Mission Accomplished!

OMG...pinch me. I think I'm dreaming.

Democrats win control of Senate
NBC projects Webb victor in Va.; win solidifies Democratic power on Hill

WASHINGTON - Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994, as NBC News projected Democrat Jim Webb as the winner.

Webb’s apparent squeaker win over incumbent Sen. George Allen gave Democrats their 51st seat in the Senate, an astonishing turnabout at the hands of voters unhappy with Republican scandal and unabated violence in Iraq. Allen was the sixth Republican incumbent senator defeated in Tuesday’s elections.

The Senate had teetered at 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans for most of Wednesday, with Virginia hanging in the balance. Webb’s victory ended Republican hopes of eking out a 50-50 split, with Vice President Dick Cheney wielding tie-breaking authority.

The presumed Democratic majority counts on the support of two independent senators who have declared that they will caucus with the Democrats.

Earlier Wednesday, Democrats ousted Sen. Conrad Burns in Montana on Wednesday and led in winner-take-control Virginia. Late victories padded their day-old majority in the House. ... ... ...

*speechless*

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had hoped, dreamed and wished for a blood letting. I must admit, given the turn of events and my luck, I did not imagine such a significant sweep of the House of Representatives.

What I find most interesting about the Mid-Term Election is the fact that the Neo-Cons received a fairly resounding wake up call. "Christian values" are not necessarily embraced by the general public. What I mean by that is not all Americans want the Bible and Christianity playing a role in public policy. The gay marriage ban in Arizona failed. The abortion ban in South Dakota failed. Stem cell research in Missouri passed. With all the flap doodle going on, these issues were fairly high on my list of third rail pets.

It is refreshing and comforting to see the body electorate speak out about the War in Iraq. Very rarely do we see the, "all politics is local" theory fail. It did.

Today...we can celebrate, self-congratulate and bask in the glory of people waking up out of the nightmare that has been the Bush Administration's bastardization of this country. Tomorrow...we have to unphuck the goat.

Best of all. Most surprising of all, however, is the resignation of McNamara, Jr...Donald Rumsfeld.

Yesterday, there was a thread on The Local about superstitions. Someone said it was bad luck to leave your keys on your desk. I had never heard that before and always keep my keys on my desk next to my cigarettes, coffee cup and cell phone. On a whim, I picked up my keys and put them in my purse which is stashed somewhere super-duper top secret. Given the luck it brought us, I'm keeping them there from now on.

Olbermann Special Comment - Election Style!

*rouses the rabble*

Olbermann: Where are the checks, balances?
Bush has been 'making it up' for too long, and the people have let him

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.

Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it’s hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase “October, or November, Surprise” now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt—let’s say it’s just “happened” that way—and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let’s perceive instead the bigger picture:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody, anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this “nonsense.”

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas -- suddenly turning this ‘unpatriotic idea’ into a platform plank.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.'"

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you’ve stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks," you’ve now resorted, sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.

Those vaunted Founding Fathers of ours have been so quoted up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore. But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit -- unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An executive would do the work, and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have and thousands more.

He’ll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq to oust Saddam or find non-existant weapons or avenge 9/11 or fight terrorists who only got there after we did or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution or for lower prices at The Texaco or…?

There are still a few hours left before the polls open, sir. There are many rationalizations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing), we have let you go on making it up as you went along.

Unchecked and unbalanced.

Vote.

Another Candidate for Club Gitmo!

If I had a job to offer, I would soooooo hire this person...my new hero.

Here is what I don't get, though. With all the shit going on, with the "War in Iraq," the "War on Terror," and everything else that goes along with running a country (albeit into the ground), someone from Congress took the time to call and complain.

I think that speaks volumes. Kids on the bus or not. Calling a school district over getting flipped off? That's the most you have to worry about you unctuous phuck?

And to the school administrator who said, “That’s not the role modeling we need for our students.” All I have to say is: WRONG!!! Those are the role models we need! Those people, who flip off a morally bankrupt, intellectually inept President serve a much greater service to society than the kool-aid drinkers who (still) fail to see the similarities between McNamara and Rumsfeld and fail to see that George W Bush is an utter incompetent.

A grievance with Bush leads to another one
School bus driver fired after flipping off president wants job back

SEATTLE - A school bus driver fired after she reportedly made an obscene gesture at President Bush has filed a union grievance in an attempt to get her job back.

The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade.

From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back.

That’s when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

“The congressman hadn’t seen it, but the president turned to him and said, ‘That one’s not a fan,”’ said Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena.

Reichert later called Barry to tell her about the incident, but the bus driver had already been fired. District officials learned about the incident after the driver boasted to colleagues about it, Cadena said.

District spokeswoman Sara Niegowski said the driver has filed a wrongful termination grievance through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union did not return calls seeking comment.

Niegowski said the firing was not politically motivated.

“The bus driver was not terminated for making an obscene gesture at the president. The bus driver was terminated for making an obscene gesture in view of the students,” Niegowski said. “That’s not the role modeling we need for our students.”

Olbermann Special Comment Night!

Yay! Let us all gather 'round the fire and listen intently to the message from the wise Keith Olbermann.

Bush owes troops an apology, not Kerry
Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.

The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke.

Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since.

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can get stuck in Iraq.”

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here.

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid, but honest.

No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you.

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.

Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, “look like just a comma.”

This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm’s way.

This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

We will not receive them, of course.

This president never apologizes.

Not to the troops.

Not to the people.

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.

Mr. Snow’s words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not “stuffed,” he is inflated.

And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context even more disturbing.

Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how “many of them have lost limbs.”

He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.

And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.

Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.

That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner.

This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush.

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bipartisanship — of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it.

“It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.”

Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?

“However they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, “their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses.”

No manipulation of feelings there.

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

Winning in Iraq, sir.

Winning in America, sir.

There we have chaos — joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn’t even know about it!

And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.”

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

Instead of “declare victory and get out” we now have “declare victory and stay indefinitely.”

And also here — we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition.

True domestic terror:

Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” that was openly available on the Internet.

One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator’s supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent — and the rage — of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI’s case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

No, you did not.

And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

All you have to do, sir, is hand out enough new canes.

America - The Greatest Country???

There is a lesson to be learned from Bill Maher's "New Rule."

America must stop bragging that it's the greatest country on earth and start acting like it. Now, I know — I know this is uncomfortable for the faith-over-facts crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers: Infant mortality rate, America ranks 48th in the world; overall health, 72nd; freedom of the press, 44; literacy, 55th. Do you realize there are 12-year-old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?

Now, America, I will admit, has done many great things: making the New World democratic comes to mind, the Marshall Plan, curing polio, beating Hitler, the deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church, and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag.

And, sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done, either. Not big things, like building a tunnel under Boston or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines. Couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting email!

Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too." Excuse me, since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil?! We invented the airplane and the lightbulb. They invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead?!

In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care. And hardly anyone doubts evolution. And, yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't going to be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning!

Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico! We're not on a bridge to the 21st century. We're on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters.

And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it's 1955 and we're still number one in everything. We're not. And I take no glee in saying this, because I love my country, and I wish we were. But when you're number 55 in this category and number 92 in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam "Number One" finger.

As long as we believe being the greatest country in the world is a birthright, we'll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations and we'll keep losing the moral high ground. Because we may not be the biggest or the healthiest or the best educated. But we always did have one thing no other place did. We knew soccer was bulls***.

And...and we also had a little thing called the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorists hate us for our freedom. And he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem.

Do you have wax in your ears???

I said, "Just shut the phuck up!"

I am willing to concede that Kerry's intentions are good. I am willing to say that The White House has elevated this gaffe to epic proportions for Neo-Con gain. Both are true statements. I believe them and will uphold them.

However...Kerry really needs to stop talking. All together. He had the opportunity to let this issue drop. He clobbered the Neo-Cons in his rebuttal and attempt to clear the air. He showed a spine (something he should have done during the 2004 election). Now...he flip-flopped (because that's what they're going to call it) and apologized! Aie!

Worst of all, for the Democrats, the RNC machine has managed to crank out a lovely campaign commercial. Now...people are going to start believing that bullshit hype that the Democrats will get you killed.

*sighs*

It is a very sad day when a Senator has to be muzzled. He should be able to speak his mind. He should be able to call shenanigans on The White House. A Senator should be able to read the President the riot act. Especially this President. Unfortunately, those are not the times in which we live. And now...a mountain has been made of a mole hill and Kerry's still talking.

I think Don Imus summed it up the best. "Please stop it. Stop talking. Go home, get on the bike, go windsurfing, anything. Stop it. You’re going to ruin this."

Just shut the phuck up!

I have long since said that the greatest enemy to the Democrat party is the Democrats themselves. The best thing a Democrat can do during the election season is shut the phuck up. Yes. I said it. Shut the phuck up!

John Kerry, well intended or not, managed to not only step on his own dick, but the dick of the Democrats today. And we all know that Karl Rove has a Texas sized hard-on for this stuff.

Now...after a season of bullshit campaign ads ranging from the ludicrous to the racist, with the Democrats looking like the "good guys," Kerry starts flapping his gums. And handing over the ammunition to the fear mongering Neo-Cons.

Let's face it. There is little parity in the rules of engagement in this battle for control over Congress. The Repugs currently have thier slimy mitts all over it. They are in control. We cannot have a distraction, such as Kerry's (regardless of how well founded his points may be) taking the message off track. How can we make Bush and Rove lol-cows over national security when we trot out a message which can be easily misconstrued?

All I want, all that I have been yearning for since 2000, is to make life absolute hell for the Neo-Con faction. I want to render them inert. Stupid commentary, such as Kerry's, is not helping me achieve my dream. That really pisses me off.

Uproar over Kerry Iraq remarks
Bush says troops deserve apology; Kerry says joke aimed at president

WASHINGTON - The White House and Sen. John Kerry traded their harshest accusations since the 2004 presidential race on Tuesday, with President Bush accusing the Democrat of troop-bashing and Kerry calling the president's men hacks who are "willing to lie."

The war of words, tough even for this hard-fought campaign season, came after Kerry told a group of California students on Monday that those unable to navigate the country's education system "get stuck in Iraq."

The two parties are searching for any edge amid indications Democrats could take back the House and possibly win control of the Senate in next week's midterm elections. Though neither Bush nor Kerry is on any ballot, the bitterness with which they fought each other as 2004 rivals spilled over as both campaign hard for their parties in a race shaped in large measure by public doubts about the Iraq war.

White House press secretary Tony Snow was asked about Kerry's comment at his regular briefing with reporters, and had clearly come prepared with a lengthy attack. He said the quote "fits a pattern" of negative remarks about U.S. soldiers from the decorated Vietnam veteran and suggested that whether Democratic candidates - particularly those running on their military service backgrounds - agree with their 2004 standard-bearer should be a campaign litmus test.

Bush statement asks for apology

The White House also released in advance remarks Bush was to deliver later in the day while campaigning in Georgia, in which the president called Kerry's statement "insulting and shameful." Bush, like his spokesman earlier, said soldiers deserve an apology from Kerry.

"Our troops did not enlist because they did not study hard in school or do their homework," Bush said in his prepared remarks for a former GOP congressman, Mac Collins, who is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall. "The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots."

Kerry, who is considering another run for the White House in 2008, angrily fired back.

His statement called Republicans "assorted right-wing nut jobs."

And at a hastily arranged news conference in Seattle, Kerry said: "I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy."

Kerry explanation

Kerry said the comment in question was "a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops ... and they know that's what I was talking about."

It came during a campaign rally for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Kerry opened his speech at Pasadena City College with several one-liners, saying at one point that Bush had lived in Texas but now "lives in a state of denial."

He then said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

That, Kerry said, was meant as a reference to Bush, not troops. Kerry said it is the president who owes U.S. soldiers an apology - for "a Katrina foreign policy" that misled the country into war in Iraq, failed to adequately study and plan for the aftermath, has not properly equipped troops and has expanded the terrorist threat.

The Massachusetts Democrat called the White House attack "a classic GOP textbook Republican campaign tactic" that reveals Republicans' "willingness to reduce anything in America to raw politics."

"I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes," he said. "It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."

Unsubstantiated allegations about Kerry's Vietnam War heroism from a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth figured prominently in the 2004 Kerry-Bush race. Even Kerry has blamed his slow and uncertain response to the group's claims for helping to doom his White House chances, and Democrats viewed the Tuesday fracas as a test of that lesson.

"Enough is enough. We're not going to stand for this," Kerry said. "We are going to stay in their face with the truth."

Election issue?

Other Republicans, sensing opportunity for their side, piled on throughout the day with their own demands for an apology from Kerry.

GOP Sen. John McCain, like Kerry a decorated Vietnam veteran and a potential 2008 rival, said while campaigning for Republican candidates in Indiana that "the suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat today."

Added House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., struggling to keep his party in control of Congress: "Our soldiers risk their lives in the face of grave dangers on the battlefield, and no one who chooses to courageously and selflessly defend our country can be considered 'uneducated.' "

Separately, the White House issued President Bush's Veterans' Day proclamation praising those who have served in the armed forces - a week and a half before the holiday.

Special Olbermann Commentary Night!

Special Comment: Advertising terrorism
The key to terrorism is not the act — but the fear of the act

Tonight, a special comment on the advertising of terrorism – the commercial you have already seen.

It is a distillation of everything this administration and the party in power have tried to do these last five years and six weeks.

It is from the Republican National Committee;

It shows images of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri;

It offers quotes from them—all as a clock ticks ominously in the background.

It concludes with what Zawahiri may or may not have said to a Pakistani journalist as long ago as 2001: His dubious claim that he had purchased “suitcase bombs.”

The quotation is followed (by sheer coincidence no doubt) by an image of a massive explosion.

“These are the stakes,” appears on the screen, quoting exactly from Lyndon Johnson’s infamous nuclear scare commercial from 1964.

“Vote—November 7th.”

There is a cheap “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” quality to the whole thing, and it also serves to immediately call to mind the occasions when President Bush dismissed Osama bin Laden as somebody he didn’t think about—except, obviously, when elections were near.

Frankly, a lot of people seeing that commercial for the first time, have laughed out loud.

But—not everyone.

And therein lies the true threat to this country.

The dictionary definition of the word “terrorize” is simple and not open to misinterpretation:

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

Note please, that the words “violence” and “death” are missing from that definition.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act—but the fear of the act.

That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them?

Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear.

The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home.

Only the Republicans have a bigger bank roll.

When, last week, the CNN network ran video of an insurgent in Iraq, evidently stalking and killing an American soldier, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Hunter, Republican of California, branded that channel, quote, “the publicist for an enemy propaganda film” and that CNN used it “to sell commercials.”

Another California Republican, Rep. Brian Bilbray, called the video “nothing short of a terrorist snuff film.”

If so, Mr. Bilbray, then what in the hell is your Party’s new advertisement?

And Mr. Hunter, CNN using the video to “sell commercials”?

Commercials!

You have adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National Committee!

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

By this definition, the people who put these videos together—first the terrorists and then the administration—whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking—they are the ones terrorizing you.

By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaida.

But the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.

Eleven Presidents ago, a chief executive reassured us that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

His distant successor has wasted his administration insisting that there is nothing we can have but fear itself.

The vice president, as recently as this month, was caught campaigning with the phrase “mass death in the United States.”

Four years ago it was the now-Secretary of State, Dr. Rice, rationalizing Iraq with "we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Days later Mr. Bush himself told an audience that “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

And now we have this cheesy commercial—complete with images of a faked mushroom cloud, and implications of “mass death in America.”

This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror.

It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and that only you can save them.

Lyndon Johnson used it to bury Barry Goldwater.

Joe McCarthy leaped from obscurity on its back.

And now the legacy has come to President George Bush.

Of course, the gruel of fear is getting thinner and thinner, is it not, Mr. President?

And thus more and more of it needs to be made out of less and less actual terror.

After last week’s embarrassing Internet hoax about ‘dirty bombs’ at football stadiums, the one your Department of Homeland Security immediately disseminated to the public, a self-described “former CIA operative” named Wayne Simmons, cited the fiasco as “the, and I mean the, perfect example of the President’s Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program - how vital they are.”

Frank Gaffney, once a respected assistant secretary of defense and now the president of something called the Center for Security Policy, added, “one of the things that I hope Americans take away from this, is not only that they’re gunning for us not just in a place like Iraq—but truly, worldwide.”

Of course, the “they” to which Mr. Gaffney referred, turned out to be a lone 20-year-old grocery bagger from Wisconsin named Jake—a kid, trying to one-up some other loser in an Internet game of chicken.

His “threat,” referenced seven football stadiums at which dirty bombs were to be exploded yesterday. It began with the one in New York City - even though there isn’t one in New York City. And though the attacks were supposed to be simultaneous, four of the games were scheduled to start at 1 p.m. ET and the others at 4 p.m. ET.

More over, the kid said he’d posted the identical message on 40 websites since September.

We caught him in “merely” about six weeks, even though the only way he could have been less subtle, less stealthy, and less of a threat was if he’d bought an advertisement on the Super Bowl broadcast.

Mr. Bush, this is the—what? – 100th plot your people have revealed, that turned out to be some nonsensical misunderstanding, or the fabrications of somebody hoping to talk his way off a water board in Eastern Europe?

If, Mr. President, this is the kind of crack work that your new ad implies that only you and not the Democrats can do, you, sir, need to pull over and ask for directions.

The real question of course, Mr. Bush, is why did your Department of Homeland Security even release this information in the first place?

It was never a serious threat. Even the first news accounts quoted a Homeland spokesman as admitting “strong skepticism”—the kind of strong skepticism which most government agencies address before telling the public, not afterwards.

So that leaves two options, Mr. President.

The first option: you and your department of Homeland Security don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing. Thus, contrary to your flip-flopping between saying "we’re safe” and saying “but we’re not safe enough,” and contrary to the vice president’s swaggering pronouncements about the lack of another attack since 9/11, the last five years has been just an accident.

Or there’s the second option: your political operatives leaked this nonsense for the same reason your political operatives put out that commercial—to scare the gullible.

Obviously the correct answer, Mr. Bush, is all of the above.

There are some of us who could forgive you for trying to run your candidates on the coattails of the Grim Reaper, for reducing your party’s existence to “Death and Attacks Us.”

It’s cynical and barbaric.

But, after all, it may be merely the natural extension of the gutter politics to which you have subscribed since you sidled over from baseball, and the business world of other people’s money.

But to forgive you for terrorizing us, we would have to believe you somehow competent in keeping others from doing so.

Yet, last week, construction workers repairing a subway line in New York City, were cleaning out an abandoned manhole on the edge of the World Trade Center site, when they stumbled on to the impossible: human remains from 9/11.

Bones and fragments.

Eighty of them.

Some as much as a foot long.

The victims had been lying, literally in the gutter, for five years and five weeks.

The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead—who had been grimly told in May of 2002 that there were no more remains to be found—were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened again.

And over the weekend they’ve found still more remains.

And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times five years ago.

For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush—the living and the dead—it’s a touch of 9/11 all over again.

And the mayor of this city, who called off the search four-and-a-half years ago is a Republican.

The governor of this state with whom he conferred is a Republican.

The House of Representatives, Republican.

The Senate, Republican.

The President, Republican.

And yet you can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield—the battlefield in an American city—when we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!

While signing a Military Commissions Act so monstrous that it has been criticized by even the John Birch Society, you told us, Mr. Bush, “there is nothing we can do to bring back the men and women lost on September 11th, 2001. Yet we’ll always honor their memory, and we will never forget the way they were taken from us.”

Except, of course, for the ones who’ve been lying under a manhole cover for five years.

Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat yourselves on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq, and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America;

Just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government, in time of crisis, in this country’s history!

“These are the stakes,” indeed, Mr. President.

You do not know what you are doing.

And the commercial—the one about which Zawahiri might say “hey, pretty good—we love your choice of font style”?

All that need further be said is to add three words to Shakespeare.

Mr. President, you, and that advertisement of terror, are full of sound and fury—signifying (and competent at) nothing.

Military Commissions Act

The crickets are chirping in a meadow night, at least on the news (the liberal, MSM). It is no secret that I am a news junkie. An addict, if you will. I spend hours upon hours glued to some news source.

What I find most upsetting is the lack of coverage the Military Commissions Act and subsequent ramifications of this bill have received by the MSM. Yes...Keith Olbermann has been representing the voice of dissent but where is the rest of the criticism and coverage? It seems, sadly, that there is none.

Granted, I had only recently woken up from my slumber this morning when I turned on Meet The Press, but I do not recall this being covered. Nary a peep. The focus was much more on the Mid-Terms (that I can see) and the 2008 elections (may we please clear November before looking to 08?).

Hello? Is anyone out there?

The Military Commissions Act is one of the most vile pieces of legislation to come out of Washington, in my opinion, ever. Fundamental civil liberties have been flushed down the toilet. And where is our focus, exactly?

I have seen commentary from some who feel we must make sacrifices for the sake of national security. Have we not surrendered enough, already? Must we sacrifice our inalienable rights as American citizens, as well?

It seems the only coverage of this terrifying bit of legislation is coming out of the blog-o-sphere. The Fourth Estate sleeps on the job again. As does the American public.

Yesterday, when whining about this to Dock Ellis...I referenced the Gadsden Flag. While it's a very loose tangent, it does seem very appropriate (at least to me).

At the risk of drawing ire, I have said this before and I will say it again. The population of the United States has reached 300 million. I do not wish to lessen the sting of the losses on 09.11, but enacting legislation to prevent the loss of 3,000 while destroying the rights of 300 million seems a skosh excessive to me.

"Habeas Corpus? Gone."

This needs no prologue. This needs no explanation. It needs to be read and understood. And you should be very angered by the loss of your civil liberties.

'Beginning of the end of America'
Olbermann addresses the Military Commissions Act in a special comment

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived as people in fear.

And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before—and we have been here before led here—by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been only human.

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once, sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know—just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died --- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, Sir, all of them—as always—wrong.

Habeas Corpus - Death Knell

I watched this interview last night. Something about listening to a professor of constitutional law gives a greater sense of urgency to the issue.

‘National yawn as our rights evaporate’
New law redefines habeas corpus; law professor explains on ‘Countdown’

On Tuesday, "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann talked to Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University about a new bill signed by President Bush that redefines the right of habeas corpus.

Read the transcript below.

History does not play well at this White House. Expressionless faces would probably greet references to how John Adams ended his political career by insisting he needed the Alien and Sedition Acts to silence his critics in the newspapers, or how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order to seize Japanese-Americans during World War II necessitated a formal presidential apology eight presidents later.

But even so, somebody probably should have told President Bush that today was the exact 135th anniversary, to the day, that President Grant suspended habeas corpus in much of South Carolina for the noble and urgent purpose of dispersing the Ku Klux Klan and making sure the freed slaves had all their voting rights, neither of which has yet truly occurred. It is your principal defense against imprisonment without charge and trial without defense thrown away for no good reason, then and now.

Our fifth story on "Countdown": President Bush, happy Habeas Corpus Day.

First thing this morning, the president signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which does away with habeas corpus, the right of suspected terrorists or anybody else to know why they have been imprisoned, provided the president does not think it should apply to you and declares you an enemy combatant.

Further, the bill allows the CIA to continue using interrogation techniques so long as they do not cause what is deemed, quote, “serious physical or mental pain.” And it lets the president to ostensibly pick and choose which parts of the Geneva Convention to obey, though to hear him describe this, this repudiation of the freedoms for which all our soldiers have died is a good thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BUSH: This bill spells out specific, recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes in the handling of detainees, so that our men and women who question captured terrorists can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law. And this bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Leading Democrats view it differently, Senator Ted Kennedy calling this “seriously flawed,” Senator Patrick Leahey saying it’s, quote, “a sad day when the rubber-stamp Congress undercuts our freedoms,” and Senator Russ Feingold adding that “We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation’s history.”

Outside the White House, a handful of individuals protested the law by dressing up as Abu Ghraib abuse victims and terror detainees. Several of them got themselves arrested, but they were apparently quickly released, despite being already dressed for Gitmo.

To assess what this law will truly mean for us all, I’m joined by Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

I want to start by asking you about a specific part of this act that lists one of the definitions of an unlawful enemy combatant as, quote, “a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a combatant status review tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”

Does that not basically mean that if Mr. Bush or Mr. Rumsfeld say so, anybody in this country, citizen or not, innocent or not, can end up being an unlawful enemy combatant?

JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: It certainly does. In fact, later on, it says that if you even give material support to an organization that the president deems connected to one of these groups, you too can be an enemy combatant.

And the fact that he appoints this tribunal is meaningless. You know, standing behind him at the signing ceremony was his attorney general, who signed a memo that said that you could torture people, that you could do harm to them to the point of organ failure or death.

So if he appoints someone like that to be attorney general, you can imagine who he’s going be putting on this board.

OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?

TURLEY: It does. And it’s a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn’t rely on their good motivations.

Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.

It couldn’t be more significant. And the strange thing is, we’ve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, “Dancing with the Stars.” I mean, it’s otherworldly.

OLBERMANN: Is there one defense against this, the legal challenges against particularly the suspension or elimination of habeas corpus from the equation? And where do they stand, and how likely are they to overturn this action today?

TURLEY: Well, you know what? I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking over—taking almost absolute power. It basically comes down to a single vote on the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy. And he indicated that if Congress gave the president these types of powers, that he might go along.

And so we may have, in this country, some type of uber-president, some absolute ruler, and it’ll be up to him who gets put away as an enemy combatant, held without trial.

It’s something that no one thought—certainly I didn’t think—was possible in the United States. And I am not too sure how we got to this point. But people clearly don’t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I’m not too sure we’re going to change back anytime soon.

OLBERMANN: And if Justice Kennedy tries to change us back, we can always call him an enemy combatant.

The president reiterated today the United States does not torture. Does this law actually guarantee anything like that?

TURLEY: That’s actually when I turned off my TV set, because I couldn’t believe it. You know, the United States has engaged in torture. And the whole world community has denounced the views of this administration, its early views that the president could order torture, could cause injury up to organ failure or death.

The administration has already established that it has engaged in things like waterboarding, which is not just torture. We prosecuted people after World War II for waterboarding prisoners. We treated it as a war crime. And my God, what a change of fate, where we are now embracing the very thing that we once prosecuted people for.

Who are we now? I know who we were then. But when the president
said that we don’t torture, that was, frankly, when I had to turn off my TV set.

OLBERMANN: That same individual fell back on the same argument that he’d used about the war in Iraq to sanction this law. Let me play what he said and then ask you a question about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yet with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Does he understand the irony of those words when taken out of the context of this particular passage or of what he perceives as the war against terror, and that, in fact, the threat we may be facing is the threat of President George W. Bush?

TURLEY: Well, this is going to go down in history as one of our greatest self-inflicted wounds. And I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won’t be kind to President Bush.

But frankly, I don’t think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law? There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps, there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate.

OLBERMANN: Well, not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but I think we’ve done a little bit of what we could have done. I’ll see you at Gitmo. As always, greatest thanks for your time, Jon.

TURLEY: Thanks, Keith.

Habeas Whatteas?

Habeas Corpus:

In common law countries, habeas corpus, Latin for "you [should] have the body", is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. The Unites States has just passed a law which takes this right away from "Terrorist". This means if you are declared a "terrorist" you could be locked up and they could just throw away the key. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

Ripped from the AP:

TERROR BILL
Highlights of the military commissions and interrogation system

Whom the military can detain

• The military can detain any foreigner it believes is an "unlawful enemy combatant."
• The new bill defines this as anyone "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents." This definition is aimed at terrorists and people who finance terrorists.
• The military can detain an individual indefinitely if it believes he is a threat to forces on the battlefield or U.S. citizens.
• The court would not be used to prosecute U.S. citizens or individuals who fight in foreign forces on behalf of a sovereign state.

Whom the military can prosecute

• The military gets to decide whom it prosecutes and is not required to bring charges against every prisoner. The military has some 14,000 detainees in custody.
• So far, the military has identified 10 individuals out of the estimated 450 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba who are people for whom the military believes it has enough evidence for successful prosecution. President Bush is expected to bring charges against 14 others recently transferred to the military prison from CIA custody.
• The military does not have plans yet to prosecute the remaining prisoners, most of whom are held in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, prisoners must await the decision of a military review board to determine whether they can be released. In Iraq, the review board includes representatives from the Iraqi government and coalition forces.

Rules for a military trial

• Each defendant selected for prosecution must be assigned a military defense counsel. The defendant could retain civilian counsel if the counsel is eligible to have access to classified information.
• Statements obtained by torture would not be admissible as evidence.
• Statements obtained using interrogation methods that violate a 2005 ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" would be admissible as evidence if they were taken before the ban took effect and a judge found the statements were reliable and would serve the "interests of justice."
• The commission could determine the punishment, including death.
• A defendant would be allowed to examine and respond to any evidence given to a jury. If classified information were needed for prosecution, an unclassified summary would be provided.
• When the government wants to protect classified information and an unclassified substitute is not available, the government could decide to drop the charges. Under the laws of war, the president would not be required to release the combatant.
• Defendants would be barred from protesting their detention or treatment in civilian courts.

Interrogation techniques

• The president would not be allowed to authorize any interrogation technique that amounted to a war crime. These include torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, murder, mutilation or maiming, serious bodily injury, sexual abuse, taking hostages, rape and biological experiments. An extensive definition of each crime is provided.
• Proponents of the bill say abusive interrogation methods, including "waterboarding" - or simulated drowning - would amount to war crimes and are prohibited.
• The bill does not include a provision the president wanted interpreting U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which set international standards on prisoner treatment. Bush wanted a provision that said an existing 2005 ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" was enough to satisfy the treaty's obligations. Republican senators said this would look like the United States was redefining the Geneva Conventions standards, which are much broader.
• The president could "interpret the meaning and application" of Geneva Convention standards applied to less severe interrogation procedures. Such a provision is intended to allow him to authorize methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts.

Bush terror bill signing a major victory
'High-value' suspects could face trial in next few months

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism.

Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military ommissions.

"With the bill I'm about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice," Bush said.

Likely prosecutions
Among those the United States hopes to try are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells.

"It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives," Bush said. "I have that privilege this morning."

Bush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said "Protecting America." He said he signed it in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We will answer brutal murder with patient justice," Bush said. "Those who kill the innocent will be held to account."

High-profile witnesses
Among those in the audience were military officers, lawmakers who helped pass the bill and members of Bush's Cabinet.

He singled out for praise, among others, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has come under sharp criticism in recent months as violence has soared in Iraq.

The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning _ such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment _ but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Bush said the process is "fair, lawful and necessary."

"The bill I sign today helps secure this country and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair and we will never back down from threats to our freedom," Bush said. "We are as determined today as we were on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001."

Democratic response
Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence. Bush acknowledged that the law came amid dispute.

"Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated and the questions raised can seem complex," he said. "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

"Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said.

White House victory
The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence. Lawmakers are increasingly calling for a change of strategy and political anxieties are jeopardizing Republican's chances of hanging onto control of Congress.

Bush needed the legislation because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

The legislation, which sets the rules for court proceedings, applies to those selected by the military for prosecution and leaves mostly unaffected the majority of the 14,000 prisoners in U.S. custody, most of whom are in Iraq.

The Pentagon had previously selected 10 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison to be tried. Bush is expected also to try some or all the 14 suspects held by the CIA in secret prisons and recently transferred to military custody at Guantanamo.

The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts.

The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts. White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush would probably eventually issue an executive order that would describe his interpretation, but those documents are not usually made public and Snow did not reveal when it might be issued.

Free Speech

Espied on my commute to work this morning:

A white banner hanging on the overpass on Davis Drive over I-40, reading:

Impeach Bush
Torture Cheney

How the worm turns. Even in the Conservative South.

It's Keith Olbermann Special Comment Night!

Yay! Yay for us squishly Liberals!!!

A special comment about lying
Keith Olbermann on the difference between terrorists and critics

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ...

While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover ...

The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

President Bush hears what he wants.

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.

“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”

The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.

He hears things that only he can hear.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.

Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, “We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”... ... ... (click here for entire commentary)

Responsibility

"I'm drunk!"
"I'm ghey!"
"I was molested!"
"No one understands me!"

Is it me or does Pedophile Emeritus Mark Foley have it all wrong? Is something missing from this equation? Since when does substance abuse, sexual orientation and tragic childhood events absolve people from personal responsibility?

I am giggling with delight about the fissure in the Repuglican Party. I shall not lie. I think this is titillating and salacious. Just like the Clinton blow-job thing (because...let's be honest folks...everyone knows a good Jewish girl does NOT willingly give head unless jewelry is involved).

What is really starting to piss me of is the litany of excuses oozing from Camp Foley (for kids). Cloaking yourself, concealing yourself and hiding behind your personal flaws and failures is not accepting responsibility for the fact that you're a flaming Pedo who cannot control his urges.

Your sexuality does not matter. Your taste for the sauce does not matter (because Washington is a "dry" town, after all). Your childhood does not matter.

You tried to diddle little boys. That matters.

Your colleagues tried to hide it. That matters.

You made a six figure donation to a campaign cause to cover your trail of slime. That matters.

Anything else is simply conjecture falling on very angry ears.

ZOMG! More Congressional Pedo Fun!

It does not take long for a meme to spawn.

Wishing to engage in schadenfreudish behavior myself, I surfed on over to visit my friends at Encyclopædia Dramatica to see what they had brewing with respect to Mark Foley. I am not disappointed. And you won't be, either.

The artist has given me her permission to post her handiwork on my blog. Enjoy. Please be sure to read the write-up on ED, too. Lulzy.

You cannot have it both ways...

...no matter how loudly you whine.

Back in 2004, the Repuglicans touted, lauded, praised and recommended Bob Woodward's book, "Plan of Attack." The book was listed as suggested reading on the Repuglican party's website. Unprecedented access was granted to Woodward for interviews with a normally, press unfriendly Administration.

Fast forward two years, to a mid-term election on very shaky ground.

Woodward has returned with another tome on the war in Iraq. This time, the point of view is not perceived as favorable by the Bush Administration. Now, Tony Snow is calling, "State of Denial" "cotton candy." The Bush Administration and the Repuglicans are not embracing this book. They're pulling out the garlic, stakes and holy water.

I suppose the question is: how can someone have such unprecedented access to an Administration to craft an honest report of the events leading up to the war in Iraq turn out to be a bald faced liar, trying to manipulate the mid-term elections? Oooooh. I forgot. That only happens when the actual truth is not favorable, the poll numbers are down and the support for the war is waning.

Hmmmmm.

I suppose it's time to pull out the issue-deflect-o-shield and talk about Pedos in Congress.

Pedos in Congress!

Continuing the trend of freakish sex...

Yet another time when we, as an Electorate, can look back on the good, old days and say, "whatever happened to Presidents getting blown in the White House by consenting adults?"

Rep. Foley resigns over e-mails to male page
Florida Republican had been considered a shoo-in for re-election

WASHINGTON - Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., abruptly resigned from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.

"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.

His departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate less than six weeks before midterm elections in which Democrats are making a strong bid to gain control of the House...

I think Dateline NBC and PervertedJustice need to shake their tail feathers to DC and do some real, "to catch a thievery."

The Implosion of George Allen

For those of you living under a rock, Virginia Senator George Allen made quite the social gaffe back in August, referring to a dark skinned attendee of a whatever as a, "Macaca." He also graciously welcomed him to America. Funny...the dark skinned man was already a citizen, having been born here.

Much lulz has ensued. Much ass coverage has been attempted, resulting in further lulz as the Allen campaign keeps digging itself in deeper. I do not know what sort of shovel he is using, but I should certainly like to borrow it the next time snow falls on Raleigh.

It appears that the main defense employed by the Allen campaign is the platform of, "ignorance." Apparently, stupidity is absolution for making any sort of remotely racist remark. Allen's handlers insist that it was a slip, a mistake and that he had no idea what "macaca" means. This...from a man (Allen) who had a noose in his office of his law practice years ago ("it was a gift to fit with the western decor.")

Aside from jumping on the Allen-slamming bandwagon, where am I going with this?

Years ago, I dated a charming, young lad in Pittsburgh (*gags*). I should have known to expect trouble when the mother 's (of said lad) first comment about me (after meeting me for the first time) was, "She's Jewish, isn't she?" Alas, I was young and stupid and did not see such a remark as a sign to run like hell.

One lovely evening, the charming lad and I were hanging out in the living room of his parents' house when he called me (apparently in jest) a, "kike." Yikes! Naturally, I tore into him in a most self-righteously smug fashion, chastising him for using such a dreadfully racist term. His mother, always one to defend (Oedipus, anyone) her precious offspring, flies into the living room on broomstick and says, "My son doesn't know what that word really means. I did not raise him to know those words." My retort was along the lines of, "Ok...so you raised an ignorant man who passes as a bigot? Or you raised him ill suited to be among people of different cultures and/or faiths?" The mother and I never really got along well.

A few years into our relationship, the charming lad and I bought a vehicle together. The broom riding, bitch of a mother, turns to us and says, "Did you Jew them down in price?" My only reaction to that display of diplomacy was a grin reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat. It took a few years, but I finally wheedled the truth out of that ghastly creature. She doesn't care for t3h Joos.

No. She didn't raise a bigot. She didn't teach her son words like kike. She was a good Lutheran lady who loves everyone.

Even scarier...she molds the minds of the youth of Pittsburgh as a sixth grade teacher. I wonder what argot she teaches them.

The moral of the story (aside from my sheer contempt for that horrible woman) is that you need to take responsibility for your words and your actions. If you phuck up, if you slip and say something absolutely abominable in public...do not employ ignorance as your defense. Admit that you may be a skosh bigoted, learn from your phucking mistakes and wash the hate and sense of superiority from your mind and soul.

Oh...and feed your sons pork chops and have them tell the world about it when your Jewish heritage has been uncovered (Sen Allen).

Article from the Washginton Post is here...for you under rock dwellers.