuesday. The Bush administration accused Tehran of supporting Shiite insurgents there.

"We think that given the situation in Iraq and given Iran's continued behavior that is leading to further instability in Iraq, that it would be appropriate to have another face-to-face meeting to directly convey to the Iranian authorities that if they wish to see a more stable, secure, peaceful Iraq, which is what they have said they would like to see, that they need to change their behavior," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

By grownups, I mean the not-completely-batshit-crazy people.

I am going to take this to mean that war with Iran is off the table. I can hardly believe that was something that was keeping me up at night, but it really was because this administration has proven itself to be capable of things - like, fabricating a war - that I had previously thought unimaginable. This is not to say that everything is smoothed over for good, but I think the probability of war significantly dropped.

I am sure fourthbranch is on his umpteenth consecutive heart attack right now.

E. Coli Conservatives

Government is the problem:

Congressional investigators are expected to tell a House subcommittee today that the Food and Drug Administration's ability to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply is "minimal" and agency plans to overhaul its inspection regime could make a bad situation worse.

FDA officials, under fire for the recent string of high-profile food scares involving both domestic and imported foods, have been asked to appear before a House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee hearing to discuss the agency's food inspections.

Committee staff reviewed the system extensively and found that a shrinking inspection staff examines less than 1% of all imported food. A typical inspector in the
FDA's San Francisco office examines nearly 1,000 food entries a day -- roughly one every 30 seconds, the committee report found. The agency, it says, allows importers to take possession of their high-risk goods and arrange for testing by a private laboratory. Before melamine-contaminated pet food killed and sickened thousands of pets, the FDA had never inspected those ingredients from China.

Government is not the problem, rather, people who believe government is the problem and act towards emasculating it, otherwise known as conservatives, are the problem. Or, in Grover Norquist's words, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Because that worked so well with Katrina.

Private industry cannot be counted on to work for the benefit of the public. Heck, they cannot even be counted on to work for their own paying customers (see Sprint). All they are good for is their own profit.

A Dark Day

Indeed.

Louisiana became the first U.S. state to outlaw a late-term abortion procedure Friday, when the governor approved legislation allowing doctors to be prosecuted for performing the surgery.

The new law allows so-called "partial birth" abortions in only one situation: when failure to perform it would endanger the mother's life. The procedure would be a crime in all other cases, even if the pregnancy is expected to cause health problems for the mother.

Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law criminal penalties for doctors who perform the surgery: fines of between $1,000 and $10,000, and jail terms of between one and 10 years.

Making it illegal for women to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

The term "partial birth" is a complete misnomer. There is no birth, partial birth, or any birth involved. I am so glad our media continues to accurately characterize things.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

Twin suicide car bombings exploded within 20 minutes of each other in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, killing at least 80 people and wounding around 150 in attacks targeting a Kurdish political office and ripping through an outdoor market, police said.

The attacks began around noon when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed truck near the concrete blast walls of the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Nobody tell Joe Lieberman.

Axis of Evil

Iran has lifted its ban on visits to a nuclear facility by United Nations experts and will now allow them to inspect the site, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The U.N. nuclear monitor also said Tehran was ready to answer key questions on past experiments that the international community fears could be linked to a weapons program. The IAEA said Iran promised the concessions earlier this week in a meeting between its officials and a senior delegation from the Vienna-based agency.

It is refreshing to see someone acting like an adult. As opposed to a certain someone's press conference yesterday. I can hardly wait for the right wing to lose their shit over this. "They're hiding WMDs somewhere else!!! It's like the Red Cross visiting Teresienstadt!!! YAAAAAHHHHRRRRRRR!!!!!!"

Just did a quick check, no one has posted about it yet.

Link.

Showdown at the OK Corral

Things get interesting.

The Bush administration says the president's immediate advisers are absolutely immune from having to appear before Congress, but legal scholars say the issue isn't that clear cut.

The question grew more pressing Wednesday as President Bush ordered former White House counsel Harriet Miers to defy a congressional summons in the controversy over the administration's dismissals of federal prosecutors.

The Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House judiciary committees have said they would consider introducing contempt of Congress citations against any subpoena recipients who resist.

Bush thinks he is king. That notion is antithetical to democracy. Anyone who supports Bush needs to come out of the closet and admit that what they really want is a militaristic dictatorship and tyranny that outlaws all dissent. Otherwise they are lying through their teeth.

Decidering Away

This is ridiculous.

Also shows how much this government acts on "it isn't our problem!" when it does not want to do so.

When Is Poop Not Poop?

When it's rape.

In a case that's getting national attention, the Nebraska Supreme Court may have to decide if a woman can use the word "rape" in her alleged attacker's trial.

A Lancaster County district court judge told her she can't use it.

"I refuse to call it sex, or any other word that I'm supposed to say, encouraged to say on the stand, because to me that's committing perjury. What happened to me was rape, it was not sex," said Tory Bowen of Nebraska.

Truthy bad, truth good.

h/t Feministing

Freedom to Be Free

What Digby said.

I bought The Trap last night and am looking forward to reading it. Will let you know how it is.

How Evil Can You Get?

This evil, apparently.

The White House said it would veto a college-cost-reduction bill that made its way to the House floor Wednesday, claiming that it fails to help the neediest college students and creates programs with long-term costs for taxpayers.

The College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 would boost college financial aid by about $18 billion over the next five years and cut federal subsidies to lenders in the college-loan industry. The proposed legislation would also invest in minority institutions, control repayment rates and create loan-forgiveness programs, among other actions.

Under the act, the maximum value of the Pell Grant scholarship would increase by $500 over the next five years. The act would also cut interest rates on need-based student loans to 3.4% from 6.8%.

"This costly proposal only benefits students once they leave school, when they can already take advantage of flexible repayment options available under current law and reduce the effective interest rate they pay through the existing tax deduction for student loan interest," according to a statement from the White House.

Costly proposal (n.) - a proposal that does not bring large returns to administration cronies (White House abridged dictionary, 2007 ed.)

Neediest college students (n.) - college students who are children of administration cronies (White House abridged dictionary, 2007 ed.)

This is more of the same fanatical and hysteric blubbering about how any government spending - on programs that help people, instead of letting them flounder, which is commonly referred to as "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" or "building character" - is inherently wrong. When your governing party's ideology explicitly states that government is bad, and cannot and should not do anything, of course you are going to get horrible governance. It is that simple.

(Emphasis mine)

Update: I have to point out what a stellar piece of reporting this is. Ruth Mantell, the reporter, managed to write an entire article on a bill written by Democrats without quoting a Democrat or providing any color for the Democratic position on the bill. All she did was vomit back the White House's talking points. Did it not occur to her to contact any Democrats or get a rebuttal as to why the White House might be full of crap? The article is nothing more than a convenient whine-fest for the White House. Mantell either only spoke to her sources in the White House or just pulled whatever their press release was and did some stenography. Either possibility is unacceptable and reflective of lazy and shoddy reporting.

Great Moments in Cause and Effect

Sam Brownback on the move to cut off Cheney's funding:

Such a step, said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., would set a terrible precedent in relations between the executive and legislative branches of government, which have historically let each other set their own budgets.

"This is going to further erode any sort of working relationship back and forth," Brownback said. "This is a patently bad idea."

Somebody give Sen. Brownback a cookie. An oatmeal raisin cookie.

I Can Hardly Wait

The White House Wednesday is expected to project a U.S. budget deficit for this year of just over $200 billion, down from prior estimates because of strong tax receipts, Republican sources said.

A deficit for fiscal 2007 in that range would mark a decline from the $248 billion gap recorded last year. The fresh estimate will be unveiled at 1 p.m. ET in the administration's "midsession review" of the budget.

Because Republicans are good at managing your money. I truly no longer believe anything this administration says. If there is a decline, it is because Bush has cut essential spending on education and healthcare. He is also probably using Enron-style accounting and excluding several new things that would otherwise increase the deficit. Like the Iraq War, which is funded off the books through special appropriations bills.

War?

Oh yeah, that other war.

Seventeen civilians, 12 of them children, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said seven of its soldiers were wounded in the attack, some of them seriously.

A spokesman for the extremist Taliban movement, which is waging an insurgency against the Afghan government with the support of Al-Qaeda-linked operatives, claimed responsibility for the blast in Uruzgan province.

Way to have terror on the run, Bushie.

Fantasy-Based

Republicans:

"The Republicans who were most in support of the war continue to believe that weapons of mass destruction have been found and al-Qaeda was in Iraq and Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots. They reduce their dissonance by rejecting evidence they were wrong."

Remember how we are still winning the war?

4000

Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush's ``war on terror'' in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001.

A total of 3,596 have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Some 2,957 of that number were killed in action, according to the latest Department of Defense figures. More than 26,500 personnel have been wounded in that conflict, 11,959 of them so seriously they couldn't return to duty.

In Afghanistan, 404 American personnel have died, of which 224 were killed in action. Those deaths include 61 personnel who died in Pakistan and Uzbekistan in support of the operation. Some 1,361 have been injured; 813 of them couldn't return to duty.

In Iraq, an insurgency rages against U.S. and coalition forces. The first six months this year were the deadliest yet for the American military, with more than 580 killed.

Just a period.

I Am the Law

George W. Bush:

President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.

In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Mr. Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers' demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.

Bush does not understand the simplest things about our democracy. Congress makes the laws and President executes them. His position transcends neither the law nor existence. Executive privilege cannot be used as an excuse to prevent our government from properly functioning. Congress needs to hold Bush in contempt.

Incompetence, Cronyism and Free-Market Fundamentalism

Bush administration.

Punked!

By Bush.

President Bush spared I. Lewis Libby Jr. from prison Monday, commuting his two-and-a-half-year sentence while leaving intact his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the C.I.A. leak case.

It has never been clearer that all Bush cares about is his - by which I mean him and his friends - personal gain and glory. To hell with everyone else. The President has just said that a different set of rules applies to himself and his own than everyone else, and he can get away with it because he is the President. I have never seen such a disgusting lack of understanding and respect for what this country means. We are truly ruled by psychopaths.

Head over to FDL for more reading on the subject.

Happy Bring It On Day!

They brought it.

Poop

Domestic terrorism-style.