From Garry Shay...

Dear Readers:

Feinstein and Schumer say Mukasey is the best we can get. That may be true. And I will concede there may be times when that kind of logic is correct.

This is not one of them.

The entire world, yea verily, even the Bush Administration, agrees torture is wrong.

This has devolved into an issue of semantics as to what constitutes torture in an attempt to obfuscate reality.

I believe water boarding is torture. Torture is not limited to "organ failure" or whatever it is the Bush Administration defines it as this week.

You only need to think of the Chinese Water Torture to be aware of that. The steady drip of water on the forehead will not induce organ failure, nor anything they define as torture. Yet, I think all agree it is in fact torture.

The New York Times | With Democrats Like These ...
Oct. 20, 2007 Editorial

Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

The task before Congress was to review and improve an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, that was pushed through the Capitol just before the summer break. That bill endorsed warrantless wiretapping and gutted other aspects of the 1978 law.

New Jersey’s Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez Vote with Republicans Embracing HR 1585 76 – 22, the Project for a New American Century (PNACers), the Wishes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Dick Cheyney’s War Crimes, & the Death and Destruction of Iranian Women and Children
by Andrew H. Dral

New Jersey’s two Senators -- Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez -- threw their support behind the Republicans and their Neocon resolution HR 1585, calling for “the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of U.S. power“ against Iran. With this vote our Senators embraced the colonial policies detailed in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) furthering the Neocon agenda, the wishes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its goal for Israel to gain military and economic hegemony over the Middle East. The Senators sold out their constituents‘ wishes for diplomacy, in exchange for the narrow aims of the Israeli Likud and Dick Cheyney’s radical policies of death and destruction.

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
by Helen Thomas | Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

Nancy Pelosi admits she's useless when it comes to Iraq ... and is contemptuous about it

BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.

PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just describe. I certainly could do that. That doesn't bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogative as well.

So, is she admitting that every penny that goes to fund the occupation is at the prerogative of Dinos, such as herself, Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid?

BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there's nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say...

.

On Iraq, What's More Disgusting: Being Lied To, Or Hearing the Truth?
By David Sirota | Working Assets/Denver Post's Politics West, 9/6/07

If you read the news very carefully, you can see exactly what is going on inside the Washington debate over the Iraq War. One party is lying, and one party is telling the truth - but which ones are doing what may surprise you (or, perhaps, not).

First, the lie, otherwise known as the Innocent Bystander Fable.

In a story headlined "Democrats Retreat on War End," the Politico notes that congressional Democrats are - once again - moving towards endorsing a legislative effort to cut the most unpopular president in contemporary American history a blank check to continue the most unpopular war in contemporary American history. Within this story, comes the lie to justify it all:

"The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush's hand. 'We are trying to manage expectations that we can't end the war today or next week or next month,' said one Democrat involved in the discussions. 'We have to make sure everyone understands that.'"

You can watch the online ad by clicking here.

{Through a Glass Darkly}

This is my opinion and my opinion only

For the past six years I've been under the impression that the Democratic "leadership" has wanted the same things as what I want, and think, and hold important, but in the last week I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that what I want, and think, and hold important, about the direction of this country differs greatly from what the Democratic "leadership" wants, and thinks.

The Democratic "leadership" in Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, I charge, were not compliant, but are complicit and entered into a confederacy with George Bush in the orchestration of this horrible invasion of privacy in the revision of the FISA bill, and I'm going to show how they did it.

This matters not just because this is an affront to all that we hold dear as Americans as to our privacy, but this is how they're going to manipulate the next Iraqi Occupation funding bill if their propaganda arm is not as successful as they hope.

I'm probably going to mix several metaphors, and for that I apologize, but what will follow is an autopsy into legislative subterfuge and manipulation to get what they really wanted. I also apologize for the length, and any spelling, grammatical or incorrect conclusions that are arrived at but are seemingly incontrovertible evidence of the confederacy of the leadership. And I also hope the explanations are clear enough. Be sure to click on the links to understand the full measure of what was done last weekend.

Follow the bouncing ball ...

Click

I defy anyone but the psychopaths in Washington to not tear up when you watch this video. This is one result of your tax money that buys rockets, bombs, missiles and bullets - they call them kinetic weapons - so anytime you hear a military consultant on the news say, "kinetic," you'll know it's a euphemism for bomb.

http://mothersdayforpeace.com/salee.php

On November 7, 2006, ten-year-old Salee was playing outside her home in Hasswa, Iraq with her brother, cousin and some friends when US jets circled overhead. Suddenly the jets fired three missiles, apparently at two passenger vehicles. One of the missiles hit Salee's home, killing her brother and taking both of Salee's legs.

In the video Salee's Father said, "Some of us ran into the house, overcome by terror." ... "In fear we had forgotten the children outside" ... "I asked if anyone was hurt because all of our clothes were stained with the blood and flesh that had sprinkled over the fence" ... "Akram and Tabarak were scattered in pieces on the ground"

Watch the video

More videos of Salee from the genius that is, Robert Greenwald

Blue Dog Democrats, Staunch Bush Allies
By Matt Renner | t r u t h o u t | Report | Friday 10 August 2007

A tightly-knit group of self-styled moderate and conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives known as the Blue Dog Coalition supported controversial legislation granting the Bush administration expanded powers to spy on Americans. The group was instrumental in passing legislation that was opposed by a vast majority of Democrats.

According to their web site, the coalition named themselves Blue Dogs because "their moderate-to-conservative-views had been 'choked blue' by their party in the years leading up to the 1994 election." They have had some success taking seats from Republican incumbents. According to their web site, 24 Blue Dogs won elections against Republican incumbents since 1996.

The Blue Dogs pride themselves on being a fiscally conservative group intent on balancing the national budget and paying down the almost $9 trillion national debt. Tim Mahoney, who became the Representative for the 16th district of Florida after disgraced Republican Mark Foley dropped out of the 2006 election, recently became a member of the Blue Dogs. When he joined up, Mahoney described the coalition as a select group with an agenda. "We're hawks on national defense, we're pro-business, especially small business, and we believe in balancing the budget," Mahoney said. According to Mahoney, he faced a thorough vetting process before being accepted into the group. "You have to be interviewed and accepted by the group. You have to be able to demonstrate that you're ideologically supportive of being fiscally conservative. You show them speeches and statements you've made in the past," Mahoney told the Charlotte Sun, a local paper from his district.

[Yes, that is a Samuel Adams glass, which I deliberately used as a metaphor]

I can't drop this.

The Democratic Leadership wanted -- needed -- the Spying on Americans Bill to pass. They actively worked and maneuvered it through the process. The Senate Majority Leader schedules which bills are voted on and when; the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader and the Whip, marshal bills through their half of Congress; there is absolutely no way that they can claim ignorance, to do so would be disingenuous and duplicitous.

They think we don't watch what they do ... but they're wrong. This is how they did it

The Senate-passed version (Republican) of FISA (and no other) was allowed onto the House floor on Saturday by the House leadership,

They've done it before, remember? And here. I think this abomination by the Democrats reinforces my own answer to my question here.

[Picture and video of Harry Reid to the right]

Glenn Greenwald

Saturday August 4, 2007 11:39 EST

Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).

I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) book about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss -- including us -- was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: on Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power -- many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.

Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation.

Click

In this photo, six American soldiers and an Iraqi translator are burning to death inside the armored vehicle. Cpl. Joshua Lake from Apache Company told Sean Smith, “It’s a joke. We will have spent 14 months in contact, basically fighting all 14 months…first week in Baghdad we lost two guys in our battalion, and it hasn’t stopped since.”

(Sean Smith/Guardian)

A Violent, 'Normal' Day in Baghdad

Lake and his fellow soldiers then raided a nearby house to search for the attackers. He said on a day like that, troops are given four to six hour breaks after these kinds of grueling assignments, which leaves little time to truly calm down.

Assembly Democrats Cave on Hospital Dumping (SB275)

by: Brian Leubitz
Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 13:58:58 PM PDT

No politician is perfect. Of that much I am painfully aware. But I like to think that Democrats will stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Well, I was proved wrong about that when Lou Correa and Ron Calderon blocked committee approval of SB 275, the ban on hospital dumping. Eventually, it was passed by removing the two Senators, who apparently value and/or fear the AHA (the American Hospitals Association-a corporate lobby group) more than they care about the true toll this takes on real human beings.

You know hospital dumping as the practice featured in SiCKO. Michael Moore talks about it in this video clip from his premiere for SiCKO at Skid Row.

So, SB 275 attempts to deal with this problem. Under the bill, as passed by the Senate, the transportation of patients against their will was a crime, not just a finable offense, but a real misdemeanor. Real people could get real convictions for this deplorable practice. The prospect of criminal charges meant that this law would have teeth. Well, the AHA decided that they totally didn't dig on the idea of having their staff arrested for doing what the CEO demanded. So, the Assembly accepted a hostile amendment to neuter the law by removing criminal penalties until the third offense, as if the first two homeless people don't matter.

The author, proud progressive, and my personal-favorite senator, Gilbert Cedillo spoke against the hostile amendment.

" Our offices have been committed to a thoughtful process on this issue. We do not want to do something that is not significant," said Cedillo.

Nearly unnoticed Congress (Democratic majority) yesterday (Wednesday June 20th) declared all but open war on Iran. The House passed Resolution 21:

Calling on the United Nations Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the United Nations Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Only two representatives voted against the resolution. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.
Paul said:

This resolution is an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran. Citing various controversial statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this legislation demands that the United Nations Security Council charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Having already initiated a disastrous war against Iraq citing UN resolutions as justification, this resolution is like déja-vu. Have we forgotten 2003 already? Do we really want to go to war again for UN resolutions? That is where this resolution, and the many others we have passed over the last several years on Iran, is leading us. I hope my colleagues understand that a vote for this bill is a vote to move us closer to war with Iran.

Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world “do as we say, not as we do.” ...

What exactly did Ahmadinejad say?

Professor Juan Cole explains

Lieberman Helps Collect Cash for Collins
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/05/lieberman_helps_collect_cash_f.html

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is never going to win any popularity contests among his party's liberal base -- a fact he seems decidedly unconcerned about despite his 2006 Democratic primary loss to Ned Lamont.

Democrats' 2000 vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, left, is helping raise money for Republican Susan Collins of Maine, right. (Getty Images)

Not only has Lieberman endorsed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) -- one of Democrats' biggest targets in the 2008 cycle -- but he's planning to co-host a fundraiser for her on June 21 in Washington, D.C.

Petraeus: “Historically, Counter-Insurgency Ops Have Gone At Least 9 or 10 Years”

In his first interview on a Sunday talk show, (who could have predicted he’d go to Fox, first?) Top U.S. Commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus talks to Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” about the progress of the ongoing military surge in Iraq. With the recent revelation that U.S. forces only control 40% of Baghdad, Wallace contends that this operation will take a long-term commitment (see the Korean model) and asks Petraeus if it’s time for the government to “square up” with the American public about how long the occupation will last. The General’s response lays the groundwork for lowered expectations for the upcoming deadline in September when he is to report to Congress…

Petraeus: ” I think just about everybody out there recognizes that a situation like this with the many, many challenges that Iraq is contending with is not one that’s going to be resolved in a year or even two years. In fact, typically - I think historically, counter-insurgency operations have gone at least nine or ten years.”

What's a Friedman Unit?

Glad you asked

The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.[1] A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The Huffington Post cited it as the "Best New Phrase" of 2006.[9]

Party head lambastes Lieberman on Iran

WASHINGTON — Connecticut for Lieberman Party Chairman John Orman called Tuesday for Sen. Joe Lieberman to resign, saying his advocacy of a military strike against Iran could explode into a global conflict.

"He has crossed the line," said Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University. "His unilateral warmongering could lead to a new World War III."

During an appearance on "Face the Nation" on CBS Sunday, Lieberman said the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran's involvement in Iraq.

Artillery Hillary's Fundraiser in Sacramento gets Protested and Delayed
by Monica Krauth ( monicakrauth [at] yahoo.com ) | Friday Jun 1st, 2007 9:04 AM

A Rancho Cordova fundraising event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was delayed three hours Thursday evening while the Sacramento County bomb squad investigated a coffin brought to the area by antiwar protester Stephen Pearcy.

The $500 to $4,600 per person campaign fundraiser was supposed to be quite hush hush. The media were not invited. The invite didn’t have the address on it. But late Wednesday night after some digging on the Internet by the protesters, they got word got out to their supporters where the dinner was planned.

About 20 protesters showed up and organizer Pearcy brought along his usual displays, including his mock coffin with a U.S. flag draped over it.