Truth in government and promises kept in order to keep the faith in a man’s duty and word.

Bush Scandals List:
updated 2/1/08, recent changes in red. please contact us with corrections and additions.

INTRODUCTION: George Bush, the Connecticut cowboy, the good old boy from Yale is a man of mediocre intelligence, little imagination, and great stubbornness and vindictiveness. He may be the Decider but his handlers have long known how to manipulate him. The key is to hook him with short, simple sells. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice know that once he has consulted his gut and perhaps his higher father his decision is forever. So whoever gets to him first is likely to carry the day because he doesn't like to be challenged and is, quite simply, too lazy to change his mind. The Bubble is a natural consequence of this decision making process where logic, reason, and facts have little or no role.
....Bush's Presidency began in the shadow of a contested and likely stolen election and promised to be unsuccessful in a largely forgettable and unremarkable way. 911 changed all that and transformed a plodding, and essentially AWOL one termer into an accidental hero. Enormous power flowed to his office but Bush had no idea how to use it. He liked to campaign, not govern. In those around him, he prized loyalty over competence and honesty. A believer in the notion of "to the victor go the spoils," he was the perfect mark for every conniver, bumbler, bungler, hack, hanger on, and would be crony that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their friends could find. In the normal course of things, this would have spelled failure. Post-911, it was catastrophic.
....At this critical juncture in our history we needed an adult but got an adolescent. Instead of responsibility, we got a truant. In place of flexibility we got obduracy. In the face of great and complex challenges, we got strawmen, a black and white universe, my way or the highway, regurgitated stump speeches, and a steadfast refusal to compromise not just with opponents but with reality.
....What all this comes down to is that George Bush should never have become our President. He is not just a bad President but the worst one we could have had, the worst our country has ever seen. This is a judgment that many Americans have come to but which our political establishment and media, even after 6 years, have yet to acknowledge, accept, and act on. This is the tragedy and crime of our times.

Bush List of Crimes and Scandals

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

Yay, Barack… He seems a good man and as far as experience goes it has been proven by Bush not to be necessary. And speaking of Bush…

Off Topic

From Alternet.org

Rep. Conyers: Impeachment Is Not Off the Table
Posted by Matt Stoller, Open Left on January 29, 2008 at 6:35 AM.

Today at the Progressive Media Summit I managed to catch a conversation between Rob Kall of OpedEdNews and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers on the potential impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. The video starts in the middle of a sentence, but other than that, it's pretty clear cut. It's an interesting dialogue in which Conyers goes back and forth on his own authority and ability to bring impeachment charges, his political arguments against it, and finally, his firm statement that Bush could do plenty to justify impeachment and that the option is not 'off the table'. You get to see a fascinating and very human interaction between a highly intelligent activist and a sitting Congressman with immense power who is vaguely irritated at having to answer questions, but also intensely interested in answering them.
The transcript is as follows:
John Conyers: Two impeachments rather than one. They've either got to be simultaneous or serie atum.

Rob Kall: Serie atum would be the way to do it. First Cheney, then Bush. History teaches us, let's start with Gonzales. We went to Gonzales, and he's gone. They went to Agnew, he left. Then they went to Nixon, and they started doing hearings on him. It never went to a vote in the Senate. And I don't think it ever would. All we need to do is get the hearings opened up where they can't say 'sorry, executive privilege, then you've got the tools, which is what Impeachment is, it's a tool.

John Conyers: You know who's been in more impeachment hearings than anybody in the House or Senate?

Rob Kall: You?

John Conyers: Right.

Rob Kall: And you wrote a book on impeaching Bush, too.

John Conyers: A couple, yes. Well there must be some compelling reason that I'm not doing it right now.

Rob Kall: Pelosi, Pelosi keeps coming to mind.

John Conyers: How could she stop, well, she could stop me because actually it goes through a special committee on the House, but, Pelosi can't stop me from anything, really.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/#75606

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It always comes back to this or so it seems and it’s hard to take anything else seriously while it’s still out there. I do take impeachment seriously though and I take you seriously too, Congressman Conyers. Our leader is a fascist war criminal … Hello… I reckon the faith is to be put where you will find a way to make it work; to make it stick.

It must drive you crazy to see constant impeachment references but I would bet it drives me just as crazy to see the illegitimate Bush regime get away with murder.

Thanks for all you do, Mr. Conyers … hold the line.

Amos

Note to John and Nancy: Your 'base' feels cheated, lied to and ignored. Your 'annointed' candidates are little more than Republican Lite. You have nothing to offer the American people but eight more years of 'business as usual'.

Come November, you're going to look around for the support of those who helped you win back in 2006, and wonder where everyone went.

At this point, I wouldn't cross the street to piss on you, if you and the rest of the 'Democratic Leadership' were on fire. What makes you think I'd vote for any of you in November?

In 2006, George Bush alienated his 'base' by failing to hold down spending, or get tough on illegal immigration. They stayed home on election day, and as a result the Republicans lost the House and Senate.

I predict that in 2008, the Democrats who've failed to restore accountability, oversight or the rule of law, will suffer the same fate.

You people had your chance, and you fu*ked it up. Hell, you refused to even try. Why would you ever expect us to trust you again?

Impeachment: I don't care if they try and fail. I only care if they fail to try.

Of course the democrats don't want to impeach Bush. It's like the republicans and abortion. If they actually got it banned through a constitutional amendment, they wouldn't have anything to rally the troops around. Same with Bush and the dumbs, er.. em, dems, impeach him and they lose their rallying cry. They know we would never back a repug, so they play with our heads a little, give us a carrot, and laugh it off as we continue to put them back in office.

Stupid is as stupid does....

We are the mainstream!
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

Chafee’s new book is tough on pro-war Democrats, Republicans, President Bush
By Scott MacKay

ROVIDENCE — Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s new political memoir is remarkable for its candor, its delicious window into life in America’s most exclusive club, and its condemnation of President Bush and the combination of right-wing Republicans and Democratic enablers who plunged the nation into an ill-fated war without end in Iraq.

The most startling revelation: Chafee must be the only senator in U.S. political history who says his defeat was the result of voters acting logically.

“The system works best when power remains in the hands of the voters,” writes Chafee. “I was a casualty of the system working in 2006, and while defeat is never easy, I give the voters credit: They made the connection between electing even popular Republicans at the cost of leaving the Senate in the hands of a leadership they had learned to mistrust.”

The book, titled Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President, is due in bookstores April 1. It is being published by St. Martin’s Press. The Journal obtained a copy last week, and Chafee agreed to talk about it in his office at Brown University’s Watson Institute, where the former senator is a visiting scholar.

Then-Republican Chafee, of course, met defeat at the hands of Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the wave of anti-Bush and antiwar sentiment that cost the Republican Party control of both the House and Senate. Exit polls done on Election Day showed that Chafee had a 63-percent job-approval rating, high enough, in most election cycles, to guarantee victory.

The book excoriates Mr. Bush and his GOP allies who repeatedly fanned such wedge issues as changing the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, abortion and flag-burning. But he saves some of his harshest words for Democrats who paved the way for Mr. Bush to use the U.S. military to invade Iraq. That includes New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Chafee says put her presidential ambitions above standing up to Mr. Bush and the rush to war in Iraq.

“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee. “Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against prosecuting the war. “The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,” writes Chafee. “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

“Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.”

Chafee writes of his surprise at “how quickly key Democrats crumbled.” Democratic senators, Chafee writes, “went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration’s nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?”

Unlike members of his own party, Democratic senators were not getting the influence, home-state goodies, White House invites and Congressional pork that goes with being in the majority. The Democrats had learned not to trust Mr. Bush before the Twin Towers and the Pentagon burst into flame on Sept. 11.

A bewildered Chafee, seeking an explanation, turned to an unnamed Democratic senator who opposed the war but was well-respected by his party’s leaders. This senator tells Chafee “in confidence” what concerned the Democrats. “They are afraid the war will be over as fast as Gulf One. Few will die, the oil will flow and gasoline will cost 90 cents a gallon.”

The anecdote is the only unattributed quote in a book that otherwise names names. The speaker was reportedly Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Jack Reed. When asked whether Reed was that senator, Chafee declined to confirm or deny it.

Reed, too, declined comment when asked last week about the quote.

Chafee, a 1975 Brown graduate, decided to write the book after an article about him appeared in Brown’s alumni magazine. He was contacted by a literary agent — also a Brown alum — who asked him to write a book. Chafee decided to give it a try and worked diligently last summer to finish it. Tony De Paul, a former Journal reporter known around the newsroom for his writing skills, helped Chafee focus his thoughts and meet deadlines. “It is really in his voice,” De Paul said of Chafee in a recent interview.

The book has some through-the-looking-glass scenes; one in particular reads like Hunter S. Thompson sans drugs. As Mr. Bush pressed insistently for war, Chafee requested a meeting with CIA brass to examine the evidence against Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Sooner or later, I have to vote on this war, show me everything you have,” Chafee requests of the CIA.

“What they had, I discovered as the meeting stretched into an hour, was next to nothing,” recalls Chafee. “They showed me what they had with little comment and no enthusiasm. Someone handed me one of the infamous aluminum tubes, the kind we were told Saddam was using to enrich weapons-grade uranium while plotting mushroom clouds over America, the ‘smoking gun’ that Condoleezza Rice warned about.

“I looked at the aluminum tube, looked at the analysts and thought, I can go buy one of these at Adler’s Hardware,” the Providence hardware emporium, writes Chafee.

“Few members of Congress were willing to stand up to the schoolyard tough [Mr. Bush] and in the early morning hours of Oct. 11, 2002, weeks before the crucial midterm elections, he bullied them into declaring Saddam an imminent threat.”

From the start of his career, Chafee was the most unlikely of candidates. His father, the late John H. Chafee, was the archetype of the New England Republican moderate and served as a Rhode Island state legislator, governor, U.S. Navy secretary and as a U.S. senator. But Lincoln Chafee, as a young man never much interested in a politics, took the road less traveled.

He majored in classics at Brown, captained the wrestling team, then lit out for the American West and Canada, working at racetracks shoeing horses for seven years.

Chafee moved back home to Rhode Island and developed a yen for political issues in his native Warwick. He writes fondly of his formative political years as he moved from delegate to the state Constitutional Convention to the Warwick City Council to Warwick mayor. He recalls with a wink the times he was verbally lambasted by the Democrats who controlled the City Council when he was mayor of Warwick. After these meetings he and his tormentors jawed over beers at a nearby tavern.

The initial chapters could be titled “The Political Education of Lincoln Chafee.” As an 11-year-old, he attended the 1964 Republican National Convention and watched what would become a seminal event in the lurch of the GOP to the hard right. That convention nominated Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater as the party’s presidential standard-bearer, and he was the first in a series of Republican presidential candidates from the South and West. As the party drifted right, New England moderates such as Chafee and his father became relics.

Chafee acknowledges now that he made some mistakes; perhaps the most blatant, he said in an interview, was not bolting the GOP sooner and becoming an independent, as did his friend then-Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont.

Yet, Chafee understood that switching out of the GOP would have hurt Rhode Island. Mr. Bush and Republican senators, Chafee noted, exacted revenge by stripping Vermont of a popular Jeffords-inspired program that helped dairy farmers.

Rhode Island’s defense industries and installations, such as the Naval War College in Newport, could have faced cutbacks had Chafee left the GOP while he was senator. Federal support for Rhode Island roads and highways would also have been in jeopardy, Chafee says.

Since his defeat, Chafee has switched his voter affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated, Rhode Island political argot for independent. He declined in an interview to engage in any speculation about his political future, saying only, “I’m focused right now on promoting my book.”

Chafee has few scores to settle in the book; he said that he plans to tone down before publication some of his criticism of Whitehouse. “I plan to cull anything that seems like personal animosity.”

Of the general election, Chafee writes that he was both “irked and amused” at the “parade of Democratic Bush enablers” who trekked to Rhode Island to campaign for Whitehouse.

“Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and others who had voted for the war urged my constituents” to defeat him, Chafee writes.

Yet, Chafee doesn’t mention that such GOP war supporters as former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, Arizona Sen. John McCain and First Lady Laura Bush traveled to Rhode Island to raise money or campaign for Chafee.

He has nothing good to say about Mr. Bush, whom he did not vote for in 2004. He writes that he even flirted with running against Mr. Bush in the 2004 New Hampshire primary and had hoped that a leading Republican would challenge the president.

(In the 2004 general election, Chafee wrote in the name of Mr. Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, whose foreign policies were in the internationalist vein favored by Chafee’s northeastern wing of the GOP.) Chafee makes the case that Mr. Bush fudged all of his campaign pledges of 2000, especially the promises about running a bipartisan administration, running a “humble” foreign policy that would eschew nation-building military adventures abroad, and being a “uniter not a divider.”

One of the big reasons Chafee lost his seat was his primary challenge on the right from then-Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey.

Laffey wrote a campaign memoir last year that was an amalgam of conservative talk show slogans, anecdotes from the campaign circuit and stiletto-sharp vituperation aimed at Chafee.

In Laffey’s book, Chafee was called a “backstabber,” a “confessed cocaine abuser,” “fickle,” “a dull fellow,” a “limousine liberal,” a “Ted Kennedy Republican” and a “possible member of a Neville Chamberlain fan club.”

Chafee doesn’t mention Laffey’s name in this book. But the former senator does say that Laffey’s campaign — financed largely by a national right-wing group known as the Club for Growth — split the small Republican base in Rhode Island and contributed to Chafee’s defeat. Chafee received financing from the national Republican Party but in the book laments how difficult it was to raise money.

Chafee and his wife, Stephanie Chafee, disclosed their worth in Senate documents as about $80 million. The Chafees put $1.5 million of their own money into his campaign. When asked why he didn’t contribute more, Chafee said, “We thought $1.5 million was enough.”

Reprising what public opinion surveys showed at the time, Chafee says Laffey had no chance in 2006 of winning a U.S. Senate seat.

“My challenger was an extremist’s extremist…. He might have been an appealing Republican in a Deep South or Rocky Mountain precinct, but in the state of Rhode Island, he was utter folly,” Chafee argues.

smackay@projo.com
click here
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

click here

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

...is a sign outside the White House that says "U S of A...Fire Sale!" Bush's mismanagement of the federal treasury should really be enough to throw his a$$ behind bars...

"Nonetheless, economists predict the president has saddled his successor with near-crippling debt that could threaten the US credit rating for the first time in more than 90 years.

"Despite his efforts, Mr. Bush failed to work out a deal with Congress to tackle the spiraling costs of government health and retirement programs," report the Wall Street Journal's Michael M. Phillips and John D. McKinnon. "The next president, if he or she serves two terms, could find the U.S. government so deeply in hock that it would face losing its Triple-A credit rating, something that has never happened since Moody's Investors Service began grading U.S. securities in 1917."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/In_final_aim_at_fiscal_responsibility_0201.html

Wonder what you mean by "a new vision for what is possible in America if we work together." The part I wonder about is in bold. If I am really as far from mainstream as I surmise...then the reference is to bipartisanship. Which means nothing good.

Some off topic stuff :

Interesting point made by :

Thomas Casten : chairman of the Illinois-based company Recycled Energy Development In an interview by Bruce Gellerman broadcast this (Feb 2) morning on National Public Radio

CASTEN: Electric generation inefficiency is the elephant in the room. Everybody assumes that the electric just is where it is. But it accounts for 46 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions. It's the only industry that's subject to monopoly protection. It's subject to more regulation than anything else and the rules, quite frankly, were designed for yesterday's technology and yesterday's reality.

GELLERMAN: So what one rule, on the federal level, would you like to see change?

CASTEN: The federal Clean Air Act makes improving energy productivity effectively illegal. Once you have a permit for a plant, if you modify it to make it better you lose your permit and you have to go back in and get a new permit based on the latest possible technology. And this has frozen the efficiency of all of our heat and power plants since 1976. It is a disastrous rule. We make energy productivity illegal in the largest industry in the country.

GELLERMAN: So you don't want to scuttle the Clean Air Act.

CASTEN: Oh, I'm an environmentalist who tries to make my living as a capitalist. I want to have those rules be as cost effective and as environmentally effective as possible. My larger comment is that global warming is such a huge problem; it's hard to believe we're going to solve it if our only answer is that people must make sacrifices. We're offering an approach that profitably reduces greenhouse gases and that's much easier to persuade people to do - to go improve their own economic lot and do good. We just need to be a little smarter about how we're doing these things.

Note : EPA knows this guy.

The thing to take away from this, is that perhaps the clean air act COULD be better written, and If so, it is the Congress that will have to rewrite it. No one else can do so, I don't care WHAT the pResident says. It is therefore in order to make the suggestion the matter be considered, and to point at Chairman Casten as one good man to ask about this.

To use the current vernacular, Mr. Casten is a General on the ground asking for the tools he needs to get the job done.

Did that cut through the background noise?

Thank you.

While I am here, I would like to point out for your appreciation a different type of wind turbine, the vertical shaft turbine. The advantages are :
1/ It doesn't mind if the wind is turbulent, so can be placed nearly anywhere.
2/ What? You want More? Why?

Photo Story

There is also an essay by Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the World Policy Institute, on the topic of Food vs. Fuel in the coming year.

I am going to break this in two, so I can use more links.

is in grave danger, and the honchos don't seem to recognize it. People are thinking more and more "Independent," and deserting the Party in droves, BECAUSE of Nancy's short-sighted REFUSAL to allow JC to do his Constitutional duty. I, personally, have withdrawn ANY financial aid to a Party that will NOT live up to its sworn duty. And Wexler now has over 220,000 signatures. Wake up, JC: Barack doesn't have a chance against Bloomberg's Billion$, UNLESS hearings are held on whether Cheney has proved to be the kind of unAmerican bastrich we all know he is!

If you do your plain DUTY, there is still a chance. I don't like Hillary - she's a Bilderberger and a Globalizer, and will lead the Country right off a cliff, if she gets elected - which I don't think possible; she's too deeply hated, and Bill is anathema now. And McCain will keep us in Iraq for the next century!

IMPEACH Cheney! It;s the only chance the Democrats have of increasing their hold on Congress! (And probably the only chance of electing a President, now that the Media have killed the most qualified candidates! (Edwards, Richardson, and Kucinich). I will GUARANTEE that displeasure with the Democratic Congress' nonfeasance will rub off on whatever candidate gets the nod for the top job, unless impeachment hearings are held, and his criminality exposed for all to see.

And a Rethuglican President means a corporate LOCK on the SCOTUS for the next fifty years! It HAS to be a Democrat - a REAL Democrat, or we are spurlos versenkt!

Then there is this really nice looking hi res photo of Helen Island in Palau courtesy NOAA, suitable to use as wallpaper. I came across it while working over the following :

Mr. President Remengesau pres@palaunet.com (Incorrect tried plan "B")
Mr. Vice President Chin vp@vpchin.com & http://www.vpchin.com/contact/contact.php
Minister of Resources and Development, Mr. Koshiba mrd@palaunet.com
Minister of Community and Cultural Affairs, Mr. Merep mcca@palaunet.com
Minister of Finance, Mr Sadang esadang@palaugov.net
Minister of Commerce and Trade, Mr. Besebes mincat@palaunet.com
With apologies to those I may have inappropriately excluded.

Gentalmen.

I am writing because I am concerned about a project I have heard you are considering becoming involved in. I hope that upon review of all the relevancies you will determine it is not in your interest to become involved in the proposed Space Based Solar Power project, to be headed by the recently assembled consortium : Welsom Space Power, and assembled on Helen Reef, located in the southernmost area of your Nation. In order to facilitate your considerations, with an eye toward an outcome I would approve, I would like to raise a number of negative aspects of the proposed project.

My bias is plain, I am against it. The bias of the proponents should be as plain, they are for it. It should be no surprise therefor, that the points I would raise are very different than those of the proponents. This difference should not be taken as evidence of anything more - or less - suspicious than motive. That is the first point to consider. The motive of the person you are hearing from. Is that person for or against? This dictates the light in which that persons words must be viewed. You will not hear about problems from the folks who want you to do it, nor of advantage from those who want you to stop.

Behind the motive, there is the reason for it. Is that reason profit? Is it unusual that some might seek profit through disadvantaging others? The blunt word would be, Thief. But there is no need to use that word. Only a need to consider the possibilities. Using the proponents own words against them, I ask that this be considered :

National Security Space Office Interim Assessment Phase 0 Architecture Feasibility Study, October 10, 2007

"For the DoD specifically, beamed energy from space in quantities greater than 5 MWe has the potential to be a disruptive game changer on the battlefield. SBSP and its enabling wireless power transmission technology could facilitate extremely flexible “energy on demand” for combat units and installations across an entire theater, while significantly reducing dependence on vulnerable over-land fuel deliveries. SBSP could also enable entirely new force structures and capabilities such as ultra long-endurance airborne or terrestrial surveillance or combat systems to include the individual soldier himself. More routinely, SBSP could provide the ability to deliver rapid and sustainable humanitarian energy to a disaster area or to a local population undergoing nation-building activities. SBSP could also facilitate base “islanding” such that each installation has the ability to operate independent of vulnerable ground-based energy delivery infrastructures. In addition to helping American and allied defense establishments remain relevant over the entire 21st Century through more secure supply lines, perhaps the greatest military benefit of SBSP is to lessen the chances of conflict due to energy scarcity by providing access to a strategically secure energy supply."

I, personally, would refer to that as a revealing series of suggestions. Clarified is: the proponents view Space Based Solar Power as, if not a weapon, then as a part of a weapon, moreover - as part of a wide variety of weapons. Apparently, the peaceful applications the system may be put to are put forward as SALES POINTS. I question this. Specifically, I note the system cost is estimated at $800 U.S. per Watt. This is, of course, $800,000 per kilowatt. No civilian is going to pay for power derived from a system that expensive. Therefor, this is not a civilian power project, because there are no customers. No one will benefit. Except the proponents.

Moving on to the losers, I would like to look at what will happen to Helen Atoll, should the project go forward. In as few words as possible, Helen will be destroyed. In every sense that is meaningful. That there are but three people there does not mitigate, because the resource destroyed will not be the usefulness of Helen to Man. It will be the usefulnesses of Helen to Nature. To Gaia. To Earth. Erecting a rectenna will require a construction site. And a harbor. You folks know what happened in your Islands in the Mid 1940s. That is what will happen to Helen. The trees will be cut, the sand dune beneath will lose the anchor of their roots, the dune will wash away. And then the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers will be called in to stabilize the area, and that they certainly will. They will dredge up the 276 varieties of coral, pour cement where turtles and Terns now nest, drive piles, build docks and assorted infrastructure, and then they will build the rectenna farm again. And, supposing it works, there will be power, buildings, docks, a harbor, and signs everywhere that read "U.S.Government Property. Keep Out." Presumably, to inform the Turtles. And then ...do you suppose they would leave? Why? A secure, remote harbor with a megawatt? Who would build it that did not want it? Who is to say what would go on there. Do you think that you could? Just because it is your territory? And has not the entire reef already been declared a protected area? Should that not be taken into consideration, and should that not be the only reasonable basis upon which to make a decision about the Atolls' future? That it is already spoken for?

http://www.seacology.org/projects/individualprojects/PALAU_helen2005.htm

Turning to look at the electromagnetic character of the proposed project, there is to be noted with alarm just where the microwave radiation is to be pointed. In a word, everywhere. The satellite is proposed to orbit every ninety minutes, broadcasting power the whole time. Everywhere. As if that were a good idea. There is no safe level of ionizing radiation. It has been noted that even a power lines or cell phone transmitters cause statistically discernible increases in the likelihood of certain cancers. However, unlike with cigaretts, the liability for same has been dealt with in U.S. Courts by requiring the victim to prove his cancer was actually caused by a power line or cell phone or other particular source of insult. This literally cannot be done. Not even in theory. The source of any given cancer cannot be proved. Unlike, for example, the source of any given poke in the eye. Yet, uncontradicted is : the accepted fact that electromagnetic radiation from cell phone transmitters and powerlines DO cause cancer. Occasionally. Even though the power density is very low. This project threatens the entire world, and every creature on it, with this same effect. The supposition seems to be that proving liability for health effects will be impossible. This, distinct from noting health effects and correctly attributing them. This is called...well, perhaps I should not swear.

Another aspect to consider, one that many would overlook, at first, is the Litter of the Stars with huge and quite visible man made astronomical objects. Some would say this is the price of progress. These same would also say, "This IS Progress" I would not say that. I would say instead, that if Pepsi-Cola could get away with painting their Logo on the Moon, they certainly would. Such a thing, once done, is done, and cannot be undone. Low orbit solar arrays would not be quite so permanent, IF, at some point they stopped being put up. Litter is not likely to make that happen. Proponents don't care about what THEY don't care about, Witness - they don't care about cancer - and it would be they, who have the tools - because it is they who want the tools, who would need convincing. I think that argument would be unwinnable short of violence. I also think that he who regards the Night Sky as something Sacred will be reluctant to pollute a wall by spattering it with a fools brains, while fools have no such compunction. That is permanent enough. If it is thought I am being unfair, please recall that a few paragraphs ago I showed the system to be a weapon, and not a power supply system. Spattering brains is what weapons are for. That is who we are dealing with in this instance. Not engineers, weaponeers.

I feel I have gone sufficiently far in discussing what I would greatly prefer you decide not to do. I would like, if I still have your attention, to discuss some things you might consider doing instead. Things which would provide you the benefits you seem to be seeking : Clean, affordable electricity without unnecessary infrastructure. I would like to suggest that you do, not as the USDoD and assorted hangers-on would have you do, but instead as the USDoD IS DOING. Here are three links to Photographs of Nellis Air Force Base. One is from the air, two are close-ups of the equipment shown in the first photo.

http://media.cleantech.com/ctcfiles/uploaded_images_throug_imce/Nellis-long_row.jpg
http://media.cleantech.com/ctcfiles/uploaded_images_throug_imce/Nellis-sun.jpg

That the Air Force is using it, though they need not, would seem to mean that it works. Well. Each of these units can generate up to 2500 Watts. To compare to the project you are being encouraged, shilled - if I may put it that way, to participate in, each of these units would have to cost about two million Dollars U.S.

But they don't.

I can't give you a dollar figure, but I can give you the manufacturers' brochure. And you could call and ask.

Here is their brochure :

PDF

And their website :

http://www.sunpowercorp.com

I chose that particular web page because it has on it the tracker the Air Force is using at Nellis, and it also has what I think a better idea, Photovoltaic Roofing panels.

If you were to install the trackers, there would be moving parts. Moving parts break. Roofing does not move, so there is less to go wrong. Also, the problem of where to install the unit disappears, because the unit disappears. You were going to have a roof anyway, so, with no more footprint, you have your power as well. Efficiency is reduced, but really, so what? Add a few panels, and for less than a tracker would cost you can make up the difference. There is also the not inconsiderable advantage of improved resistance to damage from high wind. And the finished product blends visually into what you were already doing. Some might call that invisible. Others might call it beautiful. Still others might call it smart.

I haven't decided which of these groups of people I am in. I will sleep on it. I ask that you do too. I thank you, for giving to me the time to say these things to you.

Good day.
My Name
also known as Frosted Flake

You will love these.

Harpers : Another Election Season, Another Political Prosecution in Alabama

It is about using a U.S Attorney for political work. Nice euphemism, eh? Political work. Nor is that all, the Press gets to play, "informing' the electorate, months in advance (How'd He Know??? Is it normal to provide notice in the press when legislators are to be arrested??) and The FBI gets to play the heavy, and a 63 year old lady Legislator gets dragged off to jail at a quarter past six in the morning so she can spend every dime she can borrow to defend herself from some of the weakest charges you could come up with, if, of course, if YOU were a lowlife crooked politician. Naturally, she is a democratic lawmaker. The thrust of the story is; that is why she was arrested.

But wait, there's more. Just who is this U.S Attorney. Why, of course, it's Alice Martin
"That's quite a history you have there, Ma'am".

Seeing as you are the Chair of the house Judiciary, you probably ought to look into this. But, taking a second thought, with Impeachment off the table, what is there that could be done?

It was probably a mistake ever saying "off the table". Pissed off your friends, encouraged your enemies. Oh, pardon, bipartisanship. They are not your enemies. They are mine.

Thus, the irritation.
Frosted Flake

When our nation was founded there were no horseless carriages, no airplanes, no telephones, no computers, no means by which a voter in Georgia could get his vote to Washington in a timely manner. In their wisdom, our founding fathers decided to elect a few who would represent the will of the majority in their respective precincts. Thus was born the House of Representatives. It's function; to counter the representation of the Senate with a body consisting of the will of the people.

Here I read yet another example of how party politics intervenes and pollutes the spirit of that body.

Today, we can easily transmit a secure signal from one end of the planet to another in a matter of seconds. Diebold's purposeful security notwithstanding, these signals can be secured so well that not even our government has the resources to break or alter them without our knowledge. The technology is not just here, it's already sitting on the shelf; waiting to be used.

It is therefore my proposal that we strip the voting privileges from those members of the House of Representatives to be replaced by a direct vote of concerned citizens. Thus relegating them from representation to individual crafters of law; that they should formulate many versions among which the public should choose. And to manage with the Senate those bills that require reconciliation before a final vote by the public.

In the true spirit of majority rule that is the foundation of the House of Representatives, a direct vote would make all representatives more equal regardless of party politics, ideology, or tenure. The public would be allowed to vote on legislation even if brought forth by a single representative or if brought by many. I am reminded of the venerable John Adams, who said

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.

It has become painfully obvious that party politics is preventing the House of Representatives from performing in a manner consistent with the spirit of their function. I therefore propose that each and every citizen - to the maximum extent possible - be empowered to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That each and every one of us should decide for ourselves whether an act is an impeachable offense or not. And each of us should be empowered to judge for ourselves what is best for our nation. And that we should be empowered to do so according to our own conscience, unfettered by party affiliations.

This would break the monopoly of the two party system in the House of Representatives. The two parties will still exist and will still influence all of politics. But without the iron hand of censure or filibuster or of pigeonholing by committees, their monopoly in the House of Representatives would be ended. Leave party politicking to the Senate where such is expected; the will of the people should be the sole determinant in passing legislation through the HoR.

I shall finish with but one more quote, as it is most appropriate; again by John Adams in a letter written to Thomas Jefferson,

As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 - 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.

And so right he was. Revolution happens first in the hearts and the minds of the people first, and only when those who resist resort to violence does it cause bloodshed. What I propose is revolution.

I don't know if you're still in Connecticut, but regardless, I would recommend that you read your own words.

Posted by occams hatchet at my new favorite blog, Docudharma:

John Conyers: Why Nixon should have been impeached

Also over at DailyKos

Your closing comments are particularly compelling, Chairman Conyers:

"If the system has worked, it has worked by accident and good fortune. It would be gratifying to conclude that the House, charged with the sole power of impeachment, exercised vigilance and acted on its own initiative. However, we would be deluding ourselves if we did not admit that this inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored.

Perhaps, ironically, and certainly unintentionally, we have ourselves jeopardized the future of the impeachment process. Before this inquiry, the prospect of impeaching a president was disquieting because it had not been attempted in more than a century. Now with our inquiry as a precedent, future Congresses may recoil from ever again exercising this power. They may read the history of our work and conclude that impeachment can never again succeed unless another President demonstrates the same, almost uncanny ability to impeach himself.

If this is our legacy, our future colleagues may well conclude that ours has been a pyrrhic victory, and that impeachment will never again justify the agony we have endured. It is imperative, therefore, that we speak to them clearly: impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free."

- FUTURE CONGRESSES MAY RECOIL FROM EVER AGAIN EXERCISING THIS POWER

- UNLESS ANOTHER PRESIDENT DEMONSTRATES THE SAME, ALMOST UNCANNY ABILITY TO IMPEACH HIMSELF

- THE SAME, ALMOST UNCANNY ABILITY TO IMPEACH HIMSELF
- THE SAME, ALMOST UNCANNY ABILITY TO IMPEACH HIMSELF
- THE SAME, ALMOST UNCANNY ABILITY TO IMPEACH HIMSELF

- IT IS IMPERATIVE, THEREFORE, THAT WE SPEAK TO THEM CLEARLY: IMPEACHING IS DIFFICULT AND IT IS PAINFUL, BUT THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE IS THE PRICE OF REMAINING FREE

- BUT THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE IS THE PRICE OF REMAINING FREE
- BUT THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE IS THE PRICE OF REMAINING FREE
- BUT THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT MUST BE DONE IS THE PRICE OF REMAINING FREE

Chairman, YOU are now that FUTURE COLLEAGUE to which you refered when you wrote those words in October of 1974. Please, speak to yourself clearly now.

But will John Conyers take her call...

Elizabeth Holtzman's Courageous Call for Impeachment -- It Is Necessary, It is Possible, And It Will Strengthen Us
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 02/04/2008 - 6:50pm. Interviews
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

I don't agree that impeachment divides, and I don't agree that it diverts. ... I do think, however, that the failure to act now, given the litany of abuses and the seriousness of abuses, could simply set the groundwork for future presidents to do the same or worse. If we want to preserve our democracy, then we have to act to hold the President and the Vice President accountable.

-- Elizabeth Holtzman, four-term Congresswoman, former House Judiciary Committee member, and coauthor, The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens

* * *

Rare is the person in public life who has enough conviction and courage to stand up for her beliefs, when standing up means standing virtually alone in the corridors of power. Elizabeth Holtzman is such a person. She cut her teeth in the 1970s serving on the House Judiciary Committee as a freshman congresswoman. That committee impeached Richard Nixon, who quit his office a half year after the committee began investigating. Holtzman sees the Bush/Cheney administration's actions as warranting the same careful, judicious investigation now. She urges American citizens to get that ball rolling. She believes it's not too late, and our letters and calls to Congress can make it happen.

* * *

BuzzFlash: In December of 2006, we interviewed you about your book, Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens. Just last week, you had an op ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on encouraging the House Judiciary Committee to move to impeach Bush and Cheney. Since we interviewed you in December 2006, what happened or changed?

Elizabeth Holtzman: What's happened is you have a few members of the House now who have supported a resolution calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. But as important, three members of the House Judiciary Committee, which is the committee generally charged with impeachments, have called for hearings on the issue of impeachment. That's really a major breakthrough, in my opinion.

Of course, three isn't everybody, but it's a crack in this granite wall that Congress has surrounded itself with on the issue of impeachment. So I think that that's important.

Of course, there have been other issues that have come to light. There's no question now, for example, that waterboarding, which is considered torture, was conducted by the CIA. The U.S. attorney scandal has come out -- and, of course, that raised the question of the President's own personal involvement. We don't know about that. We do know that Karl Rove and others in the White House were involved in the removal of U.S. attorneys, which could be either criminal or simply an abuse of power. Congress refused to investigate that. So I think those are new developments.

Just recently, a private organization put out a list of over 200 instances in which the President and his team lied to the American people about going to war in Iraq. So, if anything, the case has become stronger, and we now have some members of Congress speaking out on the need for impeachment. In fact, Dennis Kucinich, who ran for President, called for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

BuzzFlash: The three members you're speaking of who actually sit on the Judiciary Committee are Robert Wexler, Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baldwin. Wexler has started a petition, which has gotten over 200,000 signatures. But isn't the issue here that Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who is deeply respected, has said that it's not going to happen because the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has said we're not going to do it. You've served in Congress, and you served on the Judiciary Committee that oversaw the impeachment of President Nixon. have we just sort of run up against a brick wall, if the Speaker of the House says we're not going to proceed?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Not necessarily. I don't agree that she's a total brick wall. Remember, when I was in the House of Representatives during Watergate, there was no interest in the Congress in doing impeachment. That only happened when the American people became infuriated at President Nixon's abuse of power by firing the special prosecutor who was investigating Watergate. The American people said we don't want to see America become a banana republic. They insisted that Congress take action.

If the American people want to see impeachment happen, they can make it happen, just as happened during Watergate. Congress is experiencing inertia. Unless there's pressure on Congress, it's not going to do something. There has to be pressure on Congress. The American people need to pressure Congress.

And the arguments against doing it, in my view, don't hold any water. The argument is that there's other business. Well, there's very little that's going on in Congress these days because what the Democrats want to accomplish, the administration doesn't want to see happen. In any case, even if they had a huge agenda -- we had a huge agenda during Watergate -- and yet the House Judiciary Committee did its investigation, conducted its hearings. The House of Representatives did its business. The Senate did its business.

So that's not a distraction. It wasn't a distraction during Watergate, and it doesn't need to be a distraction now. In other words, impeachment hearings can be done without distracting from the other work of the Congress. That's really not an argument that's historically valid.

The second argument is that it could divide the country. I don't think so. If it's done fairly and responsibly and properly, it'll bring the country together. With Watergate, when the House Judiciary Committee voted for impeachment, there was overwhelming support by the public because the process was fair. It was bipartisan. It was open. The American people could see what was going on, and they judged.

And, by the way, the impeachment of Nixon has totally withstood the test of history. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that the impeachment process wasn't proper, or that it was unwarranted. It brought the country together, because Americans understood that, more important than any president, and more important than any political party, was preserving the rule of law. So I don't agree that it divides, and I don't agree that it diverts. I don't think that those arguments are substantial objections or merited objections.

I do think, however, that the failure to act now, given the litany of abuses and the seriousness of abuses, could simply set the groundwork for future presidents to do the same or worse. If we want to preserve our democracy, then we have to act to hold the President and the Vice President accountable.

BuzzFlash: You're not only a former congresswoman, but also a prominent attorney in New York and a former prosecutor. Why are you so passionate about this when the leadership of the Democratic Party just kind of wants to see it go away? The movers and shakers in the Democratic Party, including Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the leading candidates for president at the current time, don't talk about it. None of them support it. Yet you're a mainstream Democrat, with a long history in the party.

Elizabeth Holtzman: I love this country, and I know the consequences of what happens when presidents get to abuse their power. To me, one of the most interesting things that I learned in my research for the book that I wrote, which is the basis for the article, was that Justice Jackson in the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that President Truman didn't have a right as Commander in Chief to seize steel mills. He said we're a country of laws, and the President doesn't have this right. And if you read the opinion carefully, you saw the reason Justice Jackson came to this conclusion. It's a very famous opinion.

President Bush, on the other hand, says, I have the power as Commander in Chief to do anything. But the Supreme Court has said very clearly that, as Commander in Chief, you don't have any more powers than you would not as Commander in Chief. In other words, you have to follow the law. The president is not above the law.

Well, Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Jackson saw what happened when you get tyranny, when you get dictatorship. And nobody wants to see that happen in this country. I mean, we fought in a revolution. My parents fled to America from communism. My grandparents fled seeking freedom from persecution and oppression and tyranny. Why are we going to hand these precious rights over to somebody who will abuse them? And why will we see them fritter away?

So, to me, it's a very deep-seated cause. But it takes a long time sometimes for other people to see the justice of it, although the polls in this country show dramatically that most Americans want to see Cheney impeached. Slightly less than that want to see Bush impeached. Those aren't bad numbers. It's not that the country's against it.

Also, some people don't understand what impeachment's about. Senator Obama said impeachment is undemocratic. Wait a minute -- it's in our Constitution. The whole point of impeachment is to save democracy. It can't be undemocratic, per se, by definition. So there is a lot of misunderstanding. I think the other thing is we've just become so timid in terms of fighting for basic preservation of our democracy. We can't let that happen.

BuzzFlash: Let me take one of the most basic issues at this time, which you address in the Philadelphia Inquirer article. We're less than a year away from the next inauguration, January 20. On top of everything else, conventional wisdom would say, we're in a very pitched and heated campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and on the Republican side, an equal one. All the attention is on that. People are preparing for who is going to be the next president. So the conventional wisdom is, we've got less than a year. Why even bother? This guy's going to be out of here.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, the question is not that he's going to be out of there. Of course he'll be out of there. That's not the point. The point is: Is he going to be held accountable for the abuses of power, for the serious and grave abuses of power, that he's committed? He got us into a war. He drove this country into a war on the basis of lies and misstatements, deliberate and knowing. Thousands of Americans have died. More than twenty thousand have been wounded physically. How many untold numbers are wounded mentally? A trillion dollars or more going to be spent on this war which we need desperately here at home, not to mention the devastation in Iraq, not to mention allowing al-Qaeda to grow.

Here's a president who turned away from the danger of Osama bin Laden and the danger of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, took the troops away, and sent them to Iraq. And now we have a growing problem in Afghanistan and a real threat to the region, to Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, and the world. He has not only cost us in blood and in treasure, but he has endangered the United States of America.

So what's the next president going to say? Well, we want to start a war, we can lie, too? Or we want to eavesdrop on the American people -- who cares what the law says? We want to arrest Elizabeth Holtzman because we don't like her book? Who cares what the law says? I'm Commander in Chief. Is that where we want to go? I don't think so. I hope not.

And we have time to do it -- I went back and checked the dates. The official instruction to the House was given in February 1974, and we completed our hearings in July, and the President resigned in August.

BuzzFlash: You just brought up the wire-tapping issue. Let me just try to connect a few dots here, because I think, even to our readers, who tend to be quite informed, the whole FISA debate is extremely complicated. Many people don't quite understand what's at stake. In late January, the Democrats succeeded in filibustering an attempt to pass a bill with telecom immunity. But then the Democrats lost a vote on a 30-day extension on what is now a temporary FISA bill, but would not include telecom immunity. All the Republicans voted against the Democratic effort for the 30-day extension -- in essence, voted with the White House, because Bush threatened to veto it. The telecom immunity issue, from our perspective, is very key because it's our belief that the White House, and Cheney, in particular, are fighting so hard because, if they get telecom immunity, it's like taking one step further to get immunity for themselves.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, they did get immunity for themselves from the War Crimes Act. Let's make that explicit and perfectly clear.

BuzzFlash: They did.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Both Cheney and the administration pardoned themselves, in effect, and got immunity from prosecution under the War Crimes Act, which, by the way, carries the death penalty. A criminal statute makes it a federal crime to violate certain portions of the Geneva Conventions, and to engage in torture, mistreatment, or degrading treatment of detainees. So they were very worried about criminal liability -- so worried that they got themselves immunity under the War Crimes Act. So, yes, I think that would be the next step. You might even see a pardon by George Bush before he leaves office.

BuzzFlash: Now on the FISA bill, there's one specific issue I want to bring up, which is how the media has sort of ignored all of these prosecutable and potential impeachment violations and indictments. You mentioned a study that came out last week that said over 200 administration lies led up to the Iraq war. But that came and went in less than two news cycles. The press, I think, has had the attitude -- well, we already know he lied. It's not news.

The second thing I wanted to bring up was a piece in the print New Yorker, not online, this past week, in which the author of a book called Looming Tower, which has to do with heroism, states that he was wiretapped by the Bush administration on outgoing calls, which the Bush administration has claimed it never does. He says he made calls, and they wire-tapped him, as an American citizen. And the FBI actually came to visit him and questioned him about some of the calls he made. He's a non-fiction author who, before this book, was investigating terrorism. That is a direct violation of what the administration claims -- let alone that it has bypassed the FISA court.

But it says under its proposed FISA law, it would still never tap a call originating in the United States unless it were a call that had been routed to the United States and back overseas from someone who initiated it overseas. What happened to him is in direct violation of that promise, a direct violation of the existing law at the time, and the current law. I didn't see anything about it in the mainstream media, or a discussion in Congress. You wouldn't know about this, unless you read closely on the Internet, or you picked up that edition of The New Yorker. Yet here you had a clear indication of a FISA violation with an American citizen being wire-tapped.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, I haven't read that article yet. It's sitting on my desk, because I do subscribe to The New Yorker, and I've been meaning to read it. But that's the whole point of the FISA law. It sets up a check against the President, because we saw this in Nixon and in Watergate. The President said: Oh, I want to wiretap these newspaper reporters. And I want to wiretap the White House staff, so I'm just going to do it. That was one of the grounds the House Judiciary Committee voted for impeachment.

And it was against that background that Congress enacted FISA. We said: You know something? We're going to give the President the right, in national security cases, to wiretap foreigners -- to do intelligence surveillance. But we're not going to let him do it on his own say-so, because we've seen with Richard Nixon that when a president does this, and there's no check, there's no balance. So that's what FISA is. Now you have Bush saying: I am above the law. I am Commander in Chief, and I don't have to obey a law that was put into place to make sure that there was independent scrutiny of what the president was doing. And it was intended exactly to protect the right of free speech and free press in the United States. Journalism is not a threat to our country, yet. It shouldn't be.

But you're absolutely right -- the media has been so supine, so lethargic, so cynical, so uninterested. I remember I was at a debate in New York about a month ago. Some very prominent reporter on NBC was there, and he's: Oh, impeachment. Bush is terrible and he's done all these abuses. But impeachment? Who could be for impeachment? Then we started to go through the arguments. And he said, "You know, you've convinced me."

It's a cynical, blasé press corps that feels they know everything, and they won't deal with this issue in a serious way. So the public doesn't really understand what its options are. And the basic option is, you have the right to petition for redress of grievances under the Constitution, and you have freedom of speech. So people who care about these abuses ought to be going to their Congressional representative and saying: Sign on to the resolution for the impeachment of Cheney. Join Reps. Wexler and Gutierrez and Baldwin calling for hearings on the impeachment of Bush-Cheney. Let's move this forward. They need to contact their representatives. Congressmen need to hear from people in their districts. Other members of the House Judiciary Committee need to hear from people in their districts. Nancy Pelosi and other leaders in the House need to hear from people in their districts. If the American people want this to happen, it still can happen.

BuzzFlash: But without the media, how do the American people get a real sense of the abuses that have occurred?

Elizabeth Holtzman: That's a very good question. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. If the American people knew, they would demand. If the press were to inform them, that would help the process. But the press is uninterested, and so it becomes very difficult. I don't know what the answer is.

I just keep writing. Others keep writing. There are groups organizing all over the country on this. There's an effort in the State of Washington, I think, as we speak, to try to get the state legislature to adopt a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. So people are still active all over this country.

BuzzFlash: First of all, I just want to commend you. There are so many people who take the safe route, rather than the patriotic route. You are doing this out of your passion for our Constitution, for democracy. But if you could sit down with Nancy Pelosi and make the case to her in a couple minutes, what would you tell her? How would you try to persuade her to go ahead with allowing the House Judiciary Committee members to go ahead with impeachment?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Maybe what she should say for starters is that it's not off the table, if the American people want it on the table. Let the American people know that they can have a say in this. I think if she said that, and people thought that there was some hope, then the media might say, gee, if the American people want it, then it's not off the table -- she said that -- I think that would make a huge difference. I don't think she has to say we're going to have hearings. I think she should at least say the American people want us to begin this process. We are the people's House. And we are prepared to listen.

BuzzFlash: I might point out, as a follow-up -- and I may be reading into this, because, of course, we're just talking about the newspaper article -- but the way I read Speaker Pelosi's statement, she said it's like these people have these anti-impeachment buttons, and they're just waiting for me to arrive in the airport. Rather than saying the logical thing and the common-sense thing, which is there are a lot of people wearing these buttons. It's not that anyone knows the Speaker of the House is going to arrive at the airport. It just represents the broad sentiment for impeachment. And she happens to show up in the airport, and there's a lot of people with the buttons. Do you think that, in a democracy, the will of the people should be heard? Do you think that, again, this is possible with a very heated presidential primary going on?

Elizabeth Holtzman: Well, I've seen it happen in my lifetime. I've seen how the American people can turn things around. I saw them turn around the war in Vietnam, which was based on lies. Ultimately the American people forced the Congress to end the war. That's how the war ended. The American people forced that.

I saw what happened in the South during the time of segregation. People came and said, we've had enough, and they ended it. The whole system of Jim Crow -- they ended it. With the guns and the water hoses, and the police dogs -- they ended it. And I saw that.

And they ended the tenure of an abusive presidency by Richard Nixon. The American people can make that difference. But they have to know they have that power. And the press needs to advise them and play a responsible role here. And I think the leadership doesn't have to endorse impeachment, but I don't think there's any harm in saying the American people want this. We know how to respond. And open the process to allowing the American people to have a say about whether we're going to continue as a robust full-throated democracy, or are we tip-toeing our way -- maybe not even tip-toeing -- hurtling our way into a military dictatorship?

BuzzFlash: Thank you so much.

Elizabeth Holtzman: Nice talking to you.

BuzzFlash Interview conducted by Mark Karlin.
click here

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

All Americans should see this and digest its contents well!

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

John McCain
seems to be the up and coming Rethuglikan candidate for President.
Although he is a Rethuglikan,he seems to be a man of character.

That said,I am worried about something that happened in his past. He was a navy pilot during the Viet Nam war ,and "On his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967, he was shot down and badly injured. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973".

"Periods of torture"!! What happens to a person after he undergoes years of deprivation , mental and physical abuse?
Has anyone here ever heard of mind control,sleeper cells,plants?
My question is ,can we,despite the fact that this brave person was in the hands of expert operatives for years, TRUST him to be president of the United States?

I believe this is a legitimate question,and I would like to hear what others think about it !

This :History of MK-ULTRA. CIA program on Mind Control
is just scratching the surface of possibilities!

Sorry folks ,but because we can not Trust those that we put into position to take care of us, WE ARE DAMNED TO ETERNAL VIGULANCE!!

I Just found this :::Another Manchurian Candidate?

Amnesty International Calls for Criminal Investigation Following CIA 'Waterboarding' Admission

Amnesty International today called for a full, independent and prompt criminal investigation, following the first public admission by CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, that waterboarding had been used by the agency as an interrogation technique against three detainees held in secret custody.

"Waterboarding -- where detainees are subjected to simulated drowning
-- is torture. Torture is a crime under international law," said Rob Freer,
Amnesty International's researcher on the United States. "Yet, no one has
been held accountable for the authorization and use of waterboarding by
U.S. personnel."

"This assertion begs the question of who authorized the torture of
these three individuals in 2002 and 2003," said Freer. "Any U.S. President
does not have the authority to order or approve the torture of an
individual. No one does. Any criminal investigation must have the power to
go right to the top."
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