If they can't take Gonzales down for the obvious perjury that he has committed, then the Bush cabal will continue to get away with anything they want over the next 18 months. It's about time they subpoenaed Karl Rove. What took so long? That's going to be an interesting fight with dubya.

Democrats Urge Perjury Probe of Gonzales
Jul 26, 1:34 PM (ET) | By LAURIE KELLMAN and LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.

They dispatched the letter shortly before Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the subpoena of Rove, the president's top political strategist, in remarks on the Senate floor. The White House has claimed executive privilege to block congressional demands for documents or testimony by some current and former presidential aides. President Bush, meanwhile, has continued to support Gonzales.

Dave Dionisi is responsible for National Awareness for Teach Peace. Dave is the author of American Hiroshima, a book about how to prevent the next 9/11 attack in the United States. Prior to working in corporate America, Dave served the country as an Army Intelligence Officer. His business and military experiences over the last 24 years are complemented by an extensive background as an international volunteer worker in Asia, Central America, Europe and Africa. He lives in Davis, CA. Learn about the small country of Liberia as it encounters the US Empire.

"Liberia is a beautiful place where elephants still roam with many of the exotic animals we see on television. The people are extremely friendly and handle adversity with tremendous grace. Workers in Liberia and many other countries around the world are exploited by multi-national corporations. This exploitation is managed by secret armies and intelligence operations."

High Cost Of Low Prices by Dave Dionisi

Bush vs. the whales

One of the reasons to pay attention to the Bush administration's towering mendacity in its ongoing attempts to reconfigure the American political system -- particularly in its attempts to claim nearly illimitable executive-branch powers -- is that it doesn't just manifest itself in the prominent, well-noted ways. These include the ongoing claims of executive privilege in shielding itself from congressional investigations, or the White House's assertion of immunity from judicial review in such matters as military tribunals.

No, this madness infects everything this administration does, including its environmental policy. Witness, for example, what is going on this very moment in the administration's intent to deploy new high-tech sonar devices along the Pacific Coast as part of the ongoing "war on terror".

From Jerry Perry...

Dusty Brown, more Stolen Band Gear in Sacramento

I'm sure you're as sick of getting these Stolen Gear messages as I am
of sending them out, but please repost this. Dusty has had to cancel
his summer tour because of this. Terrible
jerry

Reposted from Dusty's Myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/dustybrown

I've wanted to do a blog on this for a few weeks and haven't found the time to put it together, then today I was reading Wu Ming's blog and came across a link to a blog by Shanikka at Political Sapphire with an excellent rundown of the Radical Right-Wing in action. I posted the entire blog because the info is so important to everyone. Please make sure to click on the header to be able to read all the links Shanikka took the time to dig up. BTW Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and I'm pretty sure Thomas are all members of the the lawyers version of the Neocons - The Federalist Society

Rewinding the Warren Court

I've been wondering how long it would be before someone in the mainstream called a spade a spade, where this year's Supreme Court term is concerned. Finally, this morning, the New York Times almost hits the mark, in its editorial Justice Denied.

It draws the nexus between this Court's decisions this year and the dismantling of Warren Court jurisprudence, particularly as it relates to the rights of the oppressed:

At the end of its first full term, Chief Justice John Roberts’s court is emerging as the Warren court’s mirror image.

Am I the only person who recalls what Justice Alito explained were his reasons for deciding that his passion in life lie in law instead of some other career where he could not do much as much damage? In deciding in 1985 to apply for a job with the Reagan administration? Because he disagreed with "Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause and reapportionment?" (Emphasis mine.) I can't be, yet so far nobody in either the mainstream media nor the Democratic Party leadership appears to have brought that up. The closest we have come is today's Times editorial. Which strikes me as just a bit too little, too late.

SiCKO Spurs Audiences Into Action

By Josh Tyler: 2007-07-01 17:15:27

Long time readers of this site no doubt know that I live in Texas. As everyone knows there’s no more conservative state in the Union than here. And I don’t just live in Texas; I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Dallas isn’t some pocket of hippy-dippy behavior. This isn’t Austin. Dallas is the sort of place where guys in cowboy hats still drive around in giant SUV’s with “W” stickers on the back windshield, global warming and Iraq be damned. It’s probably the only spot left in America where you stand a good chance of getting the crap kicked out of you for badmouthing the president.

So when I went to see Sicko for a second time this afternoon, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the audience. I wasn’t watching it downtown, where the city’s few elitist liberals congregate and drink expensive lattes. I went to a random mall in the mid-cities, where folks were likely to be just folks. As I sat down, right behind me entered an obligatory, cowboy hat wearing redneck in his 50s. He announced his presence by shouting across the theater in a thick Texas drawl to his already seated wife “you owe me fer seein this!”

Sicko started; the stereotypical Texas guy sat down behind me and never stopped talking. He talked through the entire movie… and I listened. The first ten to twenty minutes of the film he spent badmouthing Moore to his wife and snorting in disgust whenever MM went into one of his trademark monologues. But as the movie wore on his protestations became quieter, less enthusiastic. Somewhere along the way, maybe at the half way point, right before my ears, Sicko changed this man’s mind. By the forty-five minute mark, he, along with the rest of the audience were breaking into spontaneous applause. He stopped pooh-poohing the movie and started shouting out “hell yeah!” at the screen. It was as if the whole world had been flipped upside down. This is Texas, where people support the president and voting democratic is something only done by the terrorists.

Perhaps it is time that we re-read the Declaration of Independence very carefully. As our country creeps closer towards a dictatorship and fascism, we better wake up before it's too late.

Violations of the FISA Act (illegal wiretapping / spying on Americans), Presidential signing statements ("unitary executive powers"), launching an illegal war of aggression against Iraq without cause, kidnap and torture, rendition, obstruction of justice, criminal negligence in responding to the Katrina disaster, war profiteering, over one trillion dollar cost in the occupation of Iraq, Guantanamo, etc...

We are taught in school to respect and revere our Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, under the Bush regime, if one were to write the Declaration of Independence today, they would be locked up in Guantanamo for eternity without a trial.

Quotes of particular note (emphasis is mine):

"...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,..."

..."But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

You can substitute "present King of Great Britain" with "pResident George W. Bush".

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."

"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."

Can you say, Unitary Executive Powers?

"For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."

You can substitute "foreign Mercenaries" with "domestic Mercenaries".

"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

NPR has an audio recording of the Declaration of Independence here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11703583

The full text is below:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign
‘I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.’
SPECIAL COMMENT | By Keith Olbermann | Updated: 5:13 p.m. PT July 3, 2007


Click picture to watch video

“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

That—on this eve of the 4th of July—is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.

“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne’s voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.

House Judiciary Committee Schedules Hearing on Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24280

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. announced that he will be holding a full committee hearing next week titled, “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.” The hearing will be held next Wednesday, July 11, at 10:15 am in the committee’s hearing room, 2141 Rayburn House Office Building.
“In light of yesterday’s announcement by the President that he was commuting the prison sentence for Scooter Libby, it is imperative that Congress look into presidential authority to grant clemency, and how such power may be abused,” Conyers said. “Taken to its extreme, the use of such authority could completely circumvent the law enforcement process and prevent credible efforts to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch.”

Since I sent out the last piece, the Rev's hearing has been postponed for a month...so our walk will be starting on July 10th from Camp Casey...

and our route is almost set and we will get that out tonight or early tomorrow.

Love
Me

Call Out The Instigator
by Cindy Sheehan

Call out the Instigator
Because there’s something in the air
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here
You know it’s right!

-Thunderclap Newman

I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon —and you know he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in. I can’t sit back and let this BushCo drag our country further down into the murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the rest of the world with them!

I have sat quietly back these past five weeks as the slaughter in Iraq sorrowfully surges along with George’s bloody escalation—and as the philosophical opposition to the war has soared to almost four out of every five Americans. I have remained silent when Senator Barack Obama said that impeachment is only reserved for “grave, grave” breeches! Well, BushCo has created hundreds of thousands of graves dug by their lies and greed. For cripes’ sake, George admitted to breaking the FISA Act (which is a felony) that also breeched the 4th Amendment to our Constitution that already prohibited illegal search and seizure. How was Bill Clinton’s offense graver than George’s, Dick’s, or Scooter’s? Did we ever think that the criminality and arrogance of the Nixon White House would be eclipsed in our time with nary a “baaaah” from the Sheeple in Congress?

Commuting Scooter
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24255
By David Swanson

George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."

James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

Of course, Bush has long been connected in a suspicious manner to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and others. Madison would probably have called for Bush's impeachment when Bush first refused to investigate or hold anyone accountable for leaking Valerie Plame's identity, or rather when Bush lied us into the war in the first place, or when he confessed to illegal spying, or when he detained people without charge and tortured them, or when he overturned laws with signing statements or refused to comply with
subpoenas, and so on and so forth. Madison wouldn't have wanted to see his Constitution tossed aside until the moment Bush commuted Libby's sentence. But he certainly would have acted now if not before.

This isn't your usual posting from SFD, but what happened here really sucks, so I have to spread the word. These guys are just trying to make a living doing something that they love and some ethically challenged individuals steal their gear. As you can see below, they stole a lot of equipment. If you're near any pawnshops and you see a bunch of musical equipment in there (check out the list), please let Jerry Perry (jerry AT alivenkicking DOT com)know about it. If you know any musicians, please pass this on to them as well.
Thanks, Bill

Touring Band's Equipment Stolen in Sacramento

Last Thursday night Aranda from Oklahoma City played at Old Ironsides in Sacramento. They were great guys who put on a great show. They played in front of a smallish crowd, made about $50 and were grateful for even that small amount!

But before they left town the next morning, they discovered all of their gear had been stolen, thus ending their tour before they were even half way through it and sending them home with all of their
instruments gone.

Please look over this very extensive list of what was stolen and keep an eye out for it.

If anyone has any information about any of these items listed below please contact the band at www.myspace.com/aranda

AND PLEASE REPOST THIS MESSAGE TO AS MANY IN THE MUSIC COMMUNITY AS YOU CAN!!!

Wow, who would have thought that this could have happened?

CIA Opens the Book on a Shady Past
By Alex Johnson | MSNBC | Tuesday 26 June 2007

Declassified "family jewels" detail assassination plots, break-ins, wiretaps.

The CIA declassified nearly 700 pages of secret records Tuesday recording its illegal activities during the first decades of the Cold War, publishing a catalog of adventures that run the gamut of spy movie clichés from attempts to kill foreign leaders and intercept domestic mail to garden-variety break-ins and burglaries.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," the CIA's director, Gen. Michael Hayden, said last week in announcing plans to release the documents, which had been considered so sensitive that they were known internally as the agency's "family jewels."

Much of the material had previously entered the public record through nearly 30 years of requests by academics, authors and journalists under the Freedom of Information Act. But publication of the materials Tuesday by the CIA itself marked a major step in the agency's public acknowledgement of its sometimes sordid history.

White House of Mirrors
June 24, 2007 | Editorial | NY Times.com

President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to see nothing about what they do.

Everyone knows this administration has disdained openness and accountability since its first days. That is about the only thing it does not hide. But recent weeks have produced disturbing disclosures about just how far Mr. Bush’s team is willing to go to keep lawmakers and the public in the dark.

That applies to big issues — like the C.I.A.’s secret prisons — and to things that would seem too small-bore to order up a cover-up.

Looks like Jefferson may be doing time with the corrupt Repubs. I wonder if Bush will pardon him like he's going to pardon Libby?
--Bill

House Approves Speedy Jefferson Probe
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | June 6, 2007 | Filed at 4:28 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House ordered a speedy internal investigation that could oust indicted Rep. William J. Jefferson from Congress before his bribery trial.

Mindful of anti-corruption sentiment among voters last November, the House passed two resolutions Tuesday that require the ethics committee to investigate charges more quickly than in the past.

Jefferson, meanwhile, resigned his seat on the Small Business Committee in response to his indictment on federal charges of taking more than $500,000 in bribes. Democrats already had moved to take that seat from him. Jefferson admitted no wrongdoing.

Someone wake me up when he actually spends some time in prison. I won't be holding my breath.
--Bill

Prison for Libby in leak case
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, stood calmly before a packed courtroom as a federal judge said the evidence overwhelmingly proved his guilt.

"People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said.

Cheney criticizes the Geneva Conventions in Military Academy commencement address
05/26/2007 @ 7:33 pm | Filed by Michael Roston

Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the notion of applying the Geneva Conventions to individuals captured in the course of the war on terrorism in a Saturday commencement address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
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"Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States," the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. "Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away."

Cheney delivered the remarks in the context of moral and ethical lessons that the graduating cadets at West Point had learned in the course of their study.

The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom
By Greg Palast : BradBlog.com : Thursday 24 May 2007

And the no longer "missing" Rove emails revealing the cagey scheme to steal 2008...

This Monica revealed something hotter - much hotter - than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One.... And the Committee members didn't even know it.

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? "Caging"???

The perplexed committee members hadn't a clue - and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling. If the members had gotten the clue, and asked the right questions, they would have found "the keys to the kingdom," they thought they were looking for. They dangled right in front of their perplexed faces.

The keys: the missing emails - and missing link - that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.

Missing Rove Emails Point to Violation of Records Act
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner : t r u t h o u t | Report : Monday 21 May 2007

Three years ago, Robert Luskin, the attorney who defended White House Political Adviser Karl Rove in the CIA leak case, made a startling discovery: a July 2003 email Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that proved Rove was far more involved in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and the campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, than he had let on during interviews with federal investigators and in testimony before a federal grand jury.

Curiously, the email Rove sent to Hadley that Luskin had found never turned up during an exhaustive document search ordered a year earlier, in September 2003, by Alberto Gonzales. At the time, Gonzales, who was White House counsel, enjoined all White House staff members to turn over any communications pertaining to Plame Wilson and her husband, a vocal critic of the Iraq war, who had accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war Iraq intelligence. Gonzales's order to turn over documents and emails came 12 hours after former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had informed him that the Justice Department was launching an investigation into the leak.

Will Doolittle Do Time?
By Ralph Brave : NewsReview.com : Monday 07 May 2007

Does the downfall of a local congressman mean something more than the latest corruption of a politician?

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the U.S. Department of Justice's ongoing investigation into Congressman John T. Doolittle and his wife, Julie-and it's been going on for three years now-clearly his political career is over. Even if he and his wife unexpectedly locate some loophole to avoid indictment or imprisonment for the two corruption cases in which their fund-raising activities are inextricably entangled, the Doolittles' unsavory skimming of campaign contributions and personally pocketing more than a quarter-million dollars have forever finished off their reputations among their own conservative kith and kin. From Sacramento to Washington, the only discussion of the Doolittle case by political insiders from both parties regards strategy over when and how and by whom he should be replaced.