Please call Sen. Feinstein's office (202-224-3841) and ask if she supports torture.

Remind the staffer that "water-boarding" is torture even though Mukasey won't admit it.

Then ask her to vote NO on Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General.

If you have time, please contact the other members of the Judiciary Committee and ask them the same questions.

http://judiciary.senate.gov/members.cfm

They can all be reached via the Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121 (Just ask for the Senator by name)

Thanks,
Bill


President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, thinks the president should be able to wiretap Americans without a warrant and refuses to say whether water-boarding is torture. It's outrageous—but we can stop him. Can you call Sen. Feinstein today and tell her that torture is unacceptable in America? Tell her to vote 'no' on Mukasey's nomination next week.
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Phone: 202-224-3841

Barbara Lee Responds to Bush Iraq Supplemental Request
October 22, 2007, Washington, DC

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who last week led a group of 89 House members in writing to the President to state their commitment to only providing funding for the redeployment of troops from Iraq, issued the following statement in response to the $196 billion supplemental spending request for Iraq that President Bush formally submitted today:

“The President is asking Congress to pay for an exit strategy for him at the expense of our troops. Well, people aren't buying his scare tactics anymore. People are asking 'How many of our troops should die so the President can save face?

“Congress should not approve another dime for him to run out the clock on his failed policy. We have the power to end the occupation of Iraq by fully funding the safe, timely, responsible redeployment of our troops, and there are a growing number of members of Congress who are committed to doing just that.”

Here's the recording of Colonel Ann Wright's address at Time-Tested Books on Oct. 17th.

AWright10-17-07.mp3 link here. (1:29:27)

AWright10-17-07.ra link here. (1:29:27)

Here's the Mp3 of Colonel Ann Wright's address to Sacramento City College from 12-1pm on 10/16/07.

AWright10-16-07.mp3 link here. (55:30)

AWright10-16-07.ra link here. (55:30)

The Alarming Parallels Between 1929 and 2007

Has deregulation left the economy at risk of another 1929-scale crash? Should the Fed keep bailing out speculators? Robert Kuttner testified yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee.

Robert Kuttner | October 2, 2007

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Robert Kuttner. I am an economics and financial journalist, author of several books about the economy, co-editor of The American Prospect, and former investigator for the Senate Banking Committee. I have a book appearing in a few weeks that addresses the systemic risks of financial innovation coupled with deregulation and the moral hazard of periodic bailouts.

In researching the book, I devoted a lot of effort to reviewing the abuses of the 1920s, the effort in the 1930s to create a financial system that would prevent repetition of those abuses, and the steady dismantling of the safeguards over the last three decades in the name of free markets and financial innovation.

Your predecessors on the Senate Banking Committee, in the celebrated Pecora Hearings of 1933 and 1934, laid the groundwork for the modern edifice of financial regulation. I suspect that they would be appalled at the parallels between the systemic risks of the 1920s and many of the modern practices that have been permitted to seep back in to our financial markets.

Although the particulars are different, my reading of financial history suggests that the abuses and risks are all too similar and enduring. When you strip them down to their essence, they are variations on a few hardy perennials -- excessive leveraging, misrepresentation, insider conflicts of interest, non-transparency, and the triumph of engineered euphoria over evidence.

How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength
By MARIO M. CUOMO | October 7, 2007 | Op-Ed Contributor

SENATORS Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagues are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 already provides that only Congress has the power to declare war. Perhaps the founders’ greatest concern in writing the Constitution was that they might unintentionally create a president who was too much like the British monarch, whom they despised. They expressed that concern in part by assuring that the president would not have the power to declare war.

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this mandate was neither erased nor modified by the actions or inactions of timid Congresses that allowed overeager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without making a declaration.